Aug. 9, 2009: 19th Sunday Ordinary (B)

This past Wednesday, I spent a whole day with my 2 1/2 yr. old nephew who came home to Dallas. And I learned two lessons in life from him. First, have paper towel handy, always. His mama was potty training him without the pull-up diaper in the house, and he would just show up saying, "I'm wet." And it was my job to look around the house to see where he pee'd on the floor with plenty of paper towels. The second lesson in life is that even at an early age of 2 1/2 yr. old, we can push away someone who loves us. My nephew is named Pio after St. Padre Pio, but that did not mean that he was like the saintly Padre Pio most of the time. He was playing with his sister and his mama was next to him helping him play. He did not want his mama interfering with his play, so he pushed his mama away. She got up and walked away. Pio must felt guilty. He got up and chased after his mama and asked her to hug him. She ignored him. He began to cry out louder and louder. My sister said, "What do you say first?" Pio replied, "I'm sorry, mommy." Pio was back in his mama's arms, all content.

Isn't it a mystery that we hurt those who love us? Why is that? Is it because we are taking them for granted? Is it because we're so used to be forgiven that it's understood that no repentance is necessary? Taking this analogy beyond our moms and dads, relatives, and friends, do we take God for granted that He does not require, "I'm sorry," from us when we push Him away?

Not long ago, I read a book by Anne Rice named, "Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession." She grew up as a Catholic in the 1940s and 50s in the neighborhood of New Orleans near the Irish Channel and the Garden District. She was baptized at St. Alphonsus Catholic Church and attended school there. Those of you who have been down in Irish Channel neighborhood, St. Alphonsus is directly across from St. Mary's Catholic Church where the Shrine of Blessed Francis Xavier Seelos is located at.

She said, "I left the church at age eighteen, because I stopped believing it was 'the one true church established by Christ to give grace'...When I

married two years later, it was to a passionate atheist, Stan Rice." They had a daughter together, but she died at the age of 5. And Rice channeled her grief through her first vampire novel called, "Interview with the Vampire." She later reflected, "The novel reflected my guilt and my misery in being cut off from God and from salvation; my being lost in a world without light." Yet, she said, "I kept trying to give up on God, but God wouldn't give up on me."

She was drawn to the person of Jesus. But she couldn't explain her attraction. In mid 1990s, she went to the Holy Land without knowing reasons why. She said, "Why did I insist that we remain in the church at the Garden of Gethsemane, as three priests said the Mass...What did it mean to me to be staring at the Garden of Olives, where just possibly Our Lord experienced his agony before the arrest that changed the history of the ancient world?...I continued to deny faith in God. I truly didn't think faith was possible again for me."

Then she went to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to see the great statue of Jesus Christ whose arms outstretch over the city. After climbing up 2300 feet up the steep mountain she saw this 100 feet high and 1,145 ton statue. She said, "I remember a kind of delirium, a kind of joy. I didn't acknowledge faith, but a sense that this Lord of Lords belonged to me...Surely what I felt in that moment was love." Back down in the streets of Rio de Janeiro, she stopped at a religious gift store and bought a 2 ft. statue of Jesus nailed to his Cross and St. Francis of Assisi reaching up to

embrace the Lord. One of Jesus' arm was freed from the Cross; and Jesus tenderly embraced St. Francis. She remembered that many years ago during her Catholic school days, she once read the life of St. Francis and how he received the Stigmata. In her youthful zeal, she also asked the Lord if He would grant her the Stigmata. Her Stigmata turned out to be many years of her life in the darkness cut off from her Lord. Later in Brazil, she walked into a church, and there she saw a giant version of the statue she bought earlier at a shop. She was shocked. It was as someone was whispering to her: "This is not some statue you bought in a shop and put among your collectibles. This is a figure of the love of Jesus Christ that is waiting for you. This is the mystery of the Incarnation. This is the Lord bridging the gulf between God and humankind. This is the Lord, in the midst of his atoning suffering, reaching out for...you."

And finally one day she said, "I wrestled with a lot of theological questions, and then one afternoon, I thought, I love you--I want to come back to you."

Can we see ourselves in place of St. Francis at the foot of the cross, being embraced by Jesus' arm like Anne Rice? At the moment when we place our hands out to receive Jesus in the Eucharist, aren't we reaching out for Him and He reaching out for us? If we have pushed Him away this past week with our bitterness, anger, shouting, and malice, does He not need to hear from us, "O my God, I'm heartily sorry for having offended you. I detest all my sins because of your just punishment, but most of all, because I offended you my God, who are all Good and deserving of all my love." And as we embrace Him during Communion, we will hear Him say, "I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”