Want to go to prison?

Have you ever wished you were a prisoner, locked up in some small, stuffy cell, not able to come and go as you please? If you have, I recommend you find a good therapist, and find one fast. It's not a normal thing to have the desire to lose our freedom. We all deeply want to be free. In fact, many people have died in order to preserve freedom for their country and for their fellow citizens. Freedom is one of the highest ideals of humankind.

And yet the sad truth is that many of us give up our freedom so easily. We choose paths which are narrow and which squeeze the life out of us. We willingly give up our freedom so that we can gain something that is usually not worth very much at all. We choose the small stuffy cramped cell over the wide world filled with God's love and grace.

Imprisoned By Our Choices

We do this every time we choose not to love our neighbor. Whenever we turn our back on the legitimate needs of another person, we are heading back into our prison cell. It's true that often the short road back to our own personal prisons is a much easier road than the road towards caring for someone else. In fact, that's probably why we go that way in the first place. It's an easier path, but it doesn't lead to a place that gives us genuine life.

We are often under the illusion that if we keep our hearts only for ourselves, if we don't go out in caring towards others, that we will remain free. We will be free of any obligations to others, won't we? But we will also be free of any real love in our lives. When we refuse to give love, then the sad end to the tale is that we also refuse to receive love. We end up in our lonely cells, wondering what went wrong with our lives.

In the letter to the Galatians we heard: For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." There it is. We only have to worry about one thing—everything else will eventually fall into place if we only take care of that one thing—loving our neighbor.

Devouring One Another

But St. Paul seemed to know people very well because he also warns us that, even though we are called to love, we can easily destroy one another. "If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another." This image is savage and crude. People taking bites out of one another, even to the extent of actually destroying another person. We talk about tearing a person down, or savaging a person's reputation. St. Paul is telling us that we have the power to devour others by our unfounded and unthinking remarks.

It's sad, but probably all of us have had some experience where we saw a person's good name or reputation destroyed by the unthinking and cruel words of someone else. It doesn't take much to create suspicion in the minds of people. Just the slightest hint that you suspect someone might have done something wrong is often all that it takes.

Innocent Gossip?

And once our words are out, we all know how difficult, if not impossible it is, to take those words back. Once released, they seem to have a power of their own—a power to destroy. The judgments we make about others, and the words we use about them, can have an absolutely devastating effect. There is no such thing as innocent gossip.

It's clear that this kind of behavior does not lead to freedom. We become a slave to gossip and slander, thirsting for the next juicy revelation. It's often the case that we engage in this tearing down of one another because we have been hurt in some way and we want to take some revenge on the other person. We feel justified in our behavior. A quick look at our gospel today shows us Jesus refusing to even think about the possibility of taking revenge on the Samaritans.

Revenge

Revenge ties us to the person with whom we are angry. It imprisons us in a way that can often destroy us. How many people have found themselves in prison because they took revenge on another person? We must stop any thoughts of revenge and retaliation before they have the chance to affect us in such a negative way.

The way to freedom is the way of love. It leads us out of the darkness of hate to the path of goodness and kindness and light. May we follow Jesus down the path, which will bring us all together in his love.

Wherever respect for life and human dignity are lacking, there is need of God’s merciful love, in whose light we see the inexpressible value of every human being. Mercy is needed in order to ensure that every injustice in the world will come to an end in the splendor of truth.

– Pope John Paul II, Homily, Dedication of the Shrine of Divine Mercy, Krakow, Aug. 17, 2002

For all health care professionals who conscientiously object to moral evils advocated in our nation’s laws: that the Holy Spirit will be their guide and support for acting rightlyand that he will lead them to peace in trying times; we pray to the Lord. Amen.

Please pray for the sick of our parish family: Jesse Gonzales, Thomas Joseph Stanton, Mr. & Mrs. Arnulfo Carrillo, Sam Patterson, Bradly Hall, Dick Sledden, Anissa Seewell, Cora Lee Groff, Jane Bolf, Erin Parker, Cecil & Teresa Toudouze, Longinat Duran, L. Z. Baldarrama, Carol Stephan, Nanette Barrera, Lupita Cardenas, Juanita Rosas, Margaret Gallardo, Albert Rihtarchik, Edith Aldaya, Julian Galindo, Billie Sievers, Rosaura Trevino, Mary Cerha, Nancy Souhrada, Sandra Cave, Aurora Dyer, Carlos Vazquez, Robyn Marcum, Dee Hancock, Mark Spiekerman, Randy Schriedel and Louis Perez.

Tend your sick ones, O Lord Christ.
Rest your weary ones.
Bless your dying ones.
Soothe your suffering ones.
Pity your afflicted ones.
Shield your joyous ones.
And for all your love's sake. Amen.

(Names run for four consecutive weeks unless the church office is otherwise notified.)

Saving Things

Once again we are given what seems like a riddle: "...those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it." What can this mean? When we save something we keep it for our own use. We don't give it away. We protect it. Some of us end up saving everything we can until we don't have room for any more stuff in our homes.

For some reason, we're afraid to get rid of things we don't even need. In some cases, we save so many things that we actually lose them because we can't find what we want. We just have too much stuff, and when we need some particular item, we can't find that one thing because it is lost among so many other things. Trying to save things, we lose them.

Saving People

Some of us save people the way we save things. We attach ourselves to so many people that we end up belonging to no one We think that the more friends we have, the more important or successful we are. The end result is that we don't really have any close friends or any real friends at all. We have many people we know by name, but not many people who really know us in a deep or satisfying way. Trying to save people, we lose them.

Saving Ideas

Even in the realm of ideas, we know that the person who saves or holds onto his or her ideas and refuses to be open to new thoughts, often ends up possessing half truths. They canonize their own thoughts as the only ones worthy of them and so lose out on the bigger and more life-giving picture which new ideas can bring into one's life. A person who insists that the only thoughts they want to consider are the ones they already have loses out on so much.

Their view of the world is so narrow that they try to imprison other people's thoughts so that nothing new is allowed to be discussed. In this way they effectively prevent any creative ideas from being introduced into a situation where newness could be a saving grace. And so they end up losing new and life-giving ideas because they try so hard to save only their own hardened and narrow ones.

Losing And Saving

And so by trying to hang onto things, people, ideas, we often end up really losing them. When we do this kind of thing, we are closing ourselves off from the world. We are, in a sense, trying to save our lives, just the very thing that Jesus warned us against. What then are some ways in which we lose our lives so that, in the end they can actually be saved?

Let's use the same three examples—things, people, and ideas. The common problem we noted above was that of attachment. When we tie ourselves so firmly to having so much stuff, collecting people like they were objects and holding onto our ideas as if they were gold bars, then we end up losing so much in life.

Hanging on to things, people and ideas as if they were gods is the quick path to isolation and even depression in some cases. Jesus wants us to be freed from anything that locks us up and prevents us from really living life as we are meant to live it. That familiar expression about "letting go and letting God," contains a lot of wisdom. The only way we can come to freedom is to let go of everything which ties us down with invisible chains.

Jesus and the Cross

Jesus had to let go of his entire life in order to save us. In the eyes of those who saw him die, Jesus lost everything that could be lost. And yet we now know that his letting go was the very path he needed to take in order to bring life to the world. And today he tells us that we too must let go. "Take up your cross daily and follow me".

"To be a follower of the Crucified Christ means, sooner or later, a personal encounter with the cross. And the cross always entails loss....The great symbol of Christianity means sacrifice and no one who calls himself a Christian can evade this stark fact. It is not by any means an easy thing to recognize, within a given instance of personal loss, the opportunity it affords for participation in Christ's own loss" (Elizabeth Elliot).

Yes, we gain everything when we are able to let everything go—a difficult task at the best of times, but one that we need to take upon ourselves. As we allow ourselves to be freed from anything that holds us back and ties us down, we will gradually experience the enormous freedom and new life that will come into our lives.