Homily, May 20

Wow! After a gospel like that, what can you say? Well, for me, that's never a problem (ha ha!) Seriously, today's gospel is one that should prompt all of us to serious reflection. But it's not just gospels that make us reflect. Anything can and should be a prompt for reflection. Sometimes reflection comes from the strangest places. A couple of examples: One of our ministers told me that some of the kids in our faith community are starting to referto each other as SOV-iers. How cool is that? Get it? SOViers = "Saviors"! Wow! That's a mind-blower. I mean, instead of getting uptight about dogma or whatever, these kids - OUR kids, are in tune enough to recognize each other as saviors. So I had to reflect - and I did, and I see the truth in this - that within our faith community, we are all saviors to each other, when we help each other, or when we are just there in communion. Isn't that what it's all about?

Then another thing that made me reflect was overhearing some of our brothers complaining about the feast of the ascension being moved from Thursday to Sunday. And that's just sad - sad that people get so hung up on one day of the week or another. I mean, how can you get so psychoempathically wrapped up in something that you get all bent out of shape becuase it gets moved to a different day? I'll tell you how - it's because you're looking for somebody to give you THE RULES, instead of just trying to be church. If these people would just get it, like the kids do, that you've got to be a SOVier, then our entire faith community might be like the apostles were - sharing, giving, loving people who redistributed their wealth and didn't get hung up about what day of the week a certain celebration was. Let's do that. Let's both reflect and BE reflections - reflecting each other like two mirrors face to face. How cool is that? How CHURCH is that?