Pentecost Thursday: No Joy in Mudville for Dustman.

Pentecost Thursday.

The Roman Station is St. Lawrence outside the walls, which is where it was in the Easter Octave on Wednesday.

In the Gospel from Luke 9, Jesus sends the Apostles out with authority to heal and cast out demons. In the Epistle from Acts 8, Deacon Philip is in Samaria doing the same.

For the rest, the remaining Mass Propers are like those of Pentecost Sunday.

I note in the Epistle, “And the crowds with one accord gave heed to what was said by Philip… So there was great joy in that city.”

I note in the Gospel, “And whatever house you enter, stay there, and do not depart from thence. And whosoever will not receive you – go forth from that town, and shake off even the dust from your feet for a witness against them.”

A common thread here is docility and acceptance of the Good News.

Where there is acceptance there is healing.

Where there is not, there is no joy in “dustville“.

The Lord Himself established the attitude that the Apostles (bishops and priests today?) should have.

In Latin, “étiam púlverem pedum vestrórum excútite in testimónium supra illos“. The Greek says, “kai koniortos“. In Greek, kai is a conjunction, a copulative like “and”.   It is also a form of karate associated with a particular kind of snake practiced in the Receda area of L.A. where the vampires pass by on Ventura Boulevard. Sometimes I just want to see if anyone really reads this stuff.  However, kai, the Greek particle, not the karate, can also lend greater force to what follows, which is how we get that Latin etiam that comes into English as ” don’t just leave that town but even shake the dust off your feet”. Leave it and forget it and the dust – whence all of them were made and to which they will return – will remain there as a reminder of what they lost: life, joy.

I am compelled to digress a little about “dust”. I could have entitled this “No Joy in Mudville” also. In Hebrew, the Genesis 2:7 verse that describes God creating man from dust reads (phonetically) “vayitser Adonai et ha-adam ‘afar min ha-adamah … then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground (RSV)”. The Hebrew word for dust used here, “afar”. It can also refer to clay, mud, or ashes. The name “Adam” is from the Hebrew word “adamah… ground”. Also, just to be entirely pedantic, that Hebrew more precisely reads something like “God formed dust man”.  If there are “super heroes” maybe we are mostly “under heroes” beginning with “Dustman”!

That places man in a tension between the lowliness of earth and the heights of Heaven.

However, when dust is in the picture, something is up. Or rather, down.

This points to consequences for all of us when we reject something from God.

What pops into my mind is the rejection of a vocation.

For example, say someone has a vocation to marry, but… won’t. That person will be restless. Say someone doesn’t have the vocation to marry, but… does… and then abandons the marriage. Sorry, can’t do that.

Say the same about religious life or about priesthood.

Yes yes, there are ways to deal with “being in the wrong place”.

In canon law there is acknowledgement that marriages at times don’t work. The innocent one of the couple could in, for example, cases of infidelity, adultery, seek a separation from the other (not divorce, mind you).  Canon Law even states that the bishop can be involved in this decision.  This can be misunderstood by the poorly informed as asking a bishop to grant something so there can be a civil divorce, which clearly is a misunderstanding of the law: bishops aren’t going to be involved in divorces. Or they shouldn’t be. Similarly, there are paths for clerics to be relieved of the obligations of the clerical state.

However, both of these are exceptions and exceptions are … well… exceptions. They, by definition, are not the norm.

In most cases the better path forward is to bear the crosses that flow from the obligations one has chosen, that come from choosing that fork in the road rather than the other, and apply oneself with humble perseverance for the sake of saving one’s soul.

Life is short and eternity is long.

This pretty much flies in the face of the squishy messaging in certain documents with infamous footnotes that present the hard aspects of vocations as nearly impossible “ideals” that no one can be expected to be able to reach. Hence, there ought to be even greater and multiple paths “out” of whatever hard situation one finds oneself in.  It’s a manifestation, I think, of a Christian-lite, one without the Cross, and maybe a dose of … wokey confusion about reality.  However, recently our new Pope Leo XIV subtly walked back that wokey corrosive ambiguity fostered over the last dozen or so years when he stated that marriage is “not an ideal but the measure of true love between a man and a woman”.

It is an aspect of fallen human nature to tend toward the easy path and to avoid the crosses life brings. We should be wary of this tendency. I do NOT mean that must always choose the way of greater suffering. But I think it is good to double-check oneself, even to consult, to determine what God wants.

Going back to Luke 9, when the Lord sent the Apostles out with His authority, He also told them not to take those things along by which they could possibly make a living or easily obtain creature comfort: they were to rely only on “the sending” … which was from Jesus alone. That probably entailed hunger and thirst during their mission. Not to mention anxiety and danger.

It was a harder path. But it was one which brought them their joy later.

It also provided an opportunity for people to be generous to the Apostles, in gratitude for their instruction, healing and the life of freedom as children of God.