Those who do - They shake the foundations of the world! - Maybe its time to shake the foundations once again!

Today at Holy Mass Jesus addresses the religious leaders of his day….What he says also can be applied to the many practicing Catholics in the pews as well….”Are we ticking boxes”?……In our religious practice, have we lost sight of the trees amongst the density of the forrest?……”The Lord said: “Woe to you Pharisees! You pay tithes of mint and of rue and of every garden herb, but you pay no attention to judgment and to love for God”…Its very easy to “go through the motions” of our religious practices and forget why we are there and what we are doing……Going to daily Mass….Saying our daily Rosary…..Praying the Divine Mercy Chaplet……These aspects of our faith are important - VERY IMPORTANT…But the devil understands human nature…And the devil can even “get into” and spoil these holy of holy practices….How does one keep focused?……Only by living a humble and simple life…..Too much comfort naturally breeds distraction…..We even see this with artists….When an artist is “hungry”, his art flourishes….But when the artist “gets too comfortable”, he loses his “edge” and so does his art…….At the end of her life Mother Teresa was asked by a reporter if she thought the Missionaries of Charity would carry on the work she started…This is what she said…..”If the sisters do two things, the Missionaries Charity will continue to flourish…One - Keep the Blessed Sacrament at the heart of everything they do….Two - Continue to live and embrace poverty…..Many very prominent prelates in the Catholic Church have also addressed this issue of how a “wealthy Church”, which we have in the west can be a detriment to religious practice…For example…The Catholic Church in Africa is very poor but at the same time is growing at an amazing rate…..This is what the late great Pope Benedict XVI had to say on the subject…."Soon we will have priests reduced to the role of social workers and the message of faith reduced to a political vision." All will seem lost, but at the right time, precisely in the most dramatic phase of the crisis, the Church will be reborn. She will be smaller, poorer but also holier. For it will no longer be the church of those who seek to please the world, but the church of the faithful in God and his eternal law. The rebirth will be the work of a small remnant, seemingly insignificant but untamable, undergone a process of purification. Because this is how God works. Against evil, a small flock withstands.”

So how do we “keep it real” in the here and now?…How do we as Catholics keep focused and not just “tick boxes”……Don’t get too comfortable - This life is not “our true home”……This is how we “keep our edge”!

“My sheep hear my voice, says the Lord; I know them, and they follow me”

In 2007 I made may first trip over to Kolkata, India to work with Mother Teresa’s sisters….I remember before Mass seeing the sisters at the crack of dawn, washing their cloths by hand…..Not a small job and how easy it would be for them to buy a washing machine…Interestingly enough…The same sisters in New York City, one of the wealthiest cities in the world, they wash their cloths by hand as well…..Mother Teresa understood human nature….When human beings get “too comfortable” we forget God….Catholics today throw around the word humility a lot…I know this because I do it too….Mother Teresa, who experienced a tremendous amount of success remained humble….How did she do it?…Because she lived poverty herself…Mother Teresa also said this about the virtue of humility….Something I always remember…..”In order to be humble, one must feel it - To be truly humble one must understand what it means to be humiliated”…..Allow we to translate that…You can’t understand the virtue of humility from reading a book…It must be felt deep within a person…This experience allows a Catholic to understand “the other person” standing directly in front of us….If you ask me…..The Catholic Church in the west, along with our American society is way too comfortable…And because of that…We have gotten “soft”…We need to get back our “edge”….There is an old saying….”Hard times breed strong men”…..Hard times just may be on the horizon - But fear not….Because God plays the “long game”…..Once again - This is what Pope Benedict XVI had to say about what I am attempting to communicate in this reflection:

“From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge — a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes, so it will lose many of her social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age, it will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision. As a small society, it will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members. Undoubtedly it will discover new forms of ministry and will ordain to the priesthood approved Christians who pursue some profession. In many smaller congregations or in self-contained social groups, pastoral care will normally be provided in this fashion. Along-side this, the full-time ministry of the priesthood will be indispensable as formerly. But in all of the changes at which one might guess, the Church will find her essence afresh and with full conviction in that which was always at her center: faith in the triune God, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, in the presence of the Spirit until the end of the world. In faith and prayer she will again recognize the sacraments as the worship of God and not as a subject for liturgical scholarship.

The Church will be a more spiritual Church, not presuming upon a political mandate, flirting as little with the Left as with the Right. It will be hard going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek. The process will be all the more arduous, for sectarian narrow-mindedness as well as pompous self-will will have to be shed. One may predict that all of this will take time. The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution — when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain — to the renewal of the nineteenth century. But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.”

“Trust in him at all times, O my people! Pour out your hearts before him; God is our refuge!”

Today Jesus at Mass tells the leaders of his day to focus….To pay attention, to what you say you believe…..To stop “ticking boxes"….To “see” the person who stands right in front of you!……..Being Catholic is not “rocket science”….It boils down to two ideas…Love God above all things and love your neighbor as yourself…..But look at how easily we get distracted from what should be so simple!!!!!….Maybe one of the “things” that makes us so distracted is we are way too comfortable…..I can hear it now - All the Americans reading this reflection…..This guy is crazy!….He is a socialist - Maybe even a communist?… Before the reader jumps to conclusions - Ask yourself honestly…..Have we gotten too “soft”?……Have we lost God amongst all the “stuff” we have acquired and still want to acquire?…….No one wants to be poor - I get it - But no one ever got poor by sharing…….Humility is the bedrock virtue of all the virtues….Catholics love to “throw” the word humility around a lot…But do we really know what it means to be truly humble?….Those who do - They shake the foundations of the world! - Maybe its time to shake the foundations once again!………JMJ

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