“The Convenience and Selfishness of Playing Small”
Rev. Ronald Knott
January 15, 2015
Jonah made ready and went to Nineveh according to the Lord’s bidding.
Jonah 3:1-5,10
As we said in the Confiteor tonight, we can sin in two ways – by what we do and what we fail to do. We can sin by excessively over-inflating our worth, by thinking too highly of ourselves, but we can also sin by devaluating ourselves, by thinking too little of ourselves.
Narcissism is the term used to describe excessive vanity and self-centeredness. The condition was named after a mythological Greek youth named Narcissus who became infatuated with his own reflection in a lake. He did not realize at first that it was his own reflection, but when he did, he died out of grief for having fallen in love with someone who did not exist outside himself.
Narcissistic personalities are characterized by unwarranted feelings of self-importance. They expect to be recognized as superior and special, without necessarily demonstrating superior accomplishments. They exhibit a sense of entitlement, demonstrate grandiosity in their beliefs and behaviors and display a strong need for admiration. Bruce Barton said, “Conceit is God’s gift to little men.” Some believe their inflated self-importance has led to a disdain for those they feel are inferior, which might explain a rise in bullying and entitlement among the young.
When narcissistic people talk about church attendance, they usually say things like “I don’t go because I don’t get anything out of it!” “I, I, I!” When they say things like that they put themselves in the center of the picture. It’s all about them! Church attendance is really about giving, not getting. We go to Church to give God worship and praise! We go to learn to give and serve others!
When narcissistic people talk about marriage, they talk about what it will do for them. They are like the woman in the Guinness Book of Records with the most marriages. When she was asked about it, she said, “All I ever wanted was someone to love me!” No wonder she failed at it so many times. People who marry successfully get married to be love-givers, not love-getters! As Jesus said, “It is in giving that one receives!” Receiving is not a goal, but a by-product, of the marriage or ordination commitment. Narcissistic priests and marriage partners are always doomed to fail. For both priests and married partners, it is not about us, it is about those we are called to serve!
As I said last Sunday when I was talking about our “calls,” or “vocations,” when narcissistic young people talk about what to do with their lives, they usually ask themselves “what do I want to do or what do I want to be” that will make me happy? The real question is not what do we want to do, but what is God calling me to do and be” that will lead me to happiness? Jesus was right, “Those who seek to save their lives will lose them, while those who seek to give their lives away, will save them.” Albert Schweitzer was right when he said, and narcissistic people will never get it, “The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found out how to serve.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was right when he said, and narcissistic people will never understand it, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, “What are you doing for others?”
Pope Francis talks a lot about a “self-referential church,” in other words a narcissistic church. He says that when the Church does not look beyond itself, when it is always focused on itself, it gets sick. The Church is the moon and Christ is the sun. The Church exists to reflect the light of Christ to the world, not to live within herself, of herself and for herself.
The other extreme to narcissism is self-deprecation or the minimization and devaluation of oneself. Humility is about accepting the truth about who we are, without exaggerating it or minimizing it. “Humility” comes from the Latin “humus,” meaning “earth.” “Humility” means “grounded.” A truly “humble” person, truly in touch with his strengths and weaknesses, neither inflates his worth nor devalues it. Humility is ultimately about truth.
It is this truth that Jesus spent his ministry trying to teach. He taught it to the religious leaders of his day who were so arrogant and self-inflated that they started out talking about God and ended up thinking they were gods. He taught it to the marginalized of his day who were so beaten down that they did not recognize their own goodness and the image of God within themselves.
God has entrusted gifts to us to be used! When we do not use our gifts, even deny we have them, we neither serve God nor the people we are called to serve. Jesus told us that we are the light of the world, our light is not to be hidden, but shared with the world. When our light is shared, when our talents are invested, the credit is not to be absorbed by us as if we were the source of that light and those talents, but that credit is to be reflected back to God. Seeing our light and benefitting from our talents, people are to give God the glory and praise. There is great responsibility that goes with being the light of the world and having talents! It scares us. We tend to shy away from it.
In that arena, the prophet Jonah is a patron saint. Jonah was called to preach to the people of Nineveh. He considered himself a poor preacher on one hand and the Ninevites not worth saving on the other. To get away from his unwelcomed call, he went down to the docks and bought a ticket on the next ship sailing in the opposite direction from Nineveh. He thought he could outrun God!
In his version of a get-away-car, Jonah is pictured going to sleep in the bottom of his boat while a storm raged, a symbol today of “denial.” The psychologist Abraham Maslow calls such spiritual and emotional truancy the Jonah Complex: “The evasion of one’s own growth, the setting of low levels of aspiration, the fear of doing what one is capable of doing, voluntary self-crippling, pseudo-stupidity, mock humility.”
We are afraid of failure and success. A calling makes us wonder if we are good enough, smart enough, disciplined enough, educated enough, patient enough, and inspired enough. We manage our fear by “going to sleep,” “settling for too little” and “self-sabotage.”
The truth is this: all of us have answered “yes” in some areas and “no” in others. We both crave and fear becoming who we are called to be!
Like Jonah, we too are each called to an important mission. Fearing our own greatness and success, do we have to wait to be swallowed by a whale before we get compelled to seek the fulfillment of our own destinies? Whales do not always spit you out where you need to be. Sometimes whales simply digest you.
Thomas Merton was right, “The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little.” Maybe our biggest sin is not what we do, but what we fail to do! Michelangelo put it this way. “The greater danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.”
May you want to be who you are! You are talented! Invest your talents! The world is not served by your playing small!
Sunday, January 25, 2015
Monday, January 19, 2015
January 18 - 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
“Vocation: Everybody Has One”
Rev. Ronald Knott
January 26, 2014
If you are called, reply, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.
I Samuel 3:3b-10,19
What do you want to be when you grow up?” A lawyer? A farmer? A teacher? An actor? A doctor? What do you want to be when you grow up? A scientist? An engineer? A musician? An investment counselor? An accountant? What do you want to do when you grow up? An astronaut? A politician? An artist? A writer? You have heard these questions since you were a child! No doubt, you have been counseled, directed and pressured to choose one. You have been told that certain professions should be considered because they pay well and warned that others should be avoided because they don’t! In making your choice, you are, no doubt, under the gun to please parents, counselors, teachers and peers!
“What do you want to do when you grow up?” I believe that that question is the wrong question! The only question that really counts is the question: “What does God want you to do with your life?” Our first reading tonight, tells us of the call of Samuel, who is called three times before he is able to answer. His call reminds me of the call of another young man, Jeremiah, who hears God clearly the first time, but who resists and argues with God about his call. God tells Jeremiah:
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I dedicated you.
Jeremiah argues back:
Look God, I am too young. I’m not a good speaker! I won’t know
how to do what you are asking!
God snaps back:
Don’t say you’re too young. Don’t be afraid. Don’t worry about
it beforehand I will be with you to help you. I’ll turn you
into a good speaker. I will put the right words in
your mouth. I’ll give you what you need for the job when you
need it.
My friends, each one of you is precious in God’s eyes. You are special. You are a unique expression of God’s love and creativity. In all the world there is no other person exactly like you. There never has been or never will be another person just like you! Besides being special and unique, you are not here by accident. You were sent here for a purpose. You have a mission. You have something to do here that can be done by no one else. Your responsibility is to find out what your mission is and then carry it out with all your might. Your purpose here is commonly called “your vocation” or “your call.” Because it is GOD who calls you to your special task, God will be there to help you carry it out.
With a hundred people pulling you this way and that, saying that “you ought to be this” or “you ought to be that,” how do you hear what God is calling you to do? We hear God by listening to our own hearts. To be able to hear God speaking to us, we must spend some quality time with God and with ourselves. That means that sometimes we need to turn off the TV, the radio, the head phones, the computer, the advice givers and just be quiet! That means you have to leave your friends, you family and your neighbors once in a while, just to be alone in the presence of God. For many people, just being quiet is extremely hard to do and it’s scary! Many people are not used to being without noise and without being with people every waking moment of the day. When we go off and listen to our own hearts, we will hear our call, our vocation, where we need to go.
A very few people hear God’s voice directly like Jeremiah seems to have done. More like Samuel who hears, but is confused. Most people hear their calls as “a hunch,” “a quiet knowing” or “a small still voice” that never seems to go away. They just know in their guts. Most people hear God’s call through the invitation of others, those who say to us over and over again, “you’d make a good doctor,” “you’d be a great teacher,” “you’d make a good priest,” “you’ll make a great parent.” If you hear people saying one of those things, over and over again, you ought to listen to see if your heart agrees! They just might be messengers from God himself!
What if we listen for God’s call? What if we don’t? God wants the best for us! If we do what he calls us to do, we will be ourselves, we will be what he created us to be. We will feel, and we will know, that we are in the right place. Our life’s work will fit who we are. When we follow our calls, we will be happy, not a “ha-ha” happy, but a deep down satisfaction, in spite of challenges.
However, sometimes people know what they are supposed to do in life, but they don’t do it because they are scared of its demands, scared of what other people will think, scared of failure or scared of disappointing their parents, peers and friends. We pay a price from not listening to God’s call. We pay a price for pleasing others instead of being who we are. When people go against their call and do something else, their lives will seem to be out of sync, they will be frustrated, their hearts will not be in their jobs or professions. They will go through life with a low grade depression, a restlessness that will follow them wherever they go! Then, when they are old and look back, they will be filled with regret, anger and frustration that life somehow passed them by! I got such a letter a couple of years back from one of my classmates who dropped out of the seminary and still lives in regret forty years later.
Everybody has a vocation, a call from God, to do something for him, to help him carry out some part of his work in the world. A call is not so much about what we want to do, but what God wants us to do! The famous Albert Schweitzer put it this way, “The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.” The famous Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. put it this way, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, “What are you doing for others?” Some of you are called to help God carry out his mission by being teachers, doctors, scientists and food producers. Others of you are called to help God carry out his mission by being politicians, lawyers and writers. Others of you are called to carry out God’s mission by being social workers, artists and scientists. Still others are called to help God carry out his mission by having children, by being a good husband or wife or by living the single life. Finally, some of you are called to be priests (like me), sisters, brothers and full time lay ministers, as well as parents (like Melanie and Karen).
The church especially today needs good priests: people to preach the gospel, celebrate the sacraments and lead our parishes spiritually. Who will take my place someday soon, here at Bellarmine? According to the most recent studies, no matter what the media says, 94% of all priests are happy or very happy as priests. In spite of the big mess we have been through, priests still have one of the highest satisfaction rates around, compared to other professions! But whatever your call, you are called to help God carry out his mission in the world in some way! As St. Theresa put it, “Anyone who realizes that he or she is favored by God will have the courage necessary for doing great things!”
Young adults! You have a call! Your job is to hear your call and dare to be all that you can be! Let me end this homily by quoting these words of Marianne Williamson, one of my favorite quotes:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate,
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous – actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people
won’t feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us.
It is not just in some of us: it is in everyone,
and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously
give other people permission to do the same.
The truth is the truth, no matter who says it. Buddha said quite well when he said: “Our goal in life is to find out what our purpose in life is and to give ourselves to that purpose wholeheartedly.”
Rev. Ronald Knott
January 26, 2014
If you are called, reply, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.
I Samuel 3:3b-10,19
What do you want to be when you grow up?” A lawyer? A farmer? A teacher? An actor? A doctor? What do you want to be when you grow up? A scientist? An engineer? A musician? An investment counselor? An accountant? What do you want to do when you grow up? An astronaut? A politician? An artist? A writer? You have heard these questions since you were a child! No doubt, you have been counseled, directed and pressured to choose one. You have been told that certain professions should be considered because they pay well and warned that others should be avoided because they don’t! In making your choice, you are, no doubt, under the gun to please parents, counselors, teachers and peers!
“What do you want to do when you grow up?” I believe that that question is the wrong question! The only question that really counts is the question: “What does God want you to do with your life?” Our first reading tonight, tells us of the call of Samuel, who is called three times before he is able to answer. His call reminds me of the call of another young man, Jeremiah, who hears God clearly the first time, but who resists and argues with God about his call. God tells Jeremiah:
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I dedicated you.
Jeremiah argues back:
Look God, I am too young. I’m not a good speaker! I won’t know
how to do what you are asking!
God snaps back:
Don’t say you’re too young. Don’t be afraid. Don’t worry about
it beforehand I will be with you to help you. I’ll turn you
into a good speaker. I will put the right words in
your mouth. I’ll give you what you need for the job when you
need it.
My friends, each one of you is precious in God’s eyes. You are special. You are a unique expression of God’s love and creativity. In all the world there is no other person exactly like you. There never has been or never will be another person just like you! Besides being special and unique, you are not here by accident. You were sent here for a purpose. You have a mission. You have something to do here that can be done by no one else. Your responsibility is to find out what your mission is and then carry it out with all your might. Your purpose here is commonly called “your vocation” or “your call.” Because it is GOD who calls you to your special task, God will be there to help you carry it out.
With a hundred people pulling you this way and that, saying that “you ought to be this” or “you ought to be that,” how do you hear what God is calling you to do? We hear God by listening to our own hearts. To be able to hear God speaking to us, we must spend some quality time with God and with ourselves. That means that sometimes we need to turn off the TV, the radio, the head phones, the computer, the advice givers and just be quiet! That means you have to leave your friends, you family and your neighbors once in a while, just to be alone in the presence of God. For many people, just being quiet is extremely hard to do and it’s scary! Many people are not used to being without noise and without being with people every waking moment of the day. When we go off and listen to our own hearts, we will hear our call, our vocation, where we need to go.
A very few people hear God’s voice directly like Jeremiah seems to have done. More like Samuel who hears, but is confused. Most people hear their calls as “a hunch,” “a quiet knowing” or “a small still voice” that never seems to go away. They just know in their guts. Most people hear God’s call through the invitation of others, those who say to us over and over again, “you’d make a good doctor,” “you’d be a great teacher,” “you’d make a good priest,” “you’ll make a great parent.” If you hear people saying one of those things, over and over again, you ought to listen to see if your heart agrees! They just might be messengers from God himself!
What if we listen for God’s call? What if we don’t? God wants the best for us! If we do what he calls us to do, we will be ourselves, we will be what he created us to be. We will feel, and we will know, that we are in the right place. Our life’s work will fit who we are. When we follow our calls, we will be happy, not a “ha-ha” happy, but a deep down satisfaction, in spite of challenges.
However, sometimes people know what they are supposed to do in life, but they don’t do it because they are scared of its demands, scared of what other people will think, scared of failure or scared of disappointing their parents, peers and friends. We pay a price from not listening to God’s call. We pay a price for pleasing others instead of being who we are. When people go against their call and do something else, their lives will seem to be out of sync, they will be frustrated, their hearts will not be in their jobs or professions. They will go through life with a low grade depression, a restlessness that will follow them wherever they go! Then, when they are old and look back, they will be filled with regret, anger and frustration that life somehow passed them by! I got such a letter a couple of years back from one of my classmates who dropped out of the seminary and still lives in regret forty years later.
Everybody has a vocation, a call from God, to do something for him, to help him carry out some part of his work in the world. A call is not so much about what we want to do, but what God wants us to do! The famous Albert Schweitzer put it this way, “The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.” The famous Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. put it this way, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, “What are you doing for others?” Some of you are called to help God carry out his mission by being teachers, doctors, scientists and food producers. Others of you are called to help God carry out his mission by being politicians, lawyers and writers. Others of you are called to carry out God’s mission by being social workers, artists and scientists. Still others are called to help God carry out his mission by having children, by being a good husband or wife or by living the single life. Finally, some of you are called to be priests (like me), sisters, brothers and full time lay ministers, as well as parents (like Melanie and Karen).
The church especially today needs good priests: people to preach the gospel, celebrate the sacraments and lead our parishes spiritually. Who will take my place someday soon, here at Bellarmine? According to the most recent studies, no matter what the media says, 94% of all priests are happy or very happy as priests. In spite of the big mess we have been through, priests still have one of the highest satisfaction rates around, compared to other professions! But whatever your call, you are called to help God carry out his mission in the world in some way! As St. Theresa put it, “Anyone who realizes that he or she is favored by God will have the courage necessary for doing great things!”
Young adults! You have a call! Your job is to hear your call and dare to be all that you can be! Let me end this homily by quoting these words of Marianne Williamson, one of my favorite quotes:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate,
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous – actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people
won’t feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us.
It is not just in some of us: it is in everyone,
and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously
give other people permission to do the same.
The truth is the truth, no matter who says it. Buddha said quite well when he said: “Our goal in life is to find out what our purpose in life is and to give ourselves to that purpose wholeheartedly.”
Monday, January 5, 2015
December 24 - Solemnity of the Nativity
Bellarmine University
“Fear”
Rev. Ronald Knott
December 24, 2014
The angel said to the shepherds. “Do not be afraid; for behold, I proclaim to you and all people good news of great joy. A savior has been born to you.
Luke 2:11
Do you know what the first thing human beings said to God? According to the Book of Genesis, the first thing we said to God was this: “I was afraid.” The word “afraid” appears many, many times in the Bible, most of the time along with the command, “Do not be afraid.” They were the words of Gabriel when he appeared to Mary when she first conceived. They were the words of the angel to Joseph when he decided to accept Mary and her unexpected pregnancy. They were the words the angel to the women after the resurrection. They were the words of Jesus to his disciples when he appeared to them in the upper room after he had risen from the dead. They are his words to the shepherds in the gospel today and they are words addressed to us gathered here again this Christmas in the year 2014!
As one who has preached 45 Christmases, it has occurred to me several times that more often than not, we have the tendency to reduce the Christmas story we just read to childish sentimentalism, when underneath it has at its core a very adult and real message of hope in times of great disappointment and loss. When we reduce it to pious sentimentalism, we can just keep it safely “out there” somewhere. When we infantilize it and reduce it to mere “cuteness,” “sweetness,” “sentimentalism,” and “niceness” we don’t have to deal with its very adult message. Santa Claus is for children, but the message of Christmas is a powerful message for serious adults.
“Do not be afraid,” is a message directed to the shepherds and to us! “Do not be afraid,” is easier said than done! Most of us are afraid at some time or another and some of us all the time. We are afraid of the dark, afraid of being alone, afraid of strangers, afraid of flying, afraid of heights, afraid of the water, afraid of germs, afraid of dying, afraid of getting old and sick, afraid of losing our jobs, afraid of not finding a spouse, afraid of losing a spouse, afraid of driving, afraid of losing our savings, afraid of getting pregnant, afraid of crowds, afraid of closed spaces, afraid of failure, afraid of success and, yes, afraid to move on after a terrible loss - the list goes on and on.
It occurred to me the other day that the fear we experience after a loss is not so much about fear of what has happened to the person we lost, but fear about what is going to happen to us without the one we lost. Sometimes the hardest part of a loss isn’t letting go of the past, but rather learning to start over. It is embracing a “new way of being” that most fills us with doubt and fear. It’s as if the question “What am I going to do now?” keeps flashing before our eyes without letting up! My own niece summed it up quite well when her young husband died of cancer. “I knew who I was yesterday, but I don’t know who I am today!” That’s what fear is usually all about – not the past, but the future – our future without the one we lost.
Recently, I had to go through the death of a dream I had for retirement. It hit suddenly and it hit hard, leaving me disappointed, angry and confused. I had to come to terms with the fact that the future I expected, wanted and planned on for years was not going to happen after all. I went through a grieving process – a painful process of letting go. One day, I read something that restored my hope and helped me let go. This is what it said: “A “plan B life” can be just as good or better than a “plan A life.” You just have to let go of that first dream and realize that God has already written the first chapter of the new life that awaits you. All you have to do is start reading that new chapter.” Thinking about it, this has been true over and over again in my life.
As I wait for God to reveal “plan b” for my next few years, I remember a quote from Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, that applied to me. You will probably remember part of the quote, but maybe not know who said it. “When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”
Jesus was right when he said, “Fear is useless. What is needed is trust.” In my own life, it seems that the closer I have become to God, the less afraid I have become of life’s ups and downs. The older I get, the more I can look back on the times I was afraid and realize that most of it was useless. I like to think of it as practice for facing the “big fear,” my fear of dying. The more times I have been able to let go of my fears and chose to trust God, the more I can do it. Most of the things I worried about never happened. In fact, most of the time when I have been able to trust God, unimaginable good things have happened instead. I did get through the seminary, even though the head priest at St. Thomas Seminary called me a “hopeless case!” I did enjoy my assignment in Somerset even though I thought it was going to be hell! I was successful at the Cathedral even though I thought it was way beyond my abilities. Even though I thought the world was coming to an end when the sexual abuse scandal hit Louisville, it led to writing my column in the Record for over twelve years and publishing 28 books instead. I thought my years as a vocation director was a disaster, but instead it led to a $2 million dollar grant to implement my dream of starting the Institute for Priests and Presbyterates at St. Meinrad Seminary.
Friends, the words in Isaiah are meant for us. “Say to those whose hearts are frightened: be strong, fear not!” The words of the angels to the shepherds in the gospel tonight are meant for us: “Do not be afraid!” The words of Jesus in both the gospels of Mark and Luke are also meant for us, “Fear is useless. What is needed is trust.” These words are invitations to turn it all over to God and wait for “plan b” to reveal itself. Remember, also, that many of the things that appear to be a tragedy one year may become something marvelous, more marvelous than we could ever imagine, the next! The secret is not to give up or give into our fear. As Dale Carnegie said “Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.” Eleanor Roosevelt said, “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.” An unknown author said this, “Don’t get discouraged; it is often the last key on the ring that opens the lock.”
And so I say to any of you whose hearts are frightened tonight, “Be strong! Fear not!” Today’s breakdown may just be tomorrow’s breakthrough. In the meantime, tell yourself this: “Do not be afraid! With God’s help, I can handle this!” To help you remember this message, I have a gift for you at the end of Mass – something made possible by a generous, anonymous donor and very good friend of mine- something to take with you to remind you of what God tells all of us tonight! Carry it in your pocket or put it somewhere where you can see it in the new year to come!
Do not be afraid; for behold, I proclaim to you
good news of great joy.
“Fear”
Rev. Ronald Knott
December 24, 2014
The angel said to the shepherds. “Do not be afraid; for behold, I proclaim to you and all people good news of great joy. A savior has been born to you.
Luke 2:11
Do you know what the first thing human beings said to God? According to the Book of Genesis, the first thing we said to God was this: “I was afraid.” The word “afraid” appears many, many times in the Bible, most of the time along with the command, “Do not be afraid.” They were the words of Gabriel when he appeared to Mary when she first conceived. They were the words of the angel to Joseph when he decided to accept Mary and her unexpected pregnancy. They were the words the angel to the women after the resurrection. They were the words of Jesus to his disciples when he appeared to them in the upper room after he had risen from the dead. They are his words to the shepherds in the gospel today and they are words addressed to us gathered here again this Christmas in the year 2014!
As one who has preached 45 Christmases, it has occurred to me several times that more often than not, we have the tendency to reduce the Christmas story we just read to childish sentimentalism, when underneath it has at its core a very adult and real message of hope in times of great disappointment and loss. When we reduce it to pious sentimentalism, we can just keep it safely “out there” somewhere. When we infantilize it and reduce it to mere “cuteness,” “sweetness,” “sentimentalism,” and “niceness” we don’t have to deal with its very adult message. Santa Claus is for children, but the message of Christmas is a powerful message for serious adults.
“Do not be afraid,” is a message directed to the shepherds and to us! “Do not be afraid,” is easier said than done! Most of us are afraid at some time or another and some of us all the time. We are afraid of the dark, afraid of being alone, afraid of strangers, afraid of flying, afraid of heights, afraid of the water, afraid of germs, afraid of dying, afraid of getting old and sick, afraid of losing our jobs, afraid of not finding a spouse, afraid of losing a spouse, afraid of driving, afraid of losing our savings, afraid of getting pregnant, afraid of crowds, afraid of closed spaces, afraid of failure, afraid of success and, yes, afraid to move on after a terrible loss - the list goes on and on.
It occurred to me the other day that the fear we experience after a loss is not so much about fear of what has happened to the person we lost, but fear about what is going to happen to us without the one we lost. Sometimes the hardest part of a loss isn’t letting go of the past, but rather learning to start over. It is embracing a “new way of being” that most fills us with doubt and fear. It’s as if the question “What am I going to do now?” keeps flashing before our eyes without letting up! My own niece summed it up quite well when her young husband died of cancer. “I knew who I was yesterday, but I don’t know who I am today!” That’s what fear is usually all about – not the past, but the future – our future without the one we lost.
Recently, I had to go through the death of a dream I had for retirement. It hit suddenly and it hit hard, leaving me disappointed, angry and confused. I had to come to terms with the fact that the future I expected, wanted and planned on for years was not going to happen after all. I went through a grieving process – a painful process of letting go. One day, I read something that restored my hope and helped me let go. This is what it said: “A “plan B life” can be just as good or better than a “plan A life.” You just have to let go of that first dream and realize that God has already written the first chapter of the new life that awaits you. All you have to do is start reading that new chapter.” Thinking about it, this has been true over and over again in my life.
As I wait for God to reveal “plan b” for my next few years, I remember a quote from Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, that applied to me. You will probably remember part of the quote, but maybe not know who said it. “When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”
Jesus was right when he said, “Fear is useless. What is needed is trust.” In my own life, it seems that the closer I have become to God, the less afraid I have become of life’s ups and downs. The older I get, the more I can look back on the times I was afraid and realize that most of it was useless. I like to think of it as practice for facing the “big fear,” my fear of dying. The more times I have been able to let go of my fears and chose to trust God, the more I can do it. Most of the things I worried about never happened. In fact, most of the time when I have been able to trust God, unimaginable good things have happened instead. I did get through the seminary, even though the head priest at St. Thomas Seminary called me a “hopeless case!” I did enjoy my assignment in Somerset even though I thought it was going to be hell! I was successful at the Cathedral even though I thought it was way beyond my abilities. Even though I thought the world was coming to an end when the sexual abuse scandal hit Louisville, it led to writing my column in the Record for over twelve years and publishing 28 books instead. I thought my years as a vocation director was a disaster, but instead it led to a $2 million dollar grant to implement my dream of starting the Institute for Priests and Presbyterates at St. Meinrad Seminary.
Friends, the words in Isaiah are meant for us. “Say to those whose hearts are frightened: be strong, fear not!” The words of the angels to the shepherds in the gospel tonight are meant for us: “Do not be afraid!” The words of Jesus in both the gospels of Mark and Luke are also meant for us, “Fear is useless. What is needed is trust.” These words are invitations to turn it all over to God and wait for “plan b” to reveal itself. Remember, also, that many of the things that appear to be a tragedy one year may become something marvelous, more marvelous than we could ever imagine, the next! The secret is not to give up or give into our fear. As Dale Carnegie said “Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.” Eleanor Roosevelt said, “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.” An unknown author said this, “Don’t get discouraged; it is often the last key on the ring that opens the lock.”
And so I say to any of you whose hearts are frightened tonight, “Be strong! Fear not!” Today’s breakdown may just be tomorrow’s breakthrough. In the meantime, tell yourself this: “Do not be afraid! With God’s help, I can handle this!” To help you remember this message, I have a gift for you at the end of Mass – something made possible by a generous, anonymous donor and very good friend of mine- something to take with you to remind you of what God tells all of us tonight! Carry it in your pocket or put it somewhere where you can see it in the new year to come!
Do not be afraid; for behold, I proclaim to you
good news of great joy.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)