Christmas 2013

This Christmas, as with past Christmases, we return to the scene in Bethlehem.  Again we see a young couple being turned away.  There’s no room for them.  Again we see the common, everyday scene: a stable, a feeding trough, animals, working shepherds.  We hear Mary’s cries as she gives birth and we hear a baby’s cries, now one of us.  The scene itself is unremarkable and unadorned.  It’s a simple scene.  But the gospels will tell us through the message of angels that here God’s wonderful presence is to be found: “Glory to God in the highest” – that here our peace and our good will for one another are to be found: “Peace on earth and good will.”


This Christmas I am struck in particular by the simplicity of the scene.  The star of Bethlehem shining on these events is highlighting for me their simplicity.  People – a young family – doing what needs doing – to meet the challenges life is giving them.  And we are told their unadorned, unremarkable lives are quite enough to be where God’s presence and our peace-filled presence to one another are to be found.

There’s another scene I have been reflecting on.  It takes place in Rome – at the Vatican.  The scene is Pope Francis accepting as a gift a twenty year old Renault as his pope-mobile of choice.  And I begin to hear the same heavenly music announcing that something very right and good is being done here.  There’s a sense he’s doing what should be done.  Somehow – moving from papal Mercedes to papal Renault – moving from papal palace to papal hostel – somehow it all echoes to me that God and our peace are to be found in the unremarkable and unadorned life – are to be found in the simply human.  Washing another person’s feet is not just a ceremony; it’s a way of finding God and bringing peace to one another.

Bethlehem and Rome – both point us toward choosing simplicity of life for ourselves.  They are saying simplicity of life is our vocation as Catholic Christians.  It is this simplicity that will allow us to ask basic questions.  Questions like: Where does our happiness lie?  Does it lie in friendships, family and people?  Or, does it lie in the cycle of making and spending more money?  What does our experience tell us?  Our simplicity of life will prompt us to ask: What’s an economy for?  Do economies exist just to perpetuate themselves? Or, do they exist for the purpose of human flourishing?  Are the first and last questions we ask of an economy whether it is improving people’s lives – or, what are its scorecard numbers in GDP and stock market?

For Christians simplicity of life is a real ethic for how to live – how to live in such a way that we find God present in life and we bring peace and good will to one another.  Our aspirational ideal is not to have more for ourselves but to be more for others.  After all, that’s what the simple scene in Bethlehem tells us about God, Jesus and ourselves.  The babe in the manger is Jesus – and is us.  Just as God breathes into Jesus his own love – just so does He breathe into us.  What God breathes into us is his mercy – his tender, loving mercy.

Our Christmas lesson – from Bethlehem and Rome – is that we are to live full of mercy.  Live mercy to the full!  For us all else in our lives – all else – is to become mere footnote to that life lived in tender, loving mercy for others.

Fr. Pat Earl, S.J.

The Way We Are

3^rd sunday of advent

PASTOR’S ADDRESS TO THE PARISH 

Last year my talk at all the masses was called “The Sermon on the Amount”.  It was about money – because we needed to talk about money.  Money’s a reality in life.

But this year we need to address something deeper – not what we have but who we are.  As your pastor, I think we need to talk about who we are and how we are – as a community.  The title of this talk could be “The Way We Are”.

As I review the last four and a half years I have been with you as pastor, what is striking is our growth as a parish.  This is nothing new to you – but just to review to gain some perspective.  In 2009 we were 800 households.  Now we’re about 1,600 households with a total of 3,500+ registered members.  And our growth has made us younger.  Our average age is 34; our median age is 36.  Here are some other important statistics.  We’re just over 51% married.  A significant and growing demographic group is our singles.  We’re over 35% single.  My group – the 60+ gang – we make up about 11% of the parish.  That’s about 400 people.  In context, that’s 400 compared to 760+ school age children and 1,200+ young adults.

So, on this statistical, demographic level “The Way We Are” is lots of growth and lots of change.  But I want to move beyond the statistics.  I want to move deeper – to raise the question of our parish as a community.

This is an obvious question for us to ask as Catholics.  Catholicism is a kind of “we”-thing.  To be Catholic is to be rooted in community, to be committed to common good, to a just society and to the nurture and care of God’s creation for future generations.  As Catholics we’re a “we”-people.

But that same question of community is a difficult, much un-answered question for us as Americans.  We are unsure what it means to belong: what it means to belong to one another; what it means to belong with one another.  That sense of community and the commitment it requires not only eludes us; it challenges and scares us – because we, as Americans, prize and privilege the individual and individual freedom.  As Americans we’re an “I”-people.

Just to make it clear.  I am not talking here primarily about the kind of belonging that comes from group membership – like a club membership or even citizenship with its rights and obligations.  I am talking about the belonging that comes with friendship, with marriage, with family – and with the community that’s akin to all these: the community of Church and parish.

As a parish we are recognizably Catholic in our social justice outreach into the larger community.  And we are recognizably American in our struggle to create and commit to being a community among ourselves.

In that context I want to bring up just one statistic as an example.  There are 763 registered school age children in the parish.  20% are in Catholic school.  30% are in our faith formation programs.  But how about the remaining 380 students?  As Catholics, we say they’re part of us.  They belong.  And we all belong together with one another.  But as Americans, do we let them go their own individual way, untouched by us?  Do we let them – and I mean this in the deepest sense – do we let them be “alone” – be “alone” – prepping them for a whole society of loners, not knowing how to step out of themselves?  Do we want that for them?

How do we belong to one another?  How do we belong with one another?  What kind of community are we willing to create and commit to?  These are basic and difficult questions for us as a parish.  And we can see their difficulty in our on-going inability to grow a base of committed volunteers: volunteers to serve in our faith formation programs – to serve as ministers at our liturgies – to take an active interest in parish affairs at meetings and assemblies – and volunteers to visit and care for our elderly – a growing number.

Sadly, in our Church and in this parish, we are learning from the larger culture to behave as consumers – consumers of services we expect to be given to us.  We are behaving as “getters” – not “givers”.  By definition the consumer is basically intent on having his own needs met.  The needs of others are just not a motivating force for the consumer.  Adding value to someone else’s life is not a serious question.

When we mimic our society – its culture and values – then we are giving ourselves its future.  That is a future we can see in our country today.  Just look and listen!  You will see and hear a distrust among us.  It’s a pervasive, sometimes ugly distrust that disengages us from one another and makes us dysfunctional – incapable of common purpose.  And all this – all this in the name of an exaggerated and unquestioned individualism we call “freedom”.

As your pastor and as a Jesuit, I must tell you that course – our present course as a parish – is unsustainable.  It has no future.  Though we have much for which we can be truly grateful as a parish, we have no promising future as a community.

The only thing that can give us a promising future is, quite simply, love – our love for one another.  It’s a love that’s active and tangible.  It’s a love that commits itself to actually living and working and doing for the sake of others.  It’s a love that shows up.

This is Jesus’ command to us: we are to love others as we have learned to love one another.  This parish is to be where we learn to value and practice love – where we learn why and how to give to others: to give ourselves and to give of ourselves.  This learned love is what we will bring to our city, world and planet.

The only thing that can give us a promising future is our decision to hear Jesus’ command to us.  It will be our decision to get serious about being his disciples – our decision to learn to live and love like Jesus – our decision to be more than churchgoers.

We all have big decisions to make: you and I, laity and clergy, married and single, young and old.  “The Way We Are” is a matter for our decision as a community.  We have the responsibility for “The Way We Are” as a parish community.  This decision and our responsibility will not go away.  In the coming year, together with the Parish Council, I will recall us to both.  Please get ready for that.  And let us make the needed decisions – aware of their consequences and aware of God’s Spirit within and among us.  We need to pray – pray to God and pray for one another.

I want to close with some words from Pope Francis, from his recent letter of encouragement to the whole Church titled “The Joy of the Gospel”.

Let us believe the Gospel when it tells us that the kingdom of God is already present in this world and is growing,… The kingdom is here, … it struggles to flourish anew.  Christ’s resurrection everywhere calls forth seeds of that new world; even if they are cut back, they grow again, for the resurrection is already secretly woven into the fabric of (our) history, for Jesus did not rise in vain.  May we never remain on the sidelines of this march of living hope![278]

You need to know this.  Being your pastor has been one of the greatest blessings of my life.  It’s out of a grateful love for you that I raise the questions I have today.  St. Peter’s, our parish, deserves to be a parish where disciples are made.

 

 

Fr. Pat Earl, SJ

What’s Supposed to Happen in Advent?

2^nd sunday of advent
 
Is 11, 1-10 / Ro 15, 4-9 / Mt 3, 1-12

What I have to say is really very simple.  I think it goes to the heart of what Advent is all about.  I want to recall our opening prayer.  There we prayed that no earthly concern hold us back from being companions of Jesus.  We are praying that God remove things that get in the way of our receiving Christ and becoming his companion.  We have prayed for the grace of repentance – the grace of conversion.

Repent means changing the direction in which we look for happiness.  It means honestly recognizing that our projects for our own happiness have not worked – and cannot possibly work.

So Advent brings us to a simple question:  what needs to be removed from our lives so we can have the joy of actually recognizing Christ’s presence – the joy of recognizing that Christ is our companion?  That’s what Advent is all about.  This whole season is all about helping us become aware of Christ’s presence in us.

I think we have some un-learning to do.  The Advent scenario is not that Christ will come to us at Christmas – as if he were not already with us.  Rather, it’s that during Advent we learn to come to Christ.  We learn to recognize how Christ is already present to us in deeply real ways.  Advent brings us to the Risen Christ – who is the only Christ we have.

So what is getting in our way?  What needs removing?  Each of us must answer for ourselves.  And Advent is the time to do that asking and probing.

I want to share what gets in my way.  It’s when – with some self-satisfaction that I call gratitude – I begin to think myself and call myself a disciple of Jesus.  And I do that because I believe certain things about Jesus.  After all, being a disciple means being a true believer:  believing Jesus is my savior and redeemer; believing he is truly divine and truly risen.  And I believe in the Church [that’s spelt with a capital C!] he founded: one, true, catholic and apostolic.

 
But then comes the honest question:  so what?  So what?  How does all this believing actually affect my life?  In other words, what is the depth of my believing?  If I say Jesus is my savior and redeemer, truly divine and now risen and alive, at work in the world – then would it not make sense for me to really rely on what he says about how and where I will find joy in life?  How about when he says: Joyful are the poor – the meek – the merciful.  Joyful are those who hunger and work for justice in the world – who suffer persecution for the sake of that justice.  Joyful are the ones who work to bring about peace.  Do these sayings coming from my divine, risen savior and redeemer – do they make any real, down-to-earth sense to me?  Do I even test them, try them out to see if they’re really true?  Do I actually follow Jesus enough to know the joy he speaks about?  I haven’t noticed myself suffering persecution for the sake of justice – and feeling the joy.

What gets in my way is my own phony discipleship.  And that’s an excellent Advent question to ask myself:  what is the depth of my discipleship?  It might be a question we all need to ask.  We are parishioners – but are we disciples?

Let us all repent – and feel a new joy in our lives – a new joy to the world!

 Fr. Pat Earl, SJ