Mother’s Day Blessing

Posted on May 4, 2014 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

Mother.
There is only One God and there is only one mother.

God knew you before you were born and so did she. She carries you through the grocery store waddling down aisle after aisle looking for food that you need. She carefully gets into the car and fastens a seat belt around the two of you.

She eats for both of you during those enlarging months. (The ice cream is for her, the yogurt is for you.) Mother. Now one, united but soon to be two. Now, as an undefined unity but soon to be separated but forever one.

Then that day, on that one day, which you think is completely dedicated to you is celebrated with friends but rarely with her, she released you to this waiting world where she waits for you more times than you can imagine.

She teaches you patiently how to hold it until the right time. One day or someday you may teach her how to let go.

She reviews your crayon sketches not knowing what you were attempting to convey but smilingly tells you that it is truly a work of art and worthy of the refrigerator door. (Your first public showing!)

Before her eyes close at night she thinks of you and your safety – and when her eyes open in the morning and the oatmeal needs to be made, she thinks of you once again.

She will drive you where ever you wish to go and sometimes wish not – soccer, football, glee club, drama club, orthodontist, barber and perhaps even a psychologist to help explain your sudden emotional outbursts. You find her to be as demanding as a German commandant and as patient as one who watches paint dry.

She will tickle you, read to you, bathe you, scold and reprimand you for as long as it takes. She will act as president when a decision is to be made, counselor when your first friend abandons you, priest to help bury the gerbil that she never liked anyway, and most importantly she will be the observer – not to haunt but to guide you skillfully and carefully through misguided choices, impulsive decisions and that wrong friend from that neighborhood.

She will judge and weigh you for the rest of her life but she will never condemn you. She will evaluate you and like a good Chess player always stay at least three moves ahead of you. She may not even play Chess but she will win…every time.

You will finally be on your own and think that you are free of her but (and here’s the haunting part), her messages, mantras, platitudes, absolutes, aphorisms, family secrets that no one can ever know about (but everybody does), all her hopes and dreams for you will continue to filter through and live in your mind and soul and heart.

We are in God’s house this day but mother lives more intimately and personally than any deity. No wonder our Christian God is a jealous God, He has mother to compete with Him.

When she dies her legacy will then live within you…whether you like it or not. What started at the grocery store continues now through you. Mother’s continuing life now lives within you. Don’t ignore it. Don’t heed her enduring messages each time but do not ever forget them. (You may try to forget them but those messages have not forgotten you.)

Mother. God bless them. God has to bless them. What choice does He have? What could He, in His creative and omnipotent powers, do without them?

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The Commencement Speech I’ll Never Give

Posted on April 30, 2014 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

CU-Cap-and-Gown.jpgThe month of May rolls around and the roles of college students changes from those who’s absorbed to now those who will share.  Many will look for jobs, others may have secured theirs and still others may be prone to further their education or just wonder about it at a nearby Starbucks.  This is the speech I’ll never be invited to give.

“Graduates, faculty, trustees, family and most importantly parents.  Thomas Wolfe was right, you can’t go home again.  You’ve lived in a home created just for you for some 22 years but now it is time to create your own home which is not always a brick structure but it is truly a place.

That most of us here have shoes older than you are is not to put you down but to invite you into a perspective that is always broader than yourself.  1992 you were born.  Bill Clinton was president and your fist dose of leadership was a sexual foray of entitlement.  Since then he’s turned out to be a pretty decent guy as is the hope for all of you gathered here today.

More than likely, your parents did not take you to church often because they wanted you to find your own faith which is pretty difficult when there is no foundation to build upon.  In that regard I blame them for their oversight which says more about them then it does their parenting skills.  But not to worry, newly graduated folks, that yearning and emptiness that you will sometimes feel as an adult is a trigger that is requesting your undivided attention.  That trigger is the alert telling you that life is more than only you.

All the helmets and backpacks, seat belts, child seats, strollers (with AM/FM radio) and safety precautions your parents have inflicted upon you are now removed as you venture toward risk, challenges, and dreams with many of them full of failures and rejections.

You’ve successfully clicked your way through high school and college, sometimes using only two fingers.  I envy you but I would never want to copy you.  Remember please that nothing will nor can replace looking someone in the eye while relaying a story instead of using those two fingers of yours.  Nothing can replace a personally written note of sympathy to a friend instead of some Internet card with butterflies roaming the edges.  Nothing can replace the maturity of sincerely telling a lover that you are moving on instead of telling another friend on Facebook.

Never can mistaken communication with intimacy.  Never mistaken the easy road for the one that is honest.  Because, so often now, personal honesty is the only honesty we can trust.

Technology keeps telling us “we are in control” as though we are in control.  Illusions abound.  You’ve all grown up with Harry Potter so I hope you know how the power of illusion can illusion a lazy mind.

You and I are not in control except when it comes to our telling comments, statements and reflections that are shared with close friends.  And they are done in person, one to one.  You’ve watched more television than any generation before you and are apt to be more sarcastic than anyone your age has been.  Sarcasm only rises with experience and yours is just beginning.  If you’ve watching too much “Glee” then you’ve missed out on “Breaking Bad.”

Watch them both and allow a synthesis to occur.  Synthesis.  I fear it is a lost word in our U.S. culture.  We hear, digest and repeat but I fear that we rarely, if ever, synthesize.  That word provides the end of two previous words.  The first is a gathering of thoughts, the second is an opposition to those thoughts and the third, the synthesis, is what lives within you and then becomes future comments or commitments or promises or pledges or allegiances or obligations or even passing whims.

The home that you will now create is within you.  Create it carefully; fill it with worthwhile memories, potentials and dreams.  Guard it with your life because it is your life that will unfold because of what you’ve created.

I’ve haven’t mentioned Jesus Christ, God or His mom.  Figure that out for yourself but know that your home can house many rooms, many chambers, many nooks that contain gems yet to be unfolded or known but are still precious and worthy of your attention.

Be glad that you cannot be home because now you’re able to create a home of your own – person hood, authentic, sincere and worthy of the life you acknowledge this happy day.”

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Verbal Habits

Posted on April 29, 2014 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

ImageWe throw them out there in conversations.  More than likely we are not even conscious that we are saying them because we’ve used the word or phrase so many times.  I suspect the word or phrase is used to fill “dead air,” as we say in radio until the conversation either changes or continues.  It is annoying to hear them but hear them we do.  A sampling…

“Truthfully,”  is an alarm clock for you to replay all your conversations with this person because now you’re finally about to hear the “truth.”

“The thing of the matter is,” both “thing” and “matter” don’t matter much.  Just tell me what you’re thinking.

“Basically,” I have a graduate degree.  I am capable in handling complex thought patterns, including yours.

“At the end of the day,” At the end of this day I’ll not be standing before you but enjoying soft music and a cocktail.

“You hear what I’m saying?” Often thrown into conversations throughout the conversations.  My eyes tell you that I’m listening to what you’re saying.  My hearing may not be great but you’re talking loud enough that that statement need not be sprinkled throughout your long-winded statements.

“When I was your age,” I know, I know.  There was no air, roads or food.  When I am your age, I hope I never make the listener feel less than human.

“It goes without saying,” Boy, this is a waste of my listening time.

“As a believer,” (church folks)  Okay.  I already know that I’m going to hell.  Can we get lunch now?

“It Is What It Is,” (see same blog)

“Actually,” I thought everything we’ve been talking about has been “actual.”  Now we’re finally getting “actual?”

“You’re a priest, so,” Yeah, I know what I am.  I’ve never committed suicide but I do have some thoughts on the matter.

“You haven’t met my wife,” Yeah, but after meeting you I bet I’d like her a lot.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,”  Now you’re talking.

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“Doubting Thomas”

Posted on April 26, 2014 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

ImageThomas was the one who held out his belief in Him until Jesus appears to him after the resurrection.  He’s supposed to represent the rest of us believers who doubt, sometimes or a lot of the times.  Yet Thomas does not represent us because he got to touch and feel and to see for himself.  

Centuries later we are hear still doubting and wondering (as well we should) but still looking for that touch, that quick feeling of assurance.  If that were to occur in our lives then it would no longer be faith.  It would be fact.  “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed,” is how the Thomas story ends.  It is the unseen that weighs faith’s strength.  It is the unknown that measures faith’s depth.

A fellow employee was talking to me about beginning a new relationship after an eleven year marriage.  He said that one night he prayed to God to give him a sign that something was possible for me and the next day he met the woman he’s been dating the past three years.  So now, he believes.  I guess he touched and felt faith.  Now he’s a lifelong faithful follower of Christ?  Time will tell but keep the oxygen flowing through your lungs.

It reminds me of Frank Morgan, the Wizard in “The Wizard of Oz” – with smoke blowing, levers moving up and down, left and right as he maneuvers his omnipotent ways to match our temporal and fleeting requested ways.  “Ahhh, I guess there is a God,” says my confident friend after his supposedly divine association.

St. Augustine, writing in 300 or sometime earlier than most of us have lived, summarizes how little time has past between us and how still we forget that we who have not seen are truly blessed, even in our doubt.

Don’t you go drawing back from your God, love your God.  You are always saying to him”give me this and give me that”…say to him sometimes…”give me yourself.”
if you love him, love him for nothing…
don’t be a shameless fool.  you would not be pleased with your wife if she loved your gold…if the reason she loved you was that you had given her gold or given her a fine dress or given her a splendid Villa or given her a special slave or given her a handsome eunuch because if these were the things she loved about you, she would be loving you.
Don’t rejoice in such love as that, the adulterer very often can give more.
You want your wife to love you for nothing…and you in turn want to sell your faith to God?  “Because I believe in you” say to your God, give me gold.
Are you not ashamed? “Because I believe, give me gold.

You have put your faith up for auction.  Notice its price. that is not what it is worth…it is not to be valued in gold or silver…that is not what your faith is worth.
It has a huge price tag; God himself is its price…love him and love him freely for nothing.  You see,  if you love him on account of something else you aren’t loving him at all.
You must not want him for the sake of anything else but whatever else you want you must love for his sake, so that everything else may be referred to love of him, not so that he may be referred to other loves, but that he may be preferred to other loves. 

Love him, love him freely… for nothing. 

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“It Is What It Is”

Posted on April 26, 2014 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

ImageLike fingernails on a chalkboard I hear those five words way too much.  Twice last week which is low.  To me it says nothing but to the speaker it seems to speak volumes.  Two repeating words with a “what” in the middle is supposed to summarize one’s present predicament.

It is often said as a an conclusion as though there is nothing more to say on the subject.  I guess you could call it a spoken period.  Where’s Reinhold Niebuhr when you need him?

Are we that quick to sell out and resign?  It is not even resignation because that would imply a recognition that nothing more can be done about a particular situation.  “I am resigned to this,” is not the same as saying, “It is what it is.”  Two pronouns that represent nothing says something about our English education. If the subject is marriage (which it often is) then the concluding statement leaves me baffled as I walk away.  “Was he talking about the sorrow or grief or talking about the unknown future,” I think to myself.  “Please, try to think of a noun.”  It helps the listener (i.e. me) immensely.

Where would the great protestors of our culture be if that phrase was thrown out at a civil rights rally or gay rally or Vietnam protest or women’s rights or how many others we can recall.  The reason for those gatherings was that whatever the “it” was, it was the “it” that gathered the group to change the present “it” to a different or new “it.”  Don’t you sometimes hate pronouns?  Niebuhr gives us three approaches to life with a concluding prayer that gathers all three together.  The repeating pronouns with “what” in the middle gives us nothing; or could you call it despair?  I’ve learned to hear it as a “dead end” which makes the chalkboard’s sound all the more bothersome.  We are smart and educated here in the U.S. so how we can so easily condense and nutshell our lives into repeating pronouns with a “what” in the middle?  Naming the “what” may very well lead us to a new direction or understanding in and of our lives.

God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.

 

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Easter Sunday

Posted on April 21, 2014 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

I’ve tried to keep it a secret but I’ve been in Rehab for the past two weeks.  It’s called “Priests Who Think Too Highly Of Themselves.”  I was surprised by the large number who attend.  I was told there’s a waiting list.

One exercise was working with clay.  “Sounds easy,” I thought.  We were to think of something that’s important to us that we could create from clay.  I chose an ashtray.  It was my job to design, shape and configure this object the way I wanted it to be.  How many slots for the cigarette?  (One, I live alone and my cats don’t smoke.)  How deep does it need to be?  “Pretty deep,” I surmise.  Fancy border around the ring?  “Why not,” I conclude.  So I created my ashtray in an image and likeness that, well, reflects the image and likeness of its creator, me.

You probably already know where I’m going with my little tale.  No matter what happens to my silly ashtray, it will always be my creation.  If it gets old and worn, I’ll still remember it from its origin.  If it gets cracked, broken or fragmented, I’ll just save the lost pieces and perhaps glue them back or just hold on to those pieces, patiently, because I created it whole and I want it to remain whole.

Creator God created us whole and complete.  No creator will allow a creation to go abandoned or lost or broken.  Too much of the creator has been invested in the creation.  There is the personal investment as well as the frenzied life of the created object.  Isaiah tells us that even if a mother forgets her child, how can…

We seem to enjoy dwelling on our sin and our unworthiness as an impetus for a reunion with God and our lost pieces while all this time we didn’t need that kind of thinking because we are the created – created from a Creator who will never and can never forget what was created – even if it splinters, snaps or breaks and some pieces get lost or at least forgotten about.  All the pieces remain just where the Creator created them.  Along with the Maker’s help, we can remake what was misplaced, lost or broken.

The Creator always has the whole of creation in His mind.  His creation can only end the way it was created; in an image of goodness, likeness and the image of the One who created.

I can’t spend too much time here, it’s macrame day this afternoon.

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The Hand Written Note

Posted on April 17, 2014 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

Image“There’s that silver pen that I haven’t used for quite a while.  I thought I put it in that drawer but I must have moved it.”

A note.  Thoughts shared between two people with no other audience.  A note.  Hand written to make words have meaning.  A note.  Saved and savored, some forever.

“Oh, the pen was right were I left it on the shelve.  Now, where’s all that stationary that I’ve been saving and haven’t used for years.  Good, there it is.  Let’s see, how do I begin.”

A phone’s text message gives the facts, Twitter has a limit with no feeling, Instagram eludes me and an email tries but always fails to convey something more.

“Ummm, where to start, where to begin.  It’s just a ‘thank you’ note but I want to convey how much I felt about our time together.  ‘Hi,’ ‘Greetings,’ ‘Dear,’ all seem to be ambiguous and vague.  Well, I like ‘Dear’ for its proper beginning.  Oh goodness, look at my handwriting after years of computer typing.  I can barely read it, how am I to expect my friend to enjoy this hand written note.  Oh, it doesn’t matter because this is authentic.”

Telephone calls are still in operation, you can always leave a message.  You can also assume your gratitude toward the enjoyable evening with your friend and know that she enjoyed it as well.  You can also talk about the previous enjoyable evening during the next unplanned enjoyable evening with your friend in the unknown future.  After all, we are all going to live forever.

“Just look at my lines, they all uphill.  When did I start to write this way.  Since I’m left-handed, some of the ink stays with my fingers and runs into the previous words.  Oh my, how did people do this years ago?”

There, finished.  I can’t proof read or correct it because it’s down there in all its glorious and dried ink.  It is forever written and preserved for my recipient. 

My email was sent an hour ago, my other technological methods were completed in less time and I’m now watching television and working on my next project.  I’m glad I sent that message to my good friend.

“I need to carefully fold the message and place it in the envelope.  I hate when the creases don’t match.  I left an envelope here somewhere, oh, there it is.  I’ll lick it closed and now carefully write the address on the front of the envelope along with my return address in case it needs to be returned to me after its days-long flight toward its destination.  Oh, that’s right!  The stamp!  I wonder what stamps cost these days.  I’ll do that tomorrow.  I hope she likes it, it’s my monogram in dark colors against a cream stationary.  I said everything that I want to say to her about the evening we spent together.  I hope that she receives it and likes it.  Oh wow.  Did I sign it?  I already sealed the envelope.  I’m sure I signed it, I was there when I was writing.  I’m sure of it.  It is finished.”

So, what is saved forever and what is deleted.  What holds and endures attention and what is dismissed in the midst of what is so much dismissible.

A lost art or just a loving art that’s been misplaced…at least for the moment?

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“The Kitchen Table”

Posted on April 16, 2014 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

ImageI was brought into their house when their number of children grew to five. The junior before me was put in the basement for laundry duty. It seems that I was “On Sale” which was not a comforting thought for me since I thought I was brand new. The parents seemed pleased when their eye caught mine. I was delivered and placed in the kitchen’s most prominent place. Matching chairs made me complete and ready for my first duty.

Plates, glasses of milk, silverware and hot plates adorned me each night for many, many years. When the call for supper was made I could see anxious little legs and feet dangle. The two bigger folks feet were firmly planted on the floor. At each meal the conversation suddenly grew loud after everyone said “Amen”. It wasn’t always important talk but things about school and the question often raised by one parent was, “Then why go to school if you’re not learning anything?” No answer was ever given to that unusual question.

Some nights, even after the dishes were washed and put away, one dangling pair of feet remained at the table. I could smell liver and onions but did not know why this lone one remained. It seems that turning off the kitchen lights did not prompt those feet to leave me. Some contest was going on and those little feet thought that she could win. Eventually the lights came back on and a single dish was washed. I never found out if she won or not.

Every year a repetitive song was sung for each child followed by clapping. I heard lots of laughter during those occasions along with wrapping paper strewn all around me. Some nights I would be awaken by a warm glass of milk laid on me and only one pair of legs, always the “planted” feet. I’d have to stay awake for that hour of so while hearing sighs or even a calculator or notes written.

Only on Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving was a beautiful white garment placed upon me. (I think someone in the family made it.) On rare occasions the older man would pound on me to emphasize something he was trying to say but not doing a very good job of it because he needed to land his fist upon me. It didn’t hurt, I was made to last. (Even if “On Sale.”)

The most fun was watching those dangling bare feet in summer and wool socks in winter get longer as they reached toward the parent’s floor. The conversation seemed to be more formal; no more phrases or one words but now with complete sentences, concepts and quandaries. I began to also notice more nicks and scratches on me during those years. The older woman would sometimes polish me like a facial covering but it didn’t help. I didn’t care. I earned each nick from a broken glass or pencil markings or the Valentine’s heart that the boy and a strange girl tried to inscribe into me until one parent stopped it. Now I’m plagued with a “half heart” tattoo. I guess that makes my aging body feel contemporary, sort of.

If there’s to be an eighth sacrament, I think that, “legs” down, it ought to be me. In all humility, it’s me that gathered this tribe together at least once a day if not for card games, board games, permissions to marry, stuttering while admitting a pending divorce, needed loans (“only for awhile, trust me!”) but how many other significant and silly encounters that occurred on top of me. (No matter how beautiful you’ve crafted your living room, the guests will always, eventually and inevitably convene around me.) I know that sacraments are supposed to be a process and not an object but this object (notably me) brought together, sustained and weathered a family growing up together.

I often tell the huge flat screen in the living room that he’s the diversion but I’m the place where food is shared, stories are told, angers are waged and settled, secrets are shared and then broken and where division and then reunion occur. I deserve to be the eighth sacrament, if there is ever to be one.

I’m old now but still sturdy. All but one has left now, the others return for a short time but then leave again. Oh well, I’ve served a sacramental purpose. In my old age, I’m holding out for the “Antiques Roadshow” PBS program. Who knows, there may be another family with small dangling legs for me to serve.

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Holy Week – Wash, Rinse & Iron

Posted on April 7, 2014 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

ImageHoly Thursday
“Wash, Rinse, Iron” is these three days – Thursday, Friday, Saturday.  We “wash” on Holy Thursday, “rinse” on Good Friday and on Holy Saturday we “iron.”
I know it may sound disrespectful or ordinary but it is the ordinary that I want to point out.  These are just ordinary days for Jesus and the times in which he lived.  And these are just ordinary days in the time in which we live.  It’s just another day.
“Wash, Rinse, Iron.”  Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
Throughout the centuries we’ve embellished the stories about Jesus, don’t you think?  It’s not all as historical as it’s presented to be.  We did so (and do so) to make it important and very special to our Christian faith.  In other words, we’re trying to make “extra” what is really ordinary.
Monday was wash day for our family.  It was the day after the weekend that all our dirty laundry had to be presented to my mother.  (Boy, she must have so looked forward to Mondays.)  Gathered together, it was her tireless job to trapes down to our dark, dank basement to perform her weekly ritual.  Washing.  Lots of washing for a family of five not counting my parents.  That’s seven loads that needed unloading.
It’s such a simple human act that none of us look forward to it but feel it is imminent when we’re done to our last pair of underwear or socks.  There’s a hopeless feeling when the important wearings begin to smell.
Jesus gathered to observe a yearly ritual with his friends.  Just another year and just another ritual to complete.
Yet that night long ago, Jesus not only performed the weekly duty of washing clothes (or yearly ritual) but he changed it by personalizing it.  He gives the bread that all presiders gave that night but instead he called it himself.  He then shared wine with friends but insisted on calling it his blood. And both times we announced to those present that this food was offered for them.  Not for himself but for them.
When mom begrudgingly performs her Monday morning duty it is truly perceived as a duty if the emphasis is on her.  If she is able to turn it into a giving to others then it no longer is a duty, it then becomes a privilege, a sacrifice – if you will.
That’s washing.  That’s Holy Thursday.  If you want to harbor on sin tonight that’s fine but I prefer making an act of service to someone where the emphasis is on the other person and not yourself.
That’s Holy Thursday and that’s “Washing.”

Good Friday
“Wash, Rinse, Iron” is these three days – Thursday, Friday, Saturday.  We “wash” on Holy Thursday, “rinse” on Good Friday and on Holy Saturday we “iron.”
The odds are unlikely that we will be crucified so we can best identify with Our Lord through the ordinary, everyday lives we live; everyday.
Why “rinse” on this most graphic of the three days?  Of the three days, this is most attended by Catholic folks.  Why?  Well, it’s like that second look at the car accident intersection where the police car lights are blinking and the paramedics are loading up the wounded.  We can’t seem to resist slowing down and that second look.
This Good Friday we can bloody up all we want about what happened that day but it only best applies to us during the “rinse” cycle.
It can be called the “rinse cycle of sacrifices.”  Moms know what I’m talking about.  Life’s entry can be painful and likened to a “rinse cycle” – “just get this kid out of me!” says the distraught mother-to-be after 18 hours of labor.

Our family washing machine swirled and churned clothes clean, often moving itself off base as though it was alive until it was time for the “ringers.”  Aptly named, the ringer pulled the clothes through it until they fell into the first water basin.  Then the ringer was pulled over to rinse off the first rinsing.  The second water basin was the final cleaning until the clothes were ringed free of suds once and for all.  And then the clothes were placed in the dryer.
The sacrifice of Jesus was once and for all; a mother’s sacrifice can take up to 18 or more years.

“Lacerated flesh?”  Just look at that “boo-boo” scratch that has your little son screaming as he looks to you for salvation and redemption or at the very least some Mercurochrome and a kiss on the wound.  A band aid, a hug and a kind word assured your son that it was not cancer and would truly not grow into something bigger nor deform him for life.

The proverbial “crown of thrones” are the times when a mother says to her teenage daughter, “I think you could do better with boys. Do you really need to see that one boy again?” while the daughter yells back, “Why are you trying to wreck me life?”

“Nailed to the cross.”  This is an easy one to apply to our “rinse cycle” in life.  In early adult life, mother is blamed (or nailed) for everything from late homework assignments to facial acne to anything you’ve done but are not responsible for.  It is so simple and easy – it is always mother’s fault.  We will hold on to that for as many years as it takes until we slowly realize the responsibility resides within us and our total involvement in life’s involvement.
The sacrifices moms and dads make for their children is the sacrifice we honor this day, each in our own way.

“Wash, rinse, iron.”  Those are the motherly chores witnessed by our Savior, Jesus Christ.

I read a credible book about all of this and it said that crucifixions were so common each day, each week that Jesus’ would have gone unnoticed, just as the others did.  He would never have met the Roman governor Pilate and had that significant verbal exchange.  There was no Anthony Quinn nor Veronica and her cloth in spite of what we may think or wish.  It was just another day of needless deaths at the hands of Roman persecutors, not Jewish folks for whom we’ve blamed for centuries.

That’s remarkable to me in its un-remarkable quality.  We’ve made such an event of the last journey of Jesus that it’s lost its ordinariness.  “Just another Jew” crucified because of his blasphemy – which was not a difficult crime to commit in those days.  That it gains the crucifixion power for me – it was just another death in the midst of so many.  Today it is simply the “rinsing” cycle.  It’s what a mother days once a week, if not more.  Rinsing away whatever keeps us from the cleanliness of God.

What makes today memorable is tomorrow.  Tomorrow marks is its excellence and proves its worth.  Tomorrow is “ironing.”  Today, well, it is just another day of a needless death of another Jew who claimed to be what he was not.

Holy Saturday
“Wash, Rinse, Iron” is these three days – Thursday, Friday, Saturday.  We “wash” on Holy Thursday, “rinse” on Good Friday and on Holy Saturday we “iron.”
And tonight it is all about the smell.  It is the smells that fills the air and hopefully tired hearts.  Smell.  Often the forgotten scent but the one that is always working, even when we’re not aware of it.  There is nothing like it.  Crisp, even, and smooth – the smells last, at least for a while.
And if your method of creating good smells is God’s sun first then you’re all set for Christ’s ironing.  I’m telling you, it’s the smell.  It is the smell as your head hits the sun-dried cotton fabric and iron pressed that soothes yourself into night time slumber.
I’m telling you.  We think it is the big stuff of life that makes life big.  It’s not.  It is the small life-stuffs that makes the life that Christ won for us divine.  It is what this night is all about.
Jesus completes his Father’s plan and raises himself into a new, eternal life to become the Christ.  It is as though he was able to “iron out” all of our life’s difficulties and come out “smelling,” as the saying goes, “like a rose”.  You know we say “Jesus Christ” as though Christ is his last name.  It’s not, as we know.  But it does tell us that before this day he was just Jesus in all his budding glory.  But tonight he is Christ, the risen – washed, rinsed and ironed for us, for the salvation of the world.
Does that mean that life was easy or simple for him, his thinking that he is the Son of God and all that?  No.  It’s not.  It means that he was able to take apart seemingly complex situations and piece them back together in an orderly, faithful fashion.  Fractured, separate or divided lives are made whole again.  Jesus was able to assemble and then reassemble, reassemble once more and then reassemble yet again into what this human journey is all about.
So many times in life we get caught.  We get caught up in things and circumstances that seem to freeze us into either easy, absolute decisions or unable to know our left from our right hand.
Jesus took on love as his beginning and made it his end.  During the middle of his life, he just “ironed out” the differences.  That’s what makes his last name “Christ.”
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You know I have to iron my shirts.  I don’t like doing it but it has to be done unless I pay a dry cleaner to do it for me and I’m too cheap.  So, Sunday afternoons I’ll Manhattan myself up and iron my newly washed and rinsed shirts and I begin to watch the wrinkles and creases disappear as the iron does its magic.  (Wrinkles and creases in a retirement home are not the most appropriate images but it’s true.)  And magic slowly burns itself into those wrinkly but now ironed shirts.  How often we think that it is not possible in real life when, indeed, it is.
All of the stuff that holds us back from being closer to each other (which means being close to God) can be eliminated with a warm iron (and don’t forget to add water).  How many frenzied or useless conversations, hurtful thoughts, selfish dwellings, poisonous harborings, sheltering nasty and mean feelings or holding onto brash judgements that need to “ironed,” to Christ-themselves out of us and into a spirituality that is healthy and life giving not only for ourselves but for those we encounter.

How long the Catholic Church and other religions have thrived by holding us down as sinful, unworthy, woeful people.  Sin and a perception of undeserving, I guess, keeps us filling the pews.  I would not call that a “healthy spirituality.”

Go ahead, try to add an adjective to your spirituality and see what happens?  Give your spiritual life an adjective and see how it measures up to the “Christ” we honor tonight.  Add the word “healthy,” for example and see how your prayer life may change and how your final days lived fully in this Easter hope, this newly ironed “Christ.”  A “healthy spirituality,” one that this enriching, life-giving and geared toward service to others in the name of the man whom we now called “Christ.”

Tonight is about “ironing” things out.  Our Christ ironed out the stuff of this world giving each of us a blueprint, a method by which to live.  It is one that is heated, filled with water and you can slowly watch the life’s wrinkles and creases erase and something new, fresh (an smells good) replace it.

What remains after this ironing?  That’s easy.  It is the sun-dried smell of God’s-dried cotton pillow cases, ironed – and a place for a weary head to rest after a day of giving glory and praise to God.

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Prayer of Salvation

Posted on April 7, 2014 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

Grant me life, compassionate Lord.
Hear me, merciful Lord.
Be charitable to me, forgiving Lord.
Save me, long-suffering Lord.
Protect me, defender Lord.
Be generous, all-giving Lord.
Free me, all powerful Lord.
Revive me, restoring Lord.
Raise me again, awe-inspiring Lord.
Enlighten me, Heavenly Lord.
Cure me, omnipotent Lord.
Grant pardon, inscrutable Lord.
Bestow gifts, bountiful Lord.
Adorn me with grace, generous Lord.
Let us be reconciled, healing Lord.
Be accepting, unvengeful Lord.
Wipe away my transgressions, blessed Lord…

so that on that Day of Misery, when I stare at the abyss on either side, I may also catch sight of your salvation, my hope and guardian, and on that terrifying journey your angel of peace may sweetly guide me. Endow me, Lord, on the day my breath is finished with a clean spirit raised in light among the joyful heavenly host, with gifts of your love overtaking me. May I arrive with the workers for justice. Grant to my wayward soul an unexpected kindness on that day of despair. Will you, I wonder:

Forget to be charitable, my expectation? Neglect to be compassionate, caring Lord? Regret your charity toward humankind, constant Lord? Retreat from your life-giving, everlasting Lord? Abandon the cheerful fruit of your mercy? Corrupt the gracious flower of your sweetness? Dishonor the grandeur of your generous bounty? Vary the glory of your white-haired exaltation? Waste the gifting splendor of your crown?

If bliss is for the merciful, then you, a kingdom unto yourself, filled with love; will you not grant me full salvation?

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