Dedicated to my fellow European travelers
I don’t know about you, but, frankly, every time I come across these Beatitudes I feel a bit, well, queasy.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, the weepers, the hungry, the homeless, the peacemakers.
Who are these people anyway? The Beatitudes are all very well and good, but really, where are we supposed to find these people?
Perhaps in exotic places, perhaps in exotic places like Rome
Perhaps the people of the Beatitudes are there among the beggars jingling their cups and calling out, Padre Padre with twisted limbs and darting glances, furtive glances, answering their I phones and moving on
Among the people on the 64 bus, cramming, careening around corners
The furry, coats and hats and animal pelts
The stinky the perfumed and the putrid
The felonious pick-pocketing their way between exhausted tourists
The frantic, panicked, heated, desperate – Scusi, porta, permesso
The catatonic riding round and round with no where to go
The feely, prurient or pecunial, you decide
People eating oranges, and pizza and Chinese food
Cardinals, birds of men, authoritative
Bishops, purple and pointed IDEO
Monks, solemn and screaming out across the piazza, Va, throughout the bus: GET OUT!
Seminarians bundled and backpacked and enthralled and fatigued and very endearing
1-16
Chow Chows lost and forsaken
Justin Bieber and Gru
Free WIFI at the corner
Blessed are the poor in spirit, the weepers, the hungry, the homeless, the peacemakers.
Who are these people anyway? The Beatitudes are all very well and good, but really, where are we supposed to find these people?
Perhaps in distant places like London among the harried commuters minding the gap
Crazy bus drivers threatening death on double deckers
Shoppers frantic and rushed
Beefeaters reveling in MURDER
Horse guards, Bobbies and soldiers, sharp, arresting, combed, trimmed
Girls in pink wigs dolling out the sandwiches at Pret a manger
Folks in the street crying out: OOOO I love a bus parade
Dancers, Accordion Players, Soliloquizers, itinerate tunes sung through the nasal choruses of coughs and wheezes throughout itinerate lives lived with only a Tube pass and a cup from McDonalds, jingle, jingle, jingle.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, the weepers, the hungry, the homeless, the peacemakers.
Who are these people anyway? The Beatitudes are all very well and good, but really, where are we supposed to find these people?
Perhaps they are only be to found in big cities among the confused Japanese tourists, clicking, digitally clicking a scrapbook of memories that they will never remember how to interpret.
Infants, mewing and bound up in blankets and furs and hats and mittens with one lost or on the breast completely unabashed pushing his own stroller
Children so intelligent they speak Italian, French, British and crying out and clamoring over things and heedless
Teenagers, pimply and hormonal, twisting, shouting, texting and texting and texting
Married Couples holding hands, they still do that
Old People, wobbling and tottering like an Egyptian obelisk, but majestic
Lovers, kissing and touching and whispering meaningless things and wondering
Blessed are the poor in spirit, the weepers, the hungry, the homeless, the peacemakers.
Who are these people anyway? The Beatitudes are all very well and good, but really, where are we supposed to find these people?
Perhaps among the dead, they might be good candidates:
Kings and princes
Presidents and Heads of State
Heroes, mythologically preserved in verse and prose
Saints, embalmed, immured, ennobled in marble and bronze
Fidelia, Sophia, Valentinia, Laurentia, Cecelia, Agnes, Lucy
Artists forgotten or immortal
Musicians with too many notes
Painters of canvases too large
Architects of buildings too grand
Sinners, forgotten and reconciled long ago
Blessed are the poor in spirit, the weepers, the hungry, the homeless, the peacemakers.
The beatitudes are all very well and good, but really, where are we supposed to find these people?
In Rome, or closer to home?
Erstwhile seminarians with evaluations and goals
New men looking a bit dazed
Old men looking a bit dazed
Monks, young and old looking a bit, well, dazed
Back and forth to class, shovel some snow, no trays, napkins, please, e-mail reminders, trips to Walmart, Death by boredom, football fever, ministry assignments, no desert, smoking in a refrigerator, Doubt, meetings, chop that wood, new bishops, new pastors, new deans, doubt, Father manners, TIOP, WITH, IDGAD, sisters, movie nights, borrowing, Los Bravos, Ferdinand Chinese, doubt, missing comrades, discernment in the subject line, bold red type from the vice rector, another book in the mailbox, doubt, home, confessions,
Real hurts
Real struggles
Real pain
Real spiritual warfare.
Or among husbands and wives
Parents and children
Back and forth to school and work
Grab some breakfast
What was your name again?
Trips to the Mall
New neighbors, jobs, the daily grind of living
Blessed are the poor in spirit, the weepers, the hungry, the homeless, the peacemakers.
The beatitudes are all very well and good, but really, where are we supposed to find these people?
Or dare we hope that all men and women will be saved?
Consider your own calling, brothers and sisters.
Not many of you were wise by human standards,
not many were powerful,
not many were of noble birth.
Rather, God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise,
and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong,
and God chose the lowly and despised of the world,
those who count for nothing,
to reduce to nothing those who are something,
so that no human being might boast before God.
It is due to him that you are in Christ Jesus,
who became for us wisdom from God,
as well as righteousness, sanctification, and redemption,
so that, as it is written,
“Whoever boasts, should boast in the Lord.”
Blessed are the poor in spirit, the weepers, the hungry, the homeless, the peacemakers.
The beatitudes are all very well and good, but really, where are we supposed to find these people? Here?
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We opened our second formation term with a celebration of the Eucharist presided over by Bishop Leonard Blair of the Diocese of Toledo. The rector preached. Bishop Blair also spoke at the annual Bishops' Dinner that evening.
This is the homily from Mass
They may look and see but not perceive,
and hear and listen but not understand
About whom does the Lord address these words?
About the senseless crowds?
About the occasionally equally senseless apostles?
About us, dazed as we are over our experiences of J-term and travel?
They may look and see but not perceive,
and hear and listen but not understand
And what are we to understand?
Precisely what are we to understand in this parable?
That we are the ground?
We are the earth, the soil that receives the living word and thus we must open our lives, our minds, our hearts, our spirits, our very bodies to the fruitfulness of God’s offer?
That we must have a receptive spirit to receive what God has in store for us?
Indeed, as we know, we are the ground and yet this open, this receptive spirit can so easily become entangled with the debris of worldly engagement.
We choke the Word so generously bestowed on us with thickets and brambles of our own fashioning
The brambles of personality, I am not fit for this vocation, I am not suited for that
The thickets of our past, my life has been so .. it doesn’t matter, any excuse will do
The thorns of our present sinfulness, becoming self-fulfilling prophets of our own downfalls
The nets of technology and the trappings of progress
I can hardly expect to gaze unreservedly at the face of the expectant Christ when my neck is forever bent beneath the yoke of screens, pads, pods, phones. Heaven isn’t to be found in cyberspace but in the ever decreasing space between me and my brother in need, me and my sister in crisis.
Jesus reminds us that our lives must open up to receive this precious invitation. Our lives must themselves be inviting, forming that essential bridge between ourselves and our neighbors. The soil of our existence must be fertilized by the careful cultivation of what is true, good and beautiful and resist the temptation to become the mere dirt of a transient cultural wasteland and false understandings of the human person.
Are we open?
Are we willing?
Are we anxious to receive the fullness of His grace?
Or do we hesitate, holding back, forever giving in to the lie that all of this can happen without loss, without sacrifice, without the pinch of the negation of false selves?
Sometimes this receptiveness becomes impossible and thus …
We may look and see but not perceive,
and hear and listen but not understand
And what are we to understand?
Are we to understand that we are the seed?
That we are called brothers and sisters to be instruments of the Word. Do our lives reflect that reality?
We are called to make real the proclamation of Emmanuel, God among us by breaking open our lives in his service and in the service of our brothers and sisters.
We are called to be seed in the sacrifice of the cross that rends asunder the assurances of well-controlled lives and propels us headlong into the chaos and confusion of real living.
We are called to that orthodoxy that boldly announces the Truth of brokenness, the veracity of passion.
We are called to spend ourselves in the service of that One Reality that cannot be gainsaid, that one Thing worth living for, worth dying for that we glimpse before our heads are turned by the violent contradiction of this-worldliness
But how often do we find that our lives cannot accept this unique, yet ubiquitous vocation?
And so …
we may look and see but not perceive,
and hear and listen but not understand
And what are we understand?
Are we to understand that we are the sower?
That our lives are to be lived out in perpetual abandonment of our own projects for the sake of proclaiming the Kingdom, that same Kingdom of which we are both representative and recipient?
That Kingdom which proclaims peace in a world in which the din of war seems insatiable
That Kingdom which announces Truth in a time in which lies and half-lies permeate our collective consciousness
That Kingdom that teaches Love in a culture of Hate, life in a culture of death, liberty in a culture of false ideas of freedom and choice
That Kingdom that is bound up in the person of the savior, the man of Galilee who was the eternal God, that kenotic King whose Kingdom was our slavery to sin, whose ransom was not his own, whose saving action was always on behalf of the unworthy others.
That Kingdom that reaches out to us in the appearance of Bread and Wine, even as we stretch out hands to unworthy pursuits and idolatries
And yet it is that Kingdom that the King of Times and Universes has placed in our hands, within our care, in our sphere of influence
But our lives brothers and sisters can become so entangled. How ill we regard that gift.
So that …
we may look and see but not perceive,
and hear and listen but not understand
Except hopefully to see that we are the ground, the seed and the sower and understand that there is no simple grasping of the parable, just as there is no simple grasping of the Object of all Parabolic discourse, but there is a kind of simplicity to the message of the Gospel and thus the message of our lives, for our lives signify nothing if they are not caught up in the Good News
For when the parable of this life is finally interpreted there is only one meaning to be found:
Each of us is called to one thing:
The salvation of souls
Brothers and sisters we are placed in this world for one purpose, to assure that the ground, the seed, the sowing is not in vain and that the message is proclaimed, fully, totally, unreservedly in our lives.
In this riot of cultivation, of sowers sowing and seed sown and soil receiving, what can we offer back to the Lord but bodies willing and able, spirits saturated with the sagacity of that which is most simple and minds fired by the grace of our creator and savior
We have but one vocation, saving souls for God and everything else is nothing but straw and dross.
Nothing can separate us from this zeal for souls if we are to be authentic to who we are and why we are here:
So that it may never be said of us:
they may look and see but not perceive,
and hear and listen but not understand
Look and see now the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world
Listen to his voice crying out to us today from the sacrifice of this altar
We are called
We caught up forever, irrevocably in the harvest of his Grace
