Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

The Anchoress

Home
Catholic
You make plans; God laughs

You make plans; God laughs

Last updated on: March 13, 2017 at 5:01 pm by Elizabeth Scalia

You make plans; God laughs 2017-03-13T17:01:47+00:00 Elizabeth Scalia

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

I am on monastic retreat until the weekend, and have scheduled two reposts each day of pieces that some may not have read before. Comments will be off until I return. You might like peeking into last year’s Online Retreat

* * *

This was part of that retreat, “PLANNING BRINGS CHANGE”

Last Advent, at one Sunday Mass, the gospel reading was from Matthew 3:12

In those days John the Baptist appeared, preaching in the desert of Judea (and) saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!”
It was of him that the prophet Isaiah had spoken when he said: “A voice of one crying out in the desert, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.'”
John wore clothing made of camel’s hair and had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey.
At that time Jerusalem, all Judea, and the whole region around the Jordan were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the Jordan River as they acknowledged their sins.
When he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?
Produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance.
And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God can raise up children to Abraham from these stones. Even now the ax lies at the root of the trees. Therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.
I am baptizing you with water, for repentance, but the one who is coming after me is mightier than I. I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fan is in his hand. He will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

Rather a hair-raising reading, and when the priest finished it, he walked down the sanctuary to deliver his homily. This priest is fairly young, a great teacher of scripture (his classes are always packed) and while he is a lovely person, he always wears that slightly dyspeptic expression which is common to some Irish tribes. He looked out amongst us and pronounced,

“Scary John the Baptist!”

What followed was one of the best, most enlightening, instructive and challenging homilies I’d ever heard – it was fresh and engaging and as Fr. Dyspeptic turned and climbed back up the stairs, the congregation broke out in completely spontaneous applause. The priest’s head was bowed as he took his seat, and he did not acknowledge it.

You who are Catholic know that not only is applause – spontaneous or otherwise – NOT a common or popular feature of our liturgies, but there are precious few homilies that rise to the level of “really pretty good” at mass. This homily was exceptional, and the whole liturgy was energized and raised by it.

When I was mapping out this retreat, I remembered the “Scary John the Baptist” homily and called the priest, who knew me slightly as “Buster’s mother,” and through his classes.

I had planned a retreat on heat, scorching desert, overabundance and transition. I thought the hot imagery of Scary John the Baptist would be useful; I called Father and asked if I could steal the piece for our purposes, here.

“Oh, Scary John,” he said, “yeah, that was a good one, but I can’t give you a copy of it, because I don’t have one. I never write out my homilies.”

I was surprised; the thing had been so perfectly reasoned and built! “That was extemporaneous?” I asked. “I’m impressed. The Holy Spirit must have really been working through you that Sunday.”

“I learned a long time ago,” he said, “to just get out of the Holy Spirit’s way. I read the scriptures, meditate on them, and just trust that what comes out of my mouth will be useful.”

Still operating in my hot/desert/abundance mode, I wasn’t listening closely enough to that part. I apologized for bothering him, told him about the online retreat idea and expressed regret that I could not reproduce the homily for you, here.

“Well, if you want ” he said, “come by tomorrow and maybe we can rebuild parts of it.”

“Why don’t I send you a link to my blog first,” I said, “so you can look at it; you may find you hate the blog and don’t want your thoughts associated with it.”

“I don’t have a computer,” he said matter-of-factly. “They lied to us. They said the computers would make our lives easier, but in truth they’ve complicated things. They may be helpful but too often they’re just one more distraction; instrumentation that comes between us and each other, or us and ourselves.”

I laughed a little to myself. I love this man – he’s adorable and holy – but he can be such a crabass.

Meeting the next day we looked up the passage, Father read it and then we talked for an hour – a wonderful, instructive, engaging hour, and I took random notes, which looked like this:

– John’s scariness; primative. Unsophisticated and a little exotic. He is the wild man, of wild places, he is not civilized. There is in him no facade of civilization or society. He delivers a unfiltered message, one undistracted by the worldly things or the niceties. He disgusts the Sadducee’s and Pharisees who see themselves as more “nuanced” and sophisticated, and thus wiser.
– he is scary in politics and in person
– milk and honey – the perfect food because no animals have to die. John is not afraid to reach his hand into a hive for food; perhaps John’s wild exterior belies a peaceful oneness with created creatures, or perhaps wild bees and wild men understand each other.
– John eats locusts, which are all wildness, and have a connection to one of the great plagues. Metaphorically, this guy is so scary he “eats the plague,” and is sustained, not destroyed. Suggestive of great power and mysterious source.
– Jesus and John were delivering essentially the same message, but John was the isolated, anti-social and activist counterbalance to Jesus, who was at ease socially, and more diplomatic. John is the last prophet preaching the scary stuff.
– Scripture doesn’t say, but Elizabeth and Zechariah were older parents. Perhaps they died while John was young; perhaps John was even spent some time living with Mary and Joseph – or perhaps he ran off early to the desert. Did he and Jesus play together? Did Jesus learn early on to give his extreme cousin a wide berth?
– Prophets are holy; “set apart.” John was prophetic even in the womb, when he responded to Mary’s greeting and the presence of the embryonic Christ. Scary John does not “work” in society; he’s sort of the “necessary other.” We don’t know how long he lived alone in the desert, but he had to come to terms with his separateness early on.

There’s a lot more. My notes go into John – the last prophet – being a reflective corrective to Samson, the last judge, whether Quentin Tarantino based his character Jackie Brown on Delilah, the Zoroastrians, Syncretism, the Babylonian exile and whether Jerusalem is real estate or the place to live “within ourselves.” A far-reaching discussion.

“I don’t know if you’re going to be able to make anything of that,” Father said as I got ready to leave.

“No, this is going to be great,” I enthused, thanking him.

The the retreat began, and from the very beginning – practically the first post – my lovely plans about heat and super-abundance proceeding until a transition to cooling and sparsity must occur was left in the dust as the Holy Spirit seemed to be leading me, over and over, into reflections about openness and about allowing things to happen in our lives, and around us, instead of putting up resistance, or creating false limitations

I have tried, every day, to find a way to insert the notes about Scary John the Baptist into this retreat in a meaningful way, and every day, there was an obstacle; it could not be done, not if I wanted to be obedient to where I felt led.

“I learned a long time ago,” Fr. Dyspeptic had said, “to just get out of the Holy Spirit’s way.”

Maybe another way to say that is “to step into the path of the Holy Spirit, unencumbered, and let myself be used.” A homily put down on paper is a homily with limits. Once you have that paper, you feel bound to deliver it, and so you’re bound to the page, rather than open to where the Spirit might lead. You have put up a roadblock, an encumbrance, and put it “in the way” of what the Spirit might be trying to do. That doesn’t mean we should never write a thing down – or ever make a plan – sometimes you have to. But perhaps we should attempt to step into the path of the Intention of the Holy Spirit, and let it use us, regardless of what we may have planned. When we see a plan changing, we should simply bend with it, instead of trying to have our own way.

I had wanted the heat and intensity of Scary John the Baptist. Instead I got his quietness; his otherness – the set-apartness to which he was born, and to which he bent in obedience, even if it was a lonely obedience, or an exotic, misunderstood obedience.

Civilization, nuance, sophistication…they can get in the way; they clutter us up and create unintended blockades to the most primal part of our inmost being – the part where God speaks; the part through which – if the barricades are down and the lines are open – the Holy Spirit may flow.

I did not know, when I left Fr. Dyspeptic’s office, that he had set the whole tone of the retreat. It was not in the plan – not my plan, anyway.

The lesson here? When making plans, include within them a willingness to bend into the curve of the Holy Spirit, rather than fighting it; things have a way of working out.

He who binds himself to a joy
Does the winged life destroy.
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sun rise
— William Blake

Reposts by request

Previous Post

August 15, 2009

Assumption of the Virgin (Repost)

Next Post

August 17, 2009 Everything is different!

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category "Remaking" Ourselves 'Remaking' America 9/10 Mindset 9/11 trials Abortion ACORN Adoration Advent Advent 2008 Advent 2009 Advent 2010 Alternative Energy Alternative Media America American Catholic Church American Church American Genius Ameridolatry ANCHORESS BOOKSHELF Anglican-Roman Reconciliation Answers & Questions Anti_Semitism Archbishop Hilarion Ayn Rand Bad Mass Barack Obama Baseball Benedict Benedict & Islam Benedict in UK Benedict XVI Benedictine Bill Whittle Birth Control Blogs and Blogging Blogs and Blogging Bloodless Coup Bobby Jindal Bookchat Breitbart Bride at every wedding... Bride at every wedding... Buckley Bullies Bush Bad? Bush Good Buster Capitalism Catholic Fiction Catholic Vocations Catholicism Celibacy Chaput Charitable Stuff Chesterton Chile Chris Christie Christians in Exile Christine O' Donnell Christmas Christmas Gift Ideas Church Hates Science? Church hates women Communion of Saints Compline Conclave 2013 Confession Constitutional Stuff Conversion Crisis & Opportunity Critical Thinking Crooks and Liars Crucible of Faith Cuba Culture of Life Culture of Life/Death Culture of Treason? Dancing Death Dialogue re Islam Dick Meyer Divorce and Remarriage DOJ Domestic Terrorism Dominican Order Don't try me too high Dowd Dumb Democrat moves Dumb GOP moves Economic woe Education Egregious Harry Reid Elder Son Elder Son's Sweet Girlfriend Elderly Election '10 Election '12 Election '16 Election 2004 Election 2006 Election 2008 Election 2010 Election 2016 Elena Kagan Elitism Embryonic Stem Cell Research End Times? English language Enhanced Interrogation Erosion of Rights Eucharist Euthanasia Exorcism Extraordinary Synod Facebook Faith Faith and Reason Faith Friday Faith Perspective Faithful Friday Fascism Again Fascism in America Fatima FCC Feminism Film First Things Forgiveness Fr. James Martin Francis and Islam Francis in America Frassati Fred Thompson Free Speech? Freedom of Worship FutureChurch Global Pandemic GOP Congress Haiti Head Covering Health Care Here and Queer Hermits Heroes Hitchens Holy Spirit Holy Week '09 Holy Week '10 Hoo-Hah & BS Hoo-Hah & BS Icons Illegal Immigration In The Arena Interviews Interwebz Iran Uprising Iraqi Christians ISIL ISIS Islamic State Islamification/Islamofascism Islamification/Islamofascism Isra-El It's all about me! Me! ME! James Burke Jerry Lewis Jesus Christ Joblessness John Boehner John McCain John Paul II John XXIII Juan Williams Just Words Katrina/Rita King is a Fink Latin Mass Leadership Lectio Divina Lent Lent '08 Lent '09 Lent 2010 Lent 2011 Limbaugh Listen to Lizzie Litigious Society Liturgy Liturgy of the Hours Mainstream Media Manliness Marriage Mary Media Excess Medical Merton Michelle Obama Mighty John O' Connor Misc. Miss Ella Missionaries Mitt Romney Monasticism My brother S My Irish Aunties Mystic Monks Nanny Statism Nature NEA Neri New Media Newman Noonan Notre Dame NPR Stuff Nun News Obama Bad? Obama Good? Obama White House Oil Spill Online Retreat '08 Online Retreat Days Oratory Orthodoxy Our Hillary! Parenting Passionists Patheos Patheos Book Club Patrons Paul Ryan Penance Penn Jillette Philosophy PJTV Podcasts Poetry Politics-free zone Pop Culture Pope Emeritus Pope Francis Prayer Predictions Priesthood Pro-Life Public Sector Unions Purgatory Questions about Catholicism Quotes of the Day Quoting the News Race in America rants Recipes Remarried Catholics Reposts by request Retreat thoughts Rome Rudy Giuliani Russia Saints Sarah Palin Scandal Scott Brown SCOTUS Scriptural stuff Secularism Send in the clowns Serving up hot links Sexuality Sherrod Shroud of Turin Sisters and Nuns Social Entrepreneurship Social Media Social Security Socialism doesn't work Sports and Faith Stem Cells Strange Gods Suffering Synod Tea Parties Tea Party Terri Schiavo The 9/11 Commission The Catholic Answer The Constitution The Desert The Fourth Estate The Pelosi The Perpetual Adolescents The Rosary Third Party? Timothy Dolan Touch of evil TSA Tsunami TV/Pop Culture/Music TV/Pop Culture/Music Twitter Uncategorized Unemployment Unintended Consequences US Military Vaginal Musings Vatican Vespers video faves Vile Joe Biden Voter Fraud War by Litigation War on Terror War, What it good for? Why can't weeee be ... World Youth Days Year of Faith Year of the Priest

Select a Month August 2016 July 2016 April 2016 March 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 August 2004

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who said, "Come and see"?

Select your answer to see how you score.

John the Baptist Philip Peter Paul