Daily Postings

For a long time I had been struggling with the question of how can know every detail about everything in the universe and every detail in the lives of every human being at the same time. It struck me as being impossible. That problem bothered me for years. Then one night late when I finished locking the church, I was walking back to the rectory, and the most beautiful thought struck me like a flash of light. In that simple thought, which was no longer than a tenth of a second, I could understand how God could know everything about everything and everyone in the exact same moment.

When I returned to the rectory, I got a sheet of paper and sat down at the kitchen table and tried to write what I had just experienced, but I could find no words to explain what I had learned. I wanted to write something to help me remember the experience, and the only way I could express what I experienced was to compare God to the sun. When the sun rises in the morning, its rays touch everything in creation at the exact same moment. If we look at the sun’s ray as God’s intelligence, when God looks at the universe, his mind penetrates every detail of the universe and every detail of the life of every human being in the exact same instant.

Another way of looking at the mystery is to consider that God is everywhere. His presence pervades the universe. He is in everything that exists. Everything exists within God, and since the essence of God is his intelligence and his love, then it is easy to understand how God can know everything about every detail of his creation every moment of the day and night, and that it is his love that gives us life, and keep us in his heart.

I thought I’d share a little recipe with you today. It is one I put together for my own health. I named it Joshua Bread.

3 cups of flour, bread flour if possible.
¼ cup of milled flax seed or unprocessed wheat bran
1 tablespoon of oat bran (to reduce cholesterol)

2 teaspoons of wheat gluten

1 heaping teaspoon of salt
2½ teaspoons of sugar (optional)
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 tablespoon of yeast
1 1/8 cup of water

If you have a bread maker, mix all the ingredients in the bread maker. If you do not have a bread maker, use a bread pan of some kind, any shape, and put dough in that, and keep in a warm place so the dough can rise. Spray oil over the top to keep it moist. I heat the oven and let it cool to about 100 degrees, and place the pan in the oven, or I put it on top of the toaster oven and set the temperature at 400 degrees, then turn on the timer as if making toast. This heats the bottom of the pan. After a space of ten minutes I turn the timer on again. Then, after the dough rises, puncture it and let it rise again. Then. set the oven at 350 degrees, and when it reaches that temperature, put the pan in the oven and bake for 45 minutes.

With all the fiber from the flax seed it makes delicious, crispy toast. The flax seed also contains an abundance of omega-3 and omega-5 oil.

I think one of the reasons so many people are unhappy is because we expect too much in this life.  We look for things and people to make us happy. Thinking we will find happiness in someone else or in possessing things will always lead to disappointment. Human desires are endless; craving things, whether it be money or nice things are like children with toys.  Children may be thrilled at Christmas or Chanukah when they find their toys.  They play with them for a few weeks, or maybe longer, then they get bored with them, and they end up in the attic or the cellar.  Attics are filled with toys, children’s toys and adults’ toys. After many years of searching for more and more sophisticated toys, we are still not happy. We still crave more.  It will never end until we realize that they are never going to give us what we really crave, a craving that comes from deep within.

It is the same if we think we are going to find happiness in possessing another human being.  We see someone, and fall in love with that person.  Possessing that person will be perfect happiness.  For a few years we find bliss, but in time the ecstasies begin to disappoint and the faults and limitations become more and more evident and more and more annoying, and changes demanded of us were unexpected.   We begin to find that relationships, no matter how beautiful and ecstatic, are not static. They either grow or they fade.  For a relationship to grow demands hard work, and then we begin to ask ourselves: in the relationship I have worth all this hard work?  In almost fifty percent of the times, people decide that that once awesome relationship so necessary for happiness, is no longer worth the effort to keep alive, and we decide to give it up. And the search begins again for perfect happiness in someone else, and the cycle begins all over again, and with the same results. 

In many cases we may find a person who is easy to live with and that becomes a comfortable situation, but it has not solved the craving for what we were always looking for, the deepest craving for happiness and a love that we have learned we will never get from a human being.  Settling for a comfortable relationship is no substitute for happiness and for the kind of love that we crave in the depths of our being.  That can only come from somewhere else. 

It seems that so many people have no idea where that somewhere else is, and they still keep looking but never find.  They are afraid, and the reason they are afraid is because they feel if they look where they think they should look, they might have to give up all the things they treasure.  They think that in being close to God all the fun will go out of their life, not realizing that it could be the beginning of the greatest adventure of their life, if they do decide to go there they find that their love affair with God is the key to the greatest success of their life.  God created us for adventure.  When we find him, we find love, ecstasy and a happiness that is eternal. And we finally find peace and a happy end to our craving for happiness.  “Our hearts were made for you, O God; and they will only rest when they rest in you.”  St. Augustine

I think one of the reasons so many people are unhappy is because we expect too much in this life. We look for things and people to make us happy. Thinking we will find happiness in someone else or in possessing things will always lead to disappointment. Human desires are endless; craving things, whether it be money or nice things are like children with toys. Children may be thrilled at Christmas or Chanukah when they find their toys. They play with them for a few weeks, or maybe longer, then they get bored with them, and they end up in the attic or the cellar. Attics are filled with toys, children’s toys and adults’ toys. After many years of searching for more and more sophisticated toys, we are still not happy. We still crave more. It will never end until we realize that they are never going to give us what we really crave, a craving that comes from deep within.

It is the same if we think we are going to find happiness in possessing another human being. We see someone, and fall in love with that person. Possessing that person will be perfect happiness. For a few years we find bliss, but in time the ecstasies begin to disappoint and the faults and limitations become more and more evident and more and more annoying, and changes demanded of us were unexpected. We begin to find that relationships, no matter how beautiful and ecstatic, are not static. They either grow or they fade. For a relationship to grow demands hard work, and then we begin to ask ourselves: in the relationship I have worth all this hard work? In almost fifty percent of the times, people decide that that once awesome relationship so necessary for happiness, is no longer worth the effort to keep alive, and we decide to give it up. And the search begins again for perfect happiness in someone else, and the cycle begins all over again, and with the same results.

In many cases we may find a person who is easy to live with and that becomes a comfortable situation, but it has not solved the craving for what we were always looking for, the deepest craving for happiness and a love that we have learned we will never get from a human being. Settling for a comfortable relationship is no substitute for happiness and for the kind of love that we crave in the depths of our being. That can only come from somewhere else.

It seems that so many people have no idea where that somewhere else is, and they still keep looking but never find. They are afraid, and the reason they are afraid is because they feel if they look where they think they should look, they might have to give up all the things they treasure. They think that in being close to God all the fun will go out of their life, not realizing that it could be the beginning of the greatest adventure of their life, if they do decide to go there they find that their love affair with God is the key to the greatest success of their life. God created us for adventure. When we find him, we find love, ecstasy and a happiness that is eternal. And we finally find peace and a happy end to our craving for happiness. “Our hearts were made for you, O God; and they will only rest when they rest in you.” St. Augustine

I viewed this morning an inspirational website from my Carmelite monk friend in Rome. It was about people depriving themselves of love. I thought about that for the longest time, and wondered about it. The more I thought about it, the deeper involved I became in all the ramifications of such a horrible affliction it must be, and asked myself, “Why would anybody want to deprive themselves of love? And when they decide to do that, how do they go about the process?

And my mind scanned the lives of hundreds of people I have known over the years, and sorted out certain ones who might have methodically deprived themselves of love, because they seemed to be the people who would never let anyone come close to them for some reason, preventing anyone from becoming personal or showing personal concern, and if they did, they were promptly put in their place. Some people seem to be arrogant or stand offish, or rude, and when you try to talk with them, you feel awkward, as if your conversation is not welcome. There are others who, when you share with them a problem, they give you the impression they could care less about your problem, or make you feel stupid because you had such a problem. Others keep you at a distance, and never let you into their private world, even though you have been ‘friends’ for many years. This even happens in marriage, surprisingly!!! Others may show their isolation by being rude, when, perhaps, you may have sent them a gift, and they don’t even let you know they received it. Others are polite to you if you contact them, but never go out of their way to contact you. They give you the impression they really could care less about you. Others deprive themselves of love by treating others with ridicule, immediately cutting them off from any friendly conversation, making you afraid of being put down or demeaned especially in front of others. This is most cruel when it is on the part of family members. There are still others who are continually testing others’ love and friendship by asking them for continual favors and make their friends feel they don’t love them if they don’t do what they have been asked. It makes no difference if the persons are extremely busy with their own work or their own families. They are expected to drop everything and cooperate. It is almost as if they expect them to say no so they can feel sorry for themselves that nobody loves them. I have seen people leave their religion because they didn’t get the attention the felt they deserved in their parish.  Then there are still others who push others away by their continual complaining, which makes others depressed just to be with them. Often the complaining is about others and after awhile their friends wonder if their friend complains about them to others when they are not around. Then they no longer feel comfortable being their friend, and they wander away. Jealousy and envy are other problems that drive friends away, when it becomes known that nasty comments are made to others by a person who was supposed to be their friend.

Then I asked myself why would anyone want to deprive themselves of love, and I thought that maybe they were hurt in the past and did not want to be hurt anymore, so they lock themselves in a shell and surround themselves with barriers that send out signals loud and clear that friendship and love are not an option. So, keep your distance. Don’t even considerate being my friend. And that is so sad.

Everybody at some time in life is hurt in love, often by those who should be closest to them, but that is no reason the deprive oneself of love. Often they say it is for their own protection, but that is a cop out. Often is a way of permanently hurting those who hurt you, and giving them no possible chance of ever healing the hurt. It is a subtle form of hatred and unforgiveness and over a period of time can do untold damage to a person health wise, both spiritually and physically. That is why Jesus told us to forgive endlessly, because it is good for our health, good for our souls and opens our hearts to a world that may hurt at times, but is also a world full of joy and wonder, excitement and happiness, and gives us the chance to share the untapped goodness that has been locked deep within for so long and needs to be shared if it is to have any real meaning and value. 

 When you stop loving, you die.

In philosophy and theology we were made to realize that we cannot prove scientifically that there is a God.  All we can do is show the necessity for his existence; that logically there has to be a god to explain the existence of everything else, which can’t create itself, which would mean the same thing even if one held that the universe existed forever.

But recently I found a book that was a real eye-opener.  It was written by Anthony Flew, and is titled, “Why I Believe there is No (with ‘No’ crossed out) A God.”   Anthony Flew had been, all his life, the guiding light of atheists, then in later life, analyzing all his mathematical data and his profound understanding of science, especially after his conviction of the accuracy of George Le Maitre’s discovery of the Big Bank, he came to the realization that all the evidence proved for him the actual existence of God.  Le Maitre’s explanation of the universe expanding at a known rate of speed indicated that at one time that expansion had a beginning from an extremely dense molecule of matter that exploded at incredible force.  Le Maitre tried to explain to Einstein that Einstein’s own mathematical data indicated the same conclusion, but Einstein did not want to discuss it, and his expressed reason was because it would show graphically that the universe had a beginning and the conclusion was clear; there was a God, and he did not want to go there.  In time, Einstein came to accept Le Maitre’s discovery and became his strong defender when other scientists ridiculed Le Maitre’s discovery as flawed. In time, however, his theory became widely accepted as scientific fact, and it was acknowledgement of that fact that heavily influenced Anthony Flew.  Since then Anthony Flew developed his understanding of God even further, stating that complex molecules in the composition of human life, and animal life in general, could not possibly have intelligence to change themselves to become what was necessary to work in a coordinated way to automatically build themselves into the highly complex human organism that we are today.  Even postulating endless time that this might require still could not reasonably explain that this was possible.

His atheistic friends turned against him, but it was interesting that, following Anthony Flew, many leading scientists now accept Flew’s evidence for the existence of God.

The reason so many scientists had difficulty accepting Le Maitre’s discovery was because he was a Catholic priest, and that his mathematical conclusions leading to his discovery could have been biased.

In difficult times like what we are experiencing today, we can easily feel it may stress us beyond our ability to cope. We have the terrible fear that we might panic, which makes our situation even more precarious. These are the times that truly test our souls. The real crisis is not whether we will survive our personal and family crises, because we will survive, somehow, if we don’t panic and give up. The real crisis is will we grow stronger from the adventure, or will we become weaker. My father use to tell us that the problems we face in life are what make life an exciting adventure. They force us to face difficult challenges and to use all our creative ability and courage to conquer those challenges.

I know a young college graduate who started a business which had great potential. He invested what little money he had to start the business, but what he did not count on, was that people do not like to pay bills. They benefited from his services, but nicely ignored paying bills. The business folded up. He entered another business, got his license as a financial advisor, and formed his own stock brokerage business. He did his own research into prospectively solid businesses, and was astute at it. I invested a considerable amount of money with him, and to my surprise he increased it five fold in three months. The times were good then. However, he had never gone through a bear market, and when it struck, and things changed, he could not make a living. I wondered what he would do next. He told me, “Remember when I was a little kid and I wrote that little saying and gave it to you? Well, that saying became my mantra, ‘The tallest oak was once just a little nut that held its ground.’ That plus my friendship with Jesus has helped me through everything.’

The next thing I learned was that with whatever money he had left from his brokerage business, he invested in buying old houses cheap and started fixing them up and selling them. Even though he knew nothing about the business and made many mistakes, and went through harrowing times, he hung in there and by sheer stubbornness and steel nerves and good workers, and a very loyal retired contractor, he solved each stressful problem, until the company became a solid business on a solid foundation, thus preventing his mother and father from dying of anxiety attacks.

And then came the economic downturn, and a severe accident which severely smashed both bones in his right leg while protecting his mother from being killed by an out of control toboggan.  Everything looked bleak again. The doctor told him it would take from six months to a year for the leg to heal as the bones were so badly shattered.

What is his secret of survival? A beautiful trust in Jesus, which is not something put on, but a well-founded realization that his real help is not anything in this shaky world; it is only in his friendship with Jesus, as he knows no one else can control things. So, even with his badly damaged leg, he still limps to work and stops into church to spend time sitting there with his best friend, who he has no doubts  will see him through this crisis, too.

So, even though times are severe, don’t panic and don’t give up. As long as we have enough to eat and sufficient shelter, we have good reason to know that things will change and we will survive. God is real and he cares, and he loves you.

Each of us is priceless. Scientists set the value of a human being by the price of the chemicals of which are bodies are made. In God’s eyes, and hopefully in our eyes as well, the price of just one human person is far beyond the value of all the treasures on this earth. Each one of us is precious in God’s eyes. God thought we were valuable enough to allow his Son to give his life for us, the life of a God for each of us. How can we ever understand this God, and his values? Why are we so valuable? What does he see in us that he would sacrifice his own divine Son to save us? What makes us so precious to him?

I suppose all we can do is ask questions, because we cannot fathom the answers. We cannot even begin to probe the mind of God, much less the heart of God. If I may be presumptuous, maybe one suggestion might be that he needs us, each one of us, not because he has needs, because God has no needs. God is complete joy and peace and love, and existence itself within himself. He needs nothing that we can give him. He needs us for each other. He must always live in veiled existence from his creatures, another mystery we cannot fathom. Because he is hidden from our eyes, he needs each of us to reflect a tiny bit of his existence and his goodness to one another. That is why we are all so different, one of a kind each of us, so rare we cannot be replaced in his eyes and his heart.

To all of us, to each of us he gives a part of himself. That is what makes us precious. No other creature has that part of God that makes us what we are. There may be billions of us on this earth, but just think, not two of us are identical. Each of us is unique. The mystical element in our uniqueness is what makes us necessary to God, to make his presence alive and real to one another. I am sure we have all met a man or a woman about whom we could say, “When I am in that person’s presence, I feel I am in the presence of Jesus himself. Jesus’ presence is so real in that person. I think that is what Jesus would be like if he were here.”

All people are good. We all do bad things, some really bad, but that does not make us evil. Nothing that God has created is evil. Even the worst of us is not evil, we are by our very essence as a child of God, good. Some of us have received more gifts that have preserved us, and protected us from falling into evil ways. We cannot thank ourselves for that. We should thank him for having given us gifts that protect us from those things that condition others to fall into evil ways. But, even the worst of us God wants to redeem.  That is why the death penalty is so evil; it tears a soul from God and refuses to allow God to continue his redemptive work in that person.  So we pray for one another, as each of us has the potential to do evil things, very evil things. And that is why we have to grow in our relationship with God, and grow stronger in his love.

And God has given us the means to grow in his love and that is by getting to know him better by seeing his goodness in others as well as in ourselves, and by reading so we can learn more of his beautiful ways, and by feeding on the food that he has given to us, especially in the Eucharist, which Jesus said, that if we eat it, we will live forever, as “My body is real food, and my blood is real drink. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood will live in me and I in him.” Living in Jesus is the key to our whole life’s purpose, and by living in him and he living is us, we reflect the reality of God to a world living in darkness and desperately searching for his light

As I write I am listening to Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons,’ for perhaps the thousandth time. This beautiful music brings such peaceful joy when I am sometimes hurting. But, as I listen to this awesome music, my memory always goes back to Vivaldi’s life. He was a priest who was chaplain in an orphanage for girls in Venice, where the girls formed his famous orchestra, and where he spent his life as teacher, composer, chaplain, and expert in musical instruments. Ever since his life in the seventeenth century, his masterful compositions have mesmerized music lovers the world over. Yet, in his relationship with the girls at the orphanage, it has been said that there were some he was unusually fond of and took advantage of them. In our day, he would be put in prison to rot. It made me think about so many remarkable people in history whom we admire as saints and heroes, but whom we would have found deserving of the death penalty or life in prison.

One of these persons was Moses, the great lawgiver of our civilization. Moses had murdered an Egyptian soldier and there was a warrant out for his arrest, but he escaped by fleeing into the wilderness of the Midian desert. Later on God called him to lead his people out of Egypt into the Promised Land, and to give the world the Ten Commandments.

Another of these flawed persons was David. David was specially chosen as a mere youth by God to become king of Judah and Israel. But David violated the wife of one of the officers in his army, and then had the woman’s husband killed. Yet, David was also the composer of most of the Psalms, whom the Church chants in their entirety over and over every year, as perhaps the most beautiful prayers ever composed. Some people would demand the death penalty for a man who did what David did. Yet, God called David, ‘a man after my own heart.’ Strange! And Jesus’ lineage is traced not down through David’s son by his wife, but through Solomon, the son of David and Bethsheba, who has come to be revered as one of the wisest men in history. And even Solomon, so specially favored by God, eventually turned his back on God because of his fondness for his pagan wives.

And another was Winston Churchill. He had severe mental problems, and some would have rather seen him in a mental institution because of his severe manic depression problems, rather than the great genius who lead Britain, and the West to victory in the Great War.

In analyzing the lives of many great people, I found that many of them were great sinners, and would never be tolerated in our righteous society notorious for its demanding strict justice for violators of our moral code, or for their impropriety. Strong people have strong passions and it is the strength of their personalities that is the root of their greatness and also the root of their personal problems. They make good leaders, if people can put up with their personal problems. Lesser persons may have lesser problems, and society may prefer them as leaders though they won’t have the necessary greatness of mind and heart to make important decisions or the guts to be great leaders when troubled times demand it. Religious institutions often feel comfortable with these kinds of people. But, throughout history, God himself seems to have preferred strong, courageous leaders, knowing they would accomplish what he destined them to accomplish. He was willing to put up with their nonsense, knowing that it was the way he designed the human personality. Great persons will have great problems, and weak persons will have lesser problems. And God had a lot to get done, so he needed great people to do the job. Maybe we can learn from God.

The times are difficult and stressful. People who only a few months ago were ‘secure’ in good jobs, many in federal employment, and in other high paying positions, are now finding themselves applying for food stamps, and standing in food lines. It can be almost too much for some to bear. Some may say, “What does a priest know about being out of work and food stamps and food lines?” I know and I am proud that I know because I was in that situation for four years. I was fortunate for a while to have help from family, but I never let them know that I had nothing, and no income. I was supposed to die by the end of the year. A friend, a funeral director let me stay in a small house the family owned outside the city. I grew my own food, and fought off squirrels and crows to protect my crops. I learned to make my own bread at five cents a loaf, rather than buy it at a dollar a loaf. I was asked to help one day a week in a parish forty miles away, and earned enough money to pay for gasoline, and save a little at a time to pay for my medical insurance. Being on two boards, one the Independent Review Board for the Youth Facilities in the state, and an advisory board for Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation, I received mileage money to cover expenses, and with what I received I could buy food I couldn’t grow. I learned to live on a food budget of five hundred dollars a year. My ten year old car had two hundred twenty-five thousand miles on it, and had a hole somewhere, so when I went through a mud puddle, I got sprayed in the back of the head, yet I couldn’t find the hole. I blamed it on God’s funny sense of humor.

At the time all I wanted to do before I died, was write about a real flesh-and-blood Jesus who would make sense to people so they could fall in love with him. After a long time, I finally finished my manuscript but did not have the money to make the large number of copies needed to send to agents and publishers. I would have to wait to figure out a way of getting the book published.

One day, while I was taking my daily two mile walk to keep my blood pressure down, I was wondering what I was going to do for supper as I had no food in the house. As I walked along the back road I thought I saw some money folded up, lying in the ditch beside the road. Walking down into the ditch, I found two dollars, just enough to buy some food for supper. I could almost hear Jesus saying, “I told you not to worry. I’d take care of you.” That was something I always preached but until those days never had to practice. Now I knew he does care for us. Ever since then I never worried about what I was to eat, or what I was to wear, and all the other things Jesus talked about. I learned during those difficult years that it doesn’t take much to survive, to live comfortably, yes, but to survive it doesn’t take much, if we work at it. I realize that for parents with a family it is not easy, but there is always reason to hope, and if we are creative in trying to find jobs, as humble as they may be, we can survive. Little daily jobs helped me a lot when I was struggling, and in the end I was, with God’s help, able to take pride that I did survive.

These are the times we pray hard as if everything depends on God, and work as if everything depends on ourselves. God does care