What's my favorite story of all time?

Homily

26 January 2025

3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time - Word of God Sunday

St. Ann Catholic Church  - Prairie Village 

AMDG

What's my favorite story of all time?

When I was featured in the Archdiocesan Newspaper The Leaven upon my ordination to the priesthood, I was asked about my favorite things.  I said that my favorite book was Death Comes to the Archbishop by Willa Cather, a curious choice for a new priest just ordained by an Archbishop.

That was 2004.  I wonder what I would say today.

On the 10th Anniversary of the Royals beating the Mets in the World Series, I'm tempted to say that team is my favorite story. The Jayhawks have won a Natty, and the Chiefs three Super Bowls since then, so there are other candidates.  A lot of us are rooting for the unprecedented story of three straight Super Bowls to be written.  If so, will that be my favorite story of all time?

I love it when athletes begin their postgame interviews by thanking and praising their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Most all the time it is genuine, that these athletes who do incredible things and win amazing victories that inspire so many, attribute their success to the story of Jesus Christ, who won the ultimate victory over sin and death, and who thirsts to share this victory with all his disciples.

The athletes get that as glorious as is it to win sports victories, unless those victories participate in the redemptive mission of Christ, they are doomed to extinction as history inevitably fades into oblivion.  These athletes get something, that unless their story participates in the greatest story of all time, glory is fleeting at best.

This is true for you and me too.  That passion that is proper to your human nature, to write a heroic story of love with your life, to dramatically win the battle for faith over doubt, good over evil, and life over death, has been invited to play a pivotal role in the redemption of the world and the building of the kingdom of Heaven that will never end.  Remarkably, St. Paul says God has so written the play, and involved the actors in the body, that those with lesser roles mysteriously have the greater importance.  For the kingdom of Heaven is built from the inside out, from least to greatest.

This is the great story of salvation that we begin telling again on Word of God Sunday. For the next 34 weeks of Ordinary Time, we will see how St. Luke tells the greatest story of all time.  Most dramatically and importantly, you will get to pray through how you play a pivotal role in the story, as the story of redemption is meant course right through your heart, your body and the precise circumstances of your life.

What could be more dramatic than this, that you play a pivotal role in the greatest story of all time, and that the fulfillment of the story is riding on your response?  No other story, not the Chiefs, not politics, not the movies, not the economy, nor even the countless dramas being played out in every corner of the human experience, is more important than your story.

Chew on that as you meditate on Luke's Gospel throughout this new year.  Remembering always, that although we are a religion of the book, we are even more so a religion of the Word made flesh, who runs His story through the hearts, minds and bodies of His mystical body the Church.

What is my favorite story?

+mj

Who is pursuing your heart?

Homily

Solemnity of the Epiphany

4 January 2025

St. Ann Catholic Church Prairie Village, KS 

AMDG

Who is pursuing my heart?

It's what I desperately and deeply want for Christmas.  It's also what I'm most afraid of, that someone is pursuing my heart.  Remember that at Christmas, we reflected together on the most primal human need and desire of every newborn baby. Will you hold me?  It's what Jesus asks of us for Christmas.  It's what I most deeply want as well.

How about for Epiphany?  What does Jesus want, and what do I want?  As I age, I no longer need as much physical touch; still, I want to be pursued, recognized and cherished by someone.  I want what Jesus receives from the wise men.

Is anyone pursuing my heart?  This question lies at the heart of all reality.  Why is there something rather than nothing?  Why is there me instead of not me?  Why does there seem to be so much mind, truth and meaning embedded in creation, and a person, a love story, at the heart of it all?

You guessed it - all of reality exists so that someone who is radically in love with you can pursue your heart.  It's the most glorious, and scariest thing imaginable.

On Epiphany I get to choose whether to greet this reality with joy, or fear.

The strange magicians from nowhere couldn't have known that the God of Israel was pursuing their hearts.  Yet thank God they were seekers, not skeptics.  These foreign scientists were interested in the why of everything.  So God was able to bait their hearts by teasing their minds.  You're familiar with this God, I pray.   In order to slip by my fear and elite defenses, He puts on disguises, playing tricks as it were, so that He is not trapped by our skepticism.  He teases these astrologers from timbuktu with a star, betting Epiphany on their curiosity, and winning big!

The magi set out on a courageous expedition that every person is made for, to pursue with passion the real meaning of all things!  The Magi stand in stark contrast to Herod, who was supposed to be the most powerful man in the region.  Instead, He is incredibly scared, paralyzed and terrorized by any revelation beyond his control, privacy and choice.  Herod represents all of us skeptics, who hide behind our controls, rather than setting out in faith to live on new edges of truth.  This fear of Herod, to refuse to engage or worship anything that would draw in beyond myself into the heart of things, is why there is so much boredom and depression among us.  It's why none of our kids go to Church.

Thankfully, there is plenty of room at Epiphany for hope.  God seduced the wise men into the truth that He was pursuing their heart.  He can do the same for me and my loved ones.  The magi make the conversion from skepticism to seeking, then from seeking to worship. They make the incredible conversion of letting the truth beheld by their eyes descend deeply into their hearts.   They gave Christ what He wants for Epiphany - pursuit, recognition and worship.  In giving this, I let my heart be pursued, recognized and cherished by the Lord.  

This was true at the first Epiphany, but will it be true at the next?

Who is pursuing my heart?

+mj