Presence of Jesus Mission with Fr Dennis Chriszt (Part 2); For audio only PPN
Truth of the Spirit presents Part 2 of 4 of the Presence of Jesus Mission with Fr. Dennis Chriszt, CPPS. The Catholic Church teaches that Christ is present in the proclamation of the Word. This is true whether the proclamation takes place at Mass at your community’s church or in the domestic church of your family in your own home. As we continue our spiritual “staycation” due to the current caution for the corona virus, Host Patti Brunner shares, with the Truth of the Spirit listeners, words of encouragement from the Lord and spiritual advice in this difficult time of Corona virus precautions.
Fr. Dennis Chriszt, a priest of the Precious Blood of Chicago, presented the parish mission “Celebrating Real Presence” at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church in Rogers AR on March 7-9. 2020.
BLOG
Welcome to Truth of the Spirit, I’m your host Patti Brunner. I just wanted to share this Word of the Lord with you. The Lord says:
My child, as the world panics, my followers pray. As the lost despair, those who are found reach out to help others. All Christians can find the truth; it is in the Word of God, it is in the teaching magisterium of my Church, it is in the Temple of the Holy Spirit where I am to be found. Continue to pray for those who have been confused by the deceit of the Evil One; for those whose sins have blinded them to truth. What truth? That God loves them with an everlasting love. I Am with you. I have conquered death and dying through disease and by the frailty of mankind. Those who destroy others by their personal choices have a choice now to repent. [The Lord says:] I am pouring out a grace of truth to bring repentance and so the Evil One is trying to challenge the truth to keep control by hatred and fear. [The Lord says:] Let go of your fear. I am with you just as I was with the Israelites in the desert and with the martyrs in the courts of the persecutors. Do not fear for this life on earth to pass away, [the Lord says.] My kingdom lasts forever.
I’m Patti Brunner, and now I invite you to join our next episode with us.
The Catholic Church teaches that Christ is present in the proclamation of the Word. This is true whether the proclamation takes place at Mass at your community’s church or in the domestic church of your family in your own home. As we continue our spiritual “staycation” due to the current caution for the corona virus, we welcome you to Truth of the Spirit. I’m your host, Patti Brunner. Today we’ll continue with our mission speaker, Fr. Dennis Chriszt, a priest from Chicago’s Missionaries of the Precious Blood.
A reading from the Gospel according to Luke. [Glory to you O Lord] v16 “Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went according to his custom into the synagogue on the Sabbath day. He stood up to read and a scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was says: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.” Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue were upon him. He said to them, “Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.” The Gospel of the Lord. [Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ.]
The Prophet Isaiah is once again speaking to the people of Israel in exile. Far from home, and more importantly, far from the temple, where the people of Israel believed God dwelled among them. Seeking to reassure them, Isaiah says, That God is present in more than the temple.
Isaiah wanted them to remember God was with them even in exile, even when they were far from the Promised Land. He wanted them to know that God’s love knows no bounds. God’s mercy is not dependent on location. This afternoon God wants the people of Israel to know that God’s word itself is dependable. That God’s word does what it says, that though God’s ways are high above the heavens and the thoughts of humanity, are high above the thoughts of humanity. They are always.
In this afternoon’s Gospel, Jesus is speaking to a people not in exile but in bondage. The Roman armies occupied their land for many years. They are not free to do as they wish or speak as they desire. But Jesus reads to them from the same prophet Isaiah and proclaims God’s word. It is fulfilled in their hearing. Today I want to repeat to you what Jesus said in the synagogue of Nazareth. But I want to make one little change. Listen to the words fulfilled in your hearing today. The Spirit of the Lord God is upon us because God has anointed us to bring glad tidings to the poor. God has sent us to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.
God’s word is sending us not just Jesus but each one of us. Christ is already present among us, as I said this morning, we are already the anointed of God but not because I said so but because the word of God has said so. Listen carefully; there is always something God wants to say to us when the scriptures are opened.
I spent six years as the associate pastor at St. Andrew’s Church in Orlando, Florida. I can get into Disney for free any time I want. I still know people there although I left almost 30 years ago. But on the last Sunday I was stationed at the parish they had a reception, a nice party. People came up to me some gave me gifts. Lots of people were thanking me for things that happened the previous six years. And there was one woman who waited until she could be the last person to speak to me. If somebody came in behind her, she went back to the back of the line. And finally after shaking hands and talking to people for about two and a half hours, she finally spoke to me alone. She wasn’t sure if she wanted anyone else to know what she was about to say. This is what she told me. “Father Dennis, I have to thank you for saving my life.” I couldn’t imagine what she was talking about. We never met before. She had been one of those people in the congregation who never stops to shake hands with anybody. She came to church but I had never had a conversation with her. I could not imagine what I did that saved her life. So, I asked her, “What do you mean?” And she said, “A couple of years ago, my life was falling apart. Everything that could go wrong went wrong. I’d lost all hope. But after a long time I had decided to kill myself. And she said, “You have to remember, if someone is going to kill themselves, they are not completely rational. So I decided that before I could kill myself, I needed to stop at church. But I forgot it was a Saturday afternoon, and when I got there, the parking lot was already full, and mass was about to start, and I thought, ‘Oh well, I might as well stay.’” So she went in and sat near the back and stayed for Mass. “What you said that day,” she said to me, “Gave me hope. And I did not kill myself. And I stand here because of the word you proclaimed.” She said, “The story you told saved my life.” “What story did I tell?” I asked her. She told me the story but it was a story I never heard before. “Are you sure it was me?” She said, “I am absolutely positive it was you. I know the difference between you and Father John and Father Leonard. It was definitely you.” But I have never heard this story before. I am sure I never told that story before. And she looked at me very puzzled. “I know you told that story!” she said. “I’ll never forget it. It saved my life!” And then I asked her a question, “If you’d gone into church and the church was empty, like you thought it was going to be when you were on your way there, and suddenly in the empty church you heard a voice telling you that story, what would you have done?” She said, “I would have run out the door, got into my car, and drove home and killed myself.” I said, “So, you heard the story God wanted you to hear. And you heard the story that God wanted you to hear in a way that wouldn’t scare you to death.” She said, “But I know it was you who was talking.” I said, “You know what? There were probably 500 people in church that night.” She said, “Yeah, probably.” I said, “None of them heard that story. And none of them remember what I said. What I said didn’t save anybody’s life. But what you heard, the Word of God that you heard, was meant for you.” I said, “Remember the Pentecost story? After they leave the Upper Room they go outside and there is a huge crowd of people from 20 different countries who, they don’t all speak the same language, and Peter begins to preach. And he preaches and preaches and preaches and everyone understands every word he said. There are some people who say Peter had the Gift of Tongues. But the Gift of Tongues is when I can speak Portuguese. I’ve never learned Portuguese. If I could speak Portuguese right now it would have to be the Gift of Tongues. If I could speak Polish right now it would the Gift of Tongues. But I’d only be speaking one language. One person cannot simultaneously preach 20 different languages. So, Peter only spoke one language, probably either Aramaic or Greek because those were the languages of the day for someone who lived in that area. But everyone there had the ‘Gift of Ears’, not the Gift of Tongues, the Gift of Ears. They heard what they needed to hear that day.” I see a deacon over here, a priest back there, and I suspect because of all the other deacons, priests, and even ministers that I know from other denominations, they have had people tell them that they heard something that we never said. But they heard what God wanted them to hear. Whatever I, whatever she thought I said was the Word of God for her that day. And the Word of God saved her life.
Sometimes when I preach, I’ve had people afterwards pat me on the back, say how good it was, usually I know it was not that great, but, but I often know is that, but I often hope is that at least somebody will hear the Word of God because of what I said. I don’t expect everyone to hear what I said as the Word of God. But I do expect that when you hear the prophet, the apostle, the evangelist—when you hear one of the authors of the books of wisdom, the history of Israel, you will hear in those stories the voice of God.
After I was ordained a few years, I was in a little parish in Whiting, Indiana, which is just on the border of Indiana and Illinois, so you can spit and the spittle will land in Chicago, ah, it’s just an imaginary line on a map. And the pastor asked me to preside at the Easter Vigil. It was the first time I was going to ever do the Easter Vigil. So I spent a week or two of writing down what I was going to say and typing it up and having everything ready and I had folded; I had it sitting in the chair with me as the reader when up to do the reading. And at the Easter Vigil there are a minimum of five readings. The first reading is often the creation story. One of the readings that is required is the story of Moses stretching out his arms as the water of the Red Sea is torn in two and the people of Israel marched through to freedom. Those of us old enough remember Charlton Hesston and Cecil B. De Mills production of the scene of the great wall of water on each side. Margaret got up to do that reading. As she read, you could hear a pin drop. As she read, you could see the water; as she read, you could hear the hooves of the horses pulling the Egyptians chariots. As she read that night, you knew—you were there. And when Margaret finished that reading from the Book of Exodus, I grabbed my notes, folded them in half, and sat them under the chair. Because, I knew that night we had all heard the voice of God. It used Margaret’s lips. But we knew we had heard the voice of God. And I knew whatever I had planned on saying that night would not be enough. And that I would have to say something completely different from what I planned to say.
A few years later I, when I was working on my doctorate in liturgy there was a lady, and I had mass every Sunday in an African American Parish; I had the short mass which was an hour and a half to two hours, the long mass was 3 hours to 4 hours. I could not preach for an hour and a half which the pastor usually did. And I am grateful for usually not having to ever talk for an hour and a half straight. Some people who do parish missions do that. The reason we do scripture readings and psalm songs is so you never have to listen to any of us for more than 20 minutes or so. But there was another lady in that parish, who, when she got up to read one of the letters from the apostle Paul. And in the middle of the reading, she stopped and repeated the line she had just finished. And again, we knew that we had heard the voice of God telling us the same thing that Paul had told to the people of Corinth 2000 years earlier. That God was still speaking to God’s people. And when she finished and said, “The Word of the Lord,” instead of saying, “Thanks be to God!” the entire congregation stood and burst into applause. And some of us did what I’m doing right now, we wept, because we had heard the voice of God. Not every lector and not every experience of the Liturgy of the Word is that powerful, and sometimes it’s not that powerful for everyone but it is for some people. And I know from 38 years of being a priest that there are many times when the scripture readings proclaimed somebody hears something that changes their lives. I know most of the time that doesn’t happen. But I know that we need to listen carefully if we are to hear what God has to say. Because you and I know that sometimes we are distracted by different things. I remember a young priest when I was a seminarian I was at my home parish for some holiday and he got up and said, “Too many people come to me for confession and say they were distracted by something during [during] mass.” And in his homily he said, “Stop confessing that you were distracted because sometimes the thing you’re distracted about is the thing you’re supposed to be praying for. And the thing you’re praying for is not that important. If it’s so important that you can’t leave it at the door of the church and it keeps coming back and you keep saying I shouldn’t be thinking about that, it’s probably because you should be thinking about that.” And you should be thinking about that as you hear the word of God because maybe it’s the marriage of the Word of God and whatever it is that is distracting you today; whatever it is that is on your mind today; whatever it is that you can’t stop thinking about, that need to come together.
Have you heard God’s voice speak to you?
For most of my priesthood I’ve done work with Christian initiation of adults, and I’ve done workshops for dioceses, for a couple of national organizations as well. And one time there was a parish where the pastor was –I don’t know if you have them in Arkansas but they were very common in Florida—we have many pastors who were FBI. Do you know what a FBI pastor is? “Foreign Born Irish”! When people started moving to Florida in the … hundreds of people were moving every day, there weren’t many priests in Florida, so the bishops found out that there were so many priests in Ireland that they didn’t know what to do with them and they would send them to Florida. And so, when I was there, in 1987 to 1993, over half of the priests in the diocese were FBI. And we said there were two different kinds of FBI priests. Some of them when you said, “What diocese are you from?” They said, “Well, Orlando of course.” And some of them said, “Dublin.” Sometimes we were together for something and we’d be sitting around the table for lunch and I’d think, “Why are they all talking about the Bishop thousands of miles away who has nothing to do with their life today?” But they were all worried about—not all but half were that thought they were still in Ireland, whose minds and hearts were still in Ireland. And one of those priests was pastor of a parish where somebody who had come to several workshops that I did said, “You know, our pastor does not believe in the Rite of Christian Initiation. He still wants people to come; they meet with him nine times they use an old book called “Father Smith Instructs Jackson” and they baptize them on Saturday morning with two other people in the room. And they said, “You taught us that according to church law they are not supposed to do that!” And I said, “Well, ok. Let me think about this.” And a couple of weeks later the committee was meeting and we were talking about where our next workshop would be, and we were due to have it in that deanery. So I called up the parish secretary and I said, “I need two dates in April when your parish hall and church is going to be empty so we can do a workshop there.” And she gave me the dates, and I said, “Now, could you transfer me to the pastor but don’t tell him I asked you those questions.” Now, the pastor got on the phone and I said, “Father, the diocese would like to sponsor a workshop on Christian Initiation of Adults and we were wondering if we host it at your parish.” And he said, “Oh, yeah, yeah, let me check.” And so he puts me on hold and he calls the secretary, he asked her the same question, I already knew the answer to. And he tells me what two dates are available and I say, “Oh, that’s great. One of those will work perfect. So, we’ll schedule it for there.” So, a month or two later when we come to the workshop, he decides he’s going to sit in and find out what’s wrong with this Fr. Dennis and what kind of trouble he’s trying to make in this diocese and this parish. Because he’s got a group of parishioners that keep pounding and saying, “We ought to be doing the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults here!” So, I get up and we do a Liturgy of the Word, and he’s sitting over here, there’s a couple people he doesn’t know from a different part of the diocese were sitting near him. And I said, “Ok, now we are going to break into small groups, and I want you to listen to the Gospel again, and listen for a word or a phrase that God is speaking to you.” And then we read the Gospel again and I said, “Listen this time, what is God, what is God telling you to do? What are you going to do about it?” And then we took a break, a coffee break and then we came back 20, 30 minutes later, sat down, and I said, “Ok, everybody, what did you experience this morning in the Liturgy of the Word that we celebrated in the ritual that we did on the Christian Initiation for Adults and in our reflection afterwards on the Gospel, on tomorrow’s Gospel?” Because we read the Gospel that was going to be at mass the following day. And this pastor, who was 73 years old, stood up and took the mic that was being passed around and he said, “I have been a priest for over 50 years. Until today I never heard God speak to me in the gospel.” They started the Christian Initiation of Adults the following month. But if we learn to listen carefully, no matter whom the priest or deacon is who reads it, and no matter how well or badly they preach, we may just hear the voice of God. And it’s never too late to learn to listen in a new way. Because God will always speak. And God’s word will be fulfilled in your hearing.
Share a time when you may have heard the Voice of God, in your lives or any other insight you might have about the Word of God today. Thank you and we’ll gather again together.
You’ve been listening to Truth of the Spirit, I’m Patti Brunner. We invite you to listen to previous episodes: TOS029 Praying the Scriptures –Ken Hunter of the Prayer-Reaching Out to God Series; TOS054: Basics of Faith II – Basics to Reading the Bible for Catholics; and TOS085 Recognizing God’s Voice. So, check those out. And then, come back for more, because with the Holy Spirit there is always more! Amen.
