This was taped to a box of donated video tapes received at Kateri House
Who is God? Can you define God? God is, in fact, a mystery. Still, we use words, as inadequate as they are, to try to explain God. In the end, we end up admitting that God is unexplainable.
In Native Spirituality, God is always referred to as Creator. In fact Catholics sometimes use the same word. When Moses takes the tablets with the Ten Commandments on them from God he asks God what name should he tell the people for the God that gave him the tablets. God says to him, Yahweh, which means I am who I am, the Creator of all things.
There is a reading from Proverbs [Prov 8: 22-31] that explains the way the Hebrews struggled with explaining God. It says before the earth God created Wisdom. But God is not Wisdom for he created Wisdom. But then you have to ask yourself – why did Creator see fit to create Wisdom and create the earth and all the universe?
God created the earth and wirdom and the whole universe because God is love, and the essence of love is sharing with others. God created the universe so he would have someone to share with. The essence of love is giving of your self.
For us as Catholics, the personification of love is marriage. This reading is often used at weddings. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” [Gn 2:24] We all know marriages, good ones, ones that really work, that are like this. Its almost like you have to use the name of both the husband and wife. I have a friend Joe whose wife is Sue. But we always say Joe and Sue. We should invite Joe and Sue almost like this Joe and Sue is the name of a person. And in a way that’s true.
When a man and woman join together in marriage, a third person is created, their relationship. It is in their relationship that we see love. Over time they grow together. Through compromise, and more importantly, through seeking to bring out the best in each other, through their mutual love for each other, they develop together into something that didn’t exist before. Because when you love someone deeply you’re always looking for what is truly best for the other person. Over time each get’s inside the head of the other. So that as they grow older talking to one isn’t much different than talking to the other. If you ask Sue a question you get the same answer you would from Joe. They begin to think and act alike. One becomes a reflection of the other.
God the Father loves his son Jesus, and Jesus the son loves his Father God with such a perfect love that Jesus can say, “The Father and I are one.” [Jn 10:30] Their love for each other is a perfect love, like a perfect marriage. It is so perfect that they actually are one. Like a perfect marriage, we experience their loving relationship as a third person, which we call the Holy Spirit.
This spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, acts in our world today. God is at the core of our being. We discover this when we find this seed of love that God has implanted in each of us. We see it especially in the love that we witness in good marriages. God is love and wherever there is love there is God.
Acts 1: 1-11; Mt 28: 16-20
I was out in the units one night visiting. when Jason came up to me and said, “can you pray for me? I said sure. And with a straight face he says, “I lost my brain in admitting. Can you pray for me for a new one?”
Coming to jail can be like loosing yourself. You can’t hang out with your friends. They’re not here, but you are here. You can’t drink and party. Those things aren’t here. Sometimes you don’t even get phone calls.
While your here you take programs. You go to chapel. Maybe you go to sweats also. You are trying to change. In a way the person who you were when you came in is dying. And hopefully by the time you get out you’ll be a new man, ready to start over.
While Jesus was here on earth he hung out with his friends. They loved him just the way he was. But Jesus changed. Jesus died, he died on a cross, and then his body was locked up in a cave. They laid him in his grave, and rolled a great giant stone in front of the opening. He was locked up in that cave. But he got out, he rose from the dead a new man, He then spent 40 days with his friends. And again they didn’t want him to go. They didn’t want that kind of change in their lives. But he said, “I am with you always,until the end of the age“ And he ascended into heaven. And his followers have used this radical change in his life, this change that redeemed the world, to see how we can make the most of changes that occur in our lives.
What are you going to do when you get out? Are you going back to the same old, same old? Are you going to take advantage of being sober, and of all the programs you’ve taken. There are a lot of guys now coming to church on the weekend and going to sweats. Many of you are taking advantage of the spiritual path that is available to you here. Are you going to stay on that path? The church needs you. Each one of you has gifts from God that God intends to be part of the Church. If you don’t become part of your church at home, then it is the church that looses. You each have much to give that we in the church need. We as a church are not whole without you.
Christ died for all of us. If you let him, he will save you. A life in Christ is a life of peace and happiness. Without you those of us that do follow this path are less whole. The gifts that each of us has are from our Creator. He means us to share those with each other. When we fail to share our gifts then all of us suffer from that loss of your gifts.
©Roy Wilmhoff
When I use a word like airport or car a whole picture or maybe even a video flashes through your mind. Words represent ideas. Both individual words and sentences, paragraphs and books. One way for me to represent ideas is with words. I can write a reflection on scripture like this one, or an essay or book. I can also convey an idea using art. A picture can express an idea.There is a famous painting by Picasso called Guarnica. It shows people and animals in pieces and each human face looks like someone in great pain or terror. It expresses the horror of the bombing of the city of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.
Over time God has inspired many different people. People have painted pictures and made sculptures that were inspired by God and people have written about God. This art and these writings try to express to the pople that view or read them what God is like. For centuries before Jesus was born Jewish people had written about God. They wrote poems, they wrote history books, they collected the wise sayings and stories of their elders. These were read regularly at all their worship services and studied by their priests. And yet they still didn’t quite understand what God was really like. So God sent His son who is like God. This is why Jesus says,”If you know me, then you will also know my Father.”
Today people know God through the Church. People learn first-hand of the love God has for his people through the good works, the charitable acts, of followers of Jesus, . Through the many faith-healings that take place, people learn through these people of faith that God cares for us and heals us. Through our priest we experience God’s love and forgiveness. Jesus left us with these words, “whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these.” The Church today is where we will encounter the risen Lord.
©Roy Wilmhoff
Acts 2:42-47 ;1 Pt:1:3-9 ;Jn 20:19-31
The Grrek name Thomas means twin as does the Aramaic name Didymus. Twins are often very much alike, they have a lot in common. We only know a little about what Thomas was like.
On the Monday after Jesus death, Jesus appears to his disciples, who are gathered together in a locked room. They see his wounds. They are astounded,but they do rejoice and they believe.
Their co-worker and friend, Thomas isn’t there in the locked room when this happens. When he gets back they share their astounding experience with their friend Thomas. is like, “yeah right, you guys were in a locked room and you just saw a dead guy there and you even talked with him.”
Thomas, foremost among the apostles was the doubter. Perhaps this was because he was disappointed in himself. When Jesus said he would go to Jerusalem and suffer and die, Thomas said that the disciples should go with the Lord and die with him. But when the time came, Thomas also went into hiding. Thomas must have been horribly disappointed in himself. We have all done this. We have all been disappointed in ourselves.
Doubting in ourselves eventually leads to doubting in God. To be people of faith we have to trust in ourselves as well as others. St. Padre Pio of Petrelcina was once confronted with a man who declared: “I don’t believe in God!”
Padre Pio smiled and replied, “But God believes in you.”
We are allalittle like Thomas.In some way we are his doubting twin. Doubt can be the motivation that leads to faith, so long as you are willing to do what Thomas does–and that is to ask questions, and keep on asking questions until the gift of faith is fully yours.
©Roy Wilmhoff
Have you ever had an experience that felt so great that you just didn’t want it to ever end, a real high? Jesus was a real human being like each of us. He had been sharing God’s message given to him and was actually quite successful. He went up on a mountain to pray one day and took his three closest friends with him. And he had the highest of all highs – he met God.
In prayer we come as close to God as it is possible to get in this world. In prayer we visit our deepest innermost self. This is the person that God created. This is who we really are. Jesus deep prayer experience exposed his inner-most self, the real Jesus, for his friends to see.
After Jesus death and resurrection, his apostles reflected on this experience. They didn’t understand it at the time.They had seen something truly incredible. Their friend Jesus appeared to them having a chat with the two greatest prophets of their common Jewish heritage. And they hear a voice, the voice of God, telling them that their best friend is His son. Of course they really didn’t get it at the time, but later, after Jesus Resurrection, they remembered. In time they put this together with their experience at Pentecost. Jesus had told them that he would send the Holy Spirit to be with them, and us, for all time.
The apostles realized that their good friend that they had spent most of every day with for the last three years was the son of God. Eventually, they would describe this as the trinity. That God had come to us human beings in the form of a man, Jesus, and that he continues to be with us in the form of the Holy Spirit.
Lv 19:1-2, 17-18; Mt 5:38-48
An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind. Mohandas Gandhi
Revenge. If someone hurts me, harms me, or my family, I’ll get even. It almost seems like this must be some kind of natural instinct. I think we all must have felt this way at one time or another. Jesus says something different. Jesus says that not only should you not get even, but you should seek healing for those that harm you.
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (Ex 21:23-25). This is the measure of justice prescribed in the old testament. It was written at a time when revenge feuds routinely spiralled out of hand. It set a standard that the punishment should not exceed the original injury that was done, it should restore a balance.
Balance is a principle that is deeply embedded in traditional First Nations justice. Sentencing circles are conducted by elders. They bring all of the affected parties together. Their recommendations are meant to bring healing and rehabilitation to all involved, not to punish.
The problem with getting even is nobody wins, everybody loses. Revenge never heals the original harm. It turns out that only when the original hurt is forgiven does any real healing occur.
I know a guy in the pen who grew up with an abusive alcoholic father. Everyone in the house regularly got a beating. This guy hated his father, and despised his mother for allowing the abuse to go on. He was hugely angry. He acted out violently and is now a dangerous offender, basically in jail for life. In the course of time he transferred his anger to all authority, especially the guards. He’s in his sixties, and only recently did he face his demon. He now realises that it is his father he’s angry at, not the guards, and he is struggling to forgive him
I talk to many guys who have been abused in childhood. They medicate the pain they feel with alcohol, and while they’re drunk they do something that gets them put in jail. The pain and hurt they feel often turns to hatred. They want justice. They want the person that hurt them to be hurt. This pain is like a cancer eating away at them. Jesus offers a way to be healed from this pain.
If you’re really serious about healing then follow this path that Jesus offers. Jesus says that you are healed when you replace the hatred in your heart with love. This begins with forgiveness. It is terribly difficult to do. You forgive the person that does you harm, whether the harm was done today or when you were a kid. The lack of forgiveness is a cancer eating at your soul, and it can only be removed by learning to forgive, by learning to love. As Jesus said, to love one another as I have loved you.
©Roy Wilmhoff
1 Cor 1:26-31; Mt 5:1-12a
I went to a funeral this week for a young man, a child really, that died in his early teens. Bobbie had managed to touch the hearts of many in his brief few years. His school principal came and spoke of how much everyone at the school loved him. Bobbie wasn’t tall and handsome, an athlete, or the brightest kid. In fact he was quite disabled. The principal told a story of how, because of his disability, Bobbie would sometimes need help in the washroom. “Hey guys, I could use some help in here”, could be heard from the washroom. It seems that one of Bobbies endearing qualities was that he had learned to ask for help when he needed it without any shame or hesitation.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land.
Bishop Sylvan, the Catholic bishop for most of Northern Saskatchewan, calls today’s gospel the Be-Attitudes. These are attitudes that all of us should adopt, he says, in order to be fully human, to fully be God’s sons, to be in his image and likeness. I find it curious that the disabled, that are looked down on by many, seem to adopt these attitudes easier than others.
There is a young boy at my parish, Tommie, who has downs-syndrome. He has a typical symptom of downs syndrome of being mentally handicapped. He has a number of brothers and sisters. He hates to see anyone fight. Whenever someone starts to argue he will get upset and say something like, “that’s not nice, that’s not nice”. This usually has the effect of immediately calming the situation.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Many of us may have, at one time or another, ridiculed guys like Bobbie and Tommie. Because they have what we commonly refer to as disabilities, they have had to let down their defenses. They behave in a way that makes present what the Kingdom of God is like.
Jesus teaches us us that our behaviour with each other matters. It is not the attitudes of the rich and proud, but the weak and vulnerable, that really makes us fully human. It is then that we really appear to be in the image and likeness of God.
You can miss a lot in the Bible when you don’t know the background. Very often there is real meaning in the details. Today’s gospel is a good example.
In today’s gospel we are told that Jesus started out in a place called Galilee, and its from Galilee that Jesus chooses most of his apostles. We should keep in mind that it is these twelve apostles that become the leaders of our Church, and the Gospels are written by people in the early Church that are speaking directly to us about the roots of that Church.
I live in PA. I choose to live in PA. I like PA. I like the place, and I especially like the people. Hot flash – not everyone does. Not everyone thinks this is such a good place to live. PA has a bad reputation. When you tell someone from other large cities in Canada that you moved to PA by choice, the universal question that is asked is simply, why. Why would anyone choose to live somewhere with such a high crime rate, where your as likely to find a drug needle lying around as an empty pop bottle? In Canada today PA is a lot like Galilee was in Jesus time.
The successful people of Jesus time, priests and scribes, the leaders of the Jewish people thought Galilee was a really bad place. They had a saying then:
could anything good come from Galilee?
Yet Galilee was where Jesus chose to start, and where Jesus chose his apostles. Jesus chose people on which the movers and shakers of the time, respectable people, looked with contempt. Jesus was making a point, one on which our Church rests.
Jesus came for all of us. He came for the rich and the poor alike. Jesus came for people in power and people in prison. He came for the sober judge, and for the hopelessly addicted. Jesus came for you and for me. Jesus is the Saviour of the world.
©Roy Wilmhoff
In today’s Gospel we read that Jesus was baptized. It seems odd that Jesus would be baptized. Most people that know anything at all about baptizm think of it as washing away our sins, of cleansing all the ugliness from within ourselves. But Jesus was without sin. Jesus is the best example of what a person should be. And example is the key word here. Jesus taught and led by example.
When I was eight years old my dad bought me a b-b gun. When I was eleven I got a 410 over-under shotgun. And dad taught me to use those guns. We didn’t use books. We didn’t have elaborate classroom sessions. We went out in the field, me with my 410, and dad with his 12 gauge, and he showed me how to use the gun. He talked while he was doing it, but he taught me by his example.
John the Baptist taught that you must repent of your sins and be baptized. You must make this act of being cleansed. Most, maybe all, of you guys are from places where there are lots of lakes and rivers. Rivers are a source of life, cleanliness, and nourishment. But you can also drown and die in the water.
In the very early church they baptized the way its described in the gospel. They went down to a river, and the person being baptized would be held under the water for like thirty seconds, so you would come up gasping for air. They did this three times. The first time they said I baptize you in the name of the Father. The second time they said in the name of the Son and the third time they said in the name of the Holy Spirit. Each time they held you down. By the third time you were really glad that you hadn’t drowned.
By the time they were done with all that dunking you felt like you had been saved. You felt clean and refreshed after spending that much time under the water. It is a sign that you are cleansed of your sins, and have died to a life of sin. You are, after baptizm, born again into a life with Christ. Jesus shows us how to be born again or “born from above”, just as he was baptized, just as he died and rose again. By baptizm we enter into God’s very own life and love. A life that overcomes Adam’s sin, our propensity to be selfish and think only of ourselves. In leaving this life of sin we are able to now love God and our neighbour. We enter into the life of the Church whose purpose is to love God which is expressed in our prayer and worship, and to love our neighbour by caring for and thinking first of the needs of our fellow human beings.
We are called and chosen by God through baptizm to be an example to those around us of how God acts in our life by following the example of Jesus. Just like my dad taught me to use a gun by example, we teach others how to live a life in Christ by example. These words that I share with you are only the beginning. I only really teach you by my example, by the way I live my life.
God has come to all peoples. He came to the world in the form of a man, Jesus. But some people have still never heard of Jesus. For many centuries aboriginal people have known God. But they did not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church. Nevertheless they did seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, tried in their actions to do His will as they knew it through the dictates of conscience. They too were saved because their heart and their actions were one with their Creator.
In the end that’s what really counts. We all have to do what John the Baptist taught and Jesus made a reality. We have to turn away from sin and be true sons of God like Jesus was, and is.
©Roy Wilmhoff
We don’t talk much about Joseph. Without him its likely no one would have paid any attention to Jesus. Jesus would have been seen as the son of a harlot, not the revered Holy Mother of God. Without a husband, a pregnant woman was seen as an adulteress. Jesus may not have even lived. The punishment for an unmarried woman who got pregnant, an adulteress, was stoning to death. But Joseph followed God’s will and agreed to be Jesus Step-father.
We don’t really know much about Jesus childhood. All we know about him is from the four gospels in the bible. They all stress his three years of ministry. Only Luke even mentions anything about his childhood when his parents found him in the temple. What we know about Jesus is what kind of man he was.
All of us, everyone in this circle, has been strongly influenced by the men in our lives, or by the absence of them, as we were growing up. Jesus is no different. We talk a lot about Jesus nature as the son of God, but he was also a man, the son of Joseph. And he was such a good man, that men all over the world for the last two thousand years, have been trying to live their lives by his example. Good men don’t fall off of trees, they are raised by other good men. We don’t know how Joseph raised his son, Jesus. We do know that Jesus changed the world, and is still changing the lives of people, day after day. He is the Son of God, but he is also the son of Joseph. I have to believe that Joseph must have been an awfully good and loving father to have such a son
Jesus is coming. Next Saturday is Christmas. You guys are all missing your families. As you go through this Christmas, remember Joseph, and think about your children, and your own life. Consider leaving here, and modeling your life on that of Joseph, and be the kind of Father in your kids lives that Joseph was in Jesus’ life.When Jesus came into this world, God gave Him the gift of a good Father and Mother. Decide for yourself that this Christmas your kids will have that same gift of a good Father in their lives.