On the Packers, Bread, and Circuses

11/13/2025 ~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

Twice in a row they’ve lost, the Green Bay Packers, and social media is ablaze.

Fire this one! Change that! People who’ve barely or never played the game become sages and definers of excellence. Indeed.

For a bread and circus to work the crowd needs to be placated or the intent will soon lose its power. If my team wins, I win. If the object of my fandom is successful then I am as well and no matter the status of my actual life what happens in the surreal world of the NFL will, perhaps, make up for whatever is lacking.

The lines have blurred. This was deliberate so money could be extracted from the masses by placating them with an illusion of something larger than their humdrum lives. It all depends, however, on winning, on providing that dopamine hit because without it people might go somewhere else, do something else, and not invest in their carefully managed entertainment. Worse yet, they may step outside into the sunshine and fresh air on a Sunday afternoon and discover that life, analog and beautiful, is there to be had with no charge or paywall.

Enjoy the games. I have no problem with that because a little diversion can be a good thing. Understand, though, that it’s not real life but rather a carefully concocted fantasy and that nothing larger than a moment is really at stake and certainly not your emotions. Or your soul. The Super Bowl trophy is gossamer and, in the end, is completely without substance or meaning other than what we give it. A century from now hardly anyone will, or should, care so don’t let it get in the way of having a real life with real people in real time and in the real world.

Or you could just take a ride with your kids on Sunday which, when all is said and done, may do more to better the world than yelling at a screen where no one was ever really listening.

Homily, September 21, 2025

09/24/2025 ~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

Homily, September 21

As long as we’re children of this world we’ll be slaves. What we’ve given ourselves to will become our master and what we crave of it will become our addiction. Jesus knew this, and thus our Gospel today.

Because all of it, even the useful things of this world, are temporary. Honors will be forgotten. Riches will end up in another’s hands. Fame will drift from our grasp. Someone else will eventually own your house. And everyone will have their Ecclesiastes moment along the way, a time when they discover, like the wise teacher of old, that everything of this world is “vanity.”

If all of your hope, if all your life is invested in this world then any disruption will be soul rending and catastrophic not because it truly is but rather because your heart is where your treasure has been placed. Jobs, status, love, beauty, power, wealth all will be revealed as “less than” and exposed as temporary things stored where thieves can steal them and rust and corruption are always a possibility.

And then there’s death. Roman crucifixions were not just for the condemned but for the public as well, a way to stoke this ultimate fear for the cause of social compliance. Nothing has changed even today. The reality of death has turned us into soulless accumulators and people trapped in the moment. Our fear of mortality and the baubles it takes from us have often taken us far away from everything that truly matters for the sake of the illusions our world offers as patent medicine for the fear of dying.

This is why Jesus asks us to take up His cross and, like Him, voluntarily lose the lives we’ve been told are supposed to be in exchange for that which they were truly designed. We were meant to be children of God, of eternity, of a world so much different from that in which we live, a world whose values, meaning, and purpose are filled with the divine and whose citizens are transfigured by the light of heaven.

To attain this we’re asked to die to everything temporal, mortal, and less. This is a difficult challenge our Lord presents us with. Yet emptying ourselves of these lesser things creates space for everything holy, bright, pure, and eternal. Remembering this allows us to see beyond any given moment, even episodes of intense suffering, in an awareness that there’s so much greater, more, and holy available even in the face of death. If our Faith is correct you and I will exist eternally so what should we make of any given moment of this fraction of our existence and how should we live differently in the here and now?

The great St. Polycarp, when threatened with execution by fire, calmly responded by telling the authorities that their short fire would be his deliverance from an eternal one. He wasn’t delusional. He knew what they were planning to do but he was also prepared to take up his cross and give away everything because he saw the larger story behind the immediate, the greater reality beyond the moment, and the eternal life just beyond the earthly horizon. This is the way of all the great martyrs and confessors of our Faith and it can, and should be, God giving us both strength and wisdom, ours as well.

No, we’re not delusional. We need things of this world to live in this world but we do not need to be captivated by them. We know that suffering will visit us. If our Lord was not immune how could we expect to be? Still, we know there’s a bigger reality beyond any given moment, even the painful ones, and even death and loss have been transfigured to the heart willing to become aware of the cross in an eternal and cosmic way.

The rest of the world may see a cross as punishment, as degradation, as meaningless pain followed by empty death. A soul illumined by grace, however, sees in it the death of death, the breaking of the power of sin and mortality, and the glorious freedom of being resurrected to a renewed way of existing in this world, a way filled with the life to come and eternity.

This is the secret of how we can live and thrive even in a darkened world. This is the basis for how we take holy action in response to the hungers and struggles we see around us and within. This is how we become transfigured rather than degraded by the pain we see around us or the experience of it within. This is how we find life even when it may seem we’re losing all the temporary things our culture tells us to acquire to fill the empty spaces within where God should reside.

The real question is “Have we had enough?” Have we played the game and grown tired of always falling short of the win? Have we bent and broken ourselves into contortions for things we can’t keep? Have we given precious moments of our life away for that which is carried into the wind seconds after it ends? Have we had a moment when we looked into the mirror and thought “Is this it?”

Perhaps only in that kind of moment when we’ve given up our lives for everything unreal, unholy, and temporal and felt the emptiness of it will we even think of listening to Jesus’ words and consider not clinging so tightly to that which will inevitably pass away while taking up His cross.

And could it be, though, that when we do we’ll understand that perhaps Jesus was right all along and find, in that truth, the peace and freedom that nothing in this world can take away?

The Gentle Art of Letting Go…

11/16/2024 ~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ 1 Comment

It’s not something you want to do, to say goodbye for now to a long-standing friend, distant family, or an acquaintance over the years. Relationships of value are hard to find and tough to maintain. Yet go, sometimes, they must.

Not all problems are able to be solved. Not all advice is taken. Not all fervent prayers are immediately answered. There’s a point where the puzzle is no longer able to be solved. Sometimes the pathology is too strong. Sometimes, for now, the bad guys win.

This isn’t a trivial thing. People toss each other aside for frothy reasons these days. When the magic is gone, or the utility of the other wanes or age takes its toll. But sometimes it must be done.

Along the way and in a moment of deep pondering, you realize that I, too, will drown if I continue to attempt a rescue and that I’m not immune from burns no matter how much I wish to fight the fires. Where is the “Wonderworking power?” you may think. “Where is my faith?” “Should I not hang on just a little bit longer?” Yet deep in your heart you know that everything that can be done has been done and there is nothing left then to release your grip so you can live to love and care and hope for another day, so you, too, can recover.

Somewhere over the loud screams of guilt there’s a still, small, voice that tells you, even amongst the questions, that your release of the other is not into the void but into the hands of God. God can do what I no longer can. God can accomplish at precisely the point where my own strength has dropped off the charts. I let go of the one I can no longer grasp but in their leaving they may be beyond my weariness but not beyond God’s grace.

And then, into that deep pool of mercy I release the other so that both of us, as we fall into it, can be saved.

Saintly Words…

11/14/202411/14/2024 ~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

Homily, November 10

11/14/2024 ~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ 1 Comment

Homily, November 10, 2024

Who is my neighbor?

The guy ahead of me in traffic watching his phone, drinking coffee, and forgetting his blinker, is, according to Jesus, my neghbor.

The older lady who seems to be taking so much time at the checkout line, she, too, is my neighbor.

The keyboard warrior taking cheap shots at my faith and values from the safety of his room in the anonymous world is to be treatd as a neighbor.

The folks with the rainbow flag on their front porch, they, too are my neghbor and so is the one who struggles to decide what bathroom is best for them.

The young lady leaving the clinic empty of life but full of regret is, by the command of Christ, my neighbor and so is the one who couldn’t care less.

The politician who plucks the heartstrings of my prejudices with their words and the one who’s decided I don’t matter all that much, both are my neighbors.

Some guy on the street with a cardboard sign is my neighbor whether he’s telling the truth about his poverty or not.

The person next to me at church is my neighbor even if we’ve bumped heads a few times at parish meetings.

The one who hurt me long ago is my neighbor whether the pain was deliberate or accidental.

The inmate in jail, even for loathsome crimes, remains my neighbor in the Christian sense of that word.

Even the one who would destroy me if they could is not excluded from the circle of neighbors.

The list goes on and is as wide as the world and near as the person next door. Everyone the Master of the Feast has invited, everyone called out from the highways and byways, strangers, friends, enemies, victims and perpetrators, each, even if they don’t know it, even if they reject it, are neighbor to the truly faithful.

There are no exceptions, the world according to Jesus, is full of people I need to consider my neighbor and the list is pretty unconditional. The God who sends rain on both the good and the bad, the just and the unjust, calls me to offer, to the best of my ability, everyone I encounter grace, mercy, and yes, even the goodness I would show to a long time and trusted neighbor.

This doesn’t require us to always agree with or accept what others may do or be. We are who we are as Orthodox Christians and the vision of the world given to us in our Faith is wise, time tested, and full of healing grace for those who would embrace it. There are good reasons why we both value and share it even knowing that some may refuse it.

But the spirit in which we hold our Faith, the spirit with which we encounter the world and the people in it is what makes all the difference. We can become angry, sullen, vindictive, and even play the power games our broken world seems to cherish. We can become hard, insensitive, ungracious and unwilling. We can forget ourselves and seek, even though the Scripture warns us against it, to overcome what we believe to be evil in evil ways. We can objectify and walk past the suffering for a hundred and one reasons bu that is not who our Lord calls us to be.

The Good Samaritan tended to the wounds of the fallen with precisely the medicine and care required. No hesitation in the face of his wounds. No lectures about why the victim was foolish enough to be traveling alone. No yelling at the Priest and Levite for their failure to serve. Only oil and wine and a place to recover in a sprit of holy generosity and in our world are not such things needed now more than ever?

Jesus teaching here is hard. It’s profoundly counter cultural. To do good deeds for their own sake to everyone who has need is a difficult path to follow. To genuinely love without regard is a narrow path and few find it. It requires the emptying of the self. It requires the suspension of judgment, not to actions, but to the very heart of every person we encounter, everyone our faith teaches us bears the image of God even if it looks like that image has been mutilated beyond repair.

Yet striving to live like this, to live like Jesus, is the very substance of our Faith and contains within it an eternal kind of wisdom. Everything we desire to learn, every discipline we undertake to grow, everything we read and abosorb and struggle with is to designed to help us become something heavenly upon the Earth, light in the darkness, joy among the weeping, and the reality of the world to come in the every day.

And that striving to be neighbor in word and deed to everyone, not in a sloppy or sentimental way but in the pattern set for us by Christ, is what makes us Christian in the best sense of the word. It makes us humble and holy, keenly aware of the brokenness in ourselves and others but also deeply desiring the salvation and healing of everyone, even those we or the world may consider unworthy. It challenges us to die to yourselves but rewards us with the possibility of being resurrected, even in this world, to something so much deeper and better. It settles the heart even in troubled times gives a joy that no circumstance can take away.

Who is my neighbor? If you answer this as Jesus does you’ll change the world but even more you, we, and I will become the children of God.

Worn Down by the Anger of it all…

06/05/202406/05/2024 ~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

Such angry times, these political months, these “cause” months, this era when people are being coerced into hate so that others will rule or become famous or get rich.

Two things show themselves.

The first is that without some moral center, without some sense of transcendent vision, without God, we quickly, despite our technological progress, become little more than animals fighting over a food trough in the midst of a shareable plenty too busy to see the packing plant truck waiting on the outskirts of the farm. Without heaven we’re just commodities. When we curse God that very act expels the breath of life from us and the image of God is battered and bruised again and again.

The second is that if we just paused just a minute or two to ask “Why,” the walls would start to fall. That, perhaps, is the saddest part of these hateful times, that we’ve done it to ourselves, that we’ve made a virtue even of that which is killing us and stoned the prophets desperately calling us to become truly human again.

Somewhere along the line we’ll come to our senses again. Being conscious about God, whether as love, hate, or indifference is hardwired into us. Still the cost of finding our way back may end up being just slightly less than hell to pay and it all could have been avoided if we ensouled bipeds remembered Eden and did whatever we could to find our way back.

Rain, rain, go away…

06/05/2024 ~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

Almost every day the rain comes now as May bleeds over into June. It’s as green as it can be, and every place less than level has become a pond. Ducks are having the best time of all why the rest of their kin huddle in trees waiting to make a quick break to the feeder between storms.

Like the winds that push clouds across Wisconsin’s driftless area it is the time of travel for those who serve the Church. Some of the voyagers will be new, leaving home for the first time after the safety of seminary. The letters have come, and the assignments given. So many details and so little time. Each new Priest is a mail order bride of sorts and both sides of the equation are hoping against hope that the other will be handsome, smart, maybe rich, but at least nice.

Others with time served have felt the need to move on. Pastors are most often for seasons in the life of a parish, and each brings something for a time then another link in the chain needs to be made. Some few stay for decades, most for years, and, occasionally, some never find a true home, but there’ll always be a moving van somewhere along the line as even if you retire you can’t stay where you left. Both furniture and memories need to hit the road sometime or another and everyone who wears the collar has a moving van in their future.

And always the question in the transitions. Did I do enough? Did I make a difference? Is there a “Well done good and faithful servant…” in it all or just walking away with a tail tucked between your legs? Sometimes the answer is clear but there are moments when you never know. Only heaven will ultimately reveal so there’s nothing but trust to lean on before that Day.

Still, it’s good to be where I am now as the clouds slowly give way to the morning. There are times when I wish I had a hometown like normal folks, a stable thing where good, bad, or otherwise I would be deeply rooted and sheltered from the storm. The truth is, though, that no one really ever has that no matter how long they live in a place. Everything changes and only eternity remains serene. I’m a child of another place and, in God’s good time, I hope to arrive.

The Beautiful, Tired, Days

12/13/2023 ~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

Calendars are full. Tasks get added every day, sometimes by the hour.

Without measurable snow it doesn’t look like Christmas here in the Upper Midwest, but the planner says otherwise. Places to go. People to see. Tasks that must be done. In one sense its tiring and a reminder that I am in the autumn of my life. In another it’s blessed because each and every one is a reminder that there are people out there who still wish to see the holiness of these times, who still take it seriously.

Being a Priest, a Pastor, means never having Christmas the same again, ever. There’s a vast difference between celebrating these days and being the celebrant. Still, being the celebrant is how you celebrate, the gift you give so that God may have the glory and others can glorify Him.

Later, after the final services are complete and a quiet place at home becomes your retreat, you can take everything in. The fast-moving waters become still. Flashes of light become subdued. The constant need to be “Up” for everything fades away. Your gift is a phone that stops ringing and your own thoughts as you think of the people you love, wherever they are, and all the Christmases past. People long gone become alive and present. A child emerges in the responsible adult and the cold winds outside your door become filled with an inexpressible warmth.

That “after” is what makes all of the “before” worthwhile. The rest is what makes the exhaustion bearable. The dream is what makes the waking hours holy.

All I Want for Christmas…

11/29/202311/29/2023 ~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

Driving today. The sun is bright, but the air is cold. November in southern Wisconsin and the cranes are figuring out its time to go while the rest of us start to hunker down.

Thoughts of Christmas long ago. The excitement of the times. The lights over the street in downtown Wausau. The color pages of the J.C. Penney catalog where all the toys were. Hoping it would snow so we could make some money shoveling the neighbor’s sidewalk. Wet clothing from playing in the snow and the smell of my mom’s homemade fruitcake.

Back and forth I go from the past to the present. The present is busy, a working time for those who serve the Church. Arrangements, schedules, so many things to do. The past beckons with something simpler, more idealized, a world where people sang carols from the heart and it was okay to believe in Santa Claus.

The cold winter nights seemed so much easier then. Each one marked not the collapse at the end of a busy day so much as the progress towards that day, Christmas day. I discover in the autumn of my life that I still want to open a box with a toy inside. I still crave a piece of fruit cake spackled with butter. And oh, how I miss the orange in my stocking and the wonderful slippers my grandmother knit for us each year.

Christmas is a place in time, and I want to go back there, just for a moment, and be a kid again. I want to see family long gone. I want to be with my friends on the block where I grew up. I crave the wonder of those days. They were not perfect, but somehow, they seemed better than now.

Ah, the daydreams of a middle-aged man with a life of responsibility! My calendar calls and I snap back to work. Still, to be a child again, pajamas with feet, eyes locked on the boxes under the tree, corny movies on TV, and so much hope. I would do it again if I could. But, for now, there are only echoes and I cup my ear to hear them because their sound brings life to me, the pleasant dreams of older age that even if they seem sloppy and sentimental seem to mark the return of wonder, and how I need such wonder in my heart and soul as I keep on walking all the way Home.

Homily, November 19, 2023

11/29/202311/29/2023 ~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

Homily

November 19, 2023

Travel lightly, my soul, through this world.

Carry only what’s truly needed, there’s no need to carry more, and what weighs you down only burdens the journey.

Travel lightly, my soul through this world.

Each thing you own will, in time, own you in return and precious moments will be spent being the servant of what you think you need instead of what you must truly possess.

Travel lightly, my soul, through this world.

How many have pierced themselves through with sorrows, working day and night for that which cannot, and will not, endure. Finding this to be true how great will be the remorse of one who’s given everything for nothing, the gain of the world for the loss of the eternal.

Travel lightly, my soul, through this world.

The goods of these days, at best, are a shadow of that time which is to come. Yet even that good can be twisted, an end to itself. Such things are like a well with water enough for only a day, empty when the next morning comes and thirst returns.