Here is why I love baseball . . . and people!

I somehow missed this story when it happened on Disability night at Fenway Park (still on my list of parks to get to!) when a young man with autism was selected to sing the national anthem. Notice how people cheer for him and love him and sing with him! Melts your heart! The only thing greater than all the needs we find in the world is the need human persons have to give love and to draw together in community. This is so obvious! Celebrate life!

Homily for Thursday of the 14th Week in Ordinary Time

Homily for Thursday of the 14th Week in Ordinary Time I
9 July 2009
Year for Priests
Augustine Zhao Rong and companions, martyrs

Why have you forsaken me? Ordinarily these are words of desperation. Why am I alone? Why is this happening to me? From the lips of Jesus though, they show the purity and strength of his faith. Even though he felt alone. Even though he did not understand why things needed to be this way, still he chose to go on, still he chose to finish, still he chose to love, still he chose to obey, still he chose to hope.

Joseph lived to see why the Lord allowed his brothers to abandon him. It was so that one day, he could save them. On the day he was sold by his brothers, however, he could not have understood God's plan for him. On that day, it was hard to feel where God was. It would have been easy to lose hope because of the lack of understanding. But not only did Joseph not lose faith, as we see at the end of the story, he did not lose love for his brothers who betrayed him, he did not let their evil extinguish his love for them, but he chose to forgive them!

Augustine Zhao Rong, priest and martyr, had the faith and hope to give his life as a witness to the love of God he had experienced in Christ Jesus. Within the mantle of the love of Christ, Fr. Rong cast out all fear from his heart, and left a legacy of faith to the Church and to the Chinese people. He, like Christ, allowed himself to feel abandoned by God, but in giving his life rather than having it taken from him, he was more than a victim and instead a victor with Christ for having found a way through martyrdom to love his enemies to the end. He may not have understood why his martyrdom was necessary. He may not have understood why this was happening to him and not to someone else. But he never stopped believing that God loved him, that God knew him, that God would be with him, even in the darkness.

The purity and strength of our faith will be shown in the ways that we will choose to persevere, trusting that God will not abandon us, even when it appears on the surface that he has. The legacy of faith that we will leave will be the story of how we chose to keep going in faith, to keep hoping that with God, we can do anything, even when we do not understand why, even when we cannot see the end. +m

Homily for Tuesday of the 14th Week in Ordinary Time

Homily for Tuesday of the 14th Week in Ordinary Time

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center

7 July 2009

Holy Year for Priests

St. John Vianney, pray for us!

JMJ +m AMDG

I think I was 18-8 my senior year of high school in wrestling. I didn't make it to state. The last comment on my wrestling career was my mom saying - I think you could have done better. Well, thankfully I was able to move on to an alternate vocation the Lord had in mind for me, since I obviously was not half the wrestler Jacob was. We hear of Jacob wrestling with God not just for 3 two minute periods but throughout the night, and Jacob is not vanquished. The story reminds us that God will challenge us to use our freedom well, but will not overwhelm or take back that freedom. That is why for many of us, discovering our vocation is not about God overwhelming us with his will for our lives, but of our wrestling with the question of what he desires for us, and entering into the drama of using our freedom to follow Jesus Christ as closely as we can. A wrestling match is a good metaphor, for those who have wrestled and for those who haven't. In the end, after the wrestling is done, Jacob asks for the Lord's blessing, and receives it!

Many people have assumed that the new holy year for priests is really a holy year for vocations to the priesthood. We hear Jesus telling his disciples that the harvest is rich and the laborers are few. Most of the emphasis in the church in the past has been on getting more priests, more vocations, but this holy year in particular is not about praying for more priests, although this prayer should not lessen in any way, but about praying for the priests we already have. Priests need the prayerful support of the faithful, especially when they feel outnumbered by their parishioners, and without the energy needed to fulfill the expectations placed on them. Priests need our prayers so that even when faced with overwhelming demands for their time and pastoral charity, even when they know they cannot do everything, they will still be faithful and generous in doing what they can, praying that the Lord can do great things with small mustard seeds of faith, hope and love. Let us pray for the priests we already have, that they be strengthened in this holy year, for holy and generous priests will attract other men to labor with the Lord for an abundant harvest. +m

Homily for the 14th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center
4pm Vigil, 9am Sunday
4/5 July 2009
Year for Priests
St. John Vianney, pray for us!
JMJ +m AMDG

The higher they rise, the harder they fall. This is why most of us are afraid of being prophets. We do not want to be hypocrites. We don't want to tell people what to do, beset as we are by our own weaknesses. Being a prophet is too dangerous, even if there is something deep within us that we desperately want to say with our lives. We keep it in because being a prophet is too dangerous. It will get us killed. Being a prophet rocks the boat. It costs us friends. It goes against tolerance of the differences of others. It opens us up to criticism. It puts our past under scrutiny and our present in the spotlight. Prophecy makes people want to bring us down. Leadership is dangerous for no one cares about those who are merely following, but everyone takes a shot at those on top. Being a prophet means risking people saying about us, 'Who in the world does he think he is?'

Without prophets however, the people will perish. Our Church lacks enough prophets, and as a result, many Catholics do not go to Mass regularly, our collective conscience grows weaker instead of sharper, and excellence and virtue among us easily gives way to complacency and mediocrity. We accept the moral choices of the society around us, rather than keeping our eyes fixed through faith on the things that are truly good, the things that will last forever.

Our nation has leaders, but lacks enough prophets. We are still good at celebrating that we are free from tyranny, that we are free to elect our government and to do what we darn well please. And thank God we celebrate this, and use this weekend to never take this liberty for granted. Yet do we have enough prophets among us to remind us that freedom from tyranny is quickly wasted unless it becomes a freedom used toward pursuing excellence and virtue, stable dispositions of the soul that produce persons of character who delight in what is deeply good and true and beautiful. Do we have prophets that point us all toward a happiness that is less based on personal preferences and more directed toward a universal common good that we all share? Do we have enough prophets like these? I think not.

And even if we do have enough prophets like these among us, are we not too much like the residents of Nazareth, who cut Jesus down to size as quickly as they could? Do we not discard the prophets who do emerge in our lives, so that we may remain comforable, forcing God to love us where we are rather than daring to become more like Him? Have we so long ago given up on the idea that God has placed a message on our hearts, a message that compels us to live differently? Have we stopped discerning how we can live precisely in such a way that the world is distinctly different by what we say and do? Have we stopped believing that many people will only become whole, and become the people they deeply want to be, only if we give the prophetic witness that we were put on earth to give? Have we lost the drama of living, of being sent on a mission that has been given to us and to no one else, and instead focused on merely surviving? Have we lost the amazement that comes from knowing that God is right beside us, working miracles in us and through us, and redeeming the world bit by bit, through the choices we make. Have we stopped believing that the world really does have a chance to be redeemed and made new by the love of God, manifested in the world by what we say and do? If we have stopped believing in ourselves in this way, it is no wonder that we can find ourselves losing faith in God, and failing to see the marvelous deeds He accomplishes through His holy prophets, right in our midst. +m

he keeps going and going and going

We're just a week into the 'Year for Priests' and the Holy Father acts like he is just getting warmed up. I didn't know he was this serious about the Holy Year, nor did I think he would have so many things to say so early - good stuff from yesterday's general audience - enjoy!

"The mission of every priest depends, therefore, also and above all on the awareness of the sacramental reality of his "new being." The priest's renewed enthusiasm for his mission will always depend on the certainty of his personal identity, which is not artificially constructed, but rather given and received freely and divinely. What I have written in the encyclical "Deus Caritas Est" is also true for priests: "Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction" (No. 1).

Having received such an extraordinary gift of grace with their "consecration," priests become permanent witnesses of their encounter with Christ. Beginning precisely from this interior awareness, they can plentifully fulfill their "mission," by means of the proclamation of the Word and the administration of the sacraments. After the Second Vatican Council, the impression has come about that in our times, there is something more urgent in priests' missions; some believed that they should in the first place build up a distinct society. On the other hand, the verses from the Gospel that we heard at the beginning call our attention to the two essential elements of priestly ministry. Jesus sends the apostles, at that time and now, to proclaim the Gospel and he gives them the power to cast out evil spirits. "Proclamation" and "power," that is to say "word" and "sacrament," are therefore the two foundational pillars of priestly service, beyond its many possible configurations.

When the "diptych" consecration-mission is not taken into account, it becomes truly difficult to understand the identity of the priest and his ministry in the Church. Who in fact is the priest, if not a man converted and renewed by the Spirit, who lives from a personal relationship with Christ, constantly making the Gospel criteria his own? Who is the priest, if not a man of unity and truth, aware of his own limits and at the same time, of the extraordinary greatness of the vocation he has received, that of helping to extend the Kingdom of God to the ends of the earth?

Yes! The priest is a man totally belonging to the Lord, because it is God himself who calls him and who establishes him in his apostolic service. And precisely being totally of God, he is totally of mankind, for all people. During this Year for the Priest, which will continue until the next solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, let us pray for all priests. May there be an abundance of prayer initiatives and, in particular, Eucharistic adoration, for the sanctification of the clergy and for priestly vocations -- in dioceses, in parishes, in religious communities (especially monasteries), in associations and movements and in the various pastoral groups present in the whole world -- responding to Jesus' invitation to pray "to the lord of the harvest that he may send workers to his harvest" (Matthew 9:38).

Prayer is the first task, the true path of sanctification for priests, and the soul of an authentic "vocational ministry." The numerical scarcity of priestly ordinations in some countries should not discourage, but instead should motivate a multiplication of opportunities for silence and listening to the Word, and better attention to spiritual direction and the sacrament of confession, so that the voice of God, who always continues calling and confirming, can be heard and promptly followed by many youth.

One who prays is not afraid; one who prays is never alone; one who prays is saved! St. John Vianney is undoubtedly a model of an existence made prayer. Mary, Mother of the Church, help all priests to follow his example so as to be, like him, witnesses of Christ and apostles of the Gospel. "

Vocation Video for young women

These videos from St. Cecelias do so much for the young women in our Church who do not know a religious sister nor have ever been to a convent - take a look!

brief Royals post

Joe Posnanski hits it right on the head today . . . we are no better than we were 5 years ago - we're worse!

"In the late innings of Wednesday’s game between the Royals and Minnesota Twins, Kansas City Royals manager Trey Hillman made two absolutely remarkable moves.
In the seventh inning, he pinch hit Luis Hernandez for Tony Pena Jr.
In the ninth inning, he pinch hit Tug Hulett for Luis Hernandez.
You know, in many ways, this might be the crescendo of this preposterous decade for Kansas City Royals baseball. Yes, there have been funnier moments, sadder moments, more poignant moments. Yes, you could make a case for the time Tony Pena Sr. jumped in the shower with his clothes on or the time Buddy Bell said “Things can always get worse” or the time that pitcher Darrell May griped that he could not even get a no-decision or the time that Tony Jr. dropped a pop-up because he was blinded by the sun because wasn’t wearing sunglasses because his sunglasses, though ordered, had not been delivered.
But when you have a manager in the late innings of a close game using Luis Hernandez to pinch-hit for Tony Pena and then Tug Hulett to pinch hit for Luis Hernandez, well, at that point it might be time to seriously re-evaluate what kind of baseball organization you have become. Or way past time."