Who has paid the price for you?

Homily

29th Sunday in Ordinary Time B2

St. Ann Catholic Church  - Prairie Village, KS

20 October 2024

World Mission Sunday

Who has paid the price for you?

I don't know if your life has ever been saved before, but mine sure has, over and over and over again.  I'm an inattentive driver, and always push the limits, and drive on an empty tank, so I know my guardian angels have had to work a lot of overtime.  I need to tip them well if I get to heaven!  The spend themselves for me, and pay the price for my life.

There are countless others, starting with my parents who sacrificed everything to have a family, and to give me life.  So many people have prayed for me and supported me and believed in me, especially when I haven't been worthy of it.  I'm alive and here today because of all of them, because of all of you.  Left to my own, I would have made different choices, but my life and my soul have been redeemed. So many people have paid the price for me.  

A few years ago, I was invited to play golf, but I turned it down because I had an important therapy appointment that I couldn't afford to miss if I wanted to stay healthy.  The guy who invited me initially poked fun, hinting that going to therapy was soft, and that the only therapy I really needed was an afternoon with the boys.  

The next day though, the guy called me and asked for the number of my therapist.  Not for himself, mind you, but so that he could pay for my therapy for a year.  His comment the day earlier bothered him a lot, for he had always been a friend who had asked what he could do to support me, and when I said what I needed, he had poked fun.  He realized that he now he had a chance to die to himself so that I could live.  He paid not only for that year, but for the next as well, a bill that totaled $10,000.  If you every wonder how much it costs to keep Fr. Mitchel healthy, now you know the number.

Who has paid the price for you?  I've confessed to many of you already that there was a time not that long ago that I was spiritually lost and morally dead, and I didn't care.  Yet the Lord had given me people who wouldn't quit on me, most notably my last two spiritual directors.  I've apologized to both for being so stubborn, so whiny, so hard to work with.  The first responded that if I was a faithful priest for just one more day, it was worth all the time we had spent trying to save my soul.  The second, after giving up his summer vacation to direct me in the spiritual exercises for 30 days, thanked me for having a front row seat to see how Jesus Christ fiercely ransoms a soul from death.

I've been ransomed from death.  How about you?  Who has paid the price for your life?

I wish St. Maximilian Kolbe was running for the next president of the United States.  Kolbe lived precisely as Jesus direct us in the Gospel, that whoever wishes to be first among us will join Jesus in taking the lowest place as a slave, and in giving his life as a ransom for many.  Kolbe like Jesus our high priest was able to sympathize with weakness.  He stepped forward to ransom the life of a young dad at Auschwitz by being executed in his stead.

St. Maximilian Kolbe is not on the ballot this year; still, each of us must vote to advance the common good and a more just society in the coming weeks.  It is a grave responsibility of ours to form our consciences and to make sure we are not voting to advance any fundamental or intrinsic evils, sins against the sanctity of human life or the dignity of human nature, marriage and the family.  In the absence of a great choice, we must be innocent yet cunning, and find a way to do the least harm.  To not vote or to vote wrongly is to give up on our neighbor and to despair of God's will being done on earth as it is in heaven. 

Still, the most urgent thing in the coming weeks will not change based on the outcome of a political election.  The most urgent thing is for me to know who has paid the price so that I can live, and to pray for the grace to give my life in turn through Jesus, with Jesus and in Jesus, as a ransom for many.

+mj