Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time B
It’s
good to be back!
To
answer everyone’s question at once:
Yes, we had a wonderful
trip!
As
most of you know,
last
Sunday morning I was in Rome
as
Pope Benedict XVI canonized seven new saints for the Church.
I
made the journey in particular for the one
who
is most familiar to us here in the North Country,
but
whose name was the most difficult of the bunch to pronounce:
Saint
Kateri Tekakwitha,
'gaderi degaˈgwit-ha.
I
suspect you know
the general lines of her life’s story.
She
was born near Albany in 1656.
A
smallpox outbreak when she was very young
killed
her brother and both her parents,
leaving
Kateri still alive
but severely scarred and nearly blind.
She
first encountered Jesuit missionaries
in her late teens,
and
was baptized at the age twenty.
Facing
persecution for her newfound faith,
she
moved to a settlement of Christian Mohawks outside of Montréal.
There
she died in 1680 at the age of 24.
What’s
in that unusual name?
Kateri—a shortened form of
Catherine—
is
the Christian name she was given at her baptism.
But
Tekakwitha is another story.
It’s
the Mohawk nickname she bore since childhood,
and
it can mean several things.
It means,
“one who feels her way ahead,”
or,
“she who bumps into things”—
clear
references to her impaired vision.
But
it can also mean, “one who moves things before her,”
or,
“she who puts thing in order.”
That
tongue-twisting name—Tekakwitha—
sheds
light on this Sunday’s gospel,
and
on what it means for our lives.
A
motorist with poor eyesight
was driving through dense fog
and
was trying desperately to stay within sight
of
the taillights of the car ahead of him.
As
he squinted and worried his way along,
closely
following those taillights
on every twist and turn,
the
car in front suddenly stopped,
and
the man hit it from behind.
He
got out from his car
and demanded to know why
the other driver
came to such an abrupt stop.
“I
had to,” he replied.
“I pulled
into my garage!”
We
all have had the experience of trying to find our way in the dark.
Maybe
it was because of a power outage.
Maybe
it was a nighttime trip to the bathroom.
Maybe
we were sneaking in after curfew.
Most
of us can find our way OK in the dark…
…just
as long as everything is in it’s proper place.
One
toy or shoe or piece of furniture out of order,
and
we pretty quickly start to stumble.
(That
was the case
when
making my way to the window early Friday morning
to
find out what all the sirens in the neighborhood were about.
As
if my jetlag wasn’t enough, a laundry basket nearly did me in!)
Figures
like Bartimaeus in the gospel
and
our new saint, Kateri,
remind
us that there is a manner of seeing far more essential
than
that of the two eyes in our heads.
Notice
the movement of the blind beggar in the gospel.
We
first find him seated by the roadside:
he’s
immobile; he’s stuck; he cannot find his own way.
But
as soon as he knows that Jesus is calling him,
he
springs to his feet—even before his sight is restored.
Faith
had saved his soul though it has yet to heal his eyes.
He
begins to follow Jesus before he can see the way.
Likewise,
while Tekakwitha may have tripped about the village,
shielding
her sensitive eyes from the burning, bright sun,
she
certainly wasn’t stumbling along the pathways of the spirit.
She
had come to know the Lord
who
makes sense of this often topsy-turvy world,
who
alone can put our lives in proper order.
Many
people today needlessly bump into things.
In
these foggy, confusing times, they try to find their way alone.
But
rather than making true progress,
they
instead wander about in circles—
or
end up stuck along the side of the road.
A
recent survey confirmed
that
the fastest growing religious group in the U.S.
is
the “nones”—not the Grey Nuns or the Ursuline Nuns,
but
those who have no religious affiliation at all.
How
crucial, then, for us to make every effort to know our faith,
and
to love our faith, and to live our faith in joy!
Yes,
faith is an exercise of the mind.
If
we’re going to live according to our creed,
then
we must first be sure to understand it.
But
even more: faith is the vision of the heart.
Faith
is in-sight,
recognizing
in Jesus the only one who can save us:
the
high priest
between
God and man,
between heaven and earth.
Following
Jesus in faith
means
staying close to him in the sacraments,
especially
Eucharist and Penance—
coming
to Mass and going to confession—
visible
means by which he has promised
to
remain close and present to us.
Following
Jesus in faith
means
living according to his teaching,
which
is handed on in each new generation
by his Church.
Along
the twisting, turning pathways of life,
we must
trustingly stay within sight
of these taillights,
only
stopping when the Lord has led us home.
Faith
isn’t simply an intellectual experience:
to
grasp a concept or to pass a test.
Faith
grows out of a personal encounter—
out
of meeting God face-to-face.
It
is God’s stated desire to heal us.
“What
do you want me to do for you?” the Lord asks.
Have
we tripped and stumbled in the dark enough
to
recognize our blindness, our weakness,
our
inability to fix things for ourselves?
Only
then can we acknowledge and state our need for healing.
(You
can’t really believe in a Savior, after all,
unless
you first believe that you need to be saved.)
With
Bartimaeus, with Saint Kateri Tekakwitha,
let
us respond to the Lord’s call:
Master, increase my faith!
Master, put my world in
order!
Master, I want to see!
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