Reflection based on today’s scriptures for the First Sunday of Advent, 2017

Advent charms our restlessness

Challenging us to begin again

As breathless clay in the hands of a potter

An apocalyptic summons to calm our volatile egos

To rest in the mud and miracle of creation

Watch and wait

In all that is not perfectly whole or loved or finished

Tangled half-truths and corrupted injustice

For a new presence of divine peace

Spaces in our darkened world where light

Shall reflect the beauty of our Creator’s imagination

This year I wait for Jesus among mangled hope

Walking amid shattered glass from boarded up store fronts

Stepping over cardboard huts along the street

Leaning up against the survivors of hurricanes and fires

Watching for tenderness not blame

With all my heart I believe

Jesus will be born in Puerto Rico this year

Amid dark-outs and lack of fresh water

Hidden in the empty schoolhouses

Seeking shelter under the rumble of roofless homes

Jesus will be born somewhere in the sex scandals

Where relationships of power finally give way

To humble awareness that we cannot control or demean people

Somewhere deflated egos will make a home for real love

Jesus will be born in vast divides this year

In inflamed discussions about hospitality of immigrants

Or buried in the concrete pilings of border crossing walls

He will paint red and blue into a hue of hope

For skin shades of brown and white and black

Jesus will be born this year along the freeway of human trafficking

Where our journeys will lead us into caring for our children

Jesus will be born this year in the controversies of guns

As we grieve innocent people from unimaginable violence

Jesus will be born among our leaders and bishops and among the hopeless

Holding together the challenges and paradoxes and arguments

Whether or not love should be our most valuable friend

Where hope is dried under the nails of the potter’s hands

On the Margins from Mater Dei Radio, Portland, OR

First Sunday of Advent, December 3, 2017

LISTEN NOW: CLICK HERE

Gospel   MK 13:33-37

Mothering AIDS: Snippets from my encounters and conversations with mothers who stood by the suffering of their sons in the complexities of AIDS in the first twenty years of my priesthood. I wrote this poem recently as the first in a series. 

 At the screen door

We meet at the dirty screen door

Her face in shadow

Her fragile hand reaches for the loose doorknob from the inside

She seems taller because I stand a step down on the front porch

Sweat dripping down my back from the summer sun and

Nerves because another mother

Invites me over the threshold to sit aside a son’s deathbed

Still desiring the best for him

The priest’s last call

The pills exhausted and the chemo done

The oil is on the thumb of the man who

Opens the door to heaven within her heart at least

From her whispering invitation I slowly

Creep the narrow bedroom path amid silent machines

Strangers in this quiet room creating more fear than remedy

I open up my prayers and my heart in the darkened space

His empty eyes look through me

I sing a lullaby of faith

My heart resting in his

Connecting his silence and his song of unspoken truth

Feeling the eternal shore wash up against his bed

I touch him

Laying my hand on his forehead bearing open sores

With oil and prayer deeper than the silence

Blessing him in his fear that I will condemn him

More distracting than the pain beating against his breath

His worry that no holy man would touch his truth

The real man

His mother and I give him away and birth him again

We amble back to the threshold

She tells me I am the only person to touch her dying son

She rests those grateful words and her face on my chest

Then pushes open the worn out screen door

Toward the warm light

Click here: LEARN MORE about World AIDS Day

“Waiting for the Light” Painting: Ronald Raab, CSC

Dear Brothers and Sisters of the Messiah,

Why does Advent begin with such a challenging call from Mark’s gospel, “Be watchful! Be Alert!” We begin with a call to cultivate a deep desire for God. This desire today will help us celebrate Christmas, the Incarnation of God. This desire for God is richly traditional and ever new.

Take a look around our world today. We face so many issues that divide us, both within the Church and in the world around us. We discover our call and challenge to watch and wake up from the very issues that need our attention. God calls us into union and communion. This means that nothing within our lives is separate from God. God wants us to raise a fuss about how we live with disunity and hardness of heart.

We take seriously the value of all human life because God surrendered to us. Jesus was born in humbleness and insecurity. Image that. The All-Knowing, All-Powerful God, the God of All the Universe, broke open the heavens to manifest love upon the earth, being born along the margins of his culture. It is our challenge then to make sure we support the dignity of all human beings no matter their culture, where they have immigrated from or what language their children speak. We support with the basics of life, food, shelter, love and mercy, because those are the very things that Jesus did not have when he came among us!

In the sacred liturgy, we start the story of Jesus all over again. This means we start with the longing of the people of Israel for the Messiah. We start with the longing of our own hearts. Let me say that there are three aspects of this longing. We place ourselves in the PAST because of the history of salvation, being united with the longing of our ancestors. We also long for the FUTURE because we await the final return of Jesus Christ in the end of time. We also long for the PRESENT moment in which God changes our hearts and the hearts of the people of the world. This last longing or waiting for God is the most difficult. It is not easy for us to take a step back from our prejudice, our political views and our obsessive nature about always being correct, and confront the reality of our humble nature and to place our lives in God alone. This is the role of our individual prayer and our communal prayer. Our lives are waiting and longing for the Mystery of God manifest in our decisions, choices and family lives.

We need to be a watchful people. That means we need to have one eye on the world’s poverty, injustice and dissatisfaction, turmoil and hopelessness and one eye open waiting for God to come to us and change our hearts and satisfy our needs. Advent begins the deep longing within our hearts for the conversion of our lives and of the Church. Advent does not begin with just sentiment and nostalgia, but a new awareness of our relationship with Jesus Christ.

Blessings in these Advent days,

Fr. Ron

“Christ the King” A drip painting by: Ronald Raab, CSC 2017

A poem as question from Christ the King: “Am I expecting too much?”

Am I expecting too much that you would step into the unknown and search for me not in palaces and places of your own building up but in the way I call you into letting go and go down into a place where you can finally see other people for who they truly are across tables sharing watery oatmeal and old coffee or even at a countertop where you speak on the phone to another human being behind glass where he is wearing orange or even a place where a stranger who has crossed a desert of chemotherapy or on the hard soil of grief from the tragedy of losing a daughter who was traveling home for the holidays in a car wreck whose mouth is so dry that words of thanks can hardly make it through his parched lips but just needs a glass of water from you because there is so much standing in the way but if you listen really closely words will flow from the bottom of the glass and connect you in ways you can’t even imagine because love is a lot like water it can flow from your heart if you just share it and others will drink it up or perhaps if you share your winter coat with a mother who survived the shelter three months after the flood and she is finally going home and has spent her money on clothing for her children but she is cold not because her children do not love and respect her after her husband ran off with someone else but because she is just too loving to use the money to put a coat over her own broad and daring shoulders or perhaps can you offer your heart into the real place of hospitality and welcome to the foster family down the block where you have heard but never have experienced that the reason the children were there in the first place was because their birth parents were heroin addicts and the mother was only fifteen because she left her parents when she was just reaching puberty because she was abused and pushed into a closet with no door knob on the inside accept that she finally reached out one day to someone who came to the door of the house and who reached out to her like a new handle of hope and so you must know that there are stories behind the stories and more stories and your hospitality can create a new story if somehow you let go of your pride and ambition and there will be sheep and goats in the end but the one thing that will last is the love I have for you all so don’t be surprised that the least among you just might teach you that I am truly the Christ and that all things will be one in me when finally I take your breath away and in the end I will be your King and master of love for all your hardness and discouragement and even your joy and hope will live and that you will finally find a home in me and that maybe all the things I promise you in the end you will finally understand that the end begins today?

“Christ the King” Painting by: Ronald Raab, CSC 2017

Dear Followers of Christ the King,

Today marks the conclusion of our liturgical year with the Solemnity of Christ the King. This feast draws us into the reality that all things will be one in Christ Jesus in the end. All things will be in Christ Jesus. All things, including violence and racism, including doubt and hopelessness, including greed and substance abuse will all be healed and loved in Christ the King.

The Solemnity of Christ the King means a great deal to me. I cling to the notion that all things will be healed, loved and forgiven in the end. As a priest and pastoral minister, I hold on to this for dear life. The gospel today helps us understand the real meaning of the Solemnity.

Matthew 25:31-46 is one of the most important salvation texts in the gospels. Our salvation rests in giving a thirsty person a drink and a naked man some clothing. Our hope for heaven means that we visited the prisoner and cared for people who are ill. Being at the right hand of the Father begins with us on earth claiming our responsibility for feeding people food and sitting with strangers with an attentive ear and a heart full of hope.

If you read only one gospel text this year, read this one at its conclusion. Our salvation begins with us doing simple things for others. Salvation is not passing an exam on the Catechism or based on attendance records from Mass. Even confession is not on this list to get into heaven.

What is on the list to enter salvation is that we care for people. What a surprise. Salvation is not only a personal experience but also a communal reality. We find our way to Jesus’ face because we showed up to the real human faces of people in need. We showed up to help others without judgment, condemnation or ridicule. We showed up to relieve people of their burdens because we are already one in Christ Jesus.

So as we end our liturgical year and begin a new year next week on the First Sunday of Advent, let’s remind ourselves that salvation rests on our conscience to befriend the least among us, not the powerful and the glitzy, but the worn out, the tired and the smelly. Salvation comes in ways in which we least expect. Tell everyone you know that all will be well in Christ Jesus, King of the Universe.

Some thoughts for the week:

Take some time and reflect on what it means for Christ to come in glory…

Reflect on what it means to see Jesus Christ in the fragile and ill…

Talk with your family about the fact that salvation comes from befriending the marginalized…

Pray for the broken, lost and uncertain as we celebrate Christ the King…

Find your way to the face of Jesus, the King of the Universe in your prayer this week…

Blessings,

Fr. Ron

On the Margins from Mater Dei Radio, Portland, OR

Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe

Sunday November 26, 2017

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Gospel MT 25:31-46

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE VIDEO

Geoffrey and Anna Keating are parishioners at Sacred Heart. Geoffrey is building our new pews, altar furnishings, outside doors and more. His story is compelling, having given up an academic career to work with his hands. Anna is a writer and her words about beauty and art inspire me. I hope you will view this five minute video and enjoy the story of Anna and Geoffrey Keating.

We remember our dead in the month of November. Twenty-five years ago today, my mentor died whom I mention in this article from 2008. 

Originally published in Ministry and Liturgy Magazine, September 2008

The autumn sun burns most deeply into my room. Every year the hours of daylight shorten but the rays of sunlight lengthen to stretch beyond the windowsill to the crystal vase on my bookshelf. My mother passed down the crystal heirloom to me when my grandmother died. The first arms of this light bring back fond memories of my grandmother and now my parents as well. I see my past more clearly every year when the crystal seduces the sun.

The soft light so often surprises me because I always forget it will appear again.  When I finally settle into the memories, the late autumn light also brings the darkness of my loneliness and the reminder of the rapid pace of my adult life.

I first noticed the friendship of the sun and the crystal when my spiritual mentor, Richard, told me he had AIDS. He sat at the piano bathed in this light and for the first time could not play Mozart because of his dizziness. This light cracked open a new experience for me of delicate conversations with a dear friend who was dismantling his relationships, discovering a soulful and physical dying. The devastating news wore in me a new place of vulnerability and fear.

A year after sitting at the silent piano, he died. I preached his funeral in autumn after sunset. The roles of friendship reversed that final year. I mentored Richard through extreme physical suffering and letting go of all life. Now every year, I begin to fear the earthly change of cold air, shorter days, and the autumn memories of all the dead. I frolic in reminiscences like a lost child in a pile of fallen leaves. I feel the cold regrets and pray through the emptiness.

This autumn ritual catches me off guard. Yet, my body senses every year the deep experiences of all the loss in my life. No one autumn contains all my fear. No one crystal vase receives every regret or memory. Grief lives within the confines of our earthly life forever. The human heart calls for this flow of ritual, the current of memories, and the natural course of sorrow to find healing.

Every parish community in autumn must prepare people to feel their grief and connect their memories to faith. There is no way around death. We must find new ways to ritualize what is most common, the fear of loss. We must sort out ways to help people ritualize within in their own families and circles of friends the grief that keeps us numb to new ways of relating to people.

Death keeps every community honest. However, we must risk telling the truth about life. Naming real issues and celebrating loss breaks through much of the narcissism and pretense that strangles most communities of faith. This truth cuts into our natural instincts of thinking that money, power, education and fear create community.

These are the days to create this awareness of loss. Gather grief counselors, professional spiritual directors and liturgists from your assembly to facilitate discussions for parish staffs and liturgy committees on death and grieving. When we build a network of openness and honesty about what is most important, a new vital energy emerges to help people deal with sudden grief, sustained depression and the release of anger.

Create forums where the Gospels ignite genuine discussions in preparation for homilies during the months ending the liturgical year. Connect elderly people in the parish and school parents by creating opportunities to pray in silence for the dead. Instruct school age children to write follow-up letters to grieving families a month after losing a loved one in death. Suggest that volunteering among the poor is a way for every family member to memorialize a loved one. Create an opportunity in the church lobby for parishioners to write down not only names of the dead but how they grieve them at home and with family members. Organize discussions and name rituals for home reminders that grief needs to be ritualized within everyday experiences.

Ritualizing our grief comes in the everyday awareness of living life. Members of our communities need the assurance that they are not alone in the simple ways grief becomes articulated and lived. We need to live an honest life to lovingly grieve other people’s death. I wait for this autumn, when I will be reminded of those I love in death, when the sun shines on the crystal again.