On a lighter note...

From a "partner in crime" of mine since 4th grade...

I'm guessing this is what an average homily by @frjohnhollowell looks like these days http://t.co/xpMFOt7fTt
— Adam (@acsmith_13) March 10, 2015

Today's First Reading Could Have Also Be Prayed By Catholics in the Middle East

Reading 1 Dn 3:25, 34-43

Azariah stood up in the fire and prayed aloud:

“For your name’s sake, O Lord, do not deliver us up forever,
or make void your covenant.
Do not take away your mercy from us,
for the sake of Abraham, your beloved,
Isaac your servant, and Israel your holy one,
To whom you promised to multiply their offspring
like the stars of heaven,
or the sand on the shore of the sea.
For we are reduced, O Lord, beyond any other nation,
brought low everywhere in the world this day
because of our sins.
We have in our day no prince, prophet, or leader,
no burnt offering, sacrifice, oblation, or incense,
no place to offer first fruits, to find favor with you.
But with contrite heart and humble spirit
let us be received;
As though it were burnt offerings of rams and bullocks,
or thousands of fat lambs,
So let our sacrifice be in your presence today
as we follow you unreservedly;
for those who trust in you cannot be put to shame.
And now we follow you with our whole heart,
we fear you and we pray to you.
Do not let us be put to shame,
but deal with us in your kindness and great mercy.
Deliver us by your wonders,
and bring glory to your name, O Lord.”

Don't Be Afraid to Let in Christ

Will Someone Fix the Foot Washing and Quit Leaving Priests Hanging Out to Dry?

It's almost here...a day that should be about celebrating one of our greatest and most glorious Masses of the year, but, for so many priests and congregations it is an annual wrestling match over "pastoral sensitivities" and Church Law. What a shame that such a feast is annually marred, simply because no one seems willing to make a stand.

The Church's Law on the matter is clear. Wash the feet of 12 men or don't do the foot washing at all.

Those are the two options. And yet, Exhibit A shone against parish priests - "look what Pope Francis does."  My response: "as you seem to be more acutely aware than anyone else, and as you often remind me in other situations...I'm not the Pope!"  I can't make law.

Exhibit B - WWJD - "What Would Jesus Do."  Answer: Scriptures tell us He washed the feet of 12 men

Exhibit C - some secretary at the USCCB said it could be a good idea to wash men AND women's feet. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) secretaries at the USCCB can't make Church Law either.

And so, yet again, pastors all over the country are thrown under the bus. "Why do you hate women" "why aren't you open to the Spirit" etc etc.

Here it is worth noting if I WERE Pope, one of the things I'd do early on would be to allow, in countries that care, the use of "men and women" as opposed to just "men", at least in the Mass.  I think there are probably going to be a lot more women in Heaven then men, etc. etc.


All that being said, the truly dangerous and sad mind set here is the supposed pitting of "Law" vs "The Spirit"... Incidentally pitting the Law of the Church and the Holy Spirit against one another is a heresy.


Day 1 of leadership courses teach people aspiring to be leaders to not throw their people under the bus. If a hard decision needs to be made, leadership makes it... but not in this instance.

And so we face another year of being hated for trying to do what the Church commands.

Whitman and Abortion

"Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,

Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,

Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)

Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,

Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,

Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,

The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

                                       Answer.

That you are here—that life exists and identity,

That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse."

This is a beautiful answer to suffering

This is a beautiful answer to abortion

This is why we don't kill ourselves

This is why people fight to stay alive amidst famine and war

This is why people endure jail and torture

This is why it is wrong to kill our children

Lent is...

God scheduling a "date night" with you.

Go meet him in the wilderness...wherever the wilderness is for you

Where is your Wilderness from Salomon on Vimeo.

Why I Abhor Adding a "15th Station of the Cross"

Adding the made up "15th Station of the Cross" (The Resurrection) is something I can hardly stand because it sends a terrible message.

One might counter - "Wow, you are a terrible person for saying that the Resurrection of our Lord sends a terrible message."

Obviously I do not think that the Resurrection sends a terrible message...I think INCLUDING the Resurrection of our Lord AS a Station of the Cross sends a terrible message.


Why?


The "Stations of the Cross" are a reminder that Christ Suffered, and still suffers in his brothers and sisters on Earth, and that he didn't RUN from that suffering.  Christ knew about the Resurrection too...but he still sweated blood!

Suffering doesn't always last a half hour - sometimes people suffer excruciatingly for many many years, and the "Stations of the Cross" are a devotion where we remember that Christ's sufferings didn't last twenty minutes either.

All the people starving in the world go to bed hungry and wake up hungry.  It doesn't just last a few minutes.  The imprisoned, tortured Body of Christ experiences suffering that is drawn out, and we ought to be able to acknowledge that suffering and the blinding and disorienting experience of suffering by not always needing to reassure ourselves of the happy ending.

The terrible hospital chaplains are the people who walk into a room where there is suffering and immediately try to make the suffering go away.  They say really asinine things that suggest everything is okay, but really what is going on is THEY don't want to join the patient in their suffering, so they tell the patient to cheer up, or remember that Jesus rose from the dead, or other such things.

Most of the time we CAN'T make the suffering people experience go away


The Resurrection of Christ is what everything everything is all about.  It is why we celebrate, it is the source and summit of the Christian life, etc.  We should all want to think about the Resurrection quite regularly.

If you want to pray and rejoice in the Resurrection, pray the Glorious mysteries or meditate on the relevant Scripture Passages.

But let the Stations of the Cross be the Stations of the Cross!  Let's show the spiritual maturity required to admit that our sufferings and Christ's sufferings were and are real, that suffering is often prolonged, and suffering is not something that is usually over in 25 minutes.

We do people a disservice when we do things to suggest that we can't handle suffering and death but have to have every moment of our prayer end happily.

Driving Away from the Poor...and God

Wednesday night I was in a hurry.  I was cold, it was late, and I needed to get to drive to my other parish to get to bed.  I pulled out of the Church parking lot, coasting through our neighboring parking lot on the way to the main thoroughfare.  

As I was coasting through, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a woman sitting on top of some duffel bags.  No hat.  No gloves.  It was 3 degrees out.  She looked like, in my quick glance, that she was crying.

I kept going because it was such a fleeting moment.  Plus I was in a hurry.

As I drove away my mind was processing what I saw.  Was she really crying?  Who sits outside in the snow and cold for no reason?  She was probably just waiting on someone.  She probably wasn't crying she was probably laughing...

And I turned around and came back.

She was homeless.  She had no hat and no gloves and she wasn't waiting on anyone and she was crying.  Her boyfriend had thrown her out of the house.  She had no one to turn to.  She had given up.

I got her some food in the food pantry and then she stayed the night on a cot in the Church.  She went to a friend's house in the morning.  

I am NOT sharing this to build myself up...I've KEPT DRIVING in similar situations WAY MORE than I've turned around.  

I share this in order to pass on a couple of observations

1) I think it was easier to turn around because it was Lent.  I was doing my small little fastings/penances that day, and I was a little more tired, a little more beat down myself, and something about that made it easier to reach out to her

2) I think in the same way that we drive away from the poor, we also drive away from God.  Didn't Christ say "if you want to see my face, help poor people"???  

3) Lent is the season for "turning back around" whether to help the poor or to turn back to God...even if we've been driving quite a long time in the opposite direction.

"Yet even now," declares the Lord, "Turn back to me with your whole heart, with fasting, tears, and mourning." - Joel 2:12

Does God Get Angry?

"Do You Want to Be a Bishop?"

This is a question that most priests get asked on a somewhat regular basis.  The answer is not a simple one, so I hope you'll allow me a few paragraphs to respond.

1) Everyone knows that the answer to the question is supposed to be "absolutely not!" but it is undeniable that some priests DO want to be bishop, and quite badly.  It isn't widespread or anything, but it is there.  

The question arises here - why would a person want to be bishop?

The reason, it seems, is that all Catholics ask ourselves a question - "will I go to Heaven?" - and, as a young Catholic author recently noted, only half jokingly, we also ask ourselves another question somewhat regularly: "am I the anti-Christ?"

Getting named a bishop, by the Pope, certainly has some appeal because it could be seen as the Church (and thus Christ) saying - "This guy is holy and a winner and saintly, that's why we made him a bishop"... I understand the appeal of that selection, even though I also know it doesn't work that way.  

St. John Chrysostom once said “I do not think there are many among Bishops that will be saved, but many more that perish.”  The Saint also noted that "The road to hell is paved with the bones of priests, with the skulls of bishops as lamp posts along the way."

So while it makes sense, on a human level, to desire to have some external authority like the Church select you for something, being selected to be a bishop doesn't ACTUALLY have any bearing on one's eternal destination.

2) The people that get selected to be bishops are men who hopefully display holiness and the traits of Christ, but of course practically a bishop also needs to be a leader.  Bishops today oversee tens of thousands of employees, manage countless priests and lay leaders, and are, practically speaking, the CEO's of some of the biggest civil corporations in their territories.  So getting picked to be a bishop has a lot of practical considerations involved as well.  You hope to find a guy who is holy AND a good leader, but no one can truly judge holiness except God.  I think the Church looks for men with practical leadership skills and does the best any of us can at judging a man's character as well.


3)  The job of a bishop is huge, intimidating, and scary.

When I imagined my life as a priest when I was discerning priesthood, I imagined doing what I'm doing now - a couple of smaller parishes, youth events, Masses, baptisms, funerals, stations of the cross, soup dinners, visiting nursing homes, etc.  A bishop has almost none of that.  It is meeting, after meeting, after meeting, after meeting.  And then there's the weight of the responsibility - surely it would be crushing if not for God's Grace - and it all just seems overwhelming.  I just wouldn't want that.

I look at the two Archbishop's I served for, and I don't envy their life.  What they do is actually a great sacrifice of a lot of meetings and management at the loss of all the one on one interaction and ministry that parish priests have.  

I don't even want to be the pastor of some mega-parish, so I can hardly fathom the emails, meetings, photo ops, and all of the other things that a bishop has to deal with. 


So when you add all of this up, I am very happy being a parish priest.  I hope that helps provide some insight into what a bishop's life is like, and why anyone who chases it for any other reason than to lay down one's life for others just has not truly grasped what they are chasing...

But then again some men, as Jesus noted, will always "love places of honor at banquets, seats of honor in synagogues, greetings in marketplaces, and the salutation ‘Rabbi.’" (Matthew 23:6)

Keep your bishop in prayer because it is a tough gig.  That's why we pray for him, by name, at every Mass

Talk on Why I'm Catholic: The Church on Suffering

This may not sound very ecumenical, but I can safely say that I've never heard anything worth much on suffering from anywhere besides the Catholic Church.

On the other hand, what I've heard from the Church and Her saints on suffering has totally changed how I approach my life and how I view the world.

I am SO thankful for the Church's wisdom on suffering, and I think we need to get the word out on our teaching about suffering.

Hospital Theology

A lot of "theologies" and world views and philosophies work on a beach or on a golf course.

"Do whatever feels good"
"Whatever works for you is cool"
"If you pray hard enough and the right way, God will give you stuff"
"Our body is just a prison we must escape"
"This world is all there is"
Etc.

Again, just about anything will get you through good times.
Only the Truth works in a hospital room.

The Desert Gets a Bad Rap as an Ecosystem

now we can eat shellfish AND murder people!

Shaking Hands After Mass

Wrestling two kids out the door, shoving on mittens and hats she turns in a rush "Have a great week Father!"

His hair is disheveled and part of his shirt is untucked. "Father, I've got a question, if they found aliens on Alpha Centauri, would we baptize them?"

Eyes white hot with rage: "That was a terrible homily"

Looking scared and nervous and poor: "Father, I've never been to Mass before. Can I come back?"

Seemingly unaware of the line of people behind him: "So Father, what's going on in your life?"

With tears streaming down her face she grabs the priest's hand extra tight: "Pray for my Mom who passed away on Friday. We're burying her in Alabama on Wednesday."

With a proud and odd chuckle and a look of contrived concern: "I found a typo in the bulletin."

With a smile: "Father that was a great homily. Thanks. I needed that."

"Father, I think the sixth grade teacher has to go."

"Father would you like to buy some cookies?"

"Is anyone going to water the hydrangeas by the front door of Church?  They look like trash!"

"Parish council is on Thursday right?"

"If I were preaching I would have taken it a different direction"

"How's your grandma?"

"Could we meet on Thursday morning, I need someone to talk to.  My marriage is really struggling."

"Who decided to raise the burial costs in the cemetery?"

"Father, Stan has surgery on Monday. Pray for him."

"Will you hear my confession?"

"Father, I hated that opening song. Did you pick it?"

"Can you come over for dinner on Tuesday?"

"Father, I loved that opening song. Did you pick it?"




"And a large crowd followed him and pressed upon him." Mark 5:24

Homily: On people being burned alive, despair, and Hope

Have You Read Pope Francis' Favorite Book?

You should!  It's awesome, and it is written in English.

Here's a video I did a few years ago about "The Lord of the World"

Answered the Pope Francis Baptism Challenge

"Mass is Boring"...but some give their life for it?

Consecrated Life...What a Waste?