Presence of Jesus Mission with Fr Dennis Chriszt (Part 4); For audio only PPN
Truth of the Spirit shares the Presence of Jesus Mission Part 4-Fr Dennis Chriszt. Fr. Dennis Chriszt tells a unique story that shows how stepping out in just a little faith makes a difference! Fr. Dennis Chriszt also recognizes that what matters is that people have the chance to hear the Good News regardless of whether they want to hear it or not, whether anybody listens or not! The Holy Spirit had not yet come upon the disciples but still Jesus believed they were ready to go share the Gospel. Fr. Dennis Chriszt often calls that Gospel of Luke passage the “ready or not here you go”. Jesus believed that his disciples had everything they needed long before they knew the rest of the story. But you and I already know the rest of the story.
Fr. Dennis Chriszt, a priest of the Missionaries of the Precious Blood in Chicago, presented the parish mission “Celebrating Real Presence” at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church in Rogers, AR, on March 7-9. 2020.
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Jesus seemed to be saying, “It doesn’t matter whether anybody listens or not! What matters is that you speak.” What matters is not whether they want to hear the Good News. What matters is that they have the chance to hear it regardless of whether they want to hear it or not.
Welcome to Truth of the Spirit, I’m your host Patti Brunner and welcome to the fourth and final of this series on the celebration of the Real Presence. And our speaker today is Fr. Dennis Chriszt and so we just welcome him as he has a wonderful teaching for us
[Fr. Dennis:] The Lord be with you. [Parishioners:] And with your spirit. [Fr. Dennis] A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke. [Parishioners:] Glory to you, O Lord.
[Fr. Dennis] Jesus said to his disciples:
“You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its flavor, with what can it be seasoned? It is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lampstand, where it gives light to all in the house. Just so, your light must shine that others might see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.”
The Gospel of the Lord. [Matthew 5:13-16] [parishioners:] Praise you Lord, Jesus Christ.
At our baptisms, the priest or deacon prayed that God would touch our ears and our lips, so that we might hear and speak the Word of God by our lives. Just as Isaiah’s lips of were touched, so were ours. The message we hear is not to be kept silent. Elsewhere we are told we must proclaim it from the very rooftops. The disciples would have understood what Jesus was saying, if he had only said, “I am the light of the world, I am the salt of the earth.” But that’s not what he said. He said, “YOU are the light of the world. YOU are the salt of the earth.” Christ calls us to be salt and light. He sends us into the world as ministers of the Gospel. He sends us to proclaim that the Spirit of the Lord God is upon us, that God has anointed us, as we heard yesterday.
Before his disciples had even heard the entire message, before they seen all the wonders he would work, before they knew of his death and resurrection, Jesus, in Luke’s Gospel, sends out 72 disciples and he tells them, “Whatever town you go into and they welcome you, tell them, ‘The Kingdom of God is at hand.’ And if they don’t welcome you, shake the dust from your feet and tell them ‘The reign of God is at hand!’
Jesus seems to be saying, “It doesn’t matter whether anybody listens or not! What matters is that you speak.” What matters is not whether they want to hear the Good News. What matters is that they have the chance to hear it regardless of whether they want to hear it or not. And Jesus, also, when he sends his disciples out to tell others about God, he tells them, “You have everything you need already.”
I’m the formation director of the Missionaries of the Precious Blood and the one thing I’m not allowed to tell seminarians is “You have everything you need already.” [laughter] And I shouldn’t say that to the deacon candidates either. [laughter] Because, somehow, we expect those of us who minister in the name of the Church to be praying. But Jesus never says that. Jesus says, “You don’t need an extra set of clothes. You don’t need a spare set of shoes. You don’t need to take anything with you. You have everything you need in order to tell people the only thing you need to tell them. The reign of God is at hand for you.” Now, I don’t know about you, but my hands are pretty close.
When I was growing up, if someone was talking about the reign of God we kind of thought they were talking about something ‘out there’ somewhere, way in the future. You know; something that was going to happen to us after we die. But Jesus doesn’t say that. He says, “The reign of God is at hand for you, here and now. Go and tell people that.” Which means all disciples, every one of us in this room, everyone who is usually in this room, and all those who say that they believe in the Lord Jesus, are sent to tell people the reign of God is at hand for you.
As we were singing the opening song, I remembered not just the prayer of St. Francis but one of his famous sayings. He said to his brothers often, “You must preach the Word of God always; if necessary use words.” This weekend Gretchen and I are supposed to use words. And lucky for us we get to leave town. So you can’t see whether our actions correspond to our words. But our actions are supposed to tell people, that we believe already that the reign of God is at hand. We believe that God is with us. All through Advent we sing of Emmanuel. God is with us.
Jesus believed that his disciples had everything they needed—long before they knew the rest of the story. But you and I already know the rest of the story. We already know what wonders he did in his lifetime on earth. We know of his passion, death and resurrection. We know of his sending of the Spirit. We know how he calls us each and tells us to go. They knew they were sent to go but not much more than that. They had never eaten his Body or drank his Blood. They had not yet been anointed; the Holy Spirit had not yet come upon them and still Jesus believed they were ready to go. I often call that passage, that Gospel of Luke, the “ready or not here you go”. Remembering as a child how often we said, “Ready or not, here I come.” Ready or not, here you go! If we believe that God is with us, we don’t need to have a Master’s Degree or a Certificate in Theology or a Doctorate in Ministry or anything else. All we need is to remember that wherever we go God is with us.
We have already been anointed, we have already heard the whole story; we have already eaten his Body and drank his Blood. And ready or not, Christ is sending us to minister in his name. And when we do, Christ is with us. There are two times in the Gospels, both of them are at the last Supper, when Jesus tells his disciples and tells us what to do. He tells us to “Do this in memory of me.” He tells us to break bread and share wine; to eat his Body and drink his Blood in his memory. And we reflected on that a bit yesterday and we celebrated it this morning. But he also said, in John’s Gospel, at the Last Supper, “What I have done for you so you must do for one another.” And then he was not talking about bread and wine. He was talking about washing each other’s feet. We are sent to wash the feet of our brothers and sisters. And sometimes we wash someone else’s feet with just by a smile on our face, a hand stretched out, a person pushing me in a wheel chair; sometimes we wash each other’s feet by a kind word, or a kind deed. Whenever we do this in memory of Christ, Christ is the one who does it. We become Christ. Christ is present in us.
Once upon a time, long, long ago, and far, far away, there was a monastery. At one time the monastery housed hundreds of monks. But by the time of this story there were only had handful left. No one quite remembers why they all left but they do remember is that the handful who are there are the ones who were too lazy to leave. [laughter] They couldn’t think of anything else to do so they just stayed around. They did a little work to make sure the place wasn’t falling apart completely. They ate dinner together. Now they ate all their meals together. And not much seemed to go on there very often. Until one day Brother John was out walking around the hillside that the monastery was built on and he noticed in the woods the old hermitage, which was a place a monk would go by himself and spend a month, a week, a month, a year or more by himself contemplating the presence of God. And the hermitage had sat empty for years. It had been overgrown with vines, branches. The door was laying on the ground. And on this particular day as Brother John walked by, he noticed that the vines had been pulled off; the door was hung up again. The windows had been cleaned and shutters were open. And he wondered what was going on. Was one of the other brothers there? But he was like, “Well, no, they were all at lunch.” Well, who could this be? So, every day for the next week he would go to the woods at a different time, and one day when he arrived it was particularly warm out and there was a small table, a tiny chair, and an old Rabbi sitting on it. And he watched the old Rabbi with his yarmulke and his prayer shawl, took a loaf of bread, bowed his head, and looked to the heavens. Then broke the bread and made himself lunch. He did a similar thing with a glass of wine. Day after day the old Rabbi cleaned up the ground around the old hermitage until one day when he went to look and see what the Rabbi might be up to, he could not see anyone there. He decided to get a little closer but he was hiding behind a tree to make sure that the Rabbi might not see him when as he peered around the tree someone tapped him on the shoulder. “Looking for someone?” he said. It was the old Rabbi. Brother John was startled. “No, no, just passing by.” The Rabbi said, “Can you do me a favor? When you see the Abbot would you tell him I would like to invite him to lunch tomorrow?” The Rabbi headed back to the hermitage and Brother John headed back to the monastery. Then he ran down the hall to the room where the Abbot lived and he knocked on the door, walked in before the Abbot said anything and he said, “There’s an old Rabbi living in the hermitage! And he wants you to join him for lunch tomorrow.” And the Abbot said, “How long has he been there?” “I don’t know. I think he just arrived.” [laughter] He lied. “Well, does he have permission to live there?” “Well, I didn’t give him permission,” Brother John said.
So, the next morning the Abbot went through his closet until he found the old Abbot’s formal robes and he put them on, and he grabbed the miter, the Abbot’s miter and crosier, and walked down to the hermitage because he was going to tell that Rabbi a thing or two about moving into our property without his permission. And as he knocked on the door, not with his hand but with the crosier, the door swung open and the Rabbi smiled. The Rabbi embraced the Abbot. And the Abbot didn’t know what to do but to come in and sit down. The Abbot tried to start a conversation but the Rabbi just motioned for silence. They did not say a word. And when both of them were seated at the table, the Rabbi looked to the heavens, bowed his head, silently called a blessing upon the food they were about to share. Throughout the meal the Abbot kept trying to start a conversation and the Rabbi kept motioning for silence. And when they finished the Rabbi said only one thing, “God sent me here to tell you, “The Messiah is in your midst.”” “The Messiah is in our midst?” the Abbot said. “What do you mean?” And the Rabbi said nothing but stood up from the table, walked to the door and opened it wide, indicating it was time for the Abbot to leave.
The Abbot was utterly confused, but when he returned to the monastery instead of going back to his room he walked down the hall that no one had been down for many years, his footprints in the dust, as he walked into the chapel. He found a way to light two candles. He knelt before the altar. And Brother John had secretly been waiting for the Abbot to return, and he was stunned by what he saw. And he went out and told the other four monks who lived there, “The Abbot is praying!” And they all came and gathered at the entrance to the chapel. Some of them had never seen the chapel. And there the Abbot was, kneeling before the altar covered with dust. They wondered what was going on. After some time the Abbot stood up turned around and as he walked up to the monks they tried to ask him and he motioned for silence and went back to his room, closed the door and made sure it was locked. He put his normal clothes back on. And at dinner that night as they sat down to eat the Abbot looked to the heavens, bowed his head in prayer and asked God to bless the food they were about to share. And the monks just looked at each other like “What is going on?” “We’ve never seen anything like this. It has been years since this monastery was a holy place.”
When dinner was over the Abbot said, “There is an old Rabbi living in the hermitage out in the woods. He said he was a messenger from God. And somehow, I believed him. And he said God had a message for us. He said, “Christ is in our monastery.” He said, “One of us is the Christ.” And they looked at each other. “Yeah, one of us, uh-huh. One of us is the Christ?” Brother John was sure it wasn’t him. Stephen knew that he was a good baker; he made all the bread. But baking bread does not qualify one to be the Christ. George, well, George harvested the grapes that grew wild in the vineyard, made wine, but George often drank more of it than he should. So everyone was sure it wasn’t him. They all looked at each other. And it’s like, “Nobody here could be the Christ. What does he mean, one of us is the Christ?”
But when dinner was over, they all followed the Abbot to the chapel. They weren’t quite sure what they were doing. But, they knelt. They saw the image of Christ on the cross. And the next morning after breakfast they, one by one, all showed up at the chapel. They scrubbed the floor on their hands and knees. They dusted off the empty benches. They cleaned and polished the stone on the altar. They found candles in the storage room. One of them ran outside and picked some flowers. For the next few days they gathered in silence but they gathered. Until one day George was looking around and he found some old prayer books. They began to pray the Psalms together.
In the meantime, when John went out to see the Rabbi, about three days after it started, he was no longer there. Or so it seemed. John went up and knocked on the door. There was no answer, and he looked through the window and the Rabbi was lying on the bed. He had died. They decided to bury him but they weren’t sure what to do. None of them knew how to do a Jewish funeral. So they buried him the best they could and they prayed that God would hold him in God’s arms. As the days went by the brothers still wondered, “Who among us could be the Christ?” And they began to wonder so much so that they thought, “You know, if it is Stephen, I’d better be nice to him. If it is George, I better be nice to him. If it’s the Abbot, if its John, if its Charles, whoever it is—just to be safe I need to treat each of the brothers as if he might be the one.”
Soon people of the village could hear the sound of music coming from the chapel windows. And people started to visit the monastery. Stephen started baking three times as much bread as he ever did before so he could bring bread to those who were hungry in the village. And George passed out wine to all who were sick—because you know it’s just for medicinal purposes. [laughter] Soon others came and had heard that the old monastery was once again a holy place. And within the next 20 years the monastery was once again filled with men of prayer. All because the Abbot didn’t quite remember the message correctly, the Rabbi did not say one of you is the Christ. The Rabbi said, “The Messiah is in your midst.”
This week-end has all been about the Messiah is in our midst. The Messiah is in our midst when we gather two or three in Christ’s name. The Messiah is in our midst when the Word of God is proclaimed. The Messiah is in our midst when we eat the Body of Christ and drink his Blood. The Messiah is in our midst when we leave this place and take the Christ with us. Whether we speak and use words, or simply by our actions show the good news that the reign of God is in our midst. The Messiah is in our midst. If we forget everything else that happened here the last two days, it’s ok. Remember only this: The Messiah, the Messiah is in our midst. And though none of us is the Christ; Christ is really present in us when we gather together. Christ is really present when we hear the Word proclaimed; Christ is really present when we break bread and share the wine in memory of the one who was about to die and rise. And Christ is really in our midst when we do good for one another. Jesus tells us to remember whenever you do this for the least of my brothers or sisters you do it for me.
I always remember one of the things of Mother Teresa of Calcutta said many years ago, I don’t know how many of you remember when Jerry Brown ran for president; it was a long, long time ago. He was still a young man it was right after the first time he was governor of California and he lost in the early primaries and then he tried to figure out what he was going to do, after that. And he decided he would go and spend a few weeks with Mother Teresa of Calcutta. And when he arrived in Calcutta he expected to be greeted. And no one paid any attention. One of the young sisters came up to him and said, “There’s somebody over there you need to clean up that mess.” He was there cleaning up the mess for three or four days, mopping floors, changing adult diapers, helping people get from one place to another. All of them were dying except his fellow volunteers and the sisters. And finally, after several days, he got to meet Mother Teresa. And he said, “Mother Teresa, the people who come here are so blessed to be able to die in your arms. It is like dying in the arms of Christ!” And she looked at him and said, “You have no idea what you are talking about do you? The people who die in our arms bless us because we get to hold Christ. We get to hold Christ as he dies. We don’t make their death holy. They make our lives holy.” Jerry Brown came to understand that the Messiah was in his midst. Not because Mother Teresa was there but because the suffering Christ was there.
The Guatemalan peasant woman who walked three hours was not blessed because she got to sit next to a priest; the priest was blessed because he got to sit next to someone who walked three hours to get to church in the pouring rain.
When I was a seminarian, there was a professor who taught spirituality classes and he had worked at the Vatican for the commission for the causes of the saints. And he said he read the writings of countless men and women who were being proposed for sainthood and somebody asked him, “Who was the holiest one?” And he said, “Oh, none of the people who were canonized were the holiest ones!” He said, “The holiest person I know is the lady who every morning goes to St. John Lateran and sweeps the floor with an old broom.” He said, “I know she’s holy. “She can’t do anything else. But that she can do so that’s what she does. She sweeps the stairs and the front of St. John Lateran because that’s what she can do for God.” He said, “I also know she is holy because one day I walked in and she was standing in front of the statue of Mary and she was saying, “You got your son, I got my son. I take care of your son’s house you need to take care of my son’s house.”” [laughter] And he said, “The way she talked it was as if these two women had known each other their whole lives. The way she talked you knew that she knew the son of this woman she was speaking with.” He said, “When she dies she will not be canonized because she will not have left any written record. But the front steps of St. John Lateran will get dirty again. unless somebody else picks up a broom and does what she’s done for years. She knew that the Messiah was in her midst. And she did not work wonders. And she did not start a religious community like Mother Teresa of Calcutta. She didn’t do anything that would make her famous, but she did what she could do to help the world to know that the Messiah is in our midst. The Messiah is in our midst.
Where have you seen the Messiah in our midst? That’s today’s question.
You’ve been listening to Truth of the Spirit, I’m your host, Patti Brunner. This concludes the series of Celebrating the Real Presence. This was a mission given at St. Vincent de Paul Church in Rogers, AR. And so, this isn’t the end of the podcasts, though, we’ve got more on Truth of the Spirit. And we have several things in our library so you can find those. You can search in your podcast library or in your YouTube library or you can go to the [menu] website PatriarchMinistries.com and find all sorts of wonderful things that we provide for you. So, why don’t you subscribe and it will be right there at your fingertips for your listening and viewing pleasure. And then come back for more, because with the Holy Spirit there’s always more. Amen!
