“A man had two sons …” (Luke 15:11) – such is the beginning of the beloved and well-known Parable of the Prodigal Son. But you know Scripture doesn’t come with titles for such things. That’s just what the parable has always been called. But we could call it something else. The Parable of the Waiting Father? Or perhaps the Parable of the Petulant Older Brother? I guess it all depends on what draws your interest and attention. What about you? Where are your thoughts drawn: to the younger son’s selfish greed, the older son’s arrogant fury, or perhaps the patient father’s extravagant love? Continue reading
Hungers, Empathy and Homecoming
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We friars assist as Catholic chaplains at Tampa General. It is not my first time as a hospital chaplain. That was at Bethesda Naval Hospital. My time at Bethesda was at the beginning of the war in Iraq when the Marines were engaged in combat around Fallujah. Casualties were high. Every evening there was a chaplain assigned to the flight line to be there when marines, sailors, airmen and soldiers were medevac’d from the war zone. All of these service men and women were in grave medical conditions. I witnessed injuries that still left me amazed that the person was still alive. Alive with lives that would never be the same, never as they had planned. But the combat/trauma ICU and the flight line were not the hardest chaplain duty at Bethesda – at least not for me. For me, the hardest ward was the NICU; the neo-natal intensive care unit. 
I own a bucket. I suspect you do also. So…what is your favorite story about your bucket? Seriously. Ok, not so seriously. We don’t think about buckets a whole lot. It is not like we have a plethora of “bucket stories.” They are just kinda’ there when we need them. You use ‘em, you put them away. Back in the closet, pantry, or garage ready for the next time. And when the “next time” comes” and we go to find them and they are missing from their assigned place, it is not like the world has ended. Perhaps annoyed or inconvenienced, but not ended. A lots of times, the task is generally not too big and we can work around the missing bucket. 
This is the 2nd Sunday of Lent and each year on this day our gospel is taken from one of the accounts of the Transfiguration – this year we take it from Luke. It is the same gospel we hear every August 6th on the Feast of the Transfiguration. This year I began to wonder why we proclaim this gospel on this Sunday. Last week, proclaiming the gospel of Jesus’ temptation in the desert – well, that seems like a perfectly good start to the Lenten season. But why read the Transfiguration – why here on this 2nd Sunday of Lent? Is there a meaning, particularly Lenten, that we should hear and understand – apart from the meaning and message we would consider on August 6th? 
Did you catch the language of the second reading when St. Paul talks about “the first Adam” and “the last Adam?” It is his reference to our human nature and, with God’s grace, our possibilities. St. Paul talks about the first Adam being an earthly creature – and that is a good thing. When God created this world, he pronounced his work to be good – and when we created the first Adam and Eve, he pronounced his work to be very good. We are the work of the divine potter who knew us before we were created in our mother’s womb. We are part of that divine, creative outpouring of love that is how and why the world was created and what sustains the world in being. 
“Blessed are you who are poor, for the kingdom of God is yours.” (Luke 6:20)
Things “went south” pretty quickly after Jesus read the words from the prophet Isaiah, told the crowd that those prophetic words were fulfilled in their hearing, and then just sat down. How did things get so out of hand so quickly – from prayer to attempted homicide. When they got home, I wonder if they reflected on the whole incident? Did they take it into prayer and search for the presence of God in the midst of all that turmoil? 
It is not all that unusual that people will tell me that they find themselves waking up on Sunday morning somewhat less-than-excited about coming to Mass. “Father, it is so the-same-thing week after week, I find my mind wanders, I don’t get much out it, too many times I receive Communion and just keep walking out the door” I will almost always ask them, “When are thinking about coming to church, who do you look forward to seeing” – and I ask that God, Jesus or the priest not be their answer. Almost always the reply is “no one” or “I really don’t know anyone at the parish – I just park, come in, receive Eucharist, and go home.” 
“They have no wine.” It is a simple line spoken by Mary to her son, Jesus. Spoken among the music, the dancing, the celebration, the servants working hard to hide their panic, and wedding guest having no idea that this celebration teeters on the edge of disaster. A simple line spoken in the midst of an account that St. John the gospel writer has filled with so much theological richness. 
When I began thinking about what I might preach on this, Holy Family Sunday, I began to think about the way the family appears on television – now and way back in the early days of television, the 1950s and 1960s. If you ask people who are 60 years old or older, what might be one of their favorite family shows, the answers might include “Father Knows Best.” Weekly we could tune in to see mom Margaret as the voice of reason or dad Jim as the thoughtful father offering sage advice whenever the kids Betty and Bud had a problem. They were held up for us as the perfect family. Of course, the family on “Leave it to Beaver” was pretty amazing – they also had mom, dad and two children – Wally and Theodore (whose nickname was “Beaver”). It was one of the first primetime sitcom series written from a child’s point of view. It was a glimpse of middle-class American boyhood. In a typical episode, Beaver gets into some sort of boyish scrape, then faces his parents for reprimand and correction. But in this series, neither parent was omniscient; the series often showed the parents debating their approach to child rearing, and some episodes were built around parental gaffes. Still, it was family. 
