Deacon Bob Huber

Giving More than You Get

Contrary to what you might think, the main point of today’s Gospel is not how to invest money. If you have IRAs, 401Ks, and other investments, given the state of the stock market in recent years, you could probably use the advice of the first two servants. But if the parable in today’s Gospel really were about investing money, given what passes for professional ethics these days, we probably would need another servant who steals the master’s coin and tries to convince him there is no money left.

Fortunately, I think our Lord probably had something else in mind. Stated plainly, Our Gospel today reminds us that we are called to give more than we get.

Our Lord gives each of us many talents. We can of course accept them, and give nothing back. We can even be grateful and try to remember what was given to us, but seek only to avoid losing it.

But Catholicism is a radical faith. We are called to emulate the ultimate gift of Love Jesus Christ who gave of himself even to death on a cross to bring about the forgiveness of the sins of others. And we called to emulate that love every day in our dealings with God and with others. Not just some day, every day.

While as humans we often seek emotional and physical love as our first objective, love is not perfected or complete unless it is grounded in sacrifice. There is a certain unavoidable truth about this if we just think about it.

Many of us are blessed with lots of material possessions. We can be very partial toward them. But have you ever noticed how much more joy we feel when we find that extra special gift for someone else be it a loved one or a friend? Maybe we send flowers or a gift to someone we love for no particular reason. The feeling of elation we feel when we do for others is often much greater than the joy at doing something for ourselves. In these situations, I think the Lord is trying to tell us something about what real joy is. St. Paul tells us in our first reading that this type of charity is the key to a tranquil, happy life.

A brother deacon of mine named Joe Curtis recently relayed to me a story about an experience he had in college. On the first day of class one semester, his professor challenged everyone to get to know someone in class they didn’t already know. As Joe turned around to look for someone, a gentle hand touched his shoulder. He turned to find a wrinkled, little old lady beaming up at him. “My name is Rose,” the old lady said. I am 87 years old. Can I give you a hug? “Of course you can,” Joe replied, and she gave him a small, but giant squeeze.

Joe kidded her by asking why she was in college at such an innocent young age. Rose replied, “I’m here to find a rich husband, get married, and have a couple of children. Then I will retire and travel.” Then she got serious. “I always dreamed of having a college education, and now I am getting one.”

Joe and Rose became instant friends. They talked many times over the next several months. Joe said he always mesmerized by the Rose’s wisdom and experience. Rose became everyone’s foster grandmother in that college’s football team. Men who towered over her physically revered this tiny woman.

At the end of the season, Rose was asked to speak at the football banquet. She walked up to the podium with her 3 by 5 cards. But she was so nervous she dropped them all. “I am sorry I am so jittery. I gave up beer for Lent and this whiskey is just killing me.” So let me just tell you what I know.”

“There are only a few secrets to staying young, being happy, and achieving success. You have to laugh and find humor everyday. You have to have a dream. When you lose your dream, you die. We have so many people walking around who are dead and don’t even know it.

There is a huge difference between growing older and growing up. Growing older is mandatory but growing up is not. Anybody can grow older. That doesn’t take any talent or ability. The idea is to grow up by always finding the opportunity to change things. The elderly rarely have regrets for the things we did, but rather for the things we did not do. The only people who fear death are those with regrets.”

Rose finished the college degree she had begun. One week after graduation, Rose died peacefully in her sleep. Over 2,000 college students attended her funeral as a tribute to the wonderful woman who taught by example that it’s never too late to be all you can possibly be.

Brothers and sisters, no one can force us to love others or use our talents for the benefit of others. But at the same time, when we do so, we experience ultimate freedom. Self-giving is the essence of love, and it is the bond of charity that binds us as Christians to each other. When we give our talents, we prepare answer the call of Christian charity. We emulate the Trinity, the inner life of God himself. We live the Christian dream of life with an all-loving God in heaven.

So give more than you get. And if it gets tough, think of Rose. Ask the Lord for help. After all, He gave more than anyone. And look what we can get if we follow Him.

Saying Yes to an Intimate God

I start my homily with a personal witness. My wife Lois and I grew up in the same neighborhood, an industrial suburb of Milwaukee called West Allis. She was the girl across the alley. And from the time she was about six, she had a rather definite interest in your humble deacon. She used to go to the same Mass in the same Catholic Church that I did so she could steal stealthy looks at me in my altar server outfit. But as a young boy more interested in popping wheelies on my bicycle and trading baseball cards, I must confess I did not have a lot of interest in her.

When Lois was 12, her family departed for the town of Cedarburg, about 30 miles away from our neighborhood. I kind of lost track of her for several years. Then, seven years later, we saw each other again, this time at a wedding of one of the other kids in our neighborhood. She revealed to me recently that she only went to that wedding to see if I might now be interested in her. And it is a good thing. For to me she looked a lot more interesting when she was 19 than when she was 12. We dated for a while. But I was still not ready to make a commitment.

Then she decided to change jobs so she could be very close to me again. Now when it comes to romance, men, as women will tell you, can be a little dense. I went off to Washington, DC to take a job in the U.S. Congress. But I did not take her with me. Not to be denied, Lois took two weeks vacation shortly after I left and followed me to Washington, DC. It finally dawned on me what a good deal I was being offered. Her persistent and deeply abiding love led me to ask her to marry her. Now, just a few months short of 30 years later, it was the best decision of my life.

Now this might sound like an interesting story, but what does it have to do with all of you? Well, let me suggest that the readings for our Mass this weekend show that we really are born in the image and likeness of God. For the readings show God in a way that reminds me a little of my loving wife.

The readings provide rather clear examples of the generosity and love of God, even in the face of rather clueless human beings who often can’t accept what a good thing they are getting. In our first reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah, the Lord God of Israel summons God’s people back from exile in Babylon. It is an offer filled with generosity; that God will answer all the needs of the people of Israel. God renews the covenant of love that has existed since the time of Abraham. All that is required of the Israelites is to say yes to God and live in a certain way. As we know, they often did not.

In our second reading from the letter of St. Paul to the Romans, Paul reminds us that no matter how much suffering or misfortune that will befall us in life, no matter how desperate our lives may have become, we are never separated from God. God loves us always. God never leaves us alone and in fact creates us to conquer sin and death.  No matter what happens to us, nothing can separate us from the love of God, who will deliver us from evil.

But do we want to be delivered from evil? Or do we like a little evil to go with the good? Do we really want to say yes to God?

Finally, we have in our Gospel according to Matthew the reality that God not only meets our spiritual needs but our physical needs as well. The miracle of the loaves and fishes reminds us that everything we have comes from God, a God who is generous who enables us to live life abundantly.

Given the kind of God we as Christians believe we have, and we say we want, it seems a little odd that like my wife’s love for me we are sometimes quite reluctant to accept and respond to God’s love for us. We really are not sure we want to say yes to God. Despite all that God has given us, God’s call to give back, to love God as God loves us and to love our neighbor as Jesus loved all humanity often goes unanswered. We are all too happy to pocket the benefits of a loving God, but when it comes to giving rather than receiving we can fall short. Better to treat God like a sort of delicious baking ingredient; throw in a little dash when we need it, but otherwise leave it on the shelf. Let me say that sometimes we even treat the people we love this way.

God asks us to do our best as a response for all that God has done for us. We cannot be genuine Christians otherwise. For if we want the intimacy of an all-loving, all merciful, all generous God, then we must return that intimacy to God and others. This is why Jesus instituted a Church to which all could be invited to live life in a certain way and spread that way across the world.  Jesus’ Church is inclusive. Its message is that God’s love is invincible to the end and that God would give us all that we need. When human beings show that kind of trust in God, wonderful things happen.

That is not the same thing as saying God gives us everything we want. Our greatest joys in life come from doing for others not for ourselves. It is a lesson that for all of us is hard to learn, but is nonetheless true. It is the joy of giving in order to receive, that in giving we will receive, perhaps not in the same way, perhaps not even in this life, but ultimately through everlasting union with God.

When we read the miracle of the loaves and fishes, as we did today, we are always struck by God’s generosity. But the miracle is not just about some kind of extraordinary transformation of food. God is the source of all good things to be sure. But notice how Jesus asks his disciples to distribute the food in this miracle. The miracle tells us two things. First, God’s generosity is to be shared with many, not kept for a few. Second, God relies on us to be partners in his generosity. What God provides can only be shared well if those who believe in God’s loving generosity are willing to work to share that generosity.

There are many ways we can show God’s generosity. Some of them involve service in our Church through service ministries and financial support. Some of them involve becoming socially and politically active in support of God’s loving message in everyday issues in our communities. I would invite all to prayerfully consider these ways of reflecting God’s generosity.

But even if you do not choose these kinds of service-based love, the very best way we can show God’s generosity is by the way we live. We can say no to God, just as your humble deacon tried to foolishly do to his wonderful wife. But for all that we have been given, let us say yes to God’s persistent love. Don’t put off a good thing as your deacon did. I finally learned to respond to intimacy with intimacy. In the same way, let all of us return God’s intimacy with an intimate love of God’s way of life. If we in fact place our trust in God by the way we live, nothing will separate us from the love of God. For God will indeed be in us.
 

Why is There Good in the World?

From time to time in our daily lives, we may well ask ourselves, why is there such evil in the world? There are many possible explanations. But I will spare you any further discussion.

No, I am not going to sit down just yet. Rather, I would like to focus your attention on a question that is asked far less, but it is just as important. Why is there good in the world?

The question is worth some discussion for at least two reasons. First, yesterday we commemorated the 232nd anniversary of the one of the most fundamentally good things ever done by people, the American Declaration of Independence. A second reason is the fact that Our Holy Father Pope Benedict has declared this year, the Year of St. Paul.

Now for the life of me, I have wondered why the Pope is honoring just St. Paul and not Minneapolis, but perhaps I may have misunderstood the meaning. (Just seeing if you are listening). Actually, the Pope’s declaration of the Year of St. Paul commemorates the 2,000 anniversary of the birth of the great evangelist St. Paul. The Holy Father has asked bishops, priests, and deacons around the world to focus the faithful on the enormous contributions of St. Paul to our understanding of the Catholic faith. And let me suggest that at least in terms of human understanding of why there is good in the world, there may be no Catholic thinker as important as St. Paul.

St. Paul had a quality of mind that comes around once every thousand years or so. And indeed, it took Catholic theologians, clergy, and lay faithful about a thousand years to understand deeply the mind and faith of St. Paul. While we cannot do justice to St. Paul’s work in one homily or for that matter a year of homilies, St. Paul’s basic answer to the question of why there is good in the world is because of God, most notably the working of the Holy Spirit.

In today’s reading from the letter to the Romans, Paul is engaged in his famous distinction between the flesh and the Spirit in Christian life. Through baptism, Christians are incorporated into the life of Jesus Christ through the working of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit working through us enables us to die to the demands of the flesh, which are the primary source of evil in the world. Weakened by sin and prone to its promptings, the Holy Spirit, which is also the Spirit of Christ because they are one, stands in opposition to evil. Flesh and spirit are as separated as evil and good. To be sure we remain flesh in the physical sense, but Jesus through His Birth, Death, and Resurrection, and the Holy Spirit through his coming as a result of Jesus’ promise at the Ascension, make us if we so desire, rooted first and foremost in the Spirit of God and not the flesh of humanity.

Life in the Spirit is the pledge of resurrection for all of us. Cooperation with the Spirit makes the resurrection of our own bodies possible. The model of Jesus’ life is the goal of our lives if we so choose. The channel to make that goal attainable and bring about eternal union with God is life in the Holy Spirit. To not choose the spirit is to choose the flesh alone, which ultimately leads to destruction and spiritual death. To live the Spirit life is to live its fruits, gifts, and charisms.

Throughout writings ascribed to Paul, including the letter to the Romans, the first letter to the Corinthians, the letter to the Ephesians, and the letter to the Galatians, Paul lays out in great detail, the gifts, fruits, and charisms of the Holy Spirit. They include such things as wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, fear of the Lord, charity, joy peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, chastity, faith, healing, discernment, and many, many others.

The Holy Spirit, present at the beginning time as part of the Trinity, but manifest in particular after Pentecost, provided an enormous source of grace and confidence to the great evangelizers of the Church in those early days. But what we can easily forget is that we receive those same gifts of the Holy Spirit.  They open up the faithful to the power of the Holy Spirit in every age. They are received first at Baptism, then at Confirmation and if one cooperates with the gifts, grow in power throughout life. 

Each of us receives the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit in different measures. We in turn are called to use the gifts, fruits, and charisms of the Holy Spirit to build up the whole body of Christ.  They also include the power to work miracles of all kinds.  The gifts, fruits, and charisms of the Holy Spirit help us to be on fire with God, that we may radiate Jesus Christ, and share communion with the Trinity for the benefit of all of us, the Church.

Without the gifts, fruits, and charisms of the Holy Spirit, the Christian faith would not have been able to touch the billions over the years that call or called Jesus their Redeemer. Without them the practical work of the Church, which means all of us and is so central to bringing others to God would not be possible. And despite all the evil in the world, since the presence of the Holy Spirit manifested itself at Pentecost, cannot we not say that we in fact live in greater abundance than we did nearly 2000 years ago?

But it is more than just physical abundance. We can all think of times when we allowed God to work in our lives through the Holy Spirit. I can assure you brothers and sisters that when we are not sure what we should do in a particular situation, when we want to help but we are fearful, when we don’t know when to speak up, and when to back off, a prayer to the Holy Spirit to activate the gifts, fruits, and charisms of the Holy Spirit is always answered in a way that makes us better people, that helps us do good. Many, many people give personal witness to this reality. When we cooperate with the Spirit, the burdens and evils of life in the flesh give way, as our Gospel from Matthew says this morning to the easy yoke and light burden of life in the Spirit.

When we challenge ourselves to do good, when we put ourselves in the hands of the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit’s gifts, fruits, and charism are manifest in us. Multiply that reality in each of us by the billions of Christians who have lived since Pentecost. We can then begin to see the power of the Holy Spirit. And for helping us understand that power, we must in a deep and fundamental sense thank St. Paul.

For indeed it is the Holy Spirit that explains why we do good, why we put aside the evil of a flesh that it is dead in the Spirit. St. Paul’s writings remind us of the truth of that most famous Catholic liturgical refrain: Your words are Spirit and life O Lord. Richer than gold, stronger than death; your words are Spirit and life O Lord, Life everlasting.
 

Jesus Loves the Cracked Pots, Part II

I begin my homily this (evening, morning) in what might seem a strange way. I would like to tell you about a Hindu fable. Fortunately, I think I can get away with it because our Church does teach that insights into the revelation of God can come from non-Christian sources.

There was a poor peasant in India, who lived in a small hut with no water. He frequently had to travel for several miles with two twenty-gallon clay pots fixed on a stand that went over his shoulders. The pots leaked and so each trip to the river did not yield forty gallons of water. But the poor peasant could not afford new clay pots so he did the best he could under the circumstances.

One day to his surprise, he discovered that his cracked pots were magical. They could speak and they did to him on this day. But the cracked pots were very sad and depressed. They poured out their sorrows to him, apologizing to him that if they were not so leaky, the peasant’s life would not be so hard.

But the peasant loved the cracked pots. He told them that they accomplished much more than they realized. For the peasant had decided to plant flowers on the dirt road to the river. Each time he fetched water, the leaky pots watered the flowers and made them beautiful. So even cracked pots, he said, could bring joy and beauty.

This Hindu fable captures the essence of today’s Gospel according to Matthew. For Jesus also loved, and indeed loves in a figurative sense, the cracked pots; all of us, even some of us crackpots. The Gospel this weekend is about the calling of Matthew as an apostle. Matthew was a tax  collector. To say that tax collectors in the time of the human Jesus were despised is to put it mildly. In fact, they were regarded as traitors to the Jewish nation.

In the time of Jesus, laws and regulations did not bind tax collectors as tax collectors are today. Tax collecting was a mafia-style protection racket. Tax collectors were paid very little by the Romans, but could collect more if they gouged the public, keeping the difference between the levies of the empire and what the tax collectors actually charged ordinary people. The Pharisees, despite their protestations in today’s Gospel, shared in this protection racket; Roman taxes also supported the Jewish temple, in exchange for preaching a docile faith that protected the Roman public order;

In spite of this, Jesus liked to hang out with the despised; not because he approved of their lifestyle, but because, as He said, he came to call sinners, the cracked pots if you will. He did not want to give up on anybody, and he came to call everybody, particularly those in most of need of God’s mercy.  As the reading from the prophet Hosea says this morning, God seeks our love and love of one another more than he does ritual sacrifices or pomp and circumstance.

Sinners like Matthew who were drawn to Jesus obviously sensed something. He was offering them a happiness and inner peace that their own exploitive lifestyles were not offering them.  As our second reading, the letter of St. Paul to the Romans stresses, life in Jesus brings not financial credit, but the far superior credit that comes when we love God and others.

To bear out this teaching, I offer you a short personal witness given to me by an old friend. At the base of a mountain in Tennessee, there was a boy born to an unwed mother. He had a hard time growing up, because every place he
went, he was always asked the same question, ‘Hey boy, who’s your daddy?’

Whether he was at school, in the grocery store or drug store, people would ask the same question, ‘Who’s your daddy?’ He would hide at recess and lunchtime from other students. He would avoid going into stores because that question hurt him so bad.

When he was about 12 years old, a new preacher came to his church. He would always go in late and slip out early to avoid hearing the question, ‘Who’s your daddy?’
But one day, the new preacher said the benediction so fast that he
got caught and had to walk out with the crowd. Just about the time he got to the back do or, the new preacher, not knowing anything about him, put his hand on his shoulder and asked him, ‘Son who’s your daddy?’

The whole church got deathly quiet. He could feel every eye in the
church looking at him. Now everyone would finally know the answer to the
question, Who’s your daddy?’

This new preacher, though, sensed the situation around him and using
discernment that only the Holy Spirit could give, said the following
to that scared little boy.. ‘Wait a minute! I know who you are! I see the
family resemblance now; You are a child of God.

With that he patted the boy on his shoulder and said, ‘Boy, you’ve
got a great inheritance. Go and claim it.’ With that, the boy smiled for the first time in a long time and walked out the door a changed person. He was never the same again. Whenever anybody asked him, ‘Who’s your Daddy?’ he’d just tell them , ‘I’m a Child of
God.”

Now one could say that if that preacher hadn’t told the boy that he was one of God’s children, he probably never would have amounted to anything. The boy in question was
Ben Hooper, who eventually came one of the most revered governors in the history of the state of Tennessee.

The boy in this story was not by human standards special. But that is really the point; Jesus works with the cracked pots of every age. He works with ordinary people to bring about extraordinary things. The creation of a two thousand year old Church was brought about through Jesus working with ordinary fishermen, tax collectors, and other despised members of the society of his day.

Today as well, Jesus never gives up on any of us. He wants us to move ever closer to him through the model of his life: service-based love of God and one another. He calls us to holiness, to be with him now and in the next life. So even though you are a cracked pot, give of yourself. Dig deeper to support the many services the Church provides to thousands of cracked pots out there. Comfort a friend who in trouble, forgive someone you said you would never forgive, go back and try to heal a relationship that has been broken.

Jesus wants all of us to be with him.  By working with him, He is the glue by which are cracks our sealed.  We become new and improved vessels of grace, which can be poured out in service to God and others.

Yes, Jesus loves the cracked pots. If we work with him, we too can produce beautiful flowers.
 

Mothers and Pentecost

In the universal Church today we celebrate the feast of Pentecost. We think of Pentecost as the birthday of the Church, that marvelous time when the Holy Spirit filled the apostles with the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, giving them the courage and confidence to spread the faith of Jesus Christ to all corners of the world. That wonderful moment is told to us in our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles. Without the sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost to that small band of Jesus’ frightened disciples, we would not have a Church that today numbers over a billion people.

In the United States today, we also celebrate Mother’s Day. We recognize in this celebration the wonderful contributions that mothers have made to our lives. We wish all mothers here a joyous and happy Mother’s Day. Speaking only for myself, without the influence of my mother in my life, I would not be standing in front of you as a deacon. My mother (along with my father) raised me in the Catholic faith and in so many ways it was an honor to be her son. I am sure there are many of you who feel the same way. And we also pray today for those whose relationships with their mother might not be, or was not as positive. We pray for reconciliation for all mothers with their children on this special commemoration.

It is very rare that we would celebrate Pentecost and Mother’s Day on the same day. But let me suggest that this quirk in the liturgical and secular calendar is most appropriate. For while the Holy Spirit sends his sevenfold gifts to all of us through the sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation, let me suggest that the Spirit does so in a most special way to mothers and to women in general.

While we also speak of fruits and charisms of the Holy Spirit, the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are the following: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord.  While we all receive such gifts in different measures as St. Paul tells us in our second reading, we can see them all present in mothers and all women in a special way.

Women have enormous wisdom and a profound sense of loving and giving that are worth more than gold. It is not for nothing that in the Book of Wisdom, wisdom is always referred to in the feminine. Women are often wiser than men are because in certain situations they may know less but they understand more.  Cleverness is often left for men but wisdom is for women. Men minds are analytic; women’s are holistic and look at the totality of a particular issue more easily. Wisdom is not the same as scholarship or technical knowledge. The latter is often the refuge of people (more men than women) who spend their lives bent on books but forget how to live.  Here we are reminded of St. Bonaventure’s adage that men act but women endure. Indeed, women’s wisdom transcends and outlasts men’s desire to act.

God created women to be beautiful and their charm, lovableness and beauty exercise a powerful attraction that is central to the goodness of human life; women are fairer in beauty and weaker in physical strength. But they are clearly not lacking in character for they are the sex honored to give birth to the Savior of the world and through which the Body of Christ is sustained and renews itself. The one true God is the God of life and Jesus is the life of the soul. Mothers, who have the sublime mission of giving life, do have the Holy Spirit’s gift of understanding, and they intuitively weave this gift into their daily lives and the lives of the people they love. They play an integral role in the creative, transforming work of God   For mothers, there is a metaphysical bond between womanhood and God when they are carrying human life within them. In pregnancy, women have the profound privilege of carrying two souls in their bodies simultaneously.

Girls are typically less spoiled than boys and therefore there is more sensitivity, intuition and empathic behavior toward others. This makes them a source of the great gift of counsel from the Holy Spirit. Women are better at sensing pain in others and joining that pain to themselves emotionally, psychologically and through service to others. Have you ever noticed that when children are sick, they always want their mom. Mothers have great understanding of the fundamental and lasting importance of human life versus the ashes and dust of human accomplishments. A computer or a machine will fade away, but a human being will last forever in terms of body and soul and relationship with the Creator. A mother’s greater closeness to creation is her strength.

As for fortitude, a mother’s propensity for sacrifice and suffering emulates Jesus Christ; indeed the agony of childbirth is a human reflection of the sufferings of Christ who redeemed us. It is often women who bring men back to God and the Church not vice versa, because men are trapped in this ridiculous sense of a desire for human control that makes worship something for sissies. Anyone remembering the Passion of Our Lord can see this male trait in its most destructive form, the folly of the control impulse which often leads not just to male ruin, but the ruin of others men control or over whom they exercise authority;

The Spirit’s gift of knowledge of a different kind is present in women and mothers. Women see the forest, men see the trees; their sense of time and space is geometric, not linear as men’s are. This greater sense of empathy also leads to a greater understanding of the need for legal protections against the weak. Before Martin Luther King there was Rosa Parks, expanded voting rights for minorities had as their historical foundations the trailblazing work of the suffragettes, women are leaders in protection of children and children’s rights,  It is called Mothers Against Drunk Driving, not Fathers Against Drunk Driving. This kind of knowledge may not be book knowledge, rather knowledge of the needs of the human being without resort to statistics or force of argument.

Piety in the face of God is also a gift to the Holy Spirit. With women and mothers, piety toward God often takes the form of convincing men to do the right thing before God when often women lack the secular power to do it themselves. Mahatma Gandhi, it is said, feared neither man nor government, neither prison, nor poverty nor death, but he did fear his wife.  Woman humanize men; they often demonstrate greater human dignity in the face of masculine rowdiness and often contain and prevent that rowdiness from getting out of control.

They can also, for good and ill, bring men to their knees emotionally by their beauty, vulnerability, frailty and supposed weakness.  This can be used to bring about much good.  Queen Esther used her beauty in the Old Testament  to convince a pagan King to save the Israelites from execution. What is more powerful than a very large man brought to his knees emotionally by his mother when she asks for something? What is more powerful than watching innocent little girls charm their fathers in ways they usually cannot resist?  .

Finally, women and mothers understand more clearly what it is to receive the gift of a fear of the Lord. Women cry more than men it is true. All of women’s tears collected since the beginning of time would compete with the sea, men’s would fill a pond of modest size. Women do have a greater melding of heart and mind; they are more likely to be wounded than men, whose sense of linearity and literal ideas of meaning shields them to a certain extent from emotion.  Women tend to take their feelings much more seriously than men; they are more attuned to them, they may dwell on them, be more romantic and sentimental, more affected by their dreams, their imagination, their fancy.

But this need not be a weakness. This tendency of a deeper sense of feeling often means that women receive extraordinary graces from God more often, or at least they discern them more often, they are more receptive to God’s voice speaking to them.  Women more than men grasp intuitively that they are vulnerable, and that they need God’s help to live a happy and productive life. This may be one reason why there are more women than men in church, and more men than women in prison. But the fear (that is healthy respect of and empathy for of the Lord) women and mothers possess is clearly present in Scripture. In particular, the Stations of the Cross honor women’s fear of the Lord. At the fourth station, Jesus meets Mary his mother. He meets Veronica at the sixth station, and the women of Jerusalem at the eighth. Mary and Mary Magdalene and other women are at the foot of the Cross-. other than John, where were all the men?

Women showed more courage than any of Jesus’ male followers. If the faith of a woman in a man is strong, his chances of success are infinitely greater. The gift of fear of the Lord roots women in human loyalty that is so often critical to men’s success. The rootedness of men tends to be less reliable; a woman’s moral power is often more important to her than human accomplishments. For as Scripture reminds us, the exalted shall be humbled, and the humbled shall be exalted.

To be sure, brothers and sisters, God is neither man or woman. But all of us are made in God’s image and likeness. And so God is our spiritual mother, not just our spiritual father. And with respect to images of God in Scripture, it is the Holy Spirit that most often resembles the gifts that women bring to our faith and to our lives. It is the Holy Spirit that breathes life upon the earth in the Creation story. To whom do we draw our first breath? Our mothers. As we have already noted, the gift of wisdom in Old Testament Scripture is referred to in the feminine. Finally, in what form does the Holy Spirit appear over Jesus when He is baptized by John the Baptist? A lion? a bear? No, a beautiful dove.

So on this rare chronological congruence of Pentecost and Mother’s Day, let us honor  the Holy Spirit, who gives all of us gifts from the divine godhead essential to the salvation of both men and women. And let us honor our mothers, who bring so much to the faith and worship of God and its loving carrying out in our human lives.