Sunday Homily 6-1-08, 9th Sunday of Regular Time

 

 

Sir Charlie, we have hardly even started and  you are already booing.

 

Readings:

Exodus  22, 20-26,  You shall not molest or oppress an alien.

Psalm 18,  I love you, Lord, my strength

Thessalonians 1, 5-10,  You know what sort of people we were among you.

Matthew 22, 34-40,  Which commandment is the greatest.

 

 

 

And here we have some nice people, Becky & Tom & Mike.

 

Exodus observations–

What: One of the great books of the Bible, the second book of the O.T.  A good read.  The name  means 'departure' and refers to one of the most important events in Israel's history, the departure of the people of Israel from Egypt where they had become slaves after going there to escape drought in their own land.

Author: not Moses, but a bunch of people putting together the story most likely after the Babylonian Captivity, therefore around 555 before Christ.

 

 

She is back, Folks, Wendy with her little one.

 

 

Our selection:   comes from the "Book of the Covenant," that is, the law or commandments.

The materials in the book are akin to many legal codes of the ancient Near East, the most famous of which is the Code of Hammurabi, 20th Century before Christ.

Today's reading comes from a section of the code dealing with the laws of social conduct.  They inculcate a social ethic based upon compassion.  Abstract justice is not enough, especially for the underprivileged.  The lesson was obviously chosen to go with the summary of the Law that forms the gospel reading. 

Watch how Yahweh (that is, the person writing in Yahweh's name) says he is compassionate just after declaring he will kill certain types of people if they are not compassionate.

 

 

Our Dear Emma in action, The Candle Lighter of The Week.

 

 

Matthew observations–

What:  another example of the cultural game of "gotcha," a set up.  How this works you got to know the background…

Background:  The Pharasees identified 613 commandments in the Torah (first 5 books of the O.T.)  248 were positive ("thou shalt"), and 365 were negative ("thou shalt not").  How could anyone remember all of them?  Were some more important than others?  If you choose one, what about another??

 

 

Wake up, Tori, you are missing a marvelous story.

 

 

See where we are going?   Our Gospel, "the Greatest Commandment?"  Matthew has the the Pharasees ask this question to put Jesus into a bind.  But again, Jesus slips their trap.  

Some teachers distinguished between "heavy" and "light" commandments.  The "Ten" are examples of the heavies.  An example of a light commandment is in Deut. 22, 6-7, which stipulates that a person who finds a bird's nest with a mother sitting on eggs or with young may take the young but must let the mother go.  The reason for observing all these commandments: "That it may go well with you, and that you may live long."  (Deut. 5, 16; 22, 7)

Resources: The New Interpreters Study Bible; St. Louis U. Liturgical @ Liturgical.slu.edu

 

 

 

Communion for All.

 

 

Here comes Thanksgiving ! 

Bet you cannot guess why this Sunday is special to me!  It is tree planting Sunday!

This struck me as I was looking for something in the readings that moved me.  I honestly did not find it.  But, suddenly I remembered that this was a busy weekend for me, probably for about 15 years.  The tree project was always connected with Thanksgiving, which is only about 4 weeks away.  Let me tell you how this got started.

 

 

 

The Great Book Swap.

 

I was just back from ca. 10 years in East Africa by 1990.  I was grateful to be back in the States after being in countries a bit dangerous, like, for instance, Uganda during the time of Idi Amin. 

I have loved to plant trees ever since my years as a Boy Scout at Christ the King.  I did it everywhere I went, Toronto & East Africa, for instance.   In 1990 I was living in the Jesuit community at the high school.  I began to plant trees on the campus.  I quickly ran out of space and started on Inwood Road.   The project had begun. 

 

 

 

Georgie, witnessing a Miracle?

 

I started using the Sunday before Thanksgiving as planting day, and after a couple of years realized it was too busy a time.  So we moved the date to the last weekend of October, always with the theme of Thanksgiving.  For me, gratitude to be home. 

You may remember our last big planting, one Sunday after our Mass at Vines.   We planted 400 trees on the campus of Plano Senior High, in about two hours or less, from 12:00 to 2:00.   A picnic was scheduled for 3:00.   Most everybody stopped in by 2:00.  Then were gone by 3:00.

 

 

 

"Miracle?   What miracle?," says Buddy, more fascinated by the bricks.

 

The Thanksgiving build up has begun, Folks.  I’ll probably ask this 3 more Sundays.  What are you grateful for this year? 

 

 

 

Thanks, Brent, for the marvelous ministry you do as director of Souls Harbor.

 

 

"Welcome in, Everybody," say Cody & Richard.

 

Readings:

Isaiah , 42, 1-4, 6-7,  Here is  my chosen one.

Psalm 29,  The Lord will bless his people with peace.

Acts of the Apostles 10, 34-38,  I see that God shows no partiality

Matthew 3, 13-17,  Jesus came to John to be baptized

 

Welcome back out of the hospital, Bill.  So good to see you here.

 

 

Mike's Homily

 

Jesus of Nazareth came from Galilee to John at the Jordan River to be baptized by him.

John tried to prevent him, saying, 
“I need to be baptized by you,
and yet you are coming to me?”

 

 

Wire that old guy up, Hue.

Jesus said to him in reply,
“Allow it now, for thus it is fitting for us
to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John allowed him.

After Jesus of Nazareth was baptized,
he came up from the water and behold,
the heavens were opened for him, 
and he saw the Holy Spirit descending like a dove
and coming upon him.

 

And a voice came from the heavens, saying, 
“This is my beloved Son, the Messiah, with whom I am well pleased.”

 

 

The communion table.

 

Homily

We are to become the words and actions of the Messiah in our everyday lives; recognizing with joy his presence with us.

 

 

 

Want to know who runs this celebration here?

 

Chicago is a special place to Judy and I; we spent our honeymoon among our visits there.  I still have a story in mind that a Chicago woman wrote when she daily used a bus route getting to work and then returning home.  Walking to the bus stop each day allowed her to get to know some of people she would say hello to.  She got to know a baker who placed in his window each day donuts and her favorite bear claws.  Occasionally she would purchase a small sack of them carefully wrapped.

 

 

 

The Best Music with Shonda & Ben & David.

 

One such day, on the way home from work all of the seats were taken. She began taking off her coat, her hat, her brief case and her bear claws just as someone got up to depart from the bus. She and the young man reached the empty seat at the same time.  He let her enter first after he had taken off his coat, hat, scarf and what he had been carrying.

 

 

The Celebration team.

 

Four or five minutes later he opened the sack of bear claws, smiled at her, and began to eat one of them. She was stunned, and began to give him the evil eye.  Having finished the first one, he licked his fingers, of all things, and took a second one from the bag.  He nodded at her to join him. She gave him another evil look.

 

 

The Candle Ritual.

 

Not wanted him to take advantage of her again, she took out two of them, and saying nothing ate them rather quickly while he licked his fingers and smiled at her. She knew that there was only one left, so she tore it in two and gave him the smaller piece, and smiled back at him. 

 

 

 

Mike homilizes.

 

The bus came to a halt, and he departed, without her having said anything during the whole time they had sat together.  She was angry, especially at herself for having stuffed herself and said without words, “Good Riddance.”  A few minutes later she stood to get off the bus.  As she did so she put her hat back one, followed by her coat, lifted up her brief case and then her scarf. 

 

The last thing she took from her seat was her neatly folded, and carefully wrapped bag of five bear claws.  The messiah had been in her midst, and she had not greeted him with a single word.

 

 

"It is Girl Scout cookie time," sez Our Dearest Harper.

 

 

 

Palm Sunday Procession begins.

 

 

Readings: 

Entrance, Luke 19, 28-40.

Isaiah 50, 4-7,  I give my back to those who beat me.

Psalm 22,  My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?

Philippians 2, 6-11, God greatly exalted him.

Luke 22, 14-23, The  Passion.   

Holy Thursday & Good Friday, 7:00, Marlene's, 2017 Keystone, Plano.

 

Palm Sunday procession.

 

Palm Sunday continues.

 

 

Buddy reading The Blessing of the Lenten Candles, all 5 plus 1.

 

 

Readings: 2 Samuel 5, 1-3; Psalm 122, Let us go Rejoicing to the House of the Lord; Colossians 1, 12-20; Luke 23, 35-43. 

History of the Christ the King Feast: date, author, reason it was declared

Date: Not during the early church, not during the time when Constantine made Christianity the religion of the Empire, not during the time of Luther & the Reformation, not during the time of Pius IX with the Italian Resorgiamento & his Infallibility statement (1870), but in 1925.  Fairly Recently.

Author: Pius XI, pope 1922-39

 

Reason(s): at least 2 factors–The Times and Modernism/Secularism

1.  The Times:

a) End of WW I and build up to WW II   

b) Mussolini & Hitler: the same year Pius XI became pope, Mussolini became prime minister.  By 1925 he had become a dictator.  The feast was to counter the dictatorship.  "Christ is king, not you."

2.  Modernism & Secularism:

a) Modernism.  Despite being scholarly and pro-scientific methods, Pius XI was suspicious of biblical scholarship which questioned, for example, biblical inerrancy, the nature of bible miracles, the virgin birth, the resurrection, the atonement theory that God demanded his son suffer & die for a single sin by a human.

b) Secularism coming out of the Enlightenment said that all people were equal, people should have a say in government as in democracy, and backed the separation of church/state, like proposed by Jefferson.  The Catholic Church was against democracy.

 Sources: Living with Christ, Nov., 2009; Wikipedia

 
 

Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Woods

 

And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

                        Robert Frost

                                                                                                   

 

A few weeks ago this past fall Rosemary and I received a special gift.  We were given two tickets to a Notre Dame home football game, a game against Pittsburg. 

This had special meaning for me because when I was 18 I was enrolled in Notre Dame for college.  I had even bought some winter clothes.  Until I changed my mind and joined the Jesuits, to my mother’s rather lengthy irritation. 

Never in the following 50 odd years of my life did I ever get to visit the campus where my life might have been totally different.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving I want to give thanks for three things connected with this event.

 

First, I finally had the opportunity to reunite with one of my best old buddies from high school and even grade school, Pete Wacks.   He  has spent almost all of his adult life in Chicago working as an F.B.I agent.

 There is an amusing quality to this.  Here are two kids who seemed to get into trouble together and who spent some evenings in the University Park jail.  One ends up a Jesuit priest & the other works as an F.B.I. agent.

 After 50 years it was like we just picked up where we left off.  Rosemary & I spent the whole weekend with Pete & Margie.  We stayed at their house and they drove us to South Bend and joined us at the game.  One of his buddies even met us when we arrived at the campus and toured us around in a golf cart.  

 I am really grateful for this.

 Secondly, I was grateful for the opportunity to visit what I had heard was one of the beautiful campuses.  I got to meet touchdown Jesus, to witness a game in a fabled stadium, and to walk the campus.  The trees were just changing colors and it was a beautiful, warm fall afternoon.  It was fun and touching to walk around imagining how my life could have been different had I ended up there for 4 years.

 Thirdly, I was grateful that I had chosen the second road the summer of ’58.  It has been a good road.

 

As we look forward this week to Thanksgiving, I invite you to reminisce.  Look back.  Not often in life do we encounter two roads in a wood.  How grateful are you for the roads you have chosen?

 

Picture 1:   Curtis guarding our food drive

Picture 2:   Ryan & his mom, Michelle

Picture 3:   Connie & her family 

Picture 4:   Mark & Isabella & Donuts

Picture 5:   Wendy & Ray

 

 

Readings: 1 Samuel 26, 2-23; Psalm 103; 1 Corinthians 15, 45-49; Luke6, 27-38.

Samuel – This book of Samuel is a transition book describing how the Israelites went from being governed by judges to kings. Samuel was the last judge, Saul the first king.

A third dramatic person enters the book, King David. He is the one who killed Goliath with his sling and was King Saul’s favorite for a while.

However, when Saul noticed that the girls liked David more than he, Saul got jealous and tried to kill him on a number of occasions.

Our chapter 27 is one of these occasions. Watch what happens. The theme centers around compassion & mercy.

1 Corinthians 15 – We continue Corinthians 15 with a rather convoluted contrast between Adam, the first human being, & Jesus.

Turn the Other Cheek?

When Rosemary & I are in Mexico at Christmas we always spend the evenings in the village centers because they are enchanting. One evening in Cuernavaca this year I was standing in a one person line in front of a little kiosk selling fruit juice drinks. The kiosk was one of about six that circle the bottom of the bright gazebo. I always get an orange juice with papaya, banana, and strawberry.

As I wait in line behind a woman another woman walks by me, goes straight to the chest high counter, and asks for what she wants. I am a little indignant. I learned in East Africa, where this happens all the time, to simply say something. So I say in Spanish, "Is there no line here?"

At least the woman appeared rather abashed, even though she tried to ignore me. Ultimately, I got my fruit drink, and I was happy that I had not just wimped out, saying nothing because I hate creating scenes and this caught people’s attention.

Is this an example of offering the other cheek?

What about the example of the Amish whose children were recently killed by some deranged man? They did not just tell their kids that they would do well to forgive, but they brought aid and food to the man’s widow and his family.

I find this teaching of Christ just confounding. Half of the time I can’t do it; the other half I don’t want to. A couple of observations.

One, this is another example of the Christian program of infinite demand. The other half is infinite acceptance. We have humbling examples of people who have lived out this infinite demand: the Amish, Martin Luther King & the Freedom Riders, Dorothy Day, Maryknoller Roy Bourgeois, and even outside the Christian tradition, Ghandi in India.

Secondly, our Christian heritage clearly states that the better way is always compassion and mercy instead of hitting back and violence. David was compassionate and merciful to crazy old King Saul. Theologically we have developed a theory that says self defense is acceptable. Acceptable but not the better.

When that little lady jumped the line in front of me, I could have gotten all angry and really made a scene. I could have said nothing, which for me would have been wimping out. What I decided to do some years ago was to simply comment. Was I turning the other cheek?

What have you done when someone strikes you on the cheek, even metaphorically? What do you want to do in light of this reading?

Download the homily as an mp3.

Readings:

1 Kings 19, 9, 11-13, Go outside and stand on the mountain before the Lord.

Psalm 85,  Lord, let us see your kindness and grant us your salvation            

Romans  9, 1-5, They are Israelites.  

Matthew 14, 22-33,   Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.     

 

 

Thanks to the Team

Music,  Ben & Shonda

Readers,  Jackie & Patricia, & Buddy, the candle blesser

Gospel & Homily,  Deacon Mike 

Eucharistic Prayer A & B, Stack & John Cade

The Magic Zoom makers, Mike (on vacation) & Richard, Ben & Hue 

Final Blessing, Rosemary

 

 

Download Readings week 19

 

1^st part of Homily

Today’s gospel is a continuation of last week’s story from Matthew about the Lord, with his disciples, feeding the Jews with the fish and the loaves, for the fish are a metaphor for the liturgy of the Word, and the loaves and leftovers a metaphor for the liturgy of the Eucharist. 

 

 

Homily by Mike Carrell

The Lord be with you.

A reading from the holy gospel according to Matthew

After Jesus had fed the Jews, he made the disciples get into a boat and precede him to the other side of the lake. With the crowd dispersed, Jesus climbed the mountain so he could be by himself to pray.

He stayed there alone, late into the night. Meanwhile, the boat was far out to sea when the wind came up against the boat, and they were battered by the waves. At about four o'clock in the morning, Jesus came toward them walking on the water. They were scared out of their wits. "A ghost!" they said, crying out in terror. 

 

Their music just gets better & better.

 

But Jesus was quick to comfort them. "Courage, it's me. Don't be afraid." Peter, suddenly bold, said, "Master, if it's really you, call me to come to you on the water." 

Jesus said, "Come ahead." But when Peter looked down at the waves churning beneath his feet, he lost his nerve and started to sink. He cried, "Master, save me!" Jesus didn't hesitate. He reached down and grabbed his hand. Then he said, "You of little faith, what got into you?" The two of them climbed into the boat, and the wind died down. 

The disciples in the boat, having watched the whole thing, worshiped Jesus, saying, "This is it! You are God's Son for sure!" 

 

 

Tom, Richard, & Hue working their magic.

 

2^nd part of homily

It was Jesus intention for his disciples to follow his example of sharing the fish and preparing the gentiles to also receive the loaves and leftovers, so that Jews and gentiles could become brothers and sisters in Christ. This story teaches the Church that its disciples were to have faith in his words even until the end of time.  The gospel of the Lord.

 

 

There he is, Folks, Mike finally in the wilderness of Colorado, with Rose.

 

Please Remember these special people:

For our Bill & his family,   For Becky's dad just discovered with the virus;  For Cindy recuperating from a procedure some weeks ago;    For Esparzas, Frank & Mary,  For all the medical personnel struggling to treat the tsunami of sick people, in particular, locally, Cindy's staff at Presby, Dallas, and at Frisco Presby, the mother of Harper and Betsy, Kendle, working in labor & delivery;   For Mary & Dave Hall's g-daughter Allison Keller working at St. Lukes, Woodlands,  For Joe Hogan with cancer;  For Loretta's aunt Alicia;    For Sydney;  & For Sir Charlie & Jan;  Shonda's mom & Cody & Ben & all of Shonda's dear family;   for Michelle;

 

 

Two happy campers, Mike & Rose.

 

For Jackie's mom;  For a friend, a neighbor, & a doctor, Karen, with brain cancer; For Rick Turner searching for a kidney donor, Type O neg; For Meredith, cancer free;    For Hue;  For John O'Donnell;    For Dee, and for her daughter, Lisa; For John Schanot's continued health;  For Anthony & Sabrina;    For a young man who is suffering from depression;  John Cade's mother in law, Kalliopi Piskiouli and Lambrini, plus John's daughter, Joey

 

 

Where is that Mike??!!

 

Birthdays:   Carrie Bieda, 62; Stephen Farmer, 30; Marlene; Richard has a new grandbaby, Madeline, congratulations, Carrie

Anniversary:  John & Jean O'Donnell, 62nd;  Ryan McClurg & Grace, 7th  

 

Rosemary's Blessing:

Come, O Dancing God,

Spirit of Life and Love,

of  Beauty and Diversity,

stir up my soul,

bathe me in your light,

and unleash my own spirit

that I may dance with you

and be light for those around me

and reflect your love to all that I meet this week.

 

Edited and adapted from a blessing by Fr. Andrew M. Greeley

 

 

A 2020 broadcasting studio??

 

   

Community Finances, August 9, 2020

Expenses: $1040.00

Outreach   $300.00    (often for Souls Harbor, Legacy, etc.)

Thanks, Folks, for doing what you can.

 

Here is a link to a survey about access to the Sunday Mass.  Please take the survey and let us know how easy/difficult it is to get to the Mass.  Thanks. 

(Take this survey and all your life problems will be solved.  That is what Becky & Mike told me.)