Hi everyone, and welcome to Weekly Homilies with Father Mark Suslenko, Pastor of SS. Isidore and Maria Parish in Glastonbury, Connecticut. We are part of the Catholic Archdiocese of Hartford. I'm Carol Vassar, parish director of communications, and this is Episode 19 of Season 6 for the Fifth Sunday of Easter: May 7, 2023. Our Gospel reading from John, Chapter 14, verses 1-12
Jesus said to his disciples: "Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me. In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself so that where I am you also may be. Where I am going you know the way."
Thomas said to him, "Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, then you will also know my Father. From now on you do know him and have seen him."
Philip said to him, "Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us."
Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own. The Father who dwells in me is doing his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else, believe because of the works themselves.
Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father."
The Gospel of the Lord.
“Do Not Let Your Hearts Be Troubled,” by Father Mark S. Suslenko, Pastor, SS. Isidore and Maria Parish, Glastonbury, Connecticut
It's often very helpful in understanding the present to look back upon the past, but we have to do so cautiously because memories of our past can often be filled with present-day emotion or nostalgia that really wasn't part of the original experience. But that being said, facts are still facts, and it's helpful to look at them in order to understand where we are today.
For those of us who are here who have memories of life 50 or 60 years ago, allow your minds to go back to that time in history. How different it looked then from how it is now and the journey that life has taken can be analyzed on many different levels. But for today's purposes, let us say that life in general 50 or 60 years ago was a bit gentler, a bit kinder, and safer.
These are the days when children on a Saturday morning could get up and leave the house without fear. Young kids today have no concept of what that could possibly be like. And not just ride their bicycles on their own street but go to another town or beyond and investigate and discover and encounter all kinds of stuff that kids and their freedom enjoyed to do. Parents didn't have to worry. The world wasn't a scary place, at least not for the most part. I remember one vivid memory of my dad going out on a Saturday morning for some errands, and somewhere along the way, he lost his wallet and he came home very distraught at that, purely because he had personal items in there that he didn't want to lose. Our wallets weren't filled with credit cards back then because nobody really had those. But figuring that it was lost for lost, he went about the business of his day. Later that afternoon, the doorbell rang; young man standing at the door with the wallet perfectly intact and nothing missing. He said, "I believe this is yours," and he returned it. And my dad gave him a gift. But that's how it was back then. If you found something, you knew it wasn't yours, and you could return it, you did.
Life has become more complicated. Our kids used to be able to walk to school, walk home for lunch. No one worried about what would happen along the way. Now we need security guards in institutions; parents are fearful of their child's safety. We hear story after story of tragic happenings when parents innocently leave their kids at school to find a shooting, once again, occurring.
Life has become so much more fearful and laden with anxiety. Never really had to worry about locking doors back then. Your space usually wasn't violated. Today we lock our cars, we lock our doors, we check our Ring devices, we go into public places, and we scan the building for the nearest exits that may be available. We conduct the business of our lives, keep our eyes forward, and often do not really consider much of what's going on around us. We're encapsulated in fear, and fear drives us, and more and more so all the time.
We live in a very volatile world, a world that's always changing. There's political upheavals and crises, economic uncertainty. There's so many things around us that are one way today and can quickly change tomorrow. And here we are in the midst of all of that, trying to navigate our way through as safely as we can, and crippled by fear.
You know, we often talk about the basic needs of a human being. Our beautiful opening hymn today speaks very graciously of our physiological needs, the needs for the sustenance that we require to live. But up from that are the security needs, the needs that every human being has to feel safe, to feel that you can walk out the door and everything will be okay, that I don't have to look over my shoulder and check things twice and worry about who may intrude my space violently when I do so. And that's the security we need from our surroundings. But there's also an interior security we need too, and that's the inner security that tells me that no matter what happens in my life, the bottom is not going to fall out. It will be okay whether I am encountering a child who has extremely special needs and needs my constant attention, and I worry about how they're going to make their way through the world. Or if I have an aging parent that I know one day will soon leave this world, and I have to prepare for that event. Or I face my own mortality and my health, where I look at my career and my job, my family, and the worries and the anxieties can build, and they cripple us because they rob us of our ability to be creative, to investigate, to explore, and to truly be who we are is God's holy and blessed children.
Fear is one of our greatest enemies. It keeps us from encountering one another and keeps us from encountering ourselves and encountering God, too.
So we have this crazy mixed-up world, and we come with the brokenness of our own lives, lives that are fragile lives that require attention, lives that we struggle with. And how does the Christian, the one who believes in Jesus Christ, to live in this fearful world? And what do we do with our own personal anxieties and fears? Where can we place them?
Well, I can't pretend to answer that question for you today, but I can point you in a direction where you may be able to look and start thinking about yourself as a Christian, the world in which we live, and ourselves personally. Jesus says something very particular to us. He says, "Do not let your hearts be troubled." Do not, do not, do not do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God, have faith in me. Faith in what? Faith in the fact that, yes, hardness and suffering are gonna come.
Disappointment and anxiety are gonna be a part of life. You're gonna fall down, but you can pick yourself up, and at the end of the day, we have the resurrection in new life. So, I don't care what happens, it never ends, and the bottom never really falls out, even though the perception on our end sometimes is that it will. Do not, do not, do not let your hearts be troubled.
But yet, our hearts are so troubled all of the time. We carry so many burdens, and we have so many fears and so many worries. And they destroy us, and they cripple us, and they bring us to our knees. And then, the first letter of St. Peter tells us and this is how we can find our way in the world a bit. He said, "Let yourselves be a spiritual house." Let yourself be a spiritual house, a holy priesthood offering sacrifice that's acceptable to God. Not just priests, as in who I am, all of us are part of this holy priesthood. God is directing those words to all of us. Let yourself be turned into a spiritual house. The language is specific. Let yourself. God's not gonna force it upon you. It's not gonna come through some miraculous revelation. We have to choose to be a spiritual house. And what does that mean? That means taking our faith in Jesus Christ and his promise of everlasting life, of listening carefully to his words, "Do not let your hearts be troubled," and beginning to try to live them as much as possible. So that while we're always going to experience some measure of fear, that faith that we have can rob it of its power, and that's the key: to rob fear of its power so that it does not cripple us either as we begin to deal with the stuff of our own life or as we live and act in this crazy world.
Do not let your hearts be troubled.
So being built up into a spiritual gift, we're asked to be a holy priesthood, so what's a priest do? All of us are a part of that priesthood, (and) a priest consecrates. And to consecrate something means to declare or make it sacred; declare or make it sacred.
So here's the question we can ponder this week: as you look out at all of the stuff that's going on around us, as we look at our lives as they unfold, as we encounter the uncertainty, the fear, as we find ourselves withdrawing and trying to recoil into our own little worlds because of our fear, how can we take it all and declare or make it sacred? How can we bring the sacred into everyday life? There's the question.
There's a way, and it begins with our life of prayer. By asking and begging God to rob my fear and my anxiety, and my worry of its power; to beg God to rob, my fear and my anxiety, and my worry of its power. Because once it no longer has power over us, then we are free to be built into a spiritual dwelling and free to be the royal priesthood our baptism calls us to be. And that's how we transform the world, not by looking back nostalgically on what was and trying to recreate that, but moving forward through what we have become and who we will become through eyes of faith.
Father Mark Suslenko is the pastor of SS. Isidore and Maria Parish in Glastonbury, Connecticut. Learn more about our parish community at www.isidoreandmaria.org. And follow us on social media: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Our music comes free of charge from Blue Dot Sessions in Fall River, Massachusetts. I’m Carol Vassar. Thanks for joining us.