In previous weeks, I
have stood here and presented to you
the reflections that I had prepared and given at the prison: The
so-called “correctional
facility” that so
often seems to need more correcting than it gives. The reason for
this “double dipping” from the
pool of reflections is not so much that it allows me to get extra
mileage out
of the work that I do for them, but, more, that the words of
inspiration that
they need to hear seem to apply equally to you as well.
In a deeper vein
than this runs the truth that you have,
in
the course of our ministry here, become an integral and vital part of
our
ministry there. Not only have I been
witness to the power of your prayer as it uplifts the downtrodden and
gently
points their faces towards the light, but the wisdom I have gained from
you and
the example of the gentle spirit that fills this place, goes with me
when I
leave here and stays with me when I enter there. So,
I can truthfully say that, “Lo, you are
with me always, even unto the ends of the earth.” And
while I don’t know that the prison is the
“ends of the earth,” it’s about as close to it as I care to get.
When you hear these words
that are preached to prisoners,
know that it is you that have inspired them, and if they resonate with
you as
well as them, then I know that we are in harmony; not only with each
other, but
the Lord; and something good is happening through and for all of
us. And so when we speak of our ministry here, we
are not merely speaking of what we bring to you, but also of what you
give in
return to us and to others beyond. Our
ministry is just that. It is yours and ours together.
It is amazing to me
the way the Liturgy of the Word speaks
to us; how our lives flow in parallel to the message of the Gospel, and
how God
can somehow take the ebb and flow of life and bring it into balance
with the
Scriptures through the calendar of the Church. When all is said and
done, these
omnipresent and omniscient miracles of God’s attention to detail are,
perhaps,
the most astounding of them all.
And so, when we
are young, we are like the youthful
Isaiah,
and our sins are purged by the burning ember of our entry into the
sacraments
of Church, and we call out in our youthful exuberance, “Here I am, send
me.”
For most of us it seems so natural and anticlimactic to marry and
establish
households that we lose sight of the fact that it is God that has sent
us to do
so. Then we enter our midlife and, like
the Corinthians, we are rocked and rolled by the stress and strife and
burden
of family and home and job and business until one day we are able to
stand with
Paul and say, “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to
me has
not been ineffective. Indeed, I have toiled harder than all of
them…” But the haunting question also remains and we
hear it from far too many, “What have I really accomplished for the
Lord?”
The message for
the Church at the Masonic Home this
morning
is this; God is not done with you. Though
you have fished through the night and it seems to
all the world
that the time for your fishing has passed, Jesus is here this morning
to tell
you one more time, “Lower your nets.” Lower
the nets of your prayers at this point in your life,
with the
spiritual knowledge and the wisdom and the power of the great faith
that you
possess, and we will fill our boats to overflowing with your
catch. Already we are seeing the results in the
prison, where the hardest of the hearts are touched by the mere
knowledge that
someone cares. And they know you care
because they know that you understand what it means to be
institutionalized by
society and forgotten.
Through your
prayers, they know God has not forgotten them
and he has not forgotten you, either. To
the contrary; he has brought a fine young priest to our community; a
man that
knows the power of prayer; a man that knows the power of your prayers,
and
knows that prayer is the only hope for our community, our world and our
church
in this time of growing tribulation. He has sent us to you to help
build a
sense of community within the confines of these walls that he might
bring you
home to the Church you love, so that you might know that this same
Church loves
you and desperately needs the spiritual gifts that you have acquired
over a
lifetime: Gifts that, sadly, too many in
the younger generations are lacking.
As we come together at the table of
the Lord and join our
hearts together in the prayer of the Eucharist, let us do so in the
knowledge
that we are Church; the family of God and disciples of Jesus
Christ. At his bidding, let us once more put out into
the deep waters of our faith and lower our nets for a
catch.
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