Pentecost Sunday
May 19th
Today is the day the Lord has made! Oh, how I love the great feast of Pentecost. It is exciting, it is invigorating, it is challenging.
We all know that the Church has three great feasts – Christmas Day, the Nativity; Easter Sunday, the Resurrection; and Pentecost. Those first two Church celebrations get a lot of attention because the secular world likes them too but for the wrong reasons. I think that the followers of Jesus Christ ought to draw just as much joy and enthusiasm out of the Feast of Pentecost as we do at Christmas and Easter. On Pentecost Sunday a spotlight in heaven swivels around having been shined lo these many months on our Lord that spotlights slowly swivels around on us and WE are under the spotlight.
On Pentecost Sunday each one of us should recommit ourselves to our baptism, call for the grace of Confirmation and endeavor to make knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth our Lord and Savior better known on this battered and sinful world. Just before his return to his Heavenly Father, Jesus commissioned the apostles to be preachers of his word in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and even to the ends of the earth. In some limited sense, that command has been fulfilled. Communities of faith are now everywhere on the planet but in varying conditions.
As we think about the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity descending upon the apostles and the other disciples who were present on this awesome day. Since we should be conscious that the Holy Spirit has been given to us as well as to the apostles, we should look inside ourselves and ask if we ever do anything to move forward the message of Jesus. There are many ways to do this. You don’t have to go to the Congo or Guatemala as a fulltime foreign missionary. The main way to teach people about Jesus of Nazareth is to try as best as we can to live like Jesus of Nazareth, namely to be honest, sensitive, generous and when necessary courageous. To the extent that we find ourselves more and more like our Savior, we can then say like St. Paul, “I live now not I but Christ lives in me.”
It is a wonderful job. It is a wonderful opportunity. Let’s thank God that we have it.

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I mentioned the other day that papal social teaching has steadily responded to the constant changing and the increasingly complex mode of international politics and economics. Pope Paul VI and John Paul II expanded in this field in a very excellent manner but I am especially interested in the last document to which I referred the other day, namely Pacem in Terris, Peace on Earth, by John XXIII.
In the fall of 1962, the world was facing the missile crisis and there was a very real chance of nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States. Both President Kennedy and Nikita Krushchev made use of John XXIII in a back channel manner. The pope clearly grasped the seriousness of the situation and urged both leaders to choose peace. Until his intervention, there was real risk of nuclear war. Happily, war was avoided and it is then that the elderly pope began to dream of a world that would develop structures that would ensure prosperity, cooperation and, most of all, peace across this planet. Out of his thinking and prayer came the historic document Pacem in Terris.
When we read the daily papers and watch the evening news there is so much information about wars and the threat of war, about killings, about dangers, risk and conflicts that it is hard to imagine that things really are better today but they actually are. The world of 2013 is a much better organized and cooperative and a more peaceful world than was true in 1962. First of all, human rights have surged to the front and negotiations among peoples all over the world. While there is much to be done, the issue of human rights has become a major factor in international law and diplomacy. Many new transnational agencies and organizations have sprung up. A form of global governance has begun and, like Henry Kissinger and George Schultz, who formally played nuclear brinkmanship but now are both pushing for the removal of all nuclear weapons. This new and profound interest in human rights certainly began to strengthen inside the life of the Church in a way that had not been present before 1962.
While Pope John XXIII was supposedly elected as an “interim” pope, he surprised everyone and was one of the most influential popes of the last century. While I write here today about Pacem in Terris, we must not forget that he is the man who had the courage and wisdom to convene the Second Vatican Council. That Council was a great gift to the Church but its work is far from being completed. Speaking just for myself, I pray fervently that Pope Francis will convene yet another Council in the near future.

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Seventh Sunday of Easter, May 12th
Once again, a reading from Acts of the Apostles gives us an opportunity to see something of great importance that was taking place in the early Church. Last week’s excerpts had two important points – that there was theological confusion from the very beginning and the apostles claimed guidance by the Holy Spirit in order to be able to maintain the purity of the teachings of Jesus.
Today is another first – martyrdom! The text tells the story of Stephen, one of the first deacons. Stephen has been effectively preaching the new joyous message of Jesus of Nazareth and needless to say, it stirs up strong resentment among those who had rejected Jesus. At this point, the sacred author has Stephen giving a long, very long, homily about the story of salvation history. Towards the end of it he points out that their ancestors had rejected the prophets and now they have rejected Jesus and they are making a big mistake. You can well imagine that the crowd was infuriated and, cheered on by the Sanhedrin, the crowd begins to execute Stephen by stoning him. Again, the sacred author makes Stephen very similar to the death of Jesus. His enemies bring forth false witnesses to accuse him of false crimes and as he begins to die he prays, “Lord do not hold this sin against them.” And with these words he “fell asleep.”
From the very beginning the Church saw martyrdom as a mysterious blending of one’s own death into the death of Jesus Christ and making that person one with Christ for all eternity.
An interesting sideline is that there was a man standing there that seemed to have some importance and we will see that later on but it was that Saul was there as a witness and approved of what was happening. A little farther along in Acts we will see that Saul is commissioned to travel up to Antioch and arrest any other followers of “the way” that he might find in that city. On the road he will find that he experiences a very interesting horseback ride.

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Have you ever noticed that we Americans are often involved in conversations with each other and how
unhappy we are as a nation? We are coming out of deep recession and tremendous suffering was
generated but only for 10% to 15% of the population. That other 85% could easily be more helpful
to those who are suffering but little is being done about it. We all know the litany as these problems
manifest themselves in divorce, drug addiction, acute depression, political divides, anger and bitterness,
widespread discouragement flowing especially today from joblessness, etc., etc. We all know the list.

Well, there are countless complex problems that are facing us. There are an even greater number of
complex causes and the list of solutions seems to be on the weaker side. I recently read reviews of an
excellent book by Eckhart Tolle entitled, Awakening To Your Life’s Purpose. The author writes effectively
and covers many aspects of our lives but I lifted one particular quote that I think is important for many
of us. Tolle is talking about ego needs that disrupt our lives and even when they seem to be fulfilled
create disappointment and unhappiness. Listen to this one.

“The absurd overvaluation of fame is just one of the many manifestations of egoic madness
in our world. Some famous people fall into the same error and identify with the collective
fiction, the image of people and the media have created of them, and they begin to actually see
themselves as superior to ordinary mortals. As a result, they become more and more alienated
from themselves and others, more and more unhappy, more and more dependent on their
continuing popularity. Surrounded only by people who feed their inflated self-image, they
become incapable of genuine relationships.”

Regretfully, this very destructive weakness is common and flows directly from our wounded nature and
Original Sin. Hitler had a bad case of it and 50 million people lost their lives and most of Europe was
flattened. Happily, most of us who live in inordinate appreciation of our virtues, real or imagined, do
not cause damage on that scale, but an exaggerated ego is present in enormous percentage of conflicts
within the family, in the business world and even can affect the international community.

It is very seldom that you see a humble man who is not well liked and deeply appreciated.

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We are still very much in the Easter season and the joy of the Resurrection should carry us through towards the approaching Feast of Pentecost. To keep our liturgical spirits high, the Church has put some really great days in front of us. The first I would like to mention is the Feast of St. Catherine of Siena. Her feast was celebrated on April 29th but I failed to mention it. The Diocese of Austin has one of its largest parishes named in honor of St. Catherine and it is a great parish. I am sure she is very proud of it.
In her lifetime, Catherine was revered for extraordinary holiness and touched countless lives of those who came in contact with her. She was also extremely intelligent with great knowledge of Dominican theology and, of course, one of the great influences in her life was Thomas Aquinas. He just preceded her by just a few decades. One interesting thing about Catherine is that she got deeply involved in Church politics but at that time it was hard to separate ecclesiastical conflicts from political conflicts. It was a difficult period of conflict and one of the popes had moved the organizational structure of the Vatican to Avignon in southeastern France. Catherine influenced Pope Gregory XI to move the Curia back to Rome in 1376 but tragically the great schism would appear and the confusion about who was the true pope would set the Church back for many years.
If you want to read an interesting life, get a biography of St. Catherine of Siena. She was a very holy Dominican Sister, an excellent theologian, a superb writer and deeply involved in the activities of the hectic world of her period. I hope that those faithful of St. Catherine of Siena Parish are given instructions from time to time about the greatness and uniqueness of their patron saint.

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Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 5th
Joy and happiness of the Easter season continues with the Church’s liturgy and each Sunday that joy is reflected in the three scriptural excerpts that are placed before us. If we mediate on this reality, we should have a great sense of unity with our fellow Christians because these texts are being read simultaneously all over the world. Not only are we united East and West but we are dramatically united in terms of today and yesterday. I am referring to the fact that each week we get a scene from Acts of Apostles and if we look carefully at the texts, we will see something that is very important and something that is very much with us today.
And on this Sunday we view from 2,000 years later a dramatic and important new insight that the apostles gain after being guided by the Holy Spirit. Up until this point, every member of this tiny community of faith has been Jewish and comes straight out of the rich Jewish tradition. In today’s reading, we see the leaders of the Church realizing that faith in Jesus Christ is for all people. Peter is the leader in grasping this all important reality. When he meets Cornelius, a Roman military officer, he instructs him in the message of Jesus and while that was happening the Holy Spirit descended upon all those who were listening.
They were all GENTILES and Peter asks and implicitly answers an awesome question. What can stop these people who have received the Holy Spirit from being baptized with water? And so they were. A new missionary thrust of the Church was underway.

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Throughout human history, prisons have been terrible places. They have consistently been dirty, dangerous and disease ridden. Going to prison in either ancient Egypt in the 6th century BC or the early 20th century United States was always terrible and dangerous. The purpose of a prison, any prison, is to restrict the activities of a person to a very small area. The prison’s principal punishment is confinement itself but because the entity having the power to imprison a person or persons they also have consistently been indifferent about other aspects of the lives of the prisoners. Torture, inadequate food, lack of exercise and a dozen other things can be done to add to the punishment being administered.
I would like to think that in the Western world things have gradually, and I do mean gradually, improved. These improvements have almost always come from long and difficult struggles because the majority of our populations really don’t give a damn about prisons or prisoners. It is usually only when a person or a family sees ones loved one behind those bars that they grow sensitive about the overall conditions of prisoners and sometimes enough of them get together to generate an improvement. Over the last 40 years I have spent a fair amount of time in Texas jails and prisons. In general, they are clean, the food is adequate, the prisoners themselves are for the most part quite safe but they are still agonizingly difficult places in which to wake up.
Think about this for a moment. Not everybody in prison is guilty! Think also about the fact that many of our fellow citizens forget that the prime punishment given to a convict is the restriction of freedom. It is a terrible punishment and we should not add to their suffering and misery. If you family ever gathers for evening prayers or at least at meals, why not say an occasional prayer for people who are locked up, especially for innocent people who are locked up.
More later. In a day or so, I will do a blog on an organization that is wonderfully committed to making the life of prisoners a little bit easier than is currently the situation and that is called CURE (Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of Errants).
The director of this program is Mr. Charles Sullivan, Executive Director of CURE, PO Box 2310
Washington, DC 20013-2310, 202-789-2126.

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April 28th, Fifth Sunday of Easter
As I have said for several weeks now, this is really a delightful time of the liturgical year starting Sunday after Sunday with excerpts from Acts of the Apostles that enables us to jump over 2,000 years and in a sense walk with the very first followers of Jesus, the first Christians.
One of the reasons that I enjoy this experience so much is that it shows that although 2,000 years have elapsed since the scenes described in Acts, the problems in the Church continue and because the Church is so much bigger the problems tend to be larger as well. In today’s excerpt, you have the apostles complaining that logistical responsibilities get in the way of their prayer and preaching. “Is there a pastor with a soul so dead who never to himself has said this is my own, my native land….” Oops. This wonderful poem doesn’t really fit there. But pastors do complain about administrative responsibilities that block them from more effective ministry. I don’t believe that this was ever very true. The Church of yesterday often found it far easier to “run the parish” than to study scripture and prepare great homilies, but they did have an excuse because they had virtually no staff.
In my parish at All Saints in the 1930’s, the staff consisted of three priests, eight sisters and a janitor. There were no secretaries, no professional counselors, no business managers. Today, however, things are very different. Larger parishes at least are so much better staffed can we assume that the preaching has improved tremendously? Let’s hope.

Oops. I almost forgot about the deacons. Today’s first reading tells us how this level of Holy Orders came into being. It was to help the Church run more effectively. It was wonderful that the Second Vatican Council re-established the diaconate. Isn’t it interesting that there are three levels of ordination in the Church? They are bishops, priests and deacons, and the deacons have been around longer than the priests!
Onward through the fog.

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Yesterday, I referred briefly to the tragic amount of corruption that has manifested itself in the international banking world for the last two decades. Heroic measures are being made to clean it up but with so much money floating around the temptation is always there and, regretfully, all too many bankers have failed the test. I was talking about the megabanks, the entities that are handling billions and billions of dollars, but there is another side to it – the “pay day” loan shark. They also are bankers in a pathetic sort of way.
Did you run out of cash on Tuesday and have to take some food home to the wife and kids? Stop off at the office that advertises itself as PAY DAY LOANS. You need $50? Sure, here it is and sign here please. You are glad to have that $50 but you may have just agreed to a 500% loan and based on the annual percent rate. I was glad to see Mr. Joe Sanchez, the State Director for Advocacy for the American Association of Retired Persons Texas, reaching out to remind the rest of us of the tremendous amount of abuse in small short-term loans.
Sanchez points out that Texas needs reform that limits the amounts and the number of times that a person can roll over a loan. A few weeks ago, the Senate Committee on Business and Commerce passed Chairman John Carona’s SB1247 on pay day and auto title loans. Sanchez points out that this bill not only does not help to close the ending of the vicious cycle of debt that pay day and auto title loans create, but does much more to help the loan industry rather than the borrower.
Let’s hope that the American Association of Retired Persons can block this finance bill in the House and continue to struggle to help vulnerable people caught in a short-term financial crunch.
Happily, there is a better bill on the Senate side!

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