Memorial Mass for the Dead (Carmel Terrace)

 

Wis 3:1-6,9

1 Cor 15:20-26

Jn 12:23-28

 

The sonnet begins with a challenge directed at death as if it were a person:

 

"Death be not proud,

though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for,

thou art not so . . . "

 

It ends ten short lines later with gentle reassurance and a sense of hope directed to those who are dying and to those who survive and must go on.

 

"One short sleep past,

we wake eternally,

And death shall be no more,

death, thou shalt die."

 

In his tenth holy sonnet, the 17^th century Anglican priest and poet John Donne, tells the personification of death that he thinks very little of its reputation or its power.

 

We heard in Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians,

 

"For as by a man came death, by a man came also the resurrection. 

For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive." 

 

A few verses later we read Paul's declaration,

 

"The last enemy to be destroyed is death." 

 

It was these words that allowed Donne to end his sonnet as he did,

 

"And death shall be no more,

Death thou shalt die."

 

A quiet moment.  A slight pause.  And it is over.

 

Jesus victory over death does not mean that we will not die.  Dying can never be avoided. Even though we can sometimes postpone it briefly, we all die. But, we do not have to submit to death. We never have to submit to the nihilism of the sad pseudo-sophisticate who sniffs that death is nothing more than returning to the food chain.  That is true only if one chooses to consciously and intentionally reject the promise of Jesus' redeeming act. That act of rejection requires great effort and determination.

 

There are many challenges for those of us who must go on after the death of someone we love. The greatest of those challenges is grieving. Grieving is never easy. It is never quick. Grief never reaches so-called 'closure,' one of the most bizarre and phony concepts ever forced down the throats of a gullible public.

 

The first reading proclaimed,  

"The souls of the just are in the hands of God

and no torment shall touch them." 

 

It is not a stretch from the image of the souls of the just in the hands of God to Donne’s description,

 

“One short sleep past,

we wake eternally,

And death shall be no more”

 

We heard in the Gospel just proclaimed:  "Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there also will my servant be."  This is our task and our mandate: to serve and follow Jesus, who freed us from the thrall of death.  Only because of Jesus' saving act could Donne admonish death against being proud.

 

The words of the readings are a source of some consolation.  But that consolation can only be partial. The words can never fully ease the pain of the broken hearted, they cannot answer the questions of those who wonder how to go on after the death of a spouse, a child, a parent, a sibling, or a friend.  

 

Grieving is the most solitary and isolating of all human experiences.  Grief is the great leveler.  It brings both the peasant and the dictator to his knees in pain, rage, and sorrow.  Grieving sets off an insatiable hunger in the poor as well as in the wealthy gourmand, the jet-setter and the subway pass commuter.  Grief brings all of us to our knees, sometimes in prayer and oftentimes, perhaps most often, in pain.  It is, for each of us, an uncharted course through a wide variety of emotions.  No one can travel it for or with us.  At best others can offer support, a listening ear, and an understanding heart.  They should never offer the pseudo-therapeutic lie of ‘closure.’

 

No writer ever described the grief better than C.S. Lewis did in the opening sentence of the small diary he kept after his wife's death titled A Grief Observed.  It begins,

 

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. 

I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. 

The same fluttering in the stomach,

the same restlessness, the yawning.

I keep on swallowing."

 

Grieving takes time. It takes energy.  It takes more than the week or two, or the maximum couple of months, that American society insists it should.  It never reaches closure. With time a loved one's death becomes part of a new reality.  Entering that new reality compels new ways of living and understanding for all who survive. 

 

In just a few moments you will hear

 

" . . . for your faithful Lord, life is changed not ended. . . . " 

 

The faithful is not limited to the one or ones for whom the Mass is being offered.  The faithful includes all of us here, struggling with our memories and thoughts, because our lives were also changed. 

 

And so today, as we remember those from the Carmel Terrace community who died we take comfort in the Church’s ancient prayer for the dead:

 

Requiem aeternam

dona eis, Domine,

et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Requiescant in pace.

 

"Eternal rest

grant unto them O Lord,

and let perpetual light shine upon them.

May they rest in peace."

 

Amen.

 

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November is the month of All Souls. On Wednesday I will celebrate a Memorial Mass for the Dead who lived at Carmel Terrace in Framingham, MA. I've been going there for over 12 years. It has become my parish in many ways. I celebrate Mass there two to four times per week. There will be some families as well as the residents some of whom I've known for 12 years. We will use the funeral liturgies and prayers. Homily above.

The photos are from the Church of St. Casimir, a jesuit church in Vilnius, Lithuania. Construction was begun in 1604. There were several changes of ownership including the commies who transformed it into the museum of atheism. It was returned to the Society in the late 1980s.

 

 

 

 Fr. Jack, SJ, MD

 

Blessed are the Peacemakers: Homily for Veterans' Day

 

The names are familiar:

WW I:             Gallipoli, Verdun.

WW II:            Iwo Jima, Anzio, D-Day

Korea:            Inchon

Viet Nam:      Tet, the Fall of Saigon

Today:           The Gulf War and subsequent involvements.

 

The changes in the way wars are fought and the reasons underlying wars emerged from changes in society and changes in those who fight them.  Were any WW I veterans alive today they would not recognize anything about the way wars are fought or the way in which those who serve are trained and prepared for war.  The philosophical and theological understandings of conflict and war have also changed.  It is unlikely that either "Over There," George M. Cohan's patriotic WW I song, or Frank Loesser's WW II vintage "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition" would be written today or become the hits they were at the time. Trenches, hand to hand combat, and bayonets were replaced by a powerful air force and bombs with extraordinary destructive potential.  Today missiles can be deployed by drone and computer. There is the risk of sophisticated chemical and biological warfare that is meant to kill non-combatants and children.  All of these developments have changed the experience of those called to fight wars and to defend against the threats of aggressors.

 

The response of American society to veterans has also changed. The ticker-tape parades and welcomes  given to veterans returning from battle after the World Wars contrast sharply with the vitriolic ugliness dished out to veterans of Vietnam a violence created and sustained by so-called 'peaceniks.' Many of those veterans’ are still suffering from the trauma experienced at the hands of peace lovers when they returned home.  I will only comment on athletes, professional and college, taking a knee during the National Anthem by ignoring further comment. They are beneath contempt and,  as this is sacred space, I am constrained from using certain words and phrases to describe them. 

 

War defines the generation that fought itand the generation that follows, the veterans' sons and daughters. 

 

My dad, born in 1905, was too young for WW I.  However, he served four years in Europe as a physician in the Army medical corps during WW II. 

Like many veterans, he rarely spoke about it.  Alas, by the time I spent four years at the VA Hospital in White River Junction, Vermont, working daily with PTSD patients, some of them veteran’s of WW II, he had been dead for twenty-five years and there was no opportunity to ask the questions that I realized I should have asked.  Questions I still wonder about it. 

 

The sacrifices veterans made--the sacrifices those serving today continue to make--are oftentimes discounted or ignored. Future plans, family life, education, jobs . . . all  of these are put on hold when one is called or volunteers to serve in the armed forces.  Injuries may short circuit some plans. The risk of death needs no elaboration. Sometimes military service opens up previously undreamed of opportunities and paths of life.  It has “straightened out” more than one juvenile-delinquent-in-training.

 

The plight of the one serving in the military is, as was true for the veteran when he or she served, is one of anonymity and hiddenness.  The fame of the veteran is in the hiddenness of his or her service, doing a job day by day with little recognition or appreciation. The task of those of us who are descendants of the veterans is to keep their memories and the stories they did share with us alive.  By keeping those memories alive, we learn from them.

 

We hear in the Beatitudes  "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God."  Sometimes peace can only be accomplished through war.  Peace may only be possible  when enemy threats from the outside

are crushed in the fight.  Ideally swords will be pounded into plowshares

and spears will be turned into pruning hooks. But at times plowshares must be forged into swords and pruning hooks back into spears. 

 

The reality of the human condition is that we are sinners.  At times those sins manifest in actions that threaten the lives and safety of others.  At times those sins ignite the fuse that leads to war.  This has been true since the beginning of time and it will be true until the end of time despite bumper stickers that urge making peace.  Thus our gratitude to those who served.  Our thanks to the veteran who risked everything to ensure the safety and freedom we enjoy.

 

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God."

 

We thank them.  And we pray for them. 

 

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A choice: homily for veteran's day or the widow's mite? Easy. The widow can wait until three years from now when the gospel appears again.

It is a solemn day demanding prayer and contemplation. I particularly pray for the Gold Star Mothers (an aunt was a double gold star mother). Can't wrap my mind around it. And while not official, there were a lot of gold star father's who saw their dreams die with their children

The photos are from my home town, Plymouth, PA in front of what used to be the high school (class of '67). Every year on this day the band and others would assemble at the base of the large statue for a memorial service. The other one was only added much later. I knew some of the guys on the plaque. Their names haunted me back in 2011 when I found myself wandering the streets of Saigon with the camera . The actually still haunt me at times.

 

 Fr. Jack, SJ, MD

 

Hear O Israel: Homily for the 31st Sunday of Ordinary Time

 

Dt 6:2-6

Ps 18

Heb 7:23-28

Mk 12:28-34

 

“Hear O Israel

The Lord our God

is Lord alone!”

 

These words begin the shema, the central prayer of Judaism.  Observant Jews recite it twice daily.  It is written on the small scroll that is held within the mezuzah, the small container affixed to the door posts of Jewish homes.

 

The Shema became central to Judaism beginning in the late Second Temple period,that extended from 530 BC to AD 70.  The scroll encased within the mezuzah is inscribed by a qualified scribe trained in law and scripture related to his task. as well as how to carve the quill and write the verses, which are written in indelible black ink.  It is encased in the mezuzah which devout Jews place on the doorposts of their homes.  The mezuzah serves as a reminder of God’s commandments.  With time many came to see it as something akin to an amulet protecting the home against God’s anger. 

 

The shema  unites the reading from Deuteronomy with the Gospel of Mark. 

 

Jesus’ replied to his interlocutor's inquiry about which was the first and most important commandment by directly quoting the shema:  "Hear, O Israel . . . "  It was a succinct way to outline what one must do to ascend the mountain of the Lord, to be numbered among the saints. But then Jesus went one step further when he added, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 

 

One of the early rabbinic sages described the commandments to love of God and to love one’s neighbor, as containing all of the Torah with the rest serving as commentary.  As Jesus' reply to the man continues  we are reminded that He did not come to abolish the ten commandments.  He came to perfect them by placing them in the context of love for God and for others. The scribe’s response, “Well said teacher, Your are right . . . . “ and his summary of Jesus’ answer showed his understanding.

 

Jesus changed the focus of religious observance from multiple laws governing diet, work, and other minutiae of life to love for God and neighbor.  Two commandments as opposed to six hundred some laws?  Sounds simple on the surface.  But, as is true of much of what Jesus taught, apparent simplification is, considerably more complex and difficult in the end.  

 

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The photos were taken a few years ago at the Charles River Basin across the street, actually Storrow Drive, from Mass General.  One of the real gems.  During fellowship at the General I ran along this three to four times per week, especially on Fridays.  Great place.  

Fr. Jack, SJ, MD

Seeing is Believing: Homily for the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time

 

Ps 126

Mk 10:46-52

"Master I want to see."

What did Bartimaeus' voice sound like? Was it high or low, loud or soft? Was his tone angry, demanding, desperate or pleading? What did his face look like? Was he standing, kneeling, or bowed down before Jesus?

Enter the narrative as if you were in a movie. Place yourself in the scene. Recreate it in your mind. Compose a scene in your imagination placing yourself in the action and feeling the wind, or heat, or rain on your skin, is one of the fundamental practices of Ignatian contemplation as described in the Spiritual Exercises. Remain there as long as you wish or for as long as you can tolerate. What do you feel, what are you thinking, what is going on inside of you as you meditate on this?

We are all Bartimaeus at times. We are all periodically blind to God's presence in our lives. That blindness may afflict us suddenly as we stand at the bedside of a dying spouse or parent. It may hit as we gaze uncomprehendingly at a flooded home. Bartimaeus' plea, "I want to see" may escape our lips in different words: It may be articulated as the angry WHY of the suddenly bereaved, the desperate Where are you' as the cancer pain becomes worse. We ask: Where is your mercy? Where is your power? Where is your love? Where . . . . are. . . . You?

We are all Bartimaeus. At some point in our lives we are all that man sitting at the roadside blind, disoriented, confused and desperate to see. Difficulty seeing is one of the challenges of aging. Cataracts. Macular degeneration. Diabetic retinopathy. Glaucoma. All of them impair the ability to see. But even in uncomplicated aging, the normal changes in the eye result in diminished vision.

By age sixty only one-third the amount of light hits the retina compared with age twenty-one. That is why gray-haired old dudes . . . and I count myself among them . . . always have the high beams on. We can't see with low beams.

Seeing is more than the primary sense of vision that allows images to hit our retinas so we can navigate the world. There are other ways of seeing. It is not unusual to hear a student say, "I see" when a complicated concept has been made clear. "I see what you mean" has nothing to do with vision but with understanding and 'seeing' through the eyes of our mind and soul. "I see where this is going" may indicate that one understands the nature of an argument, the path of a relationship, or one of many abstractions that we can suddenly 'see.' Even when we are not blind to Jesus, we can always find ways to see Him better. Perhaps it is a matter of cleaning our glasses. It may be necessary to get a stronger prescription. Or we may experience the joy of the startling improvement in vision after cataract extraction and lens implant. With prayer, frequent participation in the sacraments, and contemplation on God's word, we can always see better, we can always improve our vision. Whenever you hear the gospel narratives of Jesus' healing miracles, it is important to remember that those miracles did not create faith in a vacuum.

The healing miracles were not meant to awe, amaze, confuse, or impress an audience. With one or two exceptions faith in Jesus' willingness to make him whole, faith in Jesus' desire to return her to society, faith in Jesus' ability to make them clean prompted the petitions to Jesus. We heard Bartimaeus say: "I want to see." Jesus said nothing about vision to Bartimaeus. He said, "Go . . your faith has made you well." That's all. A simple command and reassurance. "Go, your faith has made you well."

We heard in the psalm: "they left in tears I will comfort them as I lead them back I will guide them." Sometimes we need Jesus to find us when we are lost, when we are blind to God's love, when we are confused or angry or hurting.

All of us go out in life full of tears, carrying seed for the sowing. All of us go out in life to engage in backbreaking, exhausting and painful work. That is the reality of life. It is the burden we bear as humans. But as we come back rejoicing and bringing in the sheaves, the results of our labor, we realize what God has done for us, and we know what God will do for us.

"Master, I want to see."

That would be a fine prayer today and all of the coming week.

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The Ljubljana Marathon was run last week. It was run a few days after I arrive in LJ in October of 2016. It was one of the great days of my time there, spent in the company of a Lithuanian medical student who thought to go to the top of Nebotičnik, the skyscraper. We also had a drink up there. Much better mobility allowed than in Boston, especially after the "tousle-haired terrorist" attacked the finish line in Boston. May he rot in prison..

 

 Fr. Jack, SJ, MD

Feast of St. Luke

 

We read in Paul’s Letter to the Colossians, “Luke the beloved physician sends you his greetings . . .”  Though the evidence is slim, tradition holds that Luke was a physician. That tradition suggests the overlap in the vocations of priests and physicians. 

 

Few books capture the reality of the demands, sacrifices, and pain that are part of the vocations to medicine or priesthood.  Among the small number that do is a 1947 novel written that proved prophetic when covid emerged. 

While relevant to all who had to cope with the biological, psychological, social, and spiritual crises driven by that pandemic,  it holds particular import for physicians and priests. 

 

The Plague  by Albert Camus, should be required reading for anyone studying medicine or preparing for ordination. It limns the anguish of confronting the most vexing problem in the universe and the most painful cross under which our vocations converge.

 

Dr. Rieux recognized the infection spreading through Oran as bubonic plague. He approached it courageously and with unflinching commitment to his patients.  Midway through the book we hear Rieux speaking with Tarrou, an enigmatic character who became a friend.  At the end of a long conversation that cannot be summarized easily we read: “Tarrou asked  ‘Who taught you all this Doctor?’   The was immediate, ‘Suffering.’”

 

If we allow it, suffering instructs physician, priest, patient, and others.  That teaching takes time, demands courage, and requires a willingness to recognize and endure one’s own pain, impotence, and rage so as to help the other.  None of us emerges unchanged from the confrontation with suffering.  In time we learn the truth described by Aeschylus,

 

“He who learns must suffer, and, even in our sleep,

pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart,

and in our own despair, against our will,

comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.”

 

Benedictine Basil Cardinal Hume, the late Archbishop of Westminster, was the son of a physician.  He accurately described the overlap between the vocations of priest and physician in a short meditation:  “The physician and the priest have much in common.  Both are concerned with people and their well-being.  Our starting points are different but inevitably we discover that our interest converges.  The experience of people tells us, priests and physicians, that many are still bewildered, indeed haunted, by the perennial problems of pain, suffering, and death.” 

 

As it was for the characters limned by Camus, so it is for us today.

 

The late Ned Cassem, SJ, MD was the consummate physician. Chief of Psychiatry at the Massachusetts General Hospital for thirteen years, Ned possessed tremendous empathy for, and sensitivity to, the suffering of others.  Among his papers was one titled CREED.  Three tenets of creed fleshed out Cardinal Hume as if Ned were writing midrash:

 

"As clinicians our responsibility is to always protect the patient."

 

"The secret of care for the patient is caring for the patient."

 

"The core of the doctor's healing role is loving the patient as the doctor loves himself."

 

One can address these  to physicians or priests with equal relevance.

 

Today, every physician has multiple options to sin through destroying life in the womb, desecrating and mutilating the human body for bizarre purposes, by impairing a child’s physical, mental, and cognitive development through puberty blockers, and by participating in the planned execution of the sick elderly. When commenting on his opposition to euthanasia to solve the problem of suffering,  Robert Twycross a British hospice physician wrote, “Any physician who has never considered killing a suffering patient is either very new to the profession . . . or singularly lacking in empathy.”  He went on to explain why euthanasia must never be an option.  The same applies to priests.

 

Priests and physicians suffer in concert with the patient unless, as suggested by Twycross, they are totally devoid of empathy.  Each is consumed by the awful and angry protest  why.  Each may nurture the desire to end the perceived meaninglessness immediately.  Physician and priest look toward the heavens.  Both scream WHY?   But the answer never comes.  The answer never will come.   We can only slog away trying to diminish suffering as much as we can, in whatever manner we can, and when we can, one patient at a time. 

 

John Paul II wrote in Salvifici Doloris that: “(suffering)  is a universal theme that accompanies man at every point on earth: . . .  it co-exists with him in the world, and thus demands to be constantly reconsidered.”  He goes on to note: “Man suffers in different ways not always considered by medicine, Suffering is wider than sickness, more complex . . . more deeply rooted in humanity itself. A certain idea of this problem comes to us from the distinction between physical suffering and moral suffering.”  Camus outlined and elaborated that distinction.

 

Neither physician nor priest can answer the why of suffering, but each is obliged to offer understanding and care rather than death to the one who suffers, each is called by his vocation to share in the burden of suffering in whatever way possible. 

 

Just as the plague was ending and the city gates were to open, Tarrou died of an atypical presentation of the disease.  Knowing the inevitable outcome if it truly were plague, Rieux took Tarrou into his own home.  In a few words describing the doctor looking down at his friend’s body, Camus summarized the anguish that physicians and priests encounter throughout their lives.

 

“The doctor could not tell if Tarrou had found peace, now that all was over, but for himself he had a feeling that no peace was possible to him henceforth, any more than there can be an armistice for a mother bereaved of her son or for a man who buries his friend.”

 

When confronting suffering both priests and physicians find themselves praying as Jesus did in Gethsemane, that the cup be taken from them.  But like Jesus, and like Dr. Rieux, if they are to truly live their vocations they must drink the cup to the dregs. 

 

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Photos are from the Hospital of the Good Samaritan in N'Djamena.  It was quite the challenge to adapt to the heat, lack of electricity, water, or tech.  

 

An old 12 lead one-channel EKG.  Teaching students how to apply the leads using a classmate as the teaching model, a long-time custom in med school. 

Examining

Young man with hepatitis.  It proved to be Hep A and he was allowed to go home

Pumps are not universal.  Hadn't seen a glass IV bottle in a long time.

Storing medications for dispensing in the pharmacy.

Statue of the Parable of the Good Samaritan

 Fr. Jack, SJ, MD

With Apologies to ABBA, Money, Money, Money: Homily for the 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time

 

Wis 7:7-11

Ps 90:12-12, 13-15, 16-17

Heb 4:12-13

Mk 10:17-30

 

Some of the most exquisite images in scripture describe the attributes of Wisdom.  Wisdom is not innate or genetic. It is never present at birth or the early stages of development, which go up to 25 or older.  It has nothing to do with IQ. It has even less to do with educational level or number of advanced degrees.  Wisdom is acquired and molded through long experience of success and failure, of the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. It is the special possession of those with a listening heart who have the courage to enter into silence, prayer, and self-reflection.

 

Wisdom defines and supports civilization. It is fundamental to being human.  Wisdom definitively separates us from all lower animals, no matter how cute, cuddly, majestic, or clever they might be, only humans are capable of wisdom. Somewhere in the bowels of MIT worker bees are slaving away at artificial intelligence.  I’ve yet to hear of anyone working on artificial Wisdom.  A computer can be programmed to check the spelling of and translate the lyrical passage just proclaimed, but no computer can be programmed to create something as splendid from its circuit boards. 

 

The Wisdom literature is not inert. It is not an historical curiosity that explained the world to the benighted, non-scientific, and unsophisticated peoples of the Ancient Near East.  They weren’t all that different from us today.  Wisdom recognizes and supports all that God does in the world.  It should undergird all that we do in the world.

 

Though there is a pragmatic dimension to it, the Wisdom literature is not a handbook along the lines of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.  It is much more than that.  Wisdom reveals the mystery of God, a mystery we cannot begin to approach through any literature but the mystical, the numinous, the poetic, and perhaps through music.  We come closer to understanding the mystery of God through the poetry of the psalms than we do through books of systematic theology or historical-literary criticism of the Gospels.

 

British neuropsychiatrist Sir Michael Trimble published The Soul in the Brain in 2007. The book emphasizes neuroanatomy, neurochemistry, and neurophysiology while outlining the role of the brain in the genesis of language and art.

 

Language and art are important components of religious belief and perhaps the most important means of transmitting that belief from generation to generation.

It is a brilliant book that also considers the ancient wisdom of philosophers and theologians.

 

Whether speaking of the Ancient Near East or the early years of the 21st century

one must ask what Jesus meant by the startling and uncomfortable image

of the camel passing through the needle's eye more easily than the wealthy.  Does wealth automatically condemn?  Are all the wealthy excluded

from the Kingdom of God? More specifically, what income level is damning?

Should I have saved all my W-2s?

 

Jesus is not warning against wealth as wealth.  He is warning about a human behavior that hasn't changed in millennia. That behavior is the drive to acquire more and more wealth.  The drive that demands more and more time, energy, and attention to maintain and increase that wealth, to the detriment of caring for and about others, if not outright destroying them. Too often the more one has

the less one shares. 

 

We've become almost jaded to news detailing the latest financial scandals

involving obscenely paid executives who appear to want even more. The saga of the recently imprisoned Elizabeth Holmes, the Stanford dropout foundress of Theranos Corporation, is a tale of greed mixed with the pursuit of wealth, fame, and magazine covers. She combined those desires with a callous and criminal disregard for the health of others.

 

As a society we tolerate, and even rationalize, the greed of overpaid athletes and their agents whose whiny demands for more and more astronomical salaries, have pushed the cost of taking a family to a game beyond the ability of many.  In an effort to increase its revenues, the NCAA is systematically destroying college football.  The impact of the business for profit model on medicine is a separate homily. There are also, of course,  middle and lower level atrocities in the pursuit of wealth committed by those with similar mindsets but much smaller budgets. 

Money seems to desire more money no matter the cost to others or the cost to oneself, as long as one doesn’t get caught.

 

It is not the cold hard cash that Jesus is decrying. Jesus is warning against the mind-set of wealth craving more wealth that is the well-beyond what is needed.  Unlike membership in a country club or a place on a Forbes Magazine list

salvation does not derive from human achievement.  One is not automatically saved because of rank, bank balance, or the number of toys one has upon death. 

Wealth is not one of the keys to the kingdom. It need not be an impediment to entering the kingdom,  but it will never move anyone to the front of the line.

 

True wealth is not what one possesses, but what one gives. True wealth is not what one hoards, but what one shares. The more we share our treasure with those in need, the treasure of money, time,  or the gift of presence, the larger the eye of that needle becomes. 

 

. . .  and that there camel gallops right on through.

 

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Photos are black and whites from the monastery.  When the inevitable day comes that I won't be able to get out with a camera--and the day will come--I hope to spend the time converting and processing much of what I've taken into black and white.   

The refectory set up for the midday meal which, in most monasteries is the main meal of the day.

Vessels in the small sacristy.

Leading to the consecration

Crucifix in a chapel

All monasteries need a body of water of three

Fr. Jack, SJ, MD