Harper says, "Welcome in, Everybody."

 

 

Readings:  

 Wisdom 2, 12, 17-20,  The wicked say.

Psalm 54,  The Lord upholds my life.

 James 3, 16-4 3, Where jealousy & selfish ambition exist, there is disorder.

Mark 9, 30-35,  Whoever receives one child.

                   

 

Our Candle Lighter of The Week, Victoria.

 

 

 Wisdom observations:  

What:One of the 14-15 books of the deutero-canonical books of the bible.  Not OT nor NT, but in between and the subject of controversy over the centuries.  The “in between books.”  Were they really part of the bible or not?  How do you know?  Catholic church accepts the books.

Subject matter: the book makes use of traditional Jewish material, as well as ideas borrowed from Greek philosophy, in order to teach that God rewards those who are faithful to him.

 

 

 

Georgie reads the Blessing of the Autumn Candles.

 

 

Author: not Solomon, but a Jew living in Alexandria, Egypt who wrote and spoke excellent Greek.  The book is sometimes called “The Wisdom of Solomon.”

Date: ca. 100-200 before Christ.  How do we know these facts?  Because of text analysis.  For example, while the author wrote in Greek, he uses phrases and expressions that have a Hebrew flavor.  Also, he mentions rulers and places that reveal date and locale. 

Our Selection: what a wicked person thinks should be done with a good person–beat & kill.  This links up with the suffering servant poem from 2 Isaiah last week.  Jews think the good person getting beaten is the Jewish race/nation.  Christians think the person is Christ.

 

James:  presents a pretty negative image of people.  What would be a compassionate image? 

 

 

 

The Best Music, Ben at his Best.

 

 

Says the child, “Numero uno or last??”

This morning I would like to talk about receiving the child. In particular, I would like to focus on the inner child, the child inside all of us, even in old geezers like myself.  

I also want to say a word about the notion of being  first or last.

 

 

 

 

What did you do, Gil?  You got Gene, Bern, and Loretta all laughing.
 

 

 

To exemplify the points, a story.    I have used the story before.  It is too good to bury.   The story, the musical play Most Happy Fella.

The play is about a guy named Tony, middle aged Italian American, successful wine maker from Nappa Valley, and a bachelor.

He eats in a restaurant one evening in, say, Chicago.  He likes the waitress and leaves her a note with his tip, despite his shyness.   They begin a long distance correspondence and start to get close.  Both are looking for partners.

 

 

 

 

The Offertory Team (all characters!): Jan & Sir Charlie, Teresa & Tom (who lost all their checked luggage before they began their cruise.)

 

 They decide to exchange photos.  Tony, who has been taking a lot of risk because he is so shy, is afraid to show her his picture.  He thinks he is too old & too ugly.  So he sends her the photo of his handsome young farm foreman.  The foreman has already told Tony he is planning on moving on anyway.

So Tony and his girl decide to wed at the farm.  On the day of her arrival and the big wedding, Tony discovers that the foreman decided to hang around for the wedding & party.  Tony loses it.  He goes out, rolls his pickup, and almost kills himself. 

 

 

 

Is this not a Full Service Community?  Even to a play room.

 

Meanwhile, the girl arrives and thinks the nice foreman is the groom.  In fact, they get rather enamored of each other.  Then Tony is brought in on a stretcher.  Guess what happens then.  I’ll tell you at the end.

Let me make 2 observations about Tony. 

 

                           

 

A tremendous team when one has parkinsons.

 

 

First, Tony might have had ambitions about being numero uno, but he really thought he was the last, a loser, ugly, and old.  His challenge: get away from thinking best or worst.  Both are traps.  Just accept Tony as okay.

Secondly, when Tony let himself leave the note for the waitress, he was letting his inner child out for a minute.  In his correspondence he was letting that child play.  The child wants to be loved and to play.  Trouble was, the child was not used to getting out and was afraid.   So he tries the picture trick.

 

 

 

 

Happy Birthday to our Dearest Twins.

 

 

I can resemble Tony.  Thinking I am first, numero uno in anything, or last, both are traps.  I would propose it is irrelevant.  I am okay just as I am.

Like Tony I have an inner child.  Want to know what the child wants?  Just watch our kids here.  To be loved and to play.  I think this is what I am doing when I ride my bike across Iowa or in the Hotter N' Hell Hundred, and when I hike around  Yosemite.  These are great times for my inner spirit, that is, my inner child. 

   

 

Happy Birthday, Dearest Georgie.  I remember when you were just a cute little girl.  Now look how pretty you are.  What happened??   Whatever happened, you are a terrific young girl.

 

So, two questions today:

First, where do you think of yourself, first, last, or just okay?

Secondly, how do you let your own inner child out to play? 

What happened to Tony?  He eventually became a most happily married fella.  

 

 

 

 

Happy Birthday, Jackie, and thanks so much for all you do for the community.

 

 

 

Welcome Home, Alison & John.

 

 

Readings:

Proverbs 31, 10-13, 19-20, 30-31,   When one finds a worthy wife, her value is far beyond pearls.

Psalm 128,  Blessed are those who fear the Lord.  (No!)

1 Thessalonians 5, 1-6,  The Lord will come like a thief at night.  (No!)

Matthew 25, 1-13,  The parable of the man going on a journey and leaving talents with his servants

 

 

 

Says Rocco, "Good Morning, Everybody, welcome in."

 

 

Observation on the  psalm response and Thessalonians

Could there not be a better way to establish a relationship with the Lord than FEAR?  Like maybe LOVE?!

 

 

 

 

Wake up, Buddy.  Mike is coming on and he will fascinate you.

 

 

In honor of Thanksgiving we have invited Mike Kuklenski to share his experiences in Viet Nam and since.   

 

Nearly 50 years after Vietnam, a combat hero struggles to understand his war

 

The Link:

 

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/news/2017/11/11/fifty-years-vietnam-combat-hero-struggles-understand-war

 

 

 

 

Mike Kuklenski sharing his experiences in Viet Nam.

 

 

Mike, a ''67 graduate of Jesuit , was awarded two Purple Hearts and a Silver Star for his heroic time as a conscientious objector and corpsman (medic).

 

 

 

The Team.

 

 

 

The marvelous Music Team.

 

 

 

 

Says Our Dearest Emma, "Welcome in, Everybody."

 

Readings:

Isaiah 45, 1, 4-6,  I am the Lord, there is no other.

Psalm 96,  Give the Lord glory & honor.

Thessalonians 1, 1-5,  We give thanks to God for all of you

Alleluia,   Shine like lights in the world   (Great line)

uMatthew 22, 15-21,  Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?

 

 

 

Welcome in Denni, Charlotte, and Chloe, and Tom & Nora.  So good to see you all.

 

Isaiah observations :

Who : Can you guess which Isaiah this is in chapter 45?  1, 2, or 3?  A little more difficult than the last two Sundays.  This is Isaiah 2, going from chapter 40 to 55.

Today’s selection:  this is not Isaiah 2 at his best.  I like the line, I have called you by your name.  Otherwise, the passage is mildly comforting to the people who are living in Babylonian slavery, around 555 before Christ.

 

 

 

Welcome in to you, too, Dearest Zoe.  Just you wait.  We got something for you.  I have not forgotten.   Get ready,

 

Cyrus: So, who is Cyrus?          

 Cyrus the Great of Persia, modern Iran, built the first great empire, which extended as far as Athens in Greece.   He was a benevolent emperor of his people and the people he conquered, for instance, the Israelites.

Isaiah 2 is championing Cyrus because he hears of Cyrus coming and hopes Cyrus will defeat the Babylonians and set the Israelites free to return to Jerusalem.  This is exactly what Cyrus does.  Where is Babylon?  Try 50 miles south of Baghdad on the Euphrates River.  What is left?  Rubble. 

 

Note: Watch out for the alleluia verse.  A good one & I want to talk about it.

 

 

 

Hi, Diane, and welcome back.  Want to learn how to dance?   Diane is one of the best.

 

Shine like Lights in the World

This morning I would like to talk about the Alleluia verse, Shine like lights in the world.  The final questions are obvious, Who is a light for me, and For whom am I a light in the world.

I have lots of people who answer the first question.  You people, for instance.  What I would like to talk about, however, is two ladies, two black ladies, one of whom has died some years ago.

 

 

 

Our Candle Lighter of the Week in action.

 

First, ever hear of Juanita Craft?  In the ‘60’s & 70’s Juanita was the Dallas leader of the NAACP and a prominent activist.  She lived in South Dallas west of Fair Park. 

I was a Jesuit intern from ’65 to’68 at the high school.  The summer of probably ’67 I was looking at doing something different.  I talked with Juanita.  The next thing I know I am the only white guy on a Greyhound bus full of NAACP young people and their chaperons.  We were going to D.C. and then to the NAACP national convention in Atlantic City.  Remember this was another tense interracial time.  Sound familiar.  Martin Luther King was assassinated in May, 1968.   This was ’67.

 

 

 

The Best, Shonda, Ben, & David.

 

 

I learned two things from Juanita.   First, she was tireless in advocating for her people.  She used the media to help and she eventually was elected to the Dallas City Council.  Believe it or not, she was one of the inspirations for me gathering crowds for those years of planting trees.   Juanita was long dead by then and I had spent 10 years in East Africa.  It was like I would ask myself, ‘What would Juanita do with this dream?’

Secondly, a small thing.  Every time we got off that bus, Juanita would tell everybody to clean up every scrap of trash.  I was a bus driver for Jesuit, mostly sports teams.  I never thought of telling the kids to clean it up.  After the example of that old lady, I did.

To round out that summer I even spent the rest of it living in her little house in South Dallas and being active in the NAACP.

 

 

 

The Balloon Girls at work, Zoe & Tori.

 

 

The second black lady is named Sondra.  I see her once or twice a week when I go to our corner supermarket to buy bananas & milk & occasionally flowers.  She is the early morning cashier, is probably mid-‘60’s and should be retired,  She is very friendly and knows my name, Mr. John, and, get this, gets up ca. 2 A.M. to catch two or three buses from South Dallas to open up the store at 6:00. 

These two women shine like lights in my world.

Who are the lights in your world?

For whom are you a light?

 

 

 

Offertory ready with Carrie & Paul, Aggie & Allen.

Readings: 1 Kings 19, 16-21; Psalm 16; Galatians 5, 13-18; Luke 9, 51-62.

1 Kings: This book continues the history of the Israelite kings begun in the two previous books of Samual. First was Samuel, a judge, then Saul, the first king, then the Great King David.  David’s activities make up a large part of this book.  When David dies the kingdom gets split into north and south.  Things go badly.  Along comes Elija the prophet.  This is a sign that times are bad.  We read in today’s section about the time Elija chooses Elisha as his successor. 

A Role Model

I would like to talk this morning about my Aunt Kitty with her glorious 100 years. She has always been a hero of mine and after our visit this past week she still is. We stayed in the retirement home where Kitty lives. Consequently, were able to make numerous small visits over the day & a half we were there. One attendant even asked me if I lived there now!

Since we had just been talking two weeks ago about the qualities of a peaceful & whole person, I was looking at Kitty with the 6 qualities in mind, e.g., curiosity & hope, gratitude & love, zest and, my own, humor. I spotted at least 3. 

Above all else, I was struck about how peaceful she was. At one point in our visits she said that while she had not wanted to live until she was 100, "It is not bad," she claimed. This said a lot to me, because over the past 10 years Kitty often told us that she did not want to live to 100. 

I asked her how she got to this peace & 100 years. "Golf", she replied.  She loved to play golf.  I think I see here that zest for living that I mentioned was one of the 6 characteristics of a whole & peaceful person. She, also of course, was famous for her yellow Buick convertible.  Which leads to the second quality I remember about her.

Her humor.  I can still remember her laughing at my uncle Frank and going into hysterics with my mom.  The two of them were close in age and spirit.  They laughed often over a time when the two of them as girls in Pittsburg were driving along behind a streetcar and went right out over a bridge. They had to get rescued. Kitty was notorious as an air head and my mom was right with her.   

One year when I was returning to East Africa from a home visit, I toured Kitty, my mom, and their older sister Pauline around Ireland in a little, two door, red economy sized car. Folks, it was lucky that Ireland is so small because we did not get started in the morning until about 9:30 or 10:00 and then we began looking for a place to stay around 4:00. Plus we stopped for lunch & morning & afternoon tea.  During all this time they laughed non stop.

During our visits Kitty often poked fun at her situation and age, when she remembered she really was 100. And when she did not remember, she laughed at herself. 

Besides humor and zest for life, Kitty loved her friends. While we were with her she said how much she missed her pals Jenny Gooch and Betty Lynch. Betty had three paintings on Kitty’s wall.  Especially she missed my mom. In fact, she was disappointed she had not heard from her recently.  Her long term memory is shaky. She did not remember that mom had died about 15 years ago.  She was even disappointed Pauline had not written her.  Pauline lived in NYC and died before my mom.

One moment after she forgot her age, however, she tuned directly into me and asked how I liked marriage, what was my relation with the Jesuits, and was I still working actively as a priest. Even though she became Presbyterian when she married my Uncle Frank, she has been totally interested in and supportive of my process.  And she remembed clearly. 

Of all the qualities my aunt shows, humor is her best. 

What is your best quality?

Click here to download to an mp3 file:

Readings: Numbers 11, 25-29; Psalm 19, The Precepts of the Lord give Joy to the Heart; James 5, 1-6; Mark 9, 38-43.

The Book of Numbers

 

The fourth book of the Pentateuch.  It leaves us with the impression of a carefully structured and organized religious society moving through history under the sustaining and guiding hand of God.  It is a very complex collection of historical, legal and liturgical traditions spanning a period of about a thousand years!  

An outline would identify three broad divisions of the book: The sojourn at Sinai, chapter 1-10 covers the last 19 days the Israelites spent at Sinai. 

 

The second section deals with the journey from Sinai to Moab, chapter 10-22 and covers a span of about 38 years.  The third section, chapters 22-36, covers events in Moab over a period of 5 months.  Today's reading is from the beginning of the

second section, when the people are just starting out on their journey.  Moses is getting concerned with the responsibility of all of the people, so God shares the spirit, which is on Moses among 70 elders, even two who were not part of the group gathered around the Tent.

The Letter of Saint James

 

This is the final Sunday for the second reading to come from Letter of St. James, which we have listened to for the past five weeks.  In the reading today the mood is very stark!  “Your wealth has rotted away”.  The audience for this letter is the communities outside of Jerusalem.

Again remember the letter is a collection of moral observations and instructions, and in today’s reading James’ does not have much that is positive to say about the rich.  The bigger context is to encourage the Christians who are suffering at the hands of the powerful.  James reminds his audience that Jesus is coming again very soon!  Immediately following today’s reading he says “Be patient brothers until the Lord’s coming”.

Notes on the Gospel 

 

9:42 "it is better for him rather if the millstone of a donkey had been set around his neck and he had been thrown into the sea." The force of the two verbs indicate it would have been better that the person died before causing the scandal.

 

9:43 "It is better (that) you go into (eternal) life deformed . . . " Compare this statement with Leviticus 21:17-24, where only the undeformed could lead worship. Only the physically intact high priest could enter the Holy of Holies, the place the populace believed Yahweh definitely dwelt. In addition, self-inflicted wounds were forbidden in the Torah.

 

Now Mark stated the self-deformed could enter the kingdom. Ignore, for a moment, the fact that Mark used this extreme language symbolically. The weight of the statement was simple. Not only the sinners (the "deformed") could enter the Kingdom, the righteous (those with "two hands") could suffer eternal punishment! In addition, sometimes needed to "deform themselves" (i.e., leave the community of the "righteous" for the community of "sinners") to be saved

               

"unquenchable" in Greek is "asbeston," the root word for "asbestos."

                    

9:43, 45, 47 "Gehenna" The valley of Hinnom, south and west of ancient Jerusalem. This valley became infamous as the "high place" for idol worship among Judah's monarchs (including an oven for human sacrifice). Because of it reputation, "Gehenna" became metaphor for eternal damnation in the time of Jesus.

                                  

9:44, 46 "where the worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched" Both verses are the same. Most scholars do not believe these verses are part of the original text, so they are deleted from most modern translations.

               

9:48 "where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched." Unlike 9:44 and 9:46, this verse is original. This verse was an adaptation of Isaiah 66:24

                          

Homily for Sunday September 27^th 

 

If ever there was a gospel passage which begs for the topic of the Pedophile Disaster it is today’s, but I am not going there!!  Instead I thought about getting some hacksaws and pliers and making them available for use here today!!  If you eye causes sin – pluck it out.  Chop off your hand or your leg!!!! What is this all about? 

           

For me, this is a classic example of why it is not too smart to take the bible literally!  No, God does not want us to be inflicting severe bodily harm to ourselves.  So what is going on in this reading?

        

The three readings today are a brilliant example of why we have readings at mass.  The Word of God is speaking to us thru the readings each Sunday.  Here is what I am hearing from today’s readings.

            

In the OT reading from Numbers, we are at the beginning of the journey, the people have just been given the Covenant with God…. But already they are starting to have a really bad attitude about the whole thing, and poor Moses is feeling overwhelmed.  I guess life does get to be overwhelming at times.  Too many things too little time.  In the reading, God helps Moses first by sharing the spirit with others, can I share whatever it is that overwhelms me with others… a problem shared is a problem halved.  Then God in the very next sentence after our reading has quail blown in from the sea to feed the people.  When I am open to allowing God to help me, he invariably does. 

            

The Second reading from James reminds me to keep things in perspective.  Not to get too attached to material things.  The real riches are for me found within family, within community.

            

The Gospel passage from Mark for me says that what we here in this community are doing is the right thing!!  “Whoever is not against us, is for us”.  If ever there was an example of not seeing eye to eye with the established religion, it was Jesus.  It was ultimately what set him up for crucifixion.  The established religious were too threatened by what he was saying and doing.

           

 

But back to what I said at the beginning, what are we to make of the chopping of limbs etc.?  It is a classical example of why it is important to fully understand the context of the scriptures.  Today’s readings ask me to take stock of my priorities.                      

          

Let's take a few moments of quiet to begin that process.

                 

You may be the only Bible someone reads, will they be able to find God?

 

Picture 1:  Tony celebrating with Kevin helping

 

Picture 2:  Altar helpers

 

Picture 3:  Mike Miller presents CCAC with $2000, Cathy, Ray, & Claire accepting

 

Picture 4:  The Froebes, Richard, Morgan, Alexandra (O.U. junior), & Monica