I am old enough to have seen a lot of natural disasters occur in the United States and across the world. At a time that pain and suffering are generated humans suffer terribly and it is a sad and tragic situation. The greater the tragedy the more the sadness. SANDY and its aftermath is beyond comprehension in terms of its suffering. The storm itself was horrible but the next day we began to realize that thousands and thousands of people were trapped in high rise apartments with no electricity. That meant no heat, no cooking, no elevators. It usually meant non-functioning toilet facilities, to say nothing of the danger of those darkened stairways, and immediately began several days of frightening, cold isolation in the dark.

As I write this, we do not yet know what the death toll will be from these terrible circumstances. We do know that the mayors and governors are making extraordinary efforts to deal with the issues. The immediate problem is to get food, clothing and shelter to all those who are suffering. It is a tremendous task but we are well underway. Down the road, we will not be able to avoid the consequences of the extraordinary economic destructiveness. People living in San Bernadino will pay a price for SANDY. We don’t know what that price is yet but the bill will come!

SANDY is a tragic, agonizing disaster for the North East and for the whole country. I would not be so silly as to make much mention of the fact that at least some minimum of good will come from it. However, as an optimist I would like to mention a couple of benefits. They are nothing in terms of the total damage but ought at least to be taken into consideration in our downward spiral.

The immediate efforts at recovery to SANDY’S devastation is a tremendous tribute to the organizational ability of the American economic and political system. What was done immediately and will be done in the immediate future is astonishing and we can thank God that we have the capacity to do this.

The spirit of service, love, cooperation and unity that marked the area of the country that took the hardest hit was a magnificent tribute to the American values that we all share. A corollary response is also being generated around the rest of the country and maybe even the world. Finally, because we are busy little imitators of the beavers and the ants, rebuilding is already underway. When that rebuilding is complete, the North Eastern United States will be a finer area in which to live and work than it was before SANDY came ashore on October 29th.

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The other day in thinking about the pain of loneliness, I tried to stress the positive reality that is always present for people of faith, namely, that none of us are ever really alone. God, who brought about our creation, is always with us and always knows of our pain, our potential, our hopes and places in our hearts the capacity for love, which has the potential to break through any degree of aloneness. The fact is, however, that there is a lonely chapter in virtually every life. Our children grow up and move away. One of the spouses dies and the survivor may have an intense feeling of aloneness, of isolation. This is not always the case, and those who have developed good friends and have maintained good relationships with their children survive it rather easily. However, what about those who don’t?

First of all, there are many among us who have varying degrees of autism. Most of us think of autism in its extreme form but that is not always the case. Shyness is not autism but extreme forms of shyness make it very difficult for us to reach outside ourselves to initiate conversations; to reach over, pick up that telephone and place that call that we have been wanting to make for two months now. “I really ought to drop a note to Jerry explaining why I couldn’t go to the funeral but I have used my last postage stamp. Oh well. He will understand.”

If you are a relaxed, outgoing person, you may never really feel that sense of aloneness. You should be sensitive of others who don’t have your gifts. When you see a person being left out of a conversation, make a determined effort to bring him or her into it. When you see a woman at the cash register using monosyllabic answers and looking tired and sad, use her name and thank her for her much appreciated helpfulness. When someone has experienced a death in the family, the time that they need you is not between the death and the funeral. It is a week or two weeks or a month after the funeral. Make that call, drop that note, invite them out to lunch. Reach out!

Human existence is a great gift. The humanity of each one of us is awesome but we must cultivate our humanness and one of the best ways to do it is to be concerned about the happiness of those around us.

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Forgiveness is one of the countless gifts given by God to the human condition. Life is difficult. Mistakes are made. Errors committed. Sinfulness happens. And much of this happens at home, with our families and the ones we love the most.
Forgiveness is the gift that allows us to get past these hurdles.
Let’s keep it simple, and If we want advice in this area, take it from Jesus, who said “Forgive, forgive, forgive.”

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As we go through life observing the world around us, we see many things that are destructive. Dams break and flood valleys. Cancer attacks our vital organs and calls us early to Judgment. Speeding automobiles spew out death, especially on long holiday weekends. Pain and suffering are all around us. However, none of these terrible things can generate the pain, the suffering, and the destruction as does human hatred- this frequently present aberration in the human psyche where one person or a group of persons or an entire nation develops tremendous dislike, antipathy and hatred for other persons or groups.

Psychiatrists have studied for years trying to figure this sad reality out but it is all really fairly simple. Most of us are uncomfortable with people or things that are different and when we are confronted by those differences we sometimes seem to react with fear. Since we can’t admit to ourselves that we are frightened, then sometimes we kick in another response which is hatred.

Would that all too vigilant, self-appointed night watchman have shot that young black teenager on his way home from the convenience store if he did not already have hatred in his heart for people who are different? I don’t know but God does. The American officer who shot men, women and children in that Afghan village – could it have possibly have happened at home in his own neighborhood? I doubt it. I am not judging the poor man. That is God’s chore. However, I do think that an enormous amount of damage is generated day-by-day, year in and year out, by people who allow hatred to develop in their hearts for different groups of people.

We are called to be loving people. We are called to respond to God’s love and we respond to God’s love best by manifesting it ourselves in our dealings with those around us. Let’s pray today that we can continue the never-ending task of lessening hatred within our ranks.

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We may forget it now but the years leading up to the Second Vatican Council often saw a sharp tension between the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and leading theologians across the world. A recent book, “Silence Speaks: Teilhard de Chardin, Yves Congar, John Courtney Murray, and Thomas Merton” by Father Robert Nugent describes the pain and tension in the lives of those theologians as the Vatican reacted negatively to their writings. In all four instances, they were silenced – not allowed to speak or write in their field of competence but later all will surface with honor and acclaim during the years of the Council.

The first half of the 20th century is a painful chapter in the story of theological development within the Church. Happily, we saw dramatic improvements after the Council but there are regrettable signs of a return to the heavy-handedness of that sad period are manifesting themselves again. During his ordeal, Yves Congar described the situation, “The Holy Office and practice rules the Church and makes everyone bow down to it through fear or through interventions. It is the supreme Gestapo, unyielding, whose decisions cannot be discussed.”

Currently, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is headed by an American Cardinal, William Levada. Let’s hope that he will lead the Congregation in such a way that will lend a productive atmosphere between the authority of the Church and the many theologians working sincerely to enhance the understanding of revelation.

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How burdensome is the too common human failure of “carrying a grudge”? This load can drag you down as nothing else. Grudges typically flow from a single source that many of us experience. We have been hurt. Sometimes, when we are hurt, we tend to put the worst possible movitation on the person who generated that hurt.

The fact is that most of these little social mishaps are accidental or unintentional. Even if we know a person intended the slight, it’s usually not an important thing to us except that our overly sensitive ego reacts and our pride is hurt.

So what? Mistakes are made, left and right. Some generated by us; some by friends; and yes, some by enemies. Will it matter tomorrow? CHOOSE NOT TO LET IT MATTER.

Don’t let those grudges pull you down!

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Regretfully, our society is used to dealing with scandals. We have had so many of them that we have all had an opportunity to practice how to handle them and survive them. Political scandals, banking scandals, baseball scandals, medical scandals, etc., etc., etc. Because every area of activity in human life is developed and worked out by human beings, and human beings are inevitably frail and inadequate, therefore with the passage of time, you will have scandals in every aspect of life. This is a tragedy but it is certainly an obvious truth.

But not all scandals are equally harmful. Admittedly, as I said, they appear in every area of human life. Among the most destructive are those that occur and are committed within churches and religious institutions who claim as their role the right to be moral teachers on how life ought to be lived.

We are shocked and disappointed but not depressed when an accountant will cave in to the temptation to “cook the books.” We are shocked and disappointed but not depressed when a champion athlete caves in to the temptation to enhance his physical prowess with drugs. On the other hand, I think we are shocked and bitterly disappointed when one of these scandals occurs within the context of a church. Bankers and athletes should teach by good example but usually you don’t find them preaching to us as to how we ought to live. Church leaders do that! It is for this reason that scandals inside the life of the Church are so bitterly disappointing, so destructive, so damaging.

Clichés about the fact that we are all human does not lessen the pain and disappointment. Efforts by Church leaders to clean up the situation, to rectify the immorality, to correct the injustice, are all necessary and have to be utilized quickly. But once the damage is done it takes a long, long time for it to be undone. The fact that only a small percentage of people were involved is of no comfort. Ideally, no one from this group should be so involved.

All churches have experiences of this but over the last 20 years the Roman Catholic Church has had an extraordinarily bitter, disappointing and destructive failure in this regard.

Various efforts have been made to deal with this issue and I was hopeful that we could see light at the end of the tunnel until two months ago when a monumental failure on the part of the bishops reopened the wounds. So far, no bishops have been prosecuted in this saga and only one middle-level Church bureaucrat has been indicted. Maybe that needs to change so we can really learn.

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I don’t think that anyone should challenge the use of the adjective “holy” which we place before the Thursday and Saturday of this very special week of remembrance but on Friday of this week we celebrate the agony and the death of Jesus of Nazareth. Is GOOD the right adjective that we should be using?

Good Friday does make a tremendous impact on the vast majority of the faithful in the Church. The four Gospels come together to describe the humiliation, agony, suffering, and ultimate death of our Divine Savior. The liturgy of the Church calls out to remind us that what we see in our imaginations and what we think about is that all of this has come about for each of us individually and for every one of us as members of the human family. All the events of this week coalesce to bring about, especially by the Resurrection, the redemption of the human family. Pain and suffering there well may be but certainly, in view of what flows forth from that pain and suffering this day is truly entitled to be called GOOD.

Good Friday walks us through these awesome events, which will end the human life of Jesus, but these events also move us into Holy Saturday, a day of thoughtful prayer entered into by the followers of Jesus all across this planet. We thank God for Good Friday and together we walk towards the Resurrection.

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Several days ago I expressed my opinion that the discomfort many people associate with the discussion of death is unnecessary and misguided. The reality of death crowds in on all of us and cannot be denied, must be dealt with in an optimistic Christian manner. But what about the reality of pain?

If you are talking to a friend who’s mother is conscious but in the last few days of a terminal illness, or a person who’s 18 year old daughter just lost a leg in an automobile accident, or in another case, a son is endeavoring for the fourth time to break out of a prison which is drug abuse? Cases like that do not make for pleasant conversation.

Reality must be dealt with! Refusal to face concrete agony immediately present to us is NO HELP to anyone. The suffering person in his or her family is in dire straits. Courage is required. The manifestation of courage by bystanders is a very real and measurable gift to that situation. We should not avoid placing ourselves in to those circumstances with calm faith and an understanding that ultimately, suffering produces spiritual benefits even in the face of physical tragedy.

One of the most wonderful things that Jesus said to His apostles was “Do not be afraid”.  Let’s stand together, in pain as well as in celebration. Let’s support each other in tears and difficulty, as well as in laughter and joy. We are together.

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We all know the lines.  I am going to take off 20 pounds, I am going to save 5% of my paycheck, I am going to stop complaining about my brother-in-law, etc., etc., etc.  We talk about them and them we laugh and we go on about our business without any real serious effort or change. This is a misuse of a valuable tool for self-improvement.

As a new year begins and we look into the future, asking ourselves will 2011 be just another rerun of 2010 and 2009, it doesn’t have to be.  We all know people who solve their problems, who overcome their weaknesses and who make life easier for those around them.  We should all attempt to move ourselves in that direction.  I think that one of the richest areas for self-improvement is to do some soul searching and honestly identify the weaknesses that we have that make life difficult for the people around us.  Those changes are not easy but they can be measured with some degree of accuracy.

The Church has a long and rich tradition of the importance of self-examination and of spiritual goal setting.  Let’s take advantage of this important symbolic date and look into the future with honesty and resolve.

Onward through the fog.

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