Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 2, 2022 – Habakkuk 1:2-3, 2:2-4; 2 Timothy 1:6-8, 13-14; Luke 17:5-10

Did you pick up on the three gifts? It said power, love, and self-control. About 35 years ago a priest named Robert Hovda wrote a book on how to say Mass and he called it Strong, Loving and Wise. Those were supposed to be the three qualities of a good celebrant, a good presider at Mass - strong, loving and wise. He turned the three nouns in our reading into three adjectives. 

So, I looked up the original Greek and I looked up the original Latin and, as it turns out, the three words have multiple meanings. The first one can mean physically strong or it can mean virtuous or it can be someone with a strong sense of duty, someone who is resolute. It means all those different things. The second word, in Greek, is one of five different Greek words for love, one or two of which we cannot discuss in polite company. But the one that the writer chose was agape, which means fellowship. It means having good purpose with the other people in community. It is what the early Christians called the gatherings for Eucharist that they held in their homes. They were agape meals, where everyone had fellowship, one with another. And the last word also is tricky. Our translation this morning, I think, is a biased translation – self-control. It has to do with keeping your id on a leash. That’s not quite what the word means. It means something more like wisdom gained through experience. Not book knowledge, not smarts. But rather, hard fought, painfully learned wisdom.

So, with that thought in mind, we have to ask ourselves, “How did Timothy get these gifts?”  The Letter to Timothy was written long after Paul died, long after Timothy died - probably the early second century or the late first century - by someone who probably was initiated in the faith by Timothy and therefore knew very well the traditions of Paul. And Paul says in the letter, “When I laid hands on you…” That’s now the symbol for ordination to the deaconate and the priesthood. But what we read there in Timothy is like the dinosaur replica of what we now know as the Sacrament of Ordination. Every time Paul left a community, he picked out several reliable people and he placed hands on them and said, “Okay, you’re in charge while I’m gone. Teach the people like I did.” But what we don’t know is that there is another laying on of hands besides the one in the Sacrament of Holy Orders.

Those of you who were confirmed a long time ago, you may remember that the Bishop slapped you across the cheek. Right? Okay, that’s not the way it was supposed to be. That was not the gesture. Those of you who are of Italian and Polish extraction, you probably remember Nonna or Babcia going like this to the little kids. “Come here honey.” That’s what the gesture was supposed to be. It was a European gesture of affection by the father of the family. The Bishop took the person who was being confirmed, the child, and went like this on their cheeks. But American men, in the nineteenth and twentieth century, were averse to that kind of touch and so they did this as a substitute, touching the cheek. Somewhere along the way, people lost the understanding of what it was supposed to be and started slapping kids. Not really a good plan.

So, the church changed the ritual of Confirmation in the 70s, and now the imposition of hands at the Sacrament of Confirmation is simply this. The Bishop has oil on his thumb. As he marks your forehead with his thumb, he takes the other four fingers and touches right here. Gently touching your forehead as he marks you with the Sign of the Cross. So all of us, basically, had the imposition of hands if we received the Sacrament of Confirmation. That means that, according to the gifts of the Holy Spirit, we were given the gifts of being strong, loving and wise, or whatever other translations you might like for those three words. So, I’m going to tell you three stories about being strong, loving and wise. But I’m going in the opposite direction. 

Back in the 1970s, when I was working in the parish run by the old Italian Monsignor.  It was right at the beginning of celebrating Mass in English. Back then we didn’t have a whole bunch of Consecration prayers to choose from.  Right now I have four I can use on Sunday, and there are seven in addition to that, in the Ritual Book, that I can use if I choose to use them. Back then, we only had one English translation. But, all around the place, there were people writing their own consecration prayers and mimeographing them. And, of course, the danger there, is that someone could accidentally corrupt the words of institution, and destroy the Sacrament of Holy Eucharist on the altar. Most of them didn’t go that far. They protected those words; just made up by the words around them. Well, we had a priest who used to come to visit every Sunday, who worked at a local high school. Every Sunday he would bring a mimeographed new Consecration Prayer with him and use it in our Church. And I got sick and tired of it. And I said to the Pastor, “Why don’t you say something?” And the Pastor, who was busy stirring the gravy pot, picked up a wooden spoon - I thought he was going to come after me - waving his wooden spoon, and he said, “You know. When I’mah youngah priestah, they tellah me, I’mah nevah evah, evah, evah, evah, evah, evah, evah, evah, evah, evah gonna sayah Mass in Engahlish. And now I sayah Mass in Engahlish. Today what he’s ado, is not aright. Tomorrow, who knows.  I’mah not gonna be the one to tellah him he’s awrong.” Hard fought wisdom. For sure. It took him forty years in the priesthood to be able to say that. 

He also was known as a great host and he very often entertained priests from other places in the Archdiocese. This was a time when people had strong opinions and, believe me, this man had lots of strong opinions about lots of things. So very often, the people he was hosting, were people he disagreed with violently. And he would talk about them in the Rectory, about things they would say and how he disagreed with them. But while they were our guests he couldn’t do too much for them. One day, I said to him about one of them, “How come you are so nice to him. You don’t like him.” And he said, “My boy” Whenever he had an important announcement, he began with “My boy.” “My boy, whenah priestah come to my houseah for dinnah, atsah Jesus comeah to my house. I treatah him like I wouldah treatah Jesus. If he were my assistant, then I tell him what I want him to do. But he a guest in my house, oh no. That’sah Jesus come to visit.” That’s agape in action.

Now, my next story is not as funny as these. A very serious story. In one Parish where I worked, my Pastor was a dreadful alcoholic. A priest for over forty years. And he had gone several times to cures of various sorts and several times unsuccessfully tried AA. It was so serious, that the local cops in our village would find him asleep at the wheel of his car, parked on the side of the road, car in neutral and the car running. They’d get into his car and drive him home, and carry him up the stairs and put him to bed. It was so serious that, the next morning, the housekeeper would find the vomit on the sheets, wake him gently, and change his bed. I tried to do something about it when I first got there and I had my ears boxed for it, so I shut my mouth. Everybody in the parish knew the problem, and there was a conspiracy of silence that no one spoke to anyone else and no one dared to speak to the pastor about his problem. 

Finally one day he wound up in the hospital and, sitting on the side of his bed, he said to his doctor, “I can’t go on like this. Find something for me, please.” And the doctor found him a place in New Jersey whose rules are so strict that, once you voluntarily sign yourself in, you may not leave until they say you can leave. Some of the people my pastor met when he was there, had been there over two years and still were not declared safe enough to take repossession of their own lives. But he embraced the program so staunchly that, after seven months, he was able to come home. And he came home a very different man.  Able to pick up the reins of the parish and be pastor like he had never been before in his whole years of being pastor there.

And, after a year and a half, the Archdiocese told him, “Your time is up. You have to go to another parish.” They broke his heart. He went to another parish and there, the first assistant they sent to him was a raving alcoholic. And he spent two or three years, got that man sober, and then the two of them pledged the rest of their priesthood to rescuing other alcoholic priests. And, finally, an old man came to live with them who was not on the wagon, and one night, in a drunken stupor, sitting in an easy chair and smoking, he set the rectory on fire, died in the fire, and the priests lost their home. For the next two years, those two priests had to live in an Archdiocesan residence of a local high school. And then, the Pastor finally retired, and I guess the weight of a lifetime of heavy drinking plus all that stress in his last, he had a heart attack and died. But the other priest became pastor someplace else and dedicated the rest of his life to trying to rescue alcoholic priests. Strong. Strong in many different ways.

All of us had hands imposed on all of us.  All of us were given the gifts of being strong, loving and wise.  So, whatever your role in life, whether you are the captain of your basketball team, or the foreman of your office, or the one everybody in the family goes to with problems, whatever you are. Be strong. Be loving. Be wise.