Augustine Wetta's Blog, page 4

HOW TO MAKE A DECISION

“Guide me Lord in the way of your commands”
This was our response to the psalm this morning. We asked God to guide us. But how do we know that we really are following Him? How do we to know where He is leading us? When He calls, how can we be sure to hear Him? After all, His voice is so very quiet; and life is so noisy, so complicated, so full of options and temptations. Which friends should I choose? Which college should I choose? Should I stay where I am or go somewhere else? Eat what I’m served or make a pizza? Take a low grade or cheat on the quiz? How do we decide? Last term, one of my Ethics students pointed out to me that I was teaching Catholic doctrine as though he had already chosen to believe it. And that got me thinking about decisions. How should my student go about making a decision like that? How could I help him decide? Well, it turns out that there has been a lot of work done recently on the psychology of decision-making. And the consensus is that there really is no good way to make a decision – especially an important decision or a difficult decision. The reasoning goes like this: if it’s an easy decision, then bully for you. Make it and get on with your life. But if it is a difficult decision, then it’s difficult for one of two reasons: either both options are very good (in which case it doesn’t really matter what you decide—you end up in a good spot either way) or both options are very bad (in which case it doesn’t really matter what you decide—because you end up in a bad spot either way). Therefore, the happy person is distinguish from the unhappy person not so much by his good decisions, but merely by whether or not he commits to the result. So. For example, you go out to eat, and you have to decide whether to order chicken or fish. After much handwringing and agony, you decide on the chicken; then you spend the rest of your dinner wishing you had ordered fish. But a happy person chooses to be happy. He says, basically, “I chose the chicken and I’m going to enjoy it. Period. Tonight, I’m a chicken man, and that’s all there is to it.” This is, in a sense, is what Jesus says about marriage in our gospel reading. You choose a wife, you stick with her. Once you’ve made that decision, you’re in. Period. Because, “what God has joined together, no human being must separate." But that still begs the question, how did you make that choice to begin with? Our first reading answers this question to certain extent by framing it in terms of friendship: here’s what to look for in friend, and here’s what to avoid. But again, the mechanics of the decision-making are left to us. Were you listening, though, when we sang the responsorial psalm? The entire structure of a wise decision was hidden in the words of that Psalm. I’ll read it for you again in case you were napping: Open my eyes, Lord, that I may consider the wonders of your law.
Make me understand the way of your precepts, and I will meditate on your wondrous deeds.
Give me discernment, that I may observe your law and keep it with all my heart.
Lead me in the path of your commands, for in it I delight.
Open my eyes…Make me understand…Give me discernment… Lead me. Four steps to a good decision:
STEP 1: REPENT--Open my eyes, Lord: The first step in a good decision is to take a fearless, objective look at your weaknesses and subject them to rigorous interrogation. Is there anything clouding your vision? Is there anything getting in the way? Emotions, misinformation, sin… The sacrament of confession is very useful at this early stage. STEP 2: REFLECT--Make me understand, Lord: What are your strengths? What are your options? Are all of them virtuous? What does your tradition teach? What does the Law say? Here you do well to reflect on the Scriptures and the writings of wise men and women. STEP 3: REFER--Give me discernment, Lord: Has anyone made this decision before? What were their results? How did they do it? Now is when you refer the decision to a wise elder. STEP 4: RESOLVE--Lead me: You have made the decision. But does it comply with God’s will? Now you pray in earnest. You’ve been praying all along, of course. Each of these steps is itself a prayer. But in the fourth and final step, you take the whole decision and resolve to move forward, laying it at the feet of our Lord.
And the process is complete. You made a searching and fearless moral inventory of your weaknesses…you considered all your options and all that your tradition has to offer. You sought out the advice of a trusted elder, and you submitted all of it to God in prayer and humility. Decision made, right? Now what? How do you know that it worked?
You don’t. You can do all of this and still make the wrong decision. But here’s catch. Here’s what ultimately distinguishes the happy, the holy, and the peaceful from the miserable, corrupt, and anxious: COMMITMENT. Until it becomes clear that you made the wrong decision, commit to the decision you’ve made. Resolve to move forward. The last step is the most important. Don’t put your hand to the plow and keep looking back. There are times when you have to quit, when you have to give up on your dreams or choose a different path. But no one—NO ONE—wants to hang out with the guy who orders chicken then spends his whole meal wishing he’d ordered fish. Make your decision, pray your decision. Submit it to God’s will. Commit to the outcome: Repent, Reflect, Refer, Resolve.

Blessed are you, O LORD;
teach me your statutes.
Open my eyes, that I may consider
the wonders of your law.
Make me understand the way of your precepts,
Give me discernment,
Lead me in the path of your commands,

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Published on March 01, 2019 11:12

OUR LADY (Sermon delivered at EWTN on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception)

“I will put enmity between you and the woman.” We rightly festoon Our Lady with terms like gentle, loving, merciful, and sorrowful. Dom Augustine Delatte writes of Mary’s “heroic docility”. And these are all beautiful signs of her perfect love for us. But how do we reconcile such titles with a word like enmity? The word suggests a blood feud—even hatred. I teach at a boys’ school in St. Louis Missouri, and when I read this passage to my students, they latched right onto it. Mary is no wimp. Her immaculate Conception guarantees that she will hate evil—and hate it with a perfect hate. She stares down Satan himself. In ancient Greece, the early Christians use to depict Mary with the same iconography as Athena Parthenos, the warrior goddess of wisdom, bearing the storm shield and shaking her spear at evil. Mary goes to war for us. And Satan is terrified!A few summers ago, when I went home to visit my family, we watched a really awful movie starring Macaulay Culkin called “The Good Son.” Surprisingly, it turned out to be a movie about a really bad son. In fact, this particular son was a homicidal maniac; and at the end of the movie, his mother ends up holding him by his hand off the edge of a cliff. In her other hand is someone else’s son who is not a homicidal maniac and is in fact quite a nice kid. She can’t hold on to them both. So she has to make a decision.After the movie, I turned to my mother and asked her, “If it was Dad and I hanging off that cliff, which would you choose?” Without hesitation, she said. Oh, YOU!” What really surprised me was that she didn’t have to think about the answer. “I would choose my children,” she said, “over anything and anyone in the world.”So I’ve done a sort of informal survey over the past few years, and you know what? I have never met a mom who would answer otherwise. I’ve never met a mom who even hesitated with her answer. That is a terrible—a, terrifying—kind of love.There’s a painting in my home in an out-of-the-way spot in back of the house, that my mother did when I was a child. My mother is a professional artist. It was Halloween, and my sister and I went trick-or-treating, and some of the bullies on our block stole our candy. I was thirty-five years old—no just joking, I was eight, my sister was six. Anyhow, my mother is an artist, and a few days later, she went into the studio and painted this picture of us. It’s a dark painting of my sister and me in our Halloween costumes walking through a forest. In back of us, hanging from the trees are all those bullies. Dead. Suspended by their necks.That is a terrifying kind of love. And while it may surprise my students to hear that a mother could have such deep and violent emotions, I’ll bet it doesn’t surprise their moms at all. A mother understands this formidable bond between mothers and sons. This is why the most powerful prayer in the world is that of a mother for her child. All we sons can do is be grateful and try to respect it. Try to respect them.The love of a mother for her son, after all, is an icon of God’s love for us. It’s not a perfect icon—and that’s why we pray to God as Father. His is a more detached sort of love. And that’s a theological/exegetical issue I would have to explain in another sermon. Suffice to say that this love—this formidable love, this fearsome love…a love so powerful that Satan himself trembles in its presence—this love of a mother for her son… Mary has this love for us: her adopted sons and daughters! And precisely because she is The Immaculate Conception, she loves us with a purity and intensity that even our own earthly mothers cannot hope to rival. Mother Mary, Conceived without sin, pray for us.
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Published on February 20, 2019 10:48

A HARD YEAR TO BE A PRIEST (Homily for Sunday, February 10, 2019)

Today’s first reading was also read in this church on Saturday, January 1, 2000. I remember it well because that was the mass at which I took my solemn vows. I remember it vividly because the lector at that mass left out the crucial last sentence. He left out, “Here I am, send me!” Fast forward 19 years, and I find myself smiling condescendingly on that young monk who would dare make such a demand of God. And there have been times when I questioned the wisdom of the decision I made that day. Knowing how hard the life of a prophet can be, why would anyone volunteer for it? Well, it happens that today’s Gospel reading also played a large part in my discernment of my vocation. At a crucial moment during my novitiate, when I was certain this monastery was not for me, I had a very vivid daydream. This is not in itself unusual. I spend most of my life daydreaming. But on this occasion, I had been reading about the call of Peter; and I imagined that I too was on the beach that day at Gennesaret. I too was packing up my fishing nets and tackle, when I looked up the beach, and…there was Jesus. He was walking along the shore in my direction. He was choosing his apostles. So on he came. He was walking toward me. As he drew closer, I could see the determination in his eyes…and he was walking straight toward me. He came closer. Closer. And just as he got to my boat, he stopped, turned around, and chose THE GUY IN THE BOAT NEXT TO ME. Then walked away. Was this a sign that I was not called to the priesthood? Had I felt relieved, I’d say yes; But instead, I became quite convinced of the opposite. I rebooted the daydream and ran after Jesus calling out, “Wait! Wait! You forgot me! Choose me! Here I am, send me!” Now, this has been a hard few years to be a priest—a hard few years to be a Catholic. And…well…the last week has been the hardest yet for the Abbey Family. But I knew when I signed up that we might have a hard go of it. I was told that we were likely to lose men. I was warned that the life of a Christian was not easy, and that I would find myself on the front lines of a war for souls. I was told that every soldier, when he comes face-to face with the enemy, questions his decision to fight; but a good soldier knows that, for the sake of his brothers-in-arms, he must stand his ground. I was sharing this with some students on Wednesday. One of them said, “The monks may be the Green Berets of the Church…but this is like Blackhawk Down or something.” It sure feels like that. But you know, there were guys who deliberately parachuted into that fight. Knowing the odds, they deliberately put themselves in harms way. They wanted to be there. And I believe those men were heroes. Well, here we all are, monks, priests, and laypeople alike--in the thick of it. The pressure is unbearable, the enemy has us surrounded, and some of us are very discouraged. Some have run away. And some have simply cracked under the pressure of it. But I told my students, and I’ve told my brother monks, and I can surely speak for many of us here today when I say: there is nowhere in the world I would rather be right now. You all parachuted in this Sunday, and we are grateful.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about Winston Churchill. Not a great theologian, and probably not a saint, but a great soul nonetheless. A steadfast soul. A soul who, when it looked like his people were likely to lose heart, gave a speech which steeled their resolve. And I find myself reciting his words in a new context: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat…we should prepare ourselves for hard and heavy tidings. And I have only to add that nothing which may happen in this battle can in any way relieve us of our duty to defend the cause to which we have vowed ourselves; nor should it destroy our confidence in our power to make our way through disaster and through grief to the ultimate defeat of our enemy. …And when we see the originality of malice, the ingenuity of aggression, which our enemy displays, we may certainly prepare ourselves for every kind of brutal and treacherous maneuver…but at the same time, I hope, with a steady eye. …For even though many have fallen or may fall into the grip of the enemy and all the odious apparatus of his rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength…we shall defend our home, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landings, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.
To put it in more biblical terms, “Do not be afraid; from now on you’ll be catching men."

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Published on February 18, 2019 12:03

A HARD YEAR TO BE A PRIEST (Homily for Sunday, February 11, 2019)

Today’s first reading was also read in this church on Saturday, January 1, 2000. I remember it well because that was the mass at which I took my solemn vows. I remember it vividly because the lector at that mass left out the crucial last sentence. He left out, “Here I am, send me!” Fast forward 19 years, and I find myself smiling condescendingly on that young monk who would dare make such a demand of God. And there have been times when I questioned the wisdom of the decision I made that day. Knowing how hard the life of a prophet can be, why would anyone volunteer for it? Well, it happens that today’s Gospel reading also played a large part in my discernment of my vocation. At a crucial moment during my novitiate, when I was certain this monastery was not for me, I had a very vivid daydream. This is not in itself unusual. I spend most of my life daydreaming. But on this occasion, I had been reading about the call of Peter; and I imagined that I too was on the beach that day at Gennesaret. I too was packing up my fishing nets and tackle, when I looked up the beach, and…there was Jesus. He was walking along the shore in my direction. He was choosing his apostles. So on he came. He was walking toward me. As he drew closer, I could see the determination in his eyes…and he was walking straight toward me. He came closer. Closer. And just as he got to my boat, he stopped, turned around, and chose THE GUY IN THE BOAT NEXT TO ME. Then walked away. Was this a sign that I was not called to the priesthood? Had I felt relieved, I’d say yes; But instead, I became quite convinced of the opposite. I rebooted the daydream and ran after Jesus calling out, “Wait! Wait! You forgot me! Choose me! Here I am, send me!” Now, this has been a hard few years to be a priest—a hard few years to be a Catholic. And…well…the last week has been the hardest yet for the Abbey Family. But I knew when I signed up that we might have a hard go of it. I was told that we were likely to lose men. I was warned that the life of a Christian was not easy, and that I would find myself on the front lines of a war for souls. I was told that every soldier, when he comes face-to face with the enemy, questions his decision to fight; but a good soldier knows that, for the sake of his brothers-in-arms, he must stand his ground. I was sharing this with some students on Wednesday. One of them said, “The monks may be the Green Berets of the Church…but this is like Blackhawk Down or something.” It sure feels like that. But you know, there were guys who deliberately parachuted into that fight. Knowing the odds, they deliberately put themselves in harms way. They wanted to be there. And I believe those men were heroes. Well, here we all are, monks, priests, and laypeople alike--in the thick of it. The pressure is unbearable, the enemy has us surrounded, and some of us are very discouraged. Some have run away. And some have simply cracked under the pressure of it. But I told my students, and I’ve told my brother monks, and I can surely speak for many of us here today when I say: there is nowhere in the world I would rather be right now. You all parachuted in this Sunday, and we are grateful.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about Winston Churchill. Not a great theologian, and probably not a saint, but a great soul nonetheless. A steadfast soul. A soul who, when it looked like his people were likely to lose heart, gave a speech which steeled their resolve. And I find myself reciting his words in a new context: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat…we should prepare ourselves for hard and heavy tidings. And I have only to add that nothing which may happen in this battle can in any way relieve us of our duty to defend the cause to which we have vowed ourselves; nor should it destroy our confidence in our power to make our way through disaster and through grief to the ultimate defeat of our enemy. …And when we see the originality of malice, the ingenuity of aggression, which our enemy displays, we may certainly prepare ourselves for every kind of brutal and treacherous maneuver…but at the same time, I hope, with a steady eye. …For even though many have fallen or may fall into the grip of the enemy and all the odious apparatus of his rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength…we shall defend our home, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landings, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.
To put it in more biblical terms, “Do not be afraid; from now on you’ll be catching men."

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Published on February 18, 2019 12:03

THE FIRST HOMILY OF OUR NEWLY ORDAINED DEACON, BROTHER ATHANASIUS

     “This saying is hard; who can accept it?” said Jesus’ disciples. In the Gospel it refers to the real presence of our Lord in the Eucharist, but for us the ‘hard saying’ of our Lord is probably something completely different. For some this ‘hard saying’ is the call for wives to be subordinate to their husbands. In fact it is so hard that our courageous bishop’s conference offers a conveniently censored version of this passage to be read at Mass. However at the present time it is this very same clerical hierarchy that has become a ‘hard saying’ for us. Whether it is the findings of the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report or the web of scandal surrounding ex-cardinal McCarrick, the very fact that God has chosen to use not just weak and fallible men, but evil and hypocritical ones as instruments for our salvation seems not only hard but outlandish and irrational. This is indeed the ‘God of surprises’ Pope Francis talks about.
     This is where the cliches come in “God brings good out of evil’, ‘with faith all things are possible’, ‘man’s evil poses no limit to God’s goodness’ blah blah blah. The thing about these cliches is that they are not just cliches, but profound truths that provide profound insight on the relationship between divine and human action. However, without a lived experience of these truths or a concrete example of them, they do become hollow cliches for us which is why the example of Joshua is so important for us.
     In our first reading we find Joshua leading the people in a solemn profession of faith in the Lord and in a renewal of their covenant, that alliance between God and man that gave the Israelites a true home in the promised land. In fact this little passage represents the very summit of Joshua’s life and the culmination of his life’s work, since it comes at the end of a long series of victorious battles that resulted in the people of God wrestling the promised land of Israel from a slew of enemy tribes. And Joshua knew full well that his invincibility in battle depended on meditating upon the law of the Lord day and night so that he would never ever deviate from it. Much like Joshua, we too are promised invincibility in our own spiritual warfare provided that our intellect is in conformity with the truth and that our will leads us to act in conformity with that truth. And while we we all have the potential to be all-conquering spiritual Hercules, we need to look to role models like Joshua for guidance on how to fulfill that potential.
     In his first biblical appearance Exodus remarks that Joshua ‘mowed down Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword.’Now, while you might be involved in your faith community as a catechist or a as a member of a prayer group, lets just say that Joshua had a special charism to serve his fellow Israelites by participating in a kind of outreach ministry that involved reaching out to other faith groups (with a sword). The important insight here, is that the more involved and dedicated you are to the faith and religious practice the more it burns when your visible religious leaders fail you.
     Joshua got this first taste of human failure when, returning from Mount Sinai with Moses, he finds Aaron, the high priest and a spokesman chosen by God himself leading the elders and all of Israel in idolatry. Even more shameful than this was Aaron’s response when questioned by Moses: Aaron explains that the Israelites had given him gold and that he ‘threw it into the fire and there came out this calf.” I actually consider this verse to be a perfect instance of the kind of shameless obviously false self serving lies that five year olds specialize in. And it was this very verse that came to mind when I read about Cardinal Wuerl having his archdiocese set up a website to protect his reputation. This website included an article that criticized the grand jury report for not highlighting all the good things he had done regarding child protection as if grand juries are formed to investigate the good actions of citizens.
     So how did Joshua respond to this kind of scandal: he does absolutely nothing noteworthy. The Levites slay all those who are not on the Lord’s side and Moses offers to make atonement which ends up taking the form a plague from which Joshua would also suffer even though he was blameless. While he supports the special vocation of the Levites and Moses have for setting things straight, he himself recognizes that his role is simply to continue in his fidelity to the law.
     This doesn’t mean Joshua withdraws from participation in the life of Israel, rather he continues to help his people by serving as a scout that reconnoiters the land of Israel. However, as part of this service, Joshua is once again betrayed by his coreligionists. All the the scouts agree that the promised land is fertile and full of food way better than manna and quail, but all the other ones except one feel that the struggle needed to secure the land is too difficult for them. In short the courageous Joshua gets lumped in with a bunch of cowards. Now you have to understand that in herding/pastoral cultures, courage tends to be the most celebrated virtue, since it is the one needed to fend off the wolves, lions, and bandits that threaten the livestock that are vital to those cultures. So for Joshua being known as a coward is like being called a racist or a pedophile now. And this kind of humiliation is what we Catholics get stuck with, guilty or not, as part of the aftermath of all this crisis. As someone who walks around the streets of Pamplona, Spain everyday literally wearing my religion on my sleeve, I can tell you I have been called a child molester and a fascist and have even been challenged to a fistfight, all due to past sins or even perceived sins of my fellow Catholics.
     So after suffering this kind of humiliation and almost being stoned for wanting to fight for the promised land, what did this great biblical protagonist do? Well he doesn’t quit the Israelites in rage and run off to join the Amalekites, no he simply suffered with his people. God had Israel atone for its sin by waiting for 40 years so that the entire generation of cowards would die off before entering the promised land. While Joshua was guaranteed entry to the promised land, he would have to wander the desert shoulder to shoulder with those losers for 40 years despite being blameless himself.
     The hard words of our Lord also exist in what he didn’t say. He never promised us a saintly hierarchy, or a mediocre one, or even a not evil one nor did he promise us that we would never be humiliated by our brothers in the faith. Fortunately our Lord did promise us something way better than all that: THE WORDS OF ETERNAL LIFE. Those words are the words of consecration Fr. Dominic will say in a few minutes. For it is by these words that Christ becomes present among us body and blood, soul and divinity. And when we eat his flesh and drink his blood Christ abides in is and we in him. And it is when he abides in us that we become an all conquering spiritual Hercules, like Joshua.
 

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Published on August 26, 2018 09:11

Bullying

Do not give way to anger.
Do not cultivate a desire for revenge.
Do not return evil for evil (cf 1 Thes 5:15; 1 Pt 3:9).
Do not no injury, yea, even patiently to bear the injury done us.
Love your enemies (cf Mt 5:44; Lk 6:27).
Do not curse those who curse us, but rather bless them.
Bear persecution for the sake of justice (cf Mt 5:10)
--The Holy Rule of Saint Benedict, Chapter 4: The Instruments of Good Works

A few weeks ago, I was out of town giving a day of recollection to a group of confirmation students. Some nuns had invited me. It’s part of their apostolate to host retreats and that sort of thing. I didn’t know the kids, and they didn’t know me, but something felt a little off. I mean, the kids were super nice—very quiet and patient, and respectful—but there was something about them that I couldn’t quite figure out. And it wasn’t until pretty recently that I realized what was the matter. It was this: the kids were exhausted. They were 12, 13, 14 years old, and they were worn out, drained, war-weary. And so were the nuns. Every one of them had that strung-out, strained, up-all-night look about them. It made me uneasy.

And that uneasiness followed me all the way back home. And then it was like one of those new tunes you hear that suddenly, wherever you go, seems to be playing in the background. I began to notice it all around. The folks in the airport looked exhausted, the folks on the airplane looked exhausted, and when I got home, I noticed that my brother monks looked exhausted. In fact, looking out now at you guys…you look exhausted. No offense. I mean, you look great, but you also look like you could use a nap. Go ahead, if you feel like you need it. I won’t have my feelings hurt. So this has me wondering: what is it that is wearing us out? I’ve been mulling this over all week, and I can only come up with one answer: we’ve had a difficult year. And by we, I mean all of us––well, everyone in America. And by difficult, I don’t mean starvation and pestilence difficult. I imagine there are some Sudanese child soldiers who would be pretty amused to learn that I had a difficult year—that any of us had a difficult year. Our lives are not in danger. We sleep in comfortable beds. But still, we have had a difficult year. And difficult (ironically) because we ourselves made it difficult. We spent the year wringing our hands and shaking our fists about…well…about everything: the pope, the president, the Church, the Press, our neighbors, their neighbors, people who wanted to be our neighbors and other people who didn’t want them to be our neighbors. We railed against racism and sexism and liberalism and feminism and conservatism and relativism and chauvanism and fascism and pretty much anything we could tack an -ism onto. And to be sure, this has been a year worthy of much fist-shaking and hand-wringing—maybe even worthy of fist-throwing. As my students say, “When you ask ‘what would Jesus do,’ remember that kicking over tables and beating people up is not out of the question.” But I read an article on Thursday that put some of this in perspective. The article quoted the great 20th-century theologian, Matt Damon as having said, “We live in a culture of outrage.”

I don’t know the context of this quote, and I’m glad I don’t because I prefer not to be in the position of having to defend Matt Damon’s star’s behavior. “We’re surrounded?” Colonel Lewis ‘Chesty’ Puller supposedly said, “Good. That simplifies the problem.” And when asked if they were retreating, replied, “Retreat, hell. We’re attacking in a different direction.” @font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }@font-face { font-family: "Calibri"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; }p.MsoFootnoteText, li.MsoFootnoteText, div.MsoFootnoteText { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; }span.MsoFootnoteReference { vertical-align: super; }span.FootnoteTextChar { }.MsoChpDefault { font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; }div.WordSection1 { }

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Published on March 23, 2018 07:22

Homily to EWTN on the Feast of Saint Juan Diego

     Isaiah tells us that the day will come when our Teacher will No longer hide Himself, but with our own eyes we shall see Him, while from behind, a voice shall sound in our ears: "This is the way; walk in it," when we might otherwise turn to the right or to the left.
     We all have our plans. But Our Lady—Our Lady of the Snows—she has her own plans, and when our plans and her plans don’t match up, she has a way getting what she wants. I thought I was coming to Irondale, Alabama to give a retreat. Turns out, her plan was for me to have a snowball fight with five Franciscans. I can’t say I saw that coming.   Literally. The snowball hit me in the back of the head. And I learned an important life lesson: Never turn your back on a Franciscan.
   But I can take some consolation in knowing that sometimes even the Saints have their plans derailed. As the story goes…in order to avoid being delayed by the Virgin, Juan Diego chose another route around the hill where she had first appeared to him…but “the Virgin intercepted him and asked where he thought he was going…”
     That’s my favorite part of the story.   The roses blooming amid the snow, the miraculous cure, the vision of Mary—these things don’t happened to me. But an irritating detour, an awkward conversation with my mother and a stain on my shirt…now that story sounds familiar.   Because even after 21 years in a monastery, I still insist on doing things my way. And I’ve learned through trial and error that when I insist on doing things my way, what usually happens is that I repeat someone else’s mistakes.
     Frank Sinatra had it totally wrong. If you really want a full life, don’t do it your way, follow the Way see. This requires a healthy sense of your limitations. You have to be humble enough to admit that there is someone in the world smarter than yourself.
    The first time I decided to leave the monastery, I knocked on the door of my novicemaster’s cell and delivered the sad news.
    “Okay,” he said, “are you leaving today?”
    “Well, no.”
    “In that case, just for today, you should be the very best monk you can. Then tomorrow you leave.”
     To everyone’s surprise, I followed his advice, and I’ve been leaving tomorrow for 21 years. And I can tell you with absolute sincerity, I am a happy monk.
    So let us resolve, just for today, to wrap ourselves in the warm mantle of Our Lady and to be the best Christians we possibly can.   Then tomorrow, I’ll sneak up behind Father Leonard and even the score.

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Published on December 09, 2017 13:09

The Spinach Between My Teeth: Sermon to the Priory School on December 1

Consider the fig tree and all the other trees. When their buds burst open, you see for yourselves and know that summer is now near; in the same way, when you see these things happening, know that the Kingdom of God is near.
        --Lk 21:29-33

    Last Wednesday, an extraordinary thing happened to me.   Someone approached me in the lunch line and told me that she did not like my sermon. Well, that in itself is not extraordinary. Lots of people dislike my sermons. I’ve received angry emails, angry phone calls, folks have written letters to the abbot and to the pastor…last month, someone actually wrote a letter to the bishop about a sermon I gave. So that’s not anything extraordinary. What was extraordinary was that my friend wasn’t angry at me—and more extraordinary still, neither was I. I literally sat in my cell afterwards wondering why I felt so good about being criticized. And then it occurred to me: this person was my friend…and she wasn’t criticizing me, she was trying to help me. She wasn’t making assumptions about my motives. She wasn’t judging my character. In fact, she brought up her objection precisely because she respects my character and found my words inconsistent with the man she knew me to be.
    For the record, there are some things I’ll probably change if I ever give that sermon again. But that’s beside the point. What’s really important is that my friend and I could disagree without getting angry. It shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did surprise me; and I think that’s because we are living in such an angry age. Folks don’t seem to be able to disagree without insulting one another; we can’t seem to challenge an opinion without sneering at it.
    You guys hear people talk all the time about the “Priory School Family.” And in many ways, we are family. In some crucial ways, we are not.   You can’t flunk out of a family. But when we feel comfortable enough in one another’s presence to bring up sensitive issues with charity and patience—when we feel comfortable correcting one another and being corrected without turning to insults and outrage—then I think we are beginning to build something bigger than a mere school.
    I have a friend who is a nun with the Missionaries of Charity. She told me she used to work in the Amazon and that she had to share a small shack with another nun who insisted on closing the windows every night before bed. She found this really annoying because it was hot in that little shack, and hotter still when the windows were closed.   Finally, another shack was built for the other nun to sleep in; and for the very first time, she was able to sleep with the windows open. The next morning she woke up in a bed full of snakes. You see, her sister nun was really looking out for both of them.
    St. Thomas Aquinas defined love as “willing good for the other.” If you live with that kind of love long enough, it gives you a certain sense of peace and security.   You know that the people around you want what is best for you. So no matter what they do, you can safely assume they do it out of love.
    Now I want to make a radical proposition: I think we should love everyone–even our enemies. But that means trusting that even the people we disagree with have our best interest at heart. Let’s take a cue from my friend who had the courage to correct me on Wednesday, and start living this out at Priory.   Then gradually, it may seep out into the world around us.
    In practical terms, this means that when someone cuts in line in front of you, you assume it’s because they didn’t know you were there—or they were in a terrible rush, or they had some extremely good excuse for doing it. When someone tells you you’re a jerk, begin by assuming that you may actually be a jerk, and that this person wants to help you improve. When someone says something you find offensive or stupid, assume – at least at first –that they don’t know any better, and that they will be grateful for being told of their mistake. I admit that this is a dangerous way to live, and I can’t say I have ever really done it, but I saw it done on Wednesday, and it was thrilling.
    My grandmother used to say that family is for pointing out the spinach in your teeth. When we are able to criticize and be criticized without anger, then we will know that Priory is beginning to become a family. When you see these things happening, know that the Kingdom of God is near.

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Published on December 07, 2017 13:13

Sermon to the Priory School Faculty on the First Day of the Academic Year

When I read this passage from the old testament, I can’t help reading it as a prophecy of the upcoming school year:

He allowed them to fall into the power of their enemies round about
whom they were no longer able to withstand.
Whatever they undertook, the LORD turned into disaster for them,
as in his warning he had sworn he would do,
till they were in great distress.
We live in a community, a culture, a country that seems to be in a state of crisis. We live in a tumultuous age. An age of great distress. And our students will bring this burden with them when they arrive. Like the young man in today’s gospel, they come to us asking, “What good must I do? What do I still lack?” The answer is easy enough: Obey the commandments. Sell what you have. Give to the poor. Follow Christ. “But when the young man heard this statement, he went away sad,
for he had many possessions.” It’s going to take more than just teaching to save these kids. They need more than answers. It will have to be our job to make this place a sanctuary for them. A refuge. A place of joy. A place of peace. But we can’t give what we don’t have. Or maybe we can. Isn’t that, after all, what the priest does at every mass, in every confession—gives what he himself does not have?I remember asking my father once when I was very young whether it was really necessary to love one’s sister (even loving one’s enemy seemed more reasonable at the time). My father, of course, insisted that it was. And I recall explaining to him at length that this would be very dificult—even impossible—given the current circumstances, and that perhaps we should consider giving her up for adoption. My father said to me, “Jason, you may find this hard to believe, but some day, you will discover that you do love your sister. And when that day comes, you will actually want to be nice to her. In the meantime, however…fake it.” At the time, this sounded like awfully cold advice, but if we are to put into action what Christ demands of us in the gospels—if we really are to love our neighbor as we love our own selves—then there are going to be times when we don’t feel very predisposed to that emotion. Because let’s face it, some people are very very difficult to love, and even God can seem awfully distant at times. But if you think about it, those times when we must force ourselves to “fake” this love for our neighbor are often the most sincere instances of love, because those are the times when we can give love without hope of recompense. And if the wise ones are right, then the curious result of all this feigned affection is that an unfeigned affection begins to grow out of it. So here’s what we need if we are going to be what our students need: unhesitating apologies and preemptive forgiveness…and if all that doesn’t work, FAKE IT. AND IF I AM RIGHT…LET THE LORD BLOT OUT THE SUN THIS VERY DAY!!!!*

*August 21 was the day of the eclipse.

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Published on August 21, 2017 09:55

YOUR INVISIBLE FRIEND

Every year, when my English class begins the section on poetry, I read them this poem by Billy Collins:

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

    I think sometimes we treat our faith the way Billy Collins’ students treat poetry. We tie our faith to a chair with a rope and torture a confession out of it. We shine a light in its eyes and shout unanswerable questions at it: “Why is the Church so corrupt? Why is the Church so intolerant? Why is the Church so irrational?” We ask all these questions at once and without waiting for an answer so that our poor faith, which we've been keeping in the basement for years, malnourished and isolated (and now beaten senseless), blurts out incoherent answers to our impossible questions. Then we throw up our hands and declare that we can't possibly take faith seriously when that’s all it has to say for itself.
    That, or we beat our faith into submission until, weary and confused, it begins to say pretty much whatever we want it to. Then we lead our poor faith back down to the basement, lock the door, and march out into the world, coerced testimony in hand, smugly doing whatever we darn well please. (Years later, in a moment of weakness or loneliness, we might wonder whatever happened to our faith and why it died. But by then, we don't miss it much. We've learned to live without it.)
    The truth is, if you objectify your faith, it will become an object. But if you treat faith like a person—if you make dates with your faith and keep them, if you sit down and converse with your faith, listen to your faith, question and challenge your faith—if you smile at your faith first thing in the morning, and kiss it good night before you go to bed…then your faith will begin to respond in kind: it will amuse you, challenge you, teach you, infuriate you…charm you. To know your faith, therefor, you must treat your faith as a living person.
    But this relationship takes work. Once the initial infatuation passes, the long labor of love begins. Which brings us to today’s readings. We are nearing the end of Easter. The honeymoon is over, as they say, and to make matters worse, Jesus tells us in the Gospel that he is leaving. “In a little while the world will no longer see me…”
    “…but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him.” Do we see the Holy Spirit? Do we know him? He is, after all, the soul of our faith. Our duty for the next two weeks is to prepare for the coming at Pentecost of this unseen friend.
    What will happen then? That’s up to you. But try to remember that the Holy Spirit is a person—a friend, who perhaps you haven’t seen in a while. By then it will be Summer. Waterskiing is not out of the question.

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Published on May 21, 2017 08:35