{"id":6231,"date":"2024-05-15T10:30:02","date_gmt":"2024-05-15T14:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/?p=6231"},"modified":"2024-05-15T10:30:08","modified_gmt":"2024-05-15T14:30:08","slug":"hold-your-horses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/hold-your-horses\/","title":{"rendered":"Hold Your Horses!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

May 12, 2024; Acts;1, 1-11; Ascension<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I was growing up\u2014actually when I was the same age as the children making their first communion here today\u2014my favorite possession was a record player. Now, people don\u2019t use record players much anymore. So for those of you who don\u2019t know about them, they are an old way of listening to music. There is a turntable that goes round and round. Then you put a record, a flat disk with grooves on it, onto the turntable, and it goes round and round. Then you carefully pick up an arm with a needle in it, and you place it on the edge of the record. As the needle moves in the grooves, you hear music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I loved my record player. But there was one problem: my little sister Margie. She was three years younger than me, so when I was eight, she was five. And she wanted to play with my record player<\/em>. Now everybody in this church knows that a five-year-old is too little to play with a record player! But she kept asking me, \u201cGeorge, can I play with your record player?\u201d And I would say, \u201cNo, you\u2019ll break it. You\u2019re too little. Keep your hands off my record player!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, one day I came home from school, and I heard music coming out of my bedroom. When I opened the bedroom door, there was Margie playing a record on my record player. She smiled at me and said, \u201cSee, I can do it.\u201d \u201cOut,\u201d I said, \u201cGet out of my bedroom!\u201d Then, of course, I went straight to my mom: \u201cMom, Margie\u2019s playing with my record player. She doesn\u2019t know what buttons to push. She could scratch the records. She could break it. She could ruin everything. You have to stop her, now!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t know if your mother ever used sayings or expressions to make a point. But my mother did. And here is the expression she used when I went to complain about my sister. She said \u201cGeorge, hold your horses. Hold your horses!<\/em>\u201d When I first heard this, I didn\u2019t know what she was talking about, because I didn\u2019t have any horses. (I did ask for a pony for my birthday, but that is a different story.) But hold your horses means, \u201cCalm down! Don\u2019t jump on a horse and ride away. Be quiet and still, and we can work this out.\u201d And that\u2019s what my mom said to me: \u201cGeorge, hold your horses. Your record player is not broken. The records are not scratched. I will talk to Margie. We will put your records up on a shelf where she can\u2019t reach them. We can make all of this good.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In today\u2019s first reading, Jesus tells the apostles to hold their horses. They are anxious to go out and spread the good news to the whole world. But Jesus says, \u201cWait. Calm down. Stay in Jerusalem until you receive the Holy Spirit. With the Holy Spirit\u2019s power, you can face whatever comes.\u201d There are times when Jesus asks us to hold our horses. It can be when something bad happens to us and we become upset, when there is a problem in our family, a health issue, when we lose someone that we love. Jesus says, \u201cCalm down. Take a breath. Know that I am with you, and because I am with you, we will face the future together, day by day.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is, of course, the gift that we receive in the Eucharist. In the Eucharist Christ comes to dwell with us. And when Christ is with us, we can face our problems calmly and with confidence. So, as these children make their First Communion today, let it be a reminder to us of what we have received: the very presence of Christ in our life. With Christ there is no need to be upset or depressed. Because Christ is with us in every crisis and in every circumstance, we can live peacefully in his love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Because Christ is with us in every crisis and in every circumstance, we can live peacefully in his love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5879,"featured_media":6232,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-homilies","infinite-scroll-item","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-33","resize-featured-image"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/files\/2024\/05\/horses-scaled.jpeg","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6231"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5879"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6231"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6233,"href":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6231\/revisions\/6233"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}