First Sunday of Advent (Matthew 24: 37-44)

Posted on December 7, 2013 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

ImageJesus said to his disciples:
“As it was in the days of Noah,
so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.
In those days before the flood,
they were eating and drinking,
marrying and giving in marriage,
up to the day that Noah entered the ark.
They did not know until the flood came and carried them all away.   
So will it be also at the coming of the Son of Man.  Two men will be out in the field; one will be taken, and one will be left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken, and one will be left. Therefore, stay awake!  For you do not know on which day your Lord will come. Be sure of this: if the master of the house had known the hour of night when the thief was coming,  he would have stayed awake and not let his house be broken into.  So too, you also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.” (Matthew 24: 37-44)
You have a product to sell and you consider the ways to get potential buyer’s attention.  You may not think that religion is not a product but it is.  Faith, however, is not a product except it’s the product of your development, exploration, risks and personal discoveries and then normally lived and celebrated within a product called religion.

You discover the best way to set your product above any other is to use fear.  What a great seller fear is.  Your advertisement begins with a fearful proposition and then your product takes that fear away.  And, all for only $19.95, only if you act now.  This offer expires soon, just as we will.

Fear.  Insurance companies lives off of it, and how many warranties and guaranties have been sold without any loss from the merchant’s wallet.  We buy it.  We fall for it.  If we didn’t buy, they wouldn’t sell it.  That bears repeating, if we didn’t buy it, they wouldn’t sell it.  Now.  How about selling something that can’t be proven?  What a market share we’ll enjoy.  We can sell it without proving one inch.  It just is because we say that it is.

And so enters the great realm of religion.  “Can’t prove it, but you need it.”  “We’ll fear them into compliance.”

We know from our own experience what fear yields.  Fear yields nothing.  Fear freezes you in place.  You’re unable to think clearly because this thing looms over you.  You’re immobile to make choices because no choices lie before you.  You’re scared.  

The First Sunday of Advent offers us a fear-filled reading that leaves us wanting to purchase whatever can keep us from pending calamity.  The reading can’t be proven and we’re not even sure if Jesus even said those words but they are given to us this first Sunday beginning the Church’s most glorious preparation period toward its glorious beginning, the birth of Jesus.

I don’t know about you but I love Advent.  Advent is never four weeks in my calendar but it is my life’s calendar.  Life is always about preparation.  Preparation for something of which I know nothing about.  I only have an inkling of it and it doesn’t include the feeling of fear.

I don’t need a Catholic Church’s insurance policy based on my worthlessness, smallness or insignificance.  I’ll put and invest my money in an unknown future that honors my creation by a loving Creator and then will one day weigh me with all my good and all my bad.

You can all begin this sacred season of Advent “moaning and weeping in this vale of tears.”  I, however, will be loving and enjoying and savoring the Advent of these four weeks that gives me a sample and clue about my whole life.   

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Second Sunday of Advent (Isaiah 11:1-10)

Posted on December 7, 2013 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

ImageOne that day
(in my lifetime or the next century?)
a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom. 

Not by appearance shall he judge
(black, hispanic asian or any flavor that is not the same as my color)
nor by hearsay shall he decide
(MSNBC and FoxNews will merge and then implode together on live television),
but he shall judge the poor with justice
(no more, “it’s their own doing, lazy, selfish”),
and decide aright for the land’s afflicted. 
(“Who are the society’s real poor?  Cyber Monday?  Black Friday, Southridge Mall was open for 26 straight hours!”) 

He shall strike the ruthless with the rod of his mouth. 
(Rush Limbaugh told his 15 million listeners that the pope is a socialist.  The Catholic Church is socialist.  He was trying to insult us.  Tell us something we don’t know!)

and with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked. 
(After someone makes a stupid statement, you just look at the person…I love that one)

Justice shall be the band around his waist, and faithfulness a belt upon his hips. 
(You are now armed with compassion, mercy, forgiveness, hopefulness and promises beyond our imaginations.)

Then the wolf (Blitzer) shall be a guest at the Boehner’s household for supper; and those making a living salary will lie down with all the WalMart employees;

browsing together with teenagers who think they know all the answers along with older adults who really do know all the answers… all with a little child to guide and be influence by both of them.

The cow and the bear shall be neighbors
(“You clean up your own dung and I’ll take care of attacking the campers at night. Fair enough?!”)
 
Together their young shall rest
(Is it possible for two semi-conflicting views to merge into one?  We always pray and say, yes.) 

The lion shall eat hay like the ox. 
(A friend just told me that the way politics was done years ago was that U.S. Senators got together at night, had a cigar together and a few brandies, then fell on the floor and found a solution.)

The baby shall play by the cobra’s den. 
(It gets a little tricky here.  “Does my talking to you mean that I’m indeed talking to you or does it mean that I agree with you when I can’t agree because of all the stuff that keeps me talking to you.  This applies not only to statesmen but to all families at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners.)

and the child lay his hand on the adder’s lair. 
(probably the most significant of everything in this Isaiah reading.  Who takes the first step?  Who?  (Another friend of mine uses the image of dance to describe conflicting views.  “Can we dance together?” he asks.  “Who’s gonna to lead and who’s going to follow?”  And is dancing like that really about winning and losing or enjoying the music and uncovering a compromise.)

There shall be no harm or ruin on all my hold mountain. 
(How can either of those things exist when people are willing to talk together, work together, to be seen in the same room together.)

For his dwelling will be glorious.

“Sorry Isaiah.” “Yeah, right.”  “Baa-Umbug.”

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advent_gr“Wait, wait,” the Catholic Church tells us.  “Just wait, it will come.”  Wait – has to be one of the most hated American words right next to its second in growing contention, entitlement.
We misuse these words to our purposes.  Go figure.  Radio’s Christmas music was pushed up, Halloween decorations in my neighborhood appear in August and all the Christmas stuff for my Chapel is stored outside the Chapel because it’s only December 2.

We’re in such a hurry to hurry forth what can only be slowly brewed.  Have you ever watched a cup of coffee brew, staring at it with your early-morning-tired-eyes and wondering why that noise hasn’t stopped yet?  When the noise subsides you the sound of pouring begins you’re able to savor and endure the new day before you.  That first taste.  That first taste that says, “Yes, I am alive and I am here.”  Whether it’s coffee or Coke for you, the meaning is the same.
We can’t just wait.  People hearing me give this little sermon to just can’t wait until it’s over so they’ll be able to eat again, four hours since their last meal.  “Poor things.”  Don’t you wonder how we stay alive?

Whether it’s the bus, the movie, the long awaited niece’s visit, the late promised phone call, the death of a good friend in pain, the whistle to blow, the alarm clock to stop on its own, the friend with this long winded story that I’ve heard already before, the mail to arrive, for my 90th birthday day to finally come, will my son ever leave my home?, for that Christmas package from me to arrive at his house on time, to the season of spring, to my favorite television show, for the nurse to finally call my name after 45 minutes, for the test results to be given to me, will my dinner ever arrive in this place?, when will I awake in either purgatory or heaven?

We hate to wait so what do we do in the meantime?  We hurry things up, events, even Church events to make them happen according to our personal calendars.  We anticipate the end results without living the means.  “I’d thought you’d never arrive,” we say when a friend arrives.  We anticipate the end results without living the means.  Life is a means that will one day result in death.  Life is a means that will one day result in results, however, it may not be the results that you foolishly anticipated.

Advent is synonymous with that dreadful word, waiting.

Posted on December 6, 2013 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS. | Leave a comment

ImageWorld War II in all its 2013-seen glory but not without its ugly gore succeeded because of two handicapped people.

The most two powerful people of the free world were disabled and very much conscious of their frailties.  King George VI of England had a persistent stutter and Franklin Roosevelt had polio.  In a movie capturing the beginnings of World War II, King George is attempting to convince the war-weary president to enter another war.  He stutters and stammers and finally says, “This GD stuttering.”  The president pauses for a moment and then says, “What stuttering?  This GD polio.”

Two influential men who with a pen can send thousands into war’s way show their weakness, either willingly or unintentionally to each other.  Two weak but strong people led us to another victory over totalitarianism in spite of what they thought held them back.  Both feared each other but both needed each other.

Advent.  Admitting to yourself that you cannot always do it alone.  We all put our best faces forward but behind those smiling faces lies disabilities, handicaps and limitations that only show themselves when the need is greatest.

Posted on December 5, 2013 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS. | Leave a comment

Image“Okay, God, we get the joke.  Nice one.  You’ve done the joke long enough, it’s time to move on.  We get the four seasons joke but we don’t like one of them anymore.  It’s this winter thing You keep flinging at us every year.  What you send us is beautiful in its pure white form falling mysteriously from clouds we can’t name but then it seems to pile up and up and then turns grey or gray (we call it slush in Wisconsin) and then it sometimes freezes and then it stays with us until mid-June.

Driving is getting crazy enough without Your “White Christmas” routine for five months.  You must know about the macho 60 and 70 years old who go out and shovel Your stuff and then fall over dead.  Or the poor older woman who slips and falls after leaving the grocery store and her milk mixes in the grey or gray slush.  We all know that you’re old God but don’t you know how cold affects old bones?  It’s not pretty.  Sometimes we even think of using Your name in a disparaging way but luckily we pause.  We probably pause only because there’s an ice patch up ahead and we need to be careful.

You know God that “three” is the perfect number.  You taught us that.  It’s your fault.  What would be so bad, if I may brave a suggestion to You Almighty, if the season of fall just continues to spill over those old winter months and we then segue into spring.  Doesn’t that make sense to You.  You of all people.  “Father, Son, Spirit?”  Summer, Fall, Spring?  Get it?  Not to tell you what you already know but Your Son didn’t spend four days in the tomb, it was well I guess you know the answer.

And Jonah?  Four?  I think not.

Let’s look at this from your perspective.  Wouldn’t more people come to church more often if the weather were a little pleasant.  How many times I’ve heard, “The weather was just too bad for us to attend, Father.”

Making angels in the snow was fun for awhile but then this bone thing began to happen as the years gathered upon us.  Isn’t there some pagan country where you could shift winter for a few seasons, if not forever?

I don’t mean to tell You Your business… or do I.”

Posted on December 4, 2013 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS. | Leave a comment

advent-wreath1It takes hours to prepare and minutes to eat.  You know what I’m talking about.  Whether it’s a Thanksgiving meal or another special occasion, the time invested in getting the meal together boggles my microwave mind.

“Great meal, mom,” is the three word response from hours of toil.  Three words.  Take our Christian tradition and you get the same results.  “Great job, God.”  Centuries have preceded us with the toils and efforts of saints and sinners that have brought us to this day.  “Upon whose shoulders we stand,” we could say to ourselves.  From your favorite saint to saints you’ve never heard of, are united with us each day in the the short minutes we call our lives.  We marvel at 90 years while the centuries build upon and continue building the Kingdom of God.

Advent is always about beginnings.  Our beginnings and going back to the beginnings of how many folks before us.  We don’t always like to think of beginnings because it may mean changing something within us.  And we all know how we feel about that ugly word, change.  Luckily, that’s the season of Lent’s responsibility, reflecting upon our lives toward change.  Advent is simply and beautifully about beginnings – our own and that of others.  Re-root yourselves into the lives of your parents as you entered this world.  Re-root yourselves in the sinners and saints who out date you.  Re-root yourselves in a good book about holiness, trials, sufferings, joys and ecstasies.  My Advent reading this year is Flannery O’Connor, an ordinary writer with extraordinary spiritual insights.

I hope that she brings me back to my beginnings in anticipation of another renewal in the birth of Christ.  It took Flannery a lifetime to write in what I’ll read in just minutes.  “Great book, Flannery” will be my three words when I’m finished.

Posted on December 2, 2013 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS. | Leave a comment

First Sunday In Advent

Posted on November 30, 2013 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

ImageJesus said to his disciples:
“As it was in the days of Noah,
so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.
In those days before the flood,
they were eating and drinking,
marrying and giving in marriage,
up to the day that Noah entered the ark.
They did not know until the flood came and carried them all away.
So will it be also at the coming of the Son of Man.  Two men will be out in the field; one will be taken, and one will be left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken, and one will be left. Therefore, stay awake!  For you do not know on which day your Lord will come. Be sure of this: if the master of the house had known the hour of night when the thief was coming,  he would have stayed awake and not let his house be broken into.  So too, you also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.”

You have a product to sell and you consider the ways to get potential buyer’s attention.  You may not think that religion is not a product but it is.  Faith, however, is not a product except it’s the product of your development, exploration, risks and personal discoveries and then normally lived and celebrated within a product called religion.

You discover the best way to set your product above any other is to use fear.  What a great seller fear is.  Your advertisement begins with a fearful proposition and then your product takes that fear away.  And, all for only $19.95, only if you act now.  This offer expires soon, just as we will.

Fear.  Insurance companies lives off of it, and how many warranties and guaranties have been sold without any loss from the merchant’s wallet.  We buy it.  We fall for it.  If we didn’t buy, they wouldn’t sell it.  That bears repeating, if we didn’t buy it, they wouldn’t sell it.  Now.  How about selling something that can’t be proven?  What a market share we’ll enjoy.  We can sell it without proving one inch.  It just is because we say that it is.

And so enters the great realm of religion.  “Can’t prove it, but you need it.”  “We’ll fear them into compliance.”

We know from our own experience what fear yields.  Fear yields nothing.  Fear freezes you in place.  You’re unable to think clearly because this thing looms over you.  You’re immobile to make choices because no choices lie before you.  You’re scared.

The First Sunday of Advent offers us a fear-filled reading that leaves us wanting to purchase whatever can keep us from pending calamity.  The reading can’t be proven and we’re not even sure if Jesus even said those words but they are given to us this first Sunday beginning the Church’s most glorious preparation period toward its glorious beginning, the birth of Jesus.

I don’t know about you but I love Advent.  Advent is never four weeks in my calendar but it is my life’s calendar.  Life is always about preparation.  Preparation for something of which I know nothing about.  I only have an inkling of it and it doesn’t include the feeling of fear.

I don’t need a Catholic Church’s insurance policy based on my worthlessness, smallness or insignificance.  I’ll put and invest my money in an unknown future that honors my creation by a loving Creator and then will one day weigh me with all my good and all my bad.

You can all begin this sacred season of Advent “moaning and weeping in this vale of tears.”  I, however, will be loving and enjoying and savoring the Advent of these four weeks that gives me a sample and clue about my whole life.

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Graceful Grace

Posted on November 25, 2013 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

Image“I’ll have a host, a tiny sip of wine and several pieces graces please.”

You wonder where it comes from during trying times but it did arrive, just in the nick of time.  Reflecting upon it later, you consider whether it might have been God’s grace.  What a great help to help us explain the good deeds done by us sinful people.

And it’s not only a noun but a proper noun.  It’s also an adjective and even more it’s a verb and an adverb.  What a flexible word, this grace stuff.  “Grace Kelly graced us with her effortless grace and graceful presence as she gracefully walked into the room.”  (Wow.  There’s grace all over the place today!  It’s walking.  No, it’s on the table.  No, it’s over there.)  It is rich in worth, effortless in its attempts and limitless in its quantity.

Alas, the Catholic Church needs to rein in this wild grace stuff and present it as a commodity.  There are actually two form of grace, according to the one, true Church.  Sanctifying and actual.  Most Catholics can name those two graces, even on their deathbeds.  What they may not know is that sanctifying grace is that which is derived by the sacraments.  When you participate in a sacrament you receive this elusive, rewarding, beautiful proper noun, noun and verb.  Actual grace appears to appear when you need it the most.  We cannot determine graces travel time to us but we know that it is within us within nick’s time.

Just when you were about to say something questionable, grace zooms in from some unknown place.  (I have yet to receive grace’s reward during those occasions.)  Another sibling has past away and you discover a peace that even amazes and baffles you.  A serious discussion erodes and you feel you’ve said your peace and quietly listen.  A story is told to you for the third time and your newly found grace enables you to listen again knowing there will be a fourth time.  A serious diagnosis strips you of yourself but slowly but surely that noun/verb creeps into every part of your being.  A smile replaces a frown.  The handshake is forgotten and a hub is provided.  “If there’s anything I can do for you,” comes out of your mouth when there is nothing you can do.

Grace.  It’s a beautiful name.  It’s even a better verb when it travels by light speed to become within us a noun.  Our lives are graced.  We can be grace to each other.  Mary was full of it, so why can’t we be?  There is grace, in plentiful supply, thanks be to God.

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JFK Prep Reunion: Three Speakers

Posted on November 23, 2013 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

 

Very Rev. Joe Rodrigues, SDS, Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS and Peter Eltink participate in a memorial gift given by JFK alumni in the Salvatorian cemetery in St. Nazianz, Wisconsin.
DVD           $15.00
Blu-ray       $25.00
Tax and shipping is included.  Please include your Check, money order or cash with your order.
Also; the photos taken by me are available at Walmart Photo. You may View and Purchase any you like from Walmart using the following link.

http://photos2.walmart.com/walmart/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=10430838004/a=2328726004_2328726004/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=walmart/

Thank you for the opportunity to capture the memories of the occasion and preserve them for you.

Richard Humke
Das Video Haus
1137 Lisa Lane
New Holstein, WI. 53061
920-898-9736
rich@dasvideohaus.com

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“Don’t Make Me Come Over There!”

Posted on November 23, 2013 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

brxbxp44828That’s what our moms said when it was getting down and dirty (and fun) with fellow siblings or neighborhood friends.  It was only a few steps for her but travel time was important to us.  It’s as though she said, “If I need to move from here to there, then I’ll do it.” That threatening statement normally stopped childish skirmishes.

It stopped because we weren’t quite sure what the “there” meant once she arrived there; a scolding, a time out or a spanking.  (Spanking in our house was a dried painted wooden stirrer easily accessible on the left ledge next to the kitchen sink.  I should have retrieved it after they both died.)  (By the way, “time out” was not invented in my youth, spanking was the default method.  What attorney can I call now?!)

How many times has God said that sentence to us?  How many times did He try to communicate with us through his prophets until He needed to send the “big gun,” “my son, they’ll listen to my son,” says our confident Creator.

God’s Son came among us and what did he do while he was “there?”  (He moved from where he was to where we are.)  He did all three: he scolded us for doing what we always do only without thinking or knowledge; he spanked us continually because we still don’t get his simple message of love and forgiveness; and he gave us a time out, the Eucharist.

We get a time out from time to time to time ourselves out.  Because there is no time in this time out, unless you’re Catholic and it’s two verses of the Opening Song and 30 minutes for weekday and 50 minutes on Sunday.  But there is no time in the timeless time out that Jesus gave us.  There is only us, gathered together and wondering why God took so long to complete His threat, “Don’t make me come over there!”

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