Why do you let us wander?

 A Homily 

for the First Sunday in Advent

Why, Isaiah asks the Lord. Why do you let us wander?

I think of the three year old in the supermarket, squirming in that little seat in the grocery cart until his mother lets him run free.  And run free he does.  Down the aisle, past the apple sauce, knocking over the display of dried macaroni and running like a demon toward that tower of Oreos, beckoning to him like the promised land. That little one know what wandering away is like a bat, if you can describe anyone running that fast as wandering.

And he’s running down the aisle, because he’s learned how much fun chasing after all the bright shiny things can be. Which is fine, except that if we spend all of our time running after the bright shiny things, we we will find we have no time for what is most important…time with the Lord.

Martha learned that lesson the hard way.  You remember the story. Jesus was visiting Martha and Mary and their brother Lazarus. Mary, we are told, “sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said,” but Martha was running about, like a little kid in a supermarket, cooking dinner and cleaning the house and doing all kinds of stuff that just needed to be done.  And in one of the most candid exchanges of the Gospels, she turns to Jesus and says: "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!" 

Jesus’ reply is spoken not only to her, but to me: ”Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, "you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her."

Stop, sit down with the Lord and listen to him. Share with him the stirrings of your heart….

Advent is a time of waiting…waiting for the Lord. Listening for his still small voice. Hoping in his eternal love for you. Yet so often we are like Martha, running about looking for all the bright shiny things. So often we fail to stop, shut up and just listen for his still small voice.

For in order to hear him we need to empty our hearts of everything but gratitude. No grasping, no conniving or calculating. Just longing and gratitude in our still small hearts.

Especially, this week, just being grateful for all his blessings.

For the life which still flows in and out of your lungs without the help of a ventilator. For the blood which flows through your veins. For the thoughts you think and the myriad feelings which tremble through your limbs. For the people who love you and for those who are loved by you. For the thrill of a cold breeze, the beauty of the first snow, the sound of crumbling leaves under your feet, the smile of that little baby in her mother’s arms, for justice, truth and all the other joys  that await us at the dawn of each new day.

But with all the bright shining things, the first thing we seem to forget is to give thanks…

Which makes me think about one of the most colorful characters to walk the fields of Massachusetts in the decades following the American Revolution, Timothy Dexter.  Born in Malden, he made his first fortune by speculating in Continental currency.  His continuing success was due to a combination of audacity and incredible good luck. 

He was eccentric, but wise beyond his capacity, and never ceased to attribute his multiple successes to those who helped him along the way.  Indeed, gratitude was, in his view, the most important of virtues.

 “An ungrateful man,” he would frequently say, ‘is like a hog under a tree eating acorns, who never looks up to see where they came from.’

Remember the nine lepers in the Gospel parable who were just such narcissistic hogs?  Only one came back to give thanks, but the nine who were cleansed of their disease, cured of their disability, now set on getting on with their life, with not a smidgen of gratitude and not a word of thanks to the Lord who cured them.

And we are not so very different.  Sadly, ingratitude is so rampant in our day and age that we often become surprised by folks who are habitually grateful.

On the day I received my last postgraduate degree I practically sprained my wrist patting myself on the back.  But did I think of Miss Lucasak who first taught me cursive in third grade, or Miss Morin who encouraged us to write those one page essays with the pictures two years later.  Did I think of the Priest who first inspired me with a love for the Liturgy, or my parents who put me through College, or the inspiring professors I had come to know along the way.  Did I think of the scholars who had constructed that world of knowledge in which I had gained some small degree of proficiency, or those who built the institutions which had led me through those mysteries.

No, I thought of none of them, I never gave them a thought or a prayer.  I never said thank-you.  Just like the ungrateful lepers, I got on with my life and I never looked back.

It’s like those who were Baptized into Christ, learned to pray, made their First Communion and maybe were confirmed, but who now seem to have forgotten where the Church is, who seldom say a prayer, feed the poor, forgive, or even seek to love others as they were loved.  They go about living their lives, happy enough, but never full satisfied, getting along, but still uncertain about what it really means. For they have things to do, and they will continue to take, without looking back, and never say thank you.

And then there’s you and me.  Fickle, self-absorbed, and sinful as we are, we still try to crane our necks to at least look back.  To break the bread, to tell the story, and to give thanks as best we are able.

For that is what we do each day in this holy house: We celebrate the Eucharist, the thanksgiving: a memorial of recollection and gratitude, in which we remember all that He has done for us, from our first breath to our last, the love, the mercy, the sacrifice....the faith which makes sense of the darkest days and the mystery which defeats the deadly with eternal joy and eternal life.

Which is why, at Mass, speaking in the person of Christ himself, the priest calls out to us:  Lift up your hearts.  And we lift them up to the Lord.

And unlike ungrateful lepers or hogs, we will give thanks to the Lord our God.  For it is right to give him thanks and praise, even, in the words of a modern day poet:

"O Lord, we thank Thee for this world,

For every blessing, every good.

For earthly sustenance and love

Bestowed on us from heaven above.

Be present at our table, Lord.

Be here and everywhere adored.

Thy children bless and grant that we

May feast in paradise with Thee."

Talents, and Giving them Away

Here's my homily for this Sunday.

So they received talents from their Master. And the first one, who got five talents, invested it and doubled the investment. While the last fellow, who got one talent, buried it and got nothing but the wrath of an angry master.

 

Like those servants, we too receive many talents. Oh, I don't mean the Palestinian currency of a talent (which by the way, was worth about $6,000 dollars). No, I think Jesus was talking about something more than economics, and the kinds of talents he’s really talking about are worth more than money can buy.

 

For you have been given all kinds of talents.

 

There are those you were born with. Your beautiful eyes, or long silky hair or general good looks. Or your intelligence. Your ability to figure things out so much more quickly than everyone else.

 

And then there are the talents you acquired while you were growing up. Like an easy-going disposition and the ability to get along with just about everybody. Or a sense of self-confidence mixed with humility that has allowed you to get so much done in this life.

 

And then there are the talents which you have worked so hard for. Like your marriage or your vocation or that lifelong friendship. Or the fact you have been such a great mother or father. Or that job, which for thirty-seven years you worked and sacrificed to make a success.

 

All those are the talents you have been given by God. And what have you done with them?

 

If you have used them for your own selfish pleasure or tried to work them solely for your own good, you are like the man who buried the talent in his own back yard, where under the cold dark soil of winter, it just sat there and nothing came of it. And some day, God forbid, I’m afraid your master might send you to that place where there is nothing but wailing and gnashing of teeth.

 

But if you have sought to give it away (all those talents) to use them to love…then you have discovered a remarkable thing…that the talent given grows…it multiplies and will, someday, be returned to the God who first gave it to you doubled, or tripled or showing a return of a hundred fold.

 

It’s what Emily discovered when she went as a new bride with her Ensign husband to Gaeta, a small town in southern Italy where the flagship for the sixth fleet docked. It wasn’t exactly a Naval base, but the young wives of the young sailors would often rent an apartment in Gaeta, and the wives would wait (sometimes with the kids) while the ship went out to sea. 

 

Problem was, because it was such a top secret thing, not even the wives would know how long the guys would be gone, and that was particularly tough on the younger ones.

 

As Emily had experienced innumerable times over three long years. But she pushed through the anxiety and she and the three kids were now used to Gerry being gone, sometimes for almost a month. Kind of used to it, that is.

 

You see, I used to go down to Gaeta as my apostolate when I was a Deacon and then for the first year I was a student priest and say Mass for the Americans in a small Italian Church. One week I saw Emily and she looked a bit hassled, so I said a prayer for her. The next week I saw her again, and she was, to be honest, a mess.  Her hair was straggly and she just stared straight ahead while the kids ran around and screamed at each other under the pews. So I asked her after Mass how she was doing. She started to cry and told me that Gerry had been out to sea for three weeks and that she was at her wits end with the kids and the uncertainty and…she just cried. I tried to console her, but I knew it wasn’t going to help a lot. So I went back to Rome and prayed for her.

 

The next week, I saw Emily again. I was surprised that she looked so different, like a different person. Smiling and chatting with her pew mates, the kids all dressed up in their Sunday best and sitting there like little angels. So, after Mass I said “Emily, did Gerry get back this week?” “No,” she said, “but something wonderful happened.”

 

Last Tuesday, she told me, was the worst day I ever had. I was just getting ready to call the travel agency to get a ticket home when the door bell rang. It was the girl next door…she was very young and had been married for just two months ago and this was the first time her husband was out to sea.  She was crying and whining and in the mood I was in I just wanted to slap her and tell her to go away.

 

But for some reason I didn’t. With teeth gritted, I invited her to come in and got her a cup of tea.  And then I sat there and stared at her, (thinking to myself: you don’t know what its like to have three screaming kids and you’ve only been doing this for two months and you don’t know what suffering is…). But didn’t yell at the poor kid…rather, I sat there and I tried to smile, and before I knew it, I started to sympathize with her and to listen to her poor sad broken little heart…until after a few minutes (or maybe more than a few minutes) I started comforting her and all at once, for the first time in weeks, all my problems seemed so much smaller. In giving her comfort, I became comforted.

 

And ever since then, I don't really need to know when Gerry is coming back. Because I just learned an incredible lesson. When you love others, when you give it away, it comes backs a hundredfold.  And you know Father, I’m really at peace.

 

So, give it away, every talent you ever received. Invest it in others, with love, and maybe you will hear the master’s words someday: 'Well done, my good and faithful servant…come share in your master’s joy.”