Dear Friends,

Being human means that we are capable of addictions. At one time or another most of us are prone to addictive behavior. Often, these addictions are relatively harmless.

As many families know, addictions can be very problematic, harmful to our friends, our loved ones, and to the addicted person.

Addictions can be very obvious or very subtle and discrete. Addictive behavior can be public or very, very private.

All addictions appeal to our minds, at least in the beginning. We feel something and our minds make a judgment that what we feel is good or beneficial.

Our minds judge that the feeling good or peaceful or at ease and relaxed outweighs any real or perceived negative consequence or evidence to the contrary.

Food and drink can easily become the sources of addictive behavior. Mind altering drugs, legal and illegal, often, are used in an addictive manner.

So can sex, work, play, gambling, just about anything that appeals to our minds search for harmony become addictive.

In time, this is the key to the addiction, we lose control over the behavior, the food or drink, the chemicals, and our minds can no longer make independent choices.

Deeply problematic addictive behavior almost always causes problems in all other areas of our life and we cannot perform as we might want to or as we are expected to because the addiction now controls things.

As addictive behavior takes over our life, our responsibility is diminished and we need help or assistance to break the power of the addiction.

The Gospel story this weekend, I think, addresses a particular kind of addictive behavior, the addictive behavior of sexism.

The Gospel story for this week is story about the difficulty that men, religious men, sometimes very religious men, have with women.

It seems to be a chronic condition of conventional religions, an addiction of sorts.

Women are problematic to religious leaders, so they are covered, silenced, blamed, for all kinds of things. Women, in this addiction, always need to be second class, subservient, docile, and abused in mind, body, and soul.

Women are framed as problems to be solved, as it were, rather than mysteries to be embraced.

Tragically, this continues to affect women in the most violent and abusive manner in all places but especially in the overtly patriarchal societies of the Middle East and Africa.

Modern psychology and contemporary spirituality would teach us that women are the scapegoats for feelings of male inferiority.

There is a deeply seated anxiety in the hearts of many men. This anxiety causes doubts as to the integrity of and trustworthiness of life.

The Gospel story situates Jesus as a teacher, one who can give another frame, in a manner of speaking, not only to the woman but the men, as well.

Jesus does not enter the world of blame and condemnation. Jesus does not look at the woman as the men do nor does He look at the men. He bends down, releases all of them from a judging gaze. Gives them something else to think about and ultimately releases all of them to GO.

They go into their futures without the energy of a negative judgment.

The whole of Holy Week and Easter is designed to help us do the same thing.

Join us, when you can over the next two weeks for these ancient rituals, this liturgy of Mystery.

Peace,

Father Niblick