A Joyful Calling

It is great to be back with you after having been away for a couple weeks. This weekend, along with the usual Mass schedule, I have the special privilege of celebrating not one, not two, not three, but four baptisms. Three were yesterday morning, and one is today after Mass. If we took a poll among priests about which sacraments we most enjoyed celebrating, baptisms would probably be near the top of the list. A baptism is always a joyous occasion – always, even when it’s a little frenzied: if the family is running a little behind, or the child is fussy, or perhaps big brother or sister is squirmy and disobedient. The externals are not always perfect, but baptism is beautiful, not because of what’s going on the outside, but because of what’s happening on the inside.

I wonder sometimes if we talk about baptism enough, especially what happens on the inside when a person is baptized. We believe that, at baptism, the human being is spiritually remade: through the washing of the water, he or she participates, in a very real way, in the death and resurrection of Jesus. And from those waters of rebirth, whatever sin is present – original or personal – is washed away; grace fills our hearts; we become a part of the Body of Christ; and God the Father comes to love us in a wholly new and supernatural way, for he sees in us the image of his Divine Son, Jesus Christ. For that reason, we can say that all who are baptized are truly sons and daughters of God, able to share – if we persevere in his grace – in something that before would have been completely beyond our reach: the eternal joys of heaven.

We believe those things as just basic parts of our Christian faith, but if we’re honest with ourselves, I bet we’d admit that rarely do they enter into our consciousness. Sure, we all know baptism is important, but if pressed, we probably have difficulty in explaining why. Perhaps because it is usually celebrated outside of our communal worship times, baptism as a sacrament can sometimes be out of sight, out of mind. We may go years without participating in a baptism, and even if we are invited to a baptism of a family member or a friend, we might be tempted to treat it as a one-off – a joyful event, to be sure, but one which, after having been celebrated, is rarely if ever thought of again. What we need is to get back to seeing baptism as the defining experience of our life – not just for babies, or young children, but for all of us. We are baptized in a particular moment in time, but the foundational reality of baptism, the new identity that we take on in baptism, stretches beyond that moment to shape every moment that comes afterward.

Today’s Gospel gives us a great example of just what I mean. No one who saw what happened to Bartimaeus could have easily forgotten that experience or been tempted to treat it as a one-off. The fact that St. Mark names him is itself a clue that people in the early Church clearly remembered this man who had been healed by Jesus: they probably knew him and interacted with him in their communities. And certainly Bartimaeus himself could never have been the same; his whole world changed when he received his vision. Not only was he able to see with his physical eyes, but he began to perceive things anew with spiritual sight. That’s why the Gospel tells us explicitly that Bartimaeus too began to follow Jesus. He became the Lord’s disciple – his identity, the whole course of his life shaped by and rooted in that healing encounter.

Healing the Blind Man (1832) by Václav Mánes

You might say, “Father, that sounds great, but surely it’s different for those of us who haven’t been personally healed by Jesus like Bartimaeus was.” But to that I would say, actually we all have experienced just this kind of healing. How? Precisely in and through our baptism. Our Gospel writer St. Mark uses baptismal imagery throughout today’s Gospel precisely because he wants us to understand it as not just the story of one of Jesus’s miracles but as the basic pattern of conversion that informs the life of every Christian. Before our baptism, we were like Bartimaeus – spiritually blind, idle, not on the road to anywhere. Seeing our need, the Lord called out to us. And when we were asked what we wanted the Lord to do for us, we responded – either ourselves or our parents on our behalf – to be baptized. And then, through the healing waters of the sacrament, the Lord transformed our lives as profoundly as he did that of Bartimaeus – and, yes, even more so. And with that grace, we now have the ability, and the calling, to be the Lord’s faithful disciples.

Friends, the beauty of baptism is that while it happens once, the pattern of it continues to play out in our lives over and over again. Whenever our lives become a little frenzied – when we find that we are spiritually running behind, or find ourselves to be a little fussy or disobedient in our relationship with God – we need only be renewed in the grace of conversion, which we first received in baptism. It was through the healing waters of that sacrament that we first encountered the Lord, and because of that encounter, we can encounter him anew, each day – we can continue to call out to him, receive his healing where we need it, and like Bartimaeus, live out our joyful calling to follow after him.

Our Families & Our Faith

A few months ago, I was looking through the online archives of our diocesan newspaper The Arkansas Catholic – actually, The Guardian, as it used to be called. I can’t remember exactly what I was looking for, but I stumbled upon the obituary of Fr. Joseph Schlatterer. If that name doesn’t ring a bell, he was the pastor of this parish in the early part of the twentieth century. His grave is in the middle of our parish cemetery, under the big cross; next year will be the 100th anniversary of his death. Reading through his obituary, I got a little bit of a sense of this man who served our parish a century ago. He was born in Germany and ordained a priest there, eventually coming to Arkansas to serve the German immigrants who worked along the Missouri Pacific Railroad. Eventually, he made his way to the Grand Prairie and became pastor here at Holy Rosary. For brevity's sake, I'll leave it there, but suffice to say I was impressed and moved really by what I learned in Fr. Schlatterer’s obituary. I came away not only with a greater understanding of our parish’s history, but also with a deeper love for our community now and a deeper sense of commitment as your pastor. 

Remembering the origins of something can help us better understand our realities today. That’s an important thing to keep in mind, especially as we celebrate our parish feast day today. As the Catholic community in Stuttgart, we very much share in and build upon those who came before us, including Fr. Schlatterer and the community he served. What we do and who we are is rooted in what they began; and for those who will come after us, our children and grandchildren, and future generations, they will be shaped by what we do and how well we live out our faith now. Every year, as we celebrate the community of faith that we are, we also have an eye toward history – an eye toward the past, grateful for the witness of those who came before us, and an eye to the future, aware of the responsibility we have to provide them a good foundation and example.

Fr. Joseph Schlatterer, b. 1853, Baden, Germany; d. 1922, Stuttgart, Arkansas

All of this resonates well with what we hear in today’s Gospel. The Pharisees ask Jesus a question about divorce, a complicated issue both then and now. They ask the question intending to put Jesus in a tight spot, but instead of answering them directly, Jesus reminds them about the more fundamental reality of marriage and what God’s plan for it is. We hear about this more in the reading from Genesis. Among all of God’s creation – the earth and the heavens, all the creatures in them – God declares all of them to be “good.” The only thing that is “not good” is that the man is alone. And so God creates woman, not as a secondary human being but as man’s complement and equal. Together, they complete the picture of what human beings are, and in their union as husband and wife, and their love bearing fruit in their children, we see the plan of God realized: the fullness of life and love in this world, and a reflection of his own life and love for the world to come.

It goes without saying how important all of these realities remain for us today: marriage, family, human life and love. With the exception of our love for God, they are what we care most about, and for that reason they can be the source of both great joy but also at times difficulty and sorrow. But it’s important to remember these are not just merely human realities; they are also given to us by God, and so because they are rooted in our faith, it must be our faith that shapes how we live them out. The foundation of our parish – past, present, and future – is the family and family life: the married love of spouses, the relationships between parents and children, and grandparents and children, and also the relationships of family to family, especially here when we come together as the Body of Christ. In all of these relationships, the choices we make in how we live affect the larger whole – the way that we as a community proclaim the Gospel to the world around us.

If our Catholic faith shapes the parameters for how we live family life, then it also certainly helps us to do that as well. By living out our faith, by practicing it in the way that God calls us to, we also receive his grace – the gift of his love to strengthen us in our relationships. We receive that grace especially here at Mass; how important it is that we adults make sure to always bring our families to Mass every week, making sure that no other activity takes priority over the responsibility we have to bring our children to to Jesus, as he exhorts us in the Gospel today. We receive his grace in all of the sacraments, and indeed every time that we pray, as a parish community and as individual families. We also receive it via the help and intercession of others. Today we invoke the help of our patroness, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and also her spouse St. Joseph, whom we celebrate with the universal Church in this Year of St. Joseph. Mary and Joseph knew the realities of family life, its joys and its sorrows, including the difficulties of marriage and parenthood. Yet they also lived out those realities according to God’s plan and via God’s grace. They can help us to do the same.

The Baptism (c. 1940) by Carlos Reis

We also can look to the example of those who came before us who specifically provided us with the witness of faith: previous pastors, like Msgr. Janesko whom many of you remember, or Fr. Schlatterer whom I mentioned earlier; perhaps catechists and teachers who taught and formed us; and maybe especially our parents and our grandparents and other family members who valued their faith above all else, who gave us an example of how to live it out, and in doing so laid the spiritual foundation for our parish that we continue to build upon. We remember these people, and by looking to their example for strength and inspiration, God helps us to continue what they started so that we can hand on to future generations what they handed on to us.

Friends, on this our parish feast day, let us together pray for God’s blessings: for our parish, for our marriages and our families, for all of our relationships. In all of these earthly realities, may God come to aid us, helping us by his grace to live out his plan for our lives and our loves, so that through them we might fulfill his purpose in this life and be prepared for the life to come. It is ultimately there, in that heavenly family, that we will find the happiness of which the joys of this life are only a glimpse. May our Blessed Mother and St. Joseph guide us safely there. Our Lady of the Holy Rosary, pray for us!