March 15, 2009

Dear friends in life and in ministry . . .

It has been an incredible few days since I caught up with last week and sent out my weekly offering on Thursday. Shortly before sending the email I had baptized Fran Cummings at a Communion/Scripture service at the Fred and Harriet Taylor Health Center, a Bath area nursing home. I thought that this experience with Fran, his wife and the Taylor residents, would be the only mind blowing ministry experience of the week - if not the year. Not so.

On Friday afternoon, at their father's request, I baptized 7 year old Tyler and 4 year old Hailey Wilson. Rob Wilson, who had already undergone surgery for kidney, bladder and prostate cancer had begun hospice care a week earlier when liver cancer was discovered and he rapidly became weaker. Thanks to the generosity of another parishioner who had recently lost her own son to liver cancer, Rob's mom had been flown in from Denver to be with him during his remaining days. But now, Rob had requested that his children be baptized and I was privileged to do so at his bedside in the presence of
his Mom and the children's mother.

Saturday, following our 4 p.m. Mass, I stopped by the house to check in with Rob and his mother Janet. Minutes earlier Rob had suffered some kind of seizure and Janet was on the phone speaking with the hospice nurse. We decided that I should pray the prayers of commendation of the dying and share a tiny portion of a communion host with Rob as viaticum (Communion for the journey). Within thirty seconds after he had received the Lord and listened as a litany of scripture verses were quietly prayed, Rob went to the Lord.

"Come to me all you who labor and find life burdensome. I will give you rest."

If you have never been with someone as they leave this life for the next, you may wonder why I'd consider this experience such a blessing. But being with someone who has fought the good and painful fight as he or she moves toward the peace of God's embrace, is indeed a blessing. The gift of faith gives us confidence and hope.

"Though I walk through the valley of death, I fear no evil - for you are with me with your rod and your staff that give me courage."

If you have ever wondered why someone would choose to become a priest our deacon or hospice volunteer - that's why.

May God abundantly bless you and those you love during the holy season of Lent.

I've asked you to pray for my office volunteer and friend Paula Gardner who is rehabing from a stoke suffered last weekend. Along with Paula, I ask you to pray for another parishioner Hank Cullen who is very seriously ill at the Bath Veterans Administration Hospital and Bob Hendrickson whose wife Judy is very active in the Cursillo movement in the Rochester diocese. Bob suffered a serious heart attack on Friday and I believe is now at Strong memorial hospital in Rochester.

March 15, 2009 - Anger - Justified and Unjustified

I’ve just experienced one of those frustrating moments that are all too common to those who expect that their computers will always run efficiently, never crash and outsmart then when they forget to “save.” While I may be angry at having spent two and a half hours on this column - only to have it disappear into who knows where, my anger is primarily aimed
- not at the great injustice such as that which riled Jesus - but at myself.

Before visiting the Holy Land and viewing a scale model of the temple area, I believed that Jesus’ temper tantrum at the temple probably had something to do with people selling raffle tickets or holy cards on sacredground. But I have since learned that Jesus was actually incensed at the temple leaders who had found a “Catch 22” way of stealing from the poor
families who visited the temple to make simple sacrifices as required by Jewish law.

The families came to Jerusalem to offer simple sacrifices to God at the temple. They would purchase a pigeon or a small lamb at a booth leased to concessionaires by the temple officials. But, because Roman coins were not allowed in the Temple area, they first had to change their money into “Temple coins” which were sold by, you guessed it - the same temple officials. These “church people” charged exorbitant fees to change the money needed by the faithful to fulfill the required temple rites. It was if I demanded that everyone wear a special hat if they were to receive the Sacraments. No special hat, no Sacraments.

But you had to buy the hat only from me and, since I held the monopoly on “church hats” I charged $1,000 for each hat and pocketed the money. No wonder Jesus got so angry. The temple leaders who were suppose to help the people fulfill their religious duties, were instead cheating them.

Over the past several years we have too often experienced betrayal, greed and the abuse of authority from people in positions of trust within our churches, our government and in the private sector. Most recently, we have seen the damage done to the economy by people who placed their own need for power and wealth above the needs of the people they serve.

Jesus’ anger with the temple authorities was certainly justified as is the anger felt by millions of Americans whose savings and pension funds have tanked in recent months.

But there is another kind of anger that we see displayed in our church communities that is troubling. Fr. Jim described it last weekend as the tendency of some church people to make “mountains out of molehills.”

Any change is greeted with resistance and sometimes, overt disrespect. You would be stunned by the horror stories I’ve heard from my fellow pastoral administrators about the reaction of some church people when they discover that someone other than a priest has been assigned as their pastoral leader.

As a deacon and a man, I have not personally experienced to any degree the disrespect that has been given to some of my female colleagues. Typically these pastoral administrators are woman religious who have dedicated their lives to the Church. But often they are lay women who have raised their families, paid their own way through St. Bernard’s or another school of theology, and worked as pastoral associates for wages that would be considered well below entry level in any school district, health care institution or industry.

They have unselfishly accepted God’s call to ministry and the Bishop’s call to assume leadership in a parish, only to find themselves rejected and occasionally verbally abused by people who feel empowered to call the shots at the parish level and second guess the Bishop at the diocesan level.

There was a time that people priests and religious on pedestals sometimes deserved, sometimes not. Now some church people seem to relish doing everything possible to knock people in church ministry off anything resembling a pedestal. It is a scandal and a great hurt to the Church.

Let me conclude by saying that as I approach my 50th year of lay ministry and 27th year of ordained ministry, I am grateful for every day of ministry - even the tough ones. I thank you my parish family, my spouse and best friend Pat, my children and our all forgiving God for sticking with me through the good times and bad..

If you are harboring anger toward me or any other person, Lent is a good time to bury the hatchet. It is the right thing to do.

Have a good Lent. Serve one another well!
Deacon Ray

Lands of the Bible Cruise

On November 11, 2009, you are invited to join Deacon Ray and Pat Defendorf and pastoral leaders from throughout the Diocese on a twelve-day Cruise to the “Lands of the Bible”.

Our itinerary includes an over-night flight to Athens where we will visit the Acropolis and the biblical city of Corinth before boarding the mv Cristal, a new 471 passenger cruise ship. We’ll dock at Port Said for a visit to Cairo (the Egyptian Museum and the Pyramids at Giza) then on to the port of Ashod in Israel. For two days we’ll visit sites in Jerusalem and Bethlehem returning to the ship each evening for dinner and overnight.

Our next port is Haifa where we’ll disembark to tour the Galilee with stops at the Mount of the Beatitudes, Tabgha (the site of the miracle of the loaves and fish), a boat ride on the Sea of Galilee and renew our baptismal vows at the Jordan River.

After a day at sea we’ll visit the Isle of Patmos where John wrote Revelations and then to Ephesus, Turkey where St. Paul established a Christian community on his first missionary journey. After a visit to Piraeus we’ll return to Athens for our return trip home.

The price of this journey of a lifetime(including roundtrip airfare, chartered cruise ship, guided shore excursions, daily breakfast, lunch and dinner while aboard ship, study guide, entrance fees and deluxe motorcoaches), starts at $2398 plus taxes, tips and fees.

Follow this link to download our itinerary:
http://www.deaconray.com/travel.htm

This cruise is expected to sell out so early reservations are very important. For more information and a brochure, please contact me by email or phone (607-426-1100).

Serve one another well!

(Click Here For Sent To Serve Archives)

Bulletin: March 15, 2009