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After Moses has his conversation with God in the Burning Bush, Moses asks God for what name he should use in referring to God. God gives the vague answer, “I am who I am.” Asking for someone’s name is a common occurrence. When we refer to someone with their name, we honor them. We all like to be referred to by name. This is one way we honor a person. Not all of us are good at remembering names, but when we do remember and use the name of the other person, we honor them. One of the names for God is taken from our psalm, “The Lord is kind and merciful”. God is also patient. The parable from the gospel about the fig tree is a parable about God’s patience. God, being the gardener, is willing to wait a year for fruit. God works the same for all of us. God is patient with us. Not everyone comes to faith in the same way or the same time frame. Some take less time, others more. When we see a new face in church we don’t ask “What took you so long?” or “Where have you been?” We simply say, “Welcome! It is good to have you here.” We ask and learn the name of the new person and we speak to him or her each week using their name and making them feel welcome. Maybe you have been a fig tree or known someone who is or was a fig tree. This is a good reason to give thanks to the patient nature of God. Remember the kingdom is in the future and now.

2 nd Sunday of Lent C March 16, 2025 One of my memories of being a student at SUCO in the 1980s were my trips to sit and pray at Table Rock, just above the Hartwick Campus. At that time, I could look down on the world’s largest train roundhouse. Going up high gives one a new perspective. The disciples saw Jesus in a new way. Going down the mountain meant continuing their journey to Jerusalem. As we know when Luke uses the word Jerusalem he is speaking about passion, pain, and death. Resurrection comes later. Standing on a mountain top the world feels very different. The problems of the world are far below us. One comes down off the mountain with a new vision. Even if they were allowed, how could the disciples describe what happened on that mountain. Mountain top moments is one way we speak of the spiritual moments in our lives. A mountain top experience may take place anywhere and at any time. I am reminded of the moment Thomas Merton describes in Louisville. “In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.” When have you had mountain top experience? Where did it take place? What were you doing at the time? ( Pause here ) Lent is a season for adjusting how we look at ourselves and the world. In Two weeks, we have gone from the desert to the mountain top. Next week we will stand before a burning bush and ask God what do we do now? Last Sunday I joined 200 Catechumens who placed their names in the book of the Elect as they prepared to celebrate the rites of initiation at the Easter vigil. For the past year of so they have been looking for a relationship with Jesus and the Community. These 40 days of Lent are their final retreat as they adjust their vision to be disciples of Jesus. We journey with them as we fast, pray and give alms. Let our disciplines of Lent help us to invite “mountaintop” experiences into our lives.

One of the enduring memories that I have growing up on the farm as a boy and young man was the annual spring ritual of picking stones from the fields that we had tilled for the planting of corn or a new seeding of hay crop. After the fields had been plowed and then harrowed, we would enter into the field, often the whole family, accompanying our tractor with its bucket loader. Each of us would begin this methodical search for stones that were large enough to cause damage to the crop planting and harvesting machinery. When we found those stones, we would then pick them up and throw them, or carry and drop them, into the tractor bucket. With the largest stones, the best we could do was to pry them up out of the brown earth with our hands and roll and flop them into the tractor bucket. The image in my mind’s eye of the barren stony field with its brown tilled earth, and our methodical wandering back and forth, back and forth, back and forth in front of the tractor searching for stones to pick, conjures a parallel image of the Israelites wandering in the barren desert, a story we are reminded of by Moses in the first reading we heard today — a story not just of the Israelites wandering in the desert alone but, as Moses reminds them, wandering accompanied by God who heard their cry, saw their affliction, their toil, and their oppression , and led and accompanied them out of that. They were not alone; God was with them in the midst of their deserts and provided for them. We are encouraged to remember this today, as we wander in our own desert fields, picking stones from our lives: God is with us, by our sides, in our midst. And God the Son, Jesus Christ, invites us to seek his help in doing so. He tells us: “Come to me, all you who are burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Mt 11:28) It is desert and stones again that we hear of also in the Gospel passage. Jesus Christ has been in a self-sacrificing fast in the desert, is hungry, and is tempted by the devil to use his power to turn stones into bread and to feed on them. He resists the temptation — pointing to and drawing strength from reliance on God. Are we often tempted to feed on the stones that we carry in the desert fields of our lives? How often are those stones temptations, not to feed on something seemingly desirable, like bread, but rather to feed on that which is unpalatable — such as stones of bitterness, animosity, anger, discord, fear, discouragement, or useless anxiety. I think those are just as often the weighty stones we carry in our desert fields and that we may be tempted to feed on. It takes conscious effort to reach out to God for grace, in even the simplest of prayers, to resist these temptations, recognizing that often God’s grace comes through others around us who help us, support us, and love us. Let us not forget that we have in Jesus Christ one who, like us, has been similarly tested through what he endured; he is able to help us who are being tested ( cf Heb 2:18). One who invites us: “Come to me, all you who are burdened, and I will give you rest.” Jesus invites us to give him our burdens, our stones — whatever they may be: bitterness, animosity, anger, judgmentalism, fear, discouragement, anxiety — all of the things that ultimately rob us of the joy God and Christ desire for us.  We have an invitation and a choice to give these over to Christ —to let go of these stones. It is an invitation and choice that is mirrored symbolically in our parish invitation in the bulletin over the last few weeks to leave a stone at the foot of Christ’s Cross here in the well throughout Lent. A ritual act of handing over, letting go, and letting God; letting God take our stones which do not and cannot feed us, and instead feed us with his True Food and life-giving Word and Spirit. If you have not thought to bring a stone from home, fear not; there are a bucket of them here in the well. And, don’t worry about dropping your stone on the burlap desert sands; there is plenty of padding underneath! And as we leave our stones behind, maybe we can pick up and take away with us the kindness Fr. Chris invited us to share in his homily on Ash Wednesday; kindness that we feed each other with, looking out for each other, loving each other. It’ll be the same kindness that will end up feeding us .

Ash Wednesday March 5, 2025 In his book God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater , Kurt Vonnegut tells the story of Mr. Rosewater who decides to give away the family fortune to those who are in need in Rosewater County. At one point a woman who he helped out asks him to baptize her children. He tells his sister about this and she asks him, “What will you say at the baptism?” He responds: "Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.'” Sometimes it feels that is what we have lost as a community is the ability to be kind. I would like to suggest that for this season of Lent 2025 we all resolve to be kinder. Here are three ways we can accomplish this goal. (I need to thank Fr. James Martin for these suggestions.) First, don't be a jerk. You may be sick, tired, or upset about some minor catastrophe that happened at work or at home. That doesn't mean that you have to pass along your anger or frustration to others. Once I said to a friend, with mock seriousness, “My life is such a cross.” “Really,” he said. “For you or for others?” While it is important to share your struggles with friends, you don't need to make others miserable. Second, honor the absent. Stop talking about people behind their backs. Few things are as damaging to our spiritual lives as denigrating other people. It's a serious lack of charity, and needless to say, it makes the other person feel terrible if they discover what you said – which they usually do. Third, give people the benefit of the doubt. St. Ignatius Loyola mentions this at the beginning of his Spiritual Exercises. Whenever there is any doubt about what someone said or did, give them the “plus” sign. Being kind may be harder to do than giving up chocolate, but it's a lot more helpful to your spiritual life -- and for everyone else's.

8th Sunday C March 2, 2025 The book of Sirach is full of good advice. Today we hear "When a sieve is shaken, the husks appear; so do one’s faults when one speaks.” I am reminded of the words of Mark Twain, “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt." You may remember the movie Being There with Peter Sellers. Peter plays a man who took care of the garden on an estate. When his master dies, he leaves the estate to find a new place to live. His name is Chauncy, and he is the gardener. When he tells people who he is they think his name is Chauncy Gardner. Chauncy likes to watch TV, and he carries the remote control with him. He tells people, "I like to watch," and he shares rules of gardening such as “There will be growth in the spring." He is mostly silent except for these comments and people think he is a genius. It has been said, “We have one mouth and two ears; which should we use most often?” This week we will begin the season of Lent. With Jesus we will enter the desert. This season of Lent can be a time to enter the silence. Deserts are quiet places. You may want to listen more closely to what God must share with you. In our well is our desert. You are invited to add to the desert by bringing in a rock. The rock will represent what defect of character you will try to get rid of in the season of Lent. In the gospel Jesus warns against pulling the sliver in another’s eye and missing the plank in our own. So often other people are like a mirror to us. What I dislike most in another is what I dislike in myself. We may ask ourselves, “What is the plank in my eye that needs removing? And how will I remove it?" We are given 40 days to consider how to remove this plank. Years ago, I was on retreat and at the end of the retreat they gave me a "dare rock". A rock with the word 'dare' painted on it. When we received the rock, they played a song from the musical Godspell: Where are you going? Where are you going? Can you take me with you? For my hand is cold And needs warmth Where are you going? Far beyond where the horizon lies Where the horizon lies And the land sinks into mellow blueness Oh please, take me with you Let me skip the road with you I can dare myself I can dare myself I'll put a pebble in my shoe And watch me walk (watch me walk) I can walk and walk! (I can walk!) I shall call the pebble Dare I shall call the pebble Dare We will talk, we will talk together We will talk (chorus) about walking Dare shall be carried And when we both have had enough I will take him from my shoe, singing: "Meet your new road!" Then I'll take your hand Finally glad Finally glad That you are here By my side By my side By my side By my side There is a lot in today’s scriptures to reflect upon for the next 43 days or so. Let us be silent and let the words of our God speak within us. In the next few days as we prepare for Ash Wednesday, we may want to consider what character defect we wish to address in this season. We place this upon a rock and give it to Jesus to bring with him into the desert and we pray he may take it to the cross so we may rise again on Easter Sunday.

7th Sunday C February 24, 2025 The scene in the first reading of today’s mass reminds me of the scene from the Broadway Musical Le Miserable where the policeman Javert is spared by the thief Jon Valjean and can’t deal with the debt he now owes to this thief. Before he takes his life Javert sings: Who is this man? What sort of devil is he To have me caught in a trap And choose to let me go free? It was his hour at last To put a seal on my fate Wipe out the past And wash me clean off the slate! All it would take Was a flick of his knife Vengeance was his And he gave me back my life! This is much the situation for Saul and David. David could have killed Saul, but he chose to spare his life. David had not heard the sermon on the plain in today’s gospel, but he chose to love his enemy, not to hurt God’s anointed one. Saul was the first king of Israel and when his kingdom was under siege by the Philistines it is a young shepherd boy who goes up against and slays the giant Goliath. Saul should be happy, but when the people begin to praise David over him, he grows jealous and seeks to kill David. The women sing words that hurt Saul: “Saul has slain his thousands, David his tens of thousands’ As Saul chases David, one day Saul goes into a cave to relieve himself and there is David hiding and he has the chance to slay Saul, but instead he cuts a tassel off his cloak. The second time David meets Saul is today’ s first reading. David has decided to love his enemy. He sees Saul as the anointed of God and deserving of God and David’s love. Loving one’s enemy is not an easy thing. We may not all have the kind of grievance David against Saul, but we all have men and woman who we find it hard to love. Love sometimes is a choice, we choose to love not because the other is loveable, but because they are created in the image and likeness of God and therefore deserving of our love, even if they don’t earn it. Choosing to love others may not change them, but it may change who we are. How hard it is to pray for one’s enemies. The prayers may stick in our throats, but in offering them we change our attitude toward them and the world. A challenge we are given is to see our enemy, as like us, created in the image and likeness of a loving God. There is a story told of the Christmas truce in the first world war. A group of British and German soldiers stopped the war for a time to celebrate Christmas. After this celebration many of them were unable to continue to fight. They had come to know the enemy as fellow humans and could not choose to destroy the men they came to know. If we turn on the evening news, we will hear much about violence and hate in our world. We can choose to contribute or look for other news of the kingdom of God at work around us. Looking for the presence of our God during hate and violence is a discipline. One, we develop over time. This doesn’t mean we deny the brokenness of our world, but it means we don’t choose to let that be the whole story. This week in the New Yorker Magazine I read a story about a deacon and a group of nuns who chose to visit women on death row in Texas. The women went into the prison full of fear and found they had much in common with the women on death row. They met them as fellow travelers and loved them as children of a loving God. The words of today’s psalm ring true: Merciful and gracious is the LORD, slow to anger and abounding in kindness. Not according to our sins does he deal with us, nor does he requite us according to our crimes. We are invited to imitate the attitude of our God. We pray for those who hurt us and let God be the one to judge them and punish them. We may not like it, but we may be surprised that the mercy of God extends even to those who hate us, or those who we think we hate.

6th Sunday C February 16, 2025 We are already well into the Jubilee year that began on Christmas 2024. The theme of the year is Hope. Hope is also what our psalm speaks of today. Blessed are they who hope in the Lord. How do we find hope? One way is to look at what hope does for us. Hope is gained by trusting in God. When I stop trying to control all life and circumstances around me I find hope. Hope is seeing the world as cared for by our God. Hope is nurtured by planting one near God. The image from Isaih and the psalm are images of trees planted by running streams. When we plant our lives trusting in God, we find ourselves growing as a tree near running water. Where do we find this running water? One way is to live the beatitudes as found in today’s gospel. “Blessed are you who are poor, for the kingdom of God is yours. Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude and insult you, and denounce your name as evil on account of the Son of Man Poverty of spirit is the quality of trusting in God. When we place our trust in God we find satisfaction, laughter, and persecution. In the midst of persecution, we find the streams of God feeding us what we need. This image of a tree by running water is an image we can work with as we search for hope. Hope is that quality that arrives when we let go and let God. When we recognize our poverty of spirit and rely upon God, we begin to be people of Hope. • Hope is poverty of spirit. • Hope is being hungry for justice. • Hope is finding laughter rather than despair. • Hope is the antidote to oppression. • Hope is found as we focus on how our God is at work in our lives. • Hope is found when we trust. • Hope is found in the hands of a friend who reaches out to us in our need. • Hope is found as I recover from an illness or a situation that makes me feel weak. Two weeks ago, SUNY had a broadcast of the play Uncle Vanya. I often think about the last scene as Vanya and Sonya consider their lives at the estate. Sonya gives Vanya hope as she touches into her faith. SONYA: What can we do? We must live out our lives. [A pause] Yes, we shall live, Uncle Vanya. We shall live all through the endless procession of days ahead of us, and through the long evenings. We shall bear patiently the burdens that fate imposes on us. We shall work without rest for others, both now and when we are old. And when our final hour comes, we shall meet it humbly, and there beyond the grave, we shall say that we have known suffering and tears, that our life was bitter. And God will pity us. Ah, then, dear, dear Uncle, we shall enter on a bright and beautiful life. We shall rejoice and look back upon our grief here. A tender smile -- and -- we shall rest. I have faith, Uncle, fervent, passionate faith. We shall rest. We shall rest. We shall hear the angels. We shall see heaven shining like a jewel. We shall see evil and all our pain disappear in the great pity that shall enfold the world. Our life will be as peaceful and gentle and sweet as a caress. I have faith; I have faith. [Wiping away her tears] My poor, poor Uncle Vanya, you are crying! [Weeping] You have never known what it is to be happy, but wait, Uncle Vanya, wait! We shall rest. We shall rest. We shall rest. I find myself thinking of the words of Lisel Mueller when I consider hope. Mueller wrote a poem called Hope. It hovers in dark corners before the lights are turned on, it shakes sleep from its eyes and drops from mushroom gills, it explodes in the starry heads of dandelions turned sages, it sticks to the wings of green angels that sail from the tops of maples. It sprouts in each occluded eye of the many-eyed potato, it lives in each earthworm segment surviving cruelty, it is the motion that runs from the eyes to the tail of a dog, it is the mouth that inflates the lungs of the child that has just been born. It is the singular gift we cannot destroy in ourselves, the argument that refutes death, the genius that invents the future, all we know of God. It is the serum which makes us swear not to betray one another; it is in this poem, trying to speak. Let us find hope as we trust in the Lord and drink from the stream of our faith.

Have you had the experience of complimenting someone and they say in response, “It was not good”. Last week I told a choir member how much I enjoyed their meditation after communion and this is the response I got, “We made lots of mistakes.” It seems to me I am my own worst critic. In today’s gospel, Peter says to Jesus, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man,” Peter was being his own worst critic. I am sure he was no more sinful than the other fishermen he was in the boat with. Jesus’ response is “Do not be afraid”. Jesus is not concerned about the state of Peter’s life, Jesus chooses Peter because or despite who he is. “God never calls the qualified, God qualifies the called.” None of the apostles or the later saints were perfect people, most had no qualifications for the work God set out before them. They took a chance and became the ministers the Lord needed them to be. In today’s passage from St Paul, St Paul speaks of the gift of grace, For I am the least of the apostles, not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me has not been ineffective. Indeed, I have toiled harder than all of them; not I, however, but the grace of God that is with me. St. Paul, like Peter, is aware of his own deficits, yet he is also aware of the gift God has given to him. God has given St. Paul the grace to accomplish God’s work. We are all given the gift of Grace. God’s grace allows us to accomplish the work God has set before us. David Brooks in his book The Second Mountain speaks about the second mountain of our lives. In the first mountain, we develop our Ego and look for transitory things such as wealth. In the second mountain,n we become more concerned about others. When Peter and the other Fishermen felt the grace of Jesus’s presence to them, they left all to follow him, they found a new vocation. They were not qualified, but over time God’s grace made them effective. The same will happen to us. The grace of God impels us to new things, and we leave behind old things to become a disciple of Jesus.

I have a question for you: Did Jesus Christ need to be baptized? Approaching this question academically, knowing that Baptism is one of seven sacraments the Church recognizes, we might begin to answer that by asking, “What is a sacrament?” The classic definition of a sacrament is that it is an outward (that is, a visible) sign, instituted by Christ, to convey God’s grace for our sanctification — to help us grow in holiness. So does it make sense that Jesus Christ would receive a sacrament instituted by himself to convey God’s grace when he is already fully divine — God the Son? Yeah, doesn’t make much sense, does it? And on top of that, if we consider that one of the primary sacramental effects of Baptism is the forgiveness of all sin, both original sin and personal sin, and we consider that Jesus Christ, fully divine and at the same time fully human , is like us in all things except sin, then Christ has no need to be baptized to receive this sacramental effect! So pulling those few strands of logic together, I think we can conclude that Jesus does not need to be baptized for the reasons that you and I need to be baptized! …But does Jesus Christ need to be baptized… for our sake ? That is a different, and interesting, question. Today we hear from Luke’s version of the Baptism narrative, but in Matthew’s version, when John the Baptist questions whether he is worthy to baptize Christ, Jesus says “Allow it now ... to fulfill all righteousness” (Mt 3:15). Considering the definition of a sacrament I gave you a few moments ago — that a sacrament is a visible sign instituted by Christ — some theologians and Church Fathers point to Christ’s own Baptism as that very institution, or at least the beginning of the institution of the Sacrament! By physically entering into the waters of the Jordan, and by extension the waters of all the earth, Christ blesses them and sanctifies them, that they may in turn become the matter of our sanctification in Baptism. Each of the seven Sacraments of the Church has form and matter: the form consists of the words and actions of the sacrament, and the matter is the substance or prerequisite for the sacrament. Water is the matter for the Sacrament of Baptism. So in a manner, Christ needs to be baptized to establish the sacramental matter and form of Baptism for our benefit. He leads the way for us, that we may watch, listen, and follow him, leading the way by having himself baptized. Interestingly, we re-present Christ’s sanctifying entry into the waters of the Jordan at his Baptism at each Easter Vigil before we baptize our adult candidates when we dip the large Paschal candle, the Christ candle, into the waters of the Baptismal font three times — Father, Son, Holy Spirit — Christ again blessing them, making them holy, making them the matter for Baptism, the matter of our sanctification, symbolic of our cleansing from sin through Christ. There is another connection to the waters of Baptism and the sacramental effects of Baptism that is pointed to in the imagery of Luke’s Gospel we heard today: it is the descent of the Holy Spirit from heaven “… like a dove .” The dove reminds us of the action of the Holy Spirit, literally the breath of God upon the waters of the earth at the dawn of creation, bringing forth new life. The Holy Spirit descends upon Christ, revealing him as the new creation of humanity. Jesus Christ — God the Son, the Word of God — became flesh, became one of us, that we might become a new creation in Him . In Baptism we die to our old human nature of sin and its consequences that lead to perpetual separation from God and one another. In the waters of Baptism we are united to Christ’s death, with our sins washed and buried in the waters of Baptism. And from the birth-waters of Baptism we rise with Christ, sharing in His Resurrection to new life, united to Christ forever, sharing in Christ’s divine nature. We invoke this symbolism, and our faith, not only at each Baptism, but each time we bless ourselves with holy water, and at each funeral, when we sprinkle the casket or urn with holy water and pray: “In the waters of Baptism [person] died with Christ and rose with Him to new life. May he/she now share with Christ eternal glory.” We symbolize this new creation we have become through Baptism with the white garment that is donned following the Baptismal rite. Infants are traditionally dressed in white outfits. Here at St. Mary’s, we use white garments for infants, hand-made by parishioners, itself beautifully symbolic of the child joining and being welcomed by our parish Christian community. Baptized adults don a white alb, similar to what Fr. Chris and I wear under our vestments. The white garment is symbolic of the newly-Baptized having put on Christ and risen with him. St. Gregory Nazianzus, a fourth-century bishop and Doctor of the Church, also taught that the white clothing of Christ also veils our shame, the wound of our sin. Baptized and resurrected with Christ, the sin is gone, but we bear the scars, just as the Resurrected Christ bore the wounds of His crucifixion. God’s rich love and mercy are poured out upon us as salvation and grace through the Holy Trinity in the Sacrament of Baptism. There is nothing we do to merit or earn this salvation: it is God’s free gift, poured out upon us. This is what St. Paul spoke of in his letter to Titus: …not because of any righteous deeds we had done but because of his mercy, He saved us through the bath of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he richly poured out on us through Jesus Christ our savior. (Titus 3:5-6) We are only called to seek, accept, and cooperate with God’s grace in leading a holy life. In Baptism we are incorporated into Christ and configured to Christ, marked with an indelible spiritual mark upon our soul, that claims us as belonging to Christ. And once we have been claimed by Christ, we can never be unclaimed.