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Month: September 2010

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Homilies

Solemnity of Brotherly Love – 2010

First reading: Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm: Ps 85:9-14
Epistle: 1 John 4:17-21
Gospel: Luke 10:25-37

You have answered correctly. Do this and you shall live.

Film Noir

Some films: The Maltese Falcon, Shadow of a Doubt, Laura, Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce, Detour, The Asphalt Jungle, D.O.A., Sunset Boulevard, Kiss Me Deadly, Touch of Evil, Christmas Holiday. Some of you may be familiar with these films. Most are classics and they come from a style of film called film noir, meaning “black film.”

Film noir as a genre encompass a range of plots involving private eyes, plainclothes policemen, aging boxers, hapless grifters, law-abiding citizens lured into a life of crime, or victims of circumstance. You may know these plots. Someone who has just fallen on hard times, or who had an emotional hurt is attracted to someone else who is in need. The person in need is attractive and the hurt person gets slowly drawn into a place they shouldn’t be.

Watching these films, you can see the bad outcome miles ahead, but hope against hope that some saving event will occur, love will overcome the darkness. It never does. You find out that all is hopeless. In the end, the character you care about is severely hurt, dead, or has killed someone. In the background, a torch song plays.

These films represent black, dark, and cynical places.

Dark world

For some, film noir plays out as world noir, the black world. In the black world, a dark and cynical place, there is no God, and people are rotten. There may be one or two decent relationships, but you never know what other people’s true motivations are. You better glance over your shoulder from time-to-time to see if the knife is coming. At a minimum you have to protect yourself from being severely hurt.

Methods of fighting the dark world

Christian Churches and other religions all have their methods for fighting the dark world. They hope to offer hope against cynicism, to somehow show the reality of God or gods, and to offer solutions for dealing with all those rotten people we come across.

Think about these methods: Canon law and a thousand page catechism that reduce our relationship with God to a set of legalities; A pervasive ethic of struggle which ends up as war, blood, and terrorism in the service of God; A pervasive ethic of being chosen so that followers no longer have to bother with anything other than the knowledge that they are special to God. These methods bring no light, but only self-justification and more darkness. The movie is playing on, and there won’t be any saving moment.

Solemnity

Today we celebrate – and indeed we must celebrate – brotherly love. In 1913 Bishop Hodur wrote Nasza Wiara, Our Way of Life. It is a small pamphlet, only 36 pages. Every member of the PNCC should read it, and not just once. It discusses our relationship with God and with each other. It strongly echoes Jesus’ words to the young lawyer – love God and love your neighbor as yourself. It tells us that by our regeneration as people of Christ, people of the Church, we are changed. The world is not noir, black, but filled with Christ’s light because that’s what Jesus gave us – light to see clearly, to love greatly.

We often focus on Bishop Hodur and his organization of a Church that is democratic. You will hear it at clergy conferences, Synods, and Parish Committee meetings. You will read it in books and on websites. We focus so much on this one factor that we might loose what Bishop Hodur really did – organized a Church that taught a right relationship with God and with each other, one founded in the principal of love – love God and love your neighbor. Living by this theme might save us from the movie’s bad ending.

Jesus changes everything

Bishop Hodur stressed exactly what Jesus said was important. He understood, perhaps uniquely in his day and time, that we and the world are changed because of Jesus Christ. Nothing is the same in light of Jesus’ coming. Everything is defined and encompassed by the two commandments of love – love God and love your neighbor as yourself.

We do not need to be a chosen people because we are an adopted people – God lovingly wants us. We do not need books of laws and rules, because we cannot define loving in legalities. We are not to overcome and win by struggle in the form of war or terrorism, because God wants love, not blood.

Our truth, work, and struggle is to love, to have hearts that are changed and regenerated. With those kinds of hearts, we may just have that happy ending we all want to see.

All is explained

God came to us, to the world, to teach us something different, to show us that life is not to be lived in a dark world, that the movie doesn’t have to have a black ending. Jesus tells us that the two commandments of love – love God and love your neighbor as yourself – are the things we must do to live in the light, to live forever, to have the happy ending.

These commandments of love encompass everything that Jesus taught and did. They fulfill and encompass everything demanded in the law of the Old Testament, and set the standard for the way we are to live. God came to us to tell us that He exists, and is to be loved, and that no matter the goodness or rottenness of others, we are to love them. Love God, love others, no matter what, even in the face of darkness, even in the face of death.

God – love Him. Osama bin Laden, Pol Pot, Stalin, love them. Obama, McCain, Palin, love them. Our children, our spouse, Aunt Jane, Uncle Fred, cousin Tom, love them. Other Christians, non-Christians, atheists, agnostics, love them. The neighbor with the perfect lawn, and the one whose house is a mess, love them. The kid who picked on you in school, the kid you picked on, love them. Take the Ten Commandments, and indeed the rest of the 603 commandments, break them down into two columns: how does this apply to loving God, or how does this apply to loving my neighbor as myself?

Our task, our role in the film is to do more than stand on the side, considering these things. We must live a life that is defined by the love that God has designed for us, the film He is producing, writing, and directing.

World noir?

Will our film noir end badly, the way we might have expected? Will we experience an anticipated bad outcome? Is God dead, everyone rotten? Should we remain cynical, and watch over our shoulder, just in case? Is love just a platitude?

If we claim the name Christian, then there is only one thing we can do – love. Whether it is active loving by charity and works of justice, or passive loving, by answering kindly when the annoying neighbor with the putting green lawn asks whether we’re going to mow our lawn, we must love. We must love God and we must love others.

The film is moving along, we hear the torch song’s first notes, and salvation from the expected outcome is offered to us. Jesus has entered stage right and has something to say. Our choice? Accepting His salvation and being changed, living with changed, regenerated hearts that love.

Jesus promised life to those who are changed, who love. It isn’t just life today, in the here and now, in the midst of a world that can be dark, where loving can be work, but a life of love that is forever. Do this, love, and you shall live!

Amen.

Christian Witness, Perspective, Poetry,

God on 9/11

From John Guzlowski at Everything’s Jake: Poems about God after 9/11

The following is the preface I wrote to a gathering of poems about God written in the aftermath of September 11. The preface and the poems by American, Polish, and Hungarian poets were published in the Scream Online in 2005:

Before 9/11, I didn’t think much about God, and I hadn’t thought much about Him for a long, long time.

Oh, of course, I thought about Him on occasion. I thought about Him at Christmas time when my daughter Lillian was young and she’d ask me about who baby Jesus was. And I thought about God when I got interested in Isaac Bashevis Singer and started writing a series of articles about him. You can hardly write about Singer without writing about God—but there, I was thinking about God in a different sort of way. It was the way I thought about Him when I taught the great religious writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson and T. S. Eliot and Fyodor Dostoevsky. God was an idea, a concept, that I was seeing through a lens and trying to make intellectual and academic sense of.

After 9/11, all that changed. When the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center came down, I discovered that God was no longer academic. He suddenly became important in my world. Not in the sense that I’ve come to believe what my father believed when he knelt every night and prayed in the darkness, nor in the sense that I came to believe what the Sisters of St. Joseph and the Christian Brothers taught me as I was growing up and attending grammar school and high school.

God became important in the sense that my world was suddenly touched and continues to be touched by those who believe in him firmly and absolutely…

In reflecting on this solemn day, we should recognize that the God we represent is more than our feeble attempts, and a greater sum of love than all our petty squabbles, and dangerous hatreds. We should recognize that He is not the God of the U.S., or of Israel, or Mecca, or Rome, but of every nation, and ultimately, of His heavenly Kingdom. We all belong to the same call, His call. His call leads to the cross, to service in the here and now, and to a resurrected life that surpasses today to eternity. If we place our desires and demands before His, and want it all now, and need our pound of flesh now, we will reap only the fruit of our faulty humanity. We will only blaspheme His call to love.

Christian Witness, Perspective, Political,

Replant an olive tree in Palestine

Stand with Farmers — Replant an Olive Tree!

The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation is proud to partner with Canaan Fair Trade to replant olive trees in Palestine, especially in this special season of charitable giving, centered on Muslim and Jewish holidays.

You can help Palestinian farmers remain steadfast on their land and nonviolently resist Israeli occupation by donating to replant an olive tree.

For centuries, olive trees have formed the backbone of Palestinian agriculture. Yet, as part of its illegal military occupation, Israel has systematically uprooted them by the thousands to clear land for illegal Israeli settlements, apartheid fences and walls, and to dispossess Palestinian farmers of their lands and livelihoods.

For every $25 tax-deductible contribution to support the work of the US Campaign, we will replant one olive tree in Palestine. Donate $100 and we replant five. Make your tax-deductible contribution today.

After receiving your donation, the US Campaign and Canaan Fair Trade will electronically send you a Trees for Life certificate. You can replant a tree in your name or in honor of a loved one. Just let us know how you’d like the certificate to read. Click here to replant an olive tree today.

Remember that it is our taxpayer dollars ($3 billion of annual military aid to Israel) that have financed the Israeli army’s purchase of Caterpillar bulldozers and heavy machinery used to uproot trees. Please make your tax-deductible contribution to the US Campaign today so that we can both help replant olive trees and continue our work to end U.S. support for Israeli abuses of Palestinian human rights.

To make a donation by phone, call 202-332-0994. Or mail a check, cashier’s check or money order to: US Campaign, PO Box 21539, Washington, DC 20009. Be sure to indicate “Replanting Olive Trees Campaign” on your check, and the name to be printed on the certificate.

Additionally, for even more serious solidarity with the olive farmers, anyone can travel to Palestine for the 2010 Olive Harvest Campaign of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a US Campaign member group.

Events, PNCC, , ,

Events and happenings

Spaghetti Dinner: At Holy Name of Jesus Parish, 1040 Pearl St., Schenectady, NY from 4 – 7 pm on Saturday, September 11th.

Harvest Festival: Holy Mother of Sorrows PNC Church will hold their 34th Annual Polish Harvest “Dozynski” Festival and Giant Flea Market on the parish grounds at 212 Wyoming Ave, Dupont, PA.

A flea market will be held on Saturday, Sept.11, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. with many local vendors. Refreshments will be served throughout the day.

On Sunday, Sept. 12, the Harvest Festival will begin at 10:00 a.m. and continue until dusk The blessing of the harvest wreath will be held with a procession from the grounds to the church beginning at 2:00 p.m.

Live entertainment will be provided by Joe Lastovica and the Polka Punch from 3:00 to 6:00. On the menu will be homemade Polish favorites: potato pancakes, pierogies, haluski, piggies, American foods hot dogs, hamburgers, plus much more. There will be games for all ages, theme baskets, 50/50 bingo, art and crafts a children youth stand, baked goods, a parish raffle and a country store with fruits and vegetables. All are invited. Admission is free.

Chicken Barbecue Dinner: At the Polish National Catholic Church of the Tranfiguration, 135 Hathaway St., Wallington, NJ on Saturday, September 25th from 4 to 6pm. Eat in or take out. Tickets are $8. The reservation deadline is September 22nd. Please call Ed Kotula at 973-773-4090 for tickers and reservations.

Pasta Dinner: To Celebrate Jill Donovan’s Fight Against Cancer on Saturday, October 16th from 5 – 9pm at the Greenwood Hose Co. Banquet Hall, 3727-41 Birney Ave, Moosic, PA. Take-outs will be available from 4 – 6pm. For tickets or donation information call: Carol Shuminski at 570-343-0946 or Mary Ann Donovan at 570-346-3949.

Christian Witness, PNCC,

Good news at St. Francis Parish in Denver

From the Denver Post: St. Francis church getting new statue of namesake to replace stolen piece

St. Francis, the statue, will soon rejoin his flock at St. Francis of Assisi National Catholic Church in southeast Denver, after donors pitched in the $3,500 to replace a statue stolen on July 30.

The 5-foot-tall statue had greeted the congregation in front of the small church on South Jersey Street south of Leetsdale Drive for 18 years.

The new statue will be in place the week of Sept. 19, the Rev. John Kalabokes said Sunday. A dedication is planned on Sept. 26 after the 9 a.m. Mass. St. Francis is the patron saint of animals, so a blessing of the animals will be held with the dedication, Kalabokes said.

The congregation of about 50 members, most of them on fixed incomes, appealed for help in finding the stolen statue, which has not turned up. Then donors, many of them from outside the church, stepped in to replace it.

A special prayer of thanksgiving for all who stepped up to help in replacing the statue.

Christian Witness, PNCC, , , ,

Immigrants Expand Productivity

From the Federal Reserve Bank, San Francisco: Fed Says Immigrants Expand Productivity; No Evidence of Harm to Native Opportunities

SAN FRANCISCO—Data show that immigrants expand the U.S. economy by stimulating investment and improving worker efficiency and income but not at U.S.-born workers’ expense, according to a report released by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Aug. 30.

Giovanni Peri, an associate professor at the University of California at Davis and a visiting scholar at the San Francisco bank, summarized his recent research to conclude that immigration has positive financial effects for U.S.-born workers.

Data show that, on net, “immigrants expand the U.S. economy’s productive capacity, stimulate investment, and promote specialization that in the long run boosts productivity. Consistent with previous research, there is no evidence that these effects take place at the expense of jobs for workers born in the United States,’’ Peri said.

He added that there “is no evidence that immigrants crowd out U.S.-born workers in either the short or long run. Data on U.S.-born worker employment imply small effects, with estimates never statistically different from zero. The impact on hours per worker is similar.’’

Immigration Associated With Income Rise

Over the long run, Peri wrote in the bank’s Economic Letter, per worker income rises 0.6 percent to 0.9 percent for each inflow of immigrants that equals 1 percent of employment.

“This implies that total immigration to the United States from 1990 to 2007 was associated with a 6.6 percent to 9.9 percent increase in real income per worker. That equals an increase of about $5,100 in the yearly income of the average U.S. worker in constant 2005 dollars,’’ Peri said.

Such a gain equals 20 percent to 25 percent of the total real increase in average yearly income per worker registered in the United States between 1990 and 2007, Peri said.

A third result is that in the short run, physical capital per unit of output is decreased by net immigration, but in the medium to long run, businesses expand their equipment and physical plant proportionally to their increase in production, Peri said.

Peri was traveling out of the country Aug. 30 and was unavailable for comment on his report.

Immigrants Tend to Take Different Occupations

Already well documented is that U.S.-born workers and immigrants tend to take different occupations, Peri said. Among less-educated workers, those born in the United States tend to have jobs in manufacturing or mining, while immigrants tend to have jobs in personal services and agriculture. Among more-educated workers, U.S.-born workers tend to work as managers, teachers, and nurses while immigrants tend to work as engineers, scientists, and doctors, he said.

Because those born in the United States have relatively better English language skills, they tend to specialize in communication tasks, Peri said. “Immigrants tend to specialize in other tasks, such as manual labor,’’ he wrote.

“The share of immigrants among the less educated is strongly correlated with the extent of U.S.-born worker specialization in communication tasks,’’ Peri wrote in the report titled “The Effect of Immigrants on U.S. Employment and Productivity.’’

“In states with a heavy concentration of less-educated immigrants, U.S.-born workers have migrated toward more communication-intensive occupations. Those jobs pay higher wages than manual jobs, so such a mechanism has stimulated the productivity of workers born in the United States and generated new employment opportunities,’’ Peri said.

This “typically pushes U.S.-born workers toward better-paying jobs, enhances the efficiency of production, and creates jobs,’’ Peri said. Task specialization, however, may involve adopting different techniques or managerial procedures and renovating or replacing capital equipment. “Hence, it takes some years to be fully realized,’’ he said.

As we celebrate this Labor Day, let us thank all workers, and do each justice, whatever their background, origin, or line of work. May our Lord bless all our labor.

I pray for the employed, that they may work as unto Thee and not unto men. I pray for the unemployed, that they may find work and be saved from despondency. Be Thou their strength in adversity. — an excerpt from A General Intercession from A Book of Devotions and Prayers According to the Use of the Polish National Catholic Church.

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