Break Some Mirrors

Sargent Shriver was the founding Director of the Peace Corps and among the founders of the Special Olympics.  Shriver told students to "Go back to your dorm and break some mirrors."  Say what?  His point was that students should stop primping, and looking at the reflection of themselves.  This could apply to social media today.  Shriver wanted students to quit looking at themselves and look out the window.  Get involved and take the journey outward.  He was speaking in the 1960s when tremendous changes were taking place in physical appearances in hair, clothes and the whole physical look.  From yesterday's blog, Whippman says that well-being is not so much to go within to find ourselves, but rather to invest in nurturing relationships with others in our lives.  

Two Questions

HOMILY NOTES

FR. TERRY RYAN, CSP

MARK 1: 21-28

JANUARY 28, 2018

What made Jesus change his lifestyle and work so dramatically, going from small town carpenter, to a renowned teacher and healer?  I suspect that he might have asked the two questions that each of us need to ask if we want to become all God made us to be.  What questions?  Both questions are asked of God.  First question: “Who are you?”  The second question will not be asked until an intimate relationship is developed from the answer to the first question.  The catechism will tell you who God is, but that does not seem to build a sufficient relationship to transform your life to its fullest.  It is an answer for the mind, but not for the heart.  

Jesus realized that his God was one of unconditional love, compassion and forgiveness.  Jesus felt a oneness with his God, who was not up in the clouds, but in Jesus’ very essence of his being.  He and God were one in Love.  God is Love.  With that, Jesus can ask the second question.  This question is never asked by anyone who has merely a catechism answer as to the first question.  Second question for Jesus: “What do you want of me?”  In other words, how do I live out this relationship of Love?  This got Jesus out of the carpentry business and into his more central purpose as an incarnate, human being.  Jesus was going to express publicly, this love union he has with the God he calls “Father.”  

Well, now for us.  “The Kingdom of God is in your midst,” says Jesus.  Where might that be?  In each one of us, but it will stay hidden and unexpressed, unless we ask the two questions, and get beyond the catechism.  If we don’t have an in-depth relationship with God, as did Jesus, we won’t get beyond our egos which are always asking, “What is in this for me?”  If your prayer life is a series of negotiating with God the heavenly gatekeeper, to keep us out of hell and get into heaven, the kingdom of God will be rather mute and hidden as Jesus expressed it.  So the first thing God may want of you is to get those evil spirits driven from you.  Like what? Try selfishness, sloth, envy, lust, false-pride and self-pity.  Jesus never whined.  

Driverless Days

If you find yourself aging to the point where you think you may soon not be able to drive, don't sell the house and go into assisted living.  By 2020, only two years away, some CEO types are saying that you won't need a car.  If you want to go somewhere you just pick up your smart phone and call for a car.  Don't worry about some driver answering the request.  There won't be a driver.  The car is all computerized.  It comes around to your address and takes you where you want to go, church, shopping, social event and so on.  You only pay for the miles used on the trip.  And if this is so, then why would anyone think about buying a new car to drive themselves?  Tech savvy Millennials are not shopping for cars.  The car industry is freaking out a bit over this.  If you are a senior citizen you probably are not planning on driving all over the country anymore.  Car trips will be local and repetitive.  Keep the home.  Get a smart phone.

Cowgirls

You city slickers, don't make fun of cowgirls as if they are beneath you.  I know some cowgirls and they are quite accomplished women.  Esther Pariseau is an example.  She is a 19th century woman born in Quebec.  She becomes a nun and then goes out West, covering a territory to include modern day Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and southern British Columbia.  She did not go around in a covered wagon.  She had to ride.  What did she do?  She founded infimaries, orphanages, homes for the metally ill, and schools for the Native American children.  Her schools were for the poor, without discrimination.  She was a pioneer in all of this.  She died at the beginning of the 20th century and was eventually inducted into the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame.  Cowgirls don't just ride horses.  They do a lot more to develop our country, culture and society.  Giddyup!

Dismas

Dismas is the name given to the "good thief" being crucified with Jesus.  I suspect that he had been quite dreadful in his life of crime.  One is not crucified in the Roman legal system for petty crime.  Dismas more likely was a big time thief who brutalized and maybe even murdered people such that he had become notorious.  What interests me about him is that he admitted his punishment fit his criminal life.  "We have been condemned justly," is what he says.  He may be a notoriously bad guy, but he is not a whiner or a blamer.  He does not say his life is the fault of society, culture, bad government or abusive parents.  Those may have been all part of his life, but he takes responsibility for his actions.  This is the only way one can ever "repent" or change their life for the better. Conversion to a fuller life can never come if you say, "If only they would change."  Whoever is the "they" is not about to change.  The rewards come only after we admit to our side of the street.  Even in a seemingly powerless situation, we can still begin to clean up our side of the street.  Being crucified looks very powerless, but change is an inside job.  Note that Dismas began the inside work when he was feeling quite miserable.  He did not say, "I will do it tomorrow."

Prisca

Women were very important in the early Christian Church.  They were preachers and administrators.  Prisca is one of them.  She was a tentmaker like her confrere Paul, of whom we know much from his letters in the Bible.  She was Jewish too.  Her home in Ephesus was where the community of Jewish and non-Jewish Christians met.  She had been expelled from Rome by the emperor, so she was more of a traveling evangelizer, who lived in various places.  So what happened?  Where did these kind of women go?  As time went on, Chrisitianity became more formal in its worship, with hierarchy that mimiced the Roman way of male rule.  Plus, the Jewish way of male cultic worship became the Christian model.  The idea that men should rule because Jesus only chose men, does not wash, since we have women like Prisca who came soon after Jesus turned the Good News over to his disciples.  Originally, Christianity had a radical message shared in a radical way.  Eventually, the method conformed to the comfort of culture.  Once the religion became established, I wonder that the message lost some of its radical power.  I think that Pope Francis I is trying to bring back the joy of this radical Good News that bounces up against established ways of living and seeing the world that benefits the few and the powerful.  

St. Paul

Today is a very special day for my religious order, the Paulist Fathers.  In our church, it is the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul.  It celebrates when Paul stopped trying to kill or imprison Jewish Christians, and began to proclaim his faith in Jesus.  Paul is our model.  One of the ways that we model after Paul is the way that we treat women.  Paul colaborated with women in his ministry.  He relied upon them to help him in preaching and running the house churches that developed in various towns where he preached.  Women preached and were in charge.  Paulists treat women more as equals and hire them to be leaders in various ministries.  We do not treat them as peons or employees over whom we are the boss.  There is more of a sense of equality.  Interestingly, the Pope, in his Latin American visit told his hierarchs that they should not treat the lay persons as "peons."  Paulists like this Pope.