The Heart of the Matter

Homily for Sunday, April 25, 2010 - Good Shepherd Sunday

Every year the 4^th Sunday of the Easter season is Good Shepherd Sunday.  Obviously the focus is on Jesus as the Good Shepherd, so let’s look at the life and times of a shepherd so as to better understand how Jesus is the Good Shepherd.  

    Most of us have not spent a lot of time with sheep and goats, so what are these animals are like?  Sheep are gentle and, after their wool has been shorn, they are especially cute.  Every year they produce an abundance of wool; and just think of all that can be made from wool.  So they are valuable animals as well as cute.  Sheep are also not the brightest of animals.  They are easily led and whichever sheep is in a leadership position can actually lead them all to go off a cliff, simply because they are following the leader.  The shepherd usually uses a sheep herding dog to keep the sheep close together and going in the direction the shepherd wants them to go, towards new pastures so they can feed on the grass and be kept safe from wolves and thieves.  They need careful watching because they are valuable and because they are not smart enough to steer clear of danger.

    Sometimes the shepherd, who gets to know each and every sheep’s unique personality, will deal in a very unique way with a young lamb who tends to keep wandering away from the other sheep.  This unique way is, when the shepherd finds the lost lamb, he will pick it up, snap its foot and carry it about the shepherd’s shoulders.  He’ll carry the lamb until its foot is healed; and when he lets the lamb join the flock it will never again wander away from the shepherd because of that unique closeness it enjoyed while it was healing from the broken foot.

    Goats are not as cute.  They produce hair, not wool; but the females produce goat’s milk which is very good and very usable.  The males on the other hand have no sense of propriety and will force themselves on any female; and so they have a reputation for being a bit randy.  The shepherd is usually in charge of goats as well as sheep.

    So, when Jesus calls himself the Good shepherd, what is He telling us?  A few things:

• He cares for us; He protects us; and He holds us and no one can take us out of His hand.  
• When we suffer pain or sorrow, we need to see that this suffering can make us even closer to Him; and He will carry us through until we are fully healed.
• Like sheep we can be followers even unto great danger; and if it were not for His ongoing care, we could follow another voice than His and wander -- even off a cliff.
• The Good Shepherd knows each of us by name and He keeps speaking to us so we can grow into knowing His voice, able to distinguish other voices as not His voice, so that we follow only Him.
• He speaks to us not by the zeitgeist prevailing at any given time, but He speaks to us through the Scriptures, through the teachings of the Church, and through the inner workings of our souls, especially as they are nourished by the regular reception of the sacraments.

The most important gift the Good Shepherd gives us is eternal life.  If we lose sight of our goal, if we think that the pleasures of this life are all that we have, then we will not come to that verdant pasture where he will give us repose.  If on the other hand, we keep our goal firmly in mind, heeding His voice, we can begin to see heaven, even in this life, just as St. John the Divine did in describing heaven in today’s second reading:

I, John, had a vision of a great multitude,
which no one could count,
from every nation, race, people, and tongue.
They stood before the throne and before the Lamb,
wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands...
The one who sits on the throne will shelter them.
They will not hunger or thirst anymore,
nor will the sun or any heat strike them.
For the Lamb who is in the center of the throne
will shepherd them
and lead them to springs of life-giving water,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

Homily for Sunday, April 18, 2010

When I was in my first assignment, probably 2 years after I was ordained, an 8^th grader from our parish school came to find me at the end of the school day.  He told me with great sobs that his mother had told him that morning that it was a mistake that he had ever been born.  He asked me to walk home with him, about 3 blocks away, and help him talk with his mom.

    So, I walked home with him and met his mom.  As we talked the boy’s mother said that she had gone through several operations in order to have another child; but then she repeated that it was a mistake that he had ever been born.  She then expressed her bitterness on how difficult the 14 years of this boy’s life were on her.  At this, the boy began sobbing again; and I suggested that he go to his room so that his mom and I could talk.  And talk we did.

    I imagine all of us have some story of something happening in life that ruined our plans, or made for life becoming very difficult because of some event, or made us feel like trash.  

    After all, we like to be in control; and when events come along that destroy our sense of control, we tend to fight with those events, or allow ourselves to be tormented by the unexpected results that could not be foreseen.

    We much prefer our sense of control than being thrown into chaos.  We prefer the season of Peter’s life described by Jesus, “Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted.”

    We all like to be in control.  Isn’t that what birth control is all about?  Isn’t that what death with dignity is all about?  Isn’t that what abortion is all about?  Insisting in being in control, however, is the first line of defense against the grace of God.  You’ve heard of the saying, “If you want to make God laugh, tell Him what your plans are for the day!”

    Sooner or later some event will come along in all of our lives that will toss our sense of control way up into the air.  We will go from having things under control, to being thrown into chaos.  We tend to see such moments as a disaster.  For there’s nothing quite so unsettling as the feeling of being adrift in chaos.  But in fact, such moments are a time of grace, as well as a time of testing.

    It could be an experience of failure, or having made a huge mistake, or having to face a serious illness or the death of a loved one.  In everyone’s life, ultimately some huge interruption comes along and turns our lives upside down.

    Like when Jesus warns Peter: “But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.”  He said this signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God.  And when he had said this, he said to him, “Follow me.”

    What looks like an interruption, what feels like a ruination of our plans, is exactly the moment when we can glorify God.  This is the meaning of the cross of Christ.  It looked like a catastrophe, but it was the source of our salvation.  It looked like absolute failure, but was the grandest moment of God’s success: to be crucified yet to be able to say, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

    The arrest of the apostles in our first reading looked to be a terrible interruption in their plan to evangelize, and what’s worse is that they were flogged.  That interruption, however, became such that they rejoiced “that they had been found worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of the name.”

    How did the apostles get that way?  How could they interpret hardship as a way of giving God the glory?  How could that mother of the 8^th grade boy have seen her predicament as something to rejoice over instead of something to be bitter about?

    It’s all in our attitude, isn’t it?  For Peter, his attitude came from being built on the love of Jesus, "Do you love me?"  May the Lord bless us with such a strong love for the Lord that we will trust Him in whatever He calls us to experience in life.

Homily for Sunday, April 11, 2010

Have you ever tried to recite the Nicene Creed on your own?  Try it sometime.  I’ll bet you can’t recite it by yourself without looking at the text.  But did you ever notice that when we recite the creed at Mass we don’t miss a step.  It’s as if the community has the words even though my mind may have wandered, or the words just aren’t there for me at some random moment in praying the creed. As soon as the pause in my own recitation happens, I am immediately brought back by the communal memory.

    This is one small example of how the strength of the community strengthens me when I am forgetful or distracted or weak in faith.  A Scriptural example of this is today’s Gospel.  When Thomas was absent from the community, his faith was weak:  “I’ll never believe it!”  But when he was inside the community his faith was not only strong, but he came forth with the most clear expression of faith in Jesus that anyone has ever uttered: “my Lord and my God!”

    The times in which we live are a grave test of our faith; but this is not the first time the communion of the Body of Christ has been severely tested.

    Oh, for the halcyon days of the early church in today’s selection from the Acts of the Apostles, when esteem and huge increases in numbers were the order of the day.  However, we will hear in the weeks ahead further stories from the Acts of the Apostles and we will begin to hear about the many trials the early church experienced even in those early days.  

It got so difficult even in the first century of the church’s existence that there had to be written one more book in the New Testament: the Book of Revelation.  It was written to strengthen and encourage the early church as they faced unbelievable distress.  Our second reading from the Book of Revelation says, “I, John, your brother, who share with you the distress, the kingdom, and the endurance we have in Jesus, found myself on the island called Patmos because I proclaimed God’s word and gave testimony to Jesus.”  

What was the distress the early church faced?  Part of the distress came from the very fact that being a believer in Jesus was a capital offense in the Roman Empire.  That was the external cause of distress: profession of faith could land a person in court, and then be tossed to the lions or crucified or beheaded like Peter, Paul and Andrew were, or made to live in exile, as the Apostle John was.  But there was an inner cause of distress within the community of that early church.  It came from the betrayal by frightened members of the church who reported the names of their leaders to the authorities.  That betrayal produced a frenzy of wiping out the leadership and anyone else who dared to persist in this faith that we share to this day.

This particular crisis in the still young church was seen by many as the death knell for belief in Jesus Christ. 

So what enabled the early church to survive those terrible days?  Obviously it was the fulfillment of the Lord’s promise to be with us until the end of time; but there another observable reason: the strength of the community.  Ever since those early days the Holy Spirit’s reinforcement comes to the members of the church from each other.  If someone distanced himself from the community of the church, his faith diminished to the point of disappearing.  If on the other hand, someone remained within the community she would not only be strengthened by the example of the other believers, but would also be a source of reinforcement to others when their faith would go through a weak spell.

We live in another time of “the distress, the kingdom, and the endurance we have in Jesus.”  Yes, our faith may indeed be under attack, both from inside as well as from outside.  But we also know, and have indeed tasted of, the Kingdom of God.  We already know ahead of time that "the day" will come when every tear will be wiped away, and there will be no more suffering, no more crying out in pain.  We already know the Lord Jesus and how our strength comes from Him.  We know that we cannot live without the Eucharist or else we would cave in to the pressures of our time.

It is from our union with Jesus and with each other that we experience “the endurance we have in Jesus.”

Homily for Easter, 2010

What a Lent the Church has had!  All throughout the world the Church has undergone a purification process of dramatic proportions.  And here locally, who of us has not had our breath taken away by our own little drama?  How many of us had to take stock of what is it that we really believe?  How many of us have toyed with the idea that loving Christ is one thing, but loving His body, the Church, is sometimes too much to bear?  

This Lent all over the world we have faced the scandal of the cross.  That is, we have had to come to terms with whatever would be our stumbling block to prevent us from advancing in the grace of God.  It also means that our faith has been tested, which is exactly what is supposed to happen in Lent. 

Did I really mean that?  That Lent is supposed to be a test of our faith?  Yes, indeed.  Lent is a time of testing. Like when Moses led the Jews out into the desert for 40 years, during which time they were tested time and again.  They were tested by thirst; and God gave them water from the rock.  They were tested by hunger; and God gave them bread from heaven.  They were tested by boredom declaring how sick they were of the quail and manna, day after day; and God gave them an acute understanding of how bitterness is like a serpent that attacks and bites and kills.

The Israelites, Scripture says, yearned for “the fleshpots of Egypt,” which meant that they preferred the cruelty of slavery to the costly freedom that God was giving to them.

Being tested is when we grow from being a babe to being fully mature in Christ.

By now, after the testing of Lent, we should be at some level either more convinced of our faith in the Lord, truly risen in the Body of His Church; or, if our faith has not been nurtured for some time, we may have become even more weakened -- perhaps even to the point of abandoning ship.

Abandoning ship, however, would leave us storm tossed, stranded at sea, and in danger of drowning in the sea of worldly preoccupations.  If we should abandon ship, what kind of hope would we have for finding the promised land of the Kingdom of God?

All of our faith, all of our reason for living in hope, rests on the stark fact that we believe with an unshakable faith that Jesus did indeed rise from the dead.  He did indeed conquer evil. 

This is the day that makes the entire human history revolve around Him.  This is the day when a vague hope for immortality became not a vague hope but a sure and certain conviction that colors all of life.  This is the day when the future opened out into eternity.  This is the day when sin was defeated by goodness.  This is the day when Satan was chained so as to not have the last word on anyone’s life.  This is the day of salvation.  This is the day of new life.  This is the day of the Risen Lord who has the last word; and that word is one of peace.

So, my brothers and sisters, do you yearn for the fleshpots of Egypt, that is, do you yearn for earlier days when life seemed simpler, when it was easier to believe, when we were told what to believe and we did?  Or, are you willing to be a part of our time, with all of its challenges and with all of the struggles?  And are you willing to be a part of the Church with all of the contradictions that make faith no easy matter?  If your answer is yes, then you do indeed know the Lord Jesus; and you know that He is truly risen from the dead.  For you, faith in Jesus is not just because someone told you about Him.  Faith is because you have grown to behold Him.  It is now your own faith, not your parents’ faith.  It is a faith that has been tested and purified.  A faith that makes you ready to reassert your profession of faith with conviction and with joy.

Good Friday

I think we are all aware of the dreadful atrocities that were visited upon Jesus as He was scourged, beaten and crucified, so this Good Friday I’d rather look at Jesus’ inner life as we reflect on the meaning of Good Friday.  What was Jesus going through as all these horrible things were done to Him?  And while we do that, let us ask ourselves how we react to injustices when they are done to us.

    It’s one thing to love other people when they respond in a loving way to you.  It’s quite another thing to love others as they hate you, deride you, mock you, and beat you. Yet, Jesus never became the monster that other people had become as they directed their hatred towards Him.

    It’s one thing to maintain your ideals when you feel supported by others who respect you and want to share in those ideals.  It’s quite another thing to hold on to your ideals when no one else shares them, or no one else wants to identify with you when those ideals become an object of scorn.  Yet, Jesus never abandoned who He was.

    It’s one thing to keep your equilibrium when you are circled about by like minded supporters.  It’s quite another thing to keep your equilibrium when rejection is the order of the day.  Yet, Jesus never lost His integrity.

    It’s one thing to be merciful when those around you are respectful and desiring mercy and are fair.  But it’s quite another thing to be merciful when those around you are hateful, bitter and frozen in their revulsion to you.  Yet Jesus said, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

    It’s one thing to be forgiving when others want your forgiveness, or even when they don’t want your forgiveness but you know that forgiving is the right thing to do.  But it is an entirely different thing to forgive when the enormity of the injustice done to you is so wounding that it is impossible to let go of the hurt.  In fact, the wounds kill you.

    Yet Jesus responded to all of these worst case circumstances without losing the ideals He preached.  He did indeed turn the other check.  He did indeed take upon Himself the sins of us all, without ever reacting in a way that diminished the truth of who He was.

    How far away are we from the lessons He taught us by His words and by His conduct on the way to Calvary.  How often we get caught up in bitterness, in animosity toward those who harm us, in an unbalanced way of reacting to the unfair conditions of our lives’ tragic circumstances. 

    Jesus not only gave us the good example of how to respond to injustices.  He also gives us the power to overcome all disordered ways of living.  That’s what it means when we say that by the cross of Jesus all of our sins are taken away.  He by His cross became the source of salvation for all who obey Him.

    When we turn our lives over to Christ, when we let Him into every facet of our lives, and when we truly desire to conform our lives so that in everything we aim to obey Him in all things: this is when salvation takes hold of a person.  And in that saving grace, it is His power that enables us to do as He did – in everything.  Perhaps slowly, but in time we become so attuned to Him that we can “confidently approach the throne of grace,” that is the cross, “to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help.”  

    On this Good Friday, let us approach the cross to venerate not only what Jesus has done on the cross, but let us also confidently approach this throne of mercy to find the grace to conquer every bit of resistance we have to Him, our Saving Lord.

Final Thoughts on Lent 2010

What kind of Lent have you had?  The purpose of Lent is this: that the whole Church, all over the world, take a good hard look at how we have missed the mark as disciples of the Crucified and Risen Lord.  It’s a six week investment of our minds and bodies in a soul-searching look at what the Lord is calling us to undergo as a conversion of heart.

    A conversion of heart is the goal of Lent.  How may be cooperate better with the grace of our Savior to be more Christ-like.

    For me this Lent has meant a reinterpretation of what it means to be Christ-like.  It does not mean being nice, or politically correct, or not upsetting people, though that is what many people reduce “being Christian” to.  Jesus said, “Even the pagans are nice to those who are nice to them.  What credit is there to that?”

    Let’s look at some stark realities that may make us realize that being nice is not enough if we are to be true disciples of Christ.

    Let’s start with imagining the world as a village of 100 people. In this global village of 100 people, the richest person in the village has as much as the poorest 57 people taken together.

    50 of the 100 are hungry some or all of the time; and 30 of the 100 suffer malnutrition.

    40 do not have access to adequate sanitation.  18 are unable to read; and 15 do not have access to clean drinking water.

    But the world spends as much on fragrances as all of Africa and the Middle East spend on education.  And the world spends 4 times as much on alcohol as on international development aid.

    No, being nice is not what being a follower of Jesus is all about. 

    You see the world’s disorder originates in the disorder within every human heart.  The terrain of the human heart is a mystery with unlimited capacity for good or for evil.  And in a time when people call evil good, and good evil, there is an even greater complexity for the human heart to find its way in a very hostile world.  In other words, all the disorders in the world begin with the disorders of each human heart.  That is where destructive choices flow in such a way as to unravel relationships.

    On Ash Wednesday we heard the prophet Joel cry out: Proclaim a fast; gather the people, notify the congregation.  Before the altar… let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep and say, “Spare, O Lord, your people.  Make not your heritage a reproach.  Why should people say, ‘Where is their God?’”

    By our Lenten acts of penitence, the Lord is stirred with concern for His Body, the Church, and He takes pity on us.

    So, let us each and every one close out Lent, which end this evening, and ask the Lord to show us the disorder in our own lives so that we may acknowledge it and be part of His solution to the problem of evil.  The solution is His Passion and Death.  Though He faced continual disorder outside of Himself, He never became disordered in His responding to the evil He faced – even to accepting death, death on a cross.  This refusal to cooperate with evil, or to become disordered in the face of disorder, is a grace and is what saves us and sets for us a pattern of how we may live as disciples of Christ. 

    We know that what happens in the heart of every human being eventually makes its way into the vast scheme of how society becomes disordered.  Let us now confess together to the Lord, the Way, the Truth, and the Life, how we have allowed disorder to enter into our lives.  And the Lord will indeed take pity on His people.

    And now, let us get ready for the Triduum, the three most holy days of our liturgical calendar.

Some perspective

As I have been reading, and listening to, news reports about the Catholic Church and molestations, I have thought that there needs to be some perspective on this terrible problem.  One account of molestation is one too many; and the devastation it causes is beyond measure.  From the way the problem is presented, however, it looks as if it were solely a Catholic Church problem.  What is still being ignored is the millions of young people outside of the Church that are still being abused.  What has happened in the Catholic Church is only the tip of the iceberg of what has happened, and  continues to happen, in our wider society. I suggest that the Catholic Church, though pressured into dealing with this problem, is the only institution that is confronting this horrible curse.  Here's some more perspective:

"The sexual and physical abuse of children and young people is a global plague; its manifestations run the gamut from fondling by teachers to rape by uncles to kidnapping-and-sex-trafficking. In the United States alone, there are reportedly some 39 million victims of childhood sexual abuse. Forty to sixty percent were abused by family members, including stepfathers and live-in boyfriends of a child’s mother—thus suggesting that abused children are the principal victims of the sexual revolution, the breakdown of marriage, and the hook-up culture. Hofstra University professor Charol Shakeshaft reports that 6-10 percent of public school students have been molested in recent years—some 290,000 between 1991 and 2000. According to other recent studies, 2 percent of sex abuse offenders were Catholic priests—a phenomenon that spiked between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s but seems to have virtually disappeared (six credible cases of clerical sexual abuse in 2009 were reported in the U.S. bishops’ annual audit, in a Church of some 65,000,000 members)."

 

This set of facts is is a short quote from an article by George Weigel in the March 29, 2010 issue of First Things.  Click here to read the whole article.  

 

Homily for Palm Sunday

When I am weak, that is when I am strong.

The last shall be first and the first shall be last.

Blessed are you poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God.

Unless you lose your life, you will not find your life.

Unless the grain of wheat dies, it will produce no fruit.

Take up your cross, the Master said, if you would my disciple be.

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly.

 

I could go on and on with Scripture citations that show that God’s ways are not our own.  But nothing quite describes the paradox of Christianity than the Scriptures of Palm Sunday.  On Sunday there was the certain glory of being recognized as King, the long awaited Messiah with shouts of “Hosanna.” Then on Friday rejection and hate fill the day now called Good Friday with shouts of “Crucify Him!”

   

It is a law written on the hearts of all the baptized that what looks to be absolutely terrible is used by the Lord for something more wonderful than the human mind can conceive.  There is another law written on our hearts: that comfort, success, fame, fortune, and pleasure are not the paths to the fullness of life.  Rather, the path to the fullness of life is the way of the cross.

 

No one really matures unless there is some profound difficulty to face.  Just as a rose bush needs to be cut back for there to be new rosebuds, so must we allow ourselves to be pruned by the vine grower so that we may bear much fruit.  Just so must we interpret every difficulty in our lives as pruning by the divine vine grower.

 

Trials, failures, sins, scandals, sickness, and even death are the moments when we are most open to the transforming grace of God – because in moments of desperation, we know, like at no other time in our lives, that we need the grace of God.  When we are weak, that is when we are strong – because in our weakness we know our need for God.  In our own agonies in the garden we find the power of God at work in those who believe.  

 

When all goes well, when we abide in success and wealth, when we triumphantly achieve our goals and conquer every interference, then we are more than likely to attribute such deeds to our own doing.  In doing so we have begun to worship a false god, the god of self, or the god of success, and such idolatry brings on ruin.

 

The triumph of the cross is the true path to true life.  In following our Lord and Master, we will inevitably wind up at the foot of Calvary.  Even if it is not until the last moment of our lives, every one of us will come to know the cross.  But if we have not been schooled in the way of the cross, we can lose our way along the way.  If we reject the discipline of the disciple, if we avoid at all costs the painful truths of self-denial and compassion, then we will not come to know the love of the Lord Jesus who is the ultimate proof that the way to life is by the way of the cross.

 

During this coming Holy Week, I implore us all not to waste the grace offered during this week.  Come to the Lenten Penance Service on Monday night; let us confess our sins so that we may know in our own specific lives how the Lord forgives us.  Come to the Holy Thursday and Good Friday services and then rejoice with Holy Church throughout the world as we recall that day when hope conquered all.

"Tolerance goes both ways, Boulder!"

In today's 3/13/2010 Daily Camera (Boulder's newspaper) there was an Op Ed piece in the Opinion pages worth reading.  It is entitled "Tolerance goes both ways, Boulder!"  Check it out.  It was written by Charles Danaher.

I have a few thoughts about one frequent complaint I have received from people who don't agree with the decision we made here.  The complaint goes more or less this way: Jesus would never have turned anyone away, no matter where they came from or who they were. 

Now let us set things aright:

Actually Jesus did turn people away.  In Mark 5 Jesus healed the demoniac, and after the healing the man wanted to become a disciple.  Jesus said, No, go back to your own people and tell them all that the Lord in His mercy has done for you.  And when the rich young man wanted to follow Jesus, He told him, Go first and sell what you have and give it to the poor and then come follow me.  And in John 6, Jesus taught a very hard message so that most of those following Him turned away and would no longer walk in His company.  He did not soften His message so as to win them back.

 

So the post-modern thought that Jesus was warm and fuzzy and making no demands on anyone is just not true and avoids the very hard teachings that eventually led to His crucifixion.  Did He not say: Try to enter though the narrow gate, for wide is the way to destruction and many choose to go that way.

 

May God give us all a very powerful Lent.

 

Moses and the Burning Bush

When Moses had his encounter with God in the burning bush, he became a different man.  Before this he was a prince on the run, afraid for his life.  After this encounter with God he became a man for others with a mandate that seemed impossible to him.  Though our reading did not include the rest of Exodus 3, he tried to dodge what God was calling him to, but God wouldn’t have it.  God had chosen him to lead the Israelites out of slavery into the desert.  In the succeeding chapters of Exodus we can see that time after time the Israelites wanted to return to their slavery.  “Oh for the fleshpots of Egypt,” they said.  They preferred slavery to freedom!

    Lent is a season to be in the desert, to recognize the desire in us to return to the fleshpots of our previous lives of being slaves to sin.

    This past week we implemented a policy that has been the most difficult decision of my life.  The choice could have been made to do nothing and allow a lesbian couple to enroll their child in our Kindergarten.  But that choice would have been against Archdiocesan policy; and when a priest is ordained he promises obedience to his bishop; and I cannot violate that vow; and I will not. 

    The choice before me was either to protect the beliefs of our faith or pretend nothing was happening.  But our school, after all, is a Catholic school. And our reason for existence, both as a parish and as a Catholic school, is to make disciples of Jesus Christ.  Being disciples of Jesus Christ is very demanding. Yes, being disciples entails adherence to the many examples of Jesus’ love: love one another as I have loved you; be not the first to throw a stone; judge not lest you be judged.  Think of the Good Samaritan story and the Prodigal Son. 

But when it came to making disciples, He spoke in a different way, a more radical way: unless you take up your cross and follow me, you can have no part of me.  Repent and change your ways.  If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn and offer him the other cheek.  Unless you hate your mother and father, brothers and sisters, you cannot be my disciples.  Unless you eat My body and drink My blood, you have no life within you. And when the throngs deserted him, He turned to the 12 and said, “Do you also want to leave?”   These are only a few of the hard sayings Jesus gives to those who really want to be his disciples.

    Would that I could wave a magic wand and make all of the present struggle disappear.  I hate the fact that I had to make a choice between being loving and protecting the teachings of the church. 

    As I look around Boulder I recognize that there is ample love all around; but there is a scarcity of discipleship.  I chose to be on the side of what was lacking.  I chose to protect the faith over doing what would have looked like the loving thing to do.  Perhaps some of you parents have been in the position to make a decision for your family that looked like the opposite of love, but was the right decision anyway. 

    My brothers and sisters, our school is a Catholic school and our teaching on the sanctity of marriage is as clear as a bell.  So, the decision I made was based on my conviction that we needed to rest on the side of backing our beliefs and our values.  We need to fight for our Catholic values because here in Boulder it seems, no one else is.  In many ways, I feel quite alone, even though I know I am not alone.  But I do feel like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner—“alone, alone, all, all alone- alone on a wide, wide sea.”  If you’re upset, blame me.  Not our principal.  She’s an excellent principal.  I’m the one who made this decision.  If you want to blame, blame me, your Catholic priest for being – Catholic!

    Oh, for the fleshpots of earlier days.  How long has it been now that we have felt intimidated about our teaching on the sacrament of marriage – even to the point of feeling that we should apologize for our faith.  That kind of spirit is not one of a true disciple of Christ.  In the last analysis, I asked this question: why should we compromise our faith for someone else’s behavior? 

    I want to close by giving a short synopsis of the issues:

 

Our school is a Catholic school.  The issue is not about our not accepting “sinners.”  It is not about punishing the child for the sins of his or her parents.  It is simply that the lesbian couple is saying that their relationship is a good one that should be accepted by everyone; and the Church cannot agree to that.  People who are divorced do not say divorce is good.  There are no pro-divorce parades.  Divorce is a tragedy for everybody.  So there’s no comparing other issues to the issue of gay marriage.  Actually, by this decision we really want to protect the child and his or her parents from the necessary conflict that their relationship would bring to a clear-seeing and committed Catholic community. 

 

The policy of the Catholic school system is also to protect the teachers from being forced – in our own schools – to face huge conflicts within the classroom, so they can teach clearly, and also support the family life of the children they are teaching.  According to our Archbishop this policy is good for the lesbian parents, for their child and also for our teachers and our school.  If people are living other conflicts with our faith and publicly defend that conflict (for example someone publicly encouraging divorce) we would have the same problem.