Wednesday, April 14, 2021

Smile!

 

The Gospel has Nicodemus asking Jesus: “How can a man be reborn again?”  He was thinking of physical rebirth, while Jesus was speaking of spiritual rebirth.  Nicodemus thought physical rebirth impossible, but Jesus came to make spiritual rebirth a possibility.  In Baptism, we are born again spiritually, but like a physical birth, Baptism is only the start of our spiritual journey.  Jesus came to light our remaining spiritual path home, to show us the way.  Still, many are choosing a dark path.

Following Him and imitating Him, we are meant to be a light in this world.  To me, today it seems that many people are not focused on enlightening others but are more self-centered.  Their primary focus is on self.  They say and do what they believe and what benefits themselves, and don’t understand why other self-centered people don’t agree with them.  Jesus said to live, in summary, to love God and love neighbor --- living your life to give yourself to others IS the path He showed us.  He IS the Light and the Way.  Looking at His life, we need to see what we can imitate and also be a light in this world.

Yesterday, someone dared disagree with me --- because I had voiced disagreement with them!  We were both trying to do something good, praying for others, but I reacted as if my way were the only way, or at least a better way.  I judged this person and what they had said, rather than loved them --- and their efforts to imitate Jesus.  As I later said in an apology note, a better response from me (if any) would have been to say: “Here’s how I try to pray.”  I try to love, but it is so easy to fail.

At the time of Jesus, people lived their religion so much that there wasn’t even the word ‘religion’.  What you believed was how you lived.  The Jewish people lived a certain way; it’s who they were, Jewish.  Later, after people began noticing that the followers of Christ lived a different way, that they had differing priorities, they call them ‘Christians’.  It wasn’t a new ‘religion’; it was a new way of living.  “See how they love one another”.

I wonder how future historians will look back on these days, and see how we are living.  Will there be a new religion named, to describe our self-defined gods?  Or will they look back and see how the renewal of Christ’s church began; how Jesus was true to His promise to never leave us. 

Last night someone saw me at the chapel.  Later they called me “to see if you are alright”.  She said I seemed different, that I didn’t smile.  I responded that you couldn’t see my smile through the mask I wore in the chapel.  But I thought about her concerns.

This morning, I thought of that while I was saying my Morning Prayers.  A smile is a sign of love.  In our masks, the world is handicapped right now from showing or seeing love, a sign of the commandment we are supposed to be living isn’t visible.  Our love needs to be visible actions.  The love Jesus showed us was a love we should choose to give, to anyone, and show it so they know they are loved.  Going forward, through these trying times, I now resolve to love more (not judge) --- because so many people are in desperate need of love --- and, even if only for a moment, I will take down my mask and smile at them. 

Someone may be in the dark on their spiritual journey; I will give them a little light.  Smile!

The Gospel has Nicodemus asking Jesus: “How can a man be reborn again?”  He was thinking of physical rebirth, while Jesus was speaking of spiritual rebirth.  Nicodemus thought physical rebirth impossible, but Jesus came to make spiritual rebirth a possibility.  In Baptism, we are born again spiritually, but like a physical birth, Baptism is only the start of our spiritual journey.  Jesus came to light our remaining spiritual path home, to show us the way.  Still, many are choosing a dark path.

Following Him and imitating Him, we are meant to be a light in this world.  To me, today it seems that many people are not focused on enlightening others but are more self-centered.  Their primary focus is on self.  They say and do what they believe and what benefits themselves, and don’t understand why other self-centered people don’t agree with them.  Jesus said to live, in summary, to love God and love neighbor --- living your life to give yourself to others IS the path He showed us.  He IS the Light and the Way.  Looking at His life, we need to see what we can imitate and also be a light in this world.

Yesterday, someone dared disagree with me --- because I had voiced disagreement with them!  We were both trying to do something good, praying for others, but I reacted as if my way were the only way, or at least a better way.  I judged this person and what they had said, rather than loved them --- and their efforts to imitate Jesus.  As I later said in an apology note, a better response from me (if any) would have been to say: “Here’s how I try to pray.”  I try to love, but it is so easy to fail.

At the time of Jesus, people lived their religion so much that there wasn’t even the word ‘religion’.  What you believed was how you lived.  The Jewish people lived a certain way; it’s who they were, Jewish.  Later, after people began noticing that the followers of Christ lived a different way, that they had differing priorities, they call them ‘Christians’.  It wasn’t a new ‘religion’; it was a new way of living.  “See how they love one another”.

I wonder how future historians will look back on these days, and see how we are living.  Will there be a new religion named, to describe our self-defined gods?  Or will they look back and see how the renewal of Christ’s church began; how Jesus was true to His promise to never leave us. 

Last night someone saw me at the chapel.  Later they called me “to see if you are alright”.  She said I seemed different, that I didn’t smile.  I responded that you couldn’t see my smile through the mask I wore in the chapel.  But I thought about her concerns.

This morning, I thought of that while I was saying my Morning Prayers.  A smile is a sign of love.  In our masks, the world is handicapped right now from showing or seeing love, a sign of the commandment we are supposed to be living isn’t visible.  Our love needs to be visible actions.  The love Jesus showed us was a love we should choose to give, to anyone, and show it so they know they are loved.  Going forward, through these trying times, I now resolve to love more (not judge) --- because so many people are in desperate need of love --- and, even if only for a moment, I will take down my mask and smile at them. 

Someone may be in the dark on their spiritual journey; I will give them a little light.  Smile!

Saturday, April 3, 2021

Holy Saturday Endings and Beginnings

Holy Saturday, today, evening marks the end of Easter preparations and the beginning of Easter.  I just finished one of the books I was reading during Lent, and so I think it appropriate to note a couple of the meditations there which struck me as calls for a new beginning.  The book is Quiet Moments by Fr. Benedict Groeschel; 120 short readings.  Here are 2:

99. Start and Push Limits

Mother Teresa once confided to me that if she had not picked up the first homeless man in Calcutta four decades ago, she would never have been able to help hundreds of thousands who are dependent on her and her sisters and brothers today.  We have to start and keep going.  We cannot all be Mother Teresa, but we can be who we are supposed to be.  What we lack is the willingness to try and the trust to go on.  I will not change the world or the Church --- at least I hope not, because if I were to change them I would probably change them for the worse.  Only God changes things for the better.  But he does this through us if we give him the opportunity to use us.  There is no limit to how much God gives us except the limits that we put on him by our self-centeredness and lack of trust.  We must constantly be aware of the limits we place and must relentlessly push these limits back.

 

79.  Preserved Pain?

An effective way to defeat yourself is to keep alive all kinds of hurt feelings.  The Pharaohs of Egypt used to collect their tears in vials and keep them in sacred places.  They were buried in the pyramids with their tears.  The Pharaohs aren’t the only ones.  If you want to live on resentment and hurt feelings, you’ll have an unhealthy diet for the rest of your life, pure psychological cholesterol.  How many people spend much of their energy lamenting, crying, being unhappy or sad or driving themselves literally crazy by living on resentments toward those who failed them?  Yes, people do fail us.  Some don’t even know they’re failing us; some don’t mean to fail us.  Some are so preoccupied with their own problems, they don’t even know what they’re doing.  And some just don’t care.  The motto of the follower of Christ must be, “Keep going ahead  Don’t look back.”  If our Lord Jesus Christ had been someone preoccupied with his own hurt feelings, none of us would have been saved.  Mercifully, God does not nurse hurt feelings.  For our own spiritual, as well as psychological, good, we must forgive those who trespass against us.

- - - - - - - - - -

I have started going back to daily mass and adoration after receiving my pandemic shots.  However, Easter Sunday masses tomorrow will be crowded and with the recent uptick in cases (one nearby suburb had nearly 100 new cases yesterday), I decided to attend a Sunday parking lot mass at a nearby parish.  The mass from the church is also broadcast over the radio, and at communion time we drive through a circular drive to receive communion.  Tomorrow I will also be picking up communion for two homebound people I know.  I visited one this afternoon who had been hospitalized for a month for depression; I trust the communion will help her spirits.  At the moment, this seems to be part of who I am supposed to be, following the motto: “Keep going ahead.” 

Who knows what tomorrow will bring, but “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.”