Saturday, August 25, 2012

188 Reasons to Give Thanks

“As two pieces of wax fuse together make one, so those who receive Holy Communion are so united with Christ that Christ is in them and they are in Christ.”

– St. Cyril of Alexandria

On August 3, 1946 at St. George Catholic Church in Lisbon, OH, my mother, Mary Jane Divita (Jones), married David William Jones. My father died in 1986, after 40 years of marriage to her. He told Mom that she would have to enter the “promised land” alone. However, the spirit of their fidelity, loyalty, commitment, and sacrifice was unprecedented.

During 2012, we offered Pre-Cana classes here at St. Joseph Parish on 3 occasions. On January 28, we had 77 couples come to us. On April 28, 57 couples were in attendance. On August 25, there were 54 couples. A total of 188 couples have been prepared for the "largest step" in their lives. All other commitments pale to this.

Joshua, the successor of Moses and the leader of the Israelite people set a challenge before them. To decide today whether or not to serve the true God. He drew the line in the sand in this defining statement as he invited the people to promise fidelity to God: “As for me and my house (family), we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15).

Joshua says that we can choose the gods of our ancestors, who worshiped in Mesopotamia and in Egypt, or the gods of the Canaanites, or the gods of the Amorites. But there comes a point in time when we must make a choice, and hopefully a positive choice, that will effect generations to come by our pledged fidelity to a God who gave us life.

The greatest sin of the Old Testament is idolatry, the preeminent sin of the entire Bible. It distorts our thinking, making us believe that we can live without God. As we know, after the time of Joshua, the Israelites ultimately self-destructed through their bad choices. So too, our choices define us. Our choices can make us healthy or sick, free or in bondage, life-giving or death-dealing, holy or sinful.

We are responsible for our virtues and our vices. If we choose to wallow in bad habits and blame it on genetics or upbringing, or our rotten luck, then it is not good news. But if we embrace the freedom that we are offered and accept responsibility for our actions, then it is good news. Indeed, we can grow, we can learn, we can change. It’s our choice and it’s never too late. God doesn’t give up on any of us!

It is promising and exciting that the Church renews itself in every generation to grow in faith and love. A wise woman once said to her husband, “I didn’t marry you because you were perfect, I married you because you gave me a promise before God and that promise made up for your faults. The promise I gave you made up for mine.” It is two imperfect people who get married. It is the promise made to each other that makes the marriage work, as it is a covenant made with God, who gives it strength to endure.

Married life, like any life has its ups and downs, its joys and sorrows, its successes and failures. But, when we receive unconditional love and fidelity from our spouse, it’s a taste of God’s love for us. And when we give unconditional love and fidelity to our spouse, we become a sign of God’s love for others.

During Jesus’ time, the Jewish ideal of marriage was the highest imaginable. The Talmud comments, “The very altar sheds tears when a man divorces the wife of his youth.” In those times, divorce was easy to attain. One school of law held that even the spilling of a dish of food was grounds for divorce, talking to a strange man, criticizing in-laws, or even speaking too loudly. Through a written bill of divorce, it was easy to dismiss the relationship. But Jesus reaffirmed the original state and stated God’s idea of man, woman, and marriage were to be forever for life.

The Lord's relationship with Israel is often referred to as a marriage covenant. God is wedded to His people and forever faithful. Just as a couple promises to love each other for better or worse, through the plusses and minuses of life, so too, our God promises to love us in good times when we love, honor, and obey Him, but also in bad when we fail to return God’s love. Fidelity is a promise of loyalty, which is steadfast in the face of hardship, temptation, boredom, and tragedy, or whatever else a couple may be asked to face over the course of a lifetime.

Jesus said in John 15:13, “There is no greater love than to lay down your life for a friend.” Thus, he revealed that those who enter marriage must grow to a level of love that is ready for sacrifice - a truly self-giving love, not one that is intent on gratification; not a love that is subject to whims and impulse, but a love that is firmly established and endures. We do not marry angels, saints, or gods, but human beings with fears, temptations, hopes, desires, longings, and dreams. Let’s be honest. Love can turn to hatred, joys can turn to sorrows and marriages can turn to divorce. When the forces that divide us are stronger than the forces that unite us, it empties into the pain and sting of separation.

Joshua asked the Israelites where their loyalty and allegiance lies. Saint Paul encouraged husband and wife to support and build one another up. Jesus asked the Twelve a heart-breaking and heart-wrenching question, “Do you also want to leave?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You alone have the words of eternal life” (John 6:67-68). Jesus loves us so much that he respects our freedom. We can choose wisely or foolishly. We can live well or live stupidly. The covenant of God leads to wisdom, joy, light and life. The way of evil leads to foolishness, suffering, darkness, and death. Let us live our calling of our vocation of love to bless present and future generations to come.

Saturday, August 18, 2012

A Suffering Servant Remembered: Fr. Bernie Shulik

On Monday, August 13, I attended the Mass of Resurrection for Fr. Bernard P. Shulik at St. Paul Cathedral in Oakland. Bishop David A. Zubik, who knew him for 45 years, said that Fr. Bernie’s heart pulsated with God’s love and compassion. The Bishop presided, along with concelebrants Bishop William J. Walterscheid and Bishop William J. Winter. There were 23 priests present at the Mass. Fr. Gary Krummert delivered the homily to approximately 80 people in attendance. Fr. Bernie, who was a priest of the Diocese of Pittsburgh for 38 years, died of natural causes at age 64. The son of the late William P. and Margaret Zavacky Shulik, he was born in Lyndora, Pa., a Butler County steel town, on February 7, 1948, and felt right at home serving those same steel town communities in the years of his priesthood. Fr. Bernie was ordained a priest by Bishop Vincent M. Leonard on May 4, 1974 and called home to God from Vincentian Regency Nursing Home on August 8, 2012. He is survived by his two brothers, David (Mary), of Clark, Pa. and William (Karen), of Bridgeville, Pa., along with 2 nephews, 3 nieces, 3 great-nephews, and a great niece. He was also preceded in death by his brother, James.

He served as pastor of St. Joseph Parish and St. Clare of Assisi in Clairton, St. Anthony Parish in Monongahela. He was Chaplain of Bishop Boyle High School in Homestead. He had an “un-common” touch with the “common” person. His last assignment was in service to the Felician Sisters and he was well-known to our community of St. Joseph Parish for over a decade.

Fr. Krummert mentioned at the onset of his homily that while Fr. Bernie was on a school bus at the close of 7th grade, a classmate mentioned to him that he would see him next year in 8th grade, to which Bernie replied, “No you won’t, I’m off to our Lady of Lourdes High School and Seminary in Cassadaga, NY.” At a tender age, he had a vision and a goal, to which he strove a passion to become a priest. He attended Duquesne University and St. Mary University in Rollins Park, MD (Baltimore).

When I came to St. Joseph over 4 years ago I remember the first weekend after Fr. Bernie listened to confessions. He told me that he was St. Joseph’s “assistant” for many years. He loved the church, the people and the community. He prayed that I would fall in love with it as well as quickly as he did. I was deeply moved by that comment and I begged, as I fell to my knees, a prayer to help sustain and strengthen me in this new ministry in this faith-community. Countless people told me of his measureless compassion and mercy in the confessional, which seemed to be a hallmark of his ministry. They would stand in long lines to hear a comforting and reassuring word to the sinner, to come back home to be in God’s graces, even calling the rectory to find out if he was hearing confessions. He had an uncanny ability in today’s “fast-paced” society to take one person at a time, face-to-face, and heart-to-heart. He never forgot a name. At the 10:00 AM Mass at St. Joseph there is a blind man who uses a seeing eye dog. Fr. Bernie made sure he spoke to him each week and petted his dog. When he celebrated a Mass with children it seemed to bring him back to life and give him hope and strength in his ministry as a priest. He would always end his Christmas and Easter Masses with a message in his native tongue of Croatian.

I soon found out that Fr. Bernie was a “circuit-rider” priest. He offered Masses at the Pittsburgh Greater International Airport, the 911th Air Base in Moon Twp. St. Margaret Mary, St. James and surrounding areas. He would always head out to St. Coleman Church in Turtle Creek on Sunday evenings to celebrate Mass at 5:30 PM for Fr. Jim Kunkel, who was a season ticket holder for the Steelers. He knew that it would be a small crowd in attendance for that Mass, but delighted that his friend could enjoy the football game and he knew that the Steelers needed their prayers!

Fr. Bernie was an avid skier, who loved to travel both home and abroad. He would regularly ski with other Pittsburgh priests. He had a great passion for music and loved playing the piano. He had 2 St. Bernard dogs (because of his own name sake), which were his canine companions, riding along with him wherever he went in his Jeep Cherokee. I spoke to a retired priest who remembered Fr. Bernie receiving frequent deliveries of various packages from UPS and FedEx to St. John Vianney Manor. He loved to watch the QVC shopping channel, and order things online.

His brother David commented, “His passion for the priesthood and touching people’s lives was the driving force in his priesthood.” The one thing that I learned first hand from my brother, Bernie, was how to embrace with resiliency long-suffering. He had countless battles with health issues which limited his ability to minister as much as he would have liked to. He persevered with faith through personal limitations, difficulties, challenges, and sickness.

Despite carrying many burdens himself, he sought to relieve the fears and sorrows of others. My life, priesthood, and ministry is far richer for having walked with my brother, Bernie. As his cross is now ended, may he share the victory of the Risen Christ.

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Compassion Feeds Others

"We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures; we are the sum of the Father's love for us and our real capacity to become the image of His Son."

- Blessed John Paul II

While preaching my homily at the 8:00 AM Mass last Sunday, a distressed and trouble 35-year-old woman entered the side door and stood in the front aisle near the pulpit while I was preaching. Aware that Ginny Ambrose was taping my homily for our web site, I nodded with my head for her to take a seat in the front pew. A parishioner sitting nearby was watching and cautious of the situation. I am sure that many other parishioners likewise were watching how this would play out. As she walked, she bobbed and weaved. When she approached for Holy Communion, I noticed that her hands were very black and dirty. She seemed uncomfortable in the setting but, she remained for the duration of worship with us.

At the end of Mass, she made a bee-line to tell me her plight and predicament. She told me that her car was broken down and that she needed gas to get to Breezewood to help her son. After she was given some financial assistance, she got in her truck and sped off.

Situations like these make you wonder where the truth lies. You wonder if the person is in need or are they conning you. My rector at the seminary, Msgr. Richard M. McGinnis, a priest of the Archdiocese of Newark, used to say in pastoral practice class, "It's always best to err on the side of compassion." And, "When in doubt, give it out." Whenever I meet distressed, confused or agonizing people, I feel compelled to help them. As a priest, I am driven to respond to human hurts and dilemmas with pastoral instinct.

I bring this story to your attention to make us ever mindful and sensitive to those around us, to be acutely aware of our surroundings. Whether we meet a person with an unkempt appearnace, physical disability, mental challenge, or spiritual difficulty, we must be compassionate.

St. Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, encourages us through these words: "So be imitators of God, as beloved children and live in love as Christ loved us and handed Himself over for us as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma" (5: 1-2). St. Paul reminds us that if the Holy Spirit truly fills us, we will reflect holiness to each and to all. St. Paul wants us to avoid feeding on anger, hatred, self-centeredness, control, judgment and unruly passions. But rather, we must feed on jesus, the Living Bread -- the Bread of compassion, of reconciliation, of justice, of peace -- that not only nourishes us but inspires us to be bread for others. We must be strengthened through the divine encouragement the Lord gives us in His Holy Word, the Eucharist, and the life of the Holy Spirit within us. We are challenged to follow Christ in love and to love as Christ loves.

There are many hungers of the human heart. We hunger for a feeling of importance. We want to feel we are special, that we matter. Nobody wants to be a nobody. And we all want to tell our story and we all have the right to be heard and respected. We have a hunger for acceptance, understanding, and compassion -- with warts and all, with our proficiencies and deficiencies, with our assets and liabilities. We hunger of faith, to have a compass that sets us on a course of positive beliefs and values leading us to a destination. We hunger for hope. In a world that oftentimes puts a pall on promise, hope and truth, there is no spiritual hunger strike of hope in Jesus' vocabulary.

We hunger for love. St. Paul reminds us that love never fails. Life can fail us, people can fail us, health can fail us, work can fail us, our family and friends can fail us. But God remains. I have found that the common denominator in all my counseling situations is whether a person has been loved or whether there is a deficiency in love. We hunger for relationships. not co-dependent or addictive ones that are death-dealing rather than life-giving, but relationships that are healthy, holy, happy, that helps one to ward off the coldness of anguish and loneliness.

As I am at the middle stage of my life, I realize that the key to life is life-giving relationships. We must nourish relationships, encourage them and strengthen them. For example, one of the ways I have found I can stay in touch with those I have met through the years is through e-mail companions. I now have over 600 e-mail companiions that I reach out to each week. You need to have relationships that are "nutrient rich" and not "nutrient deficient" through exploitation and manipulation.

Ultimately, we hunger for eternal life. And only God can satisfy the deepest hunger that earth can't fill, that time can't fill, that people can't fill, that our profession can't fill and that our children can't fill. In other words, we hunger fo God.

The following is from a book I will be teaching in an 8-week course beginning August 27. May this be a blessing for you.

My cup of compassion holds tears of the world;
It overflows with sorrow, struggles and sadness.

My cup of compassion holds the cries of childrens,
unfed, unloved, unsheltered, uneducated, unwanted.

My cup of compassion holds the screams of war,
the tortured, slain, imprisoned, the raped, the disabled.

My cup of compassion holds the bruised and battered,
victims of incest and abuse, gang wars, violent crimes.

My cup of compassion holds the voice of silent ones,
the mentally ill, illegal immigrants, the unborn, the homeless.

My cup of compassion holds the emptiness of the poor,
the searing pain of racism, the impotency of injustice.

My cup of compassion holds the heartache of loss,
the sigh of the dying, the sting of the divorced.

My cup of compassion holds the agony of the earth,
species terminated, air polluted, land destroyed, rivers with refuse.

My cup of compassion, I hold it to my heart where the Divine dwells
Where love in strong than death and disaster.

- Joyce Rupp, "The Cup of Our Life"

Friday, August 3, 2012

From Pittsburgh to the Ends of the Earth

The less you have the more you can give, and the more you have, the less you can give.”

— Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta

Recently I celebrated my 4th anniversary in serving the faith community here at St. Joseph in Coraopolis. Around the time of my anniversary, I was searching high and low and for a picture of the Last Supper to place in the rectory dining room. Lo and behold, a parishioner who was downsizing and selling her house brought in a beautiful painting of the Last Supper. I was glad that I patiently waited because the picture’s character, size and beauty, and that fact that it was such an important part of her large household, made it all the greater a blessing for the rectory for many years to come.

During these five weeks of summer, we are reading from the Bread of Life Discourse from John 6. It makes one reflect on the precious gift of the Eucharist as each Sunday we have the joy of gathering around at the Table of the Word and the Table of the Body and Blood of Jesus. Lest one ever forget, Jesus is the one who ultimately feeds us. And from the nourishment and strength He gives us, we are called to feed others in His name. I remember my homiletic professor once telling us that the difference between a good sermon and a bad sermon is that a good sermon causes you to want more, but a bad sermon leaves you wanting less. Jesus always leaves us wanting more!

Today in our electronic society we are programmed to expect instant answers, immediate results, and we live with a rush-hour mentality. We have even been called “the fast-food nation.” Our society can be a frantic, frenetic and frenzied blizzard of text, tweets and emails. We often live in a breakneck world of work with untold stresses, pressures, demands and deadlines. Within our consumer mentality in “keeping up with Joneses,” we pursue more things, endlessly seeking the latest gadgetry and gizmos.

Many times we are comparing ourselves with others, focusing only on the gap between us. Whether that something which creates a barrier between us is talent, resources, religion, history, looks, social background, status, money, knowledge and education, special abilities, or relationships, we compare and compete with others. Role, title, position, status can easily destroy why God put us on this earth—to do the very best of our ability in the way that only we can do it. And no one can do it better than you. Let us not confuse our superficial identity with our authentic being.

The story of Jesus feeding the multitude is the only miracle found in all four Gospels. Thus it points to and highlights the importance of this account for the life of the Church. No matter where one finds this miracle recorded, the most striking element is the people’s hunger and Jesus’ readiness to feed them. Little things always mean much in the hands of Jesus. The celebration of the Eucharist is the miracle to convert us from selfishness to selflessness. It is quality time when we listen to how someone’s day was today. It’s quality time when we put others’ needs before our own preferences, schedules and interests. It’s quality time when we read a story to a child at bedtime without being concerned about checking our phone for new messages. It’s quality time when we invite our neighbors around for a meal or block party. It’s quality time when we come to the Lord’s house for time in prayer. And if we want to see our offerings to God multiplied, we need to realize that we have an essential role to play. We all have different gifts, different life situations, different opportunities that will present themselves in our lives. But one thing is sure: each of us will have an opportunity to do something important for the kingdom of God.

Recently on July 23-27, the 35th annual convention of the National Association of Pastoral Musicians was held at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh. The theme this year was “Renew the Face of the Earth.” It was a spiritual high to gather with people from around our country and beyond, from the Atlantic coastline of New Jersey to Pacific shoreline of California, and the heart of Texas to the Minnesota lakes. The event was packed with uplifting prayer services, keynote addresses, breakout workshops and a feast of performances, event venues and activities. It was heartwarming to see so many faith leaders and servants in our city. At the convention we met new and old friends, we shared experiences, listened to new music, new liturgical expressions and new perspectives to bring back home to our faith communities. New graces poured over us along the river banks of Pittsburgh. It is in moments like this that we see the special treasure and gift that faith is and the ways in which we can share our God-given talents to bless the world over.

Looking out at that vast throng of people that descended on our beautiful city of Pittsburgh to gather as Christ’s Church to be in one place at one time in prayer and thanksgiving was resoundingly beautiful, uplifting and inspiring. New waves of grace came over us to minister and evangelize and bear witness in the culture and times we live. Whether one is 20, 50 or 80 plus, we hunger for Jesus the Bread of Life who gives meaning, purpose and direction to our life.

As an avid sports fan who loves the hometown Penguins, Pirates and Steelers, I was prouder to be a part of Church community that worships as one Body of Christ across our nation than a part of any faithful participant at a sporting event. In a world that offers us myriads of interests and distractions, we must find Jesus. It was wonderful to be at a week-long event that put faith at center stage, for it is faith that holds life together. And as our faith is strengthened through other believers and witnesses, we in turn can share our faith with others.

We are all pilgrims on the journey. We are all companions on the way. We are all seekers striving for holiness. We are all bridge-builders. We are torch bearers setting the world ablaze with God’s love. We are table mates of the Lord and one another. And through the gift of the Holy Spirit entrusted to us, we are called to renew the face of the earth.

Praise the Lord!