Diocesan Cigarettes...

*Disclaimer of claimability: 

The litany of saints was prayed over me when I was ordained a priest.  Maybe this article is written under their snickering guidance.  Or perhaps they are terribly upset with it and rushing to their prayer stalls.  In any event, I hope to be keeping them busy.*

Hi.

True story: 

The parking lot of the church continues to be a haven for lethal potholes.  

The readings this week are difficult.  I do not feel motivated to preach. 

The music ministers need a visit, the deck needs fixing, the car is due for repair, i need an eye examination and new glasses.  

And amidst the sea-squall of things, oh - and a homily too...a question wells up...

- what is the significance?

The diocese is worried about lawsuits and restoring buildings.

Is 'evangelization' on the top of anyone's list?

Listen, I have the answer: We don't need another strategy, we need cigarettes.  

My grandmother Sadie Knox smoked cigarettes.  

I think priests, seminarians, and especially bishops, should 

get special benefits for smoking.  

And just think, if we all sat around and smoked together, that

would be a communal activity that could bond us closer together.

That's how they did it in the old days.  I wonder

if we might have been better off in some ways?  Self-care is good (and all

the rage these days), but imagine crying tears of laughter or pain into a good scotch with a trusted priest friend.  

You know what gets me?  It seems everyone has the answer to how to 'fix' things.

"The Bishop should do this or that" - yes, many arm-chair bishops reign over diocesan-living-rooms.  If only we could handle the fact that God has chosen and given us a bishop...one whom I happen to admire and believe in.  But even if I didn't, even if I wouldn't share my last cigarette with him - NEWS FLASH - he would still be Christ's vicar for our part of the world!  I wish more people 'got' it...namely, that 

meta-reform at the diocesan level is tied to personal-reform (ie. conversion of heart, maturity).  

I come to this scholarly and ecclesiastically refined question:

"Who will come, and light a fire under us?"  

The answer?  The Holy Spirit.

Seriously, if the Spirit had to do it today, 

would it be tongues of fire on the head...or flames of fire on the arse?  

Hey, don't get me wrong.  I am at least as guilty of inaction, resistance and fear as the next person.  I am reluctant to risk my reputation, instead clutching onto less important things as if they were the last cigarette on earth.  What I hate most - and love most - is meeting people genuinely given over to building up the kingdom.  O, these hateful lovely people make all us arm-chair philosophs look so, well, stuffy.  Instead, these have translated love for Christ into action.  O how it burns when we see them succeeding.  And yet they also encourage us to step out from the shadows and to 'let our light shine'.

I think our choices as a diocese, and a presbyterate are simple.  

Smoke or pray.  Work together or be disconnected.  

Show concern for our discipleship and fight for it, or go with the tide of self-righteous, self-help, self-religiousity that surrounds us.  

Take up our cross and follow Jesus, the Church, our Bishop, the Pope.  

Or follow the crowd, popular culture, political ideologues, music performers or enlightened individuals.  

Elisha followed Elijah.  

Saint Paul followed Jesus.

There is a cost.  

There is a great line in a movie I once liked, 

"Get busy living, or get busy dying..."

Well, the gospel seems to invite us to get on with it.

What will it be...endless posturing - excuses?  Frustration...

or discipleship?  

Discipleship allows us to overcome the bonds of doubt and follow Jesus without fear. 

As the song says, 

When my name gets called up yonder, I hope to be in that number,

when the saints go marching in...

I sing that song, 'when the saints go marching in' most often in a nursing home in Stanley.  I would be lying if I said the resident who sings it didn't strike me as inspiring.  She has given her last smoke away.  She knows where she wants to go. She knows the song-sheet she wishes to sing from.

Back to the potholes, the car repairs, the million things to 'do'.  

I am challenged to bring these things to prayer.  My life to prayer. 

To pray like I need guidance...and love.  

Without prayer I am just a fearful, unconfident faker.  

But with the Spirit, I am a son of God, who has nothing to fear,

because I have experienced God's unconditional love.

I guess it all ends here.  At the Eucharist.  The sacrament of God's love.

The expression of the Father's unconditional love.

We need that even more than we need strategies, protocols, cigarettes, or anything else that is really nice. 

We need Jesus, risen from the dead.

We need the Cross.

We need evangelization.

We need disciples. 

Aaron C. Knox

*For insurance purposes, the carrier of this article wishes to strenuously object to the referencing of smoking cigarettes.  Smoking is a semi-legal and semi-logical endemical pandemic that shall cut short the life of millions of citizens of this globe. ...On second thought, due to non-rational population-explosion worries, we rescind the above and thank you for smoking.