Sunday Homily 5-24-09, 7th Easter
Readings: Acts 1, 15-26; Psalm 103, the Lord has set his Throne in Heaven; 1 John 4, 11-16; John 17, 11-19.
Acts: a review–
Author: Luke, the author of The Acts & The Gospel
Date: ca. 50 years after the death of Jesus
Our Selection: Believe it or not, we are now back to chapter 1 after getting as far as chapters 9 & 10. What is going on is this. The chapter opens with an introduction and then a description of the Ascension, Jesus going up in the sky. Apparently the event took place about a half mile outside Jerusalem on the Mt. of Olives.
Afterward, all the community come together in the room they had been hiding in. About 120 are present and Peter gets up to speak. We read Peter's words.
John's letter: There is a great line in this selection. See if you can spot it when you hear it. I'll tell you after the reading, but a hint, it is the last line.
The World
Last Sunday evening I took Rosemary to the emergency room at Presbyterian on Walnut Hill. Many of you may not know that for years she has endured a condition where her heart would spike up to ca. 180 and lock in there. Normally when she felt a spike coming she would lie down and it would subside. Occasionally it would take a longer, like an hour or two.
Sunday, after the spike continued for 4-5 hours and she was feeling nauseous and lousy, I called our doctor who assured me the event was not life threatening, not a stroke or a heart attack, and that I should take her to the emergency room so they could arrest the spike.
So I rush over to Presbyterian reassured that she was not in danger from the spike, but anxious about going to the hospital. Flashing through my mind are stories about hospital mishaps, overworked nurses, scissors left inside incisions, mixed medications, and people going in with a hang nail and coming out with a staff infection that kills them.
However, I was humbled and impressed with the efficiency, the care, and the cleanliness of what I encountered. We arrived about 8:00 and I did not leave until shortly before midnight. It actually took most of that time to bring the spike down and keep it down. It would come down, then immediately spike. The phenomenon is called SVT, supra ventricular tachycardia.
When we walked into that emergency room, I only had to put Rosemary's name & date of birth on a piece of paper, and they whisked her into the care of numerous teams of nurses, a doctor, and eventually one of her heart specialist team.
Then a great thing happened on Tuesday morning when they did a procedure on her called an ablation, where by they run a little wire up from the groin, through a vein into the heart cavity, and zap the malfunction. Rosemary came home and donated her heart medications to the CCAC. She does not need them anymore.
The people in Presbyterian were terrific, amazingly professional, caring, and warm.
This has been on my mind a lot and I thought about the experience when I noticed the John reading about the world. Did you notice that he uses the word world 9 times in a small paragraph, always in a negative context? Like, the world is a bad place.
We have talked about this before and I would like to propose again that, while the world around us has a lot of pain & suffering, the world also has tremendous beauty. And, moreover, you and I can increase that beauty, helping to minimize the suffering.
As I've mentioned before, I pick up here the scent of the old philosophical principle of dualism. That is, the whole world is divided into two opposites, hot & cold, dark & light, spirit & matter, and especially, good & bad. Moreover, bad & good covers other doubles, for example, light is good, darkness bad. And especially, matter is bad, spirit is good. Consequently, the world full of material & stuff is seen as the enemy.
This extends to my person. My material body vs my spirit, my thinking and feeling. To free the latter I must discipline and control the body. Taken to an extreme people get into hurting themselves, so as to free the inner spirit. I did not have enough common sense as a young Jesuit to realize that some of the penitential practices we were encourage to do we just self abuse.
Where are we today? Today we are encouraged to treasure our world and to improve it. We see this all over the place. I was at the CCAC, the Collin Co. Adult Clinic, Thursday and here are all these people providing medical care to the poorest people pro bono, no salary or stipend. Ken Cramer sent me a note, "When can we have another food drive?" Great reminder. We'll do it next week.
I saw recently where Groundwork Dallas had another Trinity clean up. Hundreds showed up to remove trash and in particular a hill of dead tires illegally dumped in the forest. I wished I could have been there, like the time Ron Kovatis got many of us down there.
I propose that our challenge is not to hate the world, but the treasure it and to make it even more beautiful.
How are you beautifying our world?
AUDIO: http://mysite.verizon.net/reso7rjy/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/2009-05-24.mp3
Picture 1: Mass with Kevin & Sabrina
Picture 2: Sabrina, who graduated Friday from 8th grade at St. Monica with a Presidential Award for excellence, reading her poem Download Bread_by_sab[1]
Picture 3: John Doherty preparing to receive a blessing on his employment away from home
Picture 4: Donut Shoppe with customers Kevin, Chloe, & Denni