← Petersboat
Petersboat
Muppets, Man, and Meaning | The Monday After
00:22:27
When the Muppets come to understand that they are puppets, something amazing is happening, as mysterious as when a man or woman begins to perceive the meaning of our common humanity.
Loading summary
Transcript24 lines
- [00:06]
A
So, like most of you, I would say I'm listening a lot these days to people who have proposals for what reconstruction might look like. You know, the reconstructing of society requires plans and new approaches, or in the sports world, new plays, you know. But at the beginning of the homily yesterday, I mentioned that it's. It's funny to me sometimes to see the Muppets learn that they are puppets or come to that realization, that self awareness of their being dependent and completely upon Jim Henson. You know, they jokingly say he's had a hand in everything. It's so good. But there's a particular conversation between Kermit and Fozzie which I'll share with you here now. It's so funny. But I love this, and I'll tell you in a moment, like, why it strikes me as fitting to mention here
- [00:55]
B
now, those cows, those are real cows. I mean, those are cows that are out here. They eat grass. They, you know, they give milk. Those are cows.
- [01:03]
C
Well, I don't give milk, but I'm a bear.
- [01:04]
B
No, no, no. But a real bear is sort of a thing with. He's got sharp teeth and he.
- [01:09]
C
Now, wait a second. Now wait a second.
- [01:11]
B
Do you have sharp teeth?
- [01:12]
C
I don't have teeth.
- [01:13]
B
No, no, see, you're not a real bear.
- [01:15]
C
Now, wait a minute. Now, look, I feel in my very bones. You don't have very male.
- [01:19]
B
Wait a minute. No, no, no. Wait a minute.
- [01:21]
C
You don't even have bones. Did I what?
- [01:24]
B
You don't even have bones.
- [01:25]
C
What do you mean, I don't have bones?
- [01:26]
B
I mean, a real bear has bones. What do you have? You've got sort of a. Sort of a fake fur. You've got foam rubber.
- [01:33]
C
What?
- [01:34]
B
You're an art. You're an artificial bear.
- [01:36]
C
You're telling me I have foam rubber?
- [01:38]
B
Have you ever seen a bear with a magenta nose?
- [01:40]
C
I. I do understand that I'm not a real bear. Mm. But I am. I know what I am. I am what I am. Well, we are.
- [01:48]
B
We all are what we are.
- [01:49]
C
But I'm a real puppet. Here I went, I'm a real puppet. Well, that could be so.
- [01:56]
A
I love that. I love. You know, I could feel it in my bones. But you don't have bones. You know, but then the way he says, well, at least I'm a real puppet. What's that? I'm a real puppet. That may be so, you know, that's. That's. It's so funny as human beings, you know, whatever else we imagine about ourselves, you know, these ways we have of defining ourselves, giving ourselves our own identity also, the truth is we were made for union with God, that God created each one of us, not just the Catholic Christians, but each one of us for union with Him. So the truth of our humanity, but the way we come to know the truth of our humanity is because Christ is enabling us to see that no one comes to know the truth of the human person apart from some experience of Christ. I know that most of you are listening to me as Catholics, so that could sound like mere doctrinal superiority. But we also teach as a Catholic Church that Christ, while he is bound to his sacraments, is not bound by them. So there are people who are coming to understand the truth of the human person and even our destiny of union with God, which is a common destiny that we share with all humanity. But if they are learning that through some other faith or as sometimes called wisdom tradition, it's Christ presence in that experience that is making it possible for them. You know, remember he said, no one comes to the Father except through me. Now, why mention the Father? Because what Jesus said to us in the Gospel this week is about the Father in saying to his apostles, whoever receives you, he says, receives Me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me. And that's the Father. So the purpose of the human person is something that can be discovered by looking at life through the lens of Christ Jesus. The way that I have to look at this paper with readers in order to even to be able to see clearly or to interpret any of the signs and symbols of this language. And the way that Christ taught this to us was through this hyperbole which we heard this weekend in the Gospel. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. Or whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. He was inviting us to look at our mother and our Father with him. Come to me first and then look at them with me, and then same thing with the children. Look at your children, he says, with me. If you look at your mother and father without me, you may come to resent them as a kind of absurd burden, like something whose discipline leads nowhere, you know, unless you look at a mother or father the way that a mother wants us to remain and be attached to the family, and the way a father wants to send us out with courage. If we were to look at them without Christ, we could see the mother as merely overbearing and controlling, or we could see the Father as reckless and uncaring. You know, by wanting to send us out and embolden us. I heard somebody say this week, if you imagine the child being thrown up in the air, chances are you're imagining the father doing that. The mother wants attachment and belonging, and the father wants to encourage and embolden and send us forth, so he throws the child up in the air. I think it's true. There's something to that. But if we look at mother and father without Christ, we wouldn't know what we were looking at. The same thing with the children, though. If parents look at their children without Christ, they can make a little project of the child, and then their dependency on the child becomes a burden, and they're dependent upon the child for their own happiness. And then they make that child miserable as they try to squeeze God out of that child. So parents, even before they love son or daughter, need to love Christ more so that they even know what they're looking at when they look at their children. Does that make sense? So to love Christ more than everyone else means to always give God first place, right? So in that sense, to build our lives first on God. But Christ is the one who was sent from the Father, which is why he says, whoever receives you to his apostles, he says, receives me. And whoever receives me, he says, receives the one who sent me. And the one who sent him is God. So he sends us into the world as people who look at reality with Christ, so that people who receive us can receive Christ and in receiving us, receive God. I went to a family's home yesterday. Big Italian family. They had me over for their weekly Sunday dinners in this home of one of the sons. Both of the son's parents, the mother and father, passed away last year, very close to one another. But the family still gathers together. And then they had me come over. And I think the reason they invite the priest in is perhaps to try to help make sense of how mother and father could die like that. But in a very, I think, admirable way. They invite Christ into their life with some sense of, well, if we let God into this, that maybe we know how to look at mother and Father, maybe even then we can accept their death. So they have me into the home, and it's for them that I would accept the invitation to be received by them so that in receiving me, they could receive Christ. And in receiving Christ, they could receive the Father, receive God into their home so they can look at their lives with Christ, to be able to see the truth of things. And in seeing the truth of things, to see the Inherent goodness of things and its good destiny. One of the things we did at the. At the dinner, after eating, gave to one of the grandchildren a ring, a diamond ring that belonged to the grandmother who passed. It was very special, very touching, and there was reasons for giving it to this particular granddaughter. But the whole family celebrated it, and even the other grandchildren thought it was beautiful and touching and fitting that this particular granddaughter should receive that. And they asked me to present this ring to her and to say a prayer before and while doing so. And it's like it's really humbling in my humanity. I get a little nervous sometimes, a little self aware of my being. Like those, like the puppet who recognizes he's dependent upon Jim Henson. Like, I recognize that when they ask me to say a prayer, that it is really Christ's hand, His right hand in my priesthood that will make this prayer effective in any way. I'm lifeless without him, you know, but that he is with me. That's why I love this idea of, like, Kermit and Fawzia being able to even speak about being puppets. They're doing so by the life of the one who is in them. Now, we're not being controlled by God in that way, of course, because we have free will. But nonetheless, when someone asks you to say a prayer over a ring, such a precious family heirloom that belonged to their beloved grandmother, to give it to the granddaughter, and you're with her earthly father, her earthly mother, and then they look at you and ask you to present. They see the priests as God with them. Now, I know that I am not God on my own, but I know that Christ is with me and that the Father sent Him. So I take him at his word when he says to us in the gospel these days and yesterday in particular, whoever receives you, receives me. And whoever receives me receives the one who sent me. And he says this so beautifully. Whoever receives a prophet, because he is a prophet, will receive a prophet's reward. Whoever receives a righteous man, because he is a righteous man, will receive a righteous man's reward. I was fed by this family yesterday. And so I hear Jesus say to me what he says at the end of the Gospel. Whoever gives one of these little ones something to drink, because that little one is a disciple of mine. Amen, I say to you. He will not lose his reward. They put food out before me yesterday. I'm happy for them that their hearts are open to the priest, because a priest is one who is sent out by Christ into the world. And the hope is that after such a visit, the young people at the table, for example, will be able to make decisions with Christ in prayer that could aid them along the way, that could help them to attain to journey's end, which is heaven. You know that they have some sort of point of reference when making decisions, a goal toward which they're striving by remembering that fundamental truth about the human person, that we were made for union with God. I said yesterday in the homily that in 1961, the Green Bay packers apparently lost a championship game. And then Coach Lombardi, he heard the team talking about, like, plans and plays and how to do better next year. But he interrupted all of their ideas for reconstruction by holding a football out to them and said, gentlemen, this is a football. You know, like, back to basics, first things first. This is meant to be thrown or run with or caught before you guys talk about plans and plays, first things first. This is a football. Let's remember what we're doing here, what this was made for and what we're doing here. And I think about our Christianity as being God's way of reminding us of something we've forgotten. He sees us building and creating all these new plays and plans about prosperity and what we call progress. The Catholic Church, as the body of Christ in the world, wants to be for everyone. We meet an occasion of remembering the meaning and the destiny of the human person, remembering the purpose for which we were made. It's no small thing, and it's attributed to us as holiness, simply to receive Christ, as we heard in the first reading. Elisha the prophet. This is one of Elijah's successors, or his real successor. Elisha is welcomed by a woman of influence, and he visits her very often whenever he passes by. It reminds me of how Jesus used to stop by Bethany anytime He would go to Jerusalem to see Martha and Mary and Lazarus. And this woman, she even creates a little room on the roof and furnishes it with a bed, table, chair and lamp and gives it to Elisha. And her husband is happy to help her to do so. They welcome Elisha because he's a prophet, and the prophet is one sent by God to make us sons and daughters of God by preparing our hearts to receive Christ. And remember, Jesus said in the Gospel, whoever receives a prophet, because he is a prophet, will receive a prophet's reward. We're told that Elisha is so moved by their hospitality and their love for him and how warmly they receive him, that he calls his servant Gehazi over, and he says, can we do anything for her and his servant says, well, you know, they haven't had a child. Her husband's getting on in years. They have no son. And then Elisha says, this time next year, you will have a baby son. And it's no coincidence that it's a son, because this is the whole hope of Elisha, that these people would come to know themselves as beloved of God, sons and daughters of his destined for union with him the way that a child is in union with a mother or a father. So that's why Jesus makes this connection between loving him more than mother or father, so that he can reorder our relationship with our mother and father, and also loving son and daughter, but loving him more than we love son or daughter, because he wants to reorder our relationship with our children. And reordering it means renewing the unity between the parent and the child. We use the expression that Jesus takes away the sins of the world. Well, sin is just separation and disunity. So to take away, you know, it's like a double negative, right? To take away sin means to create unity. So when we go into the world to take away sins, we don't have to aggressively try to strip someone of something, but simply remind people of their destiny and live in such a way where they open their hearts to remembering their own humanity called to a union with God. And in doing so, we are removing this sense of separation and its consequences, the consequence of sin. And we do it by taking the sins upon ourselves. Because when I go into the family's house, for example, yesterday, and I hear all the stories, there's all the stories of pain, all the stories of cross. Everybody shares with you their hardships and their burdens. Sometimes they let you in on something that they're celebrating, of course, and then they share some joys with you, too. But what they're really looking to do is give you their burden so that you can alleviate their burden. So we go out as sin bearers, like Christ, to take upon ourselves the sins of the world by listening to people and truly allowing it into our heart so people know that they're truly being heard. And then, because of our union with Christ, we unite that with him in prayer, and we offer it to the Father, with Him at Mass, in particular, right through him, with him, in him, in the unity, the unity of the Holy Spirit. I offer you, Lord, the body, blood, soul and divinity of your dearly beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world, for the sake of his sorrowful. Passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world. That prayer that Christ Himself taught us through the Divine mercy devotion, the new devotion of our day, this second prayer that Christ has taught us after teaching us the Our Father, the Divine mercy chaplet. And it is again a prayer to our Father, the One who sent Jesus to us. So when I go to someone's home and then they. I don't want to say as if they do it uncharitably. They do not. They do it with gratitude and even reverence for the purpose of the priesthood. But they do place their sins upon you. But I don't receive it with bitterness or resentment. I try to love Christ more. Love him first and listen to this story and look at this person through Christ, with Christ and in Christ. And then I can see what's happening here. Union, salvation. That's why in the second reading from yesterday's Mass, St. Paul says, if we have died with Christ, we will live with Him. If I say no to that invitation to be received, no to them wanting to share with me some of their sins and their hurts and their past and their problems, if I don't die with Christ, I will not live with him. But if I die with Him, I live with Him. And I didn't say this yesterday, but I want to say this. Let me just look outside for a second because getting picked up here in a few minutes we got to go to a meeting some people for the parish here. I like the way the first reading reminds us of how Jesus would stop by Bethany to be received by Martha, Mary and Lazarus. This is Old Testament times. Elisha being received by a woman of influence in a place called Shunem. The reason I mentioned Lazarus, though, is Christ was talking to us today about sharing in his life. And St. Paul saying, if we die with him, we will live with Him. Lazarus received Jesus all the time in Bethany. And what did Lazarus receive for receiving Christ? Christ's reward. And what is Christ's reward? The resurrection, Eternal life. Lazarus was raised as a sign to us that those who die for receiving Christ and by receiving Christ will live with him. Even as we were amazed at the fact that Jesus called Lazarus forth from the tomb, he taught us by saying to us, through Martha, I am the resurrection and the life. It is my own life that Lazarus is sharing as I raised him from the dead. Like that. Does that make sense? So you know, so when a child, as many were this weekend, is brought to the font for baptism. And we say, and we pray that all those who've been Buried with Christ into his death may rise again to life with him who lives and reigns forever and ever. It begins relationship with Christ. We give the parents a candle and we say, this is like the gift of faith. Your child receives today a light to illuminate her intellect and a warmth to fill her heart with love as she lives the truth in this cold world, the relationship with Christ. May your child always look at everything with Jesus. And may your child love Jesus more than everyone so that she can love everyone in truth.
- [19:58]
B
You know,
- [20:00]
A
Remember, it's not instead, do you love me? Instead it is, do you love me more? Remember, Jesus asked Peter this after Jesus is raised from the dead and he appears to Peter on the shores, Peter swims to him, I love you, I love you, I love you and Jesus, do you love me more than these? If you love me firstly, Peter, you'll be able to feed my sheep, tend my lambs, tend my sheep. If you love me firstly, you'll be able to be a good leader of your brother apostles. Do you love me more than these? Not instead of these, but firstly and even in a sense, therefore, more. I mentioned, like when we come to church on Sunday, practicing the faith means practicing, loving him more, loving Christ more, More than the game or whatever the coach says we gotta do this Sunday, or loving him more than the phone and what it wants to tell me I gotta mindlessly binge instead of going to church or whatever, more than my own comfort. I'm loving you more, Jesus, for the sake of even knowing how to look at my life at all. Monday through Saturday will make no sense to me at all unless I love you first on Sunday, you know, that kind of thing. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say. And I have this piece of paper here before me with the readings. I take my readers off, I cannot see the writing. And no matter how I meditate, what kind of techniques or whatever I do to my diet or how I exercise, I take these readers off. I cannot see these words. So there's such a thing as limitation, something I am powerless to fix or correct myself. But I put the readers on, and then I can see clearly my sin is something similar. You know, I. On my own, no matter how I meditate, what kind of diet I give myself to, or how I exercise, I cannot overcome sin on my own. I cannot see the human person clearly without Christ, no matter how hard I try. But if I look at things as I put the readers back on with Christ by his grace, in a way no more easily understandable to me as how this bent glass helps my eyes to see in a way that is a great mystery. I can see clearly. Yeah.