Eh?  No one gives what they ain’t got! (A loose translation—sorry, Msgr Wiskirchen)  If I don’t have wisdom, I can only teach you my ignorance; if I don’t have joy, I can only teach you despair.  If I don’t have freedom, I can only put you in a cage.  But everything that I have I can give away.  And that’s the only real reason for having it.  But I’ve got to have it first.

Many years ago (before she ventured into spiritualism: read ‘strange’), Elizabeth Kubler-Ross did groundbreaking work on death and dying.  Her observations created an almost checklist style of how we deal with life (and death) situations. 

• Denial and isolation: "This is not happening to me."

• Anger: "How dare God do this to me."
• Bargaining: "Just let me live to see …."
• Depression: "I can't bear to face going through this, putting my family through this."
• Acceptance: "I'm ready, I don't want to struggle anymore."

Kubler-Ross told us the people that scream the loudest on their deathbeds are the people who have never lived.  They’ve been observers of life, but not active participants.  They’ve taken no risks.  They stood on the sideline.  "It's only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth - and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up, we will then begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had." (Kubler-Ross)  Every time we put our hand out to someone, we run the risk of being slapped.  But we also run the risk—50/50 chance (better odds than Vegas) of somebody reaching out, shaking it and joining us on our journey through life.

Choose wisdom, choose joy, choose freedom—but for God’s sake (and our own), choose to live.

Jesus must be smiling when he asks us: “If one of you decides to build a tower, will they not first sit down and calculate the outlay to see if they have enough money to complete the project?” 

There are, God knows, a lot of unfinished buildings around!

Here a little; there a little; everywhere a little little…

…a little what?  Well, let’s try a little forgiveness.  The verb means ‘to grant free pardon and to give up all claim on account of an offense or debt'.  It’s a word that suggests letting go, a releasing; it’s an ACTION.  Certainly if we are going to live together as the frail and vulnerable human beings we are, there is continuous need for this.

Years ago when I was in high school, we used a book in religion class entitled Moral Guidance by Edwin Healy.  When I started teaching in 1977, the book was out of print, but the publisher gave me permission to reprint as much as I wanted.  The foundational principles for a moral life are still valid.

Forgiveness is not easy.  Love will be the greatest source of forgiveness.  Consider the alternative—whose stomach keeps track of the wrongs?

A few days ago I was channel surfing and came across a mini-documentary on Hurricane Katrina and the death and destruction it caused.  New Orleans is still trying to recover from this natural disaster of five years ago.  There were graphics that showed how humans had changed the terrain of the area and actually aided and abetted the impact of Mother Nature.  In an effort to control nature, we have become our own worst enemies.  Probably the same argument can be made for our spiritual lives.

Much is written and taught in contemporary society about a need for balance.  We know what unbalanced is—we are distorted and lack the right environment where we can thrive and grow.  So, what about the environment that surrounds our soul.  Is there soul space and soul time?  Is there soul silence to relax in our creator?  Environment is everything when it comes to making things grow.  Environment is what makes the conditions for growth possible.  Is our soul confined by our busy-ness; is there enough silence?

Don't wait!  Monday drags us into a hurricane of busy-ness.  Carve some time this weekend to reflect, get quiet, read, pray and practice the presence of God.

Humility is not exactly a virtue in vogue.  Our Twenty-First century values lean toward “making it” in this world—usually living up to someone’s expectations ( a constantly moving target), if not our own.  Humbling oneself seems quaint, or appropriate to another time and place.  True humility has to do with knowing who we really are.  Knowing who we are is a humbling experience, yet it is also one of the most important tasks of our human growth.

Among family, friends, colleagues, neighbors, other Christians or simply other human beings, knowing who we really are frees us to be with one another in equality.  Our sense of hospitality is challenged as well as our need to humble ourselves.  It is God who makes us worthy.  It is God who cares for us in our defenseless moments and offers us what we need.

If each of us promised ourselves that in terms of our human relationships and our togetherness, we were dedicated to the process of helping each other to grow, and that if we couldn’t do that, we were at least not going to hurt each other, what a magical thing—a different world-- that would be.  Those who are seeking always to move higher would not likely be comfortable in such a gathering where all are gathered as one.  Humility is not exactly a virtue in vogue. 

"You must come to know the poor, maybe our people here have material things, everything, but I think that if we all look into our own homes, how difficult we find it sometimes to smile at each, other, and that the smile is the beginning of love. And so let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love, and once we begin to love each other naturally we want to do something....

This is something that you and I - it is a gift of God to us to be able to share our love with others. And let it be as it was for Jesus. Let us love one another as he loved us. Let us love Him with undivided love. And the joy of loving Him and each other - let us give now... Let us keep that joy of loving Jesus in our hearts. And share that joy with all that we come in touch with. And that radiating joy is real, for we have no reason not to be happy because we have Christ with us. Christ in our hearts, Christ in the poor that we meet, Christ in the smile that we give and the smile that we receive. Let us make that one point: That no child will be unwanted, and also that we meet each other always with a smile, especially when it is difficult to smile.”

--Mother Teresa, MC
Lecture for the Nobel Peace Prize
Oslo, Norway
11 December 1979

First Day of Issue.  The 44-cent stamp, bearing a portrait of Mother Teresa painted by artist Thomas Blackshear II of Colorado Springs, Colo., will go on sale on what would have been her 100th birthday, Aug. 26

Live it, love it and let it go.

We are never going to be able to choose life until we learn to forgive.  If not, then we are choosing to carry all the hurts, innuendoes, accusations, threats, or other dead albatrosses of life on our backs and they will weigh us down.  When we learn to forgive, we can cut those weights free and learn to live in grace once again.  Most importantly, we can utilize our energies to grow.  Drop the dead albatrosses—they stink!

Eugene O’Neil, the playright, penned:  “None of us can heal the things that life has done to us.  They’re done before we can realize what’s being done, and they then make you do things all of your life until these things are constantly coming between you and what you’d like to be.  And in that way you seem to lose yourself forever.” (Long Day’s Journey Into Night)

Choose life in the present.  There will be ‘don’ts:” there are “nevers;” there are can’ts;” there are no’s.”  If we live in a negative world, it’s of our choosing.  The author/poet Nikos Kazantzakis said, “You have your brush, you have your colors, you paint paradise, then in you go.”  If you want to paint hell and live there, go ahead but then don’t blame anyone but yourself.  Don’t blame your parents, and don’t blame society and don’t blame God. 

To choose life, we have to be willing to risk.  Some things can't be explained.

It has been over 12 years since “Dr Love”, aka Dr. Leo Buscaglia, entered eternal life to live within love itself.  Perhaps you’ve never heard of Dr. Leo.  In my early years as a priest, I used quite a bit of his material in my teaching material. (I wrote to him, asked permission to use some of his material in class and he even responded with a hand-written note.)  Yes, it was trendy, but it caught attention, was certainly reflective, and caused people to re-evaluate some of their life choices.  "What are we doing stuffing facts into people and forgetting that they are human beings?"

‘"Life is a banquet," he would say, quoting from the movie "Auntie Mame," " and most poor fools are starving to death."  The study of love brought him to the study of life. "To live in love is to live in life, and to live in life is to live in love." But this should never be done passively. He wrote, "It's not enough to have lived. We should determine to live for something. May I suggest that it be creating joy for others, sharing what we have for the betterment of personkind, bringing hope to the lost and love to the lonely." Only you will be able to discover, realize, develop and actualize your uniqueness. And when you do, it's your duty to then "give it away."’

So, what’s all this about?  This evening, I looked ahead in my breviary to the Memorial of St. Bernard, Abbot & Doctor, celebrated on August 20.  The Office of Readings has a selection from one of his sermons and as I reflected on it, I remembered Dr. Leo.  Just listen to St. Bernard:

“Love is sufficient of itself.  It gives pleasure by itself and because of itself.  It is its own merit, its own reward.  Love looks for no cause outside itself, no effect beyond itself.  Its profit lies in its practice. I love because I love, I love that I may love.  Love is a great thing so long as it continually returns to its fountainhead, flows back to its source….”  This was written about 950 years before Dr. Leo but is just as relevant now as then.  About a thousand years before St. Bernard, an itinerant preacher said:  “Love one another, as I have loved you.”

The Deacon preached!  I forgot (imagine that?)!  So, just as I do most weeks, last Monday I started to work on a homily—read the readings, did some research, checked some resources and then looked for some story or lead-in to catch interest.  So what’s the point—I have all this information and am bursting to get rid of it.

This afternoon, I met 17 couples who were on the path to marriage in Christ.  Their journey led them to Chatham.  St. Joseph the Worker hosted a Pre-Cana session for the Diocese of Springfield and for  some of these people, they had no inkling of where Chatham was until today.  Hopefully, they went away with a deeper knowledge of their journey into a married future.  Tom & Megan Walters were the lead couple as they presented topics that hopefully caught these young adults (actually, youngsters) attention.  They invited me to present some thoughts on the Sacrament of Matrimony.

 While our readings this weekend today acknowledge that the experience of not knowing exactly where we are going is the story of every person, they also point out to us that we do have some control over how we will go.  Abraham was on a journey; the Hebrews were on a journey; we are on a journey—and sometimes we just don’t know where it will lead.   Futures, we know, are always somewhat obscure. 

Not knowing the exact outcome should not deter us from setting out.  Outcomes of our larger steps will never be completely clear except in faith.  To wait for demonstrated certainty could guarantee our waiting forever.  If we only go kicking and screaming into the future, we may very well miss seeing what is really before us.  For us as Christians, the quality of the hoping and the surety of the One in whom we hope is everything.