Roamin' Catholic

With tremendous respect to Red Skelton, and his explanation of the Pledge of Allegiance.
 

I’ve been listening to men and women recite the Our Father for more years than I can remember and it seems as though it is becoming monotonous to some of you. If I may, may I recite it and try to explain to you the meaning of each word?
 

Our

yours, mine, relating to all of us, we are in this together

Father

parent, protector, creator, Daddy!

Who art in Heaven

the abode of God
He is not of this Earth, nor bound by our limitations, nor is He within our realm of understanding

Hallowed

holy, sacred, adored, worthy of our praise

Be Thy Name

Praise God! The awesome creator of the universe!

Thy kingdom come

God’s kingdom is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit; let it be made manifest

Thy Will be done

God’s choices, His desires
Not our own desires, but those of almighty God

On Earth

Here, now, in our world that God has created for us

As it is in Heaven

God is already in control of Heaven. We are engaged on a spiritual battle here on Earth, and we ask that God rule here, just like He rules in Heaven.

Give us this day

Today, each day as it arrives

Our daily bread

Enough to satisfy our needs, now, to sustain us. Not what we “want” and not enough to last “forever.” What we truly need, that we can truly be faithful that God will provide.

And forgive us

pardon, cancel debt, stop resenting, grant mercy

Our trespasses

our sins, our debts, we owe God our lives

As we forgive

On condition that we also pardon, cancel debts, stop resenting, and grant mercy

Those who trespassed against us

anyone who has wronged us, or owes us a debt

And lead us not into temptation

Help us to avoid trials of the soul, the allure of sin, whether tested by ourselves, by others, or by Satan

But deliver us from evil

Save us from sin, all evils, and from the evil one, Satan.

Jesus’ exact words were: “I don’t remember.”

We got a lot of advice from the previous generation (or generations). We ignored a lot of that advice. At some point, we starting giving that *same* advice to a subsequent generation (or generations). Why do we think they’ll listen when we didn’t?

For the most part, didn’t we learn the most from ignoring the advice and then proceeding to fail and fall flat on our faces? What makes us think the next generation is going to do things differently? If we can’t convey how our failures came to pass, we cannot possibly hope to avoid our history repeating itself.

Sex, drugs, and rock and roll. “Don’t have sex before marriage, don’t do drugs, and don’t listen to that devil-music!” So we have sex with our girlfriends, experiment with drugs, and party all night to rock-and-roll. Some of us survived to realize our mistakes and live smarter going forward. How can we take what we learned from our mistakes and actually use that to benefit those that follow? In other words, how can we make younger generations listen to all the advice that we ignored ourselves? And for how many thousands of years have people been asking that same question????

On my drive home today, Wally was talking about living according to God’s will, even when the path it sets us upon is painful or difficult. Part of living by God’s will is using the gifts that he gave us. For Wally, this meant realizing that when he gets tired of helping people, he needs to remember that it is a blessing to be able to help people!

This can be an important lesson for all of us, of course. It’s easy for me to think that helping people move, having a big truck and being able to pull a trailer are all no big deal. But when that is what is needed in a situation, the impact can be HUGE!  A good friend of mine is often bummed out that she can’t physically help with a lot of things. But really, her gift isn’t in that area, but she exudes compassion, love, and empathy, whether providing the proverbial shoulder to cry on, or just an open ear.

My gift isn’t more or less important or useful than hers, they just have different applications and each has its own time and place to be used. God always gives us our gifts for a reason, and sets us on a path where they can be used.

Coming soon: When our God GPS is “recalculating” our path in life. (Stolen from Amy’s teaching last weekend!)

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.” Jesus’ words from the beginning of John 14:27 are familiar, and yet are interpreted in many different ways. What “peace” is Jesus giving us? Is it the peace that negates war? The peace of mind in the absence of anxiety? What about when a loved one passes away and we say they are finally at peace? Can’t we be at peace here on Earth?

It’s no surprise that we have many different ideas about the nature of Jesus’ peace that he promises to us. There are at least sixteen different words in the Bible that translate into “peace” in English. In this case, the Greek is eirene (Strongs 1515). There are a few different definitions, including “peace between individuals,” “the way that leads to peace (salvation),” or “the tranquil state of a soul assured of its salvation through Christ, and so fearing nothing from God and content with its earlthly lot, of whatsoever sort that is.” (BLB).

Let’s step back a minute, and figure out why I’m so interested in ‘peace’ anyway! I had an opportunity to lead a discussion last Sunday about conflict, and the difference between worldly (counterfeit) peace versus Jesus’ (true) peace. The discussion led to some great insights about how conflict represents a broken relationship, and started examining how we can look at aspects of our relationships in order to begin resolving those conflicts.

The part of the topic that we didn’t delve into (so little time!) involved different ways of resolving conflict, and whether those results were counterfeit peace, or true peace. That leads to the question I started with: What peace is Jesus talking about?

Let’s start with this: The root of eirene is eiro, meaning “to join.” Perhaps we can take eirene to mean joining with God in order to be assured of our salvation through Christ.