#5 "The Father's Blessing" - Fr. John Riccardo

father we thank you for the many graces that have already happened this day for the freedom that you've brought to countless ones of us for the eyes to see for the capacity to know who it is that's trying to hold us bound in so many different ways for the authority and the power to come against him father we thank you for all that Jesus has done for us by his self offering on the cross the victory that he has won the defanging of the Dominion of sin and death Lord we ask now that you would continue to be gracious to us that the Spirit who dwells in us would continue to help us to come to know you who are first in the order of love help us to know that you are a good father that you know us by name that you delight in us lord I pray especially for those of us who are here who have a deformed image of you perhaps because of our own father's here on earth perhaps because of clergy or some other figure and authority in the church holy spirit help us to see and to know the Father and that he is loved and we make this prayer through Jesus our Lord amen someone just came to some of us standing at the back and said I feel so loved I pray that's true for a lot of you right now that is exactly the point and I can't think of any better way to go into the final key than to say that that is exactly what God wants to have happen for us to experience his love not his tolerance not his acceptance not his okay fine you can come in his love and his goodness and his graciousness to us let me put this image up real quick if I can not that one the one I'm sorry the one of the icon you have the icon of the resurrection there you go so maybe you can see that maybe this is familiar to many of us maybe it's not in the in the Western Church the Latin Church as we get ready for Holy Week and Easter we tend to often to have our focus on the crucifixion we do we do the cross really well we tend not to do Easter very well other than you know Cadbury eggs and white but like I get the passion I don't have a lot of experience of the resurrection but our Eastern brothers and sisters this is one of the favorites if not the favorite image for them it's the Anastasis or the resurrection of Jesus I'll say something about this in a minute I'm going to leave this up here not as a backdrop for us though but because I want this to be the image that we look at as we listen so for those of us who don't know much about icons icons aren't art icons are windows and windows into a reality that's why they're written they're not drawn they're not painted they're written they're written in a particular way so people often look at icons and go well that's not quite right you know anatomically or whatever that's not the point the point is to be a window into a reality this is intended to be a window into the reality that is the liberation of hell so we began the day by saying that if there's a word for me anyway that Unbound is all about it's about power and many of us so many of us have an image of Jesus which is he's kind and he's good but I just don't know that he's gonna be able to come through Jesus is all caps L o AR D he's Lord he reigns he has hidden himself in human flesh but he did that for a purpose which have you come here on Holy Thursday maybe you'll hear about but he's Lord and this icon perhaps more than any that I know depicts the lordship of Jesus he is trampling on the gates of hell that's what he came to do both to reconcile us to Father but then to go to battle against this Dominion that's out there so I just want us to have that yeah up and we can use that as a way into this reality of the father's blessing I have a friend of mine who's a Baptist minister who's unfortunately he's been suffering from paralysis and more or less the inability to talk for the better part of the last 15 years he's one of the greatest preachers I've ever known in my life some of you might know Michael Van Horn he used to be the pastor of Trinity Baptist Church he used to have a sign he wanted to put a sign outside that said serving the Catholic Church for 15 years because Michael had a capacity to draw people who were lapsed Catholics to his church and then he would send them back to the Catholic Church he was just a remarkable guy one of these Baptist ministers with a really strong liturgical tradition and devotion who got the faith one Holy Catholic and apostolic better than most Catholics have ever known he was a great great preacher and then he had a sickness Ceti years ago and they thought he had the flu he didn't have the flu he had some horrible virus and it left him more or less in mobile when he can't speak so please pray for Michael he lives trapped in his mind he can answer in one word sentences and so I saw him some time back and I said Michael so everything that I'm saying right now you hear right right and all the thoughts that you've had and all the capacity to think it's it's still there right right you just can't talk right I can't imagine that and I can't imagine what God's using this man to do in redemptive suffering who has such a capacity to preach but instead is living the passion as he is rendered more or less mute anyway Michael gave an image one time which i think is just one of the greatest images in a window into what it is that we want to talk about with receiving the father's blessing so he was trying to describe baptism and he said this way he said imagine growing up in a in a dysfunctional home which for some of us is pretty easy to imagine there's verbal abuse there's physical abuse plates fly languages course the result of that the structure the household means the the tension between not only you and the parents is present but the tension between the siblings is present it just kind of gets into the blood and so home is an awkward place to be and so what do you do you do everything you can to stay out of the house you sleep fitfully you wake up and you bounce out of bed and you run to school and then after school you get involved in everything you can so that you don't have to go home and then you come home late you hate summer actually you love summer because it's light so long you hate winter because it's dark so early and you have to come home earlier and when you come home it means you want to sneak into the house because you hope to go unnoticed and then it all starts all over again and across the street from you lives another family of whom you are at least jealous if not envious because every night as you lie in bed trying to sleep but can't because of all that's being said in the house you can hear right across the street the father playing with his children and there's laughter and there's joy and you can see outside the interaction that they have between one another and then they go inside when it gets dark finally and they go to bed and this goes on for years and then one day while you're the only person home there's a knock on your door and you go down you open up the door and it's the father from across the street and he looks at you and he says Kathy would you like to come live with us and you don't pack you just run across the street we've talked a lot today father Pierre said it John said it I said it at the beginning about these two dominions that may or may not have been the home that you grew up in a lot of us were blessed with great moms and dads and great examples of marriage and family life some of us were not those of us who were not blessed with that can't fathom what it's like to live in a household that's calm and loving and joyful those of us who grew up in a household that was calm and loving and joyful we can't fathom what our brothers and sisters experienced who didn't live that cuz those years shape everything for us most of the things that we're talking about back there most of the things that I talk about in confession as a confessor and a confess see most of the things I talk about in my office and counseling have to do with things that happened when we still lived under our parents roof both the positive and the negative and the negative left in some of us amazingly intense scars but even if that wasn't the case for you as much as anything out of today I pray we'll leave here with a deeper understanding of the fact that there are really only those two houses we've been calling them dominions we either live in the father's house or we have lived in a tyrants house that's the situation of the human race as a result of the fall that John described earlier every single one of us was born into a race which is held hostage that is the human condition it's why faith isn't just a nice extra it's why faith saves because we were we were we sold ourselves into this slavery and we can't get out as John talked about some of us realize this and others of us perhaps are seeing it today for the first time in a newer way how do I get from one house to the other how does it happen or who is it who comes knocking on the door that's Jesus that's how I get there I get there by this and in that passage in Colossians 1 which father peer mentioned and which I mentioned at the beginning do we have that can we put that back up again just so we can see it Colossians 1:13 2:14 this is kind of like the the bookends of the day if you will or the two pieces of bread with all the meat in between he has delivered us from the Dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son in whom we have Redemption the forgiveness of sins who is the he it's not Jesus it's the father right it must be he's transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved son Jesus can't transfer us into his own kingdom he the Father has delivered us from the Dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son in whom we have Redemption the forgiveness of sins this is so important just to sit with for a moment because again things like I'm about to say sound silly when we say them out loud but the realities or the lies they lurk in so many of us that it's important to expose it so many people who come to church forget the pagans those of us who come to church we have an image of the relationship between the father and the son which goes something like this this is the good God when he is appeasing the angry God how many of us know the scripture God is love right so the Greek is ho theos God is love that is always God the Father God the Father is love it doesn't mean the Sun and the spirit aren't it's just that within the Trinity there is an order to love and first in the order of love is the father so God is a good what we sing that song so often here because it is so not believed by so many of us we don't know that God is a good father because we have given in to the lie that he's not that he's angry that he's waiting to somehow see me mess up so he can punish me but God is a good father and he has sent his son huh the Trinity is involved in our Redemption it's a it's a divine arrangement to between all of them it's not like the father said here's another way this can get deformed ok the father says ok son you go and suffer for them go do that this is an arrangement between the three persons they are all involved in our Redemption and so the father sends his son to get us from this house across the street to this house from this Dominion and it is a Dominion people it's the explanation for why we struggle it's the reason why the things I want to do I don't do and the things I hate I end up doing because my small as sin is a collaboration with a cooperation with capital S in the kingdom of sin the household that I grew up in until the Spirit of God came into my life with me so Jesus has come to transfer me to give me a new address his father Peter put it let's go back to the icon the reason I think that so many of us have a hard time with God is because so many of us have a hard time with us we imagine God is something like we are we love you we do exactly what Jesus said right love your neighbor as you love yourself that's more or less what most of us do we don't love ourselves all that much and we treat our neighbor accordingly we have extraordinarily unrealistic demands about ourselves and we have extraordinarily unrealistic demands about each other we expect ourselves to be flawless and of course we're not and we expect each other to be flawless and we're not and so part of the challenge for so many of us is the question of identity for the peer talked about that our identity gets wrapped up in all sorts of different things and I think identity is the single biggest root cause for most of our struggles I know it is for mine and whether I'm in a confessional or in my office it's true for most of us so many of the things that we do individually we do because of our insecurities we dress the way we dress we look the way we look we drive what we drive we want to live where we live we are so so many of us are so concerned with what people think of us and that's a direct result from the fact that we just don't know who we are and so there isn't anybody here who doesn't care what people think about others we all do and in a certain sense that's right but in a certain sense that's wrong because it means we can be more concerned with what others think about us then we think about what God thinks of us in the moment I know what God thinks to me all of a sudden I really don't care what you think of me no he's not in the same way and that's what God wants to give us that's the freedom that comes from the father's blessing so st. Ignatius the founder the Jesuits would say that the God teaches not so much from A to B to C to D to e as he teaches from A to B to C to D to E he just takes an issue and he just keeps going down as opposed to the way we do classes prereq okay move on to the next subject okay move on to the next subject most of us never get past identity it's the thing that we keep coming back to over and over and over again so I know it's true in in my case so let me share with you a little bit about my own life so father Pierre would tell you this or father Dave we talk about this a lot when we're having dinner and especially with the seminarians who are going through all the fun of living in the seminary right now and Seminary is a challenging place for lots of reasons it's rather artificial if you live at Sacred Heart you tend not to go outside which is really not good for you studies are demanding for some guys not so much for others that's okay but the worst part about seminary the most painful part about seminary nod your head tom is formation so formate here's the task of when you're in seminary you both study and then you get ripped apart it sounds fun right so there's a team there's a team of people who are the formation team and they're their task their responsibilities their fun little job is to sit down with you at different intervals throughout the year and to tell you all of the things Mary and you do this this this this this and it's really annoying and so you just hear which of course most of us don't hear growing up we should have heard that from our parents in love but we didn't we heard John he's such a good boy Johnny gets a trophy Johnny's gonna do anything he wants to Johnny's a great kid when Johnny was not a great kid and it would have been helpful to have heard sometimes you know truths about the things that I was doing character wise which needed to get corrected so all of a sudden you go to seminary you're 30 and that's all you're getting is all the things that you do which you were oblivious to more or less which put people off so by the time a guy leaves Seminary in his retained a priest though he may not have changed he is painfully aware of how he is perceived I know how I come off because I heard it over and over and over again this is what I heard I heard your you you give an impression of being aloof arrogant and superior and they would say that to me because of postures I had the way I would walk and a whole host of other things and I heard this for four years and so after four years of hearing this it was okay it's it's not just you don't understand me clearly something is getting communicated so that was getting conveyed here was the challenge for me I I thought it was absolutely insignificant and disposable and useless so I was I grew up in a great home with a dad who's a saint and a mom was not far behind and they didn't know a lot of the things that happened to me when I was grown up but four years and my life I got abused not by somebody in my family but by other people there were multiple people outside of my family and it happened at two different times in my life so there are some people here who were sexually abused when they were children and and those of us who went through that you know what that's like those of us who didn't go through that you don't have a clue what that does but that was me so I had years intermittently of being abused all of which summed up to give me an estimation of myself that when something like this I'm useless I don't matter I'm disposable I'm discardable no one cares I'm not worth defending I'm not worth protecting because the young boys were the 52 year old even now when the enemy tries to play with this the 52 year old mine knows if my dad knew my dad would have done something but the young boy's brain doesn't know that young boy's brain is inside screaming out why isn't anybody doing anything right now that's what was going on in my life you know you would never have guessed that from knowing me when I was in my 20s and my 30s or my 40s because I didn't want you to know and I because I am the way I am I tried to live a particular way of life and the result of living the particular way of life or doing the things that I would do gave off the impression of being aloof arrogant and superior when in fact those were the three words that never would have come into my mind what came into my mind was useless and unworthy now of course you add unto that my cooperation with sins so it's not like I was just somebody who was used father Peter talked about these entryways of the enemy trauma which is what we've all experienced more or less in here in some way or another trauma was my life and the enemy used as an opportunity to play on and he played on it and so that gave me in my own mind permission to do a whole set of things with my life and so I just started to add sin after sin after sin after sin I'm already damaged goods who cares and so the enemy just said fertile ground to till and to plant things and so remember that the enemy was named one of his name's is Satan Satan means the accuser and so he was accusing me he was telling me you're worthless he was accusing God saying he's not a good father or that wouldn't have happened to you and he's accusing all of you you don't care and you want to hurt me too so Karen was reading through those what got in on page 35 so flip to that real quick so I don't know about you but here's what got into me abandonment a sense of rejection betrayal and orphan spirit fatherlessness even though I had a great father but he wasn't doing anything for me because he didn't know anything was happening abuse anger you should have seen my anger before God got ahold of me fear insecurity here's one of the most perverse things from all this perfectionism and self-justification kind of a sense of I got to find a way to measure up now because I'm obviously not worth much sadness almost monthly I have the experience of looking into a cavern of depression and the Lord saying to me you know you don't have to go in there just just take my hand you're not to go in there but it's omnipresent still for me sexual distortion shame unforgiveness a victim spirit and worthlessness I got all I had all those that's what got into me that's it a quick glance so I don't know what you've got checked off but I've got a bunch of him checked off so if set of years ago I had a chance to go through and bound the first time and I can't tell you how powerful it was so I had we were bringing it here for the first time and I had a chance to connect with John before the the opening night at that time we did it as a Friday night and a Saturday a conference and so we were gonna start Friday night and so I met with John in the afternoon I expected it to be somewhat you know powerful I didn't expect to go through several boxes of Kleenex so people will tell you physicians in here will tell you that there's chemically two different kinds of Tears there's the kinds of tears that you cry when you pinch your thumb in the door and then there's a kind of Tears you cry when you get abused they're different chemically one has water in salt in them the other has water salt and acid in them that's why crying is so important gets the acid out well man did I have a lot of acid after 20 years of being a priest and so John just prayed with me for some time and it was remarkably healing and there's a lot left to do trust me but there was one image in a particular way which was just a huge powerful image for me and so he asked me at one point he says do you see anything and I told him what he saw or what I saw and then he says let me tell you what I see and I said okay and he says I see a young boy about the age that I would have been when I started to get abused standing at a doorway a screen door looking outside into a back yard and he says and I see a young girl on the outside of the doorway and he says I think the young girl is and I said Terez isn't it and he said what I said st. Therese isn't it and he says I think it is actually I used to hate st. Therese and will tell you why I love st. Therese no but she had a particular devotion to priest that wasn't because she thought so much of priest that was because she hung around them and she knew how many prayers they needed so that's why Terez prays for priests she knows who we are so anyway I had been spent in that summer just immersing myself in Terez and so he says I see this young girl is Terez she's standing outside the door and she kind of pushes the door open takes the boy takes my hand walks outside in the backyard is this tremendous figure just sitting there in the backyard he's he's both strong and endearing and joyful and magnanimous everything all at once and she points and he she says that's your father and you're safe here and something just shattered in me because I realized and mindful this is still I've been ordained for 20 years or so at this time even as a priest so much of my life had been something like trying to fashion something you know out of my life my work whatever things I would do in ministry anything just make something give it to God and go is this good enough am i okay now do I measure up are you pleased because so much of what had happened in my early life had given me an understanding of myself that I had to earn love because I felt so unloved does that make sense anybody here relate to that here's the good news of the gospel Jesus dies for the ungodly Jesus dies for the ungodly all of us wasn't a reward it's the way home and all of a sudden all these things that I had tried to amass of my life this attempt to win approval to measure up to be good enough to win the kewpie doll it just melted away in a way that I had heard in my head but in a way that I had never really experienced in my life before I came to know that my identity is simply this son or daughter and that's all that matters so what's happening right now this is happening see this is the breaking down the door of that one house and the grabbing of our hands in love and bringing us to the house across the street Jesus this is a great image to go home in Google and just pray with where you can see the details so he is standing on the gates of hell remember Jesus says to Peter I give to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it we we are so accustomed to thinking of that as a as an expression that means something like okay it's bad but no matter how bad it gets the church isn't gonna fall apart that is not what Jesus is talking about gates are not offensive measures gates are defensive measures you build gates to keep people in or out what Jesus is saying there is hell doesn't have a chance against me and against my church which is my body and that's what he's doing there he's busting down the gates and he's liberating hell and so he's standing underneath him you can see all these chains these shackles that people had been held bound with all the different things that you and I have come here with there come to know about they're on the floor now why because he's unlocked them that's what he's done by his passion and he has in his hands Adam and Eve sometimes it's more this one it's more but the old man the old woman that's Adam and Eve and he's grabbing them and then behind them are all the patriarchs and all the matriarchs from the Old Testament all those who are waiting to get home because no one can get home and he grabs them and he's bringing them across the street if you will into the father's house that is happening now that's what God is doing now he is transferring you now from a tyrant to a father that's the grace that God wants to give what's the best thing about the house across the street well there's lots of things right there's no yelling plates don't crash into the walls siblings get along belts don't get torn off and smacked against my face there's no fear of abuse there's a whole host of things right but there's one thing above all that's best about the house across the street the father that's the best thing about the house across the street see Jesus isn't saying to us okay you guys you can you can come into the house you're safe I'll protect you he's doing so much more than that he's taking us by the hand just like Torrez took mine in that image that John gave me bringing us inside and saying Tim this is your father and you're not just accepted here or tolerated here your cherished and your loved by name that's your father and you're his son or his daughter about whom he's crazy and this last key this experience that we want to offer to people is the experience of having that do you have the detail of Rembrandt's prodigal son maybe you do maybe you don't so Rembrandt's image of the prodigal son it's in there that I gave Chris if you can find it there's another one it's a detail so this is the painting that Rembrandt shows of the prodigal son this is the detail I always linger over it's the father's touch he's just pulling him in despite all that this boy has done that's what God wants to offer us right now as we go to get prayed with he wants to use the hands of the prayer ministers to be his hands so that we would leave here knowing our identity knowing that we don't have to measure up we don't have to be good enough the Christian life isn't about being good enough the Christian life is about responding to the God who is good and knowing that even when we mess up he does this so let's pray and then I'm just gonna send us off to receive this touch from the father father we ask in Jesus's name that you would do here and now what it is that we see in this painting but by the power of your spirit and through the instrument of the prayer ministers who are here today that we might feel in their hands your hands that we would all leave here like that woman just a few minutes ago who said I feel so loved what can we possibly give back to you Lord for all that you have done for us for being patient showing mercy for welcoming us home for coming to get us in the person of your son father we praise you that we means so much to you that your son would take it worth the cost of pouring out his life to transfer us from a tyrant to a father and so we ask that this would happen now and that we would know it not just in our heads but know it give us freedom give us healing give us joy and send us forth from this place in this conference eager to tell others about the God who liberates and who's not just good but powerful all this father we ask in Jesus's name Amon

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Length: 44min 4sec (2644 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 11 2018