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January 30, 2006
Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time - Contemplation vs. Action: Striking a Balance
I imagine most of us have probably developed certain habits and ways of getting through daily life each day that may seem odd to others. Perhaps we feel that it's a matter of survival, that we be able to find some peace of mind amidst the stress and frustration that all of us face from day to day.
In my own case, for instance, I decided long ago that if I ever wanted to maintain my good health, I would need to rise early in the day, make my way to the Alaska Club for my daily exercise. If I were to wait until the middle of the day, I'm sure I would probably fail to get any exercise at all. So, I rise at 2:30 a.m., am on the treadmill by 2:45, back home by 4:00 a.m. Then I "crash" for a couple hours before heading off to work. Sounds crazy, but it works.
I've always been convinced that much of life is about discipline and good order. If you have a goal set for yourself, you will achieve it by setting your mind and will to it, making no exceptions. There is also a certain satisfaction in knowing that you can, indeed, accomplish something if you know clearly what your values are, what your heart is set upon, what holds first place in your life. Without that, the tendency is to drift from one thing to another and accomplish little in the end.
Another great quandary that many people face each day is the choice between contemplation and action, between thinking and doing, or between dreaming and achieving. It seems to me that most of us probably are dreamers by nature; our imaginations bring us a deep sense of pleasure and satisfaction. But at the same time, we also know that we don't have the option of simply sitting around, thinking all day. Most people, with a few exceptions, are compelled to make a living, to be active at some human endeavor; otherwise we starve.
But, of course, we need the philosophers and poets too, the thinkers, the people who have the leisure to sit and reflect on life and then offer us the fruits of their thought. We have had philosophers with us for centuries and no one has ever objected to their place in the world. Philosophers help us get a sense of what is ultimately important in life. They ask the questions about the meaning of virtue, love, truth, goodness, beauty, et cetera. Abstract as those may sound, they are important because they have to do with the essence of all things, with what makes life worth living.
Add to all that one other important question to think about, the question of God, religion, things of the spirit, transcendent matters. Those are important too. Many people would say that these are of the essence of life. Interestingly, most people seem to reflect on God or the Spirit quite naturally. We realize that there is something beyond and above us, a being that gives meaning and purpose to life itself. Some of the great religious thinkers and religious founders of history, of course, have thought about that in different ways: Jesus, Mohammed, Moses, Lao-Tzu and others, but they all have to do with the question of the ultimate meaning of life which lies in God.
Because I am a Catholic, I like to think about Jesus and the way he thought about life. There are a few short lines in Mark's gospel which we hear today that bring to mind an insight about how Jesus lived and what was important to him.
Rising very early before dawn he went off to a deserted place where he prayed. Simon and those who were with him pursued him and on finding him said, "Everyone is looking for you." He told them, "let us go to the nearby villages that I may preach there also. For this purpose I have come." So, he went to their synagogues, preaching and driving out demons throughout the whole of Galilee.
All this tells me something about Jesus that is very interesting: First of all, it seems obvious that Jesus was a very balanced person: Two things in life were very important to him: First of all, he had a deep need to get away occasionally, to be off by himself and to pray. That seemed to be the engine that kept him going. It was in quiet, deserted places that he did his contemplation, where he renewed himself by being in touch with the One he called Father. That habit of Jesus is mentioned at least a half dozen times in all the gospels. So, people, the gospel writers, must have noticed it and thought it important. Otherwise they wouldn't have mentioned it.
Secondly, what also seems to have been important in Jesus life was work. It was a unique kind of work, of course, preaching, healing, et cetera, but it was work. In fact, we know that Jesus got tired and needed to get off and rest by himself. Seemingly, Jesus did not pray 2417. When he felt renewed, he immediately called his friends together and said, "let's get back to work." So, doing something practical seemed important to Jesus. He tried to make the world a better place by bringing wisdom and healing, hope and encouragement wherever he went.
But the point is, I think he could not have done any of this very well without taking time off in "deserted places" where he could think and reflect in silence. That's where he got his energy to go back to work.
So, I have always thought that Jesus was a very orderly, disciplined, balanced person. He knew instinctively where the important things in his life were at. He knew that prayer was not just a kind of private luxury and that work was not simply a dreary necessity to make a living. Both had their place in life, one gave meaning and support to the other. So, I'm convinced that Jesus was ultimately a happy person; he knew what his priorities were and lived by them.
I suppose all of us, whether we realize it or not, are seeking our hearts desire, seeking the meaning of life, some balance like Jesus did. It seems like the normal thing for any human being to do: Pray and work, work and pray. I don't think one would necessarily have to get up before dawn, as Jesus did, to accomplish all that, but we all have peculiar little habits that work for us. If others laugh, well, too bad. It's our life, after all. We deserve to be happy, don't we?
The scriptures: Job 7: 1-4, 6-7, 1 Corinthians 9: 16-19, 22-23, Mark 1: 29-39
Posted by Julie Galligan at 11:48 AM.
January 23, 2006
Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time - By Whose Authority?
Astonishing as it may sound, 1 must confess that I am somewhat surprised, even today, that I ever grew up Catholic, much less that I ever felt a call to the religious life and the priesthood. I say this because my experience of God was fairly healthy but my experience of religion and church as a youngster was overwhelmingly negative.
It all started in summer catechism class taught by our pastor. I have a hunch today that he probably was never meant to be a teacher and perhaps that he would rather have been doing something other than teaching a bunch of kids their catechism.
At any rate his pedagogical method could be described as authoritarian. On many occasion I remember feeling threatened with eternal punishment if I could not repeat the long definitions of Catholic doctrines from the Cardinal Gasparri Catechism. The fact that my father threatened me with corporal punishment if I refused to attend "class", did not make my life any simpler nor the Catholic faith any more attractive. Alas!
It occurs to me today that authority or power sometimes seems to be the only resource that teachers or other leaders feel they have in order to get their charges to follow them. As for myself, I always had the natural instinct that God must obviously be a "kindly person" and that religion should be fun or at least interesting. For that reason, some of my best experiences of God occurred for me when I went for long walks out in the hills by myself or when I went riding on my saddle horse, pretending I was some famous cowboy. But my experiences of Catholicism and the Catholic Church were fearsome.
Thinking back on all that, it seems to me that power and authority are not the best resources to draw on if one is responsible for the faith of others, especially kids. Ideally, a good teacher leads by attracting, not by forcing or threatening.
But now as I reflect on my unhappy religious childhood, I find that even today we use the word authority a lot both in the church and in the secular world as well. We say that the church, for instance, teaches with authority, with the authority of God, when it speaks of faith and morals. Presidents have power given to them by the people. The church also uses a hierarchical model wherein power comes down from the top, from the pope to the least of the folks in the pews. Pastors often use their power to "get things done" the way they like, not worrying about how their parishioners think of them.
We use the term power to refer to anyone who is in charge: government, teachers, police, community leaders, indeed anyone who is chosen or designated to lead others, to keep good order, to bring peace to the community.
When one thinks about it, all of us have some power, some more and some less, but we have it. Even little kids know how to exert power when they are out in the school playground. Some also become bullies, as we all know. If truth be told we all like power; it feels so good when we can tell others what to do. If left unchecked, of course, that can become a real problem.
So, where does power come from? We don't individually invent it, obviously. Truly, all power, from the least to the highest, comes from God whether we wish to admit that or not. Presidents, kings and even popes have their power because God's will for the human community is protection, good order and peace. Titles and names, crowns, even tiaras and mitres mean nothing. It is of the character of leadership that we must be willing and have the ability to lead others, but humbly, without haughtiness or arrogance.
We have a beautiful example of that in the gospel for this Sunday: It tells us that people who heard Jesus speak and observed him doing miracles were astonished at his power and authority. It was something unique to himself and not like that of the scribes and Pharisees.
So, what was the difference between Jesus' power and the power of the scribes and Pharisees? 1 think it was basically this: The scribes ruled by the power of the book, the law and Jesus ruled simply from the depth of his character. People were willing to follow him because he seemed utterly sincere, without guile. There was in him and his leadership something akin to God, something sacred. Jesus did not need books to reinforce his words. He spoke with the power and authority of God and people knew it instinctively. It's as though Jesus had experienced God first hand and, hence, people were willing to listen and to follow. It's what we today would call the "trust factor." Jesus just projected a natural sense that he could be trusted, and people did trust him implicitly
The place where this trust seems most evident is when Jesus preached or proclaimed God's good news. You know the stories: People "hung around" all day and well into the evening to hear his words, and then, of course, after all the words were heard, they got fed with bread and fish. Not a bad day!
The model of Jesus' preaching power, it seems to me, should be a model for everyone who preaches, teaches or leads (we all do it in some way). It's the difference between preaching down and preaching to. Jesus did not use his divine power to talk down to people. All he did was to identify with people, to speak in their own words, out of their own experiences, and for that reason people implicitly trusted him.
To my mind, that should be the model for everyone to follow, everyone who claims a role of leadership. We should not insist on special privilege or depend upon personal authority. If we do that, people will lose trust in us immediately and the message or lesson will fall on deaf ears. Like Jesus, we ought to be able to preach, teach and lead from our deepest sense that we are doing God's work and not our own. We ought to have a sense that God trusts us with the lives of others and that is a tremendous responsibility. There is none greater.
Well, with all that, I'm glad I managed to get through life still remaining Catholic, still loving the Church. Fortunately, I had some really wonderful teachers and leaders along the way whom I learned to trust simply because they seemed to teach and lead like Jesus did. I'm sincerely happy that it all worked out for the good.
The scriptures: Deuteronomy 18: 15-20, 1 Corinthians 7: 32-35, Mark 1: 21-28
Posted by Julie Galligan at 10:26 AM.
January 17, 2006
Third Sunday in Ordinary Time - It's Never Quite the Right Time
It sometimes surprises me, although I don't know why it should, but it does surprise me when I realize how much I am enclosed and limited to my own little world. Yes, I know that I and, indeed, we all have things to do every day, people to see, appointments to keep, calls to return, places to be, attention to pay, et cetera. But when the phone rings and I am busy or when someone suddenly appears at my office door without an appointment, I'm momentarily a bit annoyed. I lose my train of thought at the computer, or I have something I just need to get done right now. So, here comes someone who is breaking into that neat little schedule I have and wants me to pay attention. Fortunately, the feeling of irritation wears off in a hurry.
Well, this is all not as serious as it sounds, but it is still true that we all live in our little cells, our small compartments, our restricted "do not disturb" areas that are important to our lives. We have our own plans, our own schedules to keep, important things to think about and accomplish. Any wonder then that when this whole agenda, this whole roster of important things goes awry, we should suddenly find ourselves a bit distressed?
Perhaps the obvious question is this: Why are these so-called little interruptions in our life any less important than what we happen to be doing at the moment? They are important to someone, for sure. It's just that they don't fit our time-frame or other priorities we may have.
It occurs to me to say then that everything that happens in our life has its place and its importance whether we happen to recognize it at the moment or not. When you think about it, life itself is a continuing series of interruptions, deviations and detours. The point being that we need to be constantly attentive and sensitive to whatever may be waiting around the corner for us.
Not surprisingly, there are some interesting events described in our scriptures today which talk about people who found that they were being interrupted in what they were doing and needed to change course in mid-stream or mid-air.
The first is the familiar story of the prophet Jonah. We don't know exactly what he was doing before the Lord God told him to get ready and that He had better plans for him. He was a Jew, of course, and he was happy in his fife and religion. But all of a
sudden he hears God invite him to set off for Nineveh, Nineveh, that great city, the sin city of the Middle East. He could care less about those people. They weren't related to him, they worshiped other gods. So, why should he set off across the desert to tell these "pagans" to do fasting for their transgressions. The part of the story that is not told here is that Jonah did not want any part of this trip west, so he deliberately travels east until he gets thrown overboard by some sailors and is swallowed up by a sea monster. That turns out to be the moment he decides that God is serious about Nineveh and so he finally decides that he should do his penitential journey through the city. As you just heard in the reading, Jonah did preach repentance and everyone got on their knees, threw on sack cloth and ashes and the city was saved from disaster.
So, there you are: A man who had other plans in his life suddenly found out that his attention was needed somewhere else. Because he was willing to be disturbed, some good things happened in Nineveh.
St. Paul also had some interesting suggestions for his parishioners in Corinth. Corinth, like Nineveh was a wild place, a sea port town with lots of crazy people hanging around. Paul tells his folks: "Folks, time is running out, the world in its present shape is changing, get ready to change with it or you get left behind."
Well, obviously, we don't know today how many changed course, probably not a lot, but we know that one of the earliest Christian churches in Christendom came out of Corinth. So, something good happened because people were willing to let their lives be disturbed.
The gospel describes one of those classic situations where four people, blue-collar working "stiffs" were already deep into their careers and plans for their lives, four fishermen. We don't know again how productive their careers were, but it must have been enough to make a living for their families at least. But now, here comes this itinerant preacher whom they had never met before, saying to them: "The kingdom of God is at hand: Come after me, I will make you fishers of men." And, crazy as it may sound; they all packed up their stuff and took off behind Jesus. Talk about your life being disturbed! Talk about being asked to change your whole career in a matter of a couple minutes! But, once again, today with history behind us, we know what happened because they did pack up and leave their boats and careers. Here we are today, all Christians gathered for worship because four guys decided to take a chance, follow Jesus and do something completely different. Sounds crazy, but that's the way life sometimes works out.
Now, I suspect it's doubtful whether any of us will ever be asked to give up our normal careers and go running off to those "sin cities" of Chicago, Los Angeles or New York or wherever to preach repentance. It just won't happen. I don't think any of us actually will be asked to leave whatever it is we are doing and choose a whole different way of life like Peter, Andrew, James and John were invited to do. There is just too much involved: Family, job, home, career, future and all the rest.
There are a few people, of course who have done that in our time: Thomas Merton who was a worldly young man with a great future as a writer decided to run off to the Trappists. Today he is known as a man who taught us all something about contemplative prayer and silence. Dorothy Day was a promising newspaper writer and decided one day to give it all up and devote the rest of her life to the poor by establishing Houses of Hospitality, soup kitchens around the country. She is still known, twenty five years after her death, as the advocate for the down and out. They wanted to make her a saint even before she died. She said: "Don't bother."
Well, with all that, are we asked to do anything that will change our lives radically? Probably not. But there is nothing to say that we should not be ready at any moment to change our attitudes toward what we are doing. We don't need to make them the "be all and end all" of our existence. St. Paul had it right when he told his people: "Time is running out folks. Be ready to change course at any moment." Perhaps the old phrase I used to hear a long time ago still holds some meaning: "Hang loose!" Don't get trapped into one stagnant way of thinking and doing. There are still lots of opportunities for living in ways you might never have imagined. And remember, don't panic: you won't have to leave town, or your career to do it. In fact, you won't even need to go out and preach repentance. That should be good news, right?
The scriptures: Jonah: 3:1-5, 1 Corinthians 7: 29-31, Mark 1: 14-20
Posted by Julie Galligan at 11:09 AM.
January 09, 2006
Second Sunday in Ordinary Time - Dreams and Visions
I have never had much time nor an inclination to delve into the meaning of dreams. Other items are higher on my daily or nightly agenda! Nonetheless, I think most of us are often fascinated by dreams. Whether there is any meaning in them or not is questionable unless you happen to be a psychologist like Carl Gustave Jung who spent a lot of time examining the meaning of dreams.
But for an amateur like myself, l think there is always the sense that our mind, our emotions or feelings continue to grapple with life's meaning even after we have gone to sleep. It makes no difference whether our mind is in control of things or not. At night we seem to go into "autopilot."
It is always an interesting adventure, of course, to try to figure out what's happening "up there" in the mind's night hours. Perhaps there really is some meaning in those odd sequences that happen in our brain waves between 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. It is not unlikely then that we might even place some meaning on dreams whether they are objectively true or not.
People who have a religious intuition or inclination often interpret dreams as messages from God. I'm personally rather skeptical about that but perhaps that's because I've never had any dreams that seemed to have any spiritual meaning or significance to them.
Nonetheless there is a consistent thread in the scriptures that interprets dreams as messages from God. Sometimes these "messages" are warnings or threats, but at other times they are predictions of what the future holds for some individual.
Interestingly too, the scripture writers also interpret messages from God as coming through the work or word of an angel. You remember the message that Mary received through the angel Gabriel that she would become the mother of the Redeemer. What I think that means is that whenever we can't understand something that is happening to us, we call it a mystery and we naturally attribute it to God. Perhaps that's what happened in Mary's case. She knew something of mystery was happening to her and she naturally attributed it to God. I guess, We'd all do the same. We have another such instance in the first reading for this Second Sunday in Ordinary Time. It is the story of the call or the vocation of Samuel to be a prophet or seer for the Israelite people. The call comes, as always, in the middle of the night, the time when God speaks in special ways, that is in dreams. It took three attempts to finally get Samuel's attention but in the end he became convinced that he was truly called to something special.
There is a somewhat similar vocation story in the Gospel: Jesus saw something special in the character of a man named Cephas. He said to Cephas: "Henceforth you will be called Peter, Rock," Jesus said. You will be the foundation stone for my other disciples and later for the entire church. So, there we have Peter's call, not at night this time, but surely a moment that was important in Peter's life.
So, it is interesting that the scriptures usually seem to speak about the vocations of important people as happening in mysterious ways, dreams, or with a special name changes, et cetera.
Is there any lesson in all that? I ask the question because I think most of us would say that we may have experienced a number of different instances in our life when there was a unique call (a dream?) to do something special or to respond to a mysterious voice inviting us to think about the future of our life.
I can tell you that I have had several of these experiences, not just a vocation to the priesthood, but several other invitations to do some special work. Perhaps you have too.
Now where could these special calls or invitations have come from? Well, in my own case, they did not happen in the middle of the night in a dream. It was always in broad daylight. It was always through some special person, a friend, a pastor, my mother. All this out of my own experience tells me that I happened to be in the right place at the right time and that changed everything. My life was never the same after that.
Was that a message from God? Well, it wasn't a dream, but I could definitely tell that there was something special going on, something sacred. Had I not paid attention to it, I'm sure my life would probably have gone in a completely different direction.
Obviously, I am not the first or only one who has had experiences like that. It happens in all our lives. And it does not always happen in dreams (although it could). It (the call) happens in moments when things are quiet, when you have time to reflect to pay attention to the silence. It (the call) happens when someone you trust takes the time to share their deepest instincts and ideas with you. it (the call) happens when you are doing something completely ordinary, whatever you do on an ordinary work day. You see, it's all about noticing, about paying attention, about being attentive to something which at first seems ordinary but turns out to be very extraordinary. It would have escaped you if you had not been alert.
So, I have nothing against dreams or their interpretation. I even have nothing against visions of angels. It can happen and it probably has. It's just that God also acts in more ordinary ways, through the human experiences of every day life. That's where most of our vocations come from even though they don't always appear to be very spectacular.
So, don't lie awake all night wondering what that latest odd dream was all about. It will all become clear to you when you go to work in the morning, but in a way you may never have imagined.
The scriptures:1 Samuel 3: 3b-10, 19, 1 Corinthians 6: 1 3c-15a,17-20, John 1: 35-42
Posted by Julie Galligan at 01:26 AM.
January 03, 2006
Feast Of The Epiphany of the Lord - The Sacred Art Of Walking
I'm coming to believe that walking is a lost art, l mean walking with a purpose. When you think about it, we just have it too easy today to get around. I know you will tell me that you wouldn't want to walk or even take the bus unless it were absolutely necessary. Transportation is exceedingly available today, and, of course, we are always in a hurry, so why should we walk if we can ride whatever mode of wheeled transportation we prefer.
Nonetheless, walking is one of the most ancient and dependable modes of transportation that has ever existed. Why should we have we been created with legs and feet unless for getting around? For centuries, of course, there was no other way of getting from here to there unless you were wealthy enough to have a horse or a camel. In many Third World Countries even today people think nothing of walking 10 or more miles to go to the community market or to attend church. It's a normal thing and nobody complains.
But aside from the fact that people in some countries need to walk in order to live, there are other reasons why one might want to walk somewhere: Many people today think of walking as an aesthetic activity. It is restful; it distracts one from the pressures of daily life. It gets you in touch with nature, with beauty, with quiet, even with the music of the birds overhead. In other words, walking can put you in a whole different category of living. Some will tell you that walking can even be a spiritual experience if you want to make it so. The surroundings are such that you can pray or simply be can be in touch with God. You can just let the earth speak to you of the sacred.
Going back many centuries in history, of course, we have records of people who have walked to holy places. It is called pilgrimaging, going on pilgrimage. The earliest record we have in the scriptures is the journey of Abraham who left the land of Ur in northern Iraq and made his way to the land God promised him, the land of Israel today. People of other religions also make holy journeys: Moslems, for instance, journey to Mecca at least once in their life. Jesus, as we also know, walked to Jerusalem many times during his life because Jerusalem was the holy place, the place where he could meet his God in the temple.
In the Medieval ages many Christians would journey together to the tombs of the saints: Geoffrey Chaucer, for instance, the English author, relates for us the conversations the Christians had as they walked together from London to Canterbury to visit the tomb of the great English bishop and martyr Thomas. If you have ever read them, you will know that some of the tales were not all that edifying.
For centuries too, Christians in Spain and from around the Christian world have been going on pilgrimage to the town of Compostella to visit the Church of St. James where they pray for special favors. The cathedral of our Lady at Chartres in France is also a popular pilgrimage spot. In France thousands of young people each summer walk to the famous ecumenical prayer center at Taize, the place where Brother Roger Schutz was killed just this past year. In our day, of course, many people in the United States go on pilgrimage to Rome or the Holy Land or to the shrine of our Lady of Lourdes. Many also travel to the shrine of our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. Now what is all this traveling about? It could partly be vacationing, but if it is a pilgrimage, it is something else. A pilgrimage is a journey people undertake for a sacred purpose, to some place they know is holy. They go as seekers, not as tourists. A pilgrimage is an act of worship. The most famous pilgrimage for Christians, of course, is the journey of the three wise men who came out of the East to pay homage to the new born king and offer their gifts. So, pilgrimages, whether they are made to some local shrine or some other distant one are done as an act of faith. Catholics believe that God can be discovered in earthly things and places. Christians believe that God can be found everywhere, but there are certain places which just have a holy history, a place where holy things have occurred. So, people go there in order to encounter that holy experience. No doubt, it will be different for each person who goes there.
But there is also another kind of pilgrimage that goes on from time to time in our own country, in which people don't so much go to a holy place as to experience something holy as they go. For instance, when people marched on the way to Selma, Alabama to sing and pray for civil rights and freedom for all, they were on a pilgrimage. In a sense, like the three wise men they followed a star, the star of justice and tolerance.
So, the reason people go on pilgrimage is because they believe, as the wise men did, that they are called to do that, and that the journey itself really matters. It isn't just the getting there that counts, it's the traveling or what happens to a person while traveling, whether alone or together, that counts.
So, a pilgrimage is a kind of retreat, but in this case we don't go backwards, but forwards, forward in order to come in touch with whatever we think of as sacred.
I should also say that pilgrimages are hard work, but like anything difficult, it takes you out of the ordinary lackadaisical world of every day life and puts you into something completely new, something awesome and breathtaking, something holy. In some sense, when we go on pilgrimage, we live our whole life story as we go along.
Finally, the exciting thing about going on pilgrimage is that we never know what we will find when we get there. In fact, that is not even important. What's important is what happens to you along the way. When you get to the place you are going, like the three wise men, you offer your gifts and then you return home---by another way---because something will have changed within you and the every day world will suddenly look completely different.
Now, that is something to think about the next time you take a walk in the woods or even down town to the local supermarket for groceries. Remember, it's what happens to you along the way that ultimately counts. I hope it's something nice.
The scriptures Isaiah 60: 1-6, Ephesians 3: 2-3a, 5-6, Matthew 2: 1-12
Posted by Julie Galligan at 09:30 AM.
