Good Morning and Happy Catholic Schools Week! Crickets! So again…Good Morning and Happy CSW! There followed a somewhat lame and subdued response. Man, oh man! I kinda thought that my eight hundred or so teenager friends would be more responsive at Mass. I mean, c’mon! They were getting out of class and would have shortened classes the rest of the day. The response at the beginning of Mass should have been: Good Morning, Father and thank you! Right? But alas, I had a large number of tired, moody, and mopey teenagers in front of me. My homiletic endeavor was strained. References to the Eagles, Elgses, or Iggles…however we spell or pronounce our beloved team name now…got me nowhere. Father was bombing. Throw him a lifeline! Even my creative redefining of a parable being akin to the Philly Tush-Push or Brotherly Shove** got perhaps merely a chuckle or two with most of those teen eyes staring blankly off into space. What gives? As Mass continued, the Lord gave answer. It was, in fact, the Philly Tush-Push of the previous evening and the Brotherly Shove still lacking on that particular morning that were to blame. They were tired. They were all tired – including faculty and administration. Everyone had watched the big game. The Birds are goin’ to the Super Bowl baby! The teens probably had mom or dad dragging them out of bed in the morning and many probably hadn’t eaten yet. Lunch was still two or three periods away. Ag…o…ny! After Mass, as I spoke with and called out various students for being dead-to-the-world at Mass, they confessed their dire straits. I discovered that they were actually listening at Mass, but that they simply weren’t responding. One student actually recounted something that I said that struck him. Wow! Miracles do happen! I told him that he made my day, especially after he informed me that he and his girlfriend like to talk about things they read in Scripture. My goodness gracious! Maybe this whole Catholic Education thing actually does work! Our Lord certainly had similar experiences – as do all good Christians working diligently and creatively to proclaim the Faith. If I recall correctly, Jesus, for the most part, bombed on the “stage” of His own hometown when He returned there and there was another time when some folks were ready to throw Him off the “stage” of a cliff! Such things can sometimes happen to us with family or friends or maybe even on a high school stage before some early Monday morning zombified students. Such times became part and parcel of the story of Our Lord. Such times became a part of the Proclamation. As was true for Our Lord, so is true for us. The key is to stay in the game, keep the ball in play, and never give up. That’s when we rally the team on the goal line giving a grace-filled Brotherly Shove breaking the plane, scoring the touchdown, and winning the really big game of bringing others to the Faith. See you at the tailgate party!
Peace!
Fr. Wilson
**The Divine Tush-Push or Brotherly Shove of a parable is a story told meant to make one think and get over the “goal line” of a deeper Faith