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