This generation is an evil generation;it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it,except the sign of Jonah.

It is easy this morning to stand in judgment of those perverse populations to whom our Lord spoke exasperatingly in the course of his frustrating three year ministry.

They wanted another sign, and another, assurances that could never assure. They were locked forever into the Lockian paradox of probability and certainty.

They were, indeed an evil generation.

But in truth, are we so very different from our foibling forebears?

Do we still not search the skies for omens like those superstitious wicked people?
Do we not check horoscopes and read fortune cookies?
Do we not plead with God in the interior recesses of our hearts for another signal of his intentions?
One more sign God and I will be a priest, I promise. And yet those signs that we eek out in our semiotic imaginations never quite satisfy.

Why?
Because the clamor for a sign is the empty rhetorical gesture of a procrastinating people, a prodigal people.

This generation is an evil generation;it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it,except the sign of Jonah.

Brothers and sisters, the sign has been given. It is the sign of Jonah

The sign of the Son of God, slinking, sliding into the ditch, the depravity of this human condition, taking the form of a slave, a passionate slave, a tempted slave and in his kenotic slavery clearing the ditch, binding our wounds, installing us in the wayward inn of the Church.

The sign of a man, a tired and dust-covered man endlessly traversing the highways of the Palestine of human folly and coaxing, gathering, healing, comforting, pleading. And still they seek a sign, a sign from the Sign, a token from the Sign bearer.

The sign of an ear-splitting Word that shatters the adamantine chains of satanic silence, hushed over a fallen world by a muffled thud of an apple core hitting the verdant ground. The Word of Wonder, Counsel, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.

The sign of priestly men, inheritors of the Aaronic breastplate, serving, plying their sacrificial craft, though fractured, broken, sacrificed themselves summoning in their bodies the generative strength of Levi, the power of the Most High, inswirling daily divinity into lowly places.

The sign of a people, wandering, forlorn but brought together under the blood-stained banner of the lamb, roused from their slumberous stupor by the echoes of an antiphon that is theirs to sing: Christus Prolongatus, Christus Prolongatus. The extended incarnation alive in their collective body, a yearning body, a pleading body, a patched body, but a glorified body.

The sign of a host rising like a broken sun above the littered landscape of a body and blood strewn altar, shedding its atomic power, surges of energy that emanate from the throne of the Father of Lights onto an equally littered landscape of broken promises, broken dreams, broken lives.

The sign of a man hung, strung upon a cross of injustice, ebbing out his life for an ungrateful nation, a sign of contradiction. He hangs there, writhing, stabbed, thorned, dying with open arms to welcome his brothers, his sisters, his sons, his daughters, those sign seekers, those prodigals.

Brothers and sisters, I ask you …

What more of a sign do we need than the invitation to live, to love, to serve in his shadow cast so mightily upon the earth, raising our human condition, rescuing us from the mouth of the whale, drawing us ever closer to the Nineveh of our true natures, discovered in the austerity of true repentance.

What more brothers and sisters do you need to see, to be convinced of your call except Jesus?

Here is the lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.

no sign will be given it,except the sign of …

When you pray, go to your inner room,close the door, and pray to your Father in secret.And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.

Does it ever seem to you that Lent is a kind of play or skit that we put on each year?

Yesterday, we actors were going about our usual business, studying, praying, socializing, and sinning.

This one was leading a study group
This one was working in Jack’s
This one was preparing a homily
This one was riding around in a laundry cart with a crown on his head

We were just normal, living, breathing, drinking caramel macchiatos and consuming the spicy jambalaya of mediocrity.

But today the curtain is up and the play is on.

The stage setting is different, all wood and sand and bareness. All of the live botanicals have been moved out of sight and now occupy the hallway in front of my door, making third Anselm look a bit like an enchanted forest, without the gnomes.

The music is different. Dirges and songs of weeping, mourning for our sins, wailing our inadequacies and praying for patience from a God who seems to have grown cranky overnight.

The prayers are different, supplication, recto tono, delighted breast beating all in the name of penance for sins that, like the cranky God, seems to have manifested themselves overnight, perhaps the aftermath of too much ingratiating undigested jambalaya.

The food is different. We feast now on crunchy oatmeal and raisins, on gallons of tomato soup poured over the culinary landscape like so much blood on snow. Cheese sandwiches, macaroni and cheese, block o cheese, the dietary staples of the spiritually constipated

Our demeanors are different. Lent is serious; this one is a mess already because he gave up (fill in the blank). The dour mask of insalubriousness has conquered the normalcy of just yesterday.
Spilling our macchiatos and overturning our laundry carts.
The unstable is closed
The vending machines are neglected
Thumbs are blackened
People are holed up in TV rooms watching the Passion of the Christ over and over


The curtain is up and the drama of forty days commences. We all have our part to play. Everyone study your lines.

But Jesus says:
When you fast,do not look gloomy like the hypocrites.They neglect their appearance,so that they may appear to others to be fasting.Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward.
Lent in our typical Catholic observance is very externalized, all gloomy faces and ascetical phylacteries.

But I wonder if Lent cannot, should not be more than an annual pre-passion play?

To me the season of Lent offers us two possibilities for us, for our community and for authentic discipleship.

First, it offers us the chance to have a clearer vision. Jesus went into the desert for forty days. The desert is a place where a clear head and little baggage are required. Is that not a good image of Lent for us?

Lent is a time to be honest, to say what’s what, to know the truth about our vocations and ourselves, to turn our sight toward inward housekeeping rather than outward stage setting.

Lent is a time to say what is true about myself, my community, my relationship with God. A time for us to put on the spectacles of the real and take off the rose colored glasses of hypocrisy, even innocent hypocrisy.

Lent is a time to go into the inner rooms of our imaginations and look around at what is there. To take an inventory of what is there, to reflect on what is there.

Second, Lent is a time for the renewal of hope. Lent that focuses on Lent and not on the hope of the resurrection is useless. Lent that uses its clarity of vision to see who we truly are, men and women renewed in the resurrected Christ is a blessing

Lent is a time to look forward to our transfiguration. Just as the catechumens are anticipating a change in the waters of the Easter Vigil, so we should anticipate something great. Why? Because God wants to give us something great. God HAS given us something great, something beyond the external diminutions of our practices, something that changes us from within, something beyond the lack of petty abstinences, something that is hoped for and the substance of things hoped for, something that is true to God and true to us, the Body of Christ.

Can this Lent teach us to yearn without compromise for the Body of Christ to be all in all in us? It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me, Christ who lives in this community, Christ who breathes in our prayer, Christ who eats our meals, Christ who studies in our classrooms, Christ who suffers with our struggles, Christ who smiles in our joys, Christ who prays in our inner rooms, Christ who walks these halls, Christ who conquers our sin, our pride, our wills.

Can lent teach us to see clearly that we want to see nothing but Him, love no one but Him, worship nothing but Him?

Then Lent becomes more than a spectacle of ascetical actions. It becomes the living drama of the Son of God.

In an acceptable time I heard you,and on the day of salvation I helped you.
Behold, now is a very acceptable time;behold, now is the day of salvation.

Rector’s Conference
February, 2010

This morning I would like to continue my reflections on the virtues of the priesthood, an important consideration in this year which our Holy Father has established as a Year for Priests. Today I would like to focus on the virtue that I consider being at the very heart of the complex reality of priestly discipleship, the virtue of piety. What is piety? What comes to mind when we mention the word? Not too long ago, it might have invoked, perhaps it still does, a rather negative image, a kind of cloying adherence to practices, mostly arcane or esoteric that promoted and preserved an individual’s relationship with God. The word implies a rout observance, a dryness, a disingenuousness, even hypocrisy.

Perhaps this image of piety, at least in the common understanding, is not far from the truth. If you say someone is “pious”, particularly among a certain generation of Catholics, it almost automatically triggers a kind of spiritual gag reflex. Piety, in this context, is something to be avoided. And yet, the virtue of piety is a virtue found at the very heart of the message of the Gospel and a virtue that has filled the lives of saintly priests throughout the history of the Church.

I think in particular of St. Ignatius of Antioch. En route to his martyrdom in Rome he wrote a series of letters that strengthened and comforted the early Church. He continued to write and console those faceless others even as his ship sailed fatefully toward his own death.

St. Cyprian guided the Church of Northern Africa through its most troubled days of persecution from within and without. He did so without ever questioning the power of the Gospel to sustain him and fortify his flock.

St. Damien de Veuster went in the spirit of obedience to the worst assignment his superiors could have devised for him, the leper colony at Molokai in Hawaii. He served there in a spirit of strong piety in order to shore up the dignity of the most forgotten people of the earth and he did so until the disease claimed his own life

Pope John Paul II served as the Vicar of Christ though the suffering that he endured from illness and age. Even as these enemies sapped his once prodigious energies, he served, he prayed and he offered an invaluable example of the dignity of life in the midst of a culture of death.

These great priests offer us examples of piety. Today, however, piety may be seen in a less-than-positive light. In spite of negative connotations however, I stand by my rather precarious claim that piety is central to being a good seminarian, and by extension a good priest.

In order to get a better grasp of the nature of piety, perhaps we need to look back. First let us look at piety in the ancient world, even in pre-Christian thought and here we find quite a lot. In the ancient world, and that includes, of course, the world of the early Church and the New Testament, piety was the core virtue. To the ancients, piety was defined as goodness, and an understanding of duty. To be pious in the Greek world was to know one’s duty in life and to fulfill it. First, it was the responsibility to the gods, to sacrifice, to pray and to provide offerings of the right proportion. Second, it was the fulfillment of human obligations. Everyone in the ancient world was perceived as having particular responsibilities according to their station in life. Piety was fulfilling one’s responsibility. Piety was what was owed to the gods, to the natural world, and to the human world as well. It meant being true to the form of who you were, of your character, of your place in the world.

We see ideals of piety in the Greek world, in the defining mythos, the Homeric epics. Telemachus’ devotion to his father and Penelope’s devotion to her long-lost husband were examples of piety owed in response to familial and social relationships. The son and the wife did this in spite of the fact that Odysseus was not so pious himself, in fact he was untrustworthy and unreliable. Nevertheless, from the standpoint of Telemachus and Penelope, relationships made a claim on those in the family, they required action and response. We see this also in Hector’s devotion to Adromache and his son Astianax in that poignant scene on the ramparts of Troy in the Sixth Book of the Iliad. Hector was torn between competing responsibilities to his family and his country. Therein lies the matter of much of the drama of the ancient world, conflicting pieties.

Likewise the Homeric tradition gives us serious warnings about what happens when piety is not observed, when one is carried away by emotion, by personal feelings and refuses to fulfill the responsibilities incumbent upon the person, to fail to be true to form. Indeed the whole of the Iliad and the Odyssey can be seen as a meditation on piety and impiety and its consequences. When Achilles acts from his feelings and passions, instead of from his sense of duty, tragedy ensues. He is impious. Likewise Odysseus is not pious toward the gods and suffers ten years of wandering for his impiety. In the philosophical realm, Socrates takes up the question of piety in the Euthyphro. The five definitions offered in the dialogue are rejected. The moral seems to be that piety is not something that can be theorized but something that must be lived. Certainly for the ancient world piety was a lively, even a manly virtue. Its exercise required courage and strength. The observance of piety often meant the difference between life and death. Socrates in the Crito, and certainly in the Phaedo, offers a great example of pious living and dying. The pious man is who fulfills the law and his responsibilities toward the law. He remains true to form even when it is inconvenient. In doing so, he fulfills the law of justice as well as piety.

For the Greeks piety and justice were intimately bound together. This is true in the Christian context as well, as we shall see. Piety is understood in this ancient context as a kind of synthetic goodness, it is a collective virtue that brings together the fulfillment of obligations to the gods, to our family members and to society as a whole. It makes us who we are by reminding us of who we are.

As important as piety was for the Greeks, it is even more important in Roman thought. For the Romans piety is associated not only with virtuous behavior but with humanity in general. To be human is to be a pious person. To act impiously, is to be less than human.

The great image of piety in the ancient world, and the enduring one is that of Aeneas. Aeneas stands out in the Roman imagination as the ideal man, the founder and the hero. He is these things precisely because he embodied the ancient virtue of piety in its completeness. He is almost always described in the Aenead as “Pious Aeneas” His devotion to his father Anchises, leads him to risk his life by carrying the old man out of the burning city of Troy on his back. When Aeneas is given a mission by the gods, the founding of a new Troy in Italy, he fulfills that mission even at great personal cost Aeneas gives up the love of a powerful and beautiful woman, Dido, in order to fulfill his mission, he risks life and limb, is inconsiderate of personal injury or discomfort, he even goes down to the netherworld in order to fulfill his responsibility. The essence of piety in all of these instances is single-minded devotion to the task, the vocation, regardless of the cost, regardless of the reward, regardless of any ephemeral notions of personal fulfillment.

This same sense of piety is, of course, central to the thought of the New Testament. We can see this in a focused way in that most Greek of all the Gospels, the Gospel of St. Luke. St. Luke, more than any of the other Gospel writers is sensitive to the virtues and values of the Hellenistic world. He constructs his Gospel with these sensibilities at the forefront. We can see this for example in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10, 30-37). The interesting thing about the parable is that it is completely counterintuitive. Perhaps that is true of many parables. The Samaritan in this parable does something that is repulsive to him, handle a Jew. The Jew of course is equally repulsed by the Samaritan. They are not doing what makes them happy, what they would choose to do. The Samaritan is fulfilling the duties of neighborliness; he is pious in that he does not what he is inclined to do, but what he knows he must do. And he does it fully, completely, even going beyond what is responsibility might be: Take care of him and I will return and pay you everything. Of course this image of piety becomes even more profound when we read this parable not as a moral fable but as a Christological parable. The Samaritan is that man, despised and rejected who nevertheless went to extremes to fulfill the law of piety. He is Christ and Christ is the essence of piety.

We can also see the virtue of piety displayed in the next passage in St. Luke’s Gospel, Mary and Martha (Luke 10, 38-42). It is typically enough to read this as a typological story about the active and contemplative lives, we have John Cassian to thank for that. Contextually, however, it doesn’t really work. It seems to me this story is really about the risks of discipleship. In their context, Mary and Martha are engaging in rather risky and risqué behaviors. Serving men at table and sitting at the feet of a rabbi, in any ancient context were taboo and subjected them to punishment, ostrecization or worse. The piety of Mary and Martha is a dangerous piety, acting with graciousness toward Jesus even when they know there is risk to themselves, bodily risk. This story is also interesting from the viewpoint of the ancient world, in that Greeks and Romans didn’t believe women were capable of piety, but obviously Luke and Jesus did. So here we see an expansion of the possibility of piety beyond the parameters set by the ancient imagination.

If we turn to the Gospel of St. Matthew we can see the virtue of piety in the story of the Wise and Foolish Bridesmaids (Matthew 25, 1-13). Waiting around for the groom to come back with the bride in tow must have been boring business, particularly if negotiations were delayed. Undoubtedly the foolish maids in this parable were more interested in having their time occupied with something interesting. They thought they had better things to do. Perhaps instead of paying attention they got online, watched the Sci-Fi channel, gossiped, wandered down to the unstable, texting on their cell phones, went shopping for something other than oil at Walmart. The wise maids however risked something truly dangerous, they risked boredom. Piety is not only choosing what is dangerous it is also sometimes choosing what is not very interesting. Piety risks boredom for the sake of duty. Being ready, watching, and waiting are not always thrilling. IF we are looking for thrilling, being a bridesmaid may not be the right vocation. If we are addicted to the dramatic, priesthood may not be for us either.


The central image of piety in the Gospels, however, comes with the onset of the passion narrative. Jesus goes to the Mount of Olives (or the Garden of Gethsemane if we prefer the account of St. Matthew) with the disciples and asked them to keep watch. His prayer to the Father is a telling one; it is Jesus’ moment of truth, his real passion. Everything else in the Gospel is falling action. "Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me; still, not my will but yours be done."

NOT MY WILL
NOT MY WILL
NOT MY WILL

Jesus sets the tone for all understandings of piety that will follow. It is our most precious example, and how do we respond to such demanding piety? Perhaps like the disciples, it is easier for us just to take a nap.

What is the image of piety presented for us then in the Gospel? Piety is to do one’s duty toward God and neighbor, to fulfill one’s obligations without considering the cost, without personal considerations, even without reward, or more extreme, even under the threat of danger. Or most extreme, even when it is boring. Piety is surrender of what is convenient and comfortable for what is right, it is complete renunciation of will to the will of God.

We also see this in the writings of St. Paul. St. Paul announces the essence of discipleship and the essence of Christian piety in Galatians 3, 27-28.

For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

If St. Paul had been speaking in a more modern context he might have added, there is no longer the isolated YOU, there is no longer EGO, there is no longer an overweening notion of the self that considers itself before all other obligations of human or divine origin

Earlier, in the letter to the Galatians, St. Paul gives the ideal in Galatians 2, 19-20

For through the law I died to the law that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me; insofar as I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who has loved me and given himself up for me.

Here is the essence of discipleship and the essence of piety, at least as it was understood in the ancient world. I do what I do, and I am what I am not for myself, but because there is a higher good, a higher purpose, a greater goal and that goal may not be visible, may not be obvious, and may not be conducive to my comfort, my prejudices, my ideals, my opinions whatever. To be a Christian is to seek Christ relentlessly, to seek His goals, His values, His ideals in the Church, through the Church, because of the Church which is His body.

As an ancient virtue and as a Christian virtue, piety is enshrined in the teachings of the early Church Fathers, in the ancient practices of the Church. It certainly forms a critical focal point for St. Benedict. Piety is the premiere virtue in the Holy Rule. In the Rule of Benedict, the virtue of piety outshines all others and it is presented in almost every chapter

In the Rule chapters 36 and 37 care for the sick must come before other cares
In the Rule chapter 53 – Guests must be treated as Christ himself
In the Rule chapter 33 – no private possessions, no private opinions (murmuring) no private will, no preferences apart from the group.
How one prays, acts as a superior, receives novices, cooks the food, works in the field, goes on a trip. All are governed by the legislation of the Rule to one end: That in all things God may be glorified.

Piety is, for St. Benedict, the complete annihilation of self interest in the pursuit, the hot pursuit, the endless pursuit of the good of God though the community of the Church.

The Benedictine vows have piety at their root, a desire to do what one is called to do, what one is destined to do and thus remain true to the form of being a good monk. Piety is rooted in humility which Benedict never understands as humiliation, but rather as a earthy groundedness, telling the truth, the good the bad and the ugly. It must be faced. And the central truth we must believe and accept about ourselves is this: If we are baptized the end toward which we are striving is the complete realization of the body of Christ and our being subsumed into that Body (Galatians, 2, 20).

Monastic anonymity insures the adherence to this truth because it is not only anonymity from the world but also from our selves. The gradations of humility in chapter seven of the Holy Rule are aimed at taking us away from false notions of self as self-sufficient, self-reliant, self-serving, self-centered, self-interested, and self-referenced. Our lives as Benedictines are hidden with Christ in God, we are dead, as our solemn vow ceremony, the mystical burial implies. We are totally for Christ, that is the ideal.

We can see this exemplified in the monastic vows:

OBEDIENCE means listening beyond the voice of my inner cravings, my prejudices, my preconceived notions of what should be and really listening to the voice of God speaking, in the superior primarily but also in the community, in the circumstances of life, in the broader Church. True obedience means that I learn to trust those voices, to hear those voices as more authoritative than my own needs

To be obedient, however, I must be present, I must stand still, thus …

STABILITY means literally staying situated. I remain here, because I cannot find God if my life is filled with the distraction of constant motion, both physical and existential. It means I show up for things, even horribly boring things, even seemingly meaningless things. I water sticks. Stability means that there is something to learn here, and I only need to be here to learn what God intends for me to learn.

CONVERSATIO means the desire to be someone other than I am at this moment. It is the reverse of self-satisfaction and notions of fulfillment. It refuses to celebrate who we are because it acknowledges that there is so much more to be. Conversatio means change, and this is seldom attractive, seldom convenient, and seldom comfortable.

Now this seminary is a Benedictine school, truly a school of the Lord’s Service and here is what we offer seminarians for diocesan priesthood; an understanding that true spirituality means being faithful to the promises you have made. True diocesan spirituality means remaining true to the form of a priest, true to the promises you will make at ordination. I hope we Benedictines give you here an example of obedience in our willingness to listen, to be obedient to our superiors and one another, stability in our fidelity to prayer, our watchfulness, our presence, conversatio in our desire to be different, to change, to grow, to seek the higher ground rather than the common ground.

I hope you find here, in this Benedictine school an encouragement to cultivate lives that will be hidden with Christ in God. That is not monastic, that is Christian and that is the essence of piety.

This monastic understanding of piety was prominent throughout the Middle Ages. Medieval society understood piety as a series of responsibilities was the essence of the feudal system. Piety is faith in the community first and foremost, faith in the Church, in the collective whole and the lack of faith in my own position, my perceptions, and my desires. The ideal of piety so well cultivated and engrained in the ancient and early Christian mind however, took a decided left turn in the modern period.

The sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries represented a dramatic shift in western thought away from the sense of corporate responsibility and toward finding the meaning of life in the emotional and the personal, the center of truth in the individual and the overall utilitarian approach to the social order and the Church. Religion in the modern sense is the fulfillment of private revelation, it serves only insofar as it satisfies. In this new model people are told that they should be interested in fulfilling themselves, making themselves feel better through religious practices, or not. It is not possible to remain true to form when there are no recognized values, object truth, or forms to which to be true. In this epistemological realm piety degenerates into the arcane and forgotten.

What is the Church then in this context? It is nothing at all. Tradition is nothing at all. Magisterium is nothing at all. Community is nothing at all. Piety, impossible.

Truth is only truth insofar as it assimilates to my perceptions, my sense of gratification. If this is the essence of postmodern secular reality we are mistaken in thinking that we, as Catholics are immune to this kind of thinking. We see it in any number of attitudes found even within Catholicism today:

A teaching is only good if it meets my needs and my sensibilities
Worship is optional according to what is going on
The Church serves me and I take it or leave it

Sometimes this notion of impious individualism which creeps into the lives of the faithful may also creep into the life of the priest.

There is no objective truth only our truths which are ultimately my truths.
Law is suggestion and does not have to correspond in practice
Its all about me

This presents a great conflict within the priest. The priest then becomes completely self referential. He lives not truly to the form or character of his priesthood, but into the social matrix that speaks falsely, acts unjustly and leads the priest to perdition in his own impiety.

These trends come not from the authentic tradition of faith, but from a misconstrued cultural context. However, we are very much products, I dare say, victims of this context. Piety in the ancient and Biblical sense, in this so-called reality is a lost art, or it disintegrates into self regard and as St. Teresa of Avila once remarked: “Self regard is my destruction.” Within this context, the true essence of piety must still be sought, albeit, now it must overcome formidable obstacles in order to authentically express itself. The social matrix shows us a false reality, but the authentic reality of a substantive human nature and sacramental character remains indelible if hidden behind the Potemkin villages of postmodern expectations.

We are not without hope here however; we have examples of the saints and near saints. St. Thomas Aquinas overcame tremendous obstacles to become a member of the Order of Preachers. St. Vincent de Paul faced the ridicule of his age to establish his teaching and healing ministries among the poorest members of French society in the Seventeenth Century. Early Twentieth-Century priests such as Robert Hugh Benson and Ronald Knox went against the grain of family and social order in their pursuit of the priesthood in the Catholic Church.


These saints and near saints and countless others offer powerful examples of piety which in their estimation is the discovery of authentic self in the negation of false selves, that is all selves that are not Christ. Our age can find no greater example than that of Blessed Theresa of Calcutta. Who in the sweep of hopeless concession to the conceits of this age could endure decades of prayer, work and apostolic labor completely without consolation? She is an example of true piety for an era of immediate gratification and ridiculously shallow notions of happiness. All of these saints, point to the reality that authentic discipleship postulates that Love of God comes before all else.

Piety then is understood in the following dimensions:

Immediate consolation is not a motivation for performing acts of discipleship

I do what I do because it is what I do, what I am called to do, what I have vowed or promised to do, what I am responsible for doing

Spiritual maturity is able to defer spiritual gratification, the more mature the longer the deferment

Consolation comes, in the end, from doing my duty, from being faithful, from perseverance and being true to form.

This is piety. The ancients said that this is human. It seems to me that it is certainly the heart of seminarian and priestly discipleship.

I now return to my original assertion that piety is the foremost virtue of the seminarian and the priest, perhaps the foremost virtue of the Christian and the human. We know the challenges of realizing this most courageous of all virtues, but how can we say that we are without hope? How we can we be without hope, when we have the example of the saints as the substance of things hoped for? God gives the grace and we provide the will to live authentic lives, courageous lives, and saintly lives. God gives the grace and we provide the will. If we can will it, then here is what our piety will yield: generativity.

Piety produces generativity through self-negation or rather it generates a new self by putting off false selves. The true seminarian and the priest know that on his own he is nothing, he has no name, no gifts, no strength, no authority. The true seminarian knows that our only source of self-worth is doing the will of God. This is what it means to be true to our form. This generativity might yield something by way of reward in the usual way of seeing things, and it might not. We do what we do and God gives the growth in ourselves and in those we serve. As our Holy Father, Pope Benedict has remarked:

In the words “I do” spoken at our priestly ordination, we have made a fundamental renunciation of our desire to be independent, self-made. But day by day this great yes has to be lived out in the many small yeses and small sacrifices we make. This yes made up of many tiny steps which together make up the great yes can be lived out without bitterness or self pity only if Christ is truly the center of our lives.

This kind of piety can only be realized in a joy for the priest that is not predicated on personal happiness but on doing the will of God. In that realization then, personal happiness comes. It produces in us true happiness and true joy because we realize that our lives are fulfilling the realization of God’s Kingdom as we pray: “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done.” Our prayer has greater meaning when it moves out to embrace those around us, rather than remain morbidly focused on my immediate needs and concerns. My labors have larger purpose when they are used to build up others. My sacrifices become meaningful when they become sacrifices for the Church and not my own ends. The piety of the priest comes to fruition when the faithful adherence to the promises I have made is able to sustain me until all vestiges of selfishness are wiped away and the priesthood in me is realized fully in the person of Christ. Our lives established in the person of Christ should not be a cause for pride, bur rather a cause for helping us realize that our responsibility in our unique calling is fulfilled when we are true to our form as priests, true to our sacramental and ontological character as priests. This truth is not something instilled in the priest with the laying on of hands, although the grace of orders is a powerful reality. It comes from practice and the practice of piety must begin here and now. In this generative process we depend upon our formators, our peers, the priests we know, and of course the saints, most especially the great model of piety, our beloved Lady in whose hands we place our selves as we say: Hail Holy Queen ….

They rose up, drove him out of the town,and led him to the brow of the hillon which their town had been built,to hurl him down headlong.

Mr. Potato Head was one of my favorite toys as a child. For those who may not know, Mr. Potato Head was a lump of brown plastic about the size of your fist. It came with all kinds of attachable accessories, noses, eyes, ears, eyebrows, mouths, mustaches made of felt, hats and bodies. The fun was in putting it all together, of assembling faces and personalities for Mr. Potato Head by combining and re-combining the various components. Now he can be a cowboy, now a construction worker, now a business man, a doctor. You could even buy complimentary parts and create a Mrs. Potato Head. And of course, part of the fun was combining parts that didn’t go together, a cowboy hat with a Mrs. Potato Head mouth. There were also offspring of the Potato family, a boy named Spud and a girl named Sister Yam all of whom came with accessories that included a car, a boat trailer, a kitchen set, a stroller, and pets called Spud-ettes. Later characters included Oscar the Orange and Pete the Pepper as well as Mr. Carrot Head and Mr. Onion Head.

Another supposed feature of Mr. Potato Head was that you could use the various parts on a real potato. My mother was constantly encouraging me to try this, but I have to say that the real potato just didn’t cut it for me. Unlike the brown plastic potato, a real potato wasn’t designed to take the components. The faces looked irregular, the noses didn’t quite fit. And of course, there were little warts and scars on a real potato that gave Mr. Potato Head too realistic a look, too rugged, too ragged.

Lest you think that my regression to childhood memory is indicative of the onset of senility, it seems to me that the problem presented in today’s Gospel is a kind of Potato Head problem.

They rose up, drove him out of the town,and led him to the brow of the hillon which their town had been built,to hurl him down headlong.

I don’t really feel sorry for Jesus in the Gospel today so much as I feel sorry for the folks at Nazareth. He must have known what the reaction of those hometown folks would be. Whereas they must have thought that they were going to town that day for a festive homecoming, a grand celebration, Mary’s fried chicken, everybody hugging and kissing, the sermon in the local synagogue

Hometown boy makes good. Miracles follow his every step. Cheering crowds. Perhaps? Perhaps even something more. The newspapers were there, the cameras were there, the reporters.

But it was not to be.

They rose up, drove him out of the town,and led him to the brow of the hillon which their town had been built,to hurl him down headlong.

Why?

It was a Potato Head problem.

The folks at Nazareth looked upon Jesus like a Mr Potato Head, something to be crafted and re-crafted in their image. Jesus might be a hero, he might be a prophet, he might even be (shhhh) the Messiah, but he was going to be that on their terms. They wanted to determine what eyes he was to have, what ears, what hat he was to wear and they are disappointed when Jesus sets the terms of their play at something of higher pitch. He was a real potato.

For 30 years He was just Jesus
He was just the carpenter and the son of a carpenter
He was just the boy of Mary and Joseph
Just a hometown boy
Just a hardworking man
Just and good and upright man
Just a plain fellow
Just a craftsman
Just a simple man
Just an uncomplicated man
Just a man of prayer
Just a man who kept to himself
Just the guy from Nazareth
Just Jesus

And they liked that
Now the stakes have been raised and Jesus is taking control
Now the chosen people may have to mix with the rest
Now the law and the prophets may take a back seat to a new law
And what is that Law
The Law of Love

Patience and kindness and humility and self control are the new rules of the game and the Potato Head of their creation is somehow no longer adequate. And so …

They rose up, drove him out of the town,and led him to the brow of the hillon which their town had been built,to hurl him down headlong.

Of course what was true of them is true of us
We like to create god in our image, giving him the features we find pleasing or amusing, changing eyes and ears and noses when necessary and worshiping him in plastic form. We like Deus Potatatus because we can control him, manipulate him and when we are tired of him, throw him in a box.

But fortunately Jesus reveals the God who is the real potato and the face of that God looks radically different from what we create.

The eyes of God in the mournful eyes of loss and pain
The ears of God in our hearing the cry of the wretched and outcast
The mouth of God in speaking words of comfort in a time of trial
The arms of God in reaching out to quiet a restless spirit
The heart of God in every beating heart, even the most vulnerable, the youngest
The mind of God in the wisdom of gnarled hands and twisted feet
The God of warts and scars, of not quite fitting, of Truth.


The real potato was too much for the men and women of Nazareth.

They rose up, drove him out of the town,and led him to the brow of the hillon which their town had been built,to hurl him down headlong.


And what of us?
Can we accept the God who comes to us on his own terms, the God with warts and unexpected crevices, the God who does not play our game, but calls us to a new game?

Love is patient, love is kind.It is not jealous, it is not pompous,It is not inflated, it is not rude,it does not seek its own interests,it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury,it does not rejoice over wrongdoingbut rejoices with the truth.It bears all things, believes all things,hopes all things, endures all things.
And of course, in the long run, the plasticized Potato headed deity cannot satisfy and the most important thing about a real potato is that you can eat it

Happy are those who are called to his supper.