Fifth Sunday of Easter, Cycle B
Actions speak loudest
Just as Saint Paul advised, my grandfather, a man of few words, lived in deed and truth. May we all find a way to do the same.
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Just as Saint Paul advised, my grandfather, a man of few words, lived in deed and truth. May we all find a way to do the same.
People who hear voices when no one is around are considered peculiar, yet we all hear voices in our heads. Some are loud, some soft and subtle, but they are there.
The 1987 Danish film Babette’s Feast tells the story of two sisters in a remote 19th-century Danish village who never marry and live a rigid life dominated by their father, the pleasure-denying pastor of their austere church. Both sisters had opportunities to leave the village. But their father objected and they instead spent their lives caring for him.
Have you ever played the game “Where’s Waldo” with a preschooler? The premise is simple. You have to find the character Waldo somewhere in a densely drawn cartoon. Despite being low tech it surprisingly holds one’s interest.
At a family dinner one year, we all went around the table and said what we were giving up for Lent. It was the typical litany of sacrifices that people usually make. My nephew, Patrick, who was 4 years old at the time, was also there, pushing the food he didn’t want to eat around his plate, not caring at all about our adult discussion.
The first day of Holy Week is Passion Sunday. Its more popular title, Palm Sunday, evokes the waving branches, the Hosannas, the welcoming “red carpet” made of the robes and garments of the crowd. The branches in our hands today place us squarely in the crowd. And crowds can have power. Think of recent political “bloodless” revolutions, of Je suis Charlie, of the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2013, or the effect of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s March for Peace in 1965.
In Saint Pope John Paul II’s final years, his dramatic physical decline and the ever more visible and enfeebling effects of Parkinson’s disease led some to call for him to step down and let a younger, more vigorous man lead the worldwide church. They claimed he was no longer up to the demands of the job. But they missed the central grace of John Paul II’s last years—his visible, embodied witness to the suffering of all humanity.
HYPOTHESIS: Light is necessary for life. Thus began my young daughter’s science fair project. To prove her simple hypothesis, she proceeded to plant six bean seeds in pots and place three on a sunny window sill and three under a bed. By day 14, the three seeds on the window sill were showing signs of life with little sprouts shooting through the soil. The seeds in darkness were showing no activity. Hypothesis apparently proved. Conclusions were drawn.
I can say with some level of certainty that most of us keep more laws than we break. There are international, federal, state, and local laws. There are church laws, natural law, the laws of science, of averages, and, if I keep on listing them, a good example of the law of diminishing return. Today we hear the familiar Ten Commandments. We also hear the story of Jesus so angry at the sellers and money changers in the temple that he physically confronts them.
South African professional golfer Retief Goosen admits he was a bad-tempered boy who used to smash his clubs in frustration—sometimes several per round. According to his mother, he was extremely outgoing in his youth—until he was 15 and he was struck by lightning while playing golf. The bolt knocked him unconscious and burnt all his clothes off his body; his shoes disintegrated and his watch melted to his wrist. Goosen spent two months recovering in the hospital, and after he emerged, his feisty emotions fizzled and his gregariousness gave way to calm. Now known for his cool reserve under pressure, Goosen’s nickname is “Iceman.”
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