My 'Preaching Debut'

One of the purposes of the various parish assignments we're given as seminarians is to expose us to the needs, tastes, and different styles of several parish communities. I very important element of that exposure includes getting feedback on our preaching. Yesterday, I preached my first reflection here at St. John's at the daily Mass.

All in all, it went smoothly and was well received. Most people told me that they liked what I had to say, that I said it clearly, and that the reflection was easy to understand and my point came across. The consensus was that I need to work a bit on my style; they said I talked a bit too slow and needed to be more 'conversational' in my delivery. Also, the length of my reflection was more appropriate for a Sunday Mass than a weekday Mass (close to five minutes). Fr. Jack suggested that I shoot for a two-and-a-half minute, tops, "pious puff." I can't wait to try again next week! It really means a lot to me to be able to get that kind of feedback because I know that the people here are honest.

I thought that some of you might be interested in what I said, so I'm posting that as well. I decided to focus on the Gospel reading for the day which was Matt. 7:6, 12-14. (The other readings for the day were from Genesis 13:2, 5-18 and Ps. 15:2-3a, 3bc-4ab, 5 in case you're curious.) Here's what I said:

I think it is particularly important to make sure we consider what the first line of today’s gospel might mean. “Do not give what is holy to dogs, or throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them underfoot, and turn and tear you to pieces” (Matt. 7:6). Just what does this mean on a practical level? Who are we supposed to understand by ‘dogs’ and ‘swine,’ and just what is it that we’re being told to do or not to do? I think what we see here is some of the wisest advice on spreading the good news of Jesus Christ that we get in all of the New Testament.

I’m sure all of us here today, when we get right down to it, are here because we have seen first-hand the value and necessity of our Christian faith in dealing with all of the struggles life brings our way. I highly doubt that any of us here is a stranger to tragedy or hardship in some way, but one other thing we have in common is an ability to look back and say, “God has done some wonderful things for me.” Maybe it is on account of great blessings we have received undeservedly, or perhaps it is because of the strength that God’s grace has imparted to us during a particularly rough time that we can say this. Either way, I think it is impossible to come away from these experiences of God’s love and care for us without thinking, “Everyone needs to know this in their lives; everyone needs to hear just how reliable and wonderful a relationship with God is, how comforting a relationship with his church is.”

Unfortunately, I’m sure we all have also had the experience of having our faith and feelings dismissed, sometimes even by someone we are close to and care about deeply. This can feel like an absolute slap in the face; one of my closest friends is an atheist who thinks of religion as little more than something ‘nice’ that basically amounts to some kind of security blanket for adults, and I often wonder, then, what he must think about what I’m doing with my life.

The advice we get in this first line of today’s gospel is telling us, very frankly, how to handle such people in our lives. We must recognize who is ready to hear what we have to say, who isn’t ready, and we must accept the fact that it will cause us nothing but needless pain and anxiety if we try to share the message of God’s love with someone who is not ready to listen. However, this does not mean that we sit back and do nothing. Rather, we must heed the words we hear in the rest of this gospel reading along with the words of today’s psalm: we must act with justice, be faithful to the truth, avoid harming anybody, make our living by honest means, treat others the way we wish to be treated, and live this way daily, even when no one else is and we feel alone and are without any support and it is just so hard to keep going on like this… Because, throughout it all, we are being watched, and it is
by watching us persevere in our faith in Jesus Christ that hearts will be softened and made open to the peace and comfort we have to bring, and ears be made ready to listen to the words of salvation we have to speak.

Feel free to comment too, if you'd like! Until next time...

Love & Blessings,

~J

St. John the Baptist Parish Picnic

This past Sunday afternoon, I experienced the first major social event at my summer assignment: the first (in a long time and now possibly annual) St. John's Parish Picnic. It was a fun afternoon with burgers, dogs, and quite the spread of all the necessary picnic accessories. We had chips, dips, salads, sides, and more! All of them delicious! Though I must say that Dirt Pudding was conspicuously absent from the dessert spread... hmm... perhaps I will have to introduce the people of St. John's to this delicacy....

Even without the Dirt Pudding, we still had a very good turn out. About seventy people signed up to bring food, and I would say we had just about one hundred people drop by over the course of three hours. I got to meet many of the families in the parish, and I hope that I will get to meet all the people I never had a chance to chat with at the picnic very soon. There was just such a nice atmosphere at the picnic, the kind of atmosphere that only arises when you bring good people together; I want to get to know them all, even if only a little bit.

That's really all I have to say about the picnic, except that I'm hoping to post at least a few more pictures soon. I want to ask for people's permission though, first, especially before I put any kids' pictures up. There were a lot of kids at the picnic, getting their faces painted and chowing down on snow cones and cotton candy. That was a big part of what made the atmosphere so pleasant, I think. The happiness of children is contagious.

Love and Blessings,
~J

Seminarians' Summer Gathering

This past week, we (all of the seminarians in my diocese not on C.P.E., plus one guy doing his chaplaincy training for the Navy) had a wonderful experience of at Christ the King Spirituality Center in Greenwich, NY. It was a great opportunity to step back from the academic work of the year and really shift gears for the work of our summer assignments. One part retreat (preached by Fr. Eric from the diocese of Little Rock) and one part social gathering, the Seminarians' Summer Gathering is an annual event last about four days and three nights. Its purpose is to give all of us seminarians a chance to pray together and form some stronger social bonds that will translate into a priestly base of friendship and support after ordination and to provide a forum in which to address some important spiritual and human formation issues.

The theme of this year's gathering focused on the priest as the one who 'stands in the gap' between the mundane and the sacred. Fr. Eric's talks were centered around the necessity of the priest being able to point the way to heaven for his people and the various practical ways in which the priest must structure his life in order to be able to do this effectively. The specific topics of the conferences ranged from appropriate boundaries between pastor and parishioner to the prayer life of the priest, but all looked to emphasizing the necessity of not getting bogged down in the administrative drudgery that can sometimes clog the daily schedule of a parish priest. All in all, Fr. Eric was a good presenter and he touched on some very practical topics that I'm sure we will all find valuable throughout the rest of our formation and after ordination. Thanks, Fr. Eric!

Now, I want to say a few words the Christ the King Spirituality Center. First of all, THIS PLACE IS ENORMOUS!!! Below is a shot from one of the high points on the property with the Great Hall and Welcome Center in the background, just before the last row of trees. I would estimate that this shot only takes in about 7% of the property associated with CTK.



There is a lot I wish I could have captured with my camera, but unfortunately, I forgot that I had even brought it with me until the last two days of the gathering! Oops! Oh well, what I'm including here are some shots mostly from a walk up to a gazebo above St. Mary's Convent some of us took at dusk on our last night at CTK Spirituality Center. The vistas are absolutely gorgeous from up there, well worth the little hike up the hill from the convent. In the picture below, you can see that I'm looking just a bit to the left of the above shot so you can still see the Great Hall in the background and now also St. Mary's convent in the foreground.

The views to the East were the prettiest; one can see miles of farmland interspersed between the rows of hills.

All of our meetings took place in the library... there was a piano... Matt found it... 'nuff said.

I'll leave you with this parting shot... a group of well-rested and rejuvenated seminarians (who had all slept on some of the best beds ever to be found in a retreat center).

The Wonders of Medical Science

So, my friend Jessica is really smart. A biochemistry major at Le Moyne, she now does cancer research in Chicago. One of my experiences during this trip was to visit Jess's lab. While I had seen part of her lab during my visit last year, I hadn't gotten to see the most important area for her work: the mouse room. The most important part of Jess's job is to keep track of which mice families carry the genes crucial to her lab's research. She must take DNA samples from every mouse, test it, and if it shows the necessary genes, she must then breed it, if not... well... that's the nasty part of her job. Mice not having the right genes must not be allowed to breed and therefore have to be euthanized.

The room where the mice are kept is quite secure for many good reasons. The pictures to the left show Jess, Kavita, Chris, Jess's family, and me doning sterile gowns, hair nets, booties, the whole nine yards, well outside the mouse room just so that we can't infect the mice with any microbes. (The building itself has many card-swipe-access-only areas so that only employees of the lab may enter. This is to prevent, I'm quite sure, animal rights groups from coming in and trashing the labs or releasing the animals, and probably to keep out anyone who might try to pirate the research data as well.) It was in interesting experience having to put on all of that gear. I've never had to look at myself as a health-threat before. I mean, I can remember when my cousins were babies and I was a little kid that there were concerns over how close I might get to them, whether or not it would be safe for me to hold them, did I wash my hands and so on, but this was a whole different ball game.

Because of the security, I was unable to take any pictures of the mice themselves, or of any of the other equipment around, though I must tell you that I was impressed with the sheer complexity of the equipment required to sustain this ongoing experiment. The mouse room holds a veritable maze of air filtration systems, water treatment systems, and waste disposal lines; the level of engineering sophistication required to do the biological research accurately, safely, and as humanely as possible is truly amazing.

The room itself did smell like an understaffed pet-shop... you can use your imagination on that one... and the lighting was strange. (During the time we visited, the light settings were mimicking night-time.) But beyond that, or perhaps because of this strangeness, I began to think about how much of our modern lives depend upon this very kind of environment. I don't want to launch into a diatribe about the ethics of animal testing or in any way, shape, form or manner, to lend credibility to the practices of organizations like PETA, but nearly every pill we take and every cosmetic product we use has come out of animal testing. In Jess's lab, the mice are deliberately given various kinds of tumors so that new drugs can be tested on them. It was sad to see some of these mice suffering through that kind of ordeal. To those who will read this and say, "Who gives a ****, it's only a mouse?!" I reply, "That mouse might very well loose its life so that your loved one can reap the benefit of some new miracle drug ten years from now; that point ought to give you some pause. The role that seemingly insignificant mouse plays in this world might very well save your life too." The late philosopher Emmanuel Levinas made the point that everyone's existence is contingent upon the death of the Other; our very lives are lethal. I couldn't help but think just how far down the line that metaphysical/ethical point bears truth as I stood there inhaling that nasty smell of mouse droppings, wood chips, and sanitizer watching hundreds of catalogued mice scurry around their cages, trying to go about their natural mousy business.

All in all, I must say that the visit to the lab was a positive experience. Tthought-provoking to be sure, but also on the personal level I consider it to be of great value to have a deeper understanding of what it is that my friend Jess faces on an average work-day. The work I do now as a seminarian, in most respects, is far easier than what she must deal with. I, as a general rule, don't have to be concerned that those to whom I minister will ever bite me unless I grab them firmly by the tail and lift them off the ground! (Thank God!) My work is also far less heady, and I'm not excluding the ad nauseam attendance of philosophy classes when I say that! Her work is certain to have far reaching and long-term positive consequences, and so will mine... but only God willing. Perhaps in some ways Jess's work is more exciting than mine, but I wouldn't classify it as being more interesting or more challenging all things considered. I don't think she would either. There is stress in both of our work-lives over what is at stake: she must take great care not to infect her mice with harmful bacteria and viruses thus jeopardizing years of painstaking research; I must take great care not to infect the people I encounter with cinicism, anger, greed, jealousy, or any other spiritual contagions thus endangering their relationship with God. Ultimately, the end goal of the work Jess does is to bring healing into the world. This could be said of what I do as a seminarian, namely, the ways I talk to people in social situations, the talks I give, the work I do in soup kitchens and Sunday School classrooms... though, it is a very different kind of healing I'm hoping to bring... and I wouldn't trade that healing for all the disposable sterile gowns in the world!

God Bless,
~J