27th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Our readings for the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time are:

1. Habakuk 1: 2-3, 2:2-4
2. Psalms 95: 1-2, 6-7, 8-9
3. 2 Timothy 1: 6-8, 13-14
4. Luke 17: 5-10

• Persevere or give up?
• No one wants to work and not see any results.  Faith, hope, and love work together.  Faith tells us that God is operating, whether we see Him or not.  Hope tells us that His work will bring about good.  Love guides us so that our actions can support His.
• What are you hoping for?  Do you think that "things" are improving?
• If you're old enough to remember the 60s, for many, that was a season of great hope, a time when change for the better was possible.  How have those dreams turned out?
• Do you see any forces for change for the better in our world today?
• How can we, as God's children, awaken our world to something better?

• Prove to me that you care
• God's people were in the desert without direction, no maps, terrible cell phone coverage, and their flocks were dying of thirst.  Clearly Moses had gotten it all wrong and some horrid mistake has happened here.
• Have you ever had a calamity in your life?  Some event that suddenly eclipsed everything else that you were doing, grabbed center stage in your life, and would not let go?
• What was your prayer life during that period?
• Do you think that you were particularly sensitive to God's guidance?
• What would have helped during that time of crisis?

• The good old days
• The reactionary finds all of their answers in the past.  They are convinced that somehow, we took the wrong off ramp and left behind some critical piece of our rightful heritage, and that's why we are in the mess that we find ourselves in.
• An authentic reform often looks to the past, not to return there, but to learn from who we have been, to discern who we are becoming, and be more faithful to that ongoing emerging, that ongoing act of creation.
• Who are you becoming?  Is today's you a better person than the one that you left behind 20 years ago (if you've been alive that long).  Is today's you a better person than the one that you left behind 10 years ago?
• Who are we becoming?  What role do you have in that larger emergence?
• How can we be more attuned to God's guidance along the way?

• Virtue is its own reward
• Think of someone that you would describe as a person of great faith.
• What makes you think of them that way?
• How do you think that they attained that faith?
• Is faith a gift, a consequence of our work, a grace?
• If you had greater faith, what would you do with it?
• What's stopping you?

• Preparation for Reconciliation:

1. How am I making this world, God's Kingdom, a better place?
2. What should I be praying for today?
3. How/what is God creating in me today?
4. How am I exercising my faith today?

Baptismal Font

My scientific mind knows that the water flows 
over the top of the font
Down the sides
And into a pump.
And starts all over again.

But the poet within me sees something far grander.
An entire ecology, gazed at through the eyes of water.
Gently warmed and wafted into the heavens.
There to form clouds and come back as rain.
Flowing through secret channels to join a bubbling brook.

All of the earth cloaked,
Soothed
Nourished
Bathed
In its waters.

My memory can recall Easter Vigils held there.
Eager, yet frightened elect
Immersing themselves in the font
Attentive alter servers with towels at the ready
And an entire gathered assembly holding its breath

As a new life blossoms from within that person
As a new life blossoms from within us at that Mass
As a new life blossoms from within our parish
As a new life blossoms from within the heart of God
Bringing us all into His life, with, in, and through all that all of us bring.

And so, as each of us sprang from the dust in the Garden so long ago,
We are watered continually again and again

Lord, let me never look at water without seeing You.
Without seeing the entire earth that you have created us in and through.
Keep me ever mindful of those who are lost, alone, marginalized.
Remind me of those of your children without clean water to drink,
Without the fellowship of loved ones to sustain them.

I dip my fingers into the font,
But all of me plunges in.
Let me ever arise anew in You.
Strengthened in all of You, everywhere, every one.
That you and I may be one in everyone.

Shalom!