Heart of Compassion: a simple church

06/16/2025

Trinity Sunday

The Blessed Trinity has always been difficult for the faithful to understand, not so much because “it’s a mystery” but because the Church and her scholars, hierarchy has never wanted the laity to know the truth.

In traditional Christian understanding, the Father is male, the Son is male, and the Holy Spirit is male. This from a tradition that opposes homosexuality! Yet Scripture tells us that the Holy Spirit – Wisdom – is feminine. So the Trinity is Father, Mother, Son. That’s pretty easy to understand, isn’t it?

In the ancient nature religions, the Trinity is Maiden, Mother, Crone… three distinct personages, but One Deity.

The Church has always opposed esoteric understandings of scripture – She has fought against it, persecuted those teaching it and yet, She herself has understood this layer of understanding – even hinted at it in Her symbology, but forever shrouding everything in “mysteries” that the laity is supposed to “accept without question.”

The liturgical color for feasts of martyrs is red…. For blood. Isn’t it interesting that the liturgical color for the feasts of Pentecost and today’s feast, the Holy Trinity, are also red. Uh… why? We were taught because the Holy Spirit came as a tongue of fire upon the heads of the apostles… and Mary the Mother of Jesus… at Pentecost.

Liturgically, the Church must tell the truth, no matter what she keeps hidden from the laity and even clergy: Red is for blood; Red symbolizing that the Holy Spirit bleeds, because She’s feminine.

If the Triple Goddess – Maiden, Mother, Crone – symbolizes the three stages of a woman’s life, would it make better sense than the Christian Trinity
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We are always waiting for the Holy Spirit—somehow forgetting that the Spirit was given to us from the very beginning. In fact, She was “hovering over the chaos” in the very first lines of Genesis (1:2), turning the “formless void” into a Garden of Eden.

We are threatened by anything that we cannot control, that part of God “which blows where it will” (John 3:8) and which our theologies and churches can neither predict nor inhibit. The Holy Spirit has rightly been called the forgotten or denied Person of the Blessed Trinity. We cannot sense the Spirit, like we cannot see air, silence, and the space between everything. We look for God “out there,” and the Spirit is always “in here” and “in between” everything.
Adapted from Radical Grace: Daily Meditations, day 205, p. 192
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01/23/2025

https://chng.it/rDjVMvbqVn

We Are Standing with You!

12/10/2023

2nd Sunday of Advent
Readings: Isaiah 40:1-11 * 2 Peter 3:8-15a * Mark 1:1-8
Homily – Peace
My friend, the late Reverend Monsignor James Gehl once sent me a beautiful hand painted Christmas card that read, "This day should see something born in each of us." The season of Advent invites us to slow down so that we can take a journey into the darkness. Just as the seed needs the darkness of the earth to germinate and grow, we humans need the darkness of the womb to develop. I invite you into the darkness precisely because in the darkness gestation happens and gestation gives rise to the birth of Christ within ourselves.

The theme for the Second Sunday of Advent is Peace. It's a bit of a stretch to find "Peace" in the Gospel of Mark because this entire gospel reads like a script from the TV show "24". Nearly every section begins with "Now" or "Immediately." It rushes through the Good News at break-neck speed. Scholars have no idea who the real author of this gospel was, but it was written sometime between 50 and 70 of the Common Era. More than 20 and as much as 40 years after the earthly life of an extraordinary teacher, healer, Master named Jesus of Nazareth.

The evangelist wrote in the darkness of his time. A darkness that began 65 years before Jesus was born, when the Roman general Pompey first swept into Palestine. Pompey’s army is said to have slaughtered some twelve thousand Jews as the darkness of oppression and despair descended.

Rome perpetrated violence upon the Jewish people because the Jews refused to submit to Roman ways. Rome was just being Rome: Demanding total submission of a people who refused to submit. Yahweh’s people were just being Yahweh’s people: They refused to worship Roman gods, claiming Yahweh the one, true God, and longing for a Messiah the likes of David to save them from their Roman overlords. In the midst of this terrible darkness, a subjugated people prayed for peace.

In the 11th Century, Pope Urban declared war upon Islam with the Christian Crusades, seeking to cleanse the Holy Land of those who followed the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed. Maybe peace will reign if all "those people" were gone. Tens of thousands of people were killed. Peace didn't come. Jesus chose to heal the daughter of the Syro-Phoenician woman.

The Crusades were followed by the Inquisition. Forgetting, of course that Jesus and the early disciples were Jews, persecution was razed against Jews. Maybe peace will reign if all "those people" were gone. More than 32,000 people were killed. Jesus healed ten lepers.

The Puritans and other marginalized Christians who couldn't find peace living in Britain colonized the New World - America. The British perhaps thought that there would be peace in their Empire if all "those people" were gone. And the Puritans arrived to find a race of people whose understanding of the Divine was completely foreign to them – the Native Americans. "Those people" too, had to be destroyed. Jesus healed the demoniac – a gentile of Gerasene and the slave of the Roman centurion.

Then it was the Africans, the Catholics, the Quakers, the Irish, the Germans, the Italians, the Asians, the poor, the handicapped, the sick, the LBGTQ. We keep pointing our fingers at "those people" as the ones who are keeping humanity from finding peace. Jesus ate with prostitutes, tax collectors and Pharisees.

The gospel according to Luke tells us that the Kingdom of God dwells within us. Human history tells us that we have and continued to look for peace – and that kingdom – outside of ourselves: in the governments we create, support and defend; the communities we build and choose to live in. Humanity's "original sin" is our inclination to fear, oppress, exclude and subjugate "those people." We want everyone to believe as we do, speak the language we do, behave as we do, value what we do, work as we do and falsely presume if that ever were to happen, we would have peace. Jesus was born to teach us to let go of our fear. The Scriptures tell us 366 times, "Be not afraid."

This season of Advent should see something new born in us. If we want peace, we must teach peace, we must practice peace and commit to loving and serving one another. We must learn to accept the reality that "others" want the same things we want – security, acceptance, inclusion, harmony, equality, justice and freedom. Perhaps by focusing more on building bridges instead of islands and extending our hands and hearts to "those people" we can be the peace that we long for. “One more powerful is coming." Prepare the way for our God who is, was and evermore shall be Love itself. This day should see something born in each of us.

10/05/2021

12/26/2020

Christmas Homily: This Day Should See Something Born In Each Of Us
Forty years ago a deacon sent me a beautiful silk-screen Christmas card he created that simply read: "This day should see something born in each of us." This phrase has stayed with me all these years, I think because it inspires me all year long to lean into all of life's challenges and lessons, joys, and excitement, and allow those events and experiences to form me – my consciousness, my spirituality, my political and social understanding of the society I live in and the world as it hums along. More than any other day, THIS day should see something born in each of us. We've grown and changed – we've been affected and formed by all of the world events of 2018.

The Beloved Disciple sets the Christmas story in the context of creation, “In the beginning.” Creation is not an event of the past but the ongoing life of God with God's people. The Evangelist echoes and continues the Genesis story of creation, “In the beginning, God said, ‘Let there be…’ and there was….” Land, sky, vegetation, living creatures from the water, birds of the air, living creatures from the earth, and humankind made in the image and likeness of God.
Christmas is God continuing to give life to God's people. “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.” Christmas, says St. Gregory of Nyssa, is the “festival of re-creation.” It is God giving God’s own life to God's people. It is as if God said, “I want humanity to see my face. I want them to hear my voice. I want them to touch me, to eat my body, to live their lives. I want them to live my life.”
This festival of re-creation is God’s celebration of humanity. It is God entrusting God’s self to us. It is God’s reaffirmation of our goodness. It is the sharing and exchanging of life between God and us. Divinity was clothed in humanity so that humanity might be clothed in divinity.

Imagine what that means for us. It means we are holy and intended to be holy, not as an achievement on our own but as a gift of God. This what is born in us. We have been given the power to become children of God. This happens not by blood, or the will of the flesh, or the will of people, but by God. “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.”

Rabbis tell a story that each person has a procession of angels going before them and crying out, “Make way for the image of God.” Imagine how different our lives and the world would be if we lived with this as our reality and the truth that guides our lives.
Everywhere we go the angels go with us announcing the coming of the image of God and reminding us of who we are. That is the truth of Christmas for us, for the person living next door, for those we love, for those we fear, for those who are like us and those who are different, for the stranger, and for our enemies. “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.”

The implications are profound. It changes how we see ourselves and one another, the way we live, our actions, and our words. It means that Christmas cannot be limited to an event. Christmas is a life to be lived, a way of being. It means that Christmas is more properly understood as a verb rather than a noun. So maybe we should stop asking, “How was your Christmas?” Instead, we should be asking, “How are you ‘Christmassing?’” And do you recognize the Word become flesh in your own life and in the lives of others? Do you see the procession of angels and hear their voices?
Advent promised Emmanuel – God-with-us and we celebrate that God chose to take on our flesh and be with us. The complete birth-to-death human experience. God comes to us still in the ordinary and the extraordinary. God's light shines through the cracks in everything, lest we lose hope.

In the midst of all that 2018 brought to our consciousness, we need to reflect upon what has been born in us. Is it the Word made flesh? Can we bring forth compassion into a world that has shown so little to those who need help? Is there the smallest kernel of mercy, kindness, and forgiveness that we can spread wherever 2019 takes us that it might germinate, take root and spring up around us? This day should see something born in each of us. Is it Christ Consciousness? Are we willing to be the hands and hearts of the Divine in order to further the gospel message of love for one another?

I want to share a poem by the 16th-century mystic St. John of the Cross:
If
you want
the Virgin will come walking down the road
pregnant with the holy,
and say,
“I need shelter for the night,
please take me inside your heart,
my time is so close.”
Then, under the roof of your soul,
you will witness the sublime intimacy,
the divine,
the Christ taking birth forever,
as she grasps your hand for help,
for each of us is the midwife of God,
each of us.
Yet there,
under the dome of your being
does creation come into existence eternally,
through your womb, dear pilgrim—
the sacred womb in your soul,
as God grasps our arms for help;
for each of us is God's beloved servant
never far.
If you want,
the Virgin will come walking
down the street pregnant
with Light and sing ...
“And the Word became flesh and lives among us.” So make way. Wherever you go. Whatever you are doing. Whoever you are with. Make way for the image of God that is born in each of us.
As you consider all that you have been through personally in 2018, seek to find what has been born in you today.
Let us pray that there will be peace on earth and goodwill to all because the Word has become flesh and lives among us.

04/14/2020

Christ is Risen! Please stay safe my friends during this pandemic. Live so you can be Christ in the world for others.

01/13/2020

1/12/2019 Baptism of Jesus – Cycle A

A certain Bostonian was seeking employment in a Chicago bank. The bank asked him to get a letter of recommendation from his former employers in Boston. The Boston investment house could not praise the young man enough. His father was a well-known and respected gentleman, his mother was a distinguished lady. His grandparents and great-grandparents were a blend of Boston’s first families. The recommendation was given without hesitation. A few days later, the Chicago bank sent a note saying the information supplied was altogether inadequate. It read: “We are not contemplating using the young man for breeding purposes. Just for work.”

Our first reading from Isaiah explains the work of the "servant". Although we assume the "servant" is the Messiah, if you go to the previous chapter, you'll find that the "servant" Isaiah refers to is the nation of Israel, the people who were in covenant relationship with God. As people of the new covenant, it is our work as well. God's purpose in choosing Israel as God's servant is to effect "Justice" – we know this because the word is used four times in this reading. Israel was to accomplish "justice" by opening the "eyes of the blind, to bring out the prisoners from confinement and the dungeon, and to those who live in darkness. (verse 7). The people, not the religious leaders, were commissioned – by God – to fulfill a specific purpose.

Today’s second reading from the Acts of the Apostles can be summed up as the three Bs of baptism: belief, belonging, and behavior.

The first part of the second reading deals with belonging. Neither John the Baptist nor the Christian Church invented Baptism; it was always understood as an admission into the covenant household of God. In the Old Dispensation, God chose the Jews. If one was born a Jew, then one belonged automatically to the covenant people of God. Baptism was a religious bath that signified purification or consecration. It was also an essential part of initiation for converts to Judaism. Although it's not mentioned anywhere in the New Testament, Jewish tradition connects this water immersion to the sprinkling of blood mentioned in Exodus 24:8 immediately before the Revelation to Moses on Mount Sinai. The full ritual included the bath, being sprinkled with blood and washing their clothing. These three acts were the initiatory rites always performed upon proselytes "to bring them under the wings of the Shekinah" (Yeb. l.c.) – Shekinah, is the Feminine Presence of God on earth, or who we Christians refer to as the Holy Spirit.

Baptism was a part of holy living and prepared one for the attainment illumination and a closer communion with the Divine. Like Christian baptism, it was a means of receiving the spirit of God; to be permitted to stand in the Shekinah. The ritual bath in living water represented a rebirth, regeneration, whereby one comes from darkness to light.

The second part of the Acts reading deals with belief. Baptism is an acceptance of the message sent by God to the people of Israel, the same message announced by Jesus Christ throughout Judea. It's the message of peace between humanity and God, between Jews and Gentiles, between any opposing segments of the human family. As hearers of this Divine message, we must understand that just as Jesus preached that keeping the Law was not enough for the Jews, keeping the Canons and Precepts of the Church are not enough for contemporary Christians. We must live what we say we believe in our daily lives. In order to count ourselves as children of God, we should also endeavor to know and live by the message we have received – we must come from darkness to light. From Law to Faith as servants in order to effect justice.

The last part of the reading deals with behavior. Like Jesus, we are anointed in baptism with the Holy Spirit and with power so that, under the grace of the sacrament, we can go end oppression by working for justice so there will be peace. Our anointing empowers us with the Holy Spirit to fulfill our commission: to be the arms, feet, ears, mouth and heart of Christ.

In Matthew's gospel John protests to Jesus' submission to baptism, because he understood Jesus as one who kept the Law and yet Jesus says, in verse 15, “Allow it now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” We 21st century Christians scratch our heads when we read this verse, because we believe Jesus was without sin and so we don't understand exactly what he meant by "righteousness".

Isaiah 32:17 states "And the work of righteousness shall be peace." Righteousness consists in doing what is just and right in all relationships and results in social stability and ultimately in peace. Righteousness requires not merely abstention from evil, but a constant pursuit of justice and the performance of positive deeds. It includes actions beyond the letter of the law in the realms of ethics and ritual. Conversely, the failure to perform ones obligations leads indirectly to the upsetting of social stability and, ultimately, to the deliberate undermining of the social structure.

The prophets understood the ideal society in terms of righteousness. Eschatologically, righteous action within a righteous society will restore peace in the world and will reestablish Jerusalem as the citadel of righteousness according to Isaiah 1:26-27: "And I will restore your judges… afterward you shall be called the city of righteousness".

Gentiles, were automatically excluded from God’s covenant blessings. The criterion for belonging to God’s people was natural birth. In the New Dispensation in Christ all that changed. Jesus leveled the playing field. Now God has no preference for one nation over others. In baptism we become children of God, equally loved by God.

The meaning of baptism can be found in the four letters of the word RICE. R stands for Rebirth. In baptism we are born again by water and the Holy Spirit. I stands for Initiation into full membership in the church, the community of the children of God in the world. C is for Consecration. We commit ourselves to be who Isaiah talks about in the first reading – servants who work for justice, to do God's will and serve God with our whole lives. And E is for Empowerment. At baptism the Holy Spirit comes into our lives and empowers us, equips us, gives us the moral strength to accomplish our ultimate purpose as stated in Micah 6:8: "You have been told, O mortal, what is good, and what the LORD requires of you: Only to do justice and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God."

We were not baptized for “breeding purposes”… We were commissioned – as children of God – as siblings of our Lord Jesus Christ – to spread the Good News, to live lives of faith, to be Jesus in this world and to bring about justice and peace and healing. Let us renew our baptismal commitment to bear witness to the Good News of the kingdom of God in word and in deed – in our parish community, our jobs, our neighborhoods... even on Facebook. Work for justice so there will be peace.

04/15/2019

HOMILY: "WATCH, WAIT, PRAY AND BELIEVE"
One of my patients died last weekend. Those of us involved with her care saw the signs that death was near and encouraged her daughter to accept daily visits by a skilled nurse, the tender ministrations of the holistic aides and music therapist, the wise guidance of the medical social worker. The daughter put them all off until "next week." As the chaplain assigned to her case, I was allowed to visit before she passed.

When I arrived, the patient was resting comfortably, but not responsive. I visited with her daughter – again encouraging her to accept the help offered. I prayed with her, provided compassionate listening and pastoral presence and even left her a booklet of prayers and readings to share with her mother if she awakened. I'd forgotten my pyx in the car, so I didn't offer Holy Communion.

Less than 36 hours later, my patient was gone. There would be no "next week" for her. Her daughter sent me a text in the midst of her shock and disbelief that read, "I think Mom's gone!" I offered my condolences, called the office to send a nurse to pronounce the death and then, I kicked myself for not waking the patient up while I was at the house, for not giving them Communion, for not being more insistent that the nurse, the aides and the social worker to be allowed to visit. I had respected the daughter's choices, but felt that I had failed at the one thing I am normally very good at – end of life spiritual care.

How many times did Jesus tell his disciples that he would have to suffer and die during the three years of his public ministry? Let me give you those scripture passages: Matthew 16:21, Matthew 17:22, Matthew 20:17-19, Matthew 26:1-2, Mark 8:31, Mark 9:31, Luke 9:22-27, and Chapters 12 through 17 of John.

And how did they respond? Matthew 22:22: "And Peter took [Jesus] aside and began to rebuke him, saying, "God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you."

Matthew 17:20-21: Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came to him with her sons, and kneeling before him, she asked a favor of him. ... She said to him, "Declare that these two sons of mine will sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom."

Matthew 17:23: [The disciples] were greatly distressed.

Mark 9:32: ...they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.

Luke does not record a response by any of the disciples.

John 12:4: But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, "Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?"

John 12:34 The crowd answered him, "We have heard from the law that the Messiah remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?"

Anger, denial, betrayal, bargaining, depression, fear, and arguing. The typical human response to death.

The disciples knew the scriptures. They knew what was foretold. Mark 9:30-32 alludes to a passage from the Book of Wisdom 2:12-20 that reads: "let us lie in wait for the righteous man, because he is inconvenient to us and opposes our actions; he reproaches us for sins against the law, and accuses us of sins against our training. He professes to have knowledge of God, and calls himself a child of the Lord. He became to us a reproof of our thoughts; the very sight of him is a burden to us, because his manner of life is unlike that of others, and his ways are strange. We are considered by him as something base, and he avoids our ways as unclean; he calls the last end of the righteous happy, and boasts that God is his father. Let us see if his words are true, and let us test what will happen at the end of his life; for if the righteous man is God's child, he will help him, and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries. Let us test him with insult and torture, so that we may find out how gentle he is, and make trial of his forbearance. Let us condemn him to a shameful death, for, according to what he says, he will be protected."

Despite what they'd learned in the scriptures from their childhood training – and these Jewish disciples were trained to memorize all of the books of the Hebrew Bible by the age of 15 or 16 – however, regardless of the texts, they believed that the Messiah would come, beat the snot out of the Romans and vindicate God's Chosen People. What actually happened? Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey instead of a warhorse, with peasants waving palms instead of soldiers with swords - knowing he's about to lose everything.

The truly human Jesus experienced the very same emotions we all do when we know that death is near: Am I ready? Am I loved? What's on the other side of death? What if my faith and beliefs are all wrong? Am I worthy? Does anyone give a rip? What am I leaving behind? Will I be remembered? Did my life have meaning? The questions, the fears, the self-doubt are endless.

In Matthew 26 verse 36 we read: ...Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane; and he said to his disciples, "Sit here while I go over there and pray."

Verse 37 says he was "grieved and agitated." He's agitated – troubled, nervous, upset, perturbed, disconcerted, disturbed, distressed, unsettled, anxious, worried.

And he tells Peter, James and John this in verse 38! "I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and stay awake with me."

In the verses that follow you can feel his agitation:
Verse 39 Jesus goes off by himself to pray.
Verse 40 Jesus checks on the disciples and finds them sleeping.
Verse 41 he tells them to "Stay awake and pray..."
Verse 42 he goes off alone to pray again.
Verse 43 he comes back to the disciples and they are sleeping again!
Verse 44 Jesus returns to his prayer spot.
Verse 45 He comes back finds the disciples still sleeping.

Jesus tells us the most important thing we can do for those who are dying: Be present! Pray! Stay awake! Today he would probably add "Put your phone down! Stop texting! And don't take a selfie with me!"

Today begins Holy Week. Jesus has been telling us through the scriptures all year that he will suffer, he'll be betrayed and he'll die. How will we sit with him this week as we prepare for Easter? How do we sit with the most important people in our lives as they are dying? We must sit in faith and confidence that regardless of our denial, anger, fear, bargaining, betrayal, depression, arguing... everything happens exactly as it is meant to. My sweet patient died peacefully – in her sleep – exactly as she wanted to go. Despite what we all wanted to DO for her, she had a perfect death. And... despite all that the Apostles seemingly goofed up, Jesus' death played out exactly as it was planned by his Father and foretold in the scriptures. Take confidence in knowing that things are always as they should be.

I leave you today with the words of John O'Donahue from his book "Anamcara",

I pray that you will have the blessing of being consoled
and sure about your own death.
May you know in your soul that there is no need to be afraid.
When your time comes, may you be given every blessing
and shelter that you need.
May there be a beautiful welcome for you
in the home that you are going to.
You are not going somewhere strange.
You are going back to the home that you never left.
May you have a wonderful urgency to live your life to the full.
May you live compassionately and creatively and transfigure
everything that is negative within you and about you.
When you come to die may it be after a long life.
May you be peaceful and happy and in the presence
of those who really care for you.
May your going be sheltered and your welcome assured.
May your soul smile in the embrace of your anam ćara.