Cleanliness is Next to Godliness

Or so the saying goes.  I kicked off my Spring Cleaning yesterday by tackling my office.  Fortunately for me, I'm not the kind of person who thrives in clutter, so cleaning my office isn't so much about picking up and putting away as it is about actual cleaning - dusting, vacuuming. mopping and the like.  I don't like cleaning my office, which is why it gets so dirty before I'm sufficiently motivated to clean it, but I LOVE having a clean office.  There's just something about a clean work place that makes me feel better about myself.

The notion that cleanliness is next to Godliness has unclear origins.  Some suggest that it dates back to Hebrew writings, though they admit that the phrase does not come from the Hebrew Scriptures.  Others attribute it to Sir Francis Bacon's "Advancement of Learning," where he wrote, "Cleanness of body was ever deemed to proceed from a

due reverence to God."   That seems like a stretch to me.  The origin of the phrase in my life was my grandmother, who liberally sprinkled it about whenever we'd complain about having to clean something up.  It always seemed to work.  How can you argue against Godliness?

 

For me, the phrase is aspirational and sometimes even motivational.  It gives me hope in a messy world that things can be straightened up.  It gives me the comfort of knowing that slates can be wiped clean, and fences can be mended.  It inspires me to clean up my life so I can be a better example for my daughters and others.  

God loves us equally in our messiness and our cleanliness.  He never stops drawing us to the purity and perfection of his life, no matter our condition, simply because he wants to share his life with us. That's what Godliness is all about. Cleanliness isn't a condition of God's love; but it sweeps away the clutter so we have the room to receive it.  And when we receive God's love, we always feel better about ourselves.  Happy Spring Cleaning!

Gonna Make this Garden Grow

                       Inch by inch, row by row,

                             Gonna make this garden grow.
                             All it takes is a rake and a hoe

                             And a piece of fertile ground.

                             Inch by inch, row by row someone bless these seeds I sow;
                             Someone warm them from below
                             Til the rain comes tumbling down.

Well, I wish it were that easy.  I spent my afternoon preparing the vegetable garden for planting. In other words, I spent my afternoon weeding.  It seems like spring has finally sprung in western New Jersey, though winter put up a darned good fight.  And with spring came a burst of . . . well . . . weeds.  I can’t get over how many there are, no doubt the result of the fresh soil I added to the beds last year.  I usually don’t mind weeding; I like being outside and gardening has been a hobby for a long time.  But there were A LOT of weeds out there today.  I spent 4 hours weeding, and I’m only half done!  It’s out of control.

                             Pullin’ weeds and pickin’ stones,
                             We are made of dreams and bones.
                             I feel the need to grow my own cause the time is close at hand.
                             Grain for grain, sun and rain I’ll find my way in nature’s chain;
                             I tune my body and my brain to the music of the land.

There’s just something about gardening that brings me back to it every spring, weeds and all.  Perhaps it’s that manly feeling I get when I put vittles on the table grown by my own calloused (read “blistered”) hands.  Maybe it’s the perennial discovery that the asparagus and horseradish keep coming back notwithstanding my poor gardening the year before.  If they can do it, so can I!  But if I had to put a stake in it, it’s just my way of connecting with nature and returning to the simpler things of life.

                             So plant your rows straight and long,
                             And temper them with prayer and song.
                             Mother earth will keep you strong if you give her love and care.
                             Now that crow watching hungrily from his perch in yonder tree;
                             In my garden I’m as free as that feathered thief up there.

I find gardening very liberating:  I can plant what I want to plant and think what I want to think.  In my garden homilies are cultivated among the cabbages, woes are uprooted with the weeds, and prayers are planted alongside the peppers.  The combination of a little physical labor and a lot of fresh air seem to melt the stress away and put life into its proper perspective.  I leave my garden a little tired and much humbled, knowing that I’m not the one who makes the garden grow, and assured that the one who does loves more that I can imagine.  And that’s the most liberating feeling we can have.  But I certainly wouldn't mind if he’d give me a little help with the weeds.

Click HERE for The Garden Song by John Denver (after the Frog)

Love ALWAYS Conquers Evil

          The terrible and senseless attack at the Boston Marathon yesterday reminds us that evil does, in fact, exist in this world, and it returns us to the seemingly unanswerable question: why?  I can't answer that.  But I can say with conviction that love ALWAYS conquers evil.  I say that with conviction not only because I believe that the loving self-sacrifice of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ conquers evil, but because I see love stand tall and strong against evil every time evil rears its ugly head.  I see love conquer evil in the rescue workers and volunteers who put themselves in harm's way to help the injured.  I see love conquer evil in the people who donated blood and in the medical professionals who jumped into action to treat the injured.  And I see love conquer evil in the prayers that are being offered in Churches and around dinner tables, that are rocketing through cyberspace and are storming the heavens.    

          May the light of Christ lead the dead to their heavenly homeland. May the peace of Christ bring healing and strength to the injured and all effected by the attack.  And may the Sacred Heart of Jesus give us the hope and conviction that love ALWAYS conquers evil.

Go Fish! Homily for the Third Sunday of Easter, Year C, April 14, 2013

          When I was a kid my Grandma Gallo taught me a card game called “Go Fish.”  You may be familiar with it; it’s a simple game where each player is dealt 5 cards and you take turns asking the other players for a card that matches one in your hand.  The object is to collect the most matches.  If your opponent has the card you ask for, she gives it to you.  If she doesn't have it she says, “Go Fish,” and you have to pick up another card from the deck.  If you’re lucky, you pick up a matching card and get another turn.  “Go Fish” takes on a completely different meaning in today’s Gospel, and luck has nothing to do with it.

          Today’s Gospel presents an unusual scene.  Following the miracle of the empty tomb and after the resurrected Jesus appeared to the Apostles twice out of nowhere, walking through walls and disappearing in an instant, the Apostles decide to go fishing.  Somehow that doesn't seem like an appropriate response to me.  But we have to remember that John’s Gospel is highly symbolic, and “[b]y the time this Gospel was written, the use of the image of fishing for the pastoral ministry of the Church was common.”[1]  So symbolically, we find the Apostles trying to fulfill Jesus’ promise that he would make them fishers of men.  But without Jesus, they didn't catch anything. 

          You see, when Jesus was with them, when they walked with him and talked with him and shared meals with him, “their hearts burned within them.”  But now he was gone, or so they thought, and they “lost that loving feeling,” as the song goes.  They lost their enthusiasm for the mission entrusted to them.  So they weren't very good fishers of men.  But as soon as they hear his voice and listen to him, they’re wildly successful and their Spirit-filled enthusiasm inspired by love returns.  “The enormous catch . . . represents the universal mission of the Church carried out by those who without Jesus can do nothing but who will be fruitful as long as they abide in him and obey him,”[2] as long as they love him.

          Jesus makes it perfectly clear that loving him is the key to the ministry of the Church.  Toward the end of the Gospel, Jesus interrogates Peter three times with the same question, “Do you love me?”  And only after he receives a positive response does Jesus charge Peter with his mission:  “Feed my lambs; tend my sheep; feed my sheep.”  Peter can’t be a successful shepherd, or a fisher of men, for that matter, if he doesn't love Jesus first.

            We’re all called to be fishers of men, just like the Apostles.  Through our common Baptism, fed by Christ in the Eucharist and sealed with the Gift of the Holy Spirit in Confirmation, we become “obliged to spread the faith by word and deed.”[3]  But we’ll be no more successful at it than the Apostles were at the beginning of the Gospel if we’re not in relationship with Christ; if we don’t love him first.   We can study the Bible and the Catechism all year, we can hear his Word and consume his Body and Blood every Sunday, but if we don’t love Jesus, we’re just going through the motions.  And we certainly won’t convince anyone to join us, we won’t catch any fish, by just going through the motions.  “Hey, do you want to just go through the motions with us this Sunday?”  That sounds kind of silly to me.  And, as the great philosopher Steven Wright once said, “There’s a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore like an idiot.” 

          In our context, that fine line is love.  If we love Jesus, if we feed his lambs and tend his sheep, we’ll experience the most gratifying life we can live.  And the joy and enthusiasm that come with being in a loving relationship with Jesus is the best bait out there.  The fish will jump right into our boat.  Just look at Pope Francis.  The Holy Father loves Jesus – no one would doubt how he’d answer Jesus’ three questions.  We all know he loves Jesus because we can see it when he washes the feet of prisoners; when he stops his car to embrace a child crippled by cerebral palsy; when he encourages every member of the Church he leads to bring Jesus to the poorest of the poor.  And guess what, Church attendance around the world has gone up since his election.  People see the joy he gets out of his ministry; they feel Christ’s love flowing right through him and they say, “I gotta get me some of that!”  Pope Francis’ success as a fisher of men doesn't come from luck; it comes from love.

          Of course, fishing can be messy business.  You have to get your hands dirty, and you may even end up smelling like fish.  But as the Spanish proverb says, “You can’t catch a trout with dry breeches.”  And I can tell you from my own experience that it’s well worth it.  When Jesus caught me hook, line and sinker, I was filled with a joy and enthusiasm that I couldn't keep in.  I had to share his love.  I had to go fishing.  Some of you may be wishing that Jesus had thrown me back, but Jesus must have thought I was a keeper.  I love my ministry because I love the one who gave it to me, and I love the people he asked me to serve.  You’re not always pretty . . . I mean ministry’s not always pretty – I've done a lot of things in ministry that I never would have imagined I would do – but the rewards are out of this world. 

          I know that this congregation is filled with people who love Jesus.  I see it all the time.  I see it especially today in the five candidates who will receive the Sacrament of Confirmation this morning.  I've been blessed with the opportunity to watch your love of Jesus grow during this past year.  You took your formation very seriously; it wasn't a game to you.  And if I can give you just two more pieces of advice for a joy-filled life, they would be:  “Love Jesus;” and then “Go Fish!”

---

[1] Sandra Schneiders, Written That You May Believe: Encountering Jesus in the Fourth Gospel (New York, The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2003) at 226.

[2] Id.

[3] Lumen Gentium, The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Vatican City, Libreria Vaticana, 1964) at 11.

The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary . . .

The Annunciation

by Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1898

What's the Point?

            It's a Lamoka projectile point to be precise.  Thanks to our friend Tony's expertise and the kindness of a local farmer, my family went "arrowhead" hunting yesterday near the Susquehanna River in New York.  The Lamoka projectile point, pictured to the left, is the fruit of two hours of combing the stubble of a 30-acre corn/soybean field for the finely-worked flint tools of the ancient people who roamed these parts nearly 6,000 years ago.  The Lamoka point predates the bow and arrow, so it's not really an arrowhead but rather an atlatl dart point.  Having now exhausted my knowledge of Native American archaeology, I commend you to Wikipedia, via the hotlinks provided above, for more information.

          Although nine of us spent the afternoon pacing the soon-to-be cultivated field, 30 plus acres is a pretty big space, so it was largely a solitary venture for each of us.  I treasure these rare occasions to think, meditate and pray alone, though I admit that my prayer was largely dedicated to the intercession of Saint Anthony ("Saint Anthony, Saint Anthony please come around; something is lost that needs to be found - please help me find an arrowhead").  The prayer obviously was successful, and I think the mediation was too.

          I spent most of my time hunched over in the field meditating on how cool it was to be standing in a place where an ancient people whittled out the tools that sustained their lives.  I thought about how they probably could never have imagined that some 6,000 years later, people would hunt for their artifacts, trying to discern what their life was like and how they survived.  I also wondered whether 6,000 years from now anyone would spend two hours searching a field for whatever remnants of my life might emerge from the soil, and whether they would consider me as primitive as I consider the people who carved the Lamoka point. 

          My meditation was an exercise in connecting with the past, the present and the future.  It was a spiritual exercise because spirituality is all about connections:  our connections to each other; to nature and the universe; and to our God.  God is the constant that links us with the past, sustains us in the present and guides us toward the future.  In God, all people of all times are eternally connected because God is equally present to the past, the present and the future.  And all people of all times are equally loved by God, no matter how primitive they or we may be.  So it was all the more fitting that I spent those two hours assuming the postion of a deep, reverent bow.

          I felt all of those connections in the middle of that cornfield, and I felt God's love too.  I was surrounded by my family and friends, but also by the Lamoka people, by the centuries of settlers and farmers who have tilled that field, past and present, and by all who will work that land in the future.  All of us were gathered together in the warm embrace of a God who loves us.  And in the end, that's precisely the only point that matters.