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New Beginnings (Nativity of Mary)

We recall today the birthday of Mary- a time of new beginnings. Not only do we celebrate the birth of a new life, we also celebrate the beginning of a new chapter in salvation history. We ourselves may be experiencing new beginnings at this time of year- perhaps the start of a new school year, or the launch of new work initiatives after the summer slowdown.

Any new beginning can be a time of excitement and hope as we anticipate its possibilities, opportunities, and challenges.  But new beginnings can also give rise to apprehension and worry. We may fear what the future may hold, or become anxious about letting go of what’s comfortable and familiar.

If this is true for us, today’s Scripture readings can speak to our situation in three ways:

  • First, Paul explained that all things work together for the good of those who have been called by God- and that means us!
  • Second, as Luke’s gospel asserts that Jesus’ birth came about only through the power of the Holy Spirit, we are reminded of the Spirit’s presence and power in our lives;
  • Third, the gospel reminds us that God has a plan. He had a plan for our salvation that lead to the births of Mary and Jesus; and he has a plan for each of our lives as well.

In short, for each and every one of our new beginnings, the Holy Spirit is always present to guide us to embrace God’s unique plan for our lives, which we’re assured is designed for our good. And, since it is her birthday, we can entrust our new beginnings to the protection of Mary our Mother, as together we pray: Hail Mary…

Readings for today’s Mass: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/090811.cfm

Photo Credit: Wikipedia Commons

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Night Owls and Early Birds

The other day I spoke with a woman who attends the 7:15 am daily Mass at my parish. She comes to Mass and then stays to pray before the Blessed Sacrament. “I just can’t pray at night,” she said, “so I have to do it early in the morning.”

I know exactly what she means. I have some friends who love all-night adoration at a local parish, and they’re always trying to get me to come. However, I’m not good for much after 10:00 PM, and I joke with my friends that I’m not a “nocturnal Christian.” My best praying, like the woman at my parish, is done in the morning.

Which is okay! God makes both early birds and night owls. One is not necessarily better than the other. But regardless of which one we are, we do need to pray, and we need to pray in a regular, disciplined way.

For prayer to become a “holy habit,” it’s best to pick a particular time and place- just like Jesus, who in today’s gospel chose to pray at night, on the top of a mountain. We might find it best to pray at night, like our Lord, or we might prefer the morning. It ultimately doesn’t matter, as long as we do it. Especially as God is available, all the time.

Readings for today’s Mass: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/090511.cfm

Photo Credit: Brisbane Falling via Creative Commons

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Idle Chatter?

Have you ever met for the first time someone you expected to dislike because you had heard negative or nasty things about him or her? But then, after you had met, you actually liked that person, and maybe even became friends? Your liking this person came as something of a surprise, because you had been biased against him or her. You had heard some piece of gossip, or been told something you really didn’t have a need or a right to know. As a result, that person almost didn’t get a chance to make a good first impression, because he or she had been given a bad name by somebody else.
And that’s not fair, is it? Our Church teaches that everyone has a right to a good reputation, and that it’s a sin to gossip or reveal things about people that others shouldn’t hear. To do that is to violate a person’s privacy, hurt their relationships with others, and maybe even put them in danger in some way. People can end up losing their jobs, for instance, because of gossip. And as the “greatest generation” used to be reminded: “Loose lips sink ships.”
Just consider what Jesus taught in today’s gospel. Whenever someone has offended or hurt us in some way, we are to first of all approach that person in private in the hope of resolving the situation. We aren’t to go around telling everyone how this person hurt us or how we think that he or she is a jerk. Jesus knows that it’s tempting to do this, because “Misery loves company.” It can feel good to get other people on “our side” of the conflict. Not only do we receive sympathy, it’s a way for us to “get back” at that person by making him or her look bad in another’s eyes. When we gossip about a person who has hurt us, or maybe even just really annoys us, our real intention is to punish.
As today’s gospel makes clear, this is not something our Lord wants us to do. Gossiping is referred to as the sin of “detraction,” it detracts from a person’s reputation and takes the shine of his or her good name. Gossiping, to say the least, is not an act of love. It’s ironic, therefore, that sometimes we do it about the very people we should love the most. Husband and wives, for instance, sometimes complain about their spouse’s behavior to their friends or acquaintances. They say things like: “My husband is so clueless; he can’t even screw in a light bulb.” Or, “My wife is such an airhead: she can’t even balance a checkbook.” Or, “He’d rather go fishing than spend time with his family.” Or, “If I spent the way she did, we’d be in the poorhouse.” If people said things like this to us about our spouses, we’d get angry and come to their defense. But we don’t hesitate to say these things ourselves.
There may be truth to what we say. But saying it doesn’t improve the situation or resolve the problem or help the relationship to heal or grow. Sometimes we’ll excuse ourselves by thinking that now we’ve gotten it off our chest, we won’t fight with our spouse later. But that’s baloney. All we accomplish is to make someone we love look bad in the eyes of others. And what will they think of our spouse the next time they see him or her? They’ll remember what you said, and look down upon your spouse. You’ve given them a bad reputation, and the harm we’ve caused can be almost impossible to repair. The damage is done.
Great damage can be done by gossip in the workplace, too. We’ve all experienced it, if we’ve ever had a job. And it’s hard to resist, sometimes because it sounds so juicy, and sometimes because we don’t want to be left out of the crowd and miss what’s being said. But workplace gossip wastes time, lessens productivity, poisons workplace morale, leads to divisions and cliques, and can ruin reputations and careers. A recent poll revealed that 60 percent of us rate “workplace gossip” as our number one on-the-job pet peeve.
These days, we might even say that we’re drowning in a virtual sea of gossip. There are nearly 400 gossip magazines on newsstands devoted to nothing more than revealing intimate details of the social and personal lives of celebrities and other public figures- things we don’t need to know and, I add, we shouldn’t seek to know or pay to learn about. Add to this the gossip spread around the internet through blogs, tweets, and Facebook, and what we have is something like a tsunami.
On our own, we probably can’t hope to stop it. But we can make a choice not to contribute to it. Let’s walk away from the water-cooler scuttlebutt, refuse to buy the trashy magazines, and not visit the offending websites. And most of all, let’s keep guard over what comes out of our mouths. It may be that someone may have hurt us, but that doesn’t mean that everyone and their brother needs to know about it. Because according to Jesus, we should treat the person we’re talking about as our brother. And he wants us to “win them over.” Not put them down.
Photo credits: Duncan~, Wikipedia Commons, Ed Yourdon. First and third via Creative Commons
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Warts and All

God loves imperfect people! This is the good news for us in today’s gospel. As we heard, Simon Peter had witnessed a miraculous catch of fish. But then he told Jesus to go away, because Peter knew that he was a sinner. But Jesus didn’t go away. Instead, he called Peter to himself, told him not to be afraid, and made him a fisher of men.

Like Peter, we too can sometimes fear Jesus because of our sins and imperfections. They can lead us to think that we’re not worthy to be Jesus’ disciple. At times like this, we need to remember the experience of Peter. As one old slogan puts it: “God doesn’t call the perfect. But he does perfect the called!”

At other times we’re so deeply ashamed of our sins that we fear Jesus will reject us or punish us. But that’s not the Jesus who hung on the cross. When we’re sorry for our sins, the only punishment we need fear is the one we inflict on ourselves when we don’t seek Jesus’ forgiveness, and when we don’t forgive ourselves.

You see, Jesus loved Peter in spite of his imperfections, and he loves us too. Because of Jesus loved only the perfect, he’d have no one on earth to love.

Readings for today’s Mass: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/090111.cfm

Photo Credit: DNisha via Creative Commons

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Bringing Jesus Home

During Mass, we hear Jesus speak to us in Scripture, and we receive Him in Holy Communion. After Mass, Jesus asks us to bring him home.

Simon Peter did this in today’s gospel. Like us, he encountered Jesus in word and worship, at the synagogue. And afterwards, Peter took Jesus to his home, where a family member was in need of a healing only Jesus could provide.

In our own families, we too may find a need for Jesus’ healing touch- healing of brokenness, jealousy, resentments, old wounds, rivalries, physical sickness, mental illness, addictions.

Like Peter, we need to bring Jesus home. Yes, sometimes Jesus does arrive unannounced! But more often than not, Jesus waits for an invitation- and an escort.

We can bring Jesus home in so many ways. Maybe we need to share our faith by sharing our story. Maybe we need to lend a helping hand. Maybe we need to confront one who is hurting others, or hurting themselves. Maybe we need to say “I’m sorry” and “I forgive you.” Maybe we need to say “I love you.” Maybe we just need to stop being a stranger, and pick up the phone.

There are any number of ways Jesus can bring healing into our homes. But we can’t just wait for him to appear. Because the truth is, it might be Jesus who is waiting for us!

Readings for today’s Mass: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/083111.cfm

Photo Credit: Mikecogh via Creative Commons

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Is Forever Possible?

Susan Gibbs,  the former Executive Director of the Office of Communications for the Archdiocese of Washington posted this blog on the Diocese of Arlington website. With her permission, we are re-posting it because it is a perfect introduction to the importance of a conference the archdiocese is hosting on October 1 at Catholic University of America.

Christ…or a sandy beach?

Ok, I admit it. Nearly every Sunday, I read the wedding section of the New York Times.

After a double dose of bad news from the front pages of the Times and TheWashington Post, I usually need some entertainment and the “how-we-met” stories tend to be a lot of fun. Plus, it can be inspiring to seecouples ready to embark on a new life together.

But what started as a diversion turned into something else. I started noticing fewer church weddings. Priests and ministers were being replaced with “Universal Life” celebrants and other officiants who were friends of the couple “ordained” for the occasion. (Like everything else these days, it turns out you can go online and get instantly “ordained.”) No longer held in churches, weddings are migrating to beaches, restaurants and exotic destinations.

Is this just the result of editors choosing unusual venues, or a sign that church weddings are on the decline?

Sadly, it seems to be the latter. A new study, released by Our Sunday Visitor and the Center for the Applied Research in the Apostolate, reports a nearly 60-percent plunge in weddings celebrated in the Catholic Church alone since 1972.

Given that the number of Catholics in the United Statesis growing, that’s not good news. What is going on?

According to the researchers,it’s not that Catholics areless likely than anyone else to marry,although that’s not saying a lot. The rate of marriage in the United States has dropped by nearly half since 1970, while the number of couples cohabitating has skyrocketed, according to The National Marriage Project. Instead, CARA researchers found:

  • Catholics are waiting slightly longer to marry
  • Catholics who divorce may be remarrying outside the Church
  • Catholics are marrying non-Catholics in increasing numbers
  • Catholics are not marrying at all.

That last one – not marrying at all– turns out to be the biggest factor in explaining the precipitous decline in weddings celebrated in Catholic churches. In 1970, nearly 80 percent of all adult Catholics in the U.S. were married. Today, barely 53 percent are. For younger Catholics (18- to 40-year-olds), the drop is even more significant: 69 percent were married in 1972, but only 38 percent are today.

In 2007, nearly a quarter of never-married U.S. Catholics said they were “not at all likely” to ever get married.

And, when they are marrying, they aren’t marrying other Catholics as often as in the past. From 1991 to 2008, the percent of young married Catholics (under age 41) married to other Catholics dropped from 78 percent to 57 percent. These couples may or may not marry in a Catholic Church.

Does it matter? Yes, quite a lot, because being married means something as a Catholic. There are only seven sacraments and marriage is one of them.

As the U.S. bishops’ website explains, “The sacraments make Christ present in our midst. Like the other sacraments, marriage is not just for the good of individuals, or the couple, but for the community as a whole. The Catholic Church teaches that marriage between two baptized persons is a sacrament. The Old Testament prophets saw the marriage of a man and woman as a symbol of the covenant relationship between God and his people. The permanent and exclusive union between husband and wife mirrors the mutual commitment between God and his people.”

Getting married – making that commitment – and holding the wedding in the sacred place of a church keeps the focus on what a wedding truly is – a joining of two people before Christ who now will become one within a community. I’m all for friends at a wedding, but I’d rather have them in the pews. After all, having Christ in your wedding and marriage will get you a lot further than a buddy on a sandy beach.

 

 

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Tuning Out a Wordy World

It’s been said that we live in a very “wordy world.” Every day we’re bombarded with words from TV, radio, the internet, billboards, road signs, t-shirts, bumper stickers, and goodness knows what else. We can’t even go to the beach without seeing airplanes dragging banners advertising beer or seafood.

Because we’re so inundated by them, words can often lose their power for us. We say things like, “Talk is cheap” or “They’re only words” or “Words don’t mean anything.” What a contrast to the situation described in today’s gospel, in which Jesus spoke at a synagogue.  We’re told that people were “astonished at his teaching” and that they said to one another, “What is there about his word?”

It’s interesting that we aren’t told much of what Jesus actually said except for the command: “Be quiet!” These words were initially directed to a demon! But perhaps we can understand them as the Holy Spirit’s little reminder to us today to “tune out” our “wordy world” and spend a moment in quiet reflection on Holy Scripture, that the amazing, astonishing, authoritative, life-giving words of Jesus- the Word made flesh- might resound in our hearts.

Readings for today’s Mass: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/083011.cfm

Photo Credit: Terwilliger911 via Creative Commons

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Conscience vs. Reputation (Martyrdom of St. John the Baptist)

Have you ever feared to do the right thing, or bear witness to your faith, because you were concerned about what others might do or say? I would imagine that most of us have; it’s something of a universal struggle. Teens struggle with peer pressure about sex and drugs. Workers weigh the pros and cons about resisting a corrupt or unethical corporate culture. Public figures bow to opinion polls. Christians keep their faith under wraps, lest they be labeled a “holy roller.” It’s all a matter of our conscience, versus our reputation.

King Herod was a case in point. He knew that the right thing to do was to set John the Baptist free. But he was afraid of what his guests might think. So against his better judgment, he delivered John to death. For his part, John could not have been a greater contrast to King Herod. As a true prophet of God, he spoke the hard truth. And he paid a hard price. All because he made a hard choice to be faithful to his Lord and true to his conscience.

John’s witness is an inspiration to us to be courageous in always choosing to do the right thing. Sure, in some people’s eye’s we’ll look like a fool; but in God’s eyes, we’ll look like a saint.

Readings for today’s Mass: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/082911.cfm

Image Credit: http://www.zeno.org/ via Wikipedia Commons