“For you always have the poor with you, but you do not always have Me.” – John 12:8

 “For you always have the poor with you; but you do not always have Me.” – Matthew 26:11

 “For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you wish you can do good to them; but you do not always have Me.” – Mark 14:7

Don’t worry. Despite initial appearances, this will not be a scripture commentary

I am not a theologian.  I am just a guy who hears a line from the gospel and spends a decade or two pondering its meaning.

The line cited above in triplicate is part of the story of the woman who anoints the feet of Jesus with expensive oil and dries his feet with her hair.  To me, that qualifies as quite an act of humility.

But one of the apostles (Judas, who would later prove less than trustworthy) expresses his concern that they should have sold the oil and given the money to the poor.  Thus the response of Jesus, basically saying they wouldn’t have him around forever (at least not physically) so chill out and let the woman offer this act of service.  Besides, you will always have poor people – and you always will have the opportunity to do good.

There is so much in this short passage.  First, there is something to be said for honoring Christ.  Tabernacles are made from precious metals – not recycled cardboard.  And churches are designed to be beautiful, to lift our spirits and to honor God.

(Aside: Once upon a time Catholics dressed up in their “Sunday Best” clothes to go to Mass. That was a good thing and some of us still go to Mass in dressed like we care.)

Second, this passage suggests that there always will be the poor, or what Pope Francis calls the peripheries.  Maybe that means that no matter how much we care and no matter how much charity/relief work we do, there always will be more that needs doing.

For some reason, this gospel passage meandered through my mind yesterday as I was perusing my favorite Catholic news website, ZENIT.  (Disclaimer: I write for ZENIT, so my feelings about the website are highly prejudiced.)

In any event, I’m looking at the page and many of the stories are uplifting and inspiring. Hey, we try to evangelize here!

But in that single news cycle appeared stories about challenges facing the world that seem like they should have been fixed long ago:

• World Leprosy Day – someone new contracts the disease every two minutes.
• Pope Francis’ call for an end to antisemitism.
• The need to eliminate food scarcity and hunger in Africa.
• Innocent children dying in terror attacks in Africa and the Middle East.

What struck me was that these four “bad” stories could have been written when Jesus was conducting his public ministry on earth: leprosy, antisemitism, hunger, and innocents slaughtered.  Horrible problems then, horrible problems 2,000 years later.  Perhaps it will be the same 2,000 years from now.

I could get a bit discouraged.  But maybe I’m missing the point. Maybe it isn’t just the poor who will always be with me, but also the sick, the denigrated, the hungry and those who suffer through no fault of their own.

Perhaps God wants to give me – and all the future guys like me – a chance to care and do good.

I’ve come to believe the most dangerous place on earth for Pope Francis isn’t on earth at all but more like 30,000 feet above the earth in a jet.

No, I’m not afraid the jet will crash or be hijacked.  But the Pope is on a plane with a herd of people who ponder every word, every expression, every sigh or clearing of the throat, every look of fatigue or dismay.

Yes, he has no snakes on his plane, but he does have journalists. And even journalists with a pro-Catholic tendency need to get a story.

Stories are built on conflict and controversy.  And it doesn’t take much to make a controversy, as Pope Francis learned last week when he performed a wedding in the jet high over Chile.

I’ll admit I’m a bit of a romantic and a sucker for a mushy story.  So, I thought a couple flight attendants being married by the Pope was, well, rather darling.  They were Catholic and had been married in a civil ceremony and done marriage prep to be married in the church.  But things happened and there was an earthquake, the church fell down, their lives continued and they never got around to the church wedding.

But if you are flying with the Pope, why not have him tie the knot?  And they did.

At that point, I figured they would simply go home and live happily ever after. Perhaps they will, but the Holy Father has been fielding a bit of criticism.  It goes something like this:

So…how are priests going to hold the feet of couples to the fire and make them marry in the church if the Pope does this sort of thing?  Did the Pope have proof they took marriage classes? Did they show him their license?  They obviously have not been living as brother and sister because they have children. Did they have a license?  Who does the Pope think he is?

I think the Pope thinks he is the Pope. He once got into hot water for not judging someone, but this time he got into hot water because he judged this couple ready, willing and able to have a Catholic wedding and he provided it. I still think it is rather darling.

I believe the Holy Father has a message. The message isn’t that marriage prep courses aren’t important, couples should live in sin and the rules of the faith don’t matter.

What matter most is mercy and love. As this little controversy has brewed, a particular verse from First Corinthians has been running through my mind…a verse I bet the pope knows well:

  13  1If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

      4Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, 5does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, 6does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

      8Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part; 10but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. 11When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. 12For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.13But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.

 

Captain Renault: I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here! – From the classic scene in Casablanca, made in 1942

Twenty years ago – January 17, 1998, news broke on Drudge that then-president Bill Clinton had “relations” with a young intern in the White House.

That was the moment when I thought our nation had lost discretion and decorum.  It wasn’t only that I was disappointed (hardly shocked) that the leader of the free world might engage in illicit sex.  No, it was the explicit nature of how the media described the “affair.” And following that came the hypocritical outcries from politicians and press suggesting they had no idea such things ever happened.

Last year we witnessed the Weinstein scandal in Hollywood.  Goodness…a movie director asking pretty girls for favors in exchange for stardom.  Everyone in the movie industry was shocked – the same people who are churning out movies and television shows filled with violence, profanity, nudity and explicit sex.

And in the past week, politicians and political pundits are protesting the profane pronouncements of our apparently potty-mouthed president.  My goodness, a president using disrespectful language.  The language was so awful, but newspapers reprinted it in headlines and critical politicians repeated the words while lambasting the president for using it.

Having spent time in newspaper offices and public-relations agencies, I can testify that President Trump could not utter any word that a large percentage of reporters, senators, congressmen, corporate executives, teachers, police officers, firefighters, soldiers and, yes, sailors, utter on a regular basis.

I am not endorsing or excusing foul language.  But even a cursory examination of history would suggest swearing has been a problem for a long time.

In 1738, Edmund Gibson, Lord Bishop of London, published “An Admonition against Profane and Common Swearing.” He hoped to save an increasingly coarse culture from further descent.

On August 3, 1776, General George Washington ordered that there be no swearing by the soldiers under his command. I guess his ears were ringing.

And as a Christian, I’m aware of the Second Commandment: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.”

I’m also aware that the Gospel isn’t gentle with hypocrites.

“You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.” – Romans 2:1

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” – Luke 6:41

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.” – Matthew 23:27

How sad it is that people of power and influence behave badly.  But the hypocrisy permeating our culture is horrifying.  Most of us are behaving badly and we need to start behaving like Christians. We need Jesus as our role model, not Captain Renault.

I have the flu. It hurts.

I’m saying that not because I’m looking for sympathy. I’m just one of a few million people who have the flu.

I mention it to put everyday life in perspective.

Most of us have dreams: places we want to visit, career levels to achieve, a book to write, a hit song, getting all the kids through college.  Sometimes our dreams are practical and materialistic: a new house, a fancy car, mink coat, a bass boat.

If you have one or more of these dreams, you probably don’t let them dominate your every waking thought, but they pop up now and again.

The flu changes all that. Over the past 24 hours, goals and objectives that seemed to important faded behind the immediate desires to have joints that don’t ache, a stomach that holds solid food and eyes that can focus.

Today the old saying “if you have your health you have everything” ran through my mind a few times.  Simply feeling OK seems much more important than having a bulging savings account or a redecorated dining room.

The flu certainly can’t be seen as a force for good in the world.  It kills people, although I believe all it will do is make me miserable for a few days.  But the flu has brought me back to the basics of focusing on the present and having an ongoing conversation with God, asking for his comfort and patience.

The moment had been creeping up on me for more than a quarter-century, but I didn’t see it coming.

Not the time. Not the place. Not the circumstances.

I sat in my kitchen, just a couple days past Christmas 2017. Four other people bustled about the kitchen rolling dough into pasta, mixing cheese and spices, putting together dozens and dozens of ravioli made from scratch. The task required patience and attention to detail and the love of good cooking I recall from my grandma’s kitchen and the kitchen of my wife’s grandmother.

But these ravioli makers were young: my daughter (half Italian on her mother’s side), her husband (plain old American like me), my son (half Italian on her mother’s side), his wife (pure Irish). All four are within a couple years pre or post thirty.

Two other people shared the kitchen with us: my daughter’s three-month-old twin daughters.  They weren’t much help with the actual making of the ravioli, but I expect they will be someday.

My wife learned to make ravioli from her mother, her mother learned from her mother, who I assumed learned from her mother.  My wife taught my daughter, who will someday teach her twin daughters.  This particular day, she was teaching her husband, her brother and his Irish wife, who proved to be most skilled in the practice of raviolian arts.

An aside: I never have learned the ravioli part of marrying into a large Italian family, but I learned how to make pizza dough from my wife’s grandmother and I’m pretty good at it (for a non-Italian).

But as you might expect, this isn’t really about making ravioli or pizza, but a generational changing of the guard. A few years ago, my wife and her mom would make the ravioli…now it is my daughter.

It seems like only yesterday that my wife and I were young marrieds heading off to Christmas Eve dinner at her grandma’s house.  This year, we went to my daughter’s house. The menu featured the same pasta with sauce made from garlic and oil.  Just like grandma made – really.

As I sat in the kitchen watching the ravioli parade forming, I found my mind bouncing from various times and places.  The times and places blended together and told me that despite all the squabbles and sacrifices, family topped everything else.

I was a young man at my wife’s grandma’s house for the holidays.  I was a little boy waiting for Christmas morning.  I was a young father wrapping presents for my children and getting ready for midnight Mass. I was in Ohio, New Jersey, Illinois, and Indiana, all the places the family had at some point called home.

My grandma’s cookies were glorious and her mashed potatoes never had lumps.  Same with my mom.

Now, home and family were these wonderful young people making food in our kitchen. Their laughter, joking, sharing, coaching, and teasing were beautiful to observe.  Maybe this was the moment my life was prepared to receive.