“I Am the Resurrection and the Life; Whoever Believes in Me, Even If He Dies, Will Live, and Everyone Who Lives and Believes in Me Will Never Die
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Sunday, March 18, 2018 * Fifth Sunday of Lent * www.stjosephparish.org “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT You Belong MARCH 18, 2018 Homily This Week: John D. Whitney, S.J. We cower Homily Next Week: Deacon in cliff-crevice or edge out gingerly Steve Wodzanowski on branches close to the nest. The wind marks the passage of holy ones riding Weekend Mass Schedule that ocean of air. Slowly their wake Saturday - 5 pm reaches us, rocks us. Sunday - 9:00 am, 11 am & 5:30 pm But storm or still, numb or poised in attention, Readings for March 25, 2018 we inhale, exhale, inhale, FIRST READING: ISAIAH 50:4-7 encompassed, encompassed. SECOND READING: PHILIPPIANS 2:6-11 GOSPEL: MARK 14:1-15:47 -Denise Levertov- Everything belongs to you, Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world Weekday Mass Schedule or life or death, or the present or the future: all belong to you, and Monday - Friday, 7 am, Parish Center you to Christ, and Christ to God. Reconciliation Saturday - 3:30-4:15 pm in the Church -1 Corinthians 3: 21b-23- or by appointment Parish Center There are times when the grace of God comes to us all at once—like 732 18th Ave E, Seattle, WA 98112 a flash of light on the road to Damascus, or a great wind that rattles Monday- Friday - 8 am - 4:30 pm our world, knocking us down and leaving us breathless, though Saturday - 9 am - 1 pm somehow certain of a truth we had not previously imagined. It may www.stjosephparish.org happen around a question of vocation or in a relationship; it may Parish Receptionist (206) 324-2522 come when we feel we have just gotten settled into a groove or Pastor when we don’t even know that we need it. But then grace come— Rev. John D. Whitney, S.J. x107 wham—and things change. I think, perhaps, I have had two such [email protected] experiences in my life: once, standing at a cash register in Chicago, Parochial Vicar when I suddenly realized that I was called to be a Jesuit, and once, Rev. Julian Climaco, S.J. x103 in the last days of a 30-day retreat, when I had a profound sense of [email protected] Additional Priest the truth of the resurrection and that my father, long dead, was with Rev. Bob Grimm, S.J. x101 Jesus and was okay. Rare and unsought, such flashes of grace, such [email protected] epiphanies, can change our lives, if we let them. Deacon Steve Wodzanowski x106 Yet, not all gifts of grace come to us in great torrents of insight and [email protected] revelation. Indeed, most don’t. Usually, in my experience, grace Pastoral Staff: arrives through the coincidence of seemingly unrelated moments, Marti McGaughey, Business Mgr x108 the coalescence of events by which a theme is revealed, a truth [email protected] Dottie Farewell, Dir. Religious Ed. x112 uncovered—as when we slowly recognized spring in the coming [email protected] of a birdsong and then a bud on a winter-stripped branch, a single Tina O’Brien, Stewardship x114 crocus breaking the soil and a warm ray of sun on a cold morning. [email protected] In such moments, epiphanies emerge, waiting for us to pay atten- Renée Leet, Admin Assistant x100 tion, to notice that God is doing something here, offering us a gift of [email protected] Theresa Lukasik, Asst. Dir. Religious Ed. x111 grace and mercy, if we will just quiet the noise in our heads or the [email protected] clamor in our hearts, if we will just step back from all the plans and Bob McCaffery-Lent, Liturgy & Music x109 needs and fears that make up our day: i.e., if we will just receive. [email protected] Caprice Sauter, Comm. & Scheduling x102 During this last week—even as I was distracted by finances and [email protected] landscaping, by my fear that I was letting someone down or not Lianne Nelson, Bookkeeper x113 being the perfect Jesuit—God was breathing grace into the world [email protected] Yuri Kondratyuk, Facilities x110 around me, offering me an epiphany it has taken me days to re- ceive, yet is as strong and true as any light from the sky could ever St. Joseph School - Main Office x210 be. Patrick Fennessy, Head of School x218 Mary Helen Bever, Middle School Dir x215 It began when I was listening to the Confessions of students from Lillian Zadra, Primary School Dir x219 our school. Though there were the usual sins of disobe- but who had been given my name by another Jesuit. She dience to parents or being mean to siblings, I began wanted to talk to me about a growing sense of attraction to notice, especially in students of the Middle School, she was finding to Catholicism, an attraction she found that there were also numerous Confessions that had to rather surprising to her and disconcerting to many of her do with feeling isolated and fearful, inadequate or in- closest friends. For them, the idea of growing closer to visible. Though the difficulty of these years, caught be- the Catholic Church was, as she put it, “like voting for tween childhood and maturity, was not a surprise to me, Trump”—i.e., not the path a properly progressive Seat- I was struck anew by how often these wonderfully gifted tleite should entertain. She was particularly concerned young people get caught by the dark spirit of compari- because of the pain felt by her many gay friends and son—measuring themselves against others whom they colleagues, whose experience of Catholicism had often think of as better than themselves, or against expecta- been brutal and dismissive. Yet, she is still drawn to the tions they think their parents have, or against an ideal liturgy and longs for the Sacraments, and so sought to self to whom they can never live up. In this web of com- talk to someone who could help her discern if this is parison, they become nothing in themselves, except a just fantasy, or if there really is a place for her in the disappointment, and seek ways of creating an identity Catholic faith. As we spoke together about liturgy and because they feel the one they have is not good enough. Natural Law, about the hierarchy of beliefs and the dis- And so they fall into gossip or backbiting, lying or theft, tinction between dogma and doctrine, we kept coming as ways to feel taller by knocking others down. Some back to the Sacraments—especially to the Eucharist, few even spoke of temptations to hurt themselves, as whose mysterious grace transcends all the metaphysics feelings of alienation would become too strong. In those and norms of Canon lawyers and theologians. We spoke few moments with each student, it was clear to me that like this for over an hour, and when she left, she seemed their sin was not in the violation of some rule of con- less fearful to pursue God’s movement in her heart, and duct, but in the isolation each one felt—i.e., not in what I felt, at last, aware of the grace in which I had been they did, but where they were, separated from their rela- standing for days—a grace as old as the gospels, but too tionship to others or to God or even to themselves. Like often forgotten. Adam and Eve, their loss of Paradise was less a function In the world today, we are constantly bombarded with of eating the fruit then it was the shame that led them messages of separation and criteria for inclusion. We are to hide in the bushes because they were naked. I found told by various parties what it means to be an American, myself saying, over and over again, how much each of or a Progressive, or a patriot, or a Catholic, and told them was loved and cared for, and how the grace of that that unless we become someone else, we cannot be in- Sacrament was in God’s choice to be with them. cluded. Yet, the great grace of the gospel, the grace that Later that same day, called to the hospital for Anoint- motivates the Incarnation and the foolish generosity of ing of the Sick, I found myself again reflecting on God’s the Cross, the grace that washes the feet of Judas as well desire to hold us close, and our own reticence to see as John, and loves Martha as much as Mary, that grace the signs. Here was a man, troubled by many failures has no criteria but our willingness to accept, and can and countless unfulfilled dreams, by addiction and a be summed up in this: We belong. Each of us and all of sense of his unworthiness in the eyes of God. He had us—whether Jew or Christian, Muslim or Hindu, gay or tried to follow Jesus, but had so often fallen short that he straight, immigrant or native born, woman or man—we wondered if salvation was possible for him. Yet, what he belong. And nothing, no failure nor doubt, no weakness failed to see was the grace already present in that hospi- nor condition of birth can ever take that away. We be- tal room, where five friends held him now in prayer and long.