Polar Bears

HOMILY NOTES

FR. TERRY RYAN, CSP

MATTHEW 15: 21-28

AUGUST 14, 2011

I live with polar bears. They are the monks who open windows wide and let in all the cold air in the chapel, dining area, and corridor where I live. I thought them to be dreadful people for freezing me out. For a while I would go around and close the windows. They would follow and open them. I took them off my prayer list.

But grace is at work, always. I began to shift my thinking. The polar bear monks are not bad and evil. They are simply different from me. We have different opinions of house temperature. So I put them on my prayer list again. Of course the prayer was, "God my their time in purgatory not be too dreadfully long."

I was moving towards love for the polar bears, but was not there yet. It is a process of growth. I only grow from differences, from what seems like the opposite of me. I would not want a monastery of monks who are just like me. They would all be egocentric, self-centered, and whining. Who wants that? It is differences that challenge us. Jesus met a pagan woman who wanted him to heal her crazy daughter. Jesus ignored her, as Jews did pagans. Then he called her the slang word Jews used for pagans, "dog." She would not go away.

Then Jesus realized that she was a source of Grace for him. She was a challenge to expand the horizon of his ministry from "The Lost Sheep of the house of Israel," to the Kingdom for all people, Jews and Gentiles, pagans. So what is the person, place, or situation that is "different" in your life, that you are resisting?