You would have to excuse the rich man who just walked away from Jesus in today’s gospel if the lesson that he really took away from this encounter was not “Sell what you have and follow me” but “If you don’t want to know, don’t ask.” The young man is asking what he has to do to gain eternal life, and he is told to do something that goes far beyond anything he expected. I think the way we would probably phrase it today cuts even closer to the bone: Not, what must we do to have eternal life, but, does God love us and accept us the way we…
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As a deacon, I get to go to more weddings than the average person, and frankly I had gotten to the point where very few of them met my rather picky standards of excellence. But two weeks ago that changed. Two friends of mine, both of them getting married rather late in life, if you know what I mean, had a wedding I’ll never forget. It had everything. There was a Jewish ritual that brought tears to my eyes, so many words that reminded everyone about commitments and joy and sadness, and of the bittersweet taste of life even in the midst of such happiness. And then, what a party…
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Maybe you saw the study recently in the New York Times about what Catholics believe about the eucharist. Like many surveys of Catholics, it disturbed a great many people. It reported that more than 60% of Catholics said that Jesus was not really present in the eucharist as the body of Christ, but that the bread and wine were really more like a symbolic reminder of him and his life. Many people saw this and wondered what it is that’s wrong with people in the church, with the way we teach people, or maybe about how we do liturgy, that accounts for the fact that people no longer believe that…
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It doesn’t happen as often as it used to in business but it still happens. There’s a rather senior person where I work who as far as any of us can tell does absolutely nothing. I mean, nothing. He has been seen in his office at 3:30 in the afternoon calmly running one of those little electric shoe-buffing machines over his shoes, or, in a famous incident, sorting a little bag of Skittles candies into piles based on their colors. This is not out of Dilbert. I’m not making this stuff up. I know it never happens in the church, Father Tim, but in business you do find these scandalous…
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Tonight, I’m having people over for dinner, and I’m looking forward to it. In complete disregard for the last few sentences of this gospel, where the host of the dinner is advised not to invite his friends, in fact, I’m having dinner with very good friends. I couldn’t live without dinner with other people, people I love. That, really, is one of the points in this gospel reading— that none of us can live without meals, meals with others, meals where we are taken care of. They are the whole goal of life, really, they are why we are here around this table [tonight/today], for a meal like that. In…
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“This is a great mystery,” Paul says in the second reading, “a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the Church.” The mystery, of course, is what he could possibly mean trying to draw a parallel between marriage and the relationship God has with us, members of the church. The first thing that has to be said is that if it is true, as our tradition claims, that the church is the bride of Christ, there must have been any number of late nights over the past 2,000 years when Jesus asked himself if he married the wrong woman. It’s not just that we fight and pick…
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I don’t have to commute into New York every single day, but I do it often enough that my heart goes out to those of you who do. I take an early train in several days a week, and maybe you’re among those who have encountered what I did recently. Usually people waiting for these early trains around 6:20 are extremely quiet. Maybe it’s because they enjoy listening to the morning birdsong. No, I doubt that’s it. Maybe they’re just in deep mental preparation for the ruthless grab for territory that starts once the train decides it’s going to stop and open the doors. But recently this scene of quiet…
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One of my children has a gift that I don’t think is all that unusual in this parish, but I want to tell you about it anyway. Unfortunately, this gift is only really in evidence when she wants something. She is the most charming, persistent and relentless asker I have ever seen. Her approach has everything — great timing, endless, wearing-down frequency, cheery smiles, logical and not-so-logical arguments, moving examples of injustice, a little flattery when appropriate, very occasionally, when all else fails, even PowerPoint. The things she asks for aren’t always possible, much less sensible, and she doesn’t always get what she wants, at least as best I can…
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We all know this is the age of multitasking, of trying to do many things at the same time. Many times, we look pretty funny doing it. I was once at a business meeting at a television network, where of course they have televisions in every conference room, and they’re on; and all through this so-called meeting, all the network guys kept darting their eyes over to the screen, checking whatever was on their network instead of looking at whoever was speaking in the room. I’m not sure what they were looking for, but the result of all that eye-shifting was to make people who were already reputed to be…
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I can’t hear the names Martha and Mary without thinking of my own family. I had an aunt Martha and an aunt Mary, and five other aunts besides, sisters all living in the same town. And while today’s gospel story clearly means to contrast Martha and Mary to make its point, in fact my aunts were pretty much all of a piece, and if we’re to be guided by today’s gospel, they might all just as well have been named Martha. My experience of them has always been from big family get-togethers that one or the other of them was hosting, and I don’t think I saw my aunt Martha…