What are you most proud of in your life?
I know being ordained a Catholic priest is a big deal, but what lingers in my mind as I get older is having a radio career beginning as a junior in high school and playing all the rock songs that all my peers were listening to.
In what ways does hard work make you feel fulfilled?
Simply because it challenges you to learn new things… As well as using past experience. 
What is a word you feel that too many people use?
Awesome… for the most mundane of things when the word means when the sun clashes into the Earth …
In describing your life, I can save you a lot of time. Life is summarized with two “S” words: surprises and setbacks. Stand for the Creed? There you have it.
Thank you for listening. Now for today’s boring sermon.
For non-believers (once called pagans but that’s not politically correct anymore although it still applies), it is winter’s slowing lightening to spring and all those budding stuff emerging from the ground, followed by the richness of spring’s hopes and summer’s heat and its frolicking. (I don’t know who frolics anymore, but it sounds like fun.) Ummmm. Easy, simple, convenient, and obviously and completely wrong.
For us, not-so-bright Christians? (Get it? “Bright.”) Where do we find the light? Where do we find light? We find light in darkness. In the darkness of darkness, we see, yes, light. We see light when we, well, when light is needed. This is what the Epiphany is all about.
When said, “I had an epiphany,” that’s just an idea. That’s from you. An Epiphany is something beyond yourselves but arrives within yourselves. The first is from the “pagans,” and the second is Divine.
During the darkness of indecision; light. Felt in the darkness of doubt; light, during haunting questions about life here or the life after here? You guessed it. Spell it out! Christians seek light in the darkness when light is most needed. How about the dark places of our lives that we refuse to admit and see? Or those dark places within us that we haven’t even uncovered yet?
Flashlight? Nay … needs batteries. Relying on our own nearsighted eyes looking inside ourselves? Nope. That’s called one-sided.
We seek the light that this holy day provides. A heavenly star that brought nations together, even if for a short time, to show that this light is universal and eternal. Those two “S’s” that happen to us are the same two two that happened to Jesus Christ. Those surprises and that setback.
I hate it when a friend tells me, “You gotta see that Netflix film. It’s great. The hero is killed in the end.” Am I surprised? No! Because now I know the ending. Why waste two hours when I already know the ending?
That’s what happens with our prayers. Try praying without providing God with the answer. That’s not prayer, that’s a command! Giving a solution or resolution to God? If answered with your wish, you tell your friends for years to come about how your prayer was answered with your answer. Surprise? Nada. (whispering) That’s called idolatry.
Pray is always buttressed through the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, you will be enlightened with more insights and guidances than you can imagine. There are many unexpected surprises during this beautiful journey of life. (“unexpected surprises” is redundant, but you get the meaning.) Coupled with life’s setbacks – full of troubles, trembles, and travails.
Epiphany shows us today that all is okay. Motel 6 spokesman Tom Bodett famously said, “We’ll leave the light on for you.”
Well, how about the story of our faith? Three kings (whose names we can never remember), a villainous governor (whose name we all know), two tired parents (we know them), an unnamed donkey with a map and magic marker yellowing directions to Egypt, shepherds (all without names) wondering if their sheep are still in the hills, angels (no names provided) looming all about…and only one bright lone star constantly shining through all of our darknesses of fears, doubts, uncertainties, and despairs. As well as life’s joys, successes, and peace. Always hoping that the latter outweighs the former. The song “Away in the manager?” Forget about it. Away? So, very wrong.
Apparently, with a joyful smile on his sleepy face is this newborn babe full of surprises and setbacks for both himself and for us. He’s asking us to be “newborns” each day.
What are their names? They are the Divine star of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit saying to us every Sunday (and those other misnamed days), “Our light is forever brightly lit and lovingly burning away for every one of you.”
“Black Lives Matter”
“Real Men Love Their Babies”
“Love Lives Here”
“Slow Down, We Can Wait” (a funeral home)
“Fair Housing Is Your Right” (Black couple holding a baby)
“Speeders Killed My Brother” (sister holding picture of her brother)
“Jesus Is The Answer” (what’s the question?)
“Hate Has No Home Here”
“Democrats Can Vote Republican” (election year)
“Polacks Are People Too!”
Truly, stupidly sad…
billboards I view while carefully driving while wishing the best for all people…
“Hail Joseph! No, it’s ‘Hi Joe,’
Blessed are you to hear the dreamy voice of an angel to receive your pregnant wife, Mary.
Blessed are you, Joe, among men. Pray for us to hear and heed the silent messages of your angels and to respond, as you gracefully did, again and again.
Thanks Joe for consistently listening and never, ever speaking one, single word. Your actions spoke so much louder and larger than words. Amen.
“Grief, for me, has held so many unexpected emotions. We most often think of sadness, and there is much sadness in grief. But there is also relief, there is anger, there is defeat, there even is joy. I thought it was humorous as I was making the reminder flyer for this service that at the top, I wrote a description of this service and how though it is a season of joy, many of us are mourning and I invited you to come together as we mourn.. And then at the bottom, on the same paper, in the same strokes of my typing, I invited you later this week to spread the joy of the Christmas season.
And the reality of those -grief and joy- coexisting is the reality that we live in. Remembering the people that we have lost is often painful, but even in the hardest of it, at funeral services and even bedsides of hospitals immediately after a death, I have experienced laughter with friends and families, sharing stories of our departed loved ones.
In this season though, it can feel unnatural to be experiencing sadness at a time when so many around us are experiencing joy, but our world is full of these seemingly opposites coinciding, this great juxtaposition.
We must not succumb to the darkness, to the sadness of it all. And yet we must at the same time make space in this season of joy for the sadness of our grief. Because yes, this is a season of joy, and yes, there will be joy and laughter in remembering stories of our lost loved ones or remembering holidays gone by, but there is also sadness.
Sadness that they are no longer celebrating with us. Sadness that things are not as they once were. Sadness in our inability to do the things that we once could. Sadness that our holidays look different than they once were. Sadness that our world is changing in a way that we are uncomfortable with. So much sadness can exist in the remembering.
The memories continue to live.
Thich Nhat Hanh, Tibetan monk and peace advocate, once said: “Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.”
This is the hope that we cling to. We hope that we experience God’s comfort. We hope that we experience some rest from the often overwhelmingness of grief. We hope we experience God’s life and light in the midst of death and darkness. We hope that tomorrow will be better than today.
And in the meantime, we endure. We grieve. We honor our loved ones.
We allow for tears in a season of joy. And we allow for joy in a season of grief.”
(written by Alexis Johnson, Chaplain of Alexian Village of Milwaukee)
Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.
