Living Water and More

Living in a rather humid climate, we may be tempted to romanticize the desert. In certain circles, it is even trendy to speak of spiritual “desert experiences.” In the Bible great things did indeed happen in the desert. But let’s not romanticize it! Deserts are harsh and hardly habitable places. Even relatively livable deserts like Judea and Samaria - or California - are places where water is scarce. So access to it is power. Even Jesus, wandering through Samaria at the hottest hour of the day, needed to ask for a drink. Having no bucket of his own, he must at first have seemed to the Samaritan woman as powerless indeed; but at least there was a well there!

There was, however, no well at Masah and Meribah, where, in their thirst for water the people grumbled against Moses [Exodus 17:3-7]. They grumbled. Actually they did a lot of that while in the desert. No surprise there! That’s one of the things people do when frustrated. They grumble. They complain. They attack their leaders - and one another. Poor Moses! How his faith must have been tested by all their endless complaints! “What shall I do with this people? A little more and they will stone me!”

Obviously, we are looking here at very typical human behavior – both on the part of the people and Moses’ reaction – typical human behavior, unique neither to the Bible nor, for that matter, to the desert. People complain constantly, and those they complain about constantly complain - about being complained about! It’s become a commonplace observation – itself yet another complaint – that contemporary American society has been increasingly paralyzed by a corrosive climate of criticism of (so it seems) virtually everything and everyone. Sadly some of the same can be said even within the Church. Such an atmosphere takes its toll on everyone, as it obviously did with Moses.

But Moses’ frustration was far from the end of the story. God is so much bigger than our complains, quarrels, and conflicts. However deep-seated human sinfulness and however widespread its destructive consequences, God still has the final word: water will flow from the rock for the people to drink.

For us, of course, the water from the rock foreshadows that living water that Jesus promised the Samaritan woman, the water that eventually flowed from the side of the dead Christ on the cross as a symbol of the water of baptism, that is meant to drown all our thirsty grumbling in his new and risen life.

In his 2011 Lenten message, Pope Benedict commented on the dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan woman: “The question that Jesus puts to the Samaritan woman: ‘Give me a drink’ [John 4:7] … expresses the passion of God for every man and woman, and wishes to awaken in our hearts the desire for the gift of ‘a spring of water within, welling up for eternal life’ [John 4:14]: this is the gift of the Holy spirit, who transforms Christians into ‘true worshippers,’ capable of praying to the Father ‘in spirit and truth’ [John 4:23].”

The season of Lent is organized around two converging themes: conversion and repentance - and two corresponding sacraments: baptism and penance.

Foreigner though she was, the Samaritan woman was responsive to Jesus and receptive to conversion. Indeed, she became a missionary – and apparently quite a successful one, preaching not just with words but by the powerful witness of her transformed life. Perhaps the people in that Samaritan city simply sensed that what Jesus had done for her was what we all need and want – to be known and loved as we truly are and so to find the refreshing possibility of renewed life. Hence the significance of her story for those preparing for baptism at Easter.

But what about the rest of us, baptized long ago and life-long (or at least long-term) members of Christ’s Church? Have we perhaps lost some of our fervor? Are we maybe more like Israel in the desert, quarreling and testing the Lord, wondering “Is the Lord in our midst or not?” The Israelites had 40 long years ahead of them in the desert, and there would be more scenes such as this one. It seems that no matter how many times God quenches our thirst, as long as we remain in this desert, the same questions continually confronts us: “Is the Lord in our midst or not?” It’s a question we cannot escape, anymore than the Israelites could escape on their own from the desert in which they found themselves.

In Jesus, God has given us an answer once and for all. It is up to us, then, to do like the Samaritan woman and take that answer seriously, and so be able to say with Saint Paul: we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ [Romans 5:1].

Lent challenges us to rediscover the new life first offered us in the living water of baptism, offered again and again in the sacrament of penance.

Homily for the 3rd Sunday in Lent, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, March 27, 2011.

63

One of the charms of Facebook is how it announces one's birthday to all of one's "friends." The result is a lot more "Happy Birthday" greetings than one might otherwise ordinarily expect to be getting!

Last year, I let my birthday pass without any public reference in my brand new blog. That may have been the wiser course, but successfully completing yet another year of life does seem to warrant at least some modest comment.

When I was younger, of course, a birthday was more about growing up, moving ahead, looking forward to the future. At this point, there is obviously less future to look forward to. It may yet
offer opportunities to experience. There may still be accomplishments ahead. (I certainly hope so!) Even so, at 63 one naturally tends to look back more than ahead. I also can't help but recall that, when I entered the Paulists in 1981, 63 was "retirement" age. Not that everyone necessarily "retired" at that age, of course, but it did serve as a certain sort of marker. Remembering that, it still serves as a marker (even though the Paulists have wisely long since raised the age for what we now call "Senior Ministry Status" to the much more appropriate age of 70).

As a new pastor in a new city, I certainly have enough to keep me busy and active, and I have no interest whatever in "retirement" (however labelled). On the other hand, I'm not what I was at 23 or 33 or 43 or, for that matter, even 53! However earnestly I may try to respond to the expectations and fulfill all the demands placed on me, chances are I will fall short of what someone younger and more energetic could accomplish. The value society places on being young and beautiful is partly esthetic, to be sure, but it is also functional. If ageing is about anything it is about the (hopefully gradual) diminishment of one's strength and ability. Then again, as a certain
Secretary of Defense famously said, "You go to war with the army that you have."

That said, I think there really is something to the idea that there is a certain wisdom to be found in old age - not just knowledge (although accumulated knowledge of life has certianly made me "wiser" than I was at 23 or 33 or 43 or 53), and not just experience (although again lived experience certainly has taught me a lot and has definitely maked me "wiser" for it). There is also an emotional development that seems to occur over time as one works one's way through the joys and sorrows of life, its attainments and its learning to let go (especially that). Some things that seemed to matter a lot years ago matter less - and vice versa. At any rate, things matter differently. But, while passion is certainly subdued, emotion remains acute. The desire to be loved and to love is every bit as real as it ever was, but the ability to love has undergone development - for the better.

So, thank you to everyone everywhere who has wished me a "Happy Birthday," bringing together through the accumuilation of those greetings so many strands from so many periods and places in my life. Thank you to all those who have been a part of my life and helped me become who and what I am. And thank you, God, for giving me life and the multiple opportunities to experience your presence and your action in this world!

Fire in the Factory

100 years ago, on March 25, 1911, in New York City (roughly where NYU is now), 149 workers at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, mostly women, most of them Jewish or Italian immigrants, were killed as a result of one of the most famous fires in American history. The previous year, garment workers throughout the city had gone on strike for unionized working places - unions being the only way to guarantee decent pay and safer working conditions. At least for the Triangle workers, however, the strike had failed, for the factory's owners successfully resisted unionization. What a city-wide strike had failed to accomplish, however, the tragic deaths of so many young women did, finally tipping the scales in favor of workers' rights. New York City and State soon adopted new laws that served as model public-safety codes and labor-relations laws for other states and later the federal government to emulate. One of those who stood in the street watching the fire was Frances Perkins, who served as FDR's Secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1945 and who famously called that tragic March 25, 1911 the day the New Deal began.

The Labor Movement undoubtedly has had its faults and failings, and the right of public-sector unions to strike has always and for good reasons struck many as somewhat questionable. That said, it cannot be denied that the period of greatest, most widespread prosperity and social harmony in modern American history was also the era when labor unions were most powerful. There are good things one can say about globalization, of course, but one of its negatives has been its impact upon American workers. In a globalized world market, national governments simply don't have the power they once had to guarantee workers' rights. (Obviously, one of the reasons public-sector unions have grown in recent decades, even as the unionized percentage of the American labor force has been declining overall is that, unlike other businesses which can simply move their factories to take advantage of cheaper labor, governments normally stay in one place).

Particularly troublesome has been the enormous increase in income inequality in the US in recent decades. Nor is it just a matter of money. The old saying that the rich are no different from eveyone else, they just have more money, is only partially true. Not having a feudal past, not having a hereditary aristocracy, American society for most of its history did indeed enjoy an unprecedented amount of social mobility, which fostered widely shared democratic and egalitarian vlaues. Even so, the very rich really always were different. The Rockefellers and the Kennedys (however much they cultivated a common touch to advance their political ambitions) lived lives completely different from that of most ordinary Americans. Apart, however, from those relatively few who fell into that distinct category of the super-rich, most successful, wealthy corporate types were seldom so much richer than those who worked for them that they could no longer relate to the rest of America. When I was growing up, my father's boss certainly made more money than my father. He lived on Fifth Avenue and presumably enjoyed many of the finer things in life that only money can buy. But I suspect that his fundamental values and view of the world were not all that markedly different from those of his employees. The incredible gap that has opened up in recent decades between the overwhelming majority of ordinary Americans and the obscenely wealthy beneficiaries of so much of our public policy since 1980 has created a complete cultural and moral chasm - not unlike that which Abraham describes in today's Gospel account of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31).

So, on this centenary of the Triangle Fire, perhaps we would do well to remember how we as a society responded the last time inequality seemed to be getting too excessive and the resulting benefits of those reform policies for generations of Americans - and to ask ourselves how we let ourselves lose so much so quickly and what, if anything, is to be done about it.

Ambitious Brothers & Jealous Others

When it comes to human behavior, there really does seem to be nothing new under the sun. In today’s Gospel [Matthew 20:17-28], Jesus has again told his disciples what lies in store for him in Jerusalem. The 1st time he did this, Peter had tried to talk him out of it, prompting both a severe reprimand and a no-nonsense instruction on what being a disciple really means. The 2nd time, the disciples they argued among themselves about which was the greatest. When asked what they’d been arguing about, their silence suggested at least some sense of embarrassment. Here, however, with no hint of embarrassment, two of Jesus’ most favored disciples (and thus the ones most especially susceptible to a sense of entitlement) have their mother request that they be given the best seats in the kingdom.

Not surprisingly, the other 10 quickly became indignant. Apparently, they neither accepted nor were willing to cater to the particular status hierarchy favored by James and John. Jealousy (as Britain’s Queen Alexandra famously said 101 years ago) is the source of so many problems in life. The 10’s jealous indignation in turn prompted yet another much needed instruction from Jesus – clarifying both what his life is about and what the life of any would-be disciple must be about.

What makes this incident so wonderful is the brilliant way Jesus handled his hard-to-teach disciples – both the 2 ambitious brothers and the 10 jealous others. Jesus was obviously a very good teacher. He recognized his disciples’ natural ambition. Rather than condemning them, he affirmed their ambition and gave it completely new content.

So you want to be great, Jesus tells his disciples. OK, then, be great – but not by imitating all those rich and prominent people you all admire and envy so much, but by imitating me. “For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” How’s that for an ambition to aspire to, an accomplishment to envy?

If following Jesus is to have any real meaning, Jesus is telling us, then it must be different with us from the way it is with the rest of the world. By his own life – and above all by his death – Jesus illustrated that by showing how different it is with him from the way it tends to be with us. Our task is not to analyze the world, which is just being the way the world is, but to change the world – but to do so by having him change us.

Homily at Lenten Ecumenical Service at Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, March 23, 2011

183

Besides being the 2^nd Sunday in Lent and the 1^st day of Spring, yesterday was also the anniversary of my first blog post. While hardly an occasion of world-historical significance, it certainly at least warrants a moment’s reflection – if only to consider whether these 182 postings to date have been worth it (and are worth continuing).

Although I can often talk easily and at length, I frequently find writing much more onerous – one reason perhaps why I was never really cut out to be an academic. I have always envied people who can write, for example, a regular newspaper column. (To some extent, that’s what a blog tries to approximate – without, of course, the mass audience!).

Some of my postings have been Sunday or occasional homilies preached primarily either at St. Paul the Apostle Church in New York City or, more recently, at Immaculate Conception Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. Averaging approximately one such homily per week, that means somewhere between one-quarter and one-third of my postings would have been composed in any case, blog or no blog.

The other postings run the gamut of social, political, and personal reflections - all of varying length, significance and (one must also assume) quality. Certainly, a lot has happened in society and politics these past 12 months to warrant my modest reflections. A lot has happened in my personal life too, only some of which - for example, my moving from New York to Knoxville - has found its way onto the pages of this blog.

In creative writing terms, perhaps it seems like "cheating" to have included so many homilies, all of which would have been composed in any case, blog or no blog. On the other hand, the fact that one-quarter to one-third of these posts have been homilies does say something significant. The fact that so much of my blogging has been explicit preaching - preaching that took place in a church as part of a liturgy - highlights that I am very much a preacher. Preaching is a central dimension of my vocation as a priest and a Paulist - ordained to proclaim to the world the Word of God in all its fullness in the Person of Jesus Christ, accessible in the life of the Church. I don't only preach, of course; and I am far from being a stellar preacher by any standard or measure; but preaching is at the heart of who I am; and it seems only right to reflect that in these pages.