On Tuesday of this past week I was listening to an old Gilbert & Sullivan song from the Macado. It's a comedy, and in the comedy there's this man, the executioner. He's not serious, but he says, "I've got a little list. They surely won't be missed." He's got a list of all the people he's gonna wipe out. But it's just a comedy; it's very light.

And I was sitting there thinking, "what can I say about the Trinity? It's profound, it's mysterious, it's deep. . . deep. . . deep. And maybe it'll be a very hot Sunday, so let me get going away from that. So I was listening to a song about a list, so I said, "Why don't I make up a list of things that would be missed, that you and I as believing Catholics with dogged faith that we would miss if we didn't have it in our lives. Make an adult list that would be missed."

And then the voice hammered in the back of my cerebral cortex that said, "Wait a minute. Anything you say on Sundays should be based on words from the Scripture readings, so I found three: In the first reading that beautiful ending: I found delight in the human race. So just those three words. Today you and I; what we can find delight in a list we might make. Since I'm the one you have to listen to, it's my list. In a less confusing world, we would be able to pool lists. And of course there's suffering and stress here, some of you are undergoing major suffering. But if you had to compile a list of things you'd miss if they didn't exist in our faith. I got 42; but don't get scared, I narrowed it down to 20.and then I narrowed that down to 14, and today, just 7. But the next time we're together I'd like to do the other 7. And I think some of these you might agree with me on.

#1 We take delight, joy, happiness out of "coming-back 'Catliks.'" And I say that word because I have a friend on the lower east side, a grown man, and that's how he says the word, "Catliks." And he calls once a month, brings me up to date on his life and his kids. Coming-back Catliks gives us delight, I think. My best friend in the priesthood has wandered away, but he's coming back. He's kept all his vows, but he worked so hard, I think it's like a lightbulb, the filaments just went out. He never took a day off, and he just wandered away. He said, "I've got to find something else." He never took a day off. So he wandered away until he'd been in a couple of ashrams in India, a classmate, my age. . . and he's been to a Buddhist monastery, been to a Confucian community, and he even came in the 60s out to California to Esalen and sat on a rock in his underwear and chanted to the moon. He's tried everything, and now he's back, and he said, when I saw him earlier in the summer, "I miss the humor and the warmth and the physical beauty, the lives of the saints and all that stuff; I missed that in those ashrams and even in the great Buddhist community. We have so much to learn from the Eastern religions-more serenity, more meditation. But," he said, "I miss the warmth, the laughter in the Catholic Church." And so, he's back, he's back.

#2 is Converts. A lot of converts on college campuses, especially where I come from on the East Coast. Young women and men in college, knocking on the door of the chaplain saying, "I want to know about Jesus Christ." Isn't that surprising, considering all the bad press we've gotten over the past twenty years? I want to know more, and they're coming into the Church more than they have in the past, well, almost seventy years. . . College kids. And they're really studying a big popular book among college students coming into the Catholic Church is by Creafed. And the way you might remember the name: you know how you have the expression, "I leafed through the book"? Well, I leafed through Creafed. He's a married man; he's got several kids; he's a college professor; and he answers so many of the questions of Catholics, "why do we believe this?" and "where did that come from?" on a crisp, funny, real level. And college kids are devouring books by Creafed. They're all in paperback.

#3 I delight in the sabbatical I keep telling you about. In 1992 in Menlo Park; it was a refresher course for priests. And I needed it. I spent three decades with Shakespeare and English and teaching English . . . don't drop the hanging participle and all that. This was good to get back to a refresher course . . . good solid Catholic teaching. We had professors from all over Europe and Asia with two PhDs apiece, that kind of thing. There were 40 of us in the class. 40 priests from all over the world, and these professors, about two dozen coming in on an airplane and he'd go, and the other guy would arrive in his airplane. And women, too, nuns, lay women and men. . . great, great, great teachers. Of the two dozen or so teachers we had who'd never even met each other, three of them half way through this or that lecture would put down the clipboard and say--Now I'm summing up a lot; I'm trying to make it in one sentence to sum up what these three people said-"you know, gentlemen," talking to us 40 priests, "probably the greatest breakthrough in the spiritual life of the 20th Century is the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous." These are all Europeans. The Bill Wilsons, the simplicity of the spiritual life of the Twelve Steps. And then I remembered a Jesuit priest had helped Bill Wilson draw up the Twelve Steps. And they sound like such banalities to us: One day at a time. Progress not perfection. But if these three super-brains, all separate from each other, said it's a spiritual breakthrough, then I think the simplicity of that spirituality is a help. It sure is to so many of us. And that progress, not perfection, that's a big thing in their program. You take each day at a time; you try to get better. And I know I told you this story before. When that happens, you just go into comtemplative culver and say, "Oh, well it's a summer re-run." But, about progress, not perfection, there's a great anecdote about Waugh. Evelyn Waugh wrote "Brideshead Revisited," which is my favorite novel. He himself is a convert, Waugh. And he was at this cocktail party a year after he became a Catholic in London, and they were sitting around Waugh, because he's very funny. And there was a lady standing outside the circle. Let's call her Lady Daphne Suitface or something. And she's sipping her drink. And after the crowd broke up, she walked up to Waugh, famous novelist, and said, "Mr. Waugh, I heard that you recently joined the Roman Catholic Dispensation. Is that true?" And he said, "Lady Daphne, I became a Catholic about a year ago." And she said, "Well, you're some advertisement for Catholicism; you've got the meanest tongue I've ever listened to." And he took a meditative sip of his sherry, and he said, "Oh, Lady Daphne, you should have heard me before I became a Catholic." Now, I like that story because it means he's trying; he's getting better, a day at a time. So I take delight in those three professors who invoked a program for sick, diseased people with a spiritual breakthrough for all of us.

#4 is this parish, really. The pastor's not here. This parish I take delight in. When I first got here. . . I mean, you've all had your share of sufferings and pains, but the warmth and the response, and the readings and the music and the way you come to communion, it's a great, great blessing, and I don't want you to take it for granted because

#5 is the way the media-by media I mean movies basically and TV--is finally beginning to treat nuns and priests a little more gently. For the past 20 years every nun and priest in the movies seemed to be an idiot, a retarded oyster, a hypocrite, a leach, but there's a show I'd like to recommend to you. It's a movie that nobody has seen. It's the best movie I've seen in a couple of years. It's about a priest played by Ed Harris, a first-rate actor, and the name-don't get it wrong-the name is "The Third Miracle." It's not some documentary about canonization. It's a story of a priest and work and research he's doing. It's a very, very good exciting movie and at last a priest is portrayed as sane and struggling in a spiritually good way. And he even stays a priest in the end. And about the media, the other thing is-so this is A and B-the other thing about the media is the way the media looks at the Pope-our present Pope. This old tired, bent-over man and all the good he's trying to do. And a friend of mine back in my first parish in Milbrook, New York way back in my first parish, he calls regularly also. And he's an agnostic. An agnostic! But he says, "you know what I like about your Pope? He stands for something. He says it's water in the desert to find a leader who stands for something, who's consistent. And this guy, whose name is Joe, said, "I don't know if I agree with a lot of the things he's said; I don't agree with him about capital punishment. But at least he's consistent. Life's precious from the moment of conception to the last breath that God allows you to take on this planet. That's consistent, at least. He says he's agnostic, but I think he's close to the truth. And I thought, of course, of Mr. McVeigh and the chaplain who spoke to us when we were studying to be priests. He was a chaplain in a big federal prison all his priesthood, and boy was he tired. . . hard job. And we had coffee with him after he gave his lecture on what it is to be a prison chaplain, and he said that some of the guys-one or two that he'd met-not many, of course, but they seemed to delight in the fact that they were going to be executed. They almost-his word-glory in it. Having inflicted death on others, they wanted it, as a kind of martyrdom. At the time I felt, "well, that's not what you're taught about capital punishment, but now I wonder, you know, the good thief, at the very last minute Christ is able to touch him, and the old priest said, "maybe I could reach somebody. Just keep them in prison-no parole-but my successors could touch somebody with repentence instead of merely another death. Anyhow, the media treats this Pope even when it doesn't agree with him with respect.

#6 are yourselves and a bunch of people I would talk with on Wall Street-those six years I was on Wall Street in that parish. There's a spirituality among grown-up Catholics now, which reminds me of Carl Jung-I know I'm dropping names. Jung was a disciple of Freud, Freud was an atheist. Jung was not. Carl Jung would believe in God and the spiritual life, and he said, which is a comfort to a lot of us, that it is only in middle age and later that one begins almost involuntarily to get a kind of grasp of the supernatural. It has nothing to do with your feelings, and nothing to do with I.Q. It's a grasp of another dimension which we call the supernatural. And Jung was all for that, very, very much for that. Hang on in middle age. And accepting things: you've taught me that. I'm just gleaning what that means: accepting a job that's tough, accepting kids who maybe don't come to church and are breaking your heart. Just accept a day at a time, progress, not perfection. Not resigned to something; we try to solve it, but a kind of grown up "I'm in God's hands, God's will just for today. Help me for today."

#7 are teenagers. Because I spent my life as a priest from 14- to 20-year-olds. And this is the only parish I have ever been in where the adolescent walks in and doesn't act as if he's just been consigned to Devil's Island. In two years I've only seen two teenagers who looked like the kind I always used to see back in the East. One was a young lady-and I haven't seen them since; so clearly they were visitors. But there was one young lady, and the usher was trying to show her and her family where they could get a good seat. You know, up front there were some vacant seats. And when he turned his back, she turned around, you know, and kind of looked at the whole place. Her look could have frozen the deuce out of me. "I want to be anywhere but here," is what she was saying. And then I learned in time it doesn't mean she hates you or she hates Our Lord or she hates the Church. Most of them-and you know this better than I do-are on a roller coaster. The only other one I ever saw like that was an adolescent boy, and all through the Mass he sat like this (gesture). I backed away a bit. All it means is they are on a roller coaster. You remember adolescence. I think it's tough; I do. I think it's very tough. Oh, they don't have the responsibility, I know. And one guy, whose language used to blister the paint off the class: He once said, "Seniors! I finally decided a lot of very smart people believe in Jesus Christ." And he's right. The best minds in Western Civilization believe in Christ and the gospel. So what I'm going to do is I'm on this-I'll spare you the adjectives he used--roller coaster--I hate you, I love you, my parent's a jerk, she dropped me, but Jesus Christ-he said without sentimentality--a strong Christ, not some wimp is holding my roller coaster, my life, my teenage miseries, and Christ is holding it in His strong hands. And coming from this kid who is not pious, I've never forgotten it. A lot of kids told me in high school and college that when they were feeling like hell, they started to make a list of things that were good-even clenching their teeth-good things they'd like to do. I told my brother on the phone yesterday that's what I think I'll end up with. He said, "Careful, you may get a letter from several adolescents listing things they would like to do, the first being: blow up gas bag preachers, and signing it "in this we take delight."