The Tuesday Sermonette

19 November 2013

     What a pleasure to see you again. I knew we would continue the conversation, even though I find myself always at a loss for words. So much of the music I've been listening to this week is about getting back, or returning, or trying to re-establish family ties. Maybe because we're coming up on Thanksgiving and along with the circus-atmosphere of football games, we also have visions of baked turkeys shoved down our throat. It's nice to have a decent conversation about something entirely different than that. I'm considering this week's questions which were posed to me. I don't have to repeat them. They'll become self-evident. I'll mention again that I'm a convert. I had to learn everything from the beginning. The Book of John begins, "In the beginning  was the word . ."  I had to go back and read the Bible. I'd read it in college for literary purposes and scholastic background and I found it unbelievably dry and boring - and mostly just unbelievable. But I could still appreciate Milton, Donne, and a number of Jacobean Protestant poets. I got good grades for regurgitating 'Academic Speak.' Then,  in 1983 when I decided to convert, I wanted to go back and read it for my own purposes. I had also been introduced to the documents of the Second Vatican Council and those changed my whole outlook on the path I was choosing in converting to the Catholic faith. I read them through and through, page after page, and soon learned (because I wanted an explanation for everything,) that the majority of Catholics had never read them! They're revolutionary. Maybe the most revolutionary set of documents to come out of the 20th Century, especially when compared to the old Baltimore Catechism. I read that on my own too, so I would have some semblance of knowledge and background on the path I was choosing..

Suffice it to say, I read a lot. That's what converts do. Early on it was suggested to me that I should seek out a "spiritual Counselor" to help with the thousands of questions I had about the Church. An old missionary priest took me on and we met solidly for a year every week. It was a god-send. The first thing he told me was to stop reading for six weeks, stop watching television, listening to radio, don't go to movies, stop reading anything about religion or the Church. What a shock to hear this kind of advice. But there was a method to his seeming madness. And the message was, clear your stupid brain of everything - all excess - all intrusion. I learned much from that experience. It also helped me get over a lot of my combat-inflicted feelings about the war and my time spent in Viet Nam. It was time to prepare to get rid of all past "baggage."

We all carry baggage from our past. I think about this all the time because I've spent a life in the travel business. I think about it every time I pick up my bag to go to another destination. Our Church is a portable device we carry with us at all times and everywhere - if we truly believe in it. I have a habit of packing a rosary (first thing) into my luggage or back-pack when I'm bound for some place. Stripped of all accoutrements our faith is the Eucharist. A piece of bread and a cup of wine and a man who came to us to tell a story. The past, and past matters, are of no earthly importance. What matters is what we do with today, and how much we have loved and cared about another human being.