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Passing Judgment

8/25/2015

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Sometimes on Sunday mornings when I am driving on Waverley Street from St. Luke to St. Joseph for the 7:30 Mass (yes, I know, I should probably be riding a bike!), I stop for a red light at the Beech Street intersection by the town field. I’m usually in a hurry (seems like I’m always in a hurry). As the seconds tick by and I observe the early morning deserted intersection, I sometimes wonder why I can’t just make my own choice to proceed cautiously through the intersection. I feel sure I could do this safely. It seems arbitrary and unnecessary at this hour of the morning to be guided by an unintelligent machine on a timer rather than to use my own intelligence and judgment to save time. I think about whether I would endanger myself or someone else. I imagine I probably wouldn’t get caught if I didn’t obey the law.

In the readings for this coming Sunday, we are invited to consider the purpose and meaning of rules and laws. In the older testament reading from Deuteronomy, Moses insists on the value of observing God’s law. The law given by God to Moses represented the relationship between God and his people. Instruction to observe the law included the motivating promise: “thus will you give evidence of your wisdom and intelligence to the nations.” But like any law, the law of Moses requires interpretation. When, how, for whom, and in what circumstances are laws to be applied? Over the centuries, oral tradition developed and was handed down by generations of leading rabbis, making following the law a complicated business.

Rules and laws exist for the good of people and society. Traffic laws exist to provide order and eliminate accidents. They are intended to protect us. This week’s gospel is about laws, too. In order to be right with God, a certain group, called Pharisees, are caught up in the interpretation. Pharisees at the time of Jesus were members of a renewal movement that sought to restore God’s favor to Israel by advocating strict observance of the law and total separation from all gentile defilement. They are scandalized by the way Jesus’s disciples ate their meals, and by the way Jesus had just fed the hungry masses without regard to ritual purity.

Jesus is not against laws, but he is concerned that people might use authority or enforcement of laws to exclude people who really are interested or who are beginning to recognize their need for a relationship with God. He is concerned that the very people who do this don't seem to live their lives in a way that is consistent with his own experience of relationship, based on love. A relationship of spirit and life. A relationship he experiences in his own prayer. A relationship that didn't begin with laws but with worship.

This is why we are so concerned about making worship experiences more meaningful and welcoming at New Roads. Rather than see attending Mass as the fulfillment of the law, we hope to invite people to discover or deepen their awareness of what it’s like to live our lives based on a relationship with God. So it’s a good week to ask ourselves what traditions we blindly cling to, and where we are or could be more discerning. This is not about giving yourself permission to go through a red light when you are in a hurry and it seems no one else is around or that you won’t get caught. It’s about asking ourselves why we attend Mass in the first place, or maybe asking ourselves whether we seek to stretch our relationship with God by opening up to new prayer experiences and opportunities to serve. We need to look at how we live our lives, asking if we have hearts truly turned toward God in a healthy and life-giving relationship.

~Fr. Thom

Take your next step: What rules or traditions are an automatic part of your life? Do they have real meaning for you? How is God inviting you to seek new ways to show the wisdom, intelligence, and love that come from your relationship with him?

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Moving Mountains

8/17/2015

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Last week Holly, Sr. Kathleen, Fr. Thom and I had the opportunity to attend a conference called the Global Leadership Summit (GLS). GLS is hosted by Willow Creek Community Church in suburban Chicago and broadcast live to almost 400 host sites, including Grace Chapel in Lexington, where we participated. It’s a big conference--about 260,000 leaders worldwide--and we heard and saw and experienced a lot of big ideas in those two days. The conference was about leadership, not about big churches per se, or even about church growth, but it was hosted by a really big church, several of the speakers were pastors of really big churches, and many of the host sites were really big churches. And one of the major takeaways of the conference for me personally was an understanding of how little churches become big churches through faithfulness to God’s vision.

I think I had the impression that many really big churches got to be that way because their leaders set out to build big churches, perhaps out of ego or ambition, and they had the skills to make that happen. As a result of the Summit, I came to understand that many of the largest churches in the country started out not with a desire to be big, but with a deep commitment to be faithful to God’s will. These churches grew and grew, and continue to grow, because God has blessed their efforts to be faithful to his vision for their community. When a church is faithful to God’s vision, God blesses that church with abundant growth. God wants his Church to grow, because God wants his love to reach to the ends of the earth.

In the first reading for this Sunday, Joshua tells the Israelites that they have to choose which gods they were going to serve: “Decide today: whom will you serve?” It’s easy for us to dismiss this question as irrelevant to us, to think that strange gods are a thing of the distant past. But it’s a question we have to take seriously as a community. We have to ask ourselves if we as a community are faithfully serving the real, living, true God, the God who expects us to be fruitful, and who promises that if we have faith the size of a mustard seed, we will move mountains in the service of his Church (Mt. 17:20).

In their book describing their experience of trying to apply some of the wisdom of intentionally growing churches to a Catholic parish in Maryland (Rebuilt: Awakening the Faithful, Reaching the Lost, and Making Church Matter), Fr. Michael White and Tom Corcoran put it this way: “God’s will is growth; God expects us to be fruitful. So, if we’re not fruitful, don’t we have to stop and consider if we’re really being faithful? If we’re not being fruitful, don’t we need to evaluate what we’re doing wrong, learn more about where God wants us to go, and if necessary, do things differently?”

The local church is nothing less than the local incarnation of God’s plan for the salvation of all the world. As a community, we have to get clear about all the ways in which we are not yet all that God dreams for us to be. We have to be willing to see and address the differences between the community we are now and the community God wants us to be. This process will require a great deal of humility, openness, and courage from all of us. It’s not easy for us to acknowledge our shortcomings, or to face up to the ways that we need to change. But it is such an important part of being a real community of faith, of faithfully serving the one true God.

We need everyone in our community to be part of this process, and there are so many ways to join the conversation. Two great opportunities are coming up soon: on Monday, September 14th, at 7 pm, the New Roads Books Group will gather at St. Joseph to discuss Rebuilt. Get yourself a copy of the book--it’s a fascinating read--and come join in the discussion. On Thursday, October 1st, we will have an event to launch our collaborative pastoral plan, a three-year plan to grow in faithfulness to God’s will for us. Stay tuned for details. And in the meanwhile, let's all join together in praying each day that God will help us to see and be faithful to his vision for our community.  

~Rachel

Take your next step: Spend a few minutes reflecting on what God desires for our community. What is one way that we as a community might need to grow and change in order to be faithful to God’s dream for us? 
Share your response by adding a comment here on our blog.

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Missed Opportunities

8/12/2015

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Soon after my ordination, when I was assigned to Sacred Heart Parish in Middleborough, a parishioner who was a pilot and a flight instructor invited me for a ride in his airplane. When he saw how enthusiastic I was, he asked if I would be interested in learning how to fly, and I accepted his invitation. I bought the books and began to learn about the physics of flight and the mechanics of the airplane. At the same time, I was learning about being a priest and had lots to do in a very active parish. Neither flying nor priesting came easy, but I knew for sure what my first priority was. I used to joke that I became a priest for two reasons: job security and no math. I should have added no physics! In case you didn’t know, flying an airplane is not easy, and with my limited time and attention span, I found it very difficult to understand how it all worked. I decided to stick to priest and abandon pilot.

I have thought of this many times as one of the missed opportunities in my life—although I will say that some of the people who love me are just as happy that I didn’t try to keep flying little planes! It causes me to reflect on other missed opportunities along the way, and to wonder how my life might have been enriched if I had been more open to figuring things out that I didn’t understand.

One of my problems is that I don’t like to be in a position where I am not in control. Like many people, I don’t want to leave my comfort zone. I don’t want to feel foolish while I try to learn about something. I somehow imagine that I am already supposed to know about things that others have mastered. It really comes down to my ego. It is so difficult to be humble enough to accept myself where I am at any point along the road, which opens the door to the possibility of learning and growing.

I wonder how many of us shy away from things that we don’t understand, or actively push them out of our lives, because it makes us feel uncomfortable to give up a sense of familiarity, mastery, comfort, security, or being in control. Just ask someone who is not a gadget freak to get a new cell phone! How easily we can be daunted by something new.

The people reacting to Jesus in John's gospel this week seem to be suffering from this affliction. Jesus offers something so new and beyond human understanding that many people simply refuse to engage, preferring to deny the possibility that there could be anything real or true about what he is offering, which is nothing short of a share in his very life, the life of God.

OK, so maybe flying is a little dangerous and not worth the risk. Getting a new cell phone? I’ll leave that one up to you. But allowing Christ to live in you by being humble enough to say that you don’t know what it means, but you’ll try it and figure it out? Don’t let that be a missed opportunity.

~Fr. Thom

Take your next step: Think about an opportunity that you allowed to pass by in your life. Ask God for the humility and courage to be open to something new that you don’t yet understand.

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Our Heart's Desire

8/4/2015

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I recently went on my annual week-long retreat, a time of quiet, reflection, and prayer. The type of retreat was a directed retreat, in which the only time you talk is during a 30-minute period, one on one with a spiritual director. With the director, you share what happens during your prayer and are offered some guidance on what scripture to pray with during the next twenty-four-hour period. I look forward to retreat with great eagerness and with a thirst for solitude, much like a runner thirsts for water upon completing a marathon.

The funny thing is that despite the anticipation, it often happens that the first days are a struggle to reach interior quiet. The not-talking is the easy part. Quieting my mind and spirit is something else entirely. So often, I get edgy and restless and annoyed that I can’t get into a prayerful frame of reference in my time frame. That’s the thing. There are two kinds of time: chronos, or the time that exists as subdivisions of our days, weeks, months, and years and Kairos, God’s time, the time in which the Spirit of God is at work in us. More often than not, the two times do not match up. On retreat, I see the days passing swiftly and effectively say to God: “You better hurry up. Time is ticking away and if something is going to happen, it better happen soon or retreat will be over.” In my best moments, I know that God can do what God wants to accomplish in me whenever God wants. “It,” whatever “it” is, can happen in an instant. So what’s there to worry about? In truth, nothing. But to get to that place of trusting the power of God working in me, doing more than I could ever ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20), I not only have to be externally quiet, I have to empty myself of my agenda, be still, and wait upon God. In God’s time, when I am open to God’s desires for me, God touches my heart. It may be that involves my letting go of pressuring myself, acting or thinking as if I am the one that does the transforming, or recognizing that God simply wants me to be in his presence, or to recognize that I am loved, as imperfect as I am.

The desires that we have for a deeper, richer, more trusting relationship with God are rooted in God’s desires for us. After all, Jesus tells us in John’s Gospel: “I have come that you may have life and have it to the full.” The fullness of which Jesus speaks, that I seek in my retreat and that many of us desire (though we may not name it) has nothing to do with money, possessions, status, power, or prestige. Rather, it is all about a deepening, intimate relationship with God, one that is nurtured by spending time alone with God, in quiet, in prayer, in love with the one who can make it happen.

~Sr. Kathleen

Take your next step: Each day, find a quiet corner in your home or your garden. Spend ten minutes with God alone and ask God to draw you into a deeper relationship with him.
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