Vaya con Dios to Father Dwight and "The Eyes have-it"

Today is the last Mass that will be celebrated by Father Dwight as the pastor of St Mary (Charlotte) and St Ann (Bellevue) parish. He served here for ten years and has been moved to a parish on the west side of Metro Lansing. In return, we are getting their pastor.

Unlike many other Christian denominations where the pastor is hired-and-fired at the discretion of a Board of Elders, Roman Catholic priests are moved at the sole discretion of the Bishop. The Bishop in Lansing has 72 players on the chessboard and, alas, every one of those individuals are men who are good at some things but weak in other areas.

The general strategy seems to be following a pastor who is weak in one area (finance for example) by a pastor who is strong in that area. Over time, though the path may wobble, it is on average it will be in a good direction.

Other factors come into play. Sometimes a bishop will move a priest to a parish closer to his ailing parents so he can also fulfill his duties as a son as well as his duties as a priest. Or he might move a priest closer to a university where the priest is pursuing an advanced degree. Those moves displace the resident priest and he must be put somewhere.

Regardless of the pastor's relative strengths and weaknesses, there are always a bunch of people who feel exceptionally bonded to him and grieve deeply when he moves on.

My outlook is more optimistic. Priests are like St Paul. They move around. If the new priest preaches from the Bible then I will be fine.

A little bit of Scripture for you Sunday

Intro material:

The Sermon of the Mount from Matthew Chapters 5, 6, and 7 jumps around and can feel like a montage of Christ's greatest-hits. I am going to take the liberty of underlining some words that thread a few of the ideas together.

Jesus leads off with the Beatitudes "Blessed are the..." sequence but then at 5:13 he starts talking about salt and light:

“You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned? It is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lampstand, where it gives light to all in the house. Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father."   (all quotes are taken from the New American Bible translation)

Then Jesus jumps into a series of very short vignettes where he teaches that we are sinning when we knowingly expose ourselves to overwhelming temptation to sin. Two examples of those vignettes follow:

5:22 

“You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, ‘You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment,  and whoever says to his brother, ‘Raqa,’ will be answerable to the Sanhedrin, and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ will be liable to fiery Gehenna."

 and 5:27

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’

But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than to have your whole body thrown into Gehenna. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than to have your whole body go into Gehenna"

Then, after preaching about a half-dozen other topics, Jesus inserts a two verses that, if read in isolation, seem way out in left field. From Matt 6:22:

“The lamp of the body is the eye. If your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light; but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be in darkness. And if the light in you is darkness, how great will the darkness be."

The common thread of these verses are "eye" and "light". 

 

One way to apply this to modern life is to look at sources of temptation or titillation that we might find ourselves subjected to. For me, that would be the content on the internet that I allow my eyes to see and my ears to listen to. (If somebody in 32 A.D. were to describe a computer monitor on a stand, he would probably call it "a lamp", no?)

 

Porn is everywhere. It creeps into innocent searches for information. It sneaks into videos.

 

At this point there are millions of videos available on streaming platforms that will jack-up your dopamine and adrenaline levels. Not just sexually explicit material, but non-stop shoot-em ups, revenge/karma videos and so on.

 

Video games (not something I am a consumer of, but I know they exist) can fall into the porn/dopamine addicting material.

 

On-line gambling is a huge dopamine jack for many people.

 

Some uses of social media where gossip is passed along. Some theologians think that "...false witness..." in the Ten Commandments was intended to control gossip (the retelling of material that is not provable as true) as much as censure the telling of lies. 

 

Some people self-sooth by shopping on-line. That is not a problem until they are buying stuff they don't need and not able to pay to fix their car when it breaks down or they cannot make their rent payment.

 

From one standpoint, it is absolutely incredible that a book that was written 2000 years ago can advise us about the perils of the internet. From another standpoint, the fact that humans haven't changed during those 2000 years tells us that we should not be surprised at all.