COULDN'T KEEP IT TO MYSELF

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In Mark's gospel (1:40) Jesus heals a leper and then promptly tells hm "You mustn't tell anyone about this."  Think about the poor guy's situation. He's been living as a victim of a disease that made him an outcast, that excluded him from every aspect of life in his community. Then this man touches him and heals him of his disease, so that suddenly he has his life back. He is able to live with his family and go to the market and the synagogue and wherever else his wants. His life will never be the same. 

But Jesus commands him solemnly not to tell anybody about it. In Mark's gospel there is this theme that the scholars call "the messianic secret," describing Jesus' constantly telling people not to tell anyone that he is the messiah (because for the Jews of that time, the messiah was a military and political figure, the complete opposite of Jesus's understanding of his identity).

In any case, the newly healed man, immediately goes and starts spreading the wonderful news that he has been cured. There's a gospel song that goes "I said I wasn't gonna tell nobody, but I couldn't keep it to myself." Naturally I think of this song whenever someone in the gospel disregards Jesus' command to be silent about some miraculous event.

The words to that song are a great source of meditation: "I said I wasn't gonna tell nobody, but I couldn't keep it to myself." Mahalia Jackson sings it slowly and reflectively, but I prefer the more lively and upbeat rendition I once heard from the choir at Blessed Sacrament Church in Newark. For me, the reason I'd sing the song so brightly and up-tempo is that I'm so overjoyed because of God's gift to me that I have to just shout out my enthusiasm.

This enthusiastic response is, it seems to me, what my life as a Christian needs to be. I have no right to "keep it to myself" when God has given me so many people who love me, for example, and so many talents, good health, and so on.

When someone says something that offends me, or does something to me that I consider rude, I need to remember that I have experienced God's boundless forgiveness myself. Do I have the right to just keep that experience to myself? No. I need to share that forgiveness with this person who has offended me.
"I said I wasn't gonna tell nobody, but I couldn't keep it to myself." 

 The Lord has been so good to me, so loving that, like that healed leper in the gospel, I just can't keep it to myself; I need to pass it on to people who need a word of encouragement or a thoughtful gesture to make their burden a little lighter.
"I said I wasn't gonna tell nobody, but I couldn't keep it to myself." 

My way of treating or talking about others should be telling them that I've personally experienced God's loving kindness in my life, and that I'm just naturally passing it on.
"I said I wasn't gonna tell nobody, but I couldn't keep it to myself." 

When I manage to love and forgive people whom I find very difficult to deal with, then my life becomes a joyful song:
"I said I wasn't gonna tell nobody, but I couldn't keep it to myself." 

The examples are countless. All of Jesus' commands seem to boil down to the one great command: "Love one another as I have loved you." Yes. That's the idea: Tell everyone by your actions that Jesus has loved you.
"I said I wasn't gonna tell nobody, but I couldn't keep it to myself." 

Happy singing!

I said I wasn't gonna tell nobody, but ...

CHRISTMAS CARDS

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I was meditating in church this morning, and started out with the reflection assigned for Saturday of the Second Week of Advent in my book From Holidays to Holy Days. (I find that the questions I was asking myself years ago tend to stay fresh and green for a long time.)

There were two aspects to the meditation about Christmas cards. The first was the idea of that God is always sending me Christmas cards. In his poem "Leaves of Grass" Walt Whitman wrote: 

I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every one is signed by God's name." God is constantly dropping Christmas cards at my feet as reminders of his love. I try to cultivate a feel for recognizing God’s gifts in the people and experiences I encounter every day, especially in my students and my brothers in the monastery, in the pretty face of a college student or the way the sunlight filters through a certain tree. I think I do pretty well on that part.

The other half of the metaphor, though was what spoke to me this morning. It was contained in this paragraph:

And it occurs to me that God must entrust me with the task of delivering many of those divine Christmas cards to others: a little favor done for a brother monk, spending fifteen minutes listening to a student tell me his problems, taking special care to prepare a good homily for the people for whom I say mass on Sunday. God uses me to drop all of these “letters” at people’s feet to assure them that they are loved, and that the Lord is with them every minute.

In the reflection questions I’d asked: “When has the Lord used you to deliver a message of love and concern to someone?”

I smiled as I remembered all the situations I was in yesterday that were testing my patience and my calmness. I’d tried very hard at the time not to be resentful of all the demands on my time and energy. I guess it was a gift that I was able to pull it off pretty well, especially on a Friday. In other words I was able to see that most of what I was doing involved being of some sort of help to others. Being patient with a troubled student who was being difficult, staying after school to give a retest, discussing a student’s grades with him, reviewing the light cues for next Thursday’s Christmas Program, arranging to get to a wake that evening even though I knew I’d be tired after a hectic day.

So now this morning’s reflection question gave me a lovely way of seeing what I’d been doing yesterday: “When has the Lord used you to deliver a message of love and concern to someone?”

I don’t send out Christmas cards. But now I realize that I have the opportunity to send them by the hundreds every day. Each one personal -- and postage free -- and signed by God.

Each of us is meant to be a letter carrier for the Lord, delivering his “love letters.”

It gives a new meaning to an expression people don’t use any more: “You’re such a card!”
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BEING A SONG

ALLELUIA IN MY TOES

At our Easter Vigil I once again had the joy of singing with the St. Mary’s Parish Choir in the abbey church as I do for the major feasts. Their music reflects the African and African-American makeup of the parish, using some African, some Caribbean, some traditional Catholic and Protestant hymns. The accompaniment is provided by organ, piano, guitar, drums and other African percussion instruments. What characterizes this choir’s style is ebullient joy and an energy that keeps on pouring out in exuberant song for ten minutes even after the recessional hymn is over. This year as we were singing the recessional, “The Strife is O’er” I felt as if every cell in my body were shouting "Alleluia!". It reminded me of a saying attributed to St. Augustine, “A Christian is an Alleluia from head to toe.” That was me!

GOD'S FAVORITE TUNE

Then a couple of days ago I was thumbing through an old copy of Conversions: Reflections on Life and Faith by Rev. James Turro (Tabor Publishing, Allen TX, 1993) which I hadn’t looked at in years. Almost immediately I came across the following passage:

"A person is a song that God sings. Each one of us is God’s song, God’s way of softening and beautifying life here on earth. Let the world hear loud and strong that splendid melody that God is humming – that melody is you" p. 4.

I’ve always loved to sing, so this passage was particularly meaningful for me: I’m called not just to SING God’s song but to actually BE a song that will “soften and beautify life here on earth” for my brothers and sisters. God wants to use the melody of my life to lighten the load and brighten the path of my brother monks, my students, my Sunday parishioners, my friends and family and others who meet me.

AN INVISIBLE DRAWING?

Later in Fr. Turro’s book I read this:

"Would it make sense for an orchestra to play its music silently? Or for an artist to paint pictures invisibly? Certainly not! And neither does it make sense for a person to be a disciple of Christ secretly. We Christians have to declare ourselves by what we say and do… " P. 53.

My sketch of Sacre Coeur

 This one, too, struck me. As someone who enjoys sketch- ing I tried to imagine show- ing someone my sketchbook filled with blank pages and explaining to them “My draw- ings are all invisible.” My life is supposed to be God’s sketchbook in which people can see the Lord’s beauty, goodness and truth. For me the issue may not be so much that I do ugly or horrible sketches, but rather that I don't do any that are visible to other people.

 THE CARUSO EFFECT

The great Caruso

Finally, on page 74 Turro tells of the time the world-famous tenor Enrico Caruso walked into a bank in New York City and tried to cash a check. The alert bank teller, seeing the famous name on the check, became suspicious. (This was in the days before television, which would have made his face familiar.) The more Caruso tried to convince the teller the he was in fact Caruso, the more convinced the teller became that he was a fraud. Then Caruso had an inspiration: Stepping back from the window, he put his hand to his chest and launched into a breathtakingly beautiful operatic aria. As the bank patrons listened in awe, the teller began counting out the cash. This was surely Caruso; there was no doubt about it.

Part of the point of being a Christian is to act like one. To say you’re a follower of Christ, to say you’re a child of the light or an Easter person or an “Alleluia from head to toe” is all very nice, but it means nothing. You have to do what Caruso did; you take a couple of steps back and prove beyond a doubt who you are by your actions, your beautiful Easter actions, calling people to life, washing their feet, lightening their load, and brightening their darkness.
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..........This is us, from head to toe!

THE JOY OF THE LORD

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JOY: THE SIGN OF A CHRISTIAN

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Joy and rejoicing are among Luke’s favorite words. In the infancy stories it seems everybody is rejoicing, from Zechariah and the bystanders to Mary and the visiting shepherds at Bethlehem. Joy is a characteristic response of those who hear the gospel preached, like that man who found a treasure buried in the field and out of sheer joy went and sold everything he had (Mt. 13:44)
Then at the end of the gospel the women rejoice upon finding the tomb is empty, Magdalene rejoices when she recognizes the risen Lord, the apostles rejoice when he appears in their midst.
The final verses of Luke’s gospels are: While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God” (Lk 24: 51-53).

Joy is a sign of the presence of the Kingdom of God: “For the kingdom of God is … righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (and Rom. 14:17, cp. Gal. 5:22). Joy is part of the Christian experience, just as it was for all our fathers and mothers in the faith. It’s just a natural response to hearing the good news, and a foretaste of the eternal joy we will share with them one day in the heavenly kingdom.

LOOK WHO’S REJOICING NOW!

In the readings for this past Friday’s Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus there was an interesting twist on the theme of Christian joy. The entire passage reads:

Jesus addressed this parable to the Pharisees and scribes: "What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it? And when he does find it, he sets it on his shoulders with great joy and, upon his arrival home, he calls together his friends and neighbors and says to them, 'Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.' I tell you, in just the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance." (Lk 15:3-7)

But notice that here it is no longer the believer who is rejoicing -- it’s rather God who is rejoicing in us sinners. What a beautiful picture: the Lord being filled with joy over you! Over who you are and what your are doing; over your fumbling attempts at attaining happiness, over your repenting and returning to God, over everything you are and everything you do.

I love the idea that God delights in each of us. Especially when I’m having a bad day and feeling down, I can feel better right away when I realize that at that very moment God is taking delight in me, that I am bringing a smile to the Lord’s face. How beautiful is that!

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........................."I Am the Good Shepherd" - Lee Hodges