The Greatest Compliment Ever Given

Yesterday our Bible study covered the readings for September 23, 2014. The gospel was Luke 8:19-21, a very short but very dense gospel.

The mother of Jesus and his brothers came to him
but were unable to join him because of the crowd.
He was told, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside
and they wish to see you.”
He said to them in reply, “My mother and my brothers
are those who hear the word of God and act on it.”

Of course, the first question to address was whether Jesus really meant to dis His mother like that. Leaving aside the question of Jesus' "brothers," which is a predictable and necessary issue to address for Catholics, the statement still seems like a terrible thing to say. After His mother walked who knows how many miles to see her Son, who hadn't been in town for a long time and wasn't going to be around for a long time in all likelihood. After all that trouble, He doesn't even take the time to see her or say anything to her. He just keeps on doing what He is doing. The question in Matthew 12:48 is even harsher: "Who is my mother? And who are my brothers?"

But what if you "invert the question" as my brother would say? (He talks theology like it's a slightly more complicated math problem.) Instead of Jesus saying, "Mom? What Mom?" He is inverting the question. "My mother? Do you want to be like her? Listen to the word of God and do it. You are my mother, my brothers, my sister, my family, if you hear the Word of my Father. I am the Word that was in the beginning. Listen to what I say and do as I do, and you are my own. My family."

He is not bringing His mother down, He is raising us up.

But there is more to it. In a way He is also paying Her the greatest compliment that it is possible for

God to pay a human. Take a look at it from her point of view for a second. After not seeing her son for weeks or months, walking for hours, and likely not to see Him again for months more, she is turned away at the door, so to speak. How did she take it? The same way she responded to every other action of God in her life: "Be it done unto me, according to thy will."

Imagine you have a friend or family member, who is so close with you, loves you so much, that you can go over to his house any time you want, day or night. If he isn't home you can open it up with the spare key under the loose brick, help yourself to his food and drink his beer and read his books. When he gets home he is completely thrilled to see you (unless you drink his last beer, my brother points out.)

Or say that I go running with my brother, who is much faster than I am. He isn't going to leave me behind, but he isn't going to take it easy on me either. He is going to run as fast as I can follow, and he is going to expect me to suck up the pain and suffer through it. He expects suffering, he expects courage, he expects me to push myself. 

Or say I ask my wife to keep me on track regarding a habit of sarcasm. She will take me seriously, and she will expect me to take her reminders humbly and with good grace. She will expect me to grow.

Now go back to Jesus and Mary. She wanted to see her Son. Her desire was denied, because He had a mission. Dozens, or even hundreds of people needed Him at that moment, and He desired to give Himself to them. With all the Love in the Eternity of the Godhead, He desired to share Himself with each one of those people. His mother loved Him, so much that she desired for Him what He most desired for Himself. She loved all of those people because He loved them, and willingly sacrificed her desire to see Him. 

This would continue until she stood at the foot of the cross, suffering with her Son, offering Him to the world, to you and I, as the best she has to offer. This was the compliment He offered her, the greatest compliment possible for a good person. I hold, and always will hold, that the greatest compliment you can offer to a good person is to invite them to become better, to become the best they can be.

God offered Mary the opportunity to take part in His work, to accept along with Him the sufferings and self-donation. He offered her the hard road of the cross, as the greatest gift, the greatest compliment it was in His power to give, expecting Her to accept the loss of Him, because He knew that she was given the grace to accept it, and He trusted in her love and faith. Seen like this, this short gospel passage becomes even more beautiful and amazing. 

More amazing still, she invites us to join her in suffering with her Son. 

Mary, Mother of Our Savior, Pray for Us.

Deep Roots

"As to this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you made careful searches and inquiries, seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as He predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves, but you, in these things which now have been announced to you." 1 Peter 1:10-12a

"Truly I say to you, among those born of women there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist! Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he." Matthew 11:11

"Ryan, you do realize that you can't impress God, right?" Fr. Matthew Pawlikowski, LTC(Ch) U. S. Army 

Ever since I was a kid I dreamed of doing great things. My head was filled with stories of knights in armor, kings, saints, explorers, sages, writers. I have always dreamed of leaving my mark on the world, hopefully for the better. I did not want to be average. I wanted my name to be known and to influence the lives of hundreds of people, or thousands. These dreams have taken a multitude of shapes and have led me to do extraordinary things. They led me to sacrifice a decade of my life to the military with ruthless single-mindedness. The caused me to spend my life trying to build myself up into a warrior and a scholar, in the hopes that when the opportunity came, I would be ready to step up to the plate. 

These dreams all have one thing in common. None of them have come true. I find myself in the odd position of having spent my life thus far chasing the means, and being (it seems) no closer to the ends than I ever was. The means fail to satisfy, as they inevitably must, and I, like everyone from time to time, am left with a feeling that I am wasting my life and my gifts. 

At times like this, you need someone who loves you, because she (assuming that it is in fact a she, although a he could do it in a pinch, though not in the same way) will see you more clearly than you can see yourself. If she is close to God, she will be able to give you just a tiny glimpse of how God sees you also, which is the only point of view that really matters in the end.

She will point out that no life is wasted that is lived with love; that ultimately it is up to God to put a value on your life, not you; and that simply because you cannot see the fruit of your actions, that does not mean that they are not or will not bear fruit. 

She will remind you of the great cathedrals, like Notre Dame, which took ninety years to build from 1160-1250, and even when the main construction was finished in 1250, remodeling and other building processes on smaller elements continued for almost another hundred years. The men who broke their backs and spent the the strength of their youth laying the foundations of this magnificent act of worship, never saw its completion. They were long since dead, having left behind a solid base to build upon and strong sons to build upon it. They left millions of tons of rock in the ground, and the Rock of faith in the hearts of the next generation. Even that generation would not live long to enjoy the completed cathedral. Ninety years is a long time. Three generations of men could put in thirty good years of labor on that one building before any of them would see it completed. Did the old gaffer who spent his entire life putting tons of anonymous gravel into an oddly shaped pit by hand, waste that life?

I took a trip to about a year ago to give a talk at John Paul the Great Academy in Lafeyette, LA. The school is housed in an old monastery that the school purchased in a miracle $10,000,000.00 fund raising campaign last summer. The grounds and building are beautiful, old, immaculately kept by volunteers without pay, the perfect venue for a classical Catholic education. The school was established by local Catholic families who simply wanted an alternative to the larger and more expensive parochial schools, or the public schools. They put a lot of time and effort into making this school a thriving organization. It is not an exaggeration to say that they offered up their "lives, fortunes and sacred honor," to providing a worthy education for their children.

One of the things that most struck me about the school grounds, one of its most amazing features, are the trees. (Just so you know, I love trees!) The grounds of JPG Academy are full of gorgeous old oak trees, all well over a hundred years old.

This one was my favorite!

 
The trees are a great metaphor for the school itself, especially the trees that line the front drive. They were originally planted back at the turn of the century, and then ten or twelve years later dug up and moved again to make the lane wider to accommodate automobiles. Now, over a hundred years later, they shade the drive up from the road to the school building. The contrast is unreal. You turn off of a fairly busy country highway, which was baking in the August Louisiana sunshine when I was there, and find yourself in a long, quiet, cool, peaceful tunnel. The tunnel leads you gently away from the noise of traffic and the heat of the exposed highway into the school grounds, and the great old stone building, and the shade of ancient trees, and the sounds of children's laughter. 

Some man saw all of that, or perhaps only part of it (he probably did not foresee it being a school) and he designed and commissioned the driveway. He chose trees of good stock and set their roots in good soil. His successors tended those trees, as just one of their many responsibilities, keeping the Spanish moth and diseases in check, weeding around them, keeping the lawns, maintaining the pavement, cutting back the ivy when it showed up. They did not see the drive as I saw it.

And I did not see it as God sees it. But God does, and that is all that matters.

Greatness is worth striving for, as is renown and influence and changing the world. All of these are good to aspire to, mostly so that you will learn faster that they are illusions, and the only greatness that matters is the greatness of doing God's will, doing the work that He gives you to do, and doing it well, forgetting about yourself and your own glory and simply looking at Him.

He is all that matters.

These Things Endure



Blessing has a way of being passed on, like ripples in a pond. We call it many things: karma, luck, positive thinking, God's favor, as if God was up there bribing us with blessings to do what he wants us to do.

 

Say rather that God has created the universe out of love, patterned after love, and built upon love. Anything done out of love takes part in the nature of the universe because it imitates the God who created the universe. One who builds his life on the foundation of love and truth, establishes a house built upon rock. Upon that foundation blessings will be laid for many generations to come, even to the ending of time, because God sees that it is strong enough to hold them.

 

But this is no guarantee that bad things won't also happen, no matter how well you build. There will still be heartache, pain, sadness, loss, and death. Sometimes we ask why bad things can happen to good people. This is a silly thing to ask. One may as well ask why storms hit both the weak houses and the strong houses. The storms are coming, whether you build your house on sand or on rock. Build on rock, not because it will keep your house out of the storm, but so that when the storm comes, your house will have a fighting chance.

 

This picture was taken on November 11, 2011, shortly after I graduated the US Army Special Forces Qualification Course and received my green beret. It was the last time I ever saw my grandfather. I put almost 3 years of sweat and blood into earning that silly green hat. G'Pa put 74 years of his life into building a legacy of Faith, Family, Pizza and Beer. The green hat means nothing, if at the end of my life I do not leave behind me a legacy of love, like the one which this old, bald, toothless hero left behind him.

Ted Pelicano, May 27, 1937 - November 26, 2011

"But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." Joshua 24:15

Generations

Generations


For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. Exodus 20:5-6

The phrase “Jealous God,” is one of those knee jerk phrases, and this is one of those knee jerk verses. Automatically it puts a sour taste in the mouth of modern Americans. We have a problem with God being jealous, and we have a problem with God punishing children for the sins of the parents. How can a loving, merciful God punish an innocent child for an infraction of His cosmic preferences that he did not even commit? How can this be the action even of a just God? And yet, the people who hate this verse tend to hate it on face value without considering the context, and in this instance I am not talking of the context within Scriptures. I am talking about the context of real life. People who hate this verse (myself included, since I wrestled with it a bit at one point in my life) hate it without pausing to think about what this would look like in the world we live in.

In life, actions have consequences. This is how God designed the universe. When I act, that act ripples outward and outward, both in the results I expect and in the unintended consequences. There is no way human wisdom and foresight can predict all the consequences of an action, or a series of actions, or a life.

So what does that verse look like in real life?

A week ago, my maternal Grandfather died. He was 74 years old. He was born in 1937 in a state mental institution. His maternal grandfather was committed to the violent ward of a state mental institution following a head injury that left him with a complete and dangerous personality change. His mother had suffered a mental breakdown following some months after her divorce and was also committed to a state mental institution. There is no way of knowing at this point who his biological father was, but Grandpa was born in that institution about eight months after her commitment, and immediately turned over to state custody. Before he was 18 months old he had been scalded with boiling water and struck by a car. He never knew his biological parents, and was never adopted, though he eventually spent his childhood and youth with a single foster family. On face value it would seem that Grandpa was dealt a bad hand right from the get-go. The choices of his parents and their parents had consequences in his life, real consequences that really hurt him. That is real life. Our bad choices hurt people who come after us.

But, fast forward 74 years to the day of his death. Grandpa died, beloved of his family, a faithful member of the church, wise, at peace, ready. He served in the Air Force during the Cold War, he remained a faithful Catholic, married in the Church, raised his children in the faith, designed and built electronics, made furniture, fixed cars, followed the fortunes of our nation through good and bad, with prayer and work right up to the end. His 8 children, 42 grandchildren, and 7 great-grandchildren are all souls that would not have existed otherwise. The life of faith, family and country are our life blood. We have soldiers and sailors, artists and business men, actors and students, movie makers, activists, entrepreneurs, farmers, mechanics, designers, husbands and fathers, wives and mothers, teenagers, children, and babies.

Think about that for a second. In some ways he was dealt a bad hand. In fact, if Grandpa were conceived under similar circumstances today, there is a large segment of the population who would consider it an act of mercy to abort him. He was reaping the consequences of the choices of those who came before him, but God was also working. Grandpa was put in good foster homes, and allowed to grow up in one home for his whole childhood. He took what he was given, and he made his own choices, and now we reap the benefits of those choices.

That is what I see when I read that verse from Exodus. God is not sitting up in heaven trying to keep bad things going for three or four generations. He doesn’t need to. Bad things keep going by themselves. That is not a threat of vengeance, but a promise of mercy. It is only because of God’s intervention that the consequences are limited to those few generations. On the other hand, no one can know, no one can even begin to imagine the good that will come from one life lived well. God longs to pour out blessings, good things, life to the full, if only we would cooperate. A life lived with faith is an open door. Through that door God is allowed into the world, and runs riot with good things for everyone, until other doors, closed and shut by selfishness or ignorance or fear, stop Him.

Mercy is the fundamental reality, or to put it another way, Love is all there is. Live that reality, and let God into the world. You have no idea what will come of it, but it will be good. It will be greater than you can possibly imagine.

The Shepherd

I had a man come into the ER one day. He was 94 years old. He had had diarrhea for two days, and then that morning he had felt tired and drowsy. So much so that he didn’t go out to walk his sheep to pasture and watch them all day, as he had done every day for nearly a century, with hardly any breaks. His daughter had gotten nervous and brought him into the ER. He spoke very little English, but he told his story with no frills and no fuss. It was not a big deal to him. His daughter supplied the nervousness. We drew some blood to check for all the usual suspects, i.e. infection, diabetes, anemia, etc. We hooked him up to a line of normal saline because we figured after two days of diarrhea he would be a bit dehydrated. Then we got a 12 lead EKG, which showed a rhythm that many 50 year olds would envy.


You have to picture him as I saw him, to understand. He was old, with a typical broad, Navajo face burned almost coffee brown from years of weather. He was very tall. I would bet he was once over six feet, and even now he stood with very little stoop and was as tall as I was. He wore tight jeans and cowboy boots, and a belt with an enormous buckle, a flannel button up shirt and a white cowboy hat. All his clothes were well worn, but clean, as if he had gotten dressed up to come to the hospital. When I went to look for a vein to stick him with the IV I saw that his arms were still thick and ropy, with great, gnarly veins like worms coursing under splotchy brown skin. He had the same perpetual farmer’s tan my Dad and Grandfather always had. He sat bolt upright on the end of the bed, kicking his legs like an impatient two year old, until we asked him to slide back against the raised head of the bed. He hopped his feet up onto the end of the bed and scooted on back with ease and when I asked him, through his daughter as an interpreter, whether that had made him tired, he took a deep, exaggerated breath and shook his head with studied nonchalance. “No.”

Bless his heart, that old man wasn’t giving us an inch. I rejoiced to see his pride.

So I got his history and did a physical exam. I had a hard time listening to his lungs through the thick, solid muscles of his back. His daughter said he used to be a very powerful man when he was younger. All I can say is, if I make it to ninety, may I be in that kind of shape. He told us a bit about his experiences as an artillery man in Europe in WWII, and seemed to be much more interested in that story than in being too tired to walk the sheep for one day.

We left him with a specimen cup and instructions to give us a urine specimen as soon as he could. I wanted to check for a UTI (Urinary Tract Infection). It’s always in the back of your mind for old people with unexplained sudden general malaise. But then again, so is pneumonia, G.I. bleed, septicemia, etc. You have to rule out problems by system, there are so many possible issues.

Over the next couple of ours the labs were backed up with patients and so were we, but the old Shepherd’s results came in a little at a time. I checked in on him from time to time. I listened to his lungs to make sure the fluid we were giving him intravenously didn’t go to his lungs. It can do that with old people if their kidneys aren’t working well. After a couple of hours all the blood was back, but he still hadn’t given us any urine. He kept insisting he couldn’t go, which made me suspect he was even more dehydrated than we thought, although these desert folks are probably always down a percent or two from what textbooks would consider optimum. One time I checked on him, he was sitting in the bed twiddling his thumbs (literally) with a frustrated look on his face, and he asked if he could go yet. We told him we couldn’t let him go until we checked the urine. He sighed and looked at the urinal, and then asked us and his daughter to leave. Five minutes later the specimen was at lab.

It turned out nothing was wrong with him. EKG, Chest X-ray, CBC, CMP and UA all negative. All his numbers were probably almost as good as mine. He probably just got a viral gastroenteritis and was feeling sluggish simply because of the dehydration. We let the nurses give him a sandwich and some juice and tell him he could go as soon as he wanted. He ate the sandwich, put his shirt and hat back on and left with his wide, hip swinging stumping walk in those old, beat up, carefully cleaned cowboy boots.

I loved that old man. He was a man with true greatness of soul. He had found something that he loved, that brought him peace, and he was going to do it, and keep doing it. Never mind that his life was slowly drawing to a close. The sheep still needed to go out to pasture every day. He still chose to spend every day alone out in the open air and sun of the Arizona desert, still ate the traditional diet of mutton and fry-bread, still lived and kept close to his children. Someday I think they will find him lying alone and still out on the mesa, and I envy him that death. That is a life truly lived, lived so well that not even the growing onset of death can interfere with him in his business of living his life.

That is true greatness of soul.