HUMBLE COMMUNITY OF CHILDREN

Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary

Saint Boniface Parish

September 23, 2018

USCCB Lectionary Readings

I have spoken about my dog once before, but for those who don't recall, or weren't here, her name is Lady. Her full name is Our Lady of the Rectory, but we just call her Lady for short. Some people ask what kind of dog she is, and I say ‘well, she's energetic, that's for sure.’ She has toys, as most dogs will, and one of those toys is as a squirrel, and it can sit on its own, and then she has these two plastic squeakers that sort of look like people, they have really big heads and little feet, and that's all that there is to them really – but, like the squirrel, they can stand up on their own. So, I will take the squirrel and these little people, and I'll line them up close to her and every single time she'll come along, and she'll take her nose and just push them over. She won't really do much else with them, at that moment at least. She might come back and play with them later, but first and foremost she pushes them over. Apparently, she doesn't really like them standing there, looking at her for some reason. I don't quite understand why, but it has caused me to wonder how much like human behavior that can be. When we see something standing on its own, something that perhaps causes us a bit of insecurity, of consternation, of challenge - we want to push it over. We don't like that feeling of being uncomfortable. We don't like having someone or something cause us to recognize our own deficiencies. So instead we attack it, we put it down. In many ways this human knee-jerk reaction to rebel against something that points out our weakness is what we are hearing about in our first reading, the reading from the Book of Wisdom. In this narrative a righteous man is under attacked, is insulted and put in a corner by the wicked ones who are close to this righteous one. The wicked see the righteous, and are seen by the righteous in their wickedness, and this disparity between the righteous and the wicked causes the wicked to recognize who they are, that they are wicked, or more precisely, that they have acted wickedly. This, Scripture tells us, is obnoxious to the wicked. Their response is not to stop and reflect on how the righteous, by their righteous deeds , may be calling them, the wicked, to a more righteous way of life. Instead their response is simple, easy, “let us bring down the righteous, let us condemn him to a shameful death!”

'The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse' Peter von Cornelius, 1926

Perhaps another image to demonstrate this human difficulty with another standing against us. I don't know if you've seen, or heard, any commercials for the gym Planet Fitness. Now, they have their reasons, and I'm not here to tell them what to do, but they have a term, a way of classifying a certain group of people, and this term is lunk. You may be wondering, what is a lunk? Well, a lunk, according to Planet Fitness, are those guys who are just really fit, they can lift a lot of weight, they might overly show off a bit, but in general they are simply in good physical condition. They are bodybuilders, essentially, and these lunks are not welcome at Planet Fitness. In fact, I have heard, if you lift too much weight at Planet Fitness, if it seems like you are too strong compare to their average clientele, then they will ask you to leave, to go and find another gym. You aren’t, they'll say, a part of their clientele. The reason for this discrimination is simple - when you lift a lot of weight, when you are in good physical condition, you may cause other people to recognize the reality that they aren't in that great of a physical condition. This is especially problematic for someone starting out at a gym and they can clearly see ‘I'm here, and this other person is over here, and there's a great distance between us, and so maybe I'll just quit.’ Instead of trying to commit to a change they may avoid the possibility of seeing in the other an opportunity to grow. They look at the distance and say, ‘that's too far, I can't get there from here, I'm just going to walk away.’ 

I can understand why Planet Fitness might have this policy; it is after all good for business not to scare away potential clientele. In the end, however, it pulls us apart doesn't it. I can see the reason why we want to have a place of comfort, a place where people can come, and not be overly challenged, after all there are plenty of beginners, and to be a beginner is difficult, especially when you see how far others have come. It is natural to want to feel safe and not feel judged. The more we go in this direction, the more we pull apart, the more we spend time around those who simply comfort, and do not challenge us, and move away from those who are better than we are in some sort of way. The more we live this way the more we will find ourselves living alone. The other, opposite end of the spectrum is to just throw everyone in together in a free for all. It's basically a war zone in which everyone is fighting everyone else. An amalgamation wherein no one ever feels confident in where they are, or in who they are, because we’re always made uneasy by the others around us. Always challenged, never safe. Nevertheless, somewhere in the middle is true community, a true community where humility exists, and we live through that humility. This is a humility that says, ‘I am who I am, and I am good, but I can be better.’ I am good as I am, I am loved as I am, but I always know that I can be better. There would be safety in this humble community since everyone else would also realize their own goodness, and their own need to grow. Others around us, especially people with virtue, people who are good people, they would, by their very being, call us to greater virtue. In the end we can either look at the virtuous and righteous as my dog looks at her toys, and simply try and push them aside; or we can see with them as an example of what we might become.

Jesus walking with his disciples - Lumo Project

The disciples in our Gospel today, they are walking along with Jesus and they miss the opportunity to grow in understanding about what it was that he had told them, about his death and resurrection. If you recall, they were scared to ask – they refused to get out of their comfort zone and didn't want to ask that question. Instead they pass the time discussing, arguing over, which of them was the greatest disciple. Who among us is the greatest? This means their secondary argument had to do with who is second best, who is third best, who is the least? As they are having this conversation they missed the mark completely. None of them are the greatest! They are in the presence of Jesus Christ, himself, greatness itself! They walk in the presence of God-made-man. If anyone was the greatest it was certainly him, and they are walking with him seemingly oblivious to the greatness in their midst. When they get to their destination Christ knows, because he's God, he knows what they were talking about. To give them an example he calls a child into their midst and says that we must be like this child. Now a child is rather humble, typically. A child knows there are things that they simply can't do. They are not strong enough to do all the things an adult can do, they’re not tall enough, they lack understanding. One day, however, one day; not today – but one day. Isn’t this what it is like to be a child, consistently looking forward to the next achievement, the next milestone, the next grade level? School, by its very nature, is looking forward to learning something new. You know you have something ahead of you. You do not doubt that you are good, especially in a loving family, and you know you have plenty to look forward to. You can, and will, be better. What a way to be once more? To be that open to growth, to be that available to potential! The image that we are given is to humble ourselves, which means to truly recognize our goodness, but also to recognize that we can grow in goodness as well.

This all-encompassing humility does not fit the society around us. Oftentimes if a person makes you uncomfortable you knock them over, or you just don't deal with them, you back away, you cut them off, you remove them from your worldview. You leave them be. We as Christians, as Catholics, we are to see what truly is good in the people around us. Not necessarily what the world says is good, but what truly is virtuous residing within one another. To see in the other patience, gentleness, goodness and mercy. To see within the other, perhaps someone sitting next to you, something that you can grow in. You are not a complete saint yet, I guess neither am I. We can all grow and become more like Christ. So perhaps, maybe, we can spend less time knocking each other over and instead build true community. Build a humble community in which we are all, each one of us, recognized as Beloved Children of God.

CONVERSATIONS WITH CHRIST

Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary

Saint Boniface Parish

September 16, 2018

USCCB Lectionary Readings

How many conversations do you think you have daily? What about in a week, a month, a year? Hundreds? Thousands? For those who are younger, we're also talking about an electronic communication. Those certainly counts as well; as ineffective as electronic communication can be at relaying everything that we must communicate. We communicate with one another on a regular basis. It's kind of what we do as human beings. We are creatures who are in relationship one to another. We live in a community and we can't help but communicate at least in some way with others and with the outside world on a somewhat regular basis. We have conversations, conversations throughout the day with many different people about many different topics. If we look at the kind of conversations that we have, one with another, we can put them into a sort of hierarchy. Now, there are plenty of ways of categorizing conversations, I imagine the communication majors out there might correct me, or offer another way of categorizing conversations, but this three-tiered system seems to fit, especially considering today's gospel. In this way one might categorize conversations in terms of talking about who we are, especially in relationship with one another, followed by what we do, also in relationship to who we are – often who we are informs what it is that we do. Thirdly, basically everything else: other, people, places, and things. Sometimes these third category conversations can lead toward gossip, sometimes they are informational, sometimes it's just small talk. First and foremost, who we are, and what we do, followed by conversations regarding other people, places, and things.

These first two, and more integral, types of conversations are the kind of conversation that Christ is having with his disciples as they are going about their way. They are going from one town to the next and Christ starts one of these first-tier conversations: ‘Who do people say that I am?’ We're not sure what they were talking about before he asked this question. Perhaps it could have been one of those third level conversations. They could have been talking about the latest scandal in Rome, some things never change, they could have been talking about their political leaders, or their religious leaders in Jerusalem. They could have been talking about the latest gossip from the town that they were coming from, or the gossip of the town they were going to; maybe whatever it was that so-and-so had done, whatever it was hat seemed so important at the time. They could have been having all these sorts of conversation when Christ interrupts with his question about himself. He wants to talk about who it is that people think of him as, not in a selfish way, but in a way that's important and meaningful. In-fact, much of the Gospels are trying to answer that very question: Who is Christ? Who is he, what has he come to do, what is he, what is going on? In the midst of the daily and ordinary Christ aks: ‘Who do people say that I am?’ His disciples could have come up with all sorts of other explanations: ‘some say you're a great political leader, some say you will free us from a Roman captivity, some say you’re an entertainer, that you've come to distract us, to offer us some entertainment, some say you're insane, you're crazy, perhaps even trouble, you are stirring things up, you are causing difficulty for yourself and for those around you!’

Christ listen to all these possibilities and then asks them ‘now, who do you say that I am?’ Peter speaks up, and he gets it right, he says ‘you are the Christ! You are the Messiah, the promised one, the one we have been waiting for!’ Peter doesn't have a full understanding of what that means, but he has, through God's grace, seen Christ for who he is. He's answered that first question: Who is Christ. The conversation then turns to what he is there to do. The reason Christ has come. He has come to die for our sins, he will be put to death, he will suffer and die, and on the third day he will rise again. Peter having recognized the answer to the first question doesn't really like the answer to the second question. And how often is that similar with us? We approach God through conversation, through prayer. Truly prayer is a conversation with God, and I imagine that often those conversations dwells in the first two categories: Who am I, and what am I supposed to do? And we may not always like the response we get in prayer. We may not always agree, at least at first, with what God has to offer us in prayer: the answers to who we are, and what we are called to do. Peter has his own idea. We don't know exactly what that is, but somehow he sees the Messiah as something else, probably someone who is there to set them free from physical captivity - the Captivity of the Roman Empire, the rule of a foreign government. Whatever it may have been, for Peter, that's as far as his vision goes. He does not want to go any further past that. Christ knows what he is here to do, he knows who he is, and what that calls him to do. He has a mission that goes far beyond the vision of Peter or the other disciples. He is there for a different reason. He is not there to fulfil Peter's smaller understanding of the mission of the Christ, he has a much larger mission, a wonderful mission: to set all of us free, not only from our current captivity but from our captivity for the rest of our lives, for all eternity.

Prayer is a conversation with Christ. We approach Christ through conversations. But first and foremost, we must be willing to have the courage to even have those conversations. We could get stuck in the third category: conversations about other people, other places, other things; or instead: Who am I? What am I supposed to do? These conversations with God help to clarify our relationship with God, and with one another. The third category conversations may be important, but they will be clearer if we have first entered into the first, and second, conversations. We may not always like what we receive in prayer. We may have our own ideas about who we are and what we are called to do. God will, hopefully, use a little more gentleness than he did with Peter in guiding us, helping us to recognize the truth. God guides us to see what it is we are called to do with our lives. We have our own ideas of course. We think as human beings do, we can think in no other way. We're not angels, we are not gods, we are human beings - we think as human beings do, not as God does. The turning point is being opened to that correction from God. Having God turn our vision, just a little, so that we see a little more of God's plan for us, and our lives, so that we can continue that conversation, that prayerful conversation with God about how we fit into God’s salvific mission for the world. God is still working. God’s mission for our salvation had a pinnacle at the crucifixion, at the cross, but Christ is still working. He is working through each and every one of us. So let us, in prayer, ask God who it is that we are, and what it is that we are called to do.

Catholic Celebrations of September

The month of September is dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows, whose memorial the Church celebrates on September 15.

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The Holy Father's Intentions for September: That young people in Africa may have access to education and work in their own countries.

Find More at CatholicCulture.org

2 September - Twenty-Second Sunday of Ordinary Time - Solemnity

3 September - Memorial

3 September - Labor Day

5 September - Optional Memorial

8 September - Feast

9 September - Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time - Solemnity

12 September - Optional Memorial

13 September - Memorial

14 September - Feast

15 September - Memorial

16 September - Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time - Solemnity

16 September - Memorial

17 September - Optional Memorial

19 September - Optional Memorial

20 September - Memorial

21 September - Feast

23 September - Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time - Solemnity

23 September - Memorial

26 September - Optional Memorial

27 September - Memorial

28 September - Optional Memorial

29 September - Feast

30 September - Twenty-Sixth Sunday in ordinary Time - Solemnity

30 September - Memorial