Saturday, December 2, 2017

tell him to mess with your mess

Homily
1st Sunday of Advent B
3 December 2017
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings

You call me Father Mitchel.  I am humbled by that.  I want to be a great father.  I want to be worthy of that title.  I want to shepherd the best Catholic family the world has ever seen.

Yet try as I might I can't do it.  I need help.  I need God.  I can't do it without him.  It won't happen unless he does it within me.  To be a great father I need God to come closer, and to come sooner.  I need to have my best Advent.  Do you too?

The truth is that not only am I not a great father, I'm first of all a lousy son and a lousy brother.  To be a great father you have to put in the work and spend a ton of time with your family.  You have to put them first and sacrifice your own desires.  You have to build trust and vulnerability and do a ton of listening.  I do none of these things.  I am very prideful and selfish.  I am addicted to control, honor and pleasure.  I take my dad and siblings for granted.  And left to myself, I will not change.  I need help.  I want to be a great father, but not enough to first be a great son and a great brother.

My favorite question that gets asked here at St. Lawrence is this: what are you struggling with right now?  It's my favorite question because it names the human condition accurately.  We are all struggling with something, and the less we hide it, the better off we are.  Life is hard, and that's ok.  Our student leaders, who rarely wallow in self-pity or discouragement, but are super-fun and joyful people, when asked if they struggle significantly with body image, anxiety, loneliness, pornography, laziness, just to name a few, report that they struggle a lot.  And that's ok.  It's normal to struggle, and you're not alone.  This doesn't mean that life sucks or isn't worth living.  Not at all.  But it names the reality of original sin.  Life is amazing, but it's also hard.  It's both.  And we don't have to pretend otherwise.  We all participate in the dysfunction.  People who struggle are never alone.  We are all addicted to something that enslaves us, and we are all powerless to change.

But believe it or not, that's not bad news.  If everyone was ok, we wouldn't need each other.  Much less would we need God.  Yet it's good to need each other and to need God.  Self-sufficiency and self-improvement and do it yourself are boring.  Needing be loved and to love makes for much better stories.  We are made for relationship and love and dependence.  That good news of Advent is that the Lord, who is like us in all thing but who alone can rescue all from the dysfunction, is near.  He is coming, especially to those who watch and wait for him.  Advent is begging Jesus to come closer, and to come sooner, and actually meaning it.

Don't fear the Lord's coming into your life.  That's backwards.  Knock it off.  Our prayer of Advent is the opposite.  Instead of telling God we're not ready, that we need more time to fix ourselves, we trade this nonsense to beg God to get down here like he promised and to do something. Right here and right now.

Yes, that's right.  In Advent we tell God to hurry the hell up, and to mess with our lives as much as possible.  Cause what we're doing now isn't working.  Quit tinkering with your self-improvement projects.  Instead have the guts to pray a good Advent.  Tell God you need him.  Tell him you can't do it without him.  Tell him that what you're most afraid of is that he will leave you to your own devices.  Tell him he is welcome to mess with your mess.  Tell him to come closer, and to come sooner, and actually mean it.  Amen.





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