*As a youth Patrick was born into a world of fading Roman glories to which his family had been attached.  He could count a grandfather who became a clergyman.  Still, Patrick, himself, had no direction in his life because the faith that was in people around him did not then or now pass by osmosis.  He had not yet learned to live because he had not yet made a decision about how to offer his life.

    *Patrick had his entire life disrupted and interrupted when he was captured by Celtic pirates.  Many people in our parish are going through economic interruptions in their life.  Patrick remarked that he thought he was going to die, and people feel great disorientation and loss of balance when the usual is interrupted, especially for prolonged periods with no fixed date for when problems will end.

    *Patrick worked through incredible loneliness to find himself being alone with God.  He was worked as a slave, but because he was not easily learning the Celtic language, Patrick was made to tend sheep.  Alone for days on end with the flocks, Patrick was nearly overwhelmed with his isolation.  He was a foreigner, he could not speak the new language, and now he was in a job which kept him from even accidental human interaction.  In this situation, however, Patrick began to pray to God for long periods of time.  He strained to remember the stories from Scripture to which he was only half attentive as a child.  He tried to meet his family in prayer, thinking that they would be praying for him at certain hours of the day.

    *Patrick decided that he was not going to stay put in his situation.  He made a detailed plan for how he was going to escape from Ireland which would include his need to courageously but cautiously enlist the help of a boatman.  He had a plan for what to say if a boatman were to turn him in to his masters, and he failed in several initial attempts to get someone to help him.  His plan to escape from his problems included all types of contingencies and an expectation that there might be initial failures.

    *Patrick’s escape plan found him in modern day France.  He thought that he would return to his native land, but an accidental stay at a Monastery made him recognize that this was to be his home, for awhile.  In that safe place, Patrick looked back on his past experiences with the Irish, grew to forgive them, and even grew to love them, pondering as he did what they might become if they could be converted to Catholicism.  Patrick shows us that we are not the best judge of our experiences while we endure them. It is good to imagine that from a safer place and time we might be able to forgive and plan how to best rectify unfair situations.

Peter, James, and John first noticed the brightness coming from Jesus and even His clothes.  There is an attention to detail and motivations which recommend modesty as the best way to form and reveal our character.  The second thing they would have noticed is the appearance of Moses.  Living by the law of God is a matter of conviction as much as a matter of restriction: the interplay between striving in sanctity and failures that allow the sinner to fall into forgiveness is the spiritual struggle in our active ascent to God.  A third thing that the Jesus centered disciples noticed was Elijah who must have reminded them about all his miracles that had to be perfected with periods of intense being with God in prayer.  Taken-up into the glory it was only natural that Peter should anticipate his role as the Church’s foremost builder by suggesting that there be a way to contain and maintain the vision of glory by building tabernacles on this Palestinian height.  God the Father, however, is present in the thick impenetrable darkness that will always be an aspect of the spiritual life.  At first the unreachable distance of God is frightening and even frustrating. However, the disciple of any age eventually learns that this divine darkness is God’s patience that allows us to clarify the darkness within us.  It could come from a lack of focus, perhaps from an insistence on what seems proper and logical to us at the time, and often enough from the blind spots where we willfully ignore the contradictions between our actions and principles.  From the Divine Darkness comes a word that is light, solution, and path:  Jesus is God’s Son, best, last, and only answer, listen to Him!

 A person does not see it coming.  They work hard, probably a bit harder than the other people at the job, and you get noticed, and  promoted.  You get a bit more money.  Then you meet new people.  You are told about the right places to live, the right activities into which to place your children, and the right places in which to recreate and socialize.  As time goes by you rarely see your family for having to pay for all those activities, fashions, and possessions that were supposed to be so good for them.  As St. Augustine said, “if you owned the oceans and all the isles, it would do more good for the fish to be owned by you than for you to have them, and it would never be enough.”  The reason things will never be “enough” is that we were made by an infinite God for a limitless destiny beyond the material world.  It is natural enough that we should have expanding desires.  Unfortunately, the material means tend to change us more than we spiritualize the world.  One of the first tasks of Lent is to notice how trapped we are in chains forged of our own making.  One of the reasons for fasting was simply to change your schedule to discover that you do not “have” to want the same kinds of foods at the same kind of time.  Increased prayer and spiritual reading was to ask how hard it was to pull away from the not so necessary things that had come to dominate over us.  When Jesus tells Satan that   “God alone is served,” he gives a declaration of independence from slavery to false idols.  False idols end-up being demons that demand human sacrifice done by the person himself or herself.

 1. The Christ Renews His Parish Retreats attempt to cover major issues in Christian Spirituality.  A spiritual retreat is a significant Lenten sacrifice, and these retreats have been the occasion of so many blessings for so many parishioners.  Fill out the registration form in the bulletin and drop it by the church office this week!

2. Tuesday Night Scripture Workshop:  “Praying With the Psalms.”  On 23 February, and March 2, 9, 16, and 23 we will have a five week seminar on this powerhouse of prayer, the Book of Psalms, with especial attention to how Jesus used these psalms and how the Church particularly saw the Psalms as the prayer encounter with Christ, after the sacraments, par excellence.  We will see how various saints and spiritual masters used and use the psalms in their prayer life.

3. The Bereavement Seminars will be offered on Wednesday evenings in March.  One of the greatest penances a person will have is attempting to live with an irreplaceable loss.  To have some             encouragement from people who have themselves lost a spouse, a parent, a child, a friend and seeing from their experiences that you are not crazy or wrong to be hurting, as well as to anticipate certain things that can be expected, is a help in bearing the cross, a cross that even Jesus did not bear alone!

4. Do not forget the daily Masses, especially the Thursday Evening Mass at 7:00 p.m. for those who work  during the day.

5. Friday Evening Stations of the Cross at 7:00 p.m. You and I might not be able to get to Jerusalem this year, but those crosses under our Stations along the walls have been there and placed to the places we think Jesus may have touched along his Way of the Cross.  This devotion is an excellent meditation on how we participate with Jesus in His passion.

Unfortunately, it does not take too long for the inspiration for improvement to collide with our memory of collected failed attempts.  The normal way people protect themselves from a too demanding conscience is to offer that, after all, one is not so bad, indeed, not as bad as most people.  Even more, that defense attorney in each of us looks at the difficulties in life balanced against the lack of opportunities or resources that we have had.  A tendency to feel sorry for one’s own self changes the inspiration, “I could be better,” into the asseveration, “I deserved better, so I can afford to be bitter.”

So, just as we were getting to rediscover ourselves as the messengers of God who have lost the message, we wonder if we really want to recover the message at all.  Inevitably that crowd in Nazareth came to the sudden joint realization that this new messenger had to be shot, in spite of his good news.  This good news was so alarming for people who already imagined that they were good enough.  How could that conscience in the individual that longs to meet up with the God searching for the person somehow keep hiding, keep standing off as an innocent bystander of sorts.  The tact is tried to deflect what is being said and ringing disturbingly true in me to something else: “just who is saying it.”  And the ‘who’ that speaks is no different a person than am I, or so it seems.  Something stirs in the soul to say, “but that is just the point:  holiness is not for the hereafter, heroics not for mere halcyon days, but the invitation  from God is to be answered in the here and now.”  Such a hard question is before me, “to be better with God, or not to be so bothered with anything beyond myself.” Such a clear conception of my identity stares starkly out at me depending on my choice.  Or, perhaps, it would be better that this person who has disturbed me (and seems intent on disturbing me yet about the choice), Jesus is it, were merely thrown over the cliff!

I doubt that Jesus ever returned to Nazareth, and not because He was afraid of them.  It is just a plain fact that people do not like to meet the one they tried to kill.  Now, if people get away with their malice, success in any deed ever so foul, unfair, or cowardly usually is more than sufficient to salve the crowded consciences of most people.  The person who gets away or survives the plot is strangely hated by those who failed to bring him down under them.  Everyone has to live with themselves, and the very sight of the still living messenger (still giving the message) reminds some people that the only person they damaged was the better person and people they did not become.  What is particularly galling to those failed plotters is why the surviving messenger keep continuing on?  Part of the message is that opposition to it is a foregone contingent and context for accepting that message, not a foregone conclusion to rejecting it.

Stop Abortion Funding in Health Care Reform!

Protect Conscience

Ensure Affordable Health Coverage

Allow Immigrants to Purchase Private Health Insurance

As long-time advocates of health care reform, the U.S. Catholic bishops continue to make the moral case that genuine health care reform must protect the life, dignity, consciences and health of all, especially the poor and vulnerable. Health care reform should not advance a pro-abortion agenda in our country.

   • On November 7, the U.S. House of Representatives passed major health care reform that reaffirms the essential,

longstanding and widely supported policy against using federal funds for elective abortions and includes positive measures on affordability and immigrants.

   • On December 24, the U.S. Senate rejected this policy and passed health care reform that requires federal funds to help

subsidize and promote health plans that cover elective abortions. All purchasers of such plans will be required to pay for other people’s abortions through a separate payment solely to pay for abortion.

   • Outside the abortion context, neither bill has adequate

conscience protection for health care providers, plans or

employers.

   • These two bills must now be combined into one bill that both the House and Senate will vote on in final form. Provisions against abortion funding and in favor of conscience protection, affordability, and immigrants’ access to health care must be part of a fair and just health care reform bill, or the final bill must be opposed.

ACTION: Contact your Representative and Senators today by

e-mail, phone or FAX.

• • To send a pre-written, instant e-mail to Congress go to            .
  • · at & .

MESSAGE—HOUSE:

“I am pleased that the House health care bill maintains the

longstanding policy against federal funding of abortion. I urge you to work to uphold essential provisions against abortion funding, to include full conscience protection and to assure that health care is accessible and affordable for all. Until and unless these criteria are met, I urge you to oppose the final bill.”

MESSAGE—SENATE:

“I am deeply disappointed that the Senate health care bill fails to maintain the longstanding policy against federal funding of

abortion and does not include adequate protection for

conscience. I urge you to support essential provisions against abortion funding, similar to those in the House bill. Include full conscience protection and assure that health care is accessible and affordable for all. Until and unless these criteria are met, I urge you to oppose the final bill.”

WHEN: Votes in the House and Senate on the final bill are

expected in January.

Act today! Thank You!

      The Ladies League has been incredibly generous to our parish.  Through their cookbook sales they have given some $3,000 to reduce our debt.  This Sunday the readings give us the opportunity to reflect on marriage.  The Ladies League commissioned the Easter panels, and they have also commissioned a set of panels based on the life of the Blessed Mother.  We think that these panels will be used by parishioners during their weddings and on the many feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary throughout the year.

      The Wedding at Cana is a magnificent event.  Mary and Jesus see a couple that are having a problem on their wedding day, the Blessed Mother and Her Son love the couple, and they want to help them.  I think that it is a charming scene because in every age and place people usually look their best at their own wedding:  rarely are we as optimistic about are willingness to sacrifice for another person as on our wedding day.  Humanity’s fall came in the context of a marriage with Adam apparently not willing to risk the loss of Eve as he preferred to join in her sin and possible punishment rather than join with God’s infinite love and will for His divine solution.  Jesus asks Mary something that does not easily translate into English:  in their own Aramaic expressions, the Lord asks, “Madame, what is this thing, in you, in me?”  Because Mary is in her son’s heart, whatever she wants is what Jesus wants.  However, if Jesus works a miracle it will be the first step on a road leading away from their private life in Nazareth to a destination that will ultimately terminate on the cross at Calvary.  Mary may not have had a grand celebration of her wedding, and she has a particular place in her heart for a couple that is not prepared sufficiently for their nuptial feast.  Mary has the attitude that Adam ought to have had when she says to the waiters then and to us now, “Do whatever He tells you.”  There is great peace and relief from much anxiety in those words.  Water was probably harder to come by than wine at Cana, so Jesus' first miracle may seem like an odd one, but changing a situation with sacrifice often has us giving something a bit more of ourselves to make things a bit better for someone else.  When we do this with Jesus, however, we enter into his more profound miracle of changing bread and wine into Himself that we who partake of Him in sacraments and sacrifices can share in His gift of redemption.

                  I once listened to a priest whose career it was to prepare men for the priesthood.  He was trying to insist on the importance of the dignity to which we are raised in Baptism and the call to be partakers in the mission of Jesus Christ.  This well meaning man made the statement, “if a student for the priesthood looks forward to his Ordination Day more than his Baptismal day, then there is something wrong.”  I challenged the speaker by saying that it is entirely understandable that a person in his Twenties would have more capacity to look forward to undertaking a lived vocation than would a baby.  I opined that the adult would obviously have more understanding, more freedom, and more of a conception of a personal call to make the sacrifice to God that is the choice for ordination, or for that matter the choice for marriage.  Baptismal excitement, however, is something that catches us by surprise at various times in our lives.

 I can understand the importance that has to be placed on the moment that one discovers that he or she is a rather mess of a person, a sinner who cannot save one’s own self.  The moment that one takes the next step to discover that Jesus is that Savior can be an experience of great emotional cleansing, and I think that a number of us experience these things when we celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  The moment that one decides to follow Jesus as a disciple can be one of great liberation from more demanding demons and demiclods (if you will allow me to coin a new word I am using to replace demigods), as well as an exhilarating moment of closeness with the Lord.  There will be days like that in our life.  Yet, I wonder if there will be days of a greater glory from a more subtle spirit.

 Our efforts come from the noble impulse to express love.  It is not easy for everyone to accept being loved.  Although what is about to be said is rather counter intuitive for the confirmed grammarians among us, but the passive is more difficult than the active.  In Baptism, the Catholic Church celebrates Jesus’s choice for you:  “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you.”  Thinking about this, St. John says in his First Letter, “We know what love is, that while we were still sinners and his enemy, God sent His only Son to die for us.  It is not that we have loved God, but that He has loved us first.”   It is difficult for any one of us not to imagine ourselves the instigators of the relationship with God when we are the ones going to Mass, and getting our families there as well, we the ones who are initiating prayer, we the ones making the donations, we the ones designing and attending spiritual conferences, and we the ones making charitable efforts or attempting to heal relationships.  In fact, people have often talked about greater spiritual attention as “taking the plunge,” like diving off a board or pier into a Summer’s lake.  The experience of our shortcomings, our failures, our turning into blind alleys, and our sliding back into old problems are particularly frustrating for the person who always supplies their own activity for God.  I sometimes think that failures are inevitable because they are God’s opportunities to tell us not just, “I still love you,” but, “You must count on and depend upon My love as preceding anything you will want to do for me.”  Being loved on God’s own terms is the gift of Baptism that we will probably need an eternity to unravel and in which to revel.

THINKING OF GOING BACK TO COLLEGE?  WELL, WILL PEOPLE GO BACK TO COLLEGE THINKING?

I know students are paying large tuition bills, and may be paying on loans for education for many years to come.  Therefore, since you are paying so much for education, you are liable to think that those professors and institutions that are taking your money would be offering you information that was largely accurate.  Many people have an agenda which skewers their interpretation of every type of fact and other pieces of information.  Instructors at our local schools do talk about the Catholic Church, and they imagine that they know something without much competent analysis of history, yet alone philosophy and science.  It is disturbing to find the number of people who have rarely move beyond a textbook sort of education to actual sources that might allow the people, themselves, to speak of the ages and mentalities.  Write your pastor about things you hear in school that disparage the Catholic Church and faith.  Ask yourself just why it is that you are inclined to buy what people are selling, and ask yourself if you would put up with that if people were making various claims about your preferred music, sports, politics, or races.  You may discover that the supposed evolution in morals is a mere exchanging of one set of prejudices for another, and often times it merely involved a mere rearranging of objects.

 On this Feast of the Holy Family, we consider how important the family unit is when we realize that Jesus Christ spend some 90% of His life on earth in the actual quiet and privacy of His family.  I think all of us point to the obvious moments when we ‘struck out on our own’ to ‘become our own person.’  We say things like, ‘the place where you were born is not as important as the place where you become who you are,’ and there are great moments in our life when we are conscience of the type of activities, commitments, and conversions that are redefining and enhancing our personalities.  Yet, we have to face the fact that everything that is higher only rises on that which is lower.  The French even think that the more we seem to change the more we stay the same sort of liquid person who takes the shape of whatever container in which we find ourselves.  Parental opinions give way to the demands of friends, and these give way to the commands of teachers and coaches, and those give way to the pressures of work.  Sometimes, people wonder if they ever had a unique thought of their own, or if everything came off the rack from somebody else.  In fact, is it not really a question not so much of change as integration of realities and intentions?  When it comes right down to it, few people ever have as much influence on us as our parents because they actually had to do more to keep us alive than have warm or correct thoughts.  Few people make us grow as much as our own children who present us, ready or not, with needs that simply must be met by our sacrifices and best efforts.  Despite promises, threats, warnings, or sage advice, normally we become the most we can be when we love somebody more than anything we ever knew, including our own good:  for most people, that whole occupying holy occupation occurs in our families.

OUR HOLY MOTHER, MARY, AND A BETTER START FOR A BETTER YEAR!

On Christmas, we celebrate the fact that God is with us in the Christ child.  On the Octave, 1 January, we celebrate the fact that Jesus, who was eternally God, is and will also be everlastingly one of us, a human being.  In many places, for many years, and in many controversies, people debated how much Jesus Christ was either God or human because, if He is not God, He does not lift us to the Almighty God that is beyond the reach of even the highest angelic creatures.  If Jesus is not a man, then not one of us human beings has ever been anything other than a sinner, and not one of us has offered on behalf of all a human consent to God’s will.  People began to see that the Blessed Virgin Mary was the solution to all of these problems:  Because she was his mother, Jesus was truly a man who was born from Mary in time.  Because that son was eternally God, Mary was, in time, the Mother of Jesus, Who is our God.  Mary’s cooperation with God is so complete as to be the best model for how we are to live our lives this year in cooperation with God’s plan that includes a role for each of us in building His kingdom.

MARY’S CHILDREN AND OUR BROTHERS & SISTERS

                 I am particularly grateful to all the people who are

assisting Our Lady of Perpetual Help parish in Chimbote, Peru on the December 8 Holy Day and again this New Year’s day.  These people regularly bear the crosses of poverty and misery, yet they live with faith and hope as an inspiration to us.  Also I thank all of you who made Christmas brighter for people in Appalachia and in our own community through our holiday gift giving trees.  This year, at his father’s funeral, a man spoke about one Christmas present he received the year his father had an accident and was out of work.  It was a “nerf” football.  He

remarked that it came from our parish, and I could not tell from the man’s story if he thought the gift rather small as compared with his father’s plight.  The man, however, became a teacher and a counselor, and he was convinced that, no matter how much character and effort a person had to face their problems, some extra help, fraternity, and sometimes even a little bit of care can be the prop that lifts a person.  Difficult and unfair situations come to families, and sometimes people are the authors of their own hardships, but their children are people who are already somebody deserving dignity.  Our efforts have blessed many people in ways we cannot imagine!