Implant a strainer in your brain.

Father Reto Nay
10th of March 2016
Chisinau, Moldova

Implant a Strainer in your Brain - Fr. Reto Preaches 3-10-16

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
When Christ speaks a lot, alone or with somebody else, and it’s very difficult to understand, really, what he wants to say, in which Gospel are we in? It’s always the Gospel of John, Gospel #4.

And today such a situation when Christ speaks after he has healed this man that has been lame many years of his life, and he goes on and on and on, and I personally couldn’t figure out what he says. So, we just stay with the last part of it when he says, “If you had believed in Moses, then you would also believe in me, because Moses speaks about me.”

Did you get it? And then Christ goes on and says, “Because you don’t believe in Moses, you don’t believe in me.”

First Question: What does Christ want to say when he speaks about Moses? Answer: One word – the essence of the exodus is, the Law. So, don’t forget that, ever: Moses is Law, and Law is bad.
If you want to read about the Law in the Holy Writ, then you have to read the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. These are the five books of Moses and they contain the Law. Because the Law is very long, we have an abbreviation of it, and these are The Ten Commandments.

Why did I tell you that the Law is bad? The Law is really bad for us because it tells us that we are wrong, that we should be different, that we went, “left” but we should have gone, “right.” A person who insists on the Law has a terrible life. If a priest speaks all the time about the Law the people will start hating him. So they have always to balance what they say, not to upset anybody. But nevertheless the Law says what we are supposed to do, and it reveals our mistakes. Therefore, we should get used to the Law because the Law really helps us a lot.
First and foremost, it shows us that we are not the ones that we believe we are. We have a terrible tendency to defend ourselves, and to justify every bad thing that we do. And Christians are no different than Atheists. There are a few things that I am certain about: That I am right and YOU are wrong, which is very comfortable because we can feel already a little bit in this world like God.

But this also has big disadvantages. We don’t make any progress. In 50 years we will be exactly like today, only with grey hair, so it’s a terrible thing to think that I think that I’m right and I don’t need anybody anymore if I do everything the way I’m supposed to do. I don’t need to go to church because I’m a saint. All the others make mistakes. I never do. I don’t need God, I don’t need Christ, I don’t need the Holy Spirit.

In other words, I am condemned, and I will never come close to Jesus Christ.

Now you understand why Christ said, “If you don’t believe in Moses, you will not believe in me.” If the Law hasn’t revealed your sins, you will sleep Sunday morning. You think Church is for those who don’t get along with their own being.

So we have to make peace with the Law of Moses. And we have to even start liking it. You see, when this Law discovers our sins, perhaps through the words of the priest, we may get angry, we can become sad, maybe frustrated, we can develop a lot of negative impulses.
Which impulse should we have when we are confronted with our sins? How about mercy? That would be another perspective. It is sometime difficult to be merciful to others. So, let’s try to be merciful to ourselves. So next time, when someone points out your faults, don’t get aggressive, don’t get defensive. Have compassion with your misery. That’s the definition of mercy: To have compassion with the misery of somebody else.

If you see that you are a sinner, don’t run away. Give to the sinner a hand. Lift him up from the dirt. If you can’t do it, then know that there is the hand of Christ that has come for that. Nobody will go to the doctor as long as he doesn’t admit that he’s sick. Nobody will go to confession as long as he does not know that he is truly a sinner. It’s possible that we get angry and hate our sins and still go to confession. But going to confession in that way is always difficult. I’m kind of, full of shame, and it’s not a good shame. It’s a shame that tries to let me not go to confession.

We must be shameful of our sins, but in a completely different way. We must go to confession knowing that we really need it. We must even say, “thank you” to our sins, that they give us a chance to go to confession. We can admit that our faults are wrong and bad for us. But they open up new possibilities that are far bigger than what we have lost.

So, if we want to celebrate the Year of Mercy, let’s have mercy with ourselves, with the miserable part of ourselves, because mercy is compassion with what is miserable. Let’s try to be merciful with ourselves, and stop any kind of thinking that is aggressive, frustrated, angry, sad, worrisome (worries come mostly from hell), let’s get rid of all of that.

So, if you want to be merciful to yourselves, then you need to buy a strainer. Then, you must go to the hospital and you must ask for a surgeon, and tell him to operate that strainer into your brain, so that it radically filters out all of your negative, angry thoughts, thoughts against yourselves and against the others.

If you start being merciful to yourself, that’s the first thing you have to stop: Stop your negative thinking! Stop your negative thinking! Stop your negative thinking! If you don’t stop it, you will be like a dog who walks around in the street and he feels thirsty and he sees water there on the street in a hole and he drinks from it. This is not a dog. This is you! That’s the dirt of all of our ugly thinking that is in us, thinking that we cannot always stop. We can have terrible thoughts coming up in our brain. That is not the problem. The problem is when you accept these thoughts, when you don’t filter them out and even worse: When you start speaking them out.
And when you act them out, that’s the moment when you radically ruin your life. You keep preaching to yourself, from morning to night, ugly thoughts about your neighbors, about yourselves, worries, angers, whatever is base and diabolic is permanent in you. This must radically stop! Today is the 10th! Write it down in your books! That was the day when you operated a strainer into your brains!

Do I tell you that there are no evil things in this world? Do I tell you that we don’t have to be afraid of death? Do I tell you we can be sure about what happens to our loved ones? Certainly I cannot. Certainly that is our penance that we have here in this life, and it’s our penance even here in this world, but this has nothing to do with bombarding us morning and night with negative thoughts! Life is bad enough! Why should we have a machine in us that permanently throws negative dirt at us? Why should we have all of that?

So we end up again with Moses. Moses discovers a lot of dirt in our lives, and a lot of mistakes will be made visible through the Law that he has given to us. From Day 1 we will receive these things with love and mercy. We will know that we need to believe in Moses in order to believe in Christ, because Moses tells us which gifts we have to bring to Christ.

It’s our sins. They were bad and frustrating, but since we know that Christ loves them, they have become, “nice.” We have a lot of worries in our lives, justified worries. I don’t want to tell you that everything is fine. It is not! But these worries have also a higher vocation. Bring them to Christ! His hands are open for them! From that moment on, the worries can’t be worries anymore.

I don’t tell you that you don’t have many defects in your personal life and character. It’s wonderful that you have them. It’s a misery that you don’t admit them. But these are the things that Christ expects from you. He doesn’t want that you are God. HE is God! You must bring him something that he doesn’t have. That’s how it’s done when you give gifts. And this will all be possible once you can look at the negative, worrisome sides of your life with mercy, and when you know where you can bring all of that stuff that is bad and ugly in your life: The perfect place is the confessional.

You have gone to confession so far, I guess? Many of you didn’t go with great pleasure. From now on, 10 of March, you will go with pleasure to confession because you will meet Christ there and he accepts your gifts and he turns dirt into gold and the priest will have to tell you, “Please don’t come more than once every two weeks because I have others that like to come to confession.”

That’s the whole story from Moses to Jesus Christ. And don’t forget the strainer.
In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.