What's Your Next Step? Think About Marriage.

When Jesus told the story about the first two travelers on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, his audience must have settled back in anticipation of the happy ending.  Surely the third traveler would be a lay person like themselves who would tend to the wounds of the victim.  Had this been the ending, Jesus’ audience would have walked away content, confirmed in their sense of themselves as good people.  But that is not the story Jesus told.  The third traveler was a Samaritan—a religious apostate, a national enemy, a dangerous outsider.  If Jesus were telling the parable to us, I wonder if the three people on the road wouldn’t be a bishop, a priest, and a jihadist.        On one level, the parable of the Good Samaritan is about helping a neighbor.  But it is critical to remember that Jesus told this story when he was asked, “Who is my neighbor?”  Jesus’ answer includes the person sitting next to you in Church or the person living in the house next door—and it also includes the person kneeling on a prayer mat in a mosque in Iran.  According to Jesus, our neighbors are not just the people we like and trust.  No, the term neighbor covers even those people we do not see eye-to-eye with, people we cannot like or trust.  Our neighbor is anyone we encounter in life who is in need.        This parable brings to my mind some advice I was told was given to the students who had volunteered to sit in at various Nashville lunch counters in the 1960s.  They knew beforehand that they would be beaten and taunted with slurs.  One of the students asked if they were supposed to love the people who would be calling them all kinds of names, putting out cigarettes on their backs.  The response was, “You do not have to like those people, no one can expect that from you.  You just have to love them.”       

What's Your Next Step? Think About Politics.

The Funeral Mass for Bobby Davis will be Saturday, July 27, at 10:30 am. There will be a luncheon in the parish hall following internment at Calvary Cemetery. Visitation will take place in the parish hall on Friday, July 26, from 4:00 pm - 8:00 pm with rosary at 7:00 pm.

A Memorial service for Rogan Allen will be Monday, July 22, at 1:00 pm in the church. Visitation will be in the parish hall on Monday, July 22, at 12:00 pm prior to the service.

What's Your Next Step? Examine Your Conscience.

Mark, who scholars tell us wrote the first Gospel, depicts Jesus rebuking his disciples for their inability to let go of old ways of thinking.  “Do you not yet understand or comprehend?  Are your hearts hardened?” (8:17)  To make his point, Jesus compared people’s minds to old wineskins.  “No one pours new wine into old wineskins.  Otherwise the wine will burst the skins...Rather new wine is poured into fresh wineskins.”  (2:21-22)  The message seems to be that we need to abandon old categories, old worldviews, in order to see with new eyes in the kingdom of God.           Scholars also suggest that Matthew, aware of Mark’s Gospel, wrote in part to nuance it.  Matthew’s community wanted to preserve much of their Jewish heritage and way of life.  They did not feel they needed to discard completely their old mindsets, for Jesus did not come “to abolish but to fulfill the Law.”  (5:17)  As Matthew put it, everyone “who has been entrusted in the kingdom of heaven is like the head of a household who brings forth from the storeroom both the new and the old.”  (18:52)           This apparent contradiction could serve today’s church well.  We need both Markan visionaries who call us to let go of old ways of thinking, as the Spirit is doing something new in our time.  We also need Matthean conservators who want to recast what is at the heart of older understandings and traditions so that they can function in our time.  What is not offered in either Gospel is the option of clinging to old understandings or traditions for their own sake — or for the sake of our comfort.  We are called to move on, to boldly go where the Spirit leads. 

What's Your Next Step? Say You're Sorry!

The Funeral Mass for Chris Porter, will be Friday, July 12, at 10:00 am with a eulogy at 9:45 am. Visitation will be at Marshall-Donnelly-Combs, on Thursday, July 11, from 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm.

  Chuck had a question about my writing of Bulletin blurbs, “How do you remember this stuff?”  His directness led me to consider my experience over the past few years.         I first started writing these blurbs when Joceline Lemaire asked for short pieces to fill extra space in the Bulletin.  I found myself waking up some mornings with an entire reflection in mind—all I needed to do was grab a pen and some paper.  After a while, those “revelations” stopped.  I still wanted to write — so, before going to sleep, I would try to recall a memory or a piece of Scripture.  I hoped this practice would act as a prompt.  If I felt any inspiration the next day, it generally took writing a few drafts before I felt I had a piece worth sending in.  That strategy worked for a while.  Recently that tactic was failing to prove fruitful.  I wondered if my days as a blurb writer were coming to an end.  The thought saddened me; it also filled me with gratitude for the opportunity I had been given.         Then Chuck asked his question—and I began writing this blurb.  The inspiration did not come in my sleep or through any effort of dredging up old memories; it came out of an ordinary encounter in my everyday life.  Grace was now showing up, unbidden, in broad daylight.         And isn’t that the way grace works sometime?  We find ourselves attracted to a certain activity or person—and there is an initial spurt of inspiration, marked by the telltale sign of joy.  The flow of grace appears to slow down and we have to invest time and energy to maintain the practice or keep up the relationship with that person.  The third movement of grace opens us to the surprising awareness of God’s presence all around—in the ordinary, the everyday—as the love of God shows through in unexpected ways and places.