Counting Blessings

This is the time of year in which many pause to count their blessings.
This year we here in Southeastern Michigan (and maybe a few others as well) have one very special blessing to include in our gratefulness. It is a blessing unique to us and also a blessing that could easily be ignored or forgotten.
So, rather than risk having this blessing passed over, I want to draw attention to it, throw the spotlight on it.
Let us not forgot the great blessing that we uniquely have in our little corner of the world.
Let us not forget to count among our greatest of blessings the Detroit Lions!
OK - go back and read that last line again.
You are reading correctly, seeing accurately.
One of our greatest of blessings, especially in a year like this would be the Detroit Lions.
Think about it.
How many households and families were fretting the approach of the holidays, especially this year?
How many households were even questioning the feasibility of hosting a gathering, a family dinner, get-together?
Name a topic and it likely ran the risk of exploding any hopefully civil holiday gathering into a verbal tug of war or worse.
Talk about politics? Boom!
Talk about refugees? Boom!
Talk about climate change? Boom!
Talk about Church? Religion? Boom! Boom! Boom!
Find a safe topic? Go on and just try.
We seem to be living in a time when any topic seems loaded with potential to blow any situation into arguments beyond control.
Neighbors are divided. Families are divided. Political parties seem equally divided. Churches are divided.
And it is not just a matter of simple disagreements and varying viewpoints.
Almost every topic seems loaded and ready to explode.
So we could have faced trying to gather and talk about -- well, nothing really.
That is until the Detroit Lions came along.
Now we have a safe topic!
In our neck of the woods we can all talk safely about the Detroit Lions.
And there is really no danger of raised voices because we can all agree.
They stink!
What a blessing they are to us!
They have provided us with a safe topic for our holiday gatherings!
Just mention the Detroit Lions and everyone in the room will come to almost instant agreement.That one great disappointment has become our special holiday blessing.
They have brought us together in a true sense of unity.
We can all agree - They stink!
And that unity can hold . . .
that is unless someone dares to say,
"But wait until next year!"

Not a Stone upon a Stone!

A couple of weekends ago I had the opportunity to preside at Mass at the Church of St. Thomas the Apostle. Being in that place invited some reflections and looking back.
You see, this St. Thomas the Apostle is located in Garden City which is in the western part of metropolitan Detroit.
I grew up in the shadow of the Church of St. Thomas the Apostle. Only thing is that the St. Thomas of my youth was located on the east side of Detroit in the Harper/Van Dyke area - worlds apart.
The St. Thomas of my youth was a very formidable complex. The church was rather large, seating, I would venture to guess, upward of 800 at a time, Romanesque in style. A stately bell tower dominated the structure. The rectory was attached and also quite sizable. I am not sure exactly how many it could house and I am not sure how many priests the founding pastor thought he would have assisting him, but my suspicion is that that place could house a small seminary.
St. Thomas had a school - grade and high school, more significant buildings. The sisters who staffed the school also needed housing and so there was, in the complex, a convent, again of significant size.
The entire St. Thomas Church of my youth covered an entire city block.
It was truly a dominant presence in the neighborhood.
Actually, thinking of that St. Thomas got my imagination going as I reflected on the Gospel for the Thirty-Third Sunday of Ordinary Time this year. The Gospel is Luke 21:5 - 19.
Letting my imagination go, I pictured someone back in the 1950's or 1960's standing on the front steps of that old St. Thomas, announcing to all who were entering for Sunday Mass, "Not a stone will be left upon a stone!"
The day is coming when all this will be gone.
I can imagine the looks an announcement like that might garner. Imagine the comments!
The mighty St. Thomas the Apostle complex will, someday, no longer be?
Really!
Well, that kind of captures what Luke describes as he tells of Jesus in the Temple, announcing its coming destruction.
The people hearing Him could hardly believe what they were hearing.
This was their most sacred of places.
This was the great sign that God was, indeed, with them.
And Jesus was saying that it is all coming down?
Really?
But He was right.
By the year 70 not a stone was left upon a stone. To this day all that remains of that once magnificent Temple is what is known as the Western or Wailing Wall.
He was serving to remind us of how temporary all of our structures are, and our institutions, and our wealth and - well, all that stuff we tend to cling to.
Temporary!
Like the St. Thomas the Apostle of my youth.
Drive by the area today.
I don't know what you will find but I do know what you will not find.
The church is gone; the bell tower is gone; the rectory and convent and schools, grade and high, all gone.
That memory, those words of Jesus, this Gospel - all are serving to call us to look around and to realize and remember - all temporary.
These things will pass.
As we move into the later days of November even Mother Nature reminds us of that concept - temporary.
The leaves of summer are gone now.
Those warm breezes are bone-chilling now.
The lush green grass is browned and ice solid now.
Don't cling too strongly to what will pass with the passing of time.