2012 11th Sunday B

Homily
11th Sunday in Ordinary Time B
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
17 June 2012
Daily Readings
Audio

Happy Father's Day this weekend to all our dads out there.  As most of you know, I am in the business of recruiting, not to natural fatherhood, but to spiritual fatherhood - to the priesthood.  When I first got the job for the Archdiocese from Archbishop Naumann 5 years ago, I was excited, and in many ways I still am.  But I have to be honest, although we have made lots of progress, and have been blessed with incredible men preparing to become priests, and although we are hoping to ordain 15 men or more in the next 3 years, the job has been much harder than I thought it would be.  Either I thought the priesthood was more attractive to guys than it really is, or I thought there would be more men willing to make the sacrifice to say something beautiful with their lives, and to do something so important as being a priest.  Though we've been blessed, it's been hard.

The Archbishop has asked us to rally on June 29th in Topeka for religious freedom. The fortnight for freedom organized by the Church is in response to a pending federal mandate that would force religious employers, including Catholic schools,hospitals, universities and charities, to violate their consciences and provide contraception and abortion-inducing drugs to all employees.  Although in response to opposition the federal administration has compromised and put the onus for this mandate not on the Church but on insurance companies, this is not an acceptable compromise given that many Catholic entities are self-insured and at any rate, will still be paying for most of an insurance policy that covers things contrary to Catholic moral teaching.  I hope you have heard about this in the news, and have heard about the rally already.  The Archbishop will speak about it next weekend.  Unless a strong exemption from this mandate is obtained, the Catholic church is prepared to defy this unjust mandate, and pay the consequences for doing so, or in the worst case scenario, close her schools, universities, hospitals and charities.

Some have labeled the Church's opposition to providing contraception and abortion-inducing drugs to all employees as a war on women, and have tried to find support for the mandate by using this rhetoric.  But on this Father's Day weekend I want to put forth that there can be no war on women when a society is raising up just and holy men.  What I want to say this weekend is that underlying a perceived need and right to contraception and abortion inducing drugs is a deeper crisis in fatherhood.  Just as I have had a hard time as vocation director finding men to address the crisis of spiritual fatherhood in the priesthood, so also in the current situation where there is the consistent breakdown of marriage and the family aided by a contraceptive mentality, the crisis of natural fatherhood is all the more urgent.  Trust me, if I find a man who has the virtue and maturity to make others holy by the way he loves them and teaches them - if I find a man who would make a great priest - there are ten women or more who think he would make a better husband.  I can't overemphasize how great the need for husbands and fathers in our society really is.  Nowhere is this more apparent than at the university, where women outnumber men by a significant majority, and men seem to have a more difficult time all the time maturing into men who can make a sacrificial gift of themselves.  So again I repeat, there can be no war on women in a culture where men are laying down their lives for them as Christ laid down his life for his bride the Church. But finding men willing to do this is hard indeed.

This summer Archbishop Naumann is taking me and our seminarians to Montreal, to the shrine of St. Joseph constructed principally through the work of a simple and humble new saint of our Church, St. Andre Bessette.  Talk about a man who started out as a mustard seed!  St. Andre was thought to lack the talent to be much of a priest, or even a religious for that matter.  He was assigned for many years in his religious congregation to the most insignificant of jobs - to be the porter, the doorman.  Yet he did this job with such zeal and love, and prayed for the people entrusted to him with such sincerity, that people soon came to realize that the Lord was answering the prayers of little Andre with great efficacy.  Thousands began coming to him to ask him to pray for them, and eventually the Lord entrusted this smallest of men with the task of building a great oratory to St. Joseph, to whom Andre had entrusted the prayers of so many.  The Lord was pleased to do his work in honor of the great St. Joseph through the smallest of men, and this summer all our seminarians will visit the relics of this new saint who taught us how devotion to St. Joseph is a sure path to justice and chastity for every man.


As our seminarians begin preparing for this pilgrimage, as part of their formation to be future spiritual fathers, I invite all dads, and all of us, to take a moment today to consecrate the men in our lives to St. Joseph.  I fear that devotion to St. Joseph and consecration to him is dying out in our Catholic piety.  In my own simple piety, when I find that as a sinner I often do not love like Jesus I go to Mary, who simply allows the Lord's will to be done unto her.  And when I lack the humility, readiness and joy of Mary to let it be done unto me,  I go to Joseph, who though not possessing a Sacred Heart like Jesus nor the Immaculate Heart of Mary still is known for being just - for doing the right thing even when it became difficult or confusing.  We honor him as well, as a go-between for those men who want to be chaste both inside and outside of marriage as he was, for those men preparing to be both spiritual fathers and natural fathers, as he was.  In preserving the virginity and unique motherhood of the Mary both inside and outside of marriage, and in protecting the child Jesus, he is a sure exemplar for every man especially in a culture that has a hard time raising up worthy fathers.  He is in every way close to those who seek his powerful intercession.  As the beautiful Catholic piety says, every man should go to Joseph.  Especially for those who wish to be fathers in a culture that is losing the meaning of fatherhood, let us pray for them on this Father's Day weekend, that they will not be afraid to go to Joseph.  Amen.