February 7, 2010
We Make a Difference
Thoughts on the Second Readings – Joe Frankenfield
5th Sunday in Ordinary Time
1Corinthians 15:1-11

Most of us respond ‘aw shucks’ to the good we do. Especially when someone notices that our good deeds appear rooted in our faith, we blush, look down and scuff our toes in the dust. Maybe this arises from an assumption that only priests and sisters are really fitting examples of faith since they’ve put aside marriage and family for their way of life. Maybe the Church’s habit of focusing on the extraordinary, even miraculous actions of those it designates saints makes our ordinary lives seem too humdrum for God to be operating there. Neither is true. Maybe it’s just how we are.

In the grand scheme of things an ‘aw shucks’ attitude about helping a friend or forgiving an enemy isn’t a big deal like turning our backs on starving people. It can even be kind of endearing. But here’s something to think about. If we don’t have a sense that God is working through us for good – even great good, we run the risk of not taking our potential to make a difference seriously. If we’re blind to that, people suffer – not directly from what we do to them but indirectly by what we do not do for them.

Being aware that the benefits we provide depend on God’s Spirit directing us as well as the matrix of enabling good that others create around us is crucial. Without that we accomplish nothing. Still, it’s we who decide to act and we who spend our energy to make things better. The love we give, the aid we provide, the life and beauty we create are gifts we give and gifts we’re given.

Too many people in our world are hungry and hurting and ignored. Too many of life’s needs are unmet. Too many human advances remain unfulfilled for us to mutter ‘aw shucks’ about our abilities – physical, moral or intellectual. In a room full of braggarts that may provide a refreshing moment but the truth is that God has done great things in us and more will follow.

January 31, 2010
Forgive – or Forget It
Thoughts on the Second Reading – Joe Frankenfield
4th Sunday of Ordinary Time
1 Corinthians 12:31-13:13

Love is always patient, kind, truthful, faithful, hopeful and persistent. It’s never jealous, pompous, rude, self-centered, hot-headed, sulky or mean-spirited. Okay, everyone still claiming to be a lover put up your hand!

Years ago the wife of a couple, considering Paul’s letter to the Corinthians for their fiftieth anniversary celebration, commented that he obviously had never been married. “You got that right,” her husband replied, laughing. “We try, and on a good day we get some of that right. On our worst days . . . ; never mind.”

We might think it strange that Jesus made “forgive us just as we forgive others” one of the four blessings he taught his disciples to pray for. We might, unless we’ve ever attempted a lasting relationship. Friendship and love teach a simple lesson: no forgiveness; no relationship.

Assuming that we’ve put aside the idea that God will establish the world of Jesus’ vision whether we cooperate or not, we’ve had to accept the idea that he’s going to work through a lot of very imperfect folks.

Stupidity isn’t going to suddenly vanish. Weak egos aren’t going to grow magically strong. All the poor aren’t going to wake up hopeful and wise or the rich as concerned with the common welfare as with their own. Enemies aren’t going to suddenly decide that their opponents are just as right as they are. How, then, will things ever change?

We have no clue how things will change! But we know how things will begin to change: we will forgive one another. We will forgive one another not because we’ve all “gotten it right” but because we realize that our future depends on forgiving one another – as we are. Everything begins with that. Each of us begins with that.

January 24, 2010
The Price of Faith
Thoughts on the Second Reading – Joe Frankenfield
3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time
1 Corinthians 12:12-30

“When the boat’s sinking, everybody bails,” my uncle Joe used to say. His point: when there’s work that has to be done, it doesn’t matter who you are, what you’ve got planned or how you feel; you pitch in till the job is finished. I hated that saying as a kid but it was hard to contest.

It’s difficult for us to identify with the thinking of the early church – even the thinking of Jesus himself. There’s urgency about it. Absolutes abound. Its judgments and demands never waver.

In our world of fluid situations and multiple visions the gospel seems naïve. “Nothing is that simple,” we find ourselves thinking. “What are the long-term consequences? What about people who see things differently? How do we know that our perspective is the right or even the best one? Where’s the fire?” we want to know. “Let’s calm down and consider alternatives.”

Jesus didn’t preach just anywhere or to just anybody. He preached to a smoldering world, a world where the smallest gust of trouble could and did stir an inferno. His world was massively unjust. Tremendous gaps existed between the rich and poor. Life was cheap. The powerful wrote and enforced the law to keep themselves in power. Ordinary people, the followers of Jesus, struggled constantly because if they stopped, they died. The sense that life had gone all wrong was deep: this couldn’t be what God wanted. Jesus offered a way forward, a path to the world of God’s promise. Wasted time meant wasted lives.

Our enthusiasm for Jesus’ gospel hangs on our ability to see the world from the Creator’s perspective. Unless the dissonance between the divine intent and the reality of the world’s powerless and suffering sets our teeth are set on edge, we’ll never make sense of the gospel’s immediacy.

Only if we feel an inescapable bond between ourselves and all who suffer will the gospel become our passion. Only that realization can transform the image of all people united in God, our Father from a sweet thought to the central focus of our hope.

January 17, 2010
Thoughts on the Second Reading – Joe Frankenfield
Second Sunday of Ordinary Time
1 Corinthians 12:4-11

Driving back from a family gathering (not yours or mine, of course) occasions a lot of post game commentary. Why do they let their kids run wild like that? I could never be married to that man; he’d drive me nuts. Can you believe how much they spent on that couch? Those two shouldn’t be allowed to vote.

Families are strange things. The cliché that you can’t live with them and you can’t live without them is true. Most everyone, at some time, wonders if they weren’t adopted or wish that they could prove that a switch had been made in the hospital. Yet, for most of us, family is one of the most precious things we’ve ever known. In them we learned to be human. They gave us our deepest values. It’s them that we count on when everything falls apart.

Many years ago I was complaining to Bishop Ken Untener, the bishop of Saginaw at the time, about some priest that I was upset with. He replied, “You know, a diocese is like a farm, you can’t just fire Johnny if he can’t milk cows. He’s part of the family. You have to find something that he’s good at.” Of course, a couple years later when he was complaining about someone, I reminded him of the diocese’s likeness to a family farm. He suggested I remember who was the bishop at the table and who wasn’t and pass the bread.

Quirks and blind spots plague us all. When all is said and done, we all try to do our best – sometimes we get it right. We’re convinced that we know how God wants us to believe and live. Still, truth be told, we decide specifics without benefit divine cue cards. Regardless of how badly we think someone else is messing things up, we can grant that he or she is probably trying to do well. If it’s true of us, why not of them?

Maybe after getting up from the table and passing out our good-by hugs we could be a bit easier on one another traveling home.

January 10, 2010 Baptism
Baptism of the Lord

It’s About Bringing People In, Not Putting Them Out
Thoughts on the Second Reading -  Joe Frankenfield
The Baptism of the Lord
Acts 10:34-38

My father was an office manager in a large company. He cared a great deal about his people and frequently that caused him distress. Once a young woman in his division, a Catholic, decided to marry a divorced man who my father knew had repeatedly cheated on his wife. When the young woman gave my dad an invitation to her wedding, he faced a dilemma. He didn’t want to give the impression that he had no problems with this man’s behavior which had caused his wife and children such pain. He was also concerned for the young woman’s future happiness and he wasn’t happy that, knowing her fiancé’s past behavior, she would still marry him.

On the other hand, my father didn’t want to hurt the young woman by refusing her invitation. He was her friend and didn’t want to destroy their relationship. Nor did he want to damage their good working rapport. The wedding was going to take place whether he and my mother attended or not.

My parents had many discussions about the situation. It was my mother who explained the issues to me saying that I needed to understand what was going on and why the decision was so difficult. There were lots of situations without perfect answers, she said. They were searching for the best answer.

Dad and mom went to the wedding. Dad later told me, “We had to go; otherwise, no matter how I might have tried to explain, we would have been writing her off and I simply didn’t want to do that.”

Drawing lines between ourselves and others is very tempting when we’re sure we’re right and they’re wrong. Yet, lines are easier to draw than to erase. And even when we rub very carefully, it’s like our second grade homework; we usually smudge and tear the paper.

Maybe that’s why God never draws lines.