Will you be meaner than hell?

Homily

Nuptial Mass of Mikala Liley and Reagan Dricken

St. Lawrence Catholic Center at the University of Kansas

18 May 2024

Saturday of the 7th Week of Easter

AMDG

Mik and Reagan, are you meaner than hell?

You know exactly where I'm going with this.  You heard this very homily theme just six days ago, at your KU graduation.  It's true that I'm too lazy to come up with a new theme for your wedding homily, but it seemed to work fine last week, so why not run it back?

So are you or aren't you meaner than hell?

You know exactly what I mean by this, having listened to my Catholic Jayhawk homilies for years now.  Yet since I'm quickly running out of chances to preach at my beloved St. Lawrence, I have no problem reminding you once and for all that a Catholic Jayhawk is to be capable of risk, vulnerability, commitment, communion, sacrifice, influence and tenacity. These marks of a great story are not exactly the 7-fold gifts of the Holy Spirit, but in my opinion, they're not that far off.

Mik and Reagan, as your spiritual Father at KU I'm so proud of you on your wedding day because you are precisely the reason that St. Lawrence Center exists.  You are true Jayhawks, meaner than hell, fierce missionary disciples of Jesus Christ and ready to write one of the greatest stories of faith and love of this generation.  More than that, you are determined to defeat the greatest relational, moral and spiritual evils of this age.  Your marriage is a true  participation in the paschal mystery and redemptive mission of our Lord, and destined to bear fruit that lasts. We at SLC are so very proud of your both, and we could not love you any more, nor feel more privileged to support you as you give your life unto death in this sacred space so dear to so many of us.  Congratulations to you and everyone who has believed in you, and thank you for inviting us here for this moment.

Having meant all that, still why does it matter than you are meaner than hell today?  It matters because there truly is an enemy who will try through lies to sow seeds of doubt and fear in your heart as you approach the altar of God. To defeat this enemy, you must be ferocious Jayhawks, meaner than hell.  You may not know this because you don't follow football or TikTok as much as the rest of us, but traditional Catholic marriage, the very kind you desire today, was on trial this week, especially the idea that marriage is worth giving your whole life to.

My dearest Mik, what are you thinking?  Your decision to get married just six days after busting your Jayhawk tail to achieve a hard-won architecture degree, was especially ridiculed this week by a woke mob who esteems privacy and choice as the surest path to equality.  In the face of this, you choose obedience and surrender, and courageously place your entire life and achievements under the mission of your husband, Reagan.  Reagan, really? What are you thinking?

Reagan, your faith is also on trial and is being labeled as toxic and oppressive.  In response, you double down on the words of St. Paul, who even though participating in the misogyny of his time said in Christ the least misogynistic thing ever, telling husbands to love their wives just as Christ loves His bride the Church, bathing her in the truth of His promises and prayer, cleansing Her by the chaste sacrifice of His own body.  You too Reagan, eschew privacy and choice in response to what you understand to be the gift and responsibility of your life.

Yet what makes the two of you more woke than anyone around you, is the attention you each give to perseverance in prayer.  Jesus Himself said the greatest evils can only be defeated by prayer.  So in prayer most of all you have learned that the battle of the sexes is not ultimately a competition for equality and control between you, but a holy obedience to love the good of another more than yourself.  In prayer you have been discerned participation in the eternal marriage of Christ to His Church by echoing His eucharistic words with your vows - this is my body which is 'for you.'  In prayer you have found the nuptial meaning of your body to be your deepest truth and reality, and the gift of yourself to each other as a sign of Christ's love for you, and a true participation in His passion, to be the fulfillment of the deepest desire of your heart.

Praise God that in prayer you've both found something worth fighting for, and even more than that, worth dying for.  Be meaner than hell, my little Jayhawks, in being faithful til death do you part. This is our faith, the true faith, revealed by Jesus Christ, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

+mj  

Why hate golf?

Homily

Funeral Mass for Anthony Craig McCoy

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

Saturday of the 7th Week of Easter B2

18 May 2024

AMDG

Why did Craig hate golf?

I had to start this brief homily by quoting the shortest line from Craig's obituary.  'He hated golf'  Though Craig loved being part of the club, and the people he knew from there, apparently he hated golf.  Smart man, I'd say.  Golf is a  four letter word, and it doesn't often bring people closer to God. Though it's a beautiful pastime and one that should bring glory to God, the holy name of God is rarely invoked in prayer and much more often used in vain on the golf course.  I have a story about that involving Bruce that is not dignified enough for a homily.  

In the end, I don't blame Craig for being like my dad, who thought golf was for sissies, and thought it quite dumb that grown men would try to hit a little white ball out of sight and then go look for it.  

If it wasn't for golf, though, I wouldn't have met my good friend Bruce, for it was through Topeka Country Club and Christ the King that I first met the McCoy's, and subsequently the McPhersons.  I'm grateful to you Cathy and to Craig, for being friends and having friends that I will cherish, and you have my deepest sympathy and prayers, Cathy, on the loss of your son just a short time ago and now your husband.  It is a great honor to pray for their souls and for the mercy and love of God to conquer even death itself, and to invite your beloved into the embrace of eternal life in heaven.

Craig built homes, and we see clearly in John Chapter 14 that this was Jesus' desire as well, to prepare a place for us in heaven, and to invite us into the way of love that builds a new home and a new kingdom that can never be destroyed.  I just returned from a mission trip to Mexico City, where I encountered thousands of homeless, young and old, natives and migrants, men and women, and it was heartbreaking.  It is a consolation that Craig knew the importance of having a home, a place where you can know who you are and who loves you, a place where you can believe that you belong and your life is destined for more.  I praise God for all the good Craig was able to do with his life; most importantly, providing a sense of home for many whom he served and loved.

Now we commend Craig to the 'way' that builds the kingdom of heaven.  The way is very simple, but easy to lose track of.  The way of Jesus is his passion for giving life to others, to being faithful to others, to serving others to the end.  Craig participated in this 'way' of Jesus in his own way, to be sure, but as with all our beloved, we lift up the love Craig was able to receive and give, and we beg mercy for the love that was lacking.  We pray that Craig's life will mysteriously participate in the sacrifice of Jesus which God has promised to use to build the kingdom of heaven.

As we confess the nail in the coffin that is the end of Craig's life here on earth, we remember the nails that fastened Jesus to the cross as He emptied Himself for love of Craig and all of us.  That love is stronger than all things, as is the cross which is not the wood of death, but the wood of new life, and where eternal life truly begins.  Amen.  

What are the sources of unity?

Homily

Thursday of the 7th and Last Week of Easter between the Ascension and Pentecost

16 May 2024

Our Lady of Guadalupe Pilgrimage with the St. Lawrence Center KU

Mexico City, Mexico

AMDG

Jesus prays not for himself the night before He dies on the cross, but for us, his little ones, his missionary disciples, his friends.  This is a reminder to always pray for others more than for ourselves, even as we can ask for whatever we want and need in the Holy Spirit, and it will be done for us.

Jesus gives us everything, always emptying Himself and holding nothing back.  This is true even of His prayer, as He prays grace after grace after grace for his little ones.  Did you hear all the graces He prays for you, his beloved?  He prays for unity in the Church, and that you may have the glory of participating fully in God's love, that you might enjoy the same perfection in unity that is in the Holy Trinity.  There is more. He prays that you will know you are a gift to him, and that He loves you even as the Father loves him.  He prays that you will know that He is with you always through His Spirit, and that His Spirit will tell you everything.  All of this, so that you can fulfill your destiny to be in God, and that those who hear your words will believe in God because of you.

What a prayer for us His little ones, His missionary disciples, and His friends. As we receive the prayer of Jesus for us, let us not be afraid that we lack anything of what we need to fulfill His new commandment of love, so that the world may believe in Him.  

Jesús no ora por sí mismo la noche antes de morir en la cruz, sino por nosotros, sus pequeños, sus discípulos misioneros, sus amigos. Este es un recordatorio de orar siempre por los demás más que por nosotros mismos, así como podemos pedir lo que queramos y necesitemos en el Espíritu Santo, y será hecho por nosotros.

Jesús nos lo da todo, vaciándose siempre y sin guardar nada. Esto es cierto incluso en Su oración, cuando ora gracia tras gracia tras gracia por Sus pequeños. ¿Escuchaste todas las gracias que Él ora por ti, su amada? Ora por la unidad de la Iglesia, y para que tengáis la gloria de participar plenamente del amor de Dios, para que podáis disfrutar de la misma perfección en la unidad que hay en la Santísima Trinidad. Hay más. Él ora para que sepas que eres un regalo para él y que Él te ama así como el Padre lo ama a él. Él ora para que sepas que Él está contigo siempre a través de Su Espíritu, y que Su Espíritu te dirá todo. Todo esto, para que puedas cumplir tu destino de estar en Dios, y que quienes escuchen tus palabras crean en Dios gracias a ti.

Qué oración por nosotros Sus pequeños, Sus discípulos misioneros y Sus amigos. Al recibir la oración de Jesús por nosotros, no tengamos miedo de que nos falte algo de lo que necesitamos para cumplir su nuevo mandamiento de amor, para que el mundo crea en Él.

What is the source of unity?

Homily

Wednesday of the 7th Week of Easter

15 May 2025

Mass at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mexico City

+St. Isidore

AMDG

Both St. Paul and the Lord pray fervently for disciples in today's Scriptures.  They know of the 'trouble' that disciples will face in the world in keeping faith, and remaining unified in mission.  The greatest evils are spiritual ones, and can only be case out by prayer.  So St. Paul and the Lord both pray for those they are leaving behind, entrusting them to the greater power of the Holy Spirit which will guide them and keep them in all truth.

Prayer, charity, and truth.  These themes jump out regarding the sources of unity for a church on mission.  The prayer of Christ that His disciples be one is so fervent, for He knows how much the evil one wants to divide the Church by lies, acts against charity, and discouragement in prayer.  Still, even with these dangers lurking, Jesus prays to 'send' his disciples to defeat evil just as He did, through the same spirit of charity and truth and prayer that burned in the Lord's sacred Heart until his mission is accomplished.

Tanto San Pablo como el Señor oran fervientemente por los discípulos en las Escrituras de hoy. Saben del "problema" que los discípulos enfrentarán en el mundo al mantener la fe y permanecer unidos en la misión. Los mayores males son los espirituales y sólo pueden solucionarse mediante la oración. Entonces, tanto San Pablo como el Señor oran por aquellos que dejan atrás, confiándolos al poder mayor del Espíritu Santo que los guiará y guardará en toda verdad.

Oración, caridad y verdad. Estos temas saltan a la vista respecto de las fuentes de unidad de una iglesia en misión. La oración de Cristo para que sus discípulos sean uno es tan ferviente, porque sabe cuánto el maligno quiere dividir a la Iglesia con mentiras, actos contra la caridad y desánimo en la oración. Aún así, incluso con estos peligros al acecho, Jesús ora para "enviar" a sus discípulos a derrotar el mal tal como lo hizo Él, a través del mismo espíritu de caridad, verdad y oración que ardía en el sagrado Corazón del Señor hasta que se cumpliera su misión.

Do Jayhawks fight?

Homily

Solemnity of the Ascension

Graduation Weekend and Mother's Day

12 May 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

Do Jayhawks fly?

I've been chaplain at KU for 8 years, and I'm a grad from here, and I still don't know.  Have you ever seen a Jayhawk fly?  Certainly not the dozens of Jayhawks affixed to pedestals all over campus. There are vulgar legends about what it would take for those Jayhawks to fly, that we won't get into here.

On the other hand, Jayhawks sure seem to fly through Allen Fieldhouse.  Johnny Furphy can fly, and he's a Jayhawk, and a kangaroo.  And now that we're a football school, Jason Bean was so fast he seemed close to liftoff, and he's a Jayhawk.

So do Jayhawks fly, or don't they?  Heck if I know.  Maybe it's a question best left to the Aerospace Engineer graduate in our midst.

Actually, there's a more critical question than whether Jayhawks fly. That question is this.  Do Jayhawks fight?  If you know the history of the Jayhawk, our killer mascot was uniquely created to be meaner than hell. The original Jayhawkers were the ruthless fighters who ensured Kansas came into the union in 1865 as a free state, not like Missouri. Two feisty birds, ferocious actually, the blue jay and the sparrow hawk, were combined into a singularly nasty hybrid known worldwide as the Jayhawk.  

Which is why my favorite rendition of our mascot is not the sexy legs Jayhawk or smiling Jayhawk, but the 1947 Warhawk.  Meaner than hell.

So, the best and last pivotal question for your KU graduates this year is not whether you will fly, but whether you are meaner than hell, whether you will fight for human dignity and freedom. You're supposed to be nasty, class of 2024, but in a good way.   Will you be tenacious in fulfilling the gift and responsibility of your life?  Jesus laid it out for you perfectly in your last Gospel at KU. Go into the world and defeat the worst spiritual, moral and relational evils of this age, confirmed by the fire of the Holy Spirit, strengthened by the accompanying signs and mysteries of Christ's sacraments, and fight like hell to fulfill the purpose and destiny of your life.

The Ascension of Jesus is not so much about flying, as the angels attest in today's Gospel, it's about fighting until the love of Christ fills and conquers all things, until all creation participates in the redemption that builds a new dimension of reality, the kingdom of Heaven.  

Your education at KU was meant to give you access to a truth that sets you free to make a sincere and meaningful gift of yourself to something that matters, something bigger than yourself.  Even more, the practice of your Catholic faith precisely at a time when you were surely tempted to ignore it, reject it, or cancel it, has given you an imagination for what your life will ultimately mean, and a capacity to be a singularly tenacious missionary disciple of Jesus Christ who will bear fruit that lasts.

The Church loves you, class of 2024. We believe in you, and we thank you for trusting us to guide your story while at KU.  We will miss you!  Our prayer is that you will fulfill your capacity for risk, vulnerability, commitment, communion, sacrifice, influence, and tenacity, as Catholic Jayhawks.  Full permission to be meaner than hell, and to write the greatest stories of faith of this generation.

Congratulations from all of us at St. Lawrence, class of 2024!  Fly, Jayhawks, fly - if you dare and if you can!  But even more than that, always fight for what you believe in.  Rock Chalk and Amen!

Who is responsible?

Homily

6th Sunday of Easter B2

5 May 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

Who is ultimately responsible for my life?

I bet you think you are.  But you're wrong.  God is.

God is necessary. I am not.  He is the source of life. I am not.  Life is never what I make of it, nor whatever I want it to be.  Life is receiving and remaining in the sacred truth that life is a gift.  That makes God ultimately responsible for my life.

Let's ponder deeply tonight how this works. St. John puts it like this:  in this is love, not that I have loved God, but that he first loved me.  Love is not something I generate; quite the opposite, it is first received, as the Father takes the initiative to send His Son to love me where I cannot and would never love myself.

Have you ever considered how crazy this really is?  God takes responsibility for letting me down.  He blames Himself for my sins.  He blames Himself for my lack of trust, accusing Himself of not revealing his love in a more compelling way.  So He takes the initiative.  He takes the responsibility to save my life.

Who is ultimately responsible for your life?  I bet you still think you are, that your life starts and ends with you, but it doesn't.  Now I'm not telling you to be irresponsible for careless, mind you. I'm just asking myself to admit that my perfectionism, my hyper-focus on myself to the neglect of the greater things God is doing, will never work.  There's a reason for that.  I am not God, and I cannot work myself into perfection.  I am first loved before I can do anything, and unless I am first loved I can do nothing.  I cannot perfect myself, but I can only be loved into perfection.

Let's listen to more.  It was not you who chose me, but I who first chose you!  Again God is responsible.  He takes the initiative.

Want more evidence that your life is not about you?  There's plenty more! As the Father loves me, so I love you.  It never works for me to say that as I love God, so God loves me.  That's backward, to start with myself, if only I admit it.

There's still more.  I have called you friends because I have first chosen to tell you everything.  For a fourth time in tonight's Scriptures, Jesus says our relationship starts with Him. It always starts with His desire for me, His revealing all the attention and affection He has for me right not, His emptying Himself until He serves me as His friend, by His choice not mine.

Yet despite all this, I bet you started today like I did, with my ego, trying to generate trust and passion and joy from myself, forgetting that I would have none of these things - no faith, no desire, no happiness, if God didn't first choose to trust me, to suffer for me, and to delight in me.

Still think your life is about you?  You probably do. We all do. Yet it's just not true.

God is necessary today.  I am not.  And it's His great joy to take responsibility for your life.  You only need to receive and remain.

mj  

How do I know I'm fully alive?

Homily

5th Sunday of Easter B2

28 April 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

How do I know I'm fully alive?  Does anybody out there know at this moment, whether you're fully alive?

It's a critical Easter question, for in this season we proclaim not only Jesus alive and risen from the dead, but that we too rise through Him to new and everlasting life?  Yet how does this work really?  How do I know this to be true, out of everything that I know to be true?  How do I know when I am fully alive?

The traditional way of asking this pivotal question is as follows:  do you know if you're saved?  Well, first of all, what does it mean to be saved?  I hope we can all agree that it's nothing less than being fully forgiven, healed, set free to live a new life, and to lay hold of a destiny to live forever in God.  To be saved is nothing less than to experience even now the fullness of life, which is why I like to pose the question in just this way.  How do I know when I'm fully alive?

Salvation must be more than a one and done profession of Jesus as my personal savior.  That's a great start, don't get me wrong, but everything about today's readings say there is more than simply believing in Jesus. We must also abide in Him completely, as a branch on a vine.  How do I remain in Him who is life itself? That's the real question of salvation!

St. John nails it for us today in the second reading.  He says we remain in Him not just by talking the talk, but by walking the walk.  We remain in Him by keeping His commandments of love, which correspond to the love of the Holy Spirit that is meant to dwell in you.

Catholics have always taught we are saved in just this way.  We become fully alive through faith and works, the two always working together for our salvation like they do in any healthy relationship.  Abiding in each other takes both words and actions, the two always reinforcing each other.  We must say I love you, but even more, we must do loving things, for talk can be cheap and actions speak louder than words.

So how do I know when I am fully alive?  Since none of us possess life in itself, but only as it is gifted to us, to be fully alive must mean to be fully attached to the source of life itself forever.  And guess what, I have good news for you!  The author of life desires nothing more today than to fully coinhere with you. If that is true, the fullness of life is staring you right in the face at Mass.

Jesus has invited us to lay hold of a shared life with Him, especially through the sacrament of the Eucharist, which is always and everywhere celebrated as the source and summit of the Church's life.  Could Jesus be any clearer on this very point?  Anyone who eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him, and I will raise him on the last day.

Yet the same Jesus who always prunes us with his words reminds us that one of us at table with Him right now will betray Him, and it would be better for that man if he had never been born.  Thank God that Jesus has given us not only the Eucharist, but also confession!  In that same upper room, Jesus gifted confession as an Easter sacrament, so that if I have not kept God's commandments, and if I have done something that does not correspond to the love of the Eucharist, I confess before consummating my shared life and communion with Him.

A final time - how do I know that I am fully alive?  I can't do better than to remind myself of all that Jesus said, and to allow His words to prune me.  I live by abiding with Him fully in the Eucharist, and I remain by keeping His commandments to love Him above all things and to love you all as He has first loved me.  If I do an unloving thing, I confess so that the branch can be grafted back onto the vine which is its life.

That's it, disciples of Jesus. That's everything that Jesus said. That's how I know that I am fully alive.

+mj 

Who knows me?

Homily

4th Sunday of Easter B2

Good Shepherd Sunday

World Day of Prayer for Vocations

21 April 2024

AMDG

Who knows me?  Does anyone really know me?

What a pivotal question this truly is!  My need to belong, to be seen and known and and heard and chosen, is immense!  I don't make sense on my own, nor can I figure everything out on my own.  I am a mystery to myself, unless I come to know myself by first being known.

So, can there be a more critical question that this - does anyone really know me?

There's a guy in the Gospel who says He knows you.  He knows you just as He is known by His Father, so He knows you, and you know Him.  What incredible words by the most unique voice in human history, the voice of the Good Shepherd.

You know by now that nobody speaks like Jesus. No one in human history has even come close. Unbelievable and radical words that always cut to the heart, words that challenge us to metanoia, thinking not as human beings do but as God does.  Words that reveal the true and deep and hidden meaning of my life, a life I seek in greater abundance during this Easter season.

Good Shepherd Sunday and the World Day of Prayer for Vocations, is about finding the faith to let this voice find us, know us, desire us, choose us, and call us to new and more abundant life.  It's a critical moment in the Easter journey, for John 10 always invites us deeper into life that is not measured by safety or length of time, but by the vertical dimension of love, by the power to lay down one's life trusting that it can be raised again.

The Good Shepherd says He knows you.  What does He know about you?  He knows that the true and full meaning of your life will be found within His paschal mystery, the only story that ends in rising from the dead.  His voice will always invite you to lose your life before it is taken from you, in conversation with His suffering and death, while trusting the promise that it is precisely there that you will find a life that conquers all things and endures.

Yet the voice of the Good Shepherd will never dare you into this mystery.  No, He will simply invite you to follow where He goes before, where He is first shorn naked, killed and eaten, as the lamb of sacrifice Himself.

Do you recognize this voice?  I'm sure that you do, but do you trust it to really know you?  Is the voice of the Good Shepherd the voice you ultimately trust to lead you into the fullness of life?

+mj  

What's the point?

Homily

3rd Sunday of Easter B2

14 April 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

What's the point of life?  Who can tell me?

When I ask you all this question, you always say 'I don't know - you're the priest!  Aren't you supposed to be telling me the point of life?

Well, I have an idea, which I am happy to share.  Yet I know as well that there is no better time than Easter to ask this very question anew.  What's the point of life?   Easter is the time when we are meant to experience to the depths of our being what it means to be fully alive.  The most pivotal news in human history, a victory greater than all others combined, that Christ my Lord has Risen indeed from the dead as He said, is announced to us anew! And what is the announcement, made forcefully by St. Peter in today's 1st reading - that there is a love stronger than death, a love worthy of the gift of your entire life, all that you are right now and all you ever will be.

So what's the point of life again?  The longer I experience the things that really matter, the more I'm zeroing in on this answer alone - the point of my life is to participate as passionately as I can in the paschal mystery, the only process by which a universe cast down in renewed, and integrity of life is restored.

I'm all ears, truly, if you can beat that answer.  But I just can't find anything else that comes close.

I've heard so often that life is about being with those you love, or about making a difference.  These are great answers, but near as I can tell, they merely participate in the ultimate thing, and that one necessary thing is the Easter proclamation.  That Jesus Christ has appeared, and invited you intimately and personally into his suffering, death and resurrection. to help Him advance the process by which all thing are made new.

You know I love sports the the source of the best stories, and as a metaphor for life. Sports are mini-dramas played out in real time, full of surprises and pivotal plays, hail marys and comeback from the dead stories, fraught with opportunities to act with confidence and courage, accompanied by countless cameras and stats that make it impossible to hide.  In the course of just a few hours, a drama with characters and conflicts and results is played out with greater clarity than the ambiguity which often afflicts reality.

Yet sports aren't the meaning of life, even if I wish it were so, and if I make them so I worship an idol.  What then is the ultimate win that truly redeems a human life?  It's trust in the Resurrection, but more precisely, it's conforming my life to the passion of Christ, His desire to empty Himself for love of another, all the while trusting that this sacrifice is the source of new life.

The drama of my life at every turn can be inserted into the mystery of this Passion.  

There's plenty of competing world views out there to consider, plenty of things vying for your heart and soul, plenty of course to distact us into thinking nothing ultimately matters, so just make up your own meaning.

Yet there's also this mysterious news our there, celebrated each Easter, that the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is at the crux of the meaning of life.  There's more, that the meaning of your life can participate too as the raw material and nexus for the recreation of a new heaven and earth that cannot fade into oblivion.

The drama of my life at every turn fits nicely into this Easter mystery, this Passion.  The point of life, near as I can tell, is to be in anguish until this mystery is consummated and accomplished through me.

+mj

what's too good to be true?

 

what's too good to be true?

Homily

2nd Sunday of Easter B2

Divine Mercy Sunday

7 April 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

What's too good to be true?  Well, it's the Resurrection - obviously!

Now don't freak out.  I haven't lost my Easter faith in one week. The Resurrection is still the one thing I know to be true out of everything I know to be true.  On this truth I am happy to bet all that I am and ever will be.

Yet the Resurrection is also the thing I most doubt.  It's also the one thing that's too good to be true.

Is there a contradiction here?  Yea, maybe.  Is there a paradox? Yes, more likely!  Is the Resurrection a huge risk of faith - pray God, I hope so!

It makes sense actually that my deepest truth will always be found where I have made the biggest risk of faith.  Don't take my word for it. Take the words of the holy martyrs, who are willing to risk death even today for the truth of the Resurrection.

So I say it again.  My deepest truth will always be where I make the biggest risk of faith.  That is what faith is for!  Faith never goes against my reason, but always goes beyond it, seeking to receive and understand truths that are beyond what my mind can figure out, manage or control.

That's exactly why my deepest faith in the strange, mysterious, profound, dramatic, and yes most true event in human history - the Resurrection of Jesus indeed from the dead as he said - is also the thing I most doubt.

On Divine Mercy Sunday, the Risen Christ greets the doubts of Thomas, and my doubts, not with disdain but with peace.  Three times He says to us doubters - peace be with you!  Then he invites us his disciples not to put away out fears and doubts, but to let them be penetrated by his forgiveness.  Jesus appears in the upper room not to condemn, but to show mercy.  The disciples discover that in penetrating the open wounds of Jesus with their own hands, that their own interior wounds, especially the deepest wounds of fear and doubt, are healed and forgiven.

Is Thomas a skeptic, a pessimist, and a doubter?  Maybe so, but so am I.  Yet his honesty led Him to have a dramatic encounter with the Resurrection.  With his own doubts and fears healed, the Resurrection will never be something he wishes or pretends to be true, but the one thing he knows to be true.

What he most doubted, becomes his firmest conviction.  St. John says the one who is indeed victor over the world is the one who testifies with Thomas that Jesus is my Lord and my God. Thomas ended up a martyr, emerging victorious through confession of this faith that he once doubted.

You too are victor over the world with a good confession during Easter.  Yes, you heard me right. Confession is an Easter sacrament, given by the Risen Christ to the Church on Divine Mercy Sunday.  You can go to confession during Lent all you want, but the best confessions are Easter ones, when not only sins are wiped away but the ways in which we do not trust God are healed by a rich experience of Divine Mercy that makes us new from the inside out.

Jesus is not put off by your doubts.  He invites you to a deeper experience of His mercy, so that the one thing that's too good to be true becomes the one thing you most know to be true.

The victory that conquers the world is our faith in Jesus Christ Risen indeed from the dead as He said - my Lord and my God!. Alleluia!

+mj

What's your word?

Homily

Easter Sunday of the Lord's Resurrection

31 March 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG 

If you could only say one word for the rest of your life, what word would you choose?

I bet you can guess what mine is.  Risen!  Risen!  Risen!  Jesus Christ is Risen!  He is Risen from the dead!  He is Risen just as He said!  Alleluia!  Alleluia!

That's my word, tonight and forever.  Risen!  On this word, I am happy to bet everything that I am and all that I ever will be.

Tonight I witness to you that this word - Risen - is the most mysterious, profound, dramatic and TRUE word that has ever been spoken in all of human history, or could ever be spoken. Tonight I sing this word - Risen - in liturgical concert with the angels, the saints, and yes, the martyrs who died for this word even today.  Today, I should into the darkness that threatens so much and so many that this word - Risen - is the one thing I know to be true out of everything I know to be true.

Risen - that's my word - now and forever.  What is yours?

Tonight my prayer is that you too will dare to shout into the world a word that is your destiny to proclaim.  Tonight my prayer is that each and all of us, led by our catechumens and candidates, and the great risk of faith they speak tonight, will get off the couch!  Tonight is not time for a virtual Easter!  To hell with that.  In this Church there is no sideline, no bench, no bystanders!

You have my answer - I dare you to proclaim yours!

Why this word for me?  Because without it, even the most heartfelt words of love I ever say, words first spoken by Jesus - this is my body broken for you - lose their power.  Without the word Risen even the greatest sign of love I have ever known, the cross on which I gave the most passionate kiss of my life last night, is powerless in the face of death.  St. Paul said it best - unless Jesus is Risen, we are all pathetic losers!

But I don't profess this word tonight because I need it to be true.  My conviction about the empty tom is not a vain wish that justifies my life or helps numb me to reality.  No, this word is the fruit of being a disciple of Jesus.  Jesus never invites you to a wishful faith. That's weak sauce!  No, He invites me to follow Him first to the cross to verify whether there is a love stronger than death.  I pray my discipleship has been a courageous one, filtered through the cross of Jesus where I have learned from Him how to face reality and fear nothing.

My conviction comes from the times I actually dared to be a real Christian, and I'll be damned if Jesus wasn't right - literally!  Every time I die to sin and to myself, I lay hold of a new, different and powerful life that does not fade.  Every time I suffer and die with Him, I also rise with Him!

It's real people!

Jesus Christ is Risen!  He is truly Risen!  Shame on me if this is ever something I have to pretend to be true, instead of something that as a disciple, through the risk of faith, I have discovered to be true.

On this truth - not this wish - but this truth - I am happy to bet everything that I am and ever will be. Not because I need to, not because I'm afraid not to, but because I want to.

My word is Risen!  You've got next!

You're invited shortly to beat me or join me.  If you dare join, renew your baptismal promises on Easter Sunday.  If you join, please don't do anything cheap, or easy or pitiable.  This is conviction Sunday - the word means 'with victory' - on our profession goes our participation in the greatest victory of all time!  So let's decide with sharp minds, and pure hearts and courageous wills.

So I propose to you now a word that has rocked the history of the world, and changed forever the meaning of life and the destiny of man, to be the word of your life.  On this most holy night set apart precisely for this decision, I invite you to say the most mysterious, dramatic, profound and true word that has ever been or could ever be spoken.  

Risen!  Jesus Christ is Risen!  He is Risen from the dead just as He said.  Alleluia!  Alleluia!   

What do I consider on Holy Saturday?

Meditation for Holy Week Retreat

Holy Saturday

30 March 2024

AMDG

Jesus is in a tomb. Creation considers whether death has the final say.  Today is the day to consider whether good turns to evil, light to darkness, life to death, everything to nothing.  God who cannot die is dead.  He let us have the final say as to whether we wanted to live or die.  We choose death, for ourselves and for him. Today we consider if this is truly the last chapter of the human story.

In Advent we wait to see if God will come to save us.  We wait, in hope and in silence, for the appearance of light in darkness.  On Holy Saturday we wait to see if darkness and evil and sin and death are victorious, and we give them the benefit of the doubt.  For God is dead, and we killed him.  Let's see if this is truly the last chapter of the human story.

It does us no good to skip today, to fast forward to tonight or tomorrow, to pretend like today isn't real or doesn't exist or can by avoided or escaped.  Holy Saturday is essential, and woe to us who pretend it doesn't matter.  

If you don't know how to consider whether bringing light from darkness, creation from nothing, was for nought, then learn how.  To know what is means to be alive means I must also consider death seriously, since the years I might lie in a tomb far outweigh the 

Today is the day to consider, which is to ponder as deeply as I can, if there was nothing, or if God regretted his creation and let everything descend back to nothing, or if there was not me instead of me, or not my loved ones instead of having them, or if I was already dead, whether the world would just be fine without me, or whether all the glory of the human experiment is just a mirage, vanishes almost immediately in the face of the eraser that is death.  

All this must be considered in the greatest of silences that is Holy Saturday.  All this must be considered, if we are also to embrace the reality of death as the necessary raw materials for a new creation.  We can't hold onto this life if it's meant to really participate in the paschal mystery.  Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat.

In the depths of the singular darkness that is Holy Saturday, there is also promised the hope that his tomb is filled with so much more potential for new light than that first abyss.

But for us to do more than wish this to be true, we must consider the possibility that Holy Saturday is my true end, and the one that I choose.

+mj

How would I give my last kiss?

Homily

Good Friday of the Lord's Passion

29 March 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

If I had one kiss left to give, how would I give it?

Would I give it here?

Would I give it now?

I can tell you for sure how I would NOT spend my last kiss - on the kiss cam!  I hate the kiss cam.  I don't go to sporting events for PDA.  The inventor of the kiss cam should be canceled.  I don't care if everyone but me loves it.  I live in perpetual fear that some camera operator far far away would think it funny to zoom in on a priest during the kiss cam.  So whenever it comes on, I make a beeline for the beer line.  The kiss cam - it's a hard no for me.

Yet I do have within me a passionate kiss.  I do have an expression of adoration that is ultimate within me.  How am I going to give my last kiss?  Will I spend it here?  Will I spend it now?

The last kiss in today's Passion story is that of Judas.  It's the kiss of betrayal.  It's the kiss of death.  You just participated in the drama.  Jesus is dead, and I killed him. I kissed him.  That's where the story is. That's where the story could end.

Yet what if you have one kiss left?  Would you spend it now?  Would you spend it here?

The Good Friday liturgy is famous for its liturgical kiss.  When you approach the crucifix in just a few minutes, you get to choose what your kiss means.  Will it be the most passionate kiss of your life?  Will it be the kiss of betrayal, the kiss of death, and where your story will end.  Or will it be a passionate kiss of devotion for a love that dares to die, and where you story truly begins?

The axis of the cross is a decision point for your kiss.  It can only mean two things.  It's either the final defeat of love, or the place where new and eternal life begins.

So what if you only had one kiss left to give?  Would you give it now? Would you give it here?

+mj  

Do I choose to kill or die?

Meditation

Holy Week Retreat

29 March 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

I love the next three mornings.  Nothing feels normal.  Everything seems different.  You know you're a liturgical warrior,  or addict, when you're bothered by subtle changes in the liturgy.  Today, the change is much more dramatic.  We see the empty sanctuary before us. We look at the remnants of the garden of agony.  Everything is empty.  Jesus is gone.  They have taken my Lord, and I don't know where they put him.  A time will come when the bridegroom is taken from you, and on that day you will fast.

Today is that day.

I love the next three mornings, for nothing is normal.  These three days are different because we try as we might to take nothing for granted.  The most dramatic moment in human history, the most intense news, the axis of the ultimate battle between life and death, is re-presented now. The story is played out before our eyes and our hearts.  That's liturgy at its best, as a space is opened up for us to participate in the mysteries that transform all reality.

Last night we experienced the depth of love.  Today the terrible and wonderful reality of death. Tomorrow the dramatic silence, of waiting to see what will happen.  Sunday the proclamation of the biggest upset our world has ever seen.  What a gift these days are, to have a time and space to enter deeply into the story of how things really are.

You know the drama of today well.  God is dead, and I killed him. Death is certain, and those who avoid it, try to escape from it, or hide from it, will never be able to face life as it really is, will never suffer reality courageously, will never write a great story with their lives.  

Today is an unbelievable day. The one thing God can't do is die.  He is immortal.  Yet there He is - dead, and I killed him.  What in the hell is going on?   And of course, that's the whole point of it.  Hell is being confronted, face to face.

The passion of our Lord gets personal when I look into my soul, and realize that ultimately, I am one of two characters.  I am the killer, or I choose to die.  At this moment, you might be in the lukewarm messy middle, and that's fine, but really it's not.  Living with real passion, especially on Passion Friday, means that I am in anguish until my real story is accomplished.  Jesus talks about this hour a lot, a chapter of my story when I pass over passionately with Jesus, for Jesus, through Jesus, who has opened up this sacred space for my passion to participate in something more.

Why do I kill?  Well that's easy, tongue in cheek. I kill because life is hard, suffering hurts, and it's just easier to numb out, check out and cancel anything that's too difficult to face.  This is too hard, and I just want it all to be over.

Why do I suffer willingly?  Because there is this promise, this hope, that when death is filled with love, it is defeated, and the gift of my life unto death is the new raw material for the Resurrection.

The point of today is to ask the Holy Spirit to burn like a fire and move you closer to your destiny.  In the end, I am the killer, or I choose to die. The cross is where my life ends, or where it begins.

what's my never?

 what's my never?

Homily

Holy Thursday 

28 March 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

No no no no no no no - never!  How many no's did you bring to Mass tonight?  What's your ultimate no? What's your never?

Mine is easy.  It's the same as Peter's.  Don't humiliate me, Lord.  Don't patronize me.  I can wash my own feet.  I don't need you to do that.  I got this.  You will never.

What's your last no?  What's your never?

Peter had multiple nevers!  You will never be crucified on my watch, Jesus!  Wrong!  Get behind me Satan.  You're not thinking as God does.  Jesus, I will never deny you - ever! Wrong!  Tonight is his final never never.  You will never wash my feet!  Ugh, wrong again.

Whatever no's you brought here tonight, whatever is your never, I doubt it will survive this night. For tonight you're up against a guy who is the absolute worst at taking no for an answer.  Hang onto your never tonight if you can.  I dare you.  In fact, I'm going to bet against you.

For whenever I tell this guy no, He moves, so that my every step away to escape from Him is transformed into a potential yes that can bring us together again.  And when this guy moves, he moves decisively and dramatically.

Our first parents said no in the garden.  No, I will not trust. No, I will not serve.  In response, He moves.  From the no of the garden He chooses to see the Fiat of the new Eve. So He moves, dramatically and decisively, from the abundant heart of His Father to the womb of a poor little girl.

What do I say to this baby?  No!  No, I will not hold you. I'm busy. Stop bothering me. Get rid of Him. Away with Him. Kill him. Crucify Him.

In response to the no of Calvary, from the denial of Peter who ran away scared, Jesus could see the pathetic yes of a priest like me.  So He moves again!  He moves not only through the yes of the Immaculate Virgin, but even more dramatically and decisively through my sin-soaked words, to be born on this altar!  Here I am!  You thought you got rid of me, didn't you?  But I'm really bad at taking no for an answer.  This is my body broken for you.  This is my blood, poured out for you!

What do I say to the gift of the Eucharist?  I say no!  What will you give me to hand Him over? My faith and my love can be bought! Yes, it is one of you eating with me at the table, the one who takes the morsel, who will betray me!  Surely not I, Lord?  You have said so.

What's your next move, Jesus?  From the no of the ways I abuse and betray Him at the altar, He can still see a yes in you, and He thirsts for it.  He can see your little yes, and He won't ever quit on it.  He doesn't know how.  Trust me, the guy is crazy.  Your yes means everything to Him, and He bets all that He is on you.

Lord, I do not deserve for you to come under my roof, but only say the word.  So He moves through your tiny yes, more dramatically and decisively than ever, from this altar into your body.

Still, the greatest distance remains.  Still, Jesus is just starting to move.  Unless I wash your feet too, you will have no part in me.  No way, Lord!  Never!  I can wash my own feet, for God's sake.   Leave my feet alone so I can walk my own path.  Don't humiliate me. You will never!

Take it from me, this dude will not listen.  Ask Peter if you don't believe me.  Unless I wash your feet, unless I get past your last no, your never, all of this is for nothing, and I have failed.  All of this. His moving from the heart of the Father, through the womb of Mary, through Calvary, to this altar, into the abyss of your body - none of it matters unless you also let Him wash your feet.

So what is your never?  Whatever it is, no matter how tightly you cling to it, just know what you're up against.  He's the absolute worst at taking no for an answer.

He has come all this way in case any of us might say yes to His washing our feet.  The sign that He got past our never, is that we will wash one another's feet.

+mj  

Where will I celebrate the Passover?

Reflection for Holy Week Retreat

Wednesday of Holy Week

27 March 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

Where will the Passover be celebrated this year?  Well, of course here in St. Lawrence chapel, and in every Catholic Church throughout the world on Holy Thursday, the commemoration of the Lord's Supper will take place.  The passion of our Lord, re-presented in the sacrifice of the Mass, will be observed liturgically as the Sacred Triduum commences tomorrow night.

Yet there is another, better, deeper place where Jesus wishes to pass over from death to life.  You know that place well.  It's in the depth of your soul, where there are remaining no's because of the fear, pains and doubts that still afflict you.  Will I fulfill the purpose of my life?  Will I love and be faithful to the end.  Will the passover from death to life be accomplished in me?  Will that really be my story?

The gift of the Eucharist contains Jesus desire to reach that innermost part of your soul, where the battle against the ultimate enemies - sin and darkness and doubt and fear and evil and ultimately, death, is constantly played out.  

Your soul is invited to be the ultimate place where the passion of Jesus, his paschal mystery, is played out and accomplished.  Where will I celebrate the Passover with my disciples?  He wants to celebrate His story in you, should you give him permission.

You have said so.  Back to back betrayal days in the Gospel remind us of the gravity of our choice, the full influence and impact of my yes or no.  With my response to Jesus invitation to celebrate the Passover, goes my story and the story of those with whom I have influence.  

Isaiah invites us to set our faces like flint, knowing we will not be put to shame.  What a gift it is to find this dramatic edge in our souls, and to burn with fire and great anguish until the true purpose of my life is accomplished.  This is the fire of the Holy Spirit that years for the confrontation of this week.  Again, from Isaiah - if anyone wishes to oppose me, let us appear together.  Let him confront me.  Let us appear together.  What a wonderful moment this really is to face what I need to face.

May Jesus beg you for the permission to say yes in you, and to passover through you this week, so that you can ask him the question - is it me, Lord?  Is it in me that you want to celebrate your passover?  You have said so.

What does it cost?

Meditation for Holy Week Retreat

Tuesday of Holy Week

26 March 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

I'm not gonna lie.  This meditation today is no fun.  This holy hour is not for the faint of heart.  Meditate at your own risk.  For today is Spy Tuesday.  And that means something personal for me.  It means that I have to come to grips with the fact that my soul is for sale.  My faith can be bought.  There is something for which I would hand Jesus over.

This sin of betrayal pops up in the Gospel, and I usually try to avoid thinking about it.  But today I can't.  Today I must not.  At that moment, Satan entered him.  Woe to the man who betrays Jesus.  It would be better for that man if he had never been born.  All sins will be forgiven, except sins against the Holy Spirit.  Whoever does not believe has already been condemned, for He has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

Ruthless passages.  Devastating truths from our Lord.  A reminder that I am free to create my own hell, if I wish.  Jesus desperately wants to save me from that hell I could choose.  He is desperate to save me.  He is in anguish about losing me. He doesn't know how to live without me.  Yet He will not take back my freedom to betray him.  If I am free to love Him to the end, to be faithful to the point of death, then I am also free to betray Him.

Yes one of you. Yes one of my most intimate friends will betray me. Yes, one of you.  Yes, one of you seated at my Eucharistic table.  The most intimate communion possible is also the locus of the greatest betrayal possible.  Satan entered him.  It would be better if he had never been born.

You know this hell well.  Jesus, leave me alone.  Depart from me, for I am a sinful man. I am not worth it, not good enough, and never will be.  I am the sum of my worst mistakes, and my judgment that I am a selfish loser, a coward and a quitter.  Leave me alone Jesus.  Let me go into the darkness, where I can be alone with my judgments, privacy and choices.  You couldn't possibly want to forgive me more than yesterday, not 70x7 times.  Your mercy is too scary, too real - leave me alone.  It doesn't matter anymore. I don't care.  I quit.

The battle played out at that first Eucharistic table is the same battle for your soul right now, that will never get less dramatic.  For the freedom to love always retains the freedom to betray.

Lord Jesus, let me bring to you my desire to despair, deny you and betray you.  In your mercy, hold me here at your table, hold me with the gaze of your merciful eyes, and have mercy on me.

What's my hour?

Homily

5th Sunday of Lent B2

17 March 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

What's my hour?

If you look at the timeline of your life, it's not hard to come up with pivotal moments, crucial hours.  

I turn 50 today, praise God and thank you!  I'm so grateful.  I'm laughing today because I always promised myself I'd have life perfectly figured out, perfectly under control, by age 50.  God sure laughed at that plan. I know less than ever. I'm less in control that ever.  But you know what, that's a good thing.  It's more fun, and fruitful to live by faith anyway.

You can't just decide when you're going to have life figured out.  What you can do is learn from your mistakes and missed opportunities. What you can do is trust the things you have done well, with God's help.  What you can do is to keep moving forward, refusing to get stuck in fantasy or regret.  What you can do is face the reality of the hour that you're in, and to engage it with faith.

What's my hour?

Within the paschal mystery of Jesus, within the holy hour of his passion, I have been invited to write my own story.  God's story is the real story.  What's amazing is that I have a part to play, as do you.  This is the story of God's love - Jesus came to embrace the pivotal hour of His life.  He came to show how glorious God's love really is, by passionately emptying Himself, being made perfect through suffering.

That's Jesus' hour that I have been invited to write my story within.  That's Jesus' hour, and if I dare accept it, it's also mine.

Don't ever forget that you have been given the same dignity and vocation as Jesus.  You arrive at life through Him, with Him and in Him, by cooperation and participation is His passion, and like Him we are to be in anguish until this hour is consummated, and accomplished.  Don't ever forget that you have the capacity through the Holy Spirit burning within you to give witness to the glorious love of God, by finding a way to empty yourself.

Most likely you're in the middle of your hour right now, or at least you're trying to be.  To be good at life, to enter fully into life, is to have the courage to face what I need to face, to embrace conflict, and to commit to the process of repentance and conversion that is Jesus' way.

Jesus didn't have any other plan for becoming perfect than facing what he needed to face. He didn't have a plan. He only had a way.

So too I can do without fantasizing about a perfect set of circumstances where I finally get control of my life That's perfectionism.  It lacks faith.  It's worthless, and it's pointless.  Maybe we should all give up perfectionism for Lent.

To be perfect is just to trust that my hour is here, and to engage the passion of my life withing the redemptive passion of Jesus.  That's Holy Week, should I dare to enter in.

If I know the Lord, I'm pretty certain he's more excited to share this moment with you than He was to establish the new covenant in His blood with those men first gathered around His table.

This is his hour.  Is it also yours?

J

+mj

Why am I so upset?

Homily

3rd Sunday of Lent B2

3 March 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

Why am I so upset?

In order to answer this question well, I can take my clue from what gets Jesus bent out of shape.  For He has taken on my nature to reveal me fully to myself.

It will pay all of us well today to pay close attention to what has Jesus fired up.  Let's notice when he cries, shouts, gets perturbed and is grieved, like He is in today's Gospel.  Jesus is angry at what He is looking it. He is consumed with zeal!  In this He is revealing something very important.  This is no moment for us to wish Jesus would calm down, play nice, and leave things as they are.

If I dare faith today, this is a Gospel to spark my own passion, lest I lose zeal for accomplishing the purpose of my own life.

I would do well to remember that Jesus is never selling tickets for me to merely watch His passion.  The cross is not entertainment, not a movie of what Jesus does for me so that I don't have to.  The paschal mystery is no spectator sport.  Instead, I am invited to participate with all my mind, heart and body, with reckless abandon.  This is His process, His way by which all things are made new.  He has invited me to be incorporated into His body, to participate in the passions of His sacred heart, and into the transformation that only comes when I too am conformed to the mystery of His holy cross.

Jesus has always taught me with clarity and conviction that there is one plan for every disciple.  Every person in this chapel is on a journey of faith up to Jerusalem.  The goal is to get ourselves killed.  Each one, without exception is to drink the cup and be baptized in blood as He is.  All are invited to empty ourselves through Him, with Him and in Him, with a love strong as death.  This love, this death, and nothing else, is the raw material of the resurrection, the new dusty from which God makes all things new.

There is only one way that does not end in death, and Jesus has shows us the way.  The process to new life is filled with zeal, anger at the way things are, passion for change, and anguish until it is accomplished.

If my Lent is not about cleansing the temple of my body so that I can participate more readily and more passionate in the paschal mystery of Jesus, then what the hell am I doing?  I may as well quit on Lent if it's anything else or anything less.

The goal is to be more upset, not less.  So we do well not to tell Jesus to calm down, but to be moved by his tears when He sees death having the last say in our lives.  We do well to share his anger that our bodies, built to be the most glorious temples of God, are instead filled with noise, junk and sin.

That's worth both Jesus and my being upset about - that my body is not empty, available and ready to be the privileged place where His paschal mystery will be consummated on those three days set apart for my life to be rebuilt.

I know how to clean house like Jesus does.  But will I make a good confession guided by the ten commandments? Will I fast so that my body is sensitive again? Will I give alms so that my heart is cleansed of pride and selfishness?

Why am I so upset?  The goal is to get more upset, not less.  I would do well today not to ask Jesus to calm down, to look away while I have a relaxing spring break, to quit on me or leave things the way they are.  I bet you Jesus my Lord, to be more upset, and to burn with a zeal that will consume me.

+mj

What's the most glorious thing I've ever seen?

Homily

2nd Sunday of Lent B2

25 February 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

What's the most glorious thing I've ever seen?

For me, it's when suffers for love of me.  It's the most glorious thing I can ever see, or feel or experience.  It's also the most terrifying.

Father, let me help you.  Father, let me pray for you.  Father, let me offer this suffering for love of you.  it's all any of us ever want, for someone to love us like that.  Yet it's also the thing I'm most terrified to ask for, receive or look at - someone suffering for love of me.

The 2nd Sunday of Lent we are rocketed from the desert floor of temptation to the glorious heights of Mt. Tabor.  Jesus in His human nature is transfigured by a divine light that reveals fully who He is.  It's way too much, way too bright and terrifying for our buddies Peter, James and John to look upon.  Mercifully, the scene quickly disappears before our friends die of fright.  Jesus returns to His normal disguise, and we remain confused as to what He is saying.

The transfiguration was meant to encourage, so that the apostles wouldn't lose heart on the hard road to Calvary. I won't call is a failed experiment, but the scene seems to terrorize just as much or more.  If I am already too terrified to look at Jesus beautifully transfigured on Mt. Tabor, how could my little faith bear to gaze on the disfigured, terrible, and yes more brightly glorious body of Jesus on Mt. Calvary?  

Today's scriptures force a conflict, and I hope you feel it, setting the transfiguration against the horrible preview of Calvary that is the proposed slaughter of Isaac many years prior on that very same hill.  If I am terrified of the transfiguration, there's no way I'll keep my eyes fixed on the cross.

Abraham and Isaac show us what absolute faith really looks like, and it's terrible.  Imagine now if you will our heavenly Father's first look at Jesus on the cross, on that same spot where Abraham first looked with horror that his only-begotten son Isaac would willingly suffer slaughter sheerly for love of him.  Imagine that our heavenly Father, though horrified at what He sees, cannot look away.

At Mt. Tabor there were words for how beautifully glorious the scene way - this is my beloved Son, listen to Him.  Mt. Calvary is too terribly glorious for words.  Imagine that.  The Father, simultaneously horrified and infinitely pleased, hardly knows what to say.  The glory of the cross demands silence.

St. Paul saw it.  Our Father looking forever at His only-begotten suffering sheerly for love of Him, is a Father whose heart has been transformed from justice to mercy.  He can only and forever be for us, never against.

St. John finally saw it.  Though terrified at Mt. Tabor and drowsy in the garden, he mustered the courage to show up and look a the disfigured yet more glorious face of Christ on the cross.  Mary Magdalen was also there, she from whom the Lord had cast out 7 fearful demons.  Because John and Mary did not look away, they saw the most glorious thing one can ever see.  They were thus the first witnesses to the Resurrection, the first to see with faith, and believe.

So what is the most glorious thing you will ever see?  To gaze at one who loves you is glorious.  To gaze at someone suffering for love of you is more glorious, and more terrifying.  Look anyway.  Look with faith.  Look always, and don't look away. For looking at the most glorious thing you will ever see will transfigure your eyes, transform your heart and transport you from death to life.

+mj  

Why do I need a road win?

Homily

1st Sunday of Lent B2

18 February 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

Why do I need a critical road win this Lent?

The men's basketball team finally got one at OU yesterday!  See ya Sooners have fun in the SEC. We won't miss you.  After starting 0-5 on the road this year, the Hawks will need a couple more really tough road wins to have a chance to win the Big XII.

You heard the knock against Patrick Mahomes, didn't you?  Before this year, he had never had to win a road playoff game.  He had rarely been a playoff underdog.  The criticism didn't make sense to me, since to get home field advantage in the playoff he had to win lots of road games.  Anyway, he won both playoff road games as an underdog, and that made this Chiefs Super Bowl more improbably and thus more glorious.  The best stories, if you're paying attention, are always the underdog, Hail Mary and comeback from the dead stories.  Fans of Jesus Christ ought to know.

So Mahomes got his road wins as the underdog.  Why do you need a critical road win this Lent?

The first Sunday of Lent sets the tone for a big road win.  It's necessary because Satan routinely kicks our tails on our home field.  This angers our Lord, and motivates Him to be a road underdog on our behalf.  There was no reason for our parents to listen to Satan's temptations in the garden.  None.  But they caved, and He got us.  He still gets the best of us, especially when we're complacent on our home turf.  When things get easy, we lose focus and motivation.  It's our fallen human nature.  Satan is still getting the best of us, and that needs to anger and motivate us.

Jesus shows us exactly how to reverse the curse, and redeem this fallen nature of ours. Right after His baptism, He goes to the desert where He has not advantage, no inherent comfort, control or status.  He prays and fasts and faces temptation, in silence, solitude and suffering.  That's Lent.  The time is at hand to learn from Him that the Spirit given me at baptism is enough to win even as a road underdog.

If the Spirit within me does not drive me into the desert this Lent, I'll never know who I am when everything is against me or how I'll respond when an active shooter is trying to kill me, when things are most intense.  I need the silence, solitude and suffering of Lent as a training ground, so that I know I will choose to trust and love even when I have every reason to lose heart.

For my own sake, I need to go get this road win, with and for Jesus and through His Spirit.  My true character is built on the road, in the desert, at practice, when no one is rooting for me or looking.  I need to know my story, and my nature, and face the fact that when I'm comfortable, I'm selfish.  Yet when my story begins in repentance, it ends in glory.

If the confetti is gonna drop on my head this Easter, and for the victory over evil and death to be real not fake, it will be because I had a real Lent as a road underdog.  Jesus leads me there in these first days of Lent.  It's up to me to know why I need this critical road win.

+mj  

why am I here?

Homily

Ash Wednesday

14 February 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

Why am I here?  I don't have to be here today, and neither do you.  So why is everybody here?

For me, this is always the best question for Ash Wednesday, especially at KU.  Because today, everyone's first choice is to be here, even if it's Valentine's Day and the Chiefs SuperBowl parade is on.  Everyone wants to know why - why is Mass everyone's first choice on Ash Wednesday?

This day marks the greatest marketing strategy in Catholic history, apparently.  Come get free dirt, and free insults.  Of all the things we offer at St. Lawrence - community, entertainment, formation, prayer, and yes, even FREE BEER - you prefer to get all those things elsewhere better.

So what gives?   Today the Catholic Church apparently solves a unique problem for you, and gives you precisely what you most need.  Believe it or not, that's free dirt and free insults, letting a stranger remind you that you're not that great and you're gonna die real soon. 

What a strange, strange day.

I'm so glad we are here together the play the game of life for keeps. Still what gives? Why am I here?

The more I pray about it, I think it's honesty!  Jesus speaks so honestly directly to my heart in today's Gospel.  He gives voice to how exhausted I am with pretense, hypocrisy, fakeness and artificiality.  He knows I need more honesty to live from the inside out, to be more fully human and more alive.  He knows my heart, that getting along and getting by and getting away will never be good enough.

Here's what I'll say - every time I go to Mass, I get an honest encounter with someone who is real with me, and truthful, and who loves me better than anyone else because He reveals to me honestly who I am, and who He is, and the life we are meant to share together.  I know this much - every time I go to Mass I am able to live more honestly.  I know that Mass is the conversion and transformation I was made for.

Why am I here?  Because Jesus through the Mass has invited me to the most honest lifelong and lifegiving conversation I can possibly have?

Why am I here?  Because He solves a problem for me, and provides what I most need.  Yes, even by throwing dirt and shouting an insult, He invites me to more than what I'm afraid of, and what I've settled for.

That's why of all the places I could be, it's my #1 choice today and always, to be here.