Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XXVIII per Annum C

13 October 2019

 Once we get past Labor Day one presumes most people have settled back into a regular routine with a new academic year under way at schools and a new formation year in full swing at the parish.  Parish programming running full-steam means the parish budget sees a dramatic uptick in expenses.  And this is also a time of year when we have the joy of seeing and greeting new faces who have recently joined the parish.  For all of these reasons it is a fairly common practice in parishes in the early fall to address stewardship, a time to reflect upon and to renew our call to sacrificial giving and our use of time, talent, and treasure.  Stewardship is one of the foundational practices of a disciple who believes in Jesus and who believes what the words mean to say that Jesus is the master of my life.  I previously told you that I would be specifically addressing parish finances and last month I had set this weekend for that talk.  But the recent release of the investigative report of abuse allegations in our archdiocese causes me to conclude that it would be more prudent for me to delay that talk for a few more weeks as we each wrestle with our reactions and pray about our response to that report.  Since it is helpful for current and new parishioners who do not know about or use our electronic giving program, Faith Direct, we are still doing a normal fall promotion of Faith Direct.  Faith Direct materials can be found in the narthex and an invitation will be coming to you by email.  But my more detailed treatment of parish finances and our common responsibility for sacrificial giving will wait until at least next month.  Together with that delay, and as I organized last year, I want you to know that I am taking time to pray and to consider parish opportunities for prayer and penance as our spiritual response to our local report.         

 I think the Gospel selection today teaches us a basic principle for life that applies equally to our spiritual life with God.  That lesson is a two-fold awareness: First, the awareness of ourselves and our afflictions.  And, secondly, the awareness of what God is doing in us.  One of the challenges of modern life marked by its frenetic pace, noise, and interruptions is that we can be easily swept along in daily living with little discipline to spend time in reflection and prayer.  The result is that we can tend to be rather numb and unaware of what stirs within us, the good and the bad.  My friends, we aren’t meant to be machines.  We are a unity of body and soul, mind and heart, reason and faith.  Emphasize the one to the exclusion of the other and you aren’t living a fully human life.  How easily and frequently we bury our faces in the backlit screen of a phone or other device, I think, serves as the sign for how easily we can be swept up in distractions that make us less aware of all that stirs in us.  Distraction is one thing; but the result is my main concern as a pastor.  The result is loss of self-awareness and awareness about God’s work with us and in us.  The Gospel shows us how important this basic principle of awareness is.

I can recall events of life when I have wondered why did I react to a given situation in the way I did?  And I have been surprised upon deeper reflection to realize that my reaction was less about the facts of the given situation and more about something else under the surface.  I can recall times of life when, much to my surprise, I came to realize that something like fear or shame or sadness was the deeper reality that explained my surface reactions.  Maybe you would agree that it is generally better overall health and functioning to be aware of what stirs inside you.  But I suggest there is a still more important reason for awareness than just overall health.  And that reason is because awareness impacts our relationship with God, our admitting the truth of what we each bring to the relationship with God.  And it impacts our ability to notice what God is doing in us.

 I’ll give a couple of examples from my own experience.  It took me years to finally notice and admit anger with God about some experiences of life.  I wondered why my prayer seemed dry or why God seemed distant.  I was tempted to believe He wasn’t there for me, wasn’t there in my attempts to pray.  Imagine my surprise when I realized that God was waiting for me where the anger was.  In other words, it was really I who was not authentically there in prayer.  God was at the place where I really was, where I needed to be… but I had to be aware and admit and go to the anger to find Him.  Another example from just a few years ago was when the priests of the archdiocese were gathered to learn about how we would each run the recent archdiocesan capital campaign in our parishes.  In that gathering, I asked some rather pointed questions, with just enough edginess, that unwittingly I became branded as “the opposition.”  But you know what I realized upon further self-reflection?  My reaction was really fear, more than it was any opposition to the campaign strategy or to the things the campaign would support.  I was afraid to have to directly ask someone for money.  I was afraid of rejection.  I was afraid of having to rely on someone else and to appear needy.  And going still deeper I had to admit it made me insecure, and I don’t like that.  And that is where this awareness took a particularly important spiritual turn.  I had to ask myself, so where do I place my security?  And I had to notice that I wasn’t placing my security in God.  You see, if I know and trust that God is my security then I can both have or not have money or resources and all will be well.  If I have God as my security then I can both give money and resources to others, or receive money and resources from others and its okay.  If I know and trust that God is my security then I can ask someone else for a pledge gift and whether they say yes or no, my security doesn’t change because it is in God and not in a person’s response to the request.  Learning the value of awareness has been for me not only a good life lesson for natural health; it has been a powerful lesson about spiritual health because awareness permits me to be honest, sincere, real, and authentic in my relationship with God.  That in turn helps me take note of what God is doing in me and to then be able to make a response to Him.

 I suggest awareness is a valuable lesson for us from the Gospel today.  It is really quite simple but profound.  It’s a lesson that is easy to miss in the scene with the lepers.  But listen again.  “As [Jesus] was entering a village, ten lepers met him,… saying ‘Jesus, Master!  Have pity on us!’  And when he saw them, he said, ‘Go show yourselves to the priests.’  As they were going they were cleansed.  And one of them, realizing he had been healed, returned, glorifying God… and fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him.”  Only one of them realized.  It’s the lesson of awareness.  And it had a direct impact on the healed leper’s relationship with God because that awareness led him back to Jesus in a posture of worship (he fell at his feet) and in gratitude.  Leprosy is a clear affliction, a disease.  But the truth is we each have and carry afflictions, both physical and spiritual, some obvious and public, like leprosy would be; others, more subtle or hidden.  Perhaps it is those hidden spiritual diseases that are even more dangerous than something like an obvious physical disease.  I say, “more dangerous,” because we can remain unaware of hidden disease, or we can simply hide it, leaving it unconfessed and unaddressed.  Is our awareness of our afflictions and awareness of what God is doing in us a critical lesson with spiritual implications?  I think so.  I think the Gospel shows us just how much is riding on awareness.  The passage doesn’t tell us everything that happened with the other nine healed lepers.  We know they were physically healed.  But what about deeper healing in their relationship with God?  What about the deeper matter of their salvation?  Can we know anything about that?  I think we can.  For only one of the ten – the one who was aware and realized – heard these words: “Stand up and go; your faith has saved you.”