July 9, 2023 (Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time)

by Fr. Bob Glynn, S.J.

[This text is an automatically generated transcript. Some edits have been made.]

When I was growing up my my parents like to use the weekends for long drives the family. The idea, I think, from my mother’s perspective was to get us out and give the house a rest from what we were up to. But they had four of us boys. And so my parents were in the front, and the four of us were in the back seat, which was a recipe for disaster. And so my mother had a pension. It was quite a talent, I must say, for keeping us occupied by playing games. And she wanted it to be somewhat educational and she loved words. So we played word games, and the you know, if a parent pretends these things are fun enough, you all agree that they are fun. And so we played these word games incessantly. The first one and the favorite one for the older ones of us was homophones. So my mother would start the game, so we would have “wear”—W-E-A-R, then we would start shouting, W-H-E-R-E. Okay, now this was immensely successful. “To”—T-O, T-W-O, T-O-O and there wasn’t a way to win the game. You just get to keep shouting the answers, okay, and then, you know, and then if they— if we could stump someone that was great. My little brother, though, wasn’t too keen on this. And then we would run into like these little things about, you know, “eye”—E-Y-E , A-Y-E, and then someone would say “I” and then there would be a huge argument you cannot have I as the word if that’s the letter. Yeah. And then so we would have to play a different game. Your shifted games when the fighting got too, too bad. I think my father often sat in the front seat and thought, you know how much calmer more peaceful it was to be on the destroyer during the Korean War, and what went on in this car.

But so then we played a game that I learned later with for movies and stuff was kind of a psychology game, like word association. So you would say, up and then someone would say, down, left, right. Talk, don’t write I mean, these kinds of games that went along quite nicely, then my mother would send you into a more clever thing, where we had to have a word and then an image so we would have winter snow and and these verses things until you thought you were going to go out of your mind. We never thought we were going out if our minds but my father did seem to keep driving faster as we went.

And you know, so, today I took this word association approach to the reading from the Gospel roll things just stuck out to me. Pay Jesus obviously, he’s a big word. Alright. And then burden. Then, light and gentle and rest in life fought back. You know, I don’t know about you, but as a kid growing up. Thing that bothered me I was probably a teenager, but Jesus is saying, Take my yoke and it’s easiest way. Okay, well, he’s God. Of course. It’s easy for him. Okay, I have one or the other problem. Like, what is this bird? Well, we know from origin Association, I say Jesus, you say either God or savior, right. Then we say Jesus, and the picture that goes with it is cross. Right? Jesus cross, burden, cross cross death, death, easy. So there are certain problems with this game. And I think from a Catholic perspective, one time our problem is our idea of burden, cross death, Jesus, because you will know if you have grown up a Catholic even if you are a young Catholic. You have heard someone say that’s my cross to bear now, they are not talking about something happy. Part A, my mother at certain points would turn to us and say You are my four crosses to bear. But when we think of cross and when we think of Jesus here with a yoke, which is would take your yoke my yoke upon you, the cross, the disaster, so that Jesus in our sometimes Catholic thinking is will take the cross on you. And that’s the point of my life, isn’t it? I carry that cross to my own little Calvary. And there I am with Jesus. It’s not a very inviting sort of thing is it? Nor is it particularly the vision that we have the Jesus gives us in what is called good news. The cross is Jesus response to the Father. We know that it gets sent money, Jesus says I do not want this. But I love you and I will do what you know, is good to the cross for the Jesus is not an endorsement contest. It is His act of love in response to the Father. And we know that in that garden of Gethsemane as soon as he says, Your will be done that cross that death are no longer daunting to him. They are the things that are his free choice. In love for the Father. We picture the cross often as our endurance contest, something that I have been saddled with, by God, that I must struggle through through my own endurance. And with this endurance I will carry that cross through life. I will sigh occasionally so people know that I am suffering. Another cross, I’ll carry on. But I do that, because I do not understand God. I do not understand that what I am asked for, in what appear to me to be burdens in life are opportunities for openness, freedom and love.

Today, we’re going to baptize—I guess I’m going to baptize—we don’t want the Vatican to get here—I am going to baptize today, baby James. Now, at times, Rosie and Eric, I think supposedly I would imagine that at about three in the morning, will think of James has a burden. Just guessing this is one of the joys of the celibate life. Okay, just guessing. Okay. But that burden is love. James is a gift. His life is a gift. Eric and Rosie’s life with James is a gift.

Gifts sometimes have things that cost us along the way. But love is price. That is the price God has given us. Love is God. Right? And so in the experience of that burden when they say but this is our gift of love and our carrying this together is our way of responding to God’s love. It is immensely freeing, and it changes who we are so that I am not struggling with my burden on this horrible valley of tears to the shadow of death to the Golgotha but instead that God walks with me and with us in a bounty of love.