Deacon Rick Lapierre
Last year I applied for a doctoral program at the Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis. I hoped to study for my doctorate in theology and move on to teaching college level theology courses. I secured references, wrote an essay and made a videotape of one of my homilies. I successfully challenged one of the requirements for a specific underlying degree. And after all of this, a few weeks ago I received a letter stating that my application was denied. I was angry, hurt, disappointed and I brought it to Jesus and complained to him about it. And you know what He said? "Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head." This was Jesus' response right after a Scribe told Jesus he would follow Him anywhere!
I'm still trying to figure out what kind of follower of Jesus I am. If I'm honest and say that I'm a so-so follower, then I hear Jesus say from the Book of Revelations "So because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth." (Rev. 3:16) Ouch.
In this morning's gospel Jesus holds out to us the special relationship with God that we are called to. When I was in religious life at Graymoor we ended every chapel service with the prayer of Fr. Paul Watson, our founder. The priest would say "That they all may be one" and we would all answer, "As you Father are in me and I in you, that they may be one in us that the world may believe that you sent me." Fr. Paul, who was an Episcopal priest converted to Catholicism, believed this prayer, from today's gospel, to be the will of Jesus and the separations of people by religion, especially between Christians, was something that could be reconciled. It was a mission he lived and preached until his death, and continues to be the mission of the Graymoor Friars to this day.
But unity is not meant to be just that all humanity believes in the one God and in Jesus as Messiah.
The good news that Jesus constantly preached was that God was not an unapproachable Supreme Being, but a loving real Presence that longs more than anything for us to recognize that we are His children and that His love for us is the love of a parent for a child.
To Jesus love doesn't mean just sending flowers. He speaks of a oneness; a relationship that is so close that differences cannot be detected. And this relationship is not meant to be just between Him and His Father, but for each of us and for all of us. This is a reality that we haven't yet quite achieved.
So we spend a lifetime in pursuing this ideal. But this is not just an intellectual exercise. It is reality. It is a lived experience we call life. It is the model of life that Jesus lived and it is meant to be lived by each one of us as well. Thus, as each adventure of life occurs, we face the challenge of choosing as our emotions, or biases, or feelings urge us to; or we can choose as Jesus does, with love, with patience, with an eye on the prize that beckons us: oneness with our God and Creator, the Lord who loves us.
When one of my co-workers this past week received her college degree we had a little get together for her in the Infirmary kitchen. It was a time of fellowship and a celebration of oneness, for as one of us is exalted, all of us are exalted.
Yet the reverse is also true. When we view the torture of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers, all of us are degraded.
The prayer of Jesus that we all become one means that we are sharers of all things, the good and the bad. This is the life we have chosen. He is the Master and Lord we have professed to follow.
So it comes to us to be the bearers of the light, the salt of the earth, the voice and hands and heart of Jesus to all we meet on the journey: those we love, those we like and especially those we cannot bear or understand.
It means listening to the Holy Spirit each day and allowing the Spirit to lead us, oftentimes to places we would rather not go. It means taking those words that have been handed down to us in the gospels and sacred writings and hearing Jesus speak them to us personally. It means choosing to make the gospel values of Jesus our values as well.
There is an old Christian legend that goes like this: A woman's happy life was shattered by the death of her brother, a good man that she loved dearly. She kept asking God "Why?" but heard nothing but silence. She set out to find the answer to her question and came upon an old man weeping on the side of the road. She asked why he was weeping and he replied that he was an artist and had lost his eyesight and could no longer paint. He too was seeking the answer to "Why?" so she invited him on her journey. They then came upon a young man walking about aimlessly. He had lost his wife, the source of his joy, to another man and could only wonder "Why?". He too joined the search. The three them came upon a young woman crying on the side of the road whose child had died and she too joined them in search of "Why?" Suddenly they came upon Jesus. They each stated their questions to their life situations, but Jesus gave no answer. Instead He began to cry and when they asked Him why he was crying, He said, "I am bearing the burden of a woman who has lost her brother, a girl whose baby has died, a painter who has lost his eyesight and a young man who has lost a love in which he delighted."
As Jesus spoke, the five moved together and embraced. And Jesus said, "My Kingdom is the Kingdom of the heart. I cannot prevent pain, I can only heal it."
"How?" the woman asked.
"By sharing it," Jesus replied, and then He was gone. The four were left holding each other. And thus the Kingdom of God is built.
