10th Sunday in OT 2018 - The Good God is in the details... (farewell Mass)

There is an idiom you hear from time to time, that “the devil is in the details.” The phrase is usually meant to describe how it is often the small details of a task which make it difficult or challenging. The great violinist Itzhak Perlman might use the phrase “the devil is in the details” to describe the challenge of getting a piece of music just right, through hours and hours of practice. What separates an amateur from a professional or a great artist is oftentimes that painstaking attention to detail.

Well, in his new apostolic exhortation, Gaudete et Exsultate, Pope Francis wrote about how attention to detail is part of the universal call to holiness. Holiness often involves paying attention to the details and needs of people’s lives. “Let us not forget” the Popes writes, “that Jesus asked his disciples to pay attention to details. The little detail that wine was running out at a party. The little detail that one sheep was missing. The little detail of noticing the widow who offered her two small coins. The little detail of having spare oil for the lamps, should the bridegroom delay. The little detail of asking the disciples how many loaves of bread they had. The little detail of having a fire burning and a fish cooking as he waited for the disciples at daybreak.”

When I first read that passage, I immediately thought of our pastor, Fr. Klasinski. Father, if you didn’t know, is detail-oriented. “A place for everything, and everything in its place”, whether it be the sacristy, the church, or the rectory. If you’ve ever attended the easter vigil, you know that Father is practicing with his elite team of servers right until we light the easter fire, to get their movements and maneuvers just right for that most sacred of all nights.  Hopefully these last four years over in the rectory weren’t too much like a four year long episode of the Odd Couple: you can guess who the clean one and who the not-so-clean one was.

But, I believe Father’s attention to detail, is a lot like Jesus’. His care for the church, for liturgy, for the rectory, is because he cares, he loves. “A community that cherishes the little details of love,” the Pope writes, “whose members care for one another and create an open and evangelizing environment, is a place where the risen Lord is present, sanctifying it in accordance with the Father’s plan.”

Many of us can relate to the Holy Father’s words. When it comes time for the holidays, or having house guests, we pay attention to the little details, out of respect, out of love, for our guests and family. It takes a lot of attention to detail to make relationships work, to make marriages work, to make parishes work.

The phrase the “devil is in the details” actually derives from an earlier French phrase, “Le bon Dieu est dans le detail”—"the good God is in the details.” Christian charity isn’t simply a vague sense of love for all of humanity, it’s about making God’s love present in the concrete details of people’s lives.

And, I think the Pope points to Our Lord’s own attention to detail, to show us that holiness is found in loving attention to other people. For the Lord’s love for us is not just this vague sense of love for humanity as a whole; God’s love reaches the details of the concrete difficulties and challenges of every human life. God knows every obstacle we face, every joy we celebrate, every hair on our head, every yearning in our heart, and he wants us to know that he is with us, in every detail.

Jesus in the Gospel today speaks of the divided house of Satan, of unclean spirits, and there really is something unclean, isn’t there, of the ego-centric attitudes which lead us to ignore the details of the lives and burdens of others. So many of our own divided houses and divisions in our nation, would be healed if we were ego-centrism was replaced with other-centeredness.

I think that is one of the great blessings of priesthood. Priests get to share in the details of your lives. They are not always pretty: the details of the confessional, the details of grief and suffering and illness which afflict the body of Christ. They aren’t always pretty, but they are important, for God is present in them, inviting us to discover him there. And so many of the details are beautiful and edifying.

I’d like to take the opportunity to say that, after four years here at St Clare, I’ve been edified by your dedication to making St. Clare a vibrant parish. I’ve been edified by all of your generosity, especially the hard work I’ve witnessed in running the parish festival, the school and academy and psr programs, and celebrating such beautiful liturgies.

I ask for your prayers as I begin my new assignment this week at Holy Family Parish in Parma. Please always pray for your priests, daily, for Fr. Klasinski and for Fr. Cosgrove, as they seek to serve you with hearts of our Good Shepherd, Christ the Lord.

And one more request, one I’ve made before and I make again: parents and grandparents, encourage the young people in your lives often to prayerfully consider God’s call to the priesthood or consecrated religious life. Help them to be courageous in discerning God’s call, and to turn away from the voices and vices that obscure that call. The religious vocation offers the happiness I know you want for the young people in your lives—joy and fulfillment, a sense of closeness to the Lord and to his people, that nothing else can imitate. Our world needs young people willing to hear and answer the call, and when we do that, we’ll never be disappointed.

As Fr. Klasinski and the bulletin have mentioned these past few weeks, there will be a reception after the noon mass in the academy gym. Please join us if you can. I’d love the opportunity to say farewell to you face-to-face.

Thank you to all those who have dropped-off delicious pastry for us to share, and to the pastoral council for organizing the reception.

May the Lord in his kindness bless all of you and your families in all the details of your lives, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.