Do whatever He tells you! (Jn 2:5)

celibacy is here to stay

2012-01-28T13:40:00.000-08:00

Homily
4th Sunday of Ordinary Time B
St. Joseph's Shawnee and St. Lawrence Center KU
Daily Readings

In my business, the vocation business, I get a lot of "I don't know's." When I ask young person after young person, especially the unmarried men of our Church, 'What is Jesus Christ asking you to do with your life?" I get a lot of "I don't know father. Why are you asking me?" It used to bother me that more young guys didn't know the answer to this crucial question that is an obvious corollary to their faith, nor were many of them desperate to find the answer. Now I expect this answer. I don't think they are lying to me . Many of them truly don't know because they are still on the journey of encountering Jesus, before they can receive a holy vocation directly from him.

Moses tells the Israelites in tonight's first reading from Deuteronomy that it will not be God's long term plan to use 'scare tactics.' It is not his plan to force us to do his will, for God is love, and love does not control, but it sets the beloved free. God had flashed his glory and thundered his power at Horeb, in such a way that the Israelites thought they were going to die. The same could be true of us, if in the discernment of our vocation God showed us in a single flash everything that his gracious will for us truly contained, we might easily die of fright, instantly. Yet God has chosen a different path - not to scare us, but to serve us. Moses tells of a prophet who will deliver God's message in a human way, by conversation and relationship. It is to this prophet, ultimately, Jesus Christ, that we must be obedient through him to find our vocation.

As Paul notes in today's second reading, Jesus Christ still personally invites men and women to a different way of life, to be conformed especially to Himself and His Church through the gift of celibacy. Yes, your heard me right. Jesus gives the gift of celibacy to those he chooses. Celibacy is most fundamentally a gift, moreso than a discipline and sacrifice, because it is a way of being with Jesus and conversing with Him, by standing in the world where he stood, and by relying more immediately on the uniqueness and depth of His divine love. Celibacy seems perennially to be more than the modern world can stand, as it provokes disbelief and mockery, even though many men and women live it well. The same media that promotes promiscuity in all its tv shows seems to delight in trying to prove through the unchastity of a few that celibacy is unnatural, harmful and impossible. They have succeeded in getting great numbers of Catholics to be misinformed and embarrassed by celibacy. But they will never succeed in disproving what St. Paul says in tonight's second reading. For St. Paul tells us the truth, that celibacy is a real way of relating to Jesus. The truth is that although our Church must always repent and make reparations for any way she fails to live up to her lofty ideals, that celibacy retains and will always retain the value that Paul gives it in the second reading. It is good for men and women to take up Jesus on his word to trust in His love in an extraordinary way. The world needs such a witness. Men and women struggling with loneliness need such a witness. Christianity does too. Sometimes Catholics get a bad rap for paying more attention to our sacraments and devotions than to scripture, but where else but in the Catholic church will you find men and women living what Paul literally tells us about celibacy in today's Scripture, men and women joyfully and fruitfully banking their lives on the love of Christ, as the vast majority of priests and religious do in the Catholic Church?

The men that I get to work with as vocations director for our Archdiocese, the men who are answering the call to be your priests after Jesus' own heart, have responded to the call of Jesus that reaches the hearts of men just as surely today as it has for 2000 years. Thank you for your prayers and support of our seminarians, who despite plenty of negativity and scandal will not let the evil one have the last say. These guys are amazing. They are not afraid of celibacy, even though many tell them the shouldn't do it or can't do it. They choose instead to listen to Christ and to trust that his teaching is always new and that He teaches with authority. Staying close to our Lord, and taking him up on his offer that his presence and love and call will be enough to sustain them, these men have cast out the demons of fear, anxiety and doubt to say yes to the Lord's call to be your priests. They need and ask for your prayers. I ask for your prayers for them. As we see in tonight's Gospel, the evil one wins when he can remain hidden and can seduce us with his lies. Yet when we take the Lord Jesus up on his promise, and don't water down what he says, then the impossible becomes possible again. Young men today, even 2000 years after Jesus' Ascension, can welcome him into their lives and when they act with him, in him and through him, the evil one who takes away our chance to be a saint is scattered, and holy vocations can once again be heard and answered in our Church. Pray God, let is continue to be so. Amen.

encounter Christ, find yourself

2012-01-21T05:49:00.000-08:00

Homily
3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time B
Holy Trinity Parish, Paola and St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
21/22 January 2012
Daily Readings

Those who have wives should act as not having them. This line from St. Paul is perhaps the most striking of all the lines that hit us this weekend. Even more striking than learning that the prophet Jonah was able to convert the entire city of Ninevah with the word he received from God. Even more incredible than seeing Peter and Andrew, James and John drop everything and respond to the Lord's call to follow them. Those who have wives should act as not having them, for time is running out. The world as we know it is passing away. Strange words from the great apostle.

We've been through enough cycles of apocalyptic predictions, despite our Lord telling us clearly that we do not know the day nor the hour, not to succumb to the superficial meaning of Paul's words. When he says those who haves wives should act as not having them, this is not a call for men to abandon all responsibilities to make sure they are individually prepared for the rapture, wives and children be damned. Paul in Ephesians, in the great treatise on marriage, says quite the opposite, that a real husband should love his wife as Christ loves the Church, and should hand himself over to his wife so as to love her into holiness. So Paul can't mean an abdication of responsibility. Rather, he points to a responsibility and a vocation that is prior to the marriage of a man and woman; namely, the responsibility to be married to God before we dare to be married to each other. Paul's urgency is directed toward what we name the universal call to holiness. It is the same call that Jesus gave to Peter, Andrew, James and John, urging them to leave their livelihoods as well, to become fishers of men.

This eternally fruitful marriage between Christ and His Church is perfectly accomplished in the Holy Eucharist we are about to celebrate. Here the two are made one - Christ and His Church become one body, one spirit, in the communion celebrated. It is because this marriage of Christ and His Church is the most real and enduring marriage, and is the source and perfection of married love, that Paul can say that those who are not aware of Christ's love for them, should act as if not having a wife. Paul rightfully creates an urgency in responding to the love of Jesus Christ, the love of a Creator for his creation and the love of a savior for sinners. It is because the love of Christ is greater than any human love, for He knows us better than we know ourselves, and as our Savior loves us where we cannot love ourselves, at the point of our greatest sin, that Paul can say what He says and Jesus can call as He calls. Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.

Without a true encounter with Jesus Christ, without a realization on our part that it is encountering Him that I will find myself and without a confession of the uniqueness and depth of His love for me, then the accounts of vocation and discipleship in tonight's readings are absurd. Mary's last words in recorded scripture are 'Do whatever He tells you" and her words, as we would suspect, represent the perfect way for a Christian to receive His vocation from Jesus. Do whatever He tells you. But why would I trust Jesus more than I trust myself? Why would I do only and precisely what He tells me, when I can respond to my own desires? Why is following Him freedom and not slavery?

Christian discipleship and vocation is much different than how the world tells us to find ourselves. The world challenges us to find our uniqueness in isolation - what makes me special and different than anyone else? Only after answering this question can we find our mission in life, so says the world. A Christian instead is called to find his uniqueness not in isolation but in relationship - we find ourselves insofar as we dare to encounter God, and by how we respond to Jesus' invitation to fall in love with him after the pattern of his falling in love with us. It is only if this falling in love has taken place, and only if it is taking place as we encounter an ever more mysterious person who in the end desires not to be my boss but to be my friend who unlocks my greatest potential, that obedience to His voice, and doing only what He tells me, becomes my greatest freedom and joy, and my sure path to happiness and eternal life.

bishops need prayers

2012-01-20T07:21:00.000-08:00

Homily
Friday of the 2nd Week of Ordinary Time II
20 January 2012
Danforth Chapel at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings

Today we listen from the Gospel of Mark about Jesus choosing the first apostles. Upon hearing the reading, I immediately begin praying for our local bishop Archbishop Naumann, the pope and all bishops. It is easy to forget when you become friends with your 'boss' and spend so much time with him, that he carries with him the full responsibilities of the apostolic mission of the Church. The Holy Father Pope Benedict is a 'first among equals' but each bishop is a true successor of the apostles, chosen by Christ through the vehicle of the Church, to be sent out to teach, forgive, and sanctify. It is an impossible task, being responsible for the unity and salvation of so many people, not only Catholics but all those in the Archdiocese. Were it not truly Jesus himself active in and through ordinary, fallible men, the leadership of the bishops would have long ago fallen apart. Bishops make many mistakes. They would be the first to admit that. Yet they have been called by Christ to a mission that they cannot shrink from. They deserve and need our prayers.

St. Fabian was one of the first bishops of Rome, who bravely took up this unique responsibility of being a successor to the apostles, and suffered martyrdom because he would not shrink from the challenge in front of him. May his powerful prayers and witness on his feast day give courage to all bishops, and their closest helpers, the priests and deacons of the Church. Amen.

For the Church, especially for our local bishop and his intentions, and those of the Holy Father, we pray to the Lord.

For the world in which we live, that all people would have the courage of their convictions, and that lasting peace and justice would spring forth, we pray to the Lord

For the mission of St. Lawrence to the University of Kansas, that the truth of the Gospel would find a good hearing here, and all learning by perfected by charity, we pray to the Lord

For the intentions we bring to this Mass, especially for those who are lonely, sick, scared or doubtful, and those who have no one to pray for them, we pray to the Lord

For the humility and faith to respond generously when we are called by the Lord to a holy vocation within the Church, we pray to the Lord.

Heavenly Father, look with kindness upon the cries of your children, and grant us only those things that are truly good for us, and in accordance with your gracious will, for we ask everything always through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Quick Takes for today

Blessings and prayers to Archbishop Naumann, Mike Scherschligt and all those from the Archdiocese embarking on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land - 101 in all! Pray for us!
The same to Fr. Steve Beseau and all those attending the FOCUS national leadership conference in Baltimore this weekend and/or going on the March for Life, especially the two KU buses!
I'll be in Paola this weekend preaching on Call to Share! This will be my first visit there as vocation director.
The Jayhawks and Longhorns always play epic games against each other; here's hoping KU keep rolling Saturday at 3pm in Austin. Rock Chalk.
I'll be saying the 12:10pm Mass at Danforth Chapel today on campus, followed by the hearing of St. Thomas Aquinas confessions, and a Mass for their senior Kairos retreat at Savior Pastoral Center this afternoon. Then hopefully catch a little of the Saints Classic where my friend Fr. Brian O'Brien will be watching the Bishop Kelley boys team do battle. Fr. Brian is the president of that high school in Tulsa.

don't be afraid of this baby!

2011-12-24T05:05:00.000-08:00

Homily
Solemnity of Christmas
Mass at Midnight
St. Frances Cabrini Church
Hoxie, Kansas
24 December 2011
Daily Readings

We might be more afraid of babies today than Herod was at the birth of Jesus. Granted, Herod had some reason to be alarmed. There were signs in the heavens that this new child had armies of angels in his corner that could make even the most fearsome armies of Caesar panic.  Still, Herod was afraid of a baby. He felt threatened by a helpless little baby!  But what about us? Are we afraid to be changed by the baby Jesus tonight? Have we truly come here tonight not out of fear or indifference, but out of love? We have to admit that sometimes we are changed more by the society that we live in than we are by the newborn Jesus.

We live in a society that seems to spend more energy manufacturing or aborting babies than in seeing children as the miraculous gifts that they are.  We spend more time arguing about the redefinition of marriage and the family than in forming young people capable of the sacrifice of marriage that will make the babies that will secure our future more secure themselves. The same societies that are smart enough to build ever more impressive smart-phones are not smart enough to stop contracepting and sterilizing their economies and themselves out of eventual existence. Herod might have been afraid of a single child. We are in a society afraid to admit that babies are our future, and to welcome them accordingly.

Perhaps this battle first fought by Mary and Joseph, to find a place to have a baby, will be the defining struggle of our generation. Being born in 1974, one year after Roe v. Wade, abortion in the civil-rights struggle of my generation, the struggle for the the right to be born,a battle that has yet to be won in favor of the baby. Yet this struggle goes hand in hand with finding a real definition of what a human person is, and this is a question that our society gets more and more confused about. We know a lot more stuff than we used to, but we are getting dumber at being able to say what a human person is. That is why the celebration of Christmas, the welcoming of the baby Jesus into the world, is the best chance the world has to remember what it is in danger of forgetting - who we really are.

We have a saying that to forget where you came from is to forget who you are.  How a societytreats its most vulnerable like her babies is a sure sign of whether that society still knows and serves the dignity of human persons or whether human persons are becoming less and less valuable. For us personally, to be able to see ourselves, and to remember where we came from, when we hold a newborn child, is the key to remembering that a human being becomes a person precisely when he is recognized, remembered and loved. And this simple but profound and irreducible definition of a human person is more evident when we are vulnerable, dependent and poor; in short, when we are like a baby. To remain a human person, to remember who we are by remembering where we came from, is to always be able to see ourselves as poor, vulnerable, and dependent, like a baby.   To remain focused on the one thing that matters - that we are created in love, that love is our constant calling, and that love is our perfection in heaven, is to remember that as we go through life, that to stop being a child - poor, vulnerable and dependent, is to forget who we really are. This my friends, is what the Christmas mystery has to continually re-teach the world. It is how the Christmas mystery gives the world hope, by teaching us that babies are the key to everything.

Tonight in this sacred liturgy we welcome no ordinary child, but the Christ child, into our lives. We simply go through the motions, and pretend that God is close to us, unless we truly adore this Christ child, which means to literally and really 'fall in love' with this new baby. Christmas takes its name, of course, from Christ's Mass, and it is at Mass only when we receive this beautiful person of Jesus into our lives in the most perfect way imaginable. It would be absurd then to base my definition of a good Christmas by any other standard other than what happens to my heart, when I receive the Holy Eucharist on this holy night, for to take the Lord Jesus under my roof, into my body and soul, is a more intimate experience than holding the this baby in our arms. Which of us, even the most crusty of us, could hold the baby Jesus in our arms, to have the privilege given to Mary, his mother,and fail to fall in love with him. The Eucharist is nothing less than this privilege, and is perhaps even more, as the baby Jesus first born poor and in the cold humbles himself even more beautifully in the Eucharist so he can truly be here tonight.  We simply go through the motions, then, if we think that our experience here tonight is any less dramatic than what happened on that first holy night.  .

Jesus' perfect closeness to us at Mass is the reason that we can never give up on trying to be close to each other, and the perfect gift we receive here tonight is our reason to keep giving. We gather at the darkest hour of the darkest night of the year to welcome with incomparable faith and joy Jesus who is the light strong enough to scatter every darkness. The birth of Jesus from a virgin mother is the sign that the first creation of everything out of nothing by the virgin Father has reached its completion in Jesus, the new Adam. Because he takes on our nature in the incarnation, our nature is capable of elevation to real participation in eternal, uncreated reality. We rejoice on Christmas because we live in the fullness of time, when nothing is impossible for a God who never stops wanting to fall in love with us and be married to us, when the re-creation of the world is really taking place whenever a human person is not afraid to be visited by Jesus.  The angels tell the shepherds - do not be afraid! We know deep down that we cannot afford to let this Christ's Mass pass with fear or indifference. If I resist Christ at this moment when he makes himself perfectly irresistible, when will I ever receive him? If not now, when? Living in a world that is oftentimes afraid of babies, may I not be afraid to fall in love again, and to be visited and changed, by this most irresistible of babies, wrapped in swaddling clothes, and laying in a manger. Amen.

Never forget where you came from

2011-12-18T06:54:00.000-08:00

Homily
4th Sunday of Advent B
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
18 December 2011
Daily Readings

I have four brothers. They are all pretty good hunters. I am not. I decided a few years ago, after about four hours of conversation about hunting, during which I had nothing to add, that if I was going to be an active member of this family, that I needed my own hunting stories, that I had better at least go buy a shotgun and some camouflage. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. And I've enjoyed the last couple of years hunting with my dad and brothers and extended family. I don't get to hunt very often, but the times I have, have been great. In a way, it is remembering where I came from. I grew up on the plains of western Kansas. That's an important thing to know about me, and an important thing for me to remember about myself. It's important no matter where you're from. I'm 37 years old now, and I've traveled all around the world, but the one question that remains the same, no matter how old I get or how many people I meet, is the question - where are you from?

This question, if we care to look at it, is of greater value than just being a conversation starter. It can be that, and it can be fun to see how small the world really is, by comparing people that you know and places you've been. It's a good way to meet people, talking about where you're from. Yet the question holds a deeper value, a spiritual value you might say. Knowing where you're from is important to knowing who you are. Forgetting where you're from is the equivalent of saying that you don't know who you are.

Enter the story of David, who after his many heroic accomplishments enjoyed a great amount of wealth and security, and a nice cedar house to dwell in, yet felt guilty that the ark of the covenent dwelt in a tent. For a moment, David felt more secure than the Lord. Boy was he wrong. For a moment David thought that he was in a position to do something for the Lord, and forgot until corrected by the prophet Nathan that the Lord still stood ready to do something for David. The Lord reminded David of where he came from and who he was, Jesse's smallest and least significant shepherd boy. The Lord reminded David of all that he had done through David, with David and in David, and promised again what yet was to be accomplished, if David would only stand at the ready, and not pity the Lord. The Lord reminded David that not all that much had changed. He was still the Lord, and David was still David, that poor shepherd boy, if only David would remember who he was and where he came from. David needed reminding that it was the Lord who chose David, not vice versa.

Enter Mary, who as we hear in today's Gospel, inherits the great promise made to David and his posterity, who while still a little helpless girl not unlike the insignificant shepherd boy David when he was first chosen, is made greater than any good king like David or any imperfect king like Caesar ever was or ever will be. Mary is great because she remained poor, vulnerable and dependent. When the angel greeted her, Mary was as poor, vulnerable and dependent as the day she was born. Mary had not great worldly victories that we know of. She was a nobody. She was no great religious figure. She was young in a culture that valued age and a woman in a culture that offered women little security apart from men. Yet because she remained poor, vulnerable and dependent as the world sees, Mary was always aware of the most important thing: she knew who loved her the most and who she loved the most. That is what we learn from Mary. For those of us called to communion, not isolation, for those of who who have love as our origin, the reason we are here instead of not here, who have love as our constant calling, the reason we keep going instead of quitting, for those of us who have love as our perfection in heaven, where the deepest desires of the heart promise to be filled, we need to learn from Mary how to stay centered on this one question we can't afford to get wrong. Who loves me the most and who do I love the most? This question is best answered when we are poor, vulnerable and dependent - it is in these circumstances only that we have the chance to learn the most important thing we have to learn. It is in these circumstances only - poor, vulnerable and dependent, that we learn where we are from and who we really are. Nobody remained in these circumstances more perfectly than Mary.

David was disappointed that the Lord dwelt in an unworthy tent. Mary remembered what David forgot, that she was most unworthy, and had nothing to offer the Lord, which is why she welcomed the Lord under her roof more perfectly than David. David, for all his greatness and accomplishments, still saw the Lord as dwelling over there, under the tent. Mary surpasses David in listening to the angel declare - the Lord is with you. He is under your tent. She received the Christ child, then, not as the world receives him, not as you and I receive him, with fear or indifference, but with joy and expectation.

Thank God, then, that Mary is the first member of our Church! Thank God that she is with us. For we are not poor, nor vulnerable, nor dependent. When we look at the Christ child we rarely see ourselves, and even more rarely remember who we are or where we are from. But Mary is with us! She is on our team! She is the last and greatest Advent prophet, and she will prepare room in Her Church for the coming of the Lord. We are not ready for Christmas, but she is. So let us be with her, and pray that her Fiat might find an echo in us. Amen.

real rejoicing

2011-12-11T05:57:00.001-08:00

Homily
Gaudete Sunday
11 December 2011
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings

Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I say rejoice! The Lord is near!

Welcome to Pink Sunday. Gaudete Sunday. Rejoice Sunday. We light the pink candle. We turn the corner toward Christmas. We rejoice for one reason, and one reason only. The Lord is near.

The joy proposed to us Christians on this 3rd Sunday of Advent is a distinctive joy. It is available here, and nowhere else. It is not the joy of improved external circumstances. It is not the joy of having things outwardly go better for us. It is not the joy of beating Ohio State or hiring Charlie Weis. No, as great as things like that are, and as thankful as we might be for such blessings, we rejoice today for a different reason, and for one reason only. The Lord is near.

Today's joy is born of knowing that since for our Lord, a thousand years are like a day, that we have no right to expect a gift like Jesus Christ to come into the world, and yet we rejoice because we know for certain that he is coming. We rejoice that he is coming not later, but now. We rejoice that he has come, that he is coming, and that he will come again. Those of us who sit in darkness have no right to anything but to sit in darkness, yet we rejoice that those of us who sit in darkness have seen a great light. We have no right to take Christmas for granted, but have every responsibility to imagine a world without Christmas. We have a duty to wonder if the Lord has not come to visit us if we would have long ago given up on visiting each other with His redeeming love. For this reason, taking nothing for granted, we rejoice. And we rejoice for one reason only, the Lord is near.

The coming of the Lord into the world brings something that nothing else can bring. He alone through whom all things were made, has the power to remake everything. This does not mean, as we have come to realize, that everything is about to go my way, or that things will turn out the way I think they should. No, it means something else - that an outwardly imperfect world is being made perfect from the inside out. Starting with the smallest and going to the greatest, the world is being made perfect from the inside out, and so are we. This is the joy, the distinctive joy, the incomparable joy, that we are invited to contemplate and enter into.

It is a joy that perdures whether or not I am outwardly ready for Christmas, whether or not finals week goes the way I think it should. It is a joy of knowing that there is one active inside of me that does more than I can ever do, one more interior to me than I am to myself who loves where I could never love myself, one closer to me than I am to myself who takes away any excuse I have not to be close to others. I rejoice, because the Lord is near, and he is ready to visit me, and to change my life from the inside out. I rejoice, then, because His coming brings nothing but joy, love and peace to my life, and that by his coming I am about to change more than I have ever changed before. I rejoice in this new hope, as surely as I can know that holding a newborn child can melt my heart.

John the Baptist as the greatest prophet tells us with great alarm that there is every chance that we will miss the Lord's visit again this year. Because the Lord wishes to visit us beginning as a vulnerable child, we have every reason to expect that he will visit me at my weakest and most vulnerable point, at my smallest point. It will take a pure faith, a faith unadulterated by the pride of sin and a faith uncluttered by the desire for things outwardly to go my way, in order for me to recognize the time of my own visitation. St. Johnthe Baptist tells us that there is no option but true repentance from the depths of our heart. For if we do not say with our Lady in her Magnificat that 'he has looked upon the lowliness of his handmaiden' then we are sure to miss Christmas again this year.

As St. Paul urges as well, let us look east and make ourselves as ready as we can be. Still, we rejoice not that that we are ready, not that we can ever be ready, but because He is ready. We rejoice for this reason, and this reason only. He is ready. And the Lord is near.

The United States, consecrated to Mary of the Immaculate Conception at her beginning

2011-12-08T06:09:00.001-08:00

Homily
Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
8 December 2011
Daily Readings

Hail Mary, full of grace! This is the angel's greeting to Mary, before Mary had any clue of what was about to happen, before she was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit and conceived Jesus in her womb. Already, before any of that, the angel says Hail Mary, full of grace. This astonishing statement should make us wonder - when did she become full of grace?

Today's Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception answers this question of when Mary became full of grace. Our Church, comtemplating the words of the angel Gabriel to Mary for the first two millenia of Christianity, defined with theological precision and certainty in 1854 the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, that every Catholic can and must believe that Mary was conceived without sin, that she was full of grace from the first moment of Her conception. This truly is theology at its very best, the faith of the Church seeking to understand the mysteries of revelation, even if it takes 1800 years to arrive at this understanding.

Defining Mary's sinlessnes from the first moment of her conception gives us a clue that God's plan from the beginning was not to use Mary in a minimum kind of way, like a temporary employee. The angel's greeting was not - Hail Mary, who will be full of grace from the moment of Jesus' conception to the moment of His birth, or to the moment of his presentation or baptism. No, his greeting was already Hail Mary, full of grace, before she conceived in her womb. This clue that Mary was always full of grace, adopted by God in Jesus Christ not at baptism but at conception, to be holy and blameless before him, should tell us to expect what we have come to know about Mary, that if she always was full of grace, she will always be full of grace. That grace that we celebrate today at the moment of her conception will not run out at the birth of Jesus, but will move Mary to say yes not only to the Annunciation, but yes to following her son to the foot of the cross, and yes to accepting the new mission to be the mother of all those destined for eternal life.

We will celebrate Mary, mother of sorrows at the cross, Mary, mother of the Church at Pentecost, and Mary, Queen of heaven, on other occasions, showing that we know Mary once full of grace always is full of grace and always will be full of grace. Today we celebrate precisely and simply that we know when Mary became full of grace. It was at the moment of her conception, that God gave the merits of her Son's redemption to her, mysteriously preserving her from original sin. This gift to Mary should make us excited to receive the same incomparable gift, and we are challenged in this Advent season to follow her example of making room in our hearts first for the coming of the infant Jesus in the flesh, the mystery of the Incarnation.

Aside from Christmas Day, today's Solemnity is the highest ranking non-Sunday celebration in the Church's United States calendar. We never move this solemnity of our Lady, and never abrogate it. For Our Lady under the title of the Immaculate Conception is the patroness of the United States America, and shame on us if we do not have a devotion to her under this title. Lacking evidence of any other apostle making it to the shores of our great land, we recognize in Our Lady's gracious beginning in the womb of her mother Anne, the conception of the Church here in the United States through the Immaculate Conception of Mary, who is the apostle of the apostles. Believing that Mary herself planted the faith here, and knowing that the first bishops of our country went to Rome with great joy for the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in Rome in 1854, eager to consecrate our country to Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, we see from the beginning the special destiny of the United States and our Church to be a light to all nations through recourse to Mary. In honoring and loving her, we honor and love her Son, who is so pleased that we know and love the one whom he knows and loves the best. In consecrating ourselves and our country to her, we more closely imitate him,who rejoiced to always be completely dependent upon Mary as the Eve of the new creation. In honoring her today, we become better disciples of him, who came into the world happy to dwell in the womb and nurse at the breasts of Mary, full of grace. Amen.

true drama

2011-12-04T05:26:00.001-08:00

Homily
2nd Sunday of Advent
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
4 December 2011
Daily Readings

There is great anticipation at KU right now regarding the university's next football coach. The coaching search is dramatic. It is urgent. Sheahon Zenger is the prophet, hitting the road like John the Baptist, trying to sell the KU job. He is working like crazy until he finds the next coach for KU, the one who will gather more people Saturday after Saturday than any other person at the University. The one who will be responsible for generating income from thousands of alumni through football. Whether or not you are a football fan, or agree with all the attention football gets, this is the reality . Every day that we go by without a new coach, is a day lost, a day that perhaps someone else will hire the coach that we need.

Remember the results of the last election, when President Obama was elected? Remember the anticipation and the dramatic coverage. The whole world was watching!

Advent desperately tries to get us Christians back into this mode of anticipating great things, and being alert for the coming of one much greater than President Obama or the next KU football coach. St .Mark writes the first Gospel, perhaps from Rome, where St. Paul and St. Peter had just been executed for their faith, and announces that the one the Israelites have long awaited, the Messiah, and quite certainly the one who has the power to redeem the heart and life of every human person, has arrived. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has arrived!

Advent begs us to enter back into the dramatic first moment of the world's creation, for the coming of the Messiah means precisely this, and more. As dramatic as the moment of our birth was, exchanging the world of our mother's womb for the infinitely bigger world in which we now live and move and have our being, and as dramatic as the moment of our death will be, when we will once again exchange the smallness of this world for the mystery of that reality that lies on the other side of death, even more dramatic is the moment which you and I now share. This is the urgent message of Advent. The coming of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, among us is a moment even more dramatic than the moment of our conception, the moment of our birth, or the hour of our death. For the moment in which we now live is the moment of recreation, a revolutionary creation even greater than the first creation bringing everything out of nothing. The second creation is greater than the first, for the entry of the Lord of the universe into the time and space of a single human nature is a more improbable creation than the creation of everything from nothing. This second creation is greater than the first, because the second creation will definitely overcome the enemies of life and love that hold sway in the world as we know it, but in the new heavens and new earth, there will be no wasteland of sin nor desert of death. As great as this first world is, we still live in enemy territory. The good news of the Gospel is that the exodus has begun. That is why we praise God with full-voice; not only for the beauty of this world, but because the revolutionary re-creation of the new world has begun in Jesus Christ our Messiah.

The prophet Isaiah and St. Peter and St. John the Baptist are three powerful voices begging us to feel in our bones our need for this Messiah, for one to come and recreate and redeem the parts of us that are already dead, the wasteland of our sinfulness, the desert of our lost hope. They remind us to repent, for no one welcomes a savior if he thinks everything is ok. The prophets beg us out of the sleepiness of thinking everything is good enough as it is. The prophets beg us not to give in to complacency, and not to be deists, who think that because this moment of recreation that we are in is taking thousands of years that the Lord is not close. St. Peter reminds us that for the Lord, a thousand years are as a day. We are in the dramatic moment of recreation whether we believe it or not. The prophets implore us to be as afraid of the Jesus who was born so helplessly in Bethlehem, and who waits for us even more vulnerably in the Holy Eucharist, as we are of the Jesus who will come in glory and rule with his strong arm at the end of time. To be a Christian means to live the drama of Advent, between the time of Jesus' first coming and his last, in the kingdom of the already and not-yet. But make no mistake, the Advent prophets tell us convincingly that the moment in which you and I now stand, is as dramatic a moment as there ever was or ever will be. The moment of re-creation, a moment greater than ever has been or ever will be, has arrived. Jesus Christ has come among us, bringing with him a baptism of the Holy Spirit andof fire. Our passover from the land of the enemy to his kingdom is at hand.

Do not be lulled into thinking the Lord is delayed. Just because the moment of his recreation has begun in the smallest of ways, just because you can block him in tonight's Eucharist be failing to prepare a way to your heart, does not mean that He is not here. Just because we can choose to fill our lives with things other than Him, does not mean that tonight's moment of the Eucharist does not contain the power to recreate you into everything you always promised yourself you would be. Whether you like it or not, He is here, and He is ready. The recreation of the world has begun, and we are in its dramatic moment. Prepare in the your heart, then, a highway for our God.

Come, Holy Spirit (Advent edition)

2011-11-29T11:50:00.001-08:00

Homily
Tuesday of the 1st Week of Advent
29 November 2011
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings

Today's prophecy from Isaiah, a classic Advent prophecy, focuses on the gift of peace that the coming of the Son of man will bestow. Peace will be a gift from the one who has the fullness of God's Spirit. Isaiah prophesies the 7 gifts of the Holy Spirit, which will be poured into the human nature of Jesus as the Father's gift to His Son.

One of the most profound prayers of the Christmas season is for peace. The Holy Father always prepares the World Day of Prayer for Peace message for January 1st during the Christmas season. To pray for peace in the Christmas season means a recognition that a real and lasting peace of which Isaiah speaks will be the fruit of the Lord's coming. It will be God's gift to a world. We have been through enough New Year's resolutions ourselves to know that unless the Lord gives the gift, in vain do we labor. So too for mankind. We see over and over man's ability to make great progress on many fronts, but so often we get dumber as quickly as we get smarter. Moral progress and technological progress do not go hand in hand. It is not a smart thing to create the ability to destroy ourselves, and yet that is what we do. We may hope for human solutions toward peace, and work sincerely toward them, but asking for peace in the Christmas season teaches us that we are wise to ask for peace as God's gift, for our ability to receive peace is greater than our ability to produce it.

Perhaps today is a good day for us to meditate on the role of the Holy Spirit in the Christmas story and Christmas mysteries. The Holy Spirit who overshadows the great Advent prophets, Isaiah, John the Baptist, Mary and Joseph, can also help us listen to them. Advent invites us to start again at the beginning, and to recognize that before the Holy Spirit can sent us out at Pentecost, He must prepare a fertile ground in our hearts for the Lord's coming. Come, Holy Spirit, and with your seven-fold gifts descend, and prepare your Church to celebrate the mystery of the Lord's incarnation.

God get down here!

2011-11-26T04:43:00.000-08:00

Homily
1st Sunday of Advent B
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
27 November 2011
Daily Readings

Advent challenges God to do something. This is the prayer of the Israelites who are suffering the Babylonian exile. God get down here. God do something! God be true to your promise to be our Father. What kind of Father are you anyway? Have you forgotten about us God? God quit hiding your face. God get down here now and do something for us.

How different is this prayer from Isaiah than the prayers we usually say to God? What do we say? God give me more time. God keep your distance and I will get around to what's important. Forget about me God, so I can go about my own business.

Advent is waking up to the reality that the only thing scarier than God messing with our lives, with God coming closer, is God keeping his distance. That is truly terrifying. For God keeping his distance does not bring us relief and freedom, it brings terror and the slavery of our own limitations. Advent is waking up to the reality that deep down, we want God to come closer, to come sooner. Advent is praying God to come as close to us as we are to ourselves, and actually meaning it.

Why do human persons go extreme? Why do we watch UFC fighting, love watching football players crash into each other, love sky diving and horror movies? Not everyone loves these things, but behind them lies the human passion for living on the edge. Why do we do this? Why do we not seek security above all things? Why not be as conservative as possible, since life is worth conserving? It is because we all know that to stop living radically and vertically, to stop living on the edge, is to fall asleep. It is to die an early death. Indeed, only those who are near death can tell others what it means to be fully alive.

Advent fights against this temptation to fall asleep when life is only really starting, to give up on ourselves by settling for less. Advent in the liturgical year corresponds to nightfall, when we are tempted to think the day is over and things are done happening. Advent says no way. Just as scientists look for smaller and smaller particles to unlock the mysteries of the universe, just as the one possession that will determine the fate of the KU basketball team this March depends on what they learn in practice today, so also for us the spark that will light our spiritual lives on fire, and enable us to be a saint, depends upon our not letting ourselves fall asleep, not allowing the darkness to cave in on us. When we are tempted to think that there are no new sparks in our lives, Advent tells us to stay awake. Be ready. We do not know the hour when the Lord is coming.

Advent is the choice we make between intensifying our life or falling asleep. Advent is the difference between thinking our best moments are behind us, versus knowing that our biggest conversion is still ahead of us. Advent is knowing that when the Christ child was born in the dark town of Bethlehem at the darkest hour of the darkest night, only those with the purest faith were awake to see it.

Advent is knowing that the only way to really see if we are alive is not diving out of an airplane, or seeing Paranormal Activity 3. These might work for a second. But if we really want intensity, and want to live life in the most radical away, living on the edge moment to moment, instead of just giving up and falling asleep, we will invite God to come closer, and to come sooner, and actually mean it. Dare to stop asking God for more time and more space. Instead, ask him for the opposite. Ask him to be your coach, your friend who believes in you more than you believe in yourself, your accountability partner who refuses to let you fail. Dare him to mold you intoa saint at a faster pace than the self-improvement plan you are currently on. It might sound terrifying, but consider the alternative. Who want to fall asleep, and give up, when life is only beginning?

The king who lays down his life

2011-11-19T07:57:00.001-08:00

Homily
Solemnity of Christ the King
20 November 2011
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings

Michael Jackson. Elvis. Simba. Lebron. There are lots of kings out there. We love them. We love anointing kings who are unstoppable within their temporal kingdom. But we also love to bring them down. In a country that was founded by the desire to topple a king, we probably take more pleasure in seeing kings fall than in anointing them. Paterno, Gill and Pinkel are all under fire, though for different reasons. Mubarak, bin Laden, and Qaddafi are tyrants and terrorists toppled in the Arab spring. Lohan and Kardashian are under fire in the tabloids.  Anointing and toppling leaders in politics is perhaps America's greatest pasttime of all.  It's embarrassing really, how much time and energy we devote to anointing kings, and how much pleasure we take in seeing them fall. Most of us get too caught up in it, to our own shame.

Today's solemnity ends the liturgical year for us by trying to set things straight. There is only one king. There is only one whose reign is unstoppable, whose kingdom extends beyond the time and space of the universe, only one kingdom that is so universal and eternal that legions of angels rejoice in proclaiming its glory. That is the kingdom of Jesus Christ our King. Whenever we say the name of Jesus, the name of the one who saves by shedding his blood for his subjects, we proclaim him to be the Christ, the anointed one. Jesus Christ. Jesus the Lord. Jesus our King. Today's feast proclaims with incomparable joy the reality of a kingdom that not even a king with the power to launch a nuclear weapon can destroy. It is a kingdom founded on truth and love, on justice and peace. To this king alone belongs the power to judge the world, as today's Scriptures state clearly. It is to this king alone, that every knee should bend, in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, to the glory of God the Father, Amen. (Ph 2:10).

The incomparable power of this king, however, lies not only in His ability to rule and to judge and to dominate, but in its opposite. The Lord cautioned the Isralites that earthly kings are sinful and dangerous, but when they still insisted that someone by anointed to rule over them, the Lord turned their sinful wish into a blessing, into a promise of a king who would rule longer than any king before or after.  Yet the king that was sent was mysterious beyond imagination, a king recognizable only by the eyes of faith, a king born out in the cold,a king who rode into his capital city on a donkey, a king who forewent a secret service or army, and instead handed himself over to the hands of his enemies, and at his weakest moment was mocked as Ieusus Nazarenus Rex Ieudaeorum. This is how the Lord himself came to rule, by showing that the greatest power a king could show is to give himself over in love to those who hate him. This power alone is a power greater than the power of the Big Bang that created the universe, for this power of sacrificial love is the ground of all reality, and is the foundation of a kingdom of love and truth, justice and peace, that alone is universal and eternal.

Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive the scroll and break open the seals (Rev 5:9). It is our King's ability to lay his life down in love, to be the lamb who was slain, that is the foundation of his judgment of the world. The sacrifice precedes the judgment. The mercy which is the heart of God is why we proclaim our King to be most worthy on this great solemnity. Worthy is the lamb. Worthy is our King who was not afraid to be a lamb. This king is to be praised and adored above all forever. Amen. This solemnity must be for us a solemnity of the highest praise, when we forsake all our false kings and idols, and proclaim the Lord to be the King who alone is worthy.  Jesus is not proclaimed king today because he is like any earthly rule that came before him; he is proclaimed king because he is the new and eternal definition of what a king really is.

You didn't see this on the mainstream media, but Pope Benedict, that old man with just a few acres of territory and an annual budget less than that of a single American university like Harvard or Notre Dame, an old man who has no army, outdrew both President Obama, the most powerful man in the world, and Prince William, whose wedding to Princess Kate made him the most popular this year. Both men outdrew the Pope on tv, but I was there when our old and frail Holy Father drew 2.2 million to Madrid for the World Youth Days, the largest crowd in the world this year. I was there, and I saw it, a small glimpse of the kingdom of Jesus Christ, which is more vast and powerful and eternal than any nation or kingdom on this earth ever was or ever will be. Let us pray with earnest for our Holy Father and his brother bishops, who are so unworthy of the task of governing and shepherding and making visible this kingdom of Jesus Christ, so that people may believe in it and belong to it. Let us help them by taking up the kingly identity and mission given to us at our baptism, for as long as we help build the kingdom of Christ, the Lord shares the dignity of his kingship with us. By virtue of our baptism, we are kings, so let us act like kings after the example of Jesus Christ. Let us forsake the temptation to anoint anyone, or to delight in the downfall of anyone, whose kingship is not rooted in the kingship of Jesus Christ. For he alone is worthy of our anointing and our loyal and obedient service, and no one can be a king, unless they belong to Him, the king of kings, and the Lord of Lords, forever and ever. Amen.

quit hoarding your faith

2011-11-12T04:31:00.001-08:00

Homily
33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time A
13 November 2011
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings

A good wife is invaluable. Those guys who are called to marriage do well to 'marry above yourself' as they say. A good Catholic man seeking a holy wife has the deck stacked in his favor. There are more women in college than men these days, and women are naturally more receptive in the things that belong to God. Men perhaps have it too easy these days. There was a time, so I hear, when a man would have to pursue a wife with reckless abandon to have any chance at all. Courtship, especially on the part of men, has lost so much of what made it beautiful. It's too casual these days. There is a real need to teach men how to be men, and how to desire a holy wife. At any rate, that is not what the reading from Proverbs is about. It is about the treasure of being a holy woman, a woman who fears the Lord. Her life is incomparably fruitful. The proverb is to be a great encouragement to any women called to marriage, that being holy will pay off with great dividends. A favorite facebook posting of mine shared among women is that a woman is to be so holy that any man has to meet Christ and fall in love with him if he is to have any chance in meeting her.

Today's Gospel flies in the face of the current protests against income inequality. The protests are legitimate. The economic system fails many people, by putting the poor at great risk of losing what they have, and insulating the rich from the risks that they take. The economic system does not place enough economic decisions in the real economy in the hands of real people. It's important that injustices and corruption be addressed. It shouldn't surprise us, however, that the economy, while it is the #1 concern of politicians, is not the top concern of our Lord.

After an initial unequal distribution of talents, Jesus makes it worse by taking the last talent from the lazy servant and giving it to the richest. Talk about redistribution in the wrong direction. From the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. Before you capitalists out there rejoice too much that Jesus agrees with a free market survival of the fittest, people are paid what they're worth mentality, need I remind you of all the times Jesus cautions about trusting in wealth, and God's preference for those who are poor. Jesus is making a different point here. Faith buried is faith lost. Divine life that is not given away is divine life that is wasted.

That is the same as saying that a faith that is merely private is not faith at all, that seeking a faith in God that works only personally for me is making God in my image, not being receptive to the greater gifts He wants to bestow upon his bride, the Church. If you ask me whether I would rather be spiritual or religious, I would say I would rather be religious every time. Despite the trappings and sinfulness of institutional and organized religion, of which many are rightfully suspicious, sharing faith with others and living faith with others and believing in God together is the only way that faith can exponentialy grow. If I horde my faith for myself, it is worth nothing.

John Paul II referred to this as the 'law of the gift.' Your faith in God will grow precisely to the extent that you give it away. This also pertains to evangelization and living the grace of our Confirmation, for by that grace we are all filled with the Spirit to the point of overflowing, and yet too often we try to control that Spirit and find the minimum we can do. Lest this law of the gift become too generically understood, the Holy Spirit is the teacher who shows us precisely how we can make Jesus Christ and his redeeming love more present and real in the exact circumstances of our lives. There is a mission given to us that has been entrusted to no one else, a vocation that we ignore to our own peril. To make it more precise, none of us should have as our goal in life just being good enough to get ourselves into heaven. This is pathetic thinking. No, our goal is to be holy enough to bring one other person with us to heaven. The difference between the former and the latter is like night and day. How easily do we settle for mediocrity when we are thinking about only our own salvation? Yet if we were all working for the salvation of another, the world could not contain the fire.

Let us pray for our Catholic students at KU. So poor is the catechesis we have given them, so little have we taught them about the real grace of confirmation, how pervasive is that pressure to keep one's faith private, that easily 90% of them do not have a real chance to invest the talent of their Catholic faith into their vocation as a student at the university. These students deserve our encouragement, support and constant prayers, for they are in real danger of having what little faith we have given them be taken away.

Finally, a word about Joe Paterno. He is a Catholic. His wife is the main patronness of the Catholic student center at Penn State. As you know, he is not an abuser, but is accused of enabling an absuive assistant coach. There have been many parallels drawn, and perhaps you have done so yourself, to the sexual abuse scandal within the Church. In response, let us pray fervently for all victims, that they will have a chance to find healing and live happy lives in which they can trust in God and in their fellow man, and give and receive love which is the right of every human person. Let us thank God as well, that as painful as these situations are, that it is more painful for them to remain in the dark. I can tell you as a pastor that the scourge of sexual abuse unfortunately extends far beyond churches or youth organizations or even universities. It is worst within our poor families, where oftentimes there are people trapped and secrets hidden for generations. Let us pray that even as we learn more about this scourage in the most painful of ways, in seeing children hurt unnecessarily, that millions of Americans will learn that when they have a chance to stop abuse, they will, and that slowly, but surely, this scourge once hidden in darkness will be shattered by the light. Amen.

waiting in joyful hope

2011-11-05T11:45:00.000-07:00

Homily
32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time A
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
6 November 2011
Daily Readings

I've never met anyone more impatient than me. Well, perhaps my dad. For him, when he told us to be ready for Church at 9:40am, he really meant 9:20. Whenever he arrives early at something, he wonders why everyone else is late. So I get my impatience honestly. For example, as soon as I calculate a route on my Google or Garmin navigator, I am driven to get there earlier than the calculated ETA. I'm passionate about beating the clock.

Being bad at patience makes it difficult to be a Christian. We all know this, because most of us confess it. We lose patience in all kinds of situations. Mostly we lose patience with other people, which usually is a sign that we are frustrated with our own progress toward becoming saints. The abbot at St. Meinrad where I went to seminary said holiness is the art of learning how to wait. He was right. Anyone who has tried to 'hurry up' the road to sanctity realizes that it backfires every time.

There is one time in life where I like waiting however. One time I get a kick out of it. It is waiting for the bride to come down the aisle on her wedding day. Maybe it's mischievous for me to say this, but I always tell the bride during rehearsal to wait as long as possible before coming down that aisle. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not a priest who spends hours tinkering with the wedding liturgy, trying to get everything just right. No, I'm one of those priests who would rather say a funeral than witness a wedding, because people are more prayerful at funerals. I usually spend as little time as possible at a wedding rehearsal. Yet this is one thing that I always mention. I tell the bride to wait before coming down the aisle. I tell her to make us wait, and to make us wait a long time. I tell her that just when you think you can't wait anymore, to wait some more. Make us think that perhaps you will not come, that you've changed your mind. That is good for all of us. By this time in the wedding ceremony, I'm standing next to the groom who is waiting to receive his bride. I want his faith and confidence tested at this moment. He shouldn't be too overconfident going into the wedding. What is more, the moment when his bride seems delayed gives me the occasion to tease him mercilessly.

In a modern wedding, the ceremony normally takes place in the bride's church, and waiting for the bride is the penultimate moment in the wedding ceremony, second only to the exchange of vows. In today's first reading from the book of Wisdom, wisdom herself is personified as feminine, as a bride searching for someone to dwell with, as a bride searching for her groom. The Gospel we have from Jesus complements this search of bride for groom, by emphasizing the other side of the equation - the groom going to meet his bride. Unlike modern weddings, it is the journey of the groom in the Gospel, the arrival of the groom, that brings the suspense. In Jesus' time, and thus in his story, it was the groom's duty, not the bride's, to make the final journey, and the people waited for his arrival at the doorstep of the bride. As we hear in the Gospel, it was the role of the bridesmaids not to dote on the bride, and to get her ready, but to wait for the groom, and if he arrived at night, to light his way and show him safely through the night to his bride. What we have in the Gospel, a time when there were no streetlights or flashlights, but only torches, is a much more dramatic scene, a bridegroom coming at night at an unexpected hour for his bride, than any drama I can create by asking the bride to wait an extra 30 seconds before coming down the aisle.

We have arrived at the point of the liturgical year when it is important for us to get better at something at which we are especially bad - waiting. It is a specific kind of waiting that we are to foster, an expectant, joyful waiting, a dramatic waiting, rather than a passive resignation of waiting because we cannot do anything about it. The apocalyptic readings of the end of the liturgical year will give way to Advent, and we will be challenged in both seasons to engage in active, joyful anticipation of the Lord's coming, by activating our faith, not passive, neglectful waiting characterized by the foolish virgins. St. Paul was perhaps unlike us too ready for the Paraousia. In his letter to the Thessalonians, he has to admit that because some Christians have fallen asleep in Christ before his second coming, that the bridegroom is apparently delayed. Yet Paul still can't imagine that he would see death before the return of the Lord. Where Paul is perhaps too eager, too confident in the Lord's return, we instead are too unprepared, overconfident that time is on our side.

With the coming of the Lord at each Eucharist, his perfect coming and yet such a humble coming that without the activation of our faith, we will surely miss his coming, we have the perfect litmus test to see how wise or foolish we really are. At the end of the Lord's prayer, the priest prays that the Church 'waits in joyful hope, for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.' Right before receiving the Eucharist we pray that our readiness for the Lord to come at the end of time, whether this be during our lifetime or not, is dependent upon how ready we are for the bridegroom's coming in the Eucharist. May we be more ready, and be found waiting in joyful hope, to activate our faith at the reception of each Eucharist, as we end this liturgical year, and turn again in Advent toward the light that scatters every darkness. Amen.

The adventure of a lifetime

2011-11-01T11:15:00.000-07:00

Homily
Solemnity of All Saints
1 November 2011
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings

I've been able to do some amazing things in my life. 4 World Youth Days with the Popes, including in Paris where I got to meet John Paul II in person, and celebrated Mass with over 2 million people. I've concelebrated with Pope Benedict on the field at Yankee Stadium. The day I was ordained a priest was incredible. I have been to South Africa to the World Cup. I've celebrated Mass near the tomb of St. Peter in Rome. I've climbed 14ers in Colorado with friends. I was in Lawrence for the 2008 national championship. And my latest thrill - I was at Arrowhead last night for the miracle victory over the Chargers. That place was wild. Absolutely nuts, like Mass street in 2008 - only with costumes. It was an amazing thrill and so much fun to be there. It was like I had died and gone to heaven!

However, I would have to say that as grateful as I am for these moments, I am not living my life checking off a bucket list. This is no way for a Christian to live. Although there are thousands of more things I would like to do and people I would like to meet and places I would like to go on this earth, I don't really have a bucket list. There is really only one thrill that I have set my heart on, and that thrill is this. When the saints go marching in, oh when the saints go marching in, oh how I'd like to be in that number, when the saints go marching in.

I'm not talking about Drew Brees touchdowns, of course. Not those saints. And I don't mean to bring to mind the Mardi Gras debauchery that this jazzy tune about the saints sometimes arouses. No, I am talking about the real thing. The only remaining thrill that I need to experience, the only one I desperately want to experience, is to be in that number, when the saints go marching in. The only thing I want to feel is what it's like to die and go to heaven.

The promise of heaven, my friends, has to excite us, because what has been promised to us in heaven is so beautiful that we will not be able to look away from its beauty. What has been promised is without compare in this world, for even the most beautiful and perfect moments of our lives pass away, but in heaven they will not. There is something wrong with us if we cannot get excited about this promise, if we impoverish heaven to nothing more than bonus time to an existence we already know. Heaven is not overtime. Heaven is no longer measured, so the perfect moments do not pass away. No, heaven is promised to be something quite different. For eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it so much as dawned upon man, what God has in store for those who love him.

The saints who we celebrate today on our solemnity teach us how to love heaven, and in so doing, they are able to bring heaven to earth, and to live today as we will live forever. The saints teach us that being with God forever in heaven will hold no value in our lives if we do not enjoy being with God now. Our bucket list will always be more important to us than seeking the kingdom of heaven, if being with God now does not excite us. The saints teach us how to love God in our real earthly circumstances with all our heart and mind and strength, and in contemplating heaven they learned how to live outside the measurements of time and space. Saints in a spiritual way always grow younger by contemplating heaven, because in heaven you don't get older. In desiring heaven, saints learned how to turn the clock off that makes perfect moments of our lives fade and pass away, and instead found the key to making every moment perfect by being fulling present to that moment.

This is why we are called to love heaven. Not because it will afford us more time to complete our bucket lists, but because heaven is the constant self-forgetfulness that makes ecstatic moments possible. The perfect moments of our lives are those moments when we lose our sense of self in the midst of something bigger than ourselves. Sin is nothing more than trying to make ourselves more important than the reality present to us, it is trying to assert self-importance when self-forgetfulness is the path to real freedom. Death is the just punishment for sin, for it puts an end to the sinner's ability to grow older and older and older by making life smaller and smaller and smaller through our own measurements.

Again, what makes the perfect moments of our lives so great is that we forget about ourselves. This is what love is, to throw away our own will. This is why a saint does not need a bucket list. A saint knows how to forget himself habitually, and is able to put away his calculator and stopwatch, and instead is able to be perfectly present to the reality in front of him. Saints learn to do this by loving heaven, where things are not measured.

Halloween is such a fun holiday because it gives life to the idea that we can become whomever we want to be. Although pagan and immature on the surface, Halloween's tradition of costuming points to a desire deep within to become something we are not. That desire, I submit to you, is to become a saint, to become our best selves and everything we ever promised ourselves we would be. The saints are those friends of ours who when faced with every circumstance and rationalization that we face, still continued to that great adventure of life that in losing our lives we will begin to truly live. We should remember on All Saints Day that becoming the saint we were meant to be is an adventure that makes our bucket lists look silly. They key is not to have many perfect moments in life, but to become a saint who knows how to make this moment perfect. Amen.

A crisis in moral leadership

2011-10-30T05:33:00.000-07:00

Homily
31st Sunday in Ordinary Time A
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
30 October 2011
Daily Readings

The Church dared to scold Wall Street this week. It's not that the Holy Father appeared in Zuccotti square as an occupier. You would have heard about that, I'm sure. No, a little Pontifical Council for Peace and Justice put out a note for discussion. Most of the world didn't see it. If you did, it was probably a media headline like POPE SIDES WITH OCCUPIERS or CHURCH AGAINST CAPITALISM or CHURCH WANTS UNITED NATIONS TO RUN THE ECONOMY none of which accurately describe the discussion the note was trying to foster. The Church is better at putting out notes than at being a spin doctor.

The note reminded Wall Street and the world economy of two important things from the Church's 2000 year history of thinking about justice. Those two things that every Catholic should know about are solidarity and subsidiarity. The document simply says that when these principles are ignored, the economy will be unstable. The document explores the creation of an authority that might make these principles universally respected in the world economy. The note realizes that such an authority is only a distant possibility.

The Church herself is no expert in how to run an immensely complex international world econom. Yet she can observe with her traditional wisdom that even as free trade and the explosion of financial transactions leads to the creation of great wealth, that every trade and transaction that can be made should not be made. The Church cautions the world that the word 'should' is more important than the word 'can', that knowing the good is more important than knowing the possible. What is problematic is that a few players in the economy can take immoral risks that endanger the economic fortune of billions, while always landing on their feet themselves. The Church sympathizes with occupiers who see that Wall Street lacks solidarity with the poor in the real economy, and reminds Wall Street that the principle of subsidiarity which puts real economic decisions at the local level is being constantly violated. Jesus for his part railed against the Pharisees who were far removed from their fellow man and who would not lift a finger to help them. The principles of solidarity and subsidiarity in the economic realm correspond to Jesus' commandments to love your neighbor as yourself and to love one another as I have loved you in the moral realm.

Communism and socialism themselves are perhaps more evil that immoral capitalism. They are failed experiments of the government playing Wall Street, and stifling growth of the real economy that relies on the private interest of real people making accurate local economic decisions for themselves. St. Paul out of love for the Thessalonians worked day and night so as to not be a burden to them, and might well have joined the tea party when he admonishes Christians that those who do not work should not eat. The solution suggested by the Church's note is not a government that runs the economy, but one that promotes the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity as the bedrock of an economy that can work for all people.

The note is a point of discussion, and the Church's contribution to justice. The Church's greater contribution to society, as we should know, is not as mediator between occupiers and tea partiers, or between socialist and capitalist nations. The Church exists not to be moderate, not merely to broker compromise, although she might at times bring people together. The Church exists primarily to produce saints. The Church is a radical institution not formed by men but borne from the side of Jesus Christ to produce men and women of heroic virtue. The Church is useless if she is not producing men and women who love God with all their heart, mind and soul, and engage with God in the untiring pursuit of the goodness, beauty and truth that leads to real human flourishing. Saints are those who not only know how to do things, but are experts in showing the world the one necessary thing that must be done. Saints are interested not merely in an economy that works, but in a society where man has a chance to realize his highest asperations of giving and receiving love. Because saints love not money or politics but God above all things, saints show the world that in pursuing goodness, truth and beauty that alone makes man ultimately happy, knowing what should be done is more valuable than knowing what can be done.

The prophet Malachi in tonight's first reading rails against priests who have scandalized their vocation by using a vocation of service to selfishly serve themselves. Jesus gets after the scribes and Pharisees for their pathetic moral leadership, and tells us his disciples to look for people who are worthy of the title teacher, father and master. Jesus in telling us to call no one on earth our teacher, father or master, exposes a vacuum of moral leadership in religion, law, business and politics that must be filled. Those of us who are disciples of Jesus should want to fill this void, knowing that if we become the saints we desperately want to be, we will affect the world more than Wall Street or Hollywood or the UN or NATO ever can. Jesus reminds us not to be idolatrous, but only to follow with our heart and mind and strength, those leaders who are worthy of God, who alone is true and good and beautiful. May we accept his invitation to become saints, and to become the teachers, the fathers, and the masters of heroic virtue that our world desperately needs. Amen.

a take on the recent statement by the vatican regarding the global economy

2011-10-24T08:56:00.000-07:00

Today the Vatican weighed in on the crisis in the global economy.

Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace

TOWARDS REFORMING THE INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL AND MONETARY SYSTEMS IN THE CONTEXT OF GLOBAL PUBLIC AUTHORITY

Vatican City

2011

Here are some of my thoughts after speed reading the document:

the Church continues to emphasize that the economy will remain unstable as long as technological growth (the growth of how to do things, the growth of information) outpaces ethical growth - the knowledge of what is good for man. There is a difference between what man can and ought to do, and when this is violated, instability results.
the principles of subsidiarity (the larger serving the smaller) and solidarity (looking out for an interest larger than our own) are continually violated in the world economy. Man is too often seen as a means to an economic end, and decisions are taken away from the smaller man by the larger economy, and man too often looks after his own interest and ignores the common good. These violations can be made by individuals, national economies, and international alliances.
if the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity can be agreed upon and respected, it would be possible to build an international body that looks after the world economy can be erected, and such a body is needed because economic possibilities in the international economy are growing much more quickly than actual wealth. Such a body will only be possible however if it is able to convince member nationas that the body itself will live by the principle of subsidiarity, the larger serving the smaller
true wealth in the end is a spiritual good, not a material good. the economy is at the service of the spiritual good of man, not vice versa

After reading a few economic experts who disagree with the statement by the Holy See, here are some more thoughts

because this document is not about faith and morals, and is issued by a Pontifical Council not the Holy Father, it is not morally binding, but is meant to be a discussion peace before the upcoming G20 summit
economists have faulted national banks and their monetary policies for much of the current crisis, and some have little hope that an international central bank would know what to do to regulate the international economy; furthermore, few developed nations have any cash whatsoever to contribute to such a bank
many economists say the economic problems come from those with wealth being able to take extraordinary risks, unreasonable ones, without in the end having to suffer the consequences of bad decisions; bad economic decisions fall disproportionately on the poor, and that is one of the reasons the Vatican is issuing this statement

Tea partiers and occupiers can agree on this

2011-10-23T04:55:00.000-07:00

Homily
30th Sunday in Ordinary Time
23 October 2011
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings

Are you a tea partier or an occupier?  Are you patient with Turner Gill or ready for a change? Are you optimistic or pessimistic about our country and the world? Are you excited about the new changes to the Roman Missal coming up, or does it not matter to you?

Whatever your opinion on these and the myriad of things big and small facing our church, our university, our country and the world, the readings for the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time remind us that if we dare to call ourselves Christian, there is one thing that is non-negotiable for us. There is one thing we must all think and do. We must grow in love for our neighbor. This is more than tolerating them or being nice to them. We must grow in love for our neighbor. We must love them as we love ourselves.

This love of neighbor is actually a corollary to the first commandment given by Jesus - that we must love God with all our heart and mind and strength. When asked for the one greatest commandment, Jesus gives two, reminding us that all the 600+ commandments of the Torah are valid because they all interpret each other. But in a simpler, more perfect way, these two great commandments interpret each other. We can evaluate our love of God by how much we love our neighbor, and we can evaluate how much we love our neighbor by how much we love God.

Without love of God first, love of neighbor is always at risk of being incomplete, is always at risk of running out. God is love. He is the source of love. Without him there would be no one to love. So unless we connect ourselves to this unending fire of love, by loving him with all our heart and mind and strength, we are always at risk of our own human, calculated love growing cold. That is why a couple wanting to get married should work on their relationship with God first, always desiring him to be the center of their love, always desiring to love him more than they love each other, knowing him to be the source of their love and seal and guarantee of their marriage. What is more, loving God first means that we will approach loving our neighbor respecting the love with which they were created. We will love not only the person, but the image and likeness of God that is essential to the dignity of every person. Loving God first corrects us from hideous errors like believing that killing an unborn child is the more loving thing. Loving God first means that we will strive to know and love persons as God knows and loves them, that we will be especially attentive to the words of Jesus to love one another just as I love you. St. John says that this is how we know what love is: Christ gave up his life for us, so we too must give up our lives for our brothers. On this World Mission Sunday, missionaries like Mother Teresa are the model for every Christian. It is a great call and privilege as a Christian to be more like her, who in loving God with all her heart and mind and strength, found everyone to be her neighbor not by geography but from the inside out. A true Christian, then, does the biggest disservice to his neighbor when he fails first to love God with all his heart and mind and strength, for it is God's perfect love alone that can fully redeem a human person.

Yet perhaps what is more remarkable about Mother Teresa is that when her own relationship with God ran cold, and her faith was being tested, her love for neighbor remained. She remained true to her mission to love because she understood that to grow perfect in love is not to grow perfect in feeling, but to grow perfect in obedience to the will of another. Thus, Jesus on the cross fulfills his two-fold commandment to love God and neighbor perfectly, by handing himself over to his enemies and to his Father's will simultaneously. It only takes a simple glance at the cross to remind us of what love and happiness really is. It is the freedom to abandon ourselves to a mission that is bigger than ourselves, one that goes beyond feelings, so that Jesus can feel both abandoned by the Father and hated by his enemies, and still love them both perfectly. On the cross we see why when asked for the greatest commandment Jesus gives two commandments, for internally to him they are one, and externally on the cross we see the two commandments fulfilled simultaneously.  Mother Teresa too was guided in her later years not by her feelings, but by taking up her cross and following Jesus. She was faithful to the end because she was faithful not to a feeling, but to a beautiful mission, and she was ready to love God for his own sake, and for her love of God to be measured by how much she loved her neighbor.

It is the great privilege and responsibility for every Christian to everyday be able to see Jesus Christ and ourselves more readily in our neighbor, to be more ready to believe their lives are as real as our own, and be more ready to show that we love God more completely by growing in love for our enemies. A Christian who truly loves God in the end does not know anyone to be an enemy, for our greatest enemy is always ourselves, and does not know anyone who is not a neighbor, for the greatest evil is always to be alienated from ourselves by losing God. We should be shamed as Christians always when humanitarians do more for the most vulnerable than we Christians do, for we have our relationship with Jesus Christ as both inspiration and sure guide for us.  We should want to meet a higher standard, the highest standard, because Christ has first loved us.  God reveals clearly to the Israelites, all of us should be willing to be judged by how the poorest and most vulnerable are doing in our midst.

There can be legitimate difference in prudential judgments between tea partiers and occupiers about how best to promote justice and the common good.  Most of us fall between the extremes. What we cannot be moderate about however, is our responsibility to fall deeply in love with God and our neighbor. If the world is getting more contentious, and there are plenty who think things need to get much worse before they can get better, the one thing we cannot allow to happen is for this rancor to become more important than our love of God, our mission given by him in this life, and our eternal salvation. Amen.

Christians not trapped by politics

2011-10-15T10:58:00.000-07:00

Homily
29th Sunday in Ordinary Time A
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
16 October 2011

Politics. Taxes. Religion. A toxic mix. Always has been. Perhaps always will be. But Jesus doesn't get down in the mud. He doesn't stoop to the level of his accusers, those trying to trap him with a soundbyte that they can play back against him over and over. He turns an either/or question on its head. Rather than avoiding the question, he shows that the question is full of malice, and challenges his accusers to ask a better question.

Politics. Taxes. Religion. They are ways to get people fired up. They are not always the most pleasant topic at cocktail parties. Yet in a successful society, the landmines must be navigtaed. and a fruitful discourse must be had in a spirit of seeking the truth in love. The Church for her part, while heeding Jesus' wisdom to not adulterate religion with politics, still takes an intense interest in the welfare of her children, who are members of political society. Being a Christian, as our Church reminds us often, is being in the world without being of the world. Yet out of concern for the common good of our neighbor, Christians must because of their religion be more involved in politics, must care more about the good of the state, as a joyful duty given us by God.

The Church must never be political in the sense of advocating a theocracy, where the laws of a society are directly gleaned from the data of revelation. Jesus is clear on this. Give to Caesar what is Caesars, and to God what is God's, keeping in mind that ultimately Caesar is also beholden to God. The data of revelation is primarily for the sanctification of the human person, and for fostering his intimate friendship with God, who sends His spirit to elevate the hearts and minds of his beloved children. The data of revelation is first for the formation of man's conscience, a conscience which then makes political decisions about how society should be ordered for the common good. The Church does not become political as far as taking sides; she is an expert only at the formation of consciences. A priest, for example, cannot run for public office. His responsibility is not to take sides, but to form consciences.

Even though the data of revelation is not primarily for the establishment of a government, God's revelation in Jesus Christ does shed light on the nature of man, and the natural law that should be the basis of any good society. When society makes decisions that are contrary to the natural law, the Church which desires both the temporal and eternal good of man must speak up in support of laws that respect and promote human dignity and flourishing. We see this today as the Church cannot be silent regarding abortion, same-sex marriage, and the conscience rights of citizens. The Church in knowing the person of Jesus Christ of course enjoys a special light that can reveal when society misunderstands the true nature and dignity of man.

The Church must speak up despite her own sinfulness. The evil one enjoys a second victory when because of the weakness of her members, the Church becomes private and abandons her mission to teach and to evangelize. This homily is being given as indictments against Bishop Robert Finn in Kansas City, Missouri regarding child endangerment are on the front page of the national and local press. While embarrassing for every Catholic, this sad situation cannot cause us to abandon the mission given to us by our Lord. That mission is to heal the world from sin, to reach out to those who are forgotten, to promote full human flourishing by fidelity to God's commandments and his promises. The current spotlight on the sins of the Church cannot make us abandon those whose faith is weak, to stop believing in our mission to heal the world, nor allow the world to live without the light of the Gospel.

When faced with an either/or dilemma, Jesus finds a both/and response. Let us not allow ourselves ever as Christians to be captured by the trappings of this world, but be detached and free to live in the world and to love God and one another in imitation of Christ, who has first loved us!

Go into the streets and gather all you find.

2011-10-08T06:17:00.000-07:00

Homily
28th Sunday in Ordinary Time A
9 October 2011
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings

Evangelization. The new evangelization. It is a buzzword of John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI. It is new because it must find new ways to present Jesus Christ, the hope of the world, to a world who is too ready to ignore him. It is new because it is a re-evangelization, a re-presentation of the joy that comes from following Jesus Christ and from accepting a deep, intimate friendship with the one who loves us more than we love ourselves. It is a re-evangelization to those parts of the world who once sent great missionaries to the end of the world, but now are faced with the reality of having more lapsed and lukewarm Catholics than fervent Catholics. Indeed, right here in our midst, the two largest Christian denominations are Catholics, and fallen-away Catholics.

Many of the reasons why Catholics have fallen away can and should be fixed. Catholics Come Home is a national outreach to remind Catholics that they are invited to the best wedding banquet there ever was or ever will be, the holy Mass, and to welcome them home to the biggest and most beautiful family the world has ever known, the Catholic church. Some Catholics do not come to Mass because they are able to rationalize that the Mass is not that relevant, and that they have something better to do, a forgetting of who has invited them. If the Lord Jesus has invited us to his banquet, and he is surely present there, as he is in every Eucharist, there can be nothing better nor anything more important than our attendance. Sometimes we forget what our role in the Church is, how much others are counting on us. Sometimes a past hurt or misunderstanding of the Church makes us openly hostile, and a re-catechesis and a personal outreach are needed to heal these wounds. All of these reasons are present in today's Gospel, when those invited did not come. Some even killed the servants who invited them. We see the same today, when 70% of Catholics do not regularly attend Mass. A re-evangelization, a new evangelization is needed.

Yet it is remarkable that the king in today's parable does not cancel the banquet. In a dramatic shift, he goes and invites new people, for those invited were not worthy to come. The Gospel is a reminder to us as Catholics that our church's strength is not found so much in maintaining our membership, but in reaching out to the good and the bad and inviting them to the banquet. The world is not our enemy, its people are our patients, those whom we are called to gather at the Lord's banquet, a feast that is a real participation in the eternal joy and salvation that the Lord desires for his people. The new evangelization is about a new zeal for souls, something Catholics are especially bad at. We do not feel the pain that we should that souls are being eternally lost, and there are so many who because of our lukewarmness do not have a chance to enjoy divine friendship with Jesus Christ, which brings so much depth, and meaning and happiness to life.

We will not have this zeal for souls, nor a willingness to go into the streets and gather all we find, unless what we receive on Sunday in the Holy Eucharist is of paramount importance to us. When we come to Mass, we do not do so in a relative way; as the parable says, we must wear our wedding garments, our baptismal garments, to ensure that we are truly participating in the Mass in a way that completely changes our lives, that advances us on the road to sanctity and conversion. By sincerely repenting of our sins, by going to confession, and by preparing ourselves for the most powerful hour of our week, the Sunday Eucharist, we have no other option after the Mass then to go into the streets and gather all we find. This is the only response of one who has been truly filled with the grace, mercy and peace of the Holy Eucharist. Amen.

Humbly think of others as more imporant than yourselves

2011-09-25T05:07:00.000-07:00

Homily
26th Sunday in Ordinary Time C
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
25 September 2011

Humbly think of others as more important than yourselves.

God sucks. I know this is an unusual way to start a homily, by stating that God sucks. But these are not my words. They are the words of a distraught grandfather in the St. Louis airport this Friday. God sucks, he said to me. He wasn't attacking me verbally. He was letting me know that something terrible had happened in his life. His 38 day old grandson had died suddenly, and the family was at a loss to explain what happened. They didn't yet have a medical explanation. Grandpa was heading to Philadelphia to bury a grandson he had never met. Grandpa was a former Catholic. He told me that now he is more Buddhist than anything, and that his son had nothing to do with God. Grandpa came up to me because he was a former Catholic, and perhaps the only one who would say anything at the burial. There wouldn't be a minister there. He told me that he was sure that I couldn't help him, that I couldn't justify why God let this happen anymore than he could, that he had concluded that God sucks. But he approached me anyway.

I'm not tooting my own horn here, but within a minute, I was able to help him. I did give him a few things to say at the burial, and he thanked me. I've buried a few children, visited many more in children's hospitals, spent more than a few hours wondering as we all do, why God's ways seem unfair. The Israelites in tonight's first reading lay this argument against God, why is life so unfair? God answers their question with a question; He doesn't respond like a bully, enforcing rules because He says so. No, he asks whether it would be any more fair for the guilty to be allowed to live forever? God's question shows us what hell really is; not the unfairness of this world, but the situation where men lived forever while never becoming their best selves. Think about this for a second - would you want to live forever in a world, yes, even this world, without ever becoming the person you always promised yourself you would be? Would you want to live forever in this world always growing older and never growing younger? God in his question shows us what hell is really like.

So the unfairness of this world is something we must accept; it is the fragility of life; yes, even accepting the death of children sometimes, that points us away from desiring a living hell, existing only in this world in a sinful state, always growing older and never younger, and makes us long for those spiritual ways in which we capture the newness and fullness of life. It is natural for us to question God when the good die young while the wicked prosper, for our anger at God is perhaps the only way in the short term we can tell him how good life is, and how grieved we are by its loss. If we didn't get upset about the fragility of life, it would be because our hearts have grown cold, and that we have grown incapable of love. We are angry when the good die young because life is beautiful; life is worth living, and there is meaning in sharing life with those we love. So even when the unfairness of life hits us the hardest, we know that God who created this world, even if we do not fully understand his ways, is good. Life is worth living because God is good.

St. Paul shows us in the letter to the Philippians how to cut right through the unfairness of the world; yes, even how to get over the guilt of our good fortune while others around us are so unfortunate. Humbly think of others as more important than yourselves. Mother Teresa put it this way: compassion is believing that another person's life is as real as your own. Now most of us are familiar with evolutionary arguments that show that there are survival advantages to loving others, to helping others, to sharing life with others. Those who love and are loved live longer. But what Paul and Mother Teresa are talking about is something that goes beyond biology; they refer to something that only makes sense if man has a transcendent spiritual freedom. They encourage us not to love to the point of personal biological advantage, but to love to the point of biological death. They speak of self-forgetfulness. They speak not of loving in order to live; they speak of living in order to love. For a true Christian, love is more important than life. As St. Paul would tell the Corinthians, if I have life, but have not love, then I am not a person. I am nothing.

That is why a true Christian, when he has a chance to end his life in order to grow perfect in love, does so. Christians are to become experts at finding a way to end your life; either spiritually, through a perfect self-forgetfulness, or vocationally, through the priesthood, religious life or marriage, or physically, through the blood of martyrdom. No one sees biological self-advantage in the cross; the cross is not loving so enhance one's life; it is self-abandonment for the good of the other. The cross is the path to true and new and everlasting life, a life that is no longer measured in hours but by the depth of love. Jesus ended his life when a path of perfect love presented itself; he who could not know suffering and death took the form of a slave, and chose the most hideous means of torture so that we would never doubt that love is more important than life.

It's not that a Christian can't wish that life would be more fair. It's not that we can't get upset when we don't understand, or that God's ways make perfect sense to us. But we need not say that God sucks, for the fairness of life is not the ultimate question for a Christian; we are baptized into the death of Christ so that our ultimate question is not whether life is fair, but whether life presents me a personal opportunity to grow perfect in love, which is my heart's deepest desire. To that ultimate question, the answer is always yes. And insofar as we live this question, the unfairness of this world can never trap us, and there are never a shortage of opportunities to move toward that eternal life for which I am made.

To this great end, let us heed the words of St. Paul. Humbly think of others as more important than yourselves. Amen.

Charity is the fullness of justice

2011-09-17T06:39:00.000-07:00

Homily
25th Sunday in Ordinary Time A
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
17 September 2011

Life isn't fair, and it's not going to be, because God has chosen to permit inequality. Yes, God, from whom justice comes, without whom justice is an illusion not grounded in ultimate reality, He whose thoughts of justice is are 'far above our thoughts' and whose ways of justice is 'far above our ways', yes, He permits inequality. The one who knows about fairness better than we does not force life to be fair, at least not by our standards. God permits inequalities, yes, we even dare to say he desires inequalities. Indeed, God seems far above our protestations of how we would run the world differently, rewarding the good and punishing the bad, preventing bad things from happening to good people. Indeed, the one who is the author of justice and fairness seems to scoff at our judgments. In our sense of justice, we identify with the laborers who go out at dawn and earn a full day's pay, while those hired last receive charity. We identify with the elder son who is loyal to his father, who has to watch his father kill the fatted calf for the delinquent younger son. We identify with Martha, who works in the kitchen tirelessly to prepare a meal for our Lord, yet is told in the end that her sister Mary who has done no serving has chosen the better part.

It is true in these great parables of Jesus, the basic justice and fairness of God is hidden, while a greater justice, that of charity, is highlighted. It would be the most superficial of readings of these great parables, to say that God is not fair, that he plays favorites, that in the end, each man will not get what he deserves. We have the parable of the separation of the sheeps and the goats, for that which you failed to do for my brothers and sisters, you failed to do for me. We have the great apocalyptic tradition of the Church of how God's justice will be at the end of time, the tradition of purgatory where everything will be set right before it enters the heavenly gates. We do not for a second need to read in today's parable a deficiency in God's justice. We might accuse God of unfairness, but in our heart of hearts we know that God is just, and that it is our ways, not his, that are unfair.

Nor should we read into this parable that a follower of Jesus can neglect justice to the preference of charity. It is never an either/or equation, but a both/and relationship. Catholics have been instructed that it is morally sinful not to participate responsibly and actively in the political process, to contribute to the civic good and the building up of a society that protects the rights of its citizens and works for justice. The Church for her part has the responsibility to correct societies and governments when they make errors regarding a true sense of justice, for example, in the area of abortion, and more importantly, the Church serves the state by forming the consciences of its citizens so that leaders with the highest understandings of justice and human flourishing may be elected.

But it should be easy for us to see, and to admit, in receiving the parables of Jesus, that justice is not the Church's final aim, nor her final responsibility. Jesus did not establish the Church only to make the world more fair. The Church contributes to the establishment of justice, but Her genius, the reason Christ established Her, is to show forth God's charity, the charity that shines so brightly in today's parable. In God's view, charity is not a means to justice, justice is the foundation of charity. Justice is not the end for God, it is the beginning. God's highest attribute is his charity, so much so that we are saying something more when we say God is love than when we say God is just. And so with us, made in God's image and likeness. We do not say that justice is our origin, justice our final calling, justice is our perfection in heaven. No, we say that love is our origin. Love is our constant calling. Love is our perfection in heaven.

Our view of heaven then is not a place where everything is finally equal, but the place where everyone has grown perfect in love. There will be nothing lacking in heaven, but what we'll notice ns heaven is not the fulfillment of justice, but the fulfillment of charity. Our view of the Trinity as Christians is not amazement in how three persons can share the Godhead equally, but our amazement is how completely the three persons give themselves away in love. In the same way here on earth, Christmas is not necessary for the redistribution of wealth, with the rich giving away what they have to the poor in a sense of justice. No, Christmas is much deeper than that, much more meaningful. Christmas is a gift-giving contest, where gifts are an expression of the deepest desire of the human heart, to grow perfect in love.

We all have a sense that there is something deeper than equality, something deeper than our own sense of justice. Even if we had equal abilities and equal possessions, the idea that the need for charity would be eliminated should appal us. The parables of Jesus show us that charity is greater than justice, that the goal in life is not to make sure everyone has the same, but to grow perfect in love by becoming more dependent upon God and one another. In this light we come to appreciate why God creates difference and permits, even at times seems to desire inequality, even to the point of raining his goodness on the unjust and chastising the just. God does all this for the greater purpose of enouraging us to grow perfect in love.

Even when justice is not yet complete, as in today's parable, opportunities abound for Christians to discover their vocation, to be called by God to work in his vineyard, to accept a personal invitation from God to give ourselves away completely in the priesthood, in religious life, in marriage or in other extraordinarily callings. Whenever this invitation from God comes in our lives, early or late, we should thank God for our vocation, and for the path that allows us to grow perfectly in love with God and with one another. This is the only acceptable daily wage for the true Christian.

While we work for justice in the world, so that more and more people have the opportunity to live in a good world where it is possible to love God and your neighbor with all your heart, and mind and strength, let us not forget that God permits inequalities so that we are all beggars and all givers, and that while working for justice, the opportunities to grow perfect in love are all around us.

Intensity - love and hate

2011-09-11T06:33:00.000-07:00

Homily
24th Sunday in Ordinary Time A
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
10th Anniversary of the Attacks of 9/11
11 September 2011

For the sake of his sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.

- from the prayers of the Chaplet for Divine Mercy

At the dawn, the very first year of the 21st century, an icon emerged that threatens to be the dominant image of humanity for an entire century - the falling of the World Trade Towers on September 11th, 2001. This is not an overstatement, at least not from our perspective in America, on the 10th anniversary of these horrendous attacks. Amidst the many tragedies and triumphs of our new century, many of which, including tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, wars, and yes, if we dare to admit it, abortion, that have claimed countless more lives than the 3000 lost on September 11th, still the memory of those towers collapsing, and the sheer evil that made such attacks possible, is the dominant image of the 21st century so far. The dominant image is one of moral evil, an evil that today as much as ever is strong enough to dominate man, to threaten his future, and to question his ultimate origin, the meaning of his life, and his final destiny.

But the image of evil is not the only icon that remains from 9/11. There is as well Body Bag 0001, the fallen hero Fr. Mychal Judge, a chaplain for the Fire Department of New York, who when he first heard of a plane hitting the World Trade Center, responded immediately to help. As we know well, first responders in droves came to help at the scene, most of them Catholics, and gave their lives trying to save someone else's. They fulfilled on that fateful day the beautiful words that Jesus said himself; no greater love has anyone than this, than to lay down one's life for one's friends. It was their job, but the courage and love with which they responded is a bulwark against the evil that threatened to dominate the day.

And people prayed. In the face of unthinkable evil, people acted with love and courage, and those of us unable to respond immediately in other ways, we prayed. These images of love and prayer may not be as dramatic as that image of evil, of those planes flying into the world trade center, an evil that changed the world forever, but they are images that small as they are, when added together, allowed the light to continue to shine through the darkness.

Our scriputure readings today challenge us to understand the uniqueness and depth of the mercy that Jesus Christ has revealed and made perfectly present in the world. Yes, you heard me right, the mercy of God is the most real thing in the world, and it is perfectly present here, because Jesus Christ has nailed the sins of the world to the Holy Cross, and He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. For a Christian, the suffering and death of Jesus Christ is an event in time, a day in history not unlike the events of 9/11, that forever changes the world. But for the Christian, the two events do not stand side by side. For the Christian, the suffering and death of Jesus Christ anticipates and swallows the events of 9/11, so that even when evil appears to have won the day, a Christian may not lose his faith, hope and love. Yes, you heard me right again, the suffering, death of Jesus Christ is for us a bigger event in history, the smaller as it were anticipating and swallowing the larger, so that when a Christian has every reason to lose faith, to lose hope, and to give up on love, the opposite happens. Because a Christian kisses the cross of Jesus Christ, and conforms his own life to the mystery of the cross, when something unthinkably evil happens, we immediately know that God is more present, not less present. We know that God never disappears in the face of evil, but even in the very heart of the mystery of evil, wants to be perfectly present there and to conquer that evil through love. Because the cross of Jesus Christ is an event in history that turned the world on its head forever, we know the victories of evil to be temporary and illusory, but that justice, mercy, goodness and peace are always stronger, and are the only things that can last forever.

Using the cross of Jesus to make sense of 9/11 is not a way for a Christian to gloss over the tragedy of 9/11, to call evil good and good evil, or to pretend like the pain of 9/11 was not really that bad. It is to do nothing of the sort. The response of a Christian to such evil is not to ignore it, or desensitize oneself to it. No, we know our hearts should be burning, that we are to reach out in love to console those who have lost someone they can never get back, and to mourn the senseless loss of so much goodness in the world. We are to help in any way we can, but also to join God in responding in hating pure evil with a perfect hate, and in resolving to fight more bravely against cowards who would use the name of God to slaughter the innocent. Yes, the events of 9/11 challenge us to preserve more intensely the goodness that still remains on earth, and to take care of those we love, while also hating evil more perfectly.

Yet what truly makes Christians unique is the mercy that Jesus taught us, and revealed most perfectly in the mystery of his own life. Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. Forgive seventy times seven times. If we do not know and live this mercy of Jesus precisely, we do not deserve to be called Christians. It is not enough for a Christian to hate evil perfectly, he must also forgive his enemies from the heart, and in the face of evil, to resolve to move closer to God and to his enemies in love, so that evil and hatred have fewer and fewer places in this world to grow and prosper. You do not have to be a Christian to hate evil perfectly, but Christians are those uniquely called and helped by Jesus himself to ride into the face of evil and to conquer it with love.

The suffering and death of Jesus is an event that like 9/11 has changed the world forever. Jesus gives us the perspective that we need to live on not in fear and hatred, but with a more intense faith, hope and love, yes even in a world threatened by unthinkable evil. For Jesus teaches us that even as the battle against good and evil takes place in the ambiguous battle lines of Islam versus Christianity, East versus West, secularism versus fundamentalism, and countless other battle lines, our Lord remind us that the ultimate battle line between good and evil rides right through the human heart, in yours and in mine. At every Mass, we pray for an end to evil in the world around us, to be sure, but more personally, we pray for mercy for the evil we have done, and the good that we have failed to do. Jesus teaches us well where the ultimate source of evil is, not out there, but in here. He teaches us perfectly that to fail to forgive our brothers is to pass judgment on ourselves, to allow hatred and evil to have the final say in our hearts. In the memory of 9/11, let us say with God that the perpetrators of 9/11 have already had their victory, they have had their reward. But because of Jesus Christ, their victory is vanishing like smoke. Let us resolve as Christians to not give them a victory that they do not deserve. Let us always respond to greater evil with greater mercy and love, in imitation of the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. Amen.

Madrid for World Youth Day

2011-08-13T21:00:00.000-07:00

I'm currently in Madrid with pilgrims from the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas, including 22 of our seminarians and Archbishop Naumann. So far so good. The flight over was really easy, compared to many international flights 6 hours from Dulles. The flight home next weeks looks much more grueling. Lisbon to Munich to Chicago to Kansas City.

Our hostel accommodations are crowded but fine. Lots of arguing trying to get enough beds for everyone, but besides the 'honey who shrunk my bathroom' reaction the rooms are fine and cool and the water hot. Speaking of hot, it's in the 90s everyday so far in Madrid, but it doesn't feel that badly, only 30% humidity. It's feels great in the shade actually.

On day one we pushed through the jet lag and saw the new Madrid cathedral, followed by an evening Mass at the original cathedral where St. Isidore and his wife Mary, one of only a few canonized couples, and the patron saints of Madrid, are entombed. On Saturday we visited the gorgeous town of Segovia, and spent time in the old cathedral, had Mass at a Dominican convent, and then said evening prayer at the tomb of St. John of the Cross, with a visit to a castle in-between.

We're getting the hang of Spain. Madrid is a busy but beautiful and fun city. Only one theft so far in our group. They are night people here - everything runs hours behind our normal schedule back home. We're eating around 8:30pm in the evening, which is absurdly early for the folks here, but with 500,000 plus pilgrims descending upon the city, I'm sure there will be lots of food available at all times.

Remarkably, the siesta is as sacred here as having 500,000 pilgrims. Yes, most of the ancient churches are locked from 2-6pm, with a matter of fact sign telling you to come back later. They assume of course, that you, like them, will be up until 2am everyday.

More later.

Good answer Solomon

2011-07-24T04:02:00.000-07:00

Homily
17th Sunday of Ordinary Time A
24 July 2011
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings

I recently watched a discussion on television on whether the job of the President of the United States had gotten too big for one person. For the president has an almost impossible list of responsibilities - leading and inspiring the country, responding wisely to every new problem, keeping the country safe and building relationships throughout the world, and of course, he is held responsible for regulating the economy. Is such a job description realistic for just one person?

Archbishop Naumann used hyperbole during the Chrism Mass one year to demonstrate that people's expectations of priests, who are only ordinary guys like the first apostles, can be quite unrealistic as well. Before priests renewed their priestly promises, the Archbishop relayed to the people that he gets many compliments about his priests, but also complaints, that not every priest is perfect. For the expectations can run out of control. Everyone wants a priest who is young and energetic, yet wise beyond his years, who is funny, holy, has short homilies, is sociable, but still has time to pray for every need of the parish, to memorize every perosn's name, and available to answer the phone and visit the sick anytime of day or night, and who also can run a parish effortlessly without ever having to ask for money. The Archbishop got quite a laugh as we realized that none of us quite measured up to the job.

Solomon is in this mix of being responsible for too much. Although his kingdom is much smaller that the United States, and his responsibilites different than those of a priest, he realizes that the expectations and responsibilities of his kingship are enormous. He humbly realizes that he is not up to the task, for he says to the Lord - who could be qualified to govern this vast people of yours? It is impossible to know enough to do so. He is asked the 'genie' question by the Lord in a dream. It is a question that appears quite often in the Bible and in folklore. If you could have one wish, what would you ask for? This question touches on many areas of the human heart - our wisdom, our desires, our anxieties. It is a question that Jesus asks over and over - what are you looking for? What do you want me to do for you? It is a question that reveals the human heart; it is a question that eludes easy answers.

Solomon's answer is uniquely good because Solomon is already wise enough to turn the question on its head. Instead of considering first what he most lacked, what desire of his that remained unfulfilled, what fear of his that most needed to be consoled, Solomon instead took stock of what he already had. Solomon was already king, and he focused on the gift the Lord had already given - the gift of serving others. Solomon knew his vocation as one chosen by God to serve him in this impossible capacity as king. Instead of asking for something for his person - long life, or wealth or protection from evil - instead, Solomon asked for something for his mission to serve God's people. This shows the kind of person Solomon is; what was most important to him personally was not his own desires and fears personally, but his mission to serve. He thus asks for wisdom, so that he may serve well no matter what circumstance may come. Because Solomon was wise enough to recognize and accept his vocation from God, he is wise enough not to waste his wish on something separate from that vocation. So Solomon asks for wisdom that makes him ready for anything. If he lives a long time or a short time, Solomon wants the wisdom to live life well. If he is rich or poor, Solomon wants the wisdom to enjoy what he has. If he lives in peace or is attacked on every side, Solomon wants the wisdom to do good and defeat evil, no matter what form evil may take.

May we see in Solomon's request our need to ask God for wisdom. We have enough examples in our society, that when wealth, or popularity or health are given without wisdom, these very blessings can end up destroying people who do not know how to use them. Let us take stock of our vocation in life before we answer the question of what we want from God. Let us realize that all the world's riches mean nothing if we do not have what Solomon has, a mission from God to serve others, and a desire to fulfill Jesus' great commandment to love others as He has first loved us. Let us be grateful to God today for the mission he has given us, and to no one else in this world, and ask for wisdom to carry it out.

God is not boring, we are.

2011-07-10T04:04:00.000-07:00

Homily
15th Sunday of Ordinary Time A
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
10 July 2011
Daily Readings

God is not boring, we are. And I'm afraid that I'm getting more boring, as I have access to more distractions and more entertainment. The rosary is not boring, I am boring. The rosary is repetitive, but in a way that serves meditation on a few words and concentration. The rosary is not boring. I am boring. A boring person is one who constantly needs to be entertained, who freaks out when a silent space of meditation presents itself. A boring person is one who thrives on distraction, rather than looking for opportunities to look deeply into himself and into the mysteries of things. None of us should be surprised that distractions, while entertaining. lead to a certain superficiality and an increasing unrest. More gadgets promise more than they can deliver, and they threaten to make us less happy.

St. Paul talks about this futility with which we are familiar. The punishment for sin that God inflicted on the world is death, but the more we think about it, the more we realize this is a just punishment, that this death is better than the alternative, living forever in this world without ever being able to realize our deepest desires. Living in the world forever would be like playing a basketball game with no clock, no ending. Eventually we would tire of keeping score, and tire of even trying, since there would be no way to achieve the reason for playing the game - no way to win. This is the futility we would experience were death not the just punishment for sin. The death that is due as a punishment for sin gives shape to our lives, and creates an urgency to meditate on the mysteries of the kingdom that lies on the other side of death. It is meditation on these mysteries that make us long for death, can help us to choose a detachment from the world and a death to self, which frees us to live in this world in an even more free and beautiful way, while setting our hope on something that can really satisfy, the vision of God, a vision so beautiful that once we see it, we will never be able to look away from it. If we do not come to desire death to this world, we becoming the most boring of people, for we settle for whatever entertainment we can find, without ever finding a desire to die now for something worth dying for. That is why Jesus insists on meditation on the mysteries of the kingdom, so that we do not place our trust in idols, so that we are not duped into putting our hope vainly in an endless series of distractions, so that we become those who truly desire death as the pathway to new life, those who are ready for death.

These mysteries of the kingdom are not for boring people, people who need to be entertained. They are for those who are willing to meditate. The Apostles here at St. Lawrence insist in teaching young people how to pray on 20 minutes a day of mental prayer, of silent meditation on the word of God. The seminarians of the Archdiocese are receiving now greater discipline and formation in true prayer of the heart, speaking heart to heart with God, and we have seen a great resurgence among young people in the practices of Eucharistic adoration and the rosary. Sometimes the world sees such meditation as brainwashing, as an unhealthy addiction to God, but when compared to the world addiction to distraction, I'll take silent prayer anyday.

In listening to the parable of the sower, we should see that in our current situation, building a habit of prayer, and creating a monastery of the heart where the mysteries of the kingdom can take root is an almost impossible challenge. But with God all things are possible. He is waiting to speak heart to heart to us. He is always ready to speak, always ready to have us listen in on the conversation of love being had at this moment between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We are invited by God to contemplate not in a superficial way, but with true adoration the love that makes all things possible, and a love that is more unique and real and redeeming than any other love available, the love that flows from the sacred heart of Jesus. Let us not be afraid of this love, nor be afraid to encounter it through a renewed commitment to silence and prayer in our lives. For God is never boring. But without prayer, we are boring.

Wedding Homily

2011-07-02T09:34:00.001-07:00

2 July 2011
Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary

It is an extraordinarily happy day for me as a priest, to be able to witness what is known in the business of priesthood as a 'real wedding.' Not that every wedding does not have its own good parts and blessings, but this one in particular is good through and through. Not only because this couple are Jayhawks, although that does not hurt one little bit. No, this couple is as prepared to speak the words that will make them no longer two, but one flesh, as any couple I have ever had the privilege to witness. They are prepared to speak profound words to each other, in imitation of Christ who has first loved them and given up his life for them, because of the foundation of faith given them by their families, and thank you and congratulations to the families for this. Yet they are able to speak words that truly call down the Holy Spirit upon each other, they are able to give each other this sacrament, because they have listened very personally as Christ has spoken to them in the depths of their hearts - this is my body, broken for you - my blood, poured out for you. They enter into this sanctuary in full knowledge of what happens in this sanctuary every time they attend Mass. So they are prepared for the depths of what will happen today. But they would also be the first to tell you that they are not prepared - they are chosen despite their unworthiness. This couple has discerned a call to marriage that goes much deeper than a couple falling in love and wanting to spend their lives together, although that too is indispensable. No, this couple has also discerned deeply the meaning of vocation, of receiving a call from God that goes far beyond - is much bigger and last longer and is more fruitful - than any choice they could ever make for themselves. I am happy to say as a vocation director for the Archdiocese, that this couple has given God every opportunity to call them first to the priesthood and religious life. The groom for his part, has pondered the call to make the love of Christ present as only a priest can; the bride, the call to belong completely to Christ as his bride, showing the world as a religious sister how to fruitfully receive the love of Christ as the Immaculate Heart of Mary first received Christ perfectly in the world. Then Kiernan messed that all up, as the story goes. She introduced these two, and over time, clear internal and external signs have shown today's marriage to be the will of God, something this couple is choosing, but much more important, something they are allowing themselves to be chosen for, something that is being done to them. This couple would be the first to tell you that they could never be prepared for, nor worthy of the mystery they are about to give each other. Yet they have arrived at this moment because they have discerned their vocation well, and they cannot say anything other than 'yes' to what God wants to do in this moment.

It is clear from the readings that this couple chose from our meditation that they understand the responsibility they have to make their spouses and their children, God willing, holy. This couple has discerned that marriage is their chosen path to holiness; it is the best way to arrive at the deepest desire of their hearts, to become a saint by following the path of perfect love. Marriage will provide many such opportunities to die to self, but this couple is encouraged first by the reading from Sirach, which beautifully shows how a wife may help her husband to grow in holiness, and the reading from Ephesians, which speaks of a husband's responsibility to make his wife holy by the way he gives up his life for her. Once again, however, this couple would humbly admit that they have a hard enough time being holy themselves, and that they are especially ill-equipped and prepared to take on the added responsibility of making another person holy. That is why the first thing they will do as a married couple is to turn to Christ in the Holy Eucharist, to Him alone who is able always to make a perfect gift of Himself. The best thing that this couple can do for each other is for each of them individually to go deeper in their relationship with Christ, and the seal and guarantee of their marriage is the sacrament of the Eucharist, where Christ marries His bride the Church and makes Her holy by the gift of Himself. It is in receiving this gift of Christ consistently in their marriage, that this couple may make their marriage for a lifetime a real participation in the marriage of Christ and His Church that lasts forever. It is through the hope that Christ Himself will be present and active in their marriage that this couple has a certain hope that they can arrive at the holiness for which they sincerely pray. It is most fitting then, that this couple have as the liturgical anniversary of their marriage, this Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, for in Her Immaculate Heart alone did God find that perfect tabernacle in which His Son would dwell. This couple should never forget how much our Lady has to teach them in welcoming Jesus Christ into the heart of their marriage.

Finally, this couple has chosen for their Gospel the sincere prayer of Jesus that after his ascension, there would be those disciples who by their word and example, might make his truth and his love real and believable in the world. All that I have said so far about this couple, they already know, and they did not need me to repeat it to them. The reason that we are here is because God has also trusted and chosen this new couple to be his witnesses in the world, and that through them, and through their act of faith in God and in each other today and everyday, you and I might be renewed in our faith in Jesus Christ and his promises, and might find living symbols of his love in the world. It is the sincere desire of this couple, most of all, that you see not only the love they have for each other, but the love that Jesus Christ has for them. It is his everlasting and perfect love that makes today possible. It is in His love that this couple has chosen to put their deepest trust. Their prayer today is for you and I to be touched once again by this love, and to prefer nothing to the love of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Kids are rich in what matters to God

2011-07-02T07:49:00.000-07:00

Homily
14th Sunday of Ordinary Time A
3 July 2011

Kids are rich in what matters to God. We adults have to admit this. Jesus challenges us to admit that we learn more from kids than they learn from us. It is a humbling admission, but one that comes through clearly in the Gospel, when Jesus says the secrets of the kingdom of heaven belong to little ones, not the wise and the learned, and that unless we become like little children, we will not enter the Kingdom of heaven. We have to face it. We have more to learn from them than they have to learn from us.

Which is why countries that are no longer having children are in trouble in more ways than one. Countries with a one-child policy are losing touch with what a family looks and feels like, for a one-child policy puts an end to relationships with aunts and uncles and cousins, because those relationships no longer exist. The one-child policy virtually ensure that most people will spend their dying years without family support. Societies that are no longer marrying and having kids are following a recipe for economic disaster, to be sure. Yet Jesus points us toward an even greater poverty. Children are rich in what matters to God - faith, hope and love. They have the keys to the secrets of the kingdom. Spiritually doomed as well is the society that tries to eliminate its dependence upon children.

This is not to say that children aren't a lot of work. It's not to say that children don't need to be taught many things by adults. Of course they do, and raising a family well is as difficult a task as ever, and not for the faint of heart. This week I was blessed to witness the launching of a new ministry in the Archdiocese called Prayer and Action. 4 of our 31 seminarians teamed with four college ladies in guiding teenagers through a prayer and mission experience right here in the Archdiocese, the program being hosted at Sacred Heart Parish in Emporia. As I supervised the program and provided encouragement to our staff, it was easy to see where the teenagers still needed to learn many things. They were barely awake for the morning Mass and rosary. At the worksites, the teenagers had to be taught how to use every tool from a paintbrush to a handsaw. They weren't great at picking up after themselves. As a vocation director, I lose touch with parish and family life sometimes, as you can see. I observed as well that few of them grew up like I did, throwing bales, hauling irrigation pipe and working hogs, so let's just say they were a little work brittle and needed lots of encouragement. They didn't always put forth the same effort cleaning up a yard that they do on the sports fields where they excel. The young people needed to be coached. Yet at the end of the week, I can easily tell you that I learned a lot from these young experts. They were better than me at forming new relationships and friendships, better than me at receiving and giving love, especially to those people whose houses we refurbished. They were better than me at seeing where God was present and at work in thousands of little ways.

It was true that I was good at working hard, and teaching kids how to use a shovel. I know how to get around in the world, living in the flesh as St. Paul calls it. Like many adults, I have become good at learning some skills, and I have gained much wisdom through experience in how to manage time, and resources and relationships. I was much better than the kids at being alert for the morning rosary and Mass. These are all things the kids needed to learn, and I was an example. But as I try to become more wise and learned, the kids taught me what only kids can teach us - how to be vulnerable. That is why Jesus points us toward children - they are experts at being dependent. Jesus proclaims himself to be meek and humble of heart. In Zechariah he is prophesized to be the king who established an eternal kingdom without the use of a single weapon, a king whose only worldly asset is a borrowed donkey. To be children of this kingdom, we have to remain on his path of sacrificial love, which is nothing less than that path of vulnerability that allows the flourishing of faith, hope and love.

As we continue to teach our children how to get along in the world, and fulfill our responsibility to help them to be successful, let us not forget our responsibility to learn more from them than they learn from us. In many ways, their world is the real world, for the yoke of independence and self-sufficiency that adults easily take on and get wrapped up in, gets both heavier and more illusory as we grow older, while Jesus' yoke of dependence, vulnerability and sacrificial love gets lighter and allows us to grow younger the more we let him carry it in us, with us and through us. On the surface, Jesus' yoke seems impossible. Yet the more we carry it, we see that it is truly lighter than the alternative.

2011-06-25T10:35:00.001-07:00

Homily

Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Jesus Christ

26 June 2011

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

Daily Readings

The grace present in a single Eucharist received by one person is enough to save the entire universe. This is true. It might be hard to believe, given that billions of Eucharists celebrated and received across the world for centuries, are easy enough to ignore. The grace of a single Eucharist is enough to save the world, and the grace of the Eucharist has indeed saved the world already, although the world does not fully know it. Which makes it all the more amazing that I can receive the Eucharist today doubting that I will change very much. I may receive the Eucharist a thousand times or more across the span of my life, and not change very much, at least as far as I can tell.

Part of this is Jesus' fault, of course. He does not force our conversion. Just as the Lord did not force the conversion of the Israelites, who like us were more afraid of conversion than slavery, so too Jesus did not force the faith of the Jews who were skeptical of his claim to give his flesh as real food. At least the Jews were honest, saying they did not believe what Jesus was saying, and realizing that to accept Jesus' words is to accept what the Cure of Ars said about the Eucharist - that if I realized what was really present in the Eucharist, I would die. The Jews, like us were not ready quite yet for this vertical unmeasured life that lies on the other side of death. They realized maybe better than us sometimes that Jesus is either crazy or the way, the truth and the life. They found no middle ground in his words like we do. To receive the bread of which Jesus spoke was to enter into a new faith, and profound conversion. The Jews who first rejected the Eucharist were more honest that we who receive the Lord without much hope of changing. Jesus allows this of course, hiding himself perfectly in a sacrament so ordinary, begging for our faith, allowing Himself to be ignored virtually every time, while never ceasing to believe that in this Eucharist right now a saint can be born, a beyond all odds at this moment a unity in love might be achieved that produces the extraordinary gift of eternal life. If there is one chance in a million, one chance in a hundred billion, that today's Eucharist will produce a saint, Jesus will allow Himself to be spent completely and made present perfectly - body, blood, soul and divinity - by the words of an ordinary priest.

In one sense, 75% of Catholics not receiving the Eucharist regularly is honest, for who of us receives the Eucharist worthily? Yet, of course, in the more important sense, such a statistic is a great tragedy, for most people avoid the Eucharist not out of humility, but out of pride, and an unwillingness to become what we receive in the Eucharist. In rejecting the Eucharist, we pridefully reject the sacrament of unity that will remain forever the surest path to the redemption of every human heart that this world will ever know. If we can imagine a love that the greater chance it will be rejected, the more readily and humbly that love gives itself, then we have discovered the Eucharist. In the Eucharist is that same perfect love that created everything out of nothing, and the same perfect love that even more powerfully recreates a human heart and renews its desire to live in perfect love. To give up on the Eucharist, is to surely give up on ourselves and our neighbor. May we set our pride aside and admit in this Eucharist, that no matter how likely it is that I will become a saint today, still what Jesus is ready to perfectly give to me - his body, blood, soul and divinity - is what I most need to receive. Amen.

Relationship is Ultimate Reality

2011-06-19T05:20:00.001-07:00

Homily
Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
19 June 2011
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center
Daily Readings

For God so loved the world that He sent his only Son.

On Trinity Sunday, thankfully we don't have a Gospel for our meditation that reads like a theology textbook. For simple minds like that of your preacher today, we have a simple Gospel. The mystery of the Trinity, deepest and most inaccessible mystery that it is, is known as a preacher's nightmare. What can be more remote and difficult to preach than God's most inner triune life, God who cannot be and is most definitely not a part of the world in which we live, who despite every sharing of himself, even the perfect sharing of his Son, remains in his perfections more unlike us than like us? Theologians have written volumes, and will continue to do so, regarding the possibility of this mystery, revealed to us by the coming of Jesus Christ into the world, that God is an indissoluble and eternal unity of three persons. Yet, thankfully, we don't have their textbooks, as good as they are, for our meditation this morning. Instead, we have one of the most pithy and accessible, and yes memorizable, even for a Catholic, lines in all of Scripture - God so loved the world, that he gave us his only Son.

This scripture challenges us to simplicity. For when we say that God is Trinity we say nothing greater than God is love. Which is to say more than God is a lover who does loving things. He is that, but he is more. To say God is love is to say that in his essence, God is communion. The revelation of the Trinity is a revelation that before we say things like God is almighty, that which nothing greater can be thought, not a part of the world, which adds nothing to his greatness, the only being whose essence and existence are the same, et cetera et cetera, we say that God is love. Before we consider God to be the greatest thing, we consider him to be the greatest person. Deeper to the mystery of God than being the greatest thing, is his being the greatest relationship, the deepest communion.

Our own definition of personhood, then, comes from the definition of the three persons of the Trinity. When we baptize a new baby in the Church, we know that this new being is indeed a human person not because all his potential has been realized, not for the decisions he has made, and certainly not for any kind of independence he has achieved. The poorest definition of a human person is that definition that tries to discover what a person is in isolation, before entering into relationship with others. No, our definition of person is grounded more properly in the three persons of the Trinity, who are so completely persons to each other that they are able to share one nature, in a communion of love where everything is given and received. So too our definition of a human person is greater than the definition of a human being. A human person is one who is in relationship -we become persons when someone knows us and desires us to exist. We know well that this recognition of a human person should begin at conception, but unfortunately does not always, because we focus on an arbitrary definition of a human being instead of the definition of a person. We can have a definition of a human being in isolation, but not a definition of a human person. A human person comes into existence through relationship, and this is an inheritance from being made in the image and likeness of God, who is himself a communion of persons. At a baptism, parents profess to teach their children that their ultimate identity and personhood come from God, who is able to know and to love the child in ways a parent never can, and thus is able to bestow a new kind of life, described to us by Jesus as eternal life.

All this is not to reduce the mystery of the Trinity to something we can fully understand, something simple that those who have written textbooks have missed. The Trinity remains for us the original and most inaccessible mystery, since is truly does name God's inner life, to which we would have no access were this life not revealed to us by Jesus in the mysteries of the Incarnation and our Redemption. The Trinity should always confound us, and yet with joy we know that we have not been set against this mystery, as an insolvable crossword puzzle, but invited into the heart of it, as Jesus has placed us His beloved, at the heart of this ultimate love, this ultimate relationship and community. He wants to share with us his divine life, and so in every liturgy we are invited into an intimate and full sharing in the Trinitarian mystery. The mystery hits our ears, our eyes our minds and our hearts in the sacred liturgy, and it is here where we are invited to contemplate in light of the relationship of Jesus with His Father and their Holy Spirit, the relationships that give us our personhood. Jesus says plainly that those who are not open to relationship are not open to the full discovery of their personhood, and in a way have already condemned themselves to a llife that can no way become eternal.

On this Trinity Sunday, we are reminded that before God is a thing, He is love. He is a love perfect in himself, but a love overflowing into a creation that involves you and me in the most intimate of ways.

For God so loved the world, that He sent His only Son.

Jesus is doing His works, rapture or no rapture.

2011-05-22T05:13:00.000-07:00

Homily
5th Sunday of Easter A
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Graduation

Amen. Amen. I say to you. Whoever believes in me will do the works I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father.

Perhaps this line from Jesus is a small consolation prize for all of us who missed the rapture yesterday. The severe thunderstorm warning was not the end, at least not for us, and I'm planning on good weather today, not utter destruction, so that I can fish with my dad a little bit. But these words from today's Gospel of course are not meant to be a small consolation prize. What profound words at the end of the Gospel! Those of us who believe in Jesus will do his works, right here and right now - today! and will do greater ones than these, because He is going to the Father.

These lines from Jesus are important to my own vocation story. The opportunity to do his works, and greater ones if I might dare to believe him, helped to make the priesthood the answer to what I wanted to do with my life, and made everything else pale in comparison. To spend my life doing his works, sharing life with him, became the purpose of my life and the greatest joy of my heart.

Jesus offers in these lines a different picture than that painted by yesterdays rapture predictors, as pitiful as the prediction was. Christians are not to be selfish individualists, trying to predict that moment when God will finally put this world out of its misery and havy pity on a predestined few. No, this is a most impoverished view of Christianity. Christians instead are to be those who are doing the work of Jesus here and now, allowing Jesus, just as Jesus first allowed the Father, to be present and at work in them, with them, and through them. Without believing in Jesus' promise to come and to take us to the Father any less, nor desiring heaven, that place so beautiful that if we saw it we could never turn our gaze back to earth, any less, Christians are ready for heaven to come to earth not only in the most unpredictable of moments, but also in constant and enduring ways. More important than searching for that perfect moment when God will whisk us away to heaven, is to know that God wishes to make the present moment perfect by visiting his people and continuing his saving works in us, and with us and through us.

When those who have not yet met Jesus through the sacraments are able to laugh at Christians as superstitious and ultimately selfish, which happens whenever the rapture is falsely predicted, then the full proclamation of the Gospel suffers. God has made his dwelling place with men; this is the mystery of the Incarnation that we proclaim in all its fullness. God in becoming one of us has more reasons than anyone could count to be patient with us, as his patience is directed toward our salvation, and toward Jesus' desire to not lose one of those the Father gave Him. The prophetic urgency of the Christian then, is not only to proclaim that man is running out of time, but to proclaim with even more urgency the need to beg God for more time, so that he can continue his saving work in us, and with us and through us. This is what makes Christianity the most humanitarian of worldviews, and a faith that we must share urgently with those who have only the most superficial knowledge of the heart of Jesus Christ.

Let us be those who in addition to inviting the world to be ready for the rapture, and to trust in God not in themselves, invite those who are not yet members of the Church to become living stones in the spiritual house founded on the cornerstone who is Jesus Christ. This is the great humanitarian mission Jesus left us, while promising to work in us, with us and through us for the redemption of the entire world. Let us share the mission with joy as long as Jesus gives it to us, and let us ask Him urgently to give it to us more! and know ourselves most perfectly as a holy priesthood working together here and now as his Church, his mystical body, to build a heavenly kingdom that will not pass away.

Amen. Amen. I say to you. Whoever believe in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, for I am going to the Father.

I am the gate

2011-05-15T04:58:00.000-07:00

Homily

4th Sunday of Easter

Good Shepherd Sunday and the World Day of Prayer for Vocations

15 May 2011

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center

Daily Readings

Amen, Amen I say to you. I am the gate for the sheep.

I am the gate for the sheep. We more familiarly know Jesus to be the good shepherd, and indeed he is. But in today's passage he repeats twice with emphasis that he is the gate. Anyone who does not use the gate, but climbs over the fence, is a thief and a robber.

Those who are called on this World Day of Prayer for Vocations to help Jesus shepherd his flock, especially those priests who long one day to be called a pastor, one who gathers God's family together, must pass through the gate that is Jesus. Jesus promised to be with his Church most perfectly through the gift of the Eucharist, so the Eucharist can be considered the gate through which a priest must come and go. A priest can be simply defined as a man who is always either celebrating the Eucharist or bringing people to the Eucharist. If this is true of a priest, then his vocation is authentic. He is a good shepherd. If this is not true, he is a thief and a robber.

The Eucharist is the gate through which every Catholic Christian comes and goes. To be sure, through the action of the Holy Spirit each one of us has a radically unique relationship with Jesus, which means that each of us is called by him to a vocation that is ours and no one else's. Yet to make sure that we are following Jesus' voice and not our own voice, we must follow him together. The Eucharist is the gate through which we come and go. The less our vocation is filtered through the gate of the Eucharist, the greater the chance that we are being led by thieves and robbers.

Whatever we feel called to do in life, must make sense in relation to Jesus' voice as we hear it at Mass, where the good shepherd is always giving his life for the sheep. Whatever I have decided to do with my life, must be able to be confirmed and deepened by Jesus' voice as we hear it at the consecration - this is my body, broken for you. This is my blood poured out for you.

It is often said that the moment after receiving the Eucharist is the best moment for discerning one's vocation. For it is at this moment that we are most inclined to hear Jesus' voice not with fear - not as do this because I told you so, or do that, or else - but with trust. We fear Jesus' voice when our pride tells us that Jesus cannot know us as well as we know ourselves, when our selfishness tells us that it would be foolish to turn any decisions over to him. We trust Jesus' voice when we realize he only desires to free us to be what we have always wanted to be, and to live a life of love that is measured by the beauty of his glorious cross. May Jesus then, fully present in the Eucharist, be the gate by which we come and go through life, and arrive at the true discernment of the vocation he has given to us, and to no one else.

Amen, Amen I say to you. I am the gate for the sheep.

Mary, teach us how to go to Mass

2011-05-07T05:15:00.000-07:00

Homily
3rd Sunday of Easter
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
8 May 2011
Daily Readings

The paschal victory of Christ which we celebrate during this long Easter season is a victory for yesterday, today and forever. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. He is for us a past, a present and a future. He is doing right now what he did yesterday, and what he will do tomorrow. The disciples on the road to Emmaus, in the aftershock of the paschal events, obviously needed a visit from the master to understand this new mixing of time.

The paschal event is the hour of history meant to contain all other hours, including the present moment. Jesus' suffering death and resurrection if it is be the hour of the world's redemption, must be an ever present hour, an hour that never fades as the clock of history keeps ticking. It must be an event that happened in real historical time but yet an event that never ends nor fades from memory like other events do. If this were not true, our doing this Eucharist in memory of the paschal event would be a futile exercise indeed, for none of us historically were there. The power of our memory is not what makes Jesus present right now. If the disciples who were the first to hear of the Resurrection were headed west instead of east just hours after these things had come to pass, what power could our distant memory of these events have to get us moving in the right direction?

The paschal events thus must themselves have the power to come forward in history, or they cannot accomplish what we need them to. This of course is the lesson of Emmaus. Before Emmaus, the empty tomb was confusing to the disciples. They did not know what to do. After Emmaus, confusion gives way to excitement that Jesus Christ is truly Risen, which means he is eager to visit his disciples. Being a Christian, then, cannot be a figuring out on our part what to do in response to a past event; no, it is an excitement of being visited by One who wishes to live his paschal events anew in us, and with us and through us.

We receive the Eucharist, then on Mother's Day, and we rejoice rightly now with Mary, mother of the Eucharist. For unlike the disciples on the road to Emmaus, our mother Mary was, is and will always be excited to show us how to be visited by Jesus. After someone in the crowd shouted 'Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that nursed you' Jesus gave his mother higher praise by saying 'Rather, blessed is the one who hears the word of God and observes it.' Jesus then teaches us how to honor all of our mothers, of course by praying for them and their vocation, of course by remembering to thank them for the irreplaceable and irreducible love that they have shown us, but most of all, by asking Mary the spiritual mother of us all to lead us in a fruitful reception this Sunday of the Holy Eucharist. What better thing could we do for our mothers than to receive the Eucharist with the same burning hearts of those first disciples? Mary, the pattern and perfection of motherhood, and of every Christian, always corrects those of us who might come to Mass proudly as one of the many things we need to do, toward her humble excitement that Jesus will acoomplish more in us, with us, and through us, that we could possibly hope for or imagine, if only we allow it to be done to us according to His word. May all mothers be blessed by Mary today, and like her help us to trust in God, and to remain with her on that beautiful path of suffering love that begets life that is stronger than death. Amen.

Mercy begets eternal life!

2011-04-30T05:52:00.000-07:00

Homily

Divine Mercy Sunday

1 May 2011

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

Daily Readings

+ Beatification of John Paul II, Pope

Give thanks to the Lord for he is good, his mercy endures forever.

John Paul II gave us the 2nd Sunday of Easter to be Divine Mercy Sunday. As we remember well on this day when the church confirms his sanctity through his beatification, John Paul desired to witness to the very end of his life his confidence in God's mercy, allowing millions to keep vigil with him until his death in 2005 on the eve of this great feast of divine mercy that he gave us.

By 2030 it is projected that there will be as many agnostics in the United States as Catholics. The proclamation of the Resurrection fails to win every heart and mind today, far from it. When I hear the story of the doubting Thomas, it first occurs to me that now is the time to get defensive, and to make a vigorous apologetic for the truth of the Resurrection of Jesus, using Thomas as an example of the rampant skepticism and individualism that plagues modern man.

Yet John Paul II forever took this 2nd Sunday of Easter in a different direction. Meditating on the sacred heart of Jesus, he realized that Jesus never became defensive. He responded to doubt with greater trust in people's faith, to sin with greater mercy. Living in the modern age which can easily find more and more reasons to doubt the Resurrection, John Paul II fought back not simply with better arguments, but with a better proclamation of the Lord's mercy that goes beyond human logic and control. John Paul II knew that the truth of the Resurrection could only flourish if man is capable of meditating on a mercy that is man's origin, his constant calling, and his perfection in heaven.

Indeed, it is our poverty in meditating upon God's mercy, and in allowing God's oceans of mercy to wash over us and make us new, that makes the Easter proclamation of the truth of Jesus' Resurrection limp, and be so easily ignored. Archbishop Emeritus Keleher told his priests constantly, that no matter how much you tell people God loves them, they still don't believe it, so you can never stop telling them that God's mercy endures forever. So too, John Paul II has give us this feast of Divine Mercy, which is key to the Easter proclamation of the Church to the world.

We have to escape the poverty of calculating the minimum amount of God's mercy we need to bail us out of jail and to squeak into heaven. Thinking this way is why Catholics love Lent and are lost during Easter. We think of Lent as work and Easter as vacation, when in reality Lent is merely a warm-up for the great work of Easter, when oceans of God's mercy are unleashed through the Paschal mystery upon the world for its redemption, and you and I are personally sent out to be witnesses of a divine mercy that is redeeming the world beautifully from the inside out, beginning with our own hearts.

We are all guilty of minimizing the effects of the divine mercy. God's mercy does bail us out, to be sure, but we must know mercy to be God's deepest attribute, the best definition of who God really is, and what he wanted to reveal about himself through the gift of Jesus. St. Thomas Aquinas steers us away from superficiality by saying that 'mercy consists in bringing a thing out of non-being into being.' When we think of mercy then, we should think of big things. Not just bailout money, but the creating of everything from nothing at the beginning, and the redemption of everything right now beginning from the nothingness of the cross. We Christians rejoice that we are awash in an ocean of mercy that has revealed itself the conquerer of sin and death, and we live a life right now that is no longer measured horizontally by a clock, but vertically by the depth of God's love for us.

The Church's proclamation of the truth of the Resurrection is built on a rock-solid foundation, and it is not going away. Yet when when modern man is convinced that he can find more reasons to doubt than to have faith, John Paul II proposed not just more arguing, but reminded us that the Church must wash herself anew in the ocean of divine mercy. For in the wounds of Jesus are the best answers for those who might doubt him. A question remains to be answered by anyone who might meet Jesus Christ: who can say no to this man who responds to doubt by allowing himself to be wounded and doubted all the more?

God will always allow himself to be doubted, for in his divine mercy he has freely chosen to always trust us more and to love us more. We even hear it said that it is absurd to believe in a God who would allow anyone, but especially his own Son, to be tortured. Yet what kind of a project is it to disbelieve God only because we cannot reduce him to our own expectations and judgments? If we had recourse to a divine mercy that only met a standard agreed upon from below, how could we ever hope in a more profound life that eye has not seen, or ear has not heard, nor has it so much as dawned upon the mind of man, what God has in store for those who love him? Let us instead praise God who thankfully surpasses our understanding, for if we only worshipped a God whom we could reduce to our own expecations, we would be doomed to worshipping ourselves.

Let us proclaim today with our late Holy Father, on the glorious day of his beatification, that the work of divine mercy in all its fullness is an Easter mystery, and belongs forever to the Easter proclamation of our Church! May we begin to know the divine mercy, and its power to recreate the world, as John Paul II knew this divine mercy. Let us rejoice that this divine mercy redeems the hearts and minds of man today, and has given us the holiness of John Paul II to inspire us. Blessed John Paul II, pray for us who now have recourse to thee, as the newest blessed of our Church!

With Blessed John Paul II, let us give thanks to the Lord, for he is good! For his mercy endures forever! Amen. Alleluia!

we zig, he zags

2011-04-20T14:56:00.000-07:00

Homily
Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord's Supper
21 April 2011
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings

Whenever we zig, Jesus zags. Whenever we go away from Jesus, he goes toward us and ahead of us. If we think we have begun to plumb the depths of the Lord's humility, then we have not even begun to know our Lord, and we will have no inheritance with him.

The instant we first used our freedom for evil, when our Lord still remained far away in heaven, Jesus responded by trusting us more, not less. The no of the garden made Jesus yearn for the yes of the annunciation. Whenever we zig, he zags. Whenever we love him less, he loves us more.

The incarnation was a long way for Jesus to go, an unbelievably amazing condescension from our Lord, a move to counter our going away from him by moving toward us in our very nature. Yet Jesus' journey from heaven to Mary's womb was only the beginning. Tonight we celebrate that Jesus allows himself to be moved just the same, and be made present in time and space and matter over and over again, not only by the yes of sinless Mary, but by words spoken by sinful priests. When Jesus instituted this sacrament, and then trod the rode to Calvary, he knew precisely what he was doing. Tonight, he lets himself be moved just as surely, by the liturgy of a Church that cannot really know what she is doing. The distance from heaven to Mary's womb is bigger than the span of the entire universe. The distance from Mary's womb to the tabernacle is perhaps even farther, and the institution fo the Eucharist perhaps an even more amazing condescension from Jesus. And still, Jesus is just getting started on his journey. He still has only begun to form his mystical body, the Church.

It is in the formation of his mystical body that Jesus really zigs when we zag. Our precious Lord never stops being more willing to hand himself over to his enemies, so could it be that he is more ready to ride into the evil of my heart right now, than he was ready to enter into his passion for the first time? It is within the mystical body that Jesus at this moment perhaps goes farther than he did entering Mary's womb or assuming the silence of the tabernacle.

Who do you say that I am? 'I don't know' is my default response. Yet, instead of being disappointed in my answer, Jesus decides to trust my faith even more. He gives Thomas a sign so that the Church's faith would never completely fail, but more often Jesus hides himself. When we doubt, he trusts us more, and hides himself trying to draw out the most perfect faith from us. Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed are his words to us. When we doubt him, he yearns for our faith all the more.

When his disciples scattered, Jesus went ahead of them to Galilee. Whenever we go away from Jesus, he goes before us. The more places we find to hide, the more places he appears. So every step of our lives, whether good or evil, he can transform into a step toward him. The extension of the Eucharist around the world is the physical sign of a spiritual reality, spoken of by the psalmist: Where can I go from your love? If I climb the heavens you are there. If I go down to Hell, you are there. If I take the wings of the dawn, and fly to the sea's furthest end, still you are there.

Even if in my pride I refuse to be a part of God's life, he stands ready and small enough to enter under my roof, no matter how worthy I am to receive him. When I spit in his face, he leaves 99 people who are not spitting at him to give me 100X his mercy and attention. When I zig, he zags. He loves sinners so much, that to know ourselves as anything but sinners costs us our relationship with our Savior who loves us precisely where no one else can. For he says plainly that people who are well do not need a doctor. Sick people do.

When my schedule is busy, Jesus waits for me never tempted to look at a watch for he does not wear one. When I am in a hurry, he is more patient. When I zig, he zags. He'll take whatever smallest part of a second I might give him, no matter how pitiable the sacrifice. Just so, the holy hour of his life, suffering, death and resurrection is forever patient, always present in the mystery of His Eucharist, and is waiting to enter into the smallest second of my life, so that I too may enter into eternity in Him, with Him and through Him.

Still, after all of this, Jesus in traveling far in the Incarnation, perhaps even farther in the Eucharist, and maybe farthest of all healing the wounds within his mystical body, does not take away the possibility of my ignoring him. No, he only serves our freedom, only becomes smaller and smaller and makes it more possible for us to reject him. A bruised reed will will not break, a smoldering wick he will not quench. He only makes it more easy for us to take him for granted, especially in the sacrament of the Eucharist.

Even given how far he has traveled, and how I struggle to take a single step toward him in return, still it is more possible than ever for me to think that what I am doing at this moment is more important than what he is doing. Even knowing Mary to be the greatest, and my pattern of holiness, my project remains superior to letting it be done to me according to His word. Peter's words are really mine. Lord, you will never wash my feet. Our pride desperately hangs on, wanting to have the authority to tell Jesus he has done enough already, and to give him our permission to stop serving our faith, our hope and our love. If we are still stuck there, Jesus reminds us that we do not know who he is, and we will have no inheritance with him. Let tonight, then, be the night when I permit him to wash my feet.

sign me up!

2011-04-16T05:45:00.000-07:00

Homily

Easter Sunday 2011

24 April 2011

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

Daily Readings

Jesus Christ is Risen just as He said! Alleluia! Alleluia!

This joyful Easter proclamation goes out from the Church to the whole world today, symbolized by the Holy Father giving his Urbi et Orbi (to the Church and to the World) blessing at noon on Easter Sunday in St. Peter's square. It goes out from St. Lawrence as well, as we with incomparable joy join in the Easter proclamation that has given new hope to the world for 2000 years and counting. Jesus Christ is Risen. Jesus Christ is truly Risen. Jesus Christ is Risen just as He said! Alleluia! Alleluia!

This proclamation of our faith should be easy to make on Easter Sunday. The earth is springing to life around us, and the Church is filled with new colors, new flowers, new sounds of Alleluias ringing. Beginning with Mary Magdalene, the first witness of the Resurrection of our Lord, through the apostles, through the countless martyrs of the centuries from every corner of the world, to the millions who are joining the Church this Easter, to the newly baptized here at St. Lawrence who have professed the faith for the first time, to my own parents and godparents who perhaps passed this faith on personally to me, the truth of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ has come down to us who will renew our baptismal promises today. The truth of Easter has beautifully captured since the time of Christ the lives of men and women who yearn to become saints, to live a new and more meaningful kind of life, and has been passed down to us today at great cost. It is a gorgeous faith that brings incomparable hope and meaning to the world and to each person within it. Jesus Christ is truly Risen from the dead, just as he said. We are proud to profess this together, to the world today, in Christ Jesus our Lord!

We are richly supported in our profession of faith today, so much so that our proclamation of Jesus' Resurrection is not so much something we individually generate, but something we receive and pass on. It is a faith in which we live and move and have our being. It is a faith that today of all days surrounds us, and captures us. We should not hesitate to join in the chorus of faith. Yet this does not mean that the renewal of our baptismal promises today should be automatic, or thoughtless. We do not say I do because everyone else is doing it, or because today in this Church is the easiest time all year to proclaim with boldness that I am a Christian. Quite the opposite, today's proclamation should be the most personal and difficult and meaningful proclamation of our lives. We should only say I do if our faith in the Resurrection this year is stronger than it has ever been, only if I can say I do from the depths of my own heart. If Jesus is truly Risen, then the renewal of our baptismal promises on Easter Sunday is the most dramatic moment of the year for me personally. Far from automatic, to renew our promises is to profess that we will live out the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus in a more dramatic way in the days ahead of us. There is no other way to look at it. So although we renew our faith today not only as individuals, but with the support of hundreds right next to us, and in chorus with billions of those in the church who have gone before us and stand with us, still in the profession of faith today we must say a deeply personal 'I do.' It is not automatic, but a challenge to witness today through our baptismal promises our deep personal relationship with Jesus, whom we have come to know intimately as the way, the truth and the life.

For as St. John has taught us - this is eternal life - to know the one true God, and to know Jesus Christ whom he has sent. When we renew our baptismal promises, it is a proclamation that we personally know Jesus. Christianity is nothing if it is not intensely personal. It is the most personal of religions, for God in taking on our humanity made it possible to know him and to love him in the most intimate of ways, and through him to enter more deeply into relationship with one another. It is a faith of intense personal love, a love that is the foundation of life, so much so that the definition of eternal life is to know the love of God as revealed in Jesus Christ. If we think that eternal life pertains to who gets to live the longest, then we have missed the boat. Eternal life is the fruit of an intense personal relationship - eternal life is more vertical, having to do with dying and rising, than horizontal, pertaining to more time. Eternal life is to know Jesus Christ with all our mind, and our heart and our strength, and so our profession of faith must be the most personal of any proclamation we can make.

Sometimes the Easter proclamation of the Church limps because we rob the Resurrection of Jesus Christ of its intense immediate meaning for us. The Resurrection is not some vain hope of Christians, that by following archaic formulas and doing what God says without questioning, we might get to fly off and be an angel or spirit in some far off place at a time to be determined. No, eternal life is an ever-present and ever-deepening reality. It is an entering personally into the depths of love, a love once powerful enough to create the world and each person in it, but a love shown even more powerful on the cross, the source of the world's redemption. Eternal life, the life of the Resurrection, is nothing else than a love that is stronger than death. What is more, it is not a fantasy. It is not bonus time in a far off place for those who are lucky. It is not time at all. Eternal life is born of an intense personal love that was present to us at our baptism, is perfectly present to us now in the Holy Eucharist, and will be present to us tomorrow in the loving promises God has marked out for us.

Once again, the Resurrection is not a vain hope. For a Christian, it is a present reality. It is something we dare to profess in a world that will never completely understand it. When we turn away from sin and toward love, we grow younger. When we stop measuring life, and instead with self-forgetfulness give and receive the love brought near to us by the blood of the cross, we enter into Jesus' promise that whoever loses his life will save it. When we fulfill Jesus' commandment to love one another as He first loves us, we enter into a life not measured by time but by the depth of our relationships, a life supported by a love that death cannot destroy.

Against those who say the Resurrection of Jesus is an outdated myth, and suffering and death are sure arguments against God, those of us who renew our baptismal promises today proclaim a life that grows stronger as we follow Jesus through his suffering and death, an eternal life that we know to be true because in our conversation with Jesus, he has shown us how to die to self and to live in true freedom. We proclaim the Resurrection to be true because we are right now in the middle of a conversation of love between Jesus and His Father, and know personally the Holy Spirit that raised Jesus Christ from the dead.

The Resurrection is not a vain hope! St. Augustine was fond of saying that he who was willing to share in our death out of love for us, will surely also share with us his life! If our Easter proclamation limps, it is because we have only just begun to understand God's love for us. For Christ redefined life forever through the prism of the cross, and revealed that since God is love, love will always set the parameters for life, not life the parameters of love. The Resurrection then is not some trick, it is the fruit of God's love for us, and it is a certain truth and hope for those of us who have entered deeply into a communion of love with God and with one another.

So with great faith, in the most personal of ways, with more strength than we have mustered before, I invite you to dare to renew with me the promises of your baptism. I invite you to do so not only in the comfort of this safe and holy place, but in solidarity with the millions of Christians who stand in harm's way on Easter Sunday because of their faith in the Resurrection, and in remembrance of the Christian martyrs of the past century, the bloodiest century for Christians in history. I ask you to dare to renew your baptismal promises in the midst of a Church that is exploding in many parts of the world, but is in danger of dying out in other places because of the lack of faith. I dare you to renew your faith right here and now, in the midst of a church that needs to repent of her sins, so that the light of the Gospel may have a new chance to reach the fasting growing demographic in the United States, fallen away Catholics, and those who no longer practice any faith. In rejecting my sins today, and in promising to walk in the light, in the most personal of ways I confess that my sins have discouraged those who might meet Jesus in me, and with me and through me, those who through my witness are yearning to stand in the light of His Resurrection. Most of all, I renew my baptismal promises so that I might renew my vocation to be holy, to be everything I have promised myself I would be, and to bring Jesus' mercy to my own family by what I say and do. I promise to live Jesus Resurrection by bringing his life, his light, his redeeming love that remakes the world perfectly from the inside out, to those souls he has given me to save.

All this we dare to proclaim with unparalleled faith, hope and love, on this beautiful Easter Sunday morning. For Jesus Christ is Risen. He is truly Risen! He is Risen just as he said! Alleluia! Alleluia!

put your hours within his hour

2011-04-16T04:42:00.000-07:00

Homily

Palm Sunday

17 April 2011

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

Daily Readings

It would be better for that man if he had never been born.

Judas was not the only one who betrayed Jesus. All the disciples betrayed him. He taught them to pray, and when he needed them to pray the most, they fell asleep. They all promised to die with him, yet cowardice ruled the hour. None mounted a cross next to Jesus, and only John made it to Calvary. He taught them to build a kingdom without force, and his disciples drew a sword. He taught them to stand in the truth, and they all denied him.

All of Jesus disciples betrayed him. His blood was on them and their children. As we have gone through the season of Lent, our sloth, our indifference, our cowardice, our lying, and our greed have become known to us. His blood is upon us and our children. We crucified him. We are sinners, just like the first disciples. Yet this is not the end of the story. We have repented of these sins, so that something worse may not happen to us. It would be better for that man if he had never been born. Jesus points out the real possibility of our story ending in despair. May this never be said of us. The shedding of Jesus' blood unleashes God's mercy upon humanity. It is shed on behalf of many for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus' blood is shed for me and for the forgiveness of my sins.

This is what Judas forgot. This is what he did not hear at the last supper. That is why his life ended in despair, whereas the other disciples found a way to move forward. This is what we must not forget, that Jesus' hour of agony is for the forgiveness of sins. The other disciples eventually began again to pray. They began to tell the truth. They woke from their sleep, and found the courage to die with Jesus. They found the meaning of their lives, the opportunity to witness to a love beyond all telling, a love powerful enough to forgive sins, within the hour of Jesus suffering, death and resurrection. They found new life measured by the depth of God's love, and a new mission to build a kingdom not with money and swords, but a kingdom whose power is in its ability to hand itself over to its enemies.

Jesus' kingdom is beyond the understanding of the world, no more powerful than a pitiable man riding a donkey into the wrath of those who want to kill him. Yet this is the kingdom to which we are invited to return if we dare to go to Jerusalem with him. As an eternal kingdom, which the world is powerless to destroy, this kingdom has the power to come forward in history into our present hour. Jesus' hour has the power to help us reorganize our own story, and the haphazard circumstances of our lives, so that we can see through once again to the end. This is the time, Holy Week, where we learn with special attention how we are invited to live, to suffer, to die and to rise with Jesus Christ our Lord. May we see in our ending not the despair of Judas, but the new life won for the apostles by the paschal mystery of Jesus, and with our sins forgiven by the shedding of his blood, let us go with Jesus to Jerusalem.

he remained for two days in the place where he was

2011-04-09T12:54:00.000-07:00

Homily

5th Sunday of Lent A

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

10 April 2011

Daily Readings

So when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he remained for two days in the place where he was.

Jesus is not in a hurry, obviously. Lazarus is dying by the second, and he waits two days. Jesus would make a horrible first responder. As a 911 operator, he would be fired. And this is precisely the point.

In the raising of Lazarus, his penultimate sign before heading to Calvary, Jesus shows that his ultimate mission is not to be a superhero who rushes to prevent death. No the mission is markedly different; Jesus comes to conquer death, and to rob death of its power to make us panic. His ultimate mission is to show that love is stronger than death. Jesus waits for two days because in the raising of his friend, Jesus intends to show more love than he has shown in any other sign. In a most extraordinary moment, before Jesus raises Lazarus, he weeps for him. This is something, Jesus' weeping, that we would not see, if Jesus had arrived in the nick of time to save Lazarus, as he had saved many others. Jesus' weeping is critical. It shows that in this penultimate sign, we are seeing something more than what we have yet seen. We are seeing more than Jesus' power to manipulate the laws of the universe, doing favors for those who believe in Him. In this sign, we get a unique look at the love Jesus has for Lazarus, a love that weeps for a friend, and a love that is stronger than death.

When Martha and Mary talk about the Resurrection on the last day, Jesus corrects them and points them to a Resurrection that is much closer, a resurrection happening in the here and now. It is a resurrection measured not horizontally by the gift of more existence at the end of time, it is a resurrection measured vertically right now by the intensity of love that is present. Jesus does not panic when his friend Lazarus is slipping away, because for Jesus, love sets the parameters for life, not life the parameters of love. Jesus lets Lazarus die lest we never learn that love is stronger than death. Jesus loves Lazarus back into life, but the new life that is created is more than than Lazarus emerging from the tomb, it is the increased intensity of relationship with Jesus. The resurrection is more than bonus time. I am the Resurrection and the life, says the Lord. In saying this, Jesus reveals himself as more than a magician who can reverse death, he reveals himself as the one who is always alive because he always loves. Jesus reminds us what life is really all about, that we are only existing, not living, if we are not loving. Jesus is fully alive. He is the resurrection and the life because he always loves. His mission is to reveal that God who weeps over death, but allows it as the pathway to new life, is the one who is the source of life because he always loves us first, and loves us best, and loves us always.

This love that first created the world out of nothing by speaking a word, recreates the world by saying to us who are like Lazarus - Arise -, and makes the resurrection not a vain wish but a certain reality by making his resurrected body perfectly present to us right now in the word of the Eucharist. The raising of Lazarus is the penultimate sign of the love that is stronger than death, the love that makes all life possible. The ultimate and everlasting sign awaits us next week on Palm Sunday at Calvary, when in order to reveal completely the love that conquers death, Jesus will give up his own life, and himself lay three days in the tomb.

For Jesus' ultimate mission is not to hit the panic button, not to respond to 911 calls, not to be a superhero who merely prevents death whenever he can. No, his ultimate mission is to allow death as the pathway to new life, to enter into death himself, to conquer death from the inside out, and to do everything he can possibly do to help us to believe in the love that is stronger than death.

So when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he remained for two days in the place where he was.

he opened my eyes

2011-04-02T04:42:00.000-07:00

Homily

4th Sunday of Lent A

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

3 April 2011

Daily Readings

JMJ AMDG +m

"This is what is so amazing. That you do not know where he is from, yet he opened my eyes."

These words, said out of frustration by the man born blind to those who would not leave him alone, are words that should be exciting for you and me to proclaim to the world. "This is what is so amazing. That you do not know where he is from, yet he opened my eyes." If we are not proclaiming this, we have relativized a powerful Gospel, and we are no longer living in the light of our baptism. Jesus is not just one of many lights, he is THE light of the world. We would not follow him if he was anything less, and so we should not be ashamed to tell the world that he has opened my eyes.

On Easter Sunday morning, we will proclaim to the world as Christians once again that the day of our baptism was the most important and dramatic day of our lives. We will proclaim to the world that Easter Sunday is the day that changed the world and gave the world its light, more than any other day. It was a day, it is a day, that we began passing over from darkness to light, from death to life. The Transfiguration, the woman at the well, the man born blind, the raising of Lazarus - these Lenten stories are stirring up the reality of our baptism, when we became children of God, when we received living water that quenches every thirst, when we gained the ability to see with God, when we began to die to ourselves with Christ and to live an entirely different kind of life. The catechumens of the Church are going through scrutinies to prepare for their baptism at the Easter vigil; but those of us already baptized, should be this Lent trying to match their preparation in mind and body and heart to celebrate the highest point of our year as Christians - the renewal of our baptismal promises on Easter Sunday.

In the story of the man born blind, Jesus shows himself to be the one through whom all things are made. The Genesis story of creation is everywhere in this Gospel. Jesus proclaims himself to be the light of the world, reminding us that light was the first thing that God made. He rubs the same clay from which man was originally made onto the eyes of the blind man, and tells him to wash in the water of creation, and so shows his power as the one through whom all things are made, to heal the world and redeem it and remake it from the inside out. The man born blind knows this power, and says to the world what we should be saying to it - this is what is so amazing, that you do not know where he is from, yet he opened my eyes. He remakes the world, which shows he is from the one who has the power to make it.

How are we proclaiming to the world that Jesus has opened our eyes? Not by assuming that we are better than anyone else, but in admitting that our minds and hearts have been darkened, but in being committed to allowing the one who first made light to be our light. At our baptism, our parents and godparents accepted the Easter candle and the ensuing hope that we would walk always as a child of the light. To be a Christian, then, is not to be perfect by our own power, but to allow the light of Christ to shatter our secrecy and darkness, and to try to walk each day more transparently, more generously, more freely, in the light.

The light of Christ not only exposes our sin as Christians, it guides us to the discovery of truth. Jesus to those who were paying attention, made outrageous claims about himself. He says not I am a way, a truth, a life, but that I am the way, the truth and the life. In saying he is the light of the world, Jesus proposes himself as the answer to every big question that man can think of - why is there something rather than nothing? what is real? what is good, and true and beautiful and eternal? Yet these are not the only questions Jesus proposes to shed light on. In Gaudium et Spes chapter 22 it says:

The truth is that only in the mystery of the Incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and his love, fully reveals man to man, and makes his supreme calling clear. It is not surprising, then, that in Him all the aforementioned truths find their root and attain their crown.

Jesus in becoming man brought the wisdom that first made the world to bear on the mystery of man. He tells the man born blind that he is the son of man, and the answer to not only the mysteries of the universe, but the most personal of questions: who am I? who loves me and who should I love? what should I do to be happy? Jesus proposes himself to be the light, and the answer to these questions pertaining to the mystery of all things.

As we approach Easter, let us dare to join the catechumens of the Church in proclaiming anew to the world how much it means for us to have been enlightened by Christ, that by his entering into relationship with us we have the joy of seeing things newly and clearly, with him and in him and through him, who is light from light. In a world that refuses to see reality with the help of the one who first made light, let us proclaim with the man born blind: this is what is so amazing, that you do not know where he is from, and yet he opened my eyes.

JMJ AMDG +m

forgiving from the heart

2011-03-29T08:00:00.000-07:00

Homily

Tuesday of the 3rd Week of Lent I

29 March 2011

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

Daily Readings

Jesus instructs Peter to forgive many times over, and from the heart. Obviously, Jesus describes forgiveness in the kingdom as distinct from a one-time superficial forgiveness. It is not enough to tell another person don't worry about it, it's no big deal. No, we are to forgive each other from the heart. Too often, the forgiveness we give another person is not true forgiveness, but a decision on our part to move away from that person, to limit the opportunity that they would have to offend us again. Too often our forgiveness comes with a healthy dose of judgment.

Jesus describes forgiveness in the kingdom as altogether different. When someone offends us, we must forgive them 70x7 times, and from the heart. When someone sins against us, we are to become more interested in that person, and in the pain, brokenness or emptiness in their soul that gave rise to the sin. In the kingdom, don't worry about it is not good enough; no, we must forgive from the heart, by giving the person true mercy that loves the person beginning at their most unlovable point, a mercy that sets a person free to be different.

This is a forgiveness that does not originate with us, but is poured into our hearts, most notably in the sacrament of confession. Jesus is ready to forgive us 70x7 times in the sacrament of penance; indeed, many of us will commit and confess the same sin at least that many times. In the sacrament, Jesus doesn't tell us it's no big deal; his mercy is there to heal us and to free us from the inside out. Yet we celebrate the sacrament at our own risk; the sacrament comes with a responsibility. It is not just a get out of jail free card; it obligates us to know and to live the mercy we have received by loving our enemies, not in a superficial way, but over and over again, and from the heart.

JMJ AMDG +m

give me a drink

2011-03-27T15:20:00.001-07:00

Homily Third Sunday of Lent A St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas 27 March 2011 Daily Readings

JMJ AMDG +m

Jesus said to her, 'if you knew the gift of God and who is asking you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water." Jesus thirsts for the faith of this insignificant woman. She was at the well all alone, for she had been shunned, and had no friends. She was there at the heat of day, where her sins would be laid completely bare, where she could not hide. She was there not on behalf of a family, for she was on her sixth husband. What is more, she is discovered by a Jewish man who would surely scorn her even more since she was a Samaritan. Yet Jesus thirsts for the faith of this woman more than she thirsts for him. He is the wellspring of eternal life. Relationship with him means everything. Relationship with her on the surface means nothing. By the standards of her time, she was a virtual nobody. Yet he thirsts for her more than she thirsts for him. Jesus is the living answer to every deep human question: who am I? who loves me? what should I do to be happy? He is the answer to every question that remained unanswered in this woman's life. Jesus was one, who though needing a drink of water, would never thirst spiritually like this woman was thirsting. He is already the living water welling up to eternal life. Yet he begins by asking this woman for a drink. He makes himself, who is all powerful, dependent upon her bucket, and her answer. He thirsts for the faith of this woman more than she thirsts for him. The disciples eventually return with food, and even though Jesus is famished, he refuses it, telling them that his food is to do the will of the one who sent him. The Father's will was for Jesus to thirst for the faith of this insignificant woman, to love her beginning where no one else could, where she did not love herself, and to wait for her response, to thirst for her response. Jesus thirsts to do the Father's will, and it was the Father's will that he ask this woman for a drink, to ask this most insignificant of women, for a drink of faith. So too in the Holy Eucharist, Jesus is thirsting for the faith of his bride, the Church. The well is the place of engagement, the place of marriage, the place of new life, and in this scene of the woman at the well, we see Jesus thirsting for the faith of his bride, the Church. As we approach the Holy Eucharist tonight, we must remember that Jesus is thirsting for us his bride more than we will ever thirst for him. The Eucharist is not a take it or leave it proposition. Jesus does not offer himself, then remain indifferent to how we respond. Along with the gift of Himself comes a greater condescension; Jesus begs and waits for our response. He thirsts for us in this Eucharist more than we will ever thirst for him. He is the wellspring of eternal life, not us, but he thirsts for us more than we will ever thirst for him. For we are too easily satisfied with filling our bucket over and over with water that will never satisfy. Who of us can say that we do not return to the same sins, over and over and over? We are here at the Eucharist, but we have only barely begun to worship in spirit and in truth, only begun to thirst to do the will of the one who loves us more than we will ever love ourselves. Yet Jesus is here at this moment worshipping the Father in spirit and in truth, thirsting for the will of his Father with a perfect thirst, for he knows better than we that the Father's love is beyond all telling. So Jesus is here, not indifferent to our response, but begging for our faith, thirsting for us, for his Father's will is that Jesus waits for each one of us as long as it takes for us to respond. The Eucharist is not a dare from our Lord to respond in kind to him. No, even if our thirst for living water is imperfect, it is the Father's will that Jesus thirsts perfectly for our faith. Once Jesus offers himself, he waits for us. He thirsts for us. His food is to worship the Father in spirit and in truth not alone but with us, and in us, and through us. This is the food that sustains Jesus, his living water, to bring us home to the Father. Jesus desires the living water of our baptism to be not a distant memory for us, not a vain hope for a life that is unsure and distant. No, Jesus desires the water of baptism to be more than a baptism of repentance, a washing from the outside in, but he wishes that the living water of baptism be stirred up from within as water welling up to eternal life. In the Eucharist, which feeds our baptism, Jesus asks us to enter into his self-forgetfulness and perfect self-giving, that is proper to those who of who are passing with Jesus even at this moment from death to eternal life, into a life not measured in length of days but by the depth of our love for God and for one another. Jesus says to his bride, the Church, in this Eucharist: 'if you knew the gift of God and who is asking you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. Amen.

JMJ AMDG +m

almsgiving the key to a good Lent

2011-03-22T07:43:00.001-07:00

Homily

Tuesday of the 2nd Week of Lent I

22 March 2011

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

Daily Readings

JMJ AMDG +m

The Lenten readings keep emphasizing that Lent has to be a season of renewal from the inside out. God does not need our outward sacrifices. He has everything he needs. Rather, he desires that we be good from the inside out not for his sake, but for our sake. He wants us to be happy from the inside out, not barely escaping his justice from the outside in. He wants us to be free to pursue the deepest desires of our hearts. That is the kind of fast that he desires for us this Lent, not an outward show, but a true rendering of hearts, not just garments.

To this end, the prophets and our Lord himself keep pointing us toward almsgiving. Almsgiving shows that our Lent is not simply about self-improvement, so that God and others will look more favorably on us, or so that we will feel better about ourselves. Those who seek to be good only from the outside in, have already received their reward. No, Lent is less about self-improvement and more about self-forgetfulness, to the point that almsgiving becomes a key to having a good Lent, just as important as prayer and fasting. Helping other people to carry their burdens, looking after the most vulnerable. This is the kind of fast that is pleasing to the Lord, because it corresponds to the great commandment of love which completes the meaning of human person. Love one another, as I have first loved you.

JMJ AMDG +m

rise, and do not be afraid

2011-03-19T07:28:00.001-07:00

Homily

2nd Sunday of Lent A

St. Lawrence Catholic Center at the University of Kansas

20 March 2011

Daily Readings

JMJ AMDG +m

But Jesus came and touched them saying, Rise, and do not be afraid!

This is admittedly a curious and obscure line from today's Gospel that I'm picking out for our meditation today, but I think it could be an interpretive key for the Transfiguration. Jesus' reassuring gesture and words are small compared to the cacophony of activity taking place on the mountaintop and in the heavens, with incredible visions, blinding light and booming voices, but it is an important gesture nonetheless. Jesus came and touched them saying, rise, and do not be afraid!

Obviously, Peter, James and John had plenty of which to be afraid. You and I would surely have fallen down prostrate out of fear as well, if we hadn't died instantly of fright. The chosen apostles were seeing something that no one else had ever seen. The heavens were opened. They get to see the truth of Jesus' promised resurrection not only in the transfigured body of Jesus, but in the appearance of Moses and Elijah. It is one thing to see Jesus bring heaven to earth in the form of his great signs and his teaching with authority. It is quite another to see and to hear what had been forever promised but never experienced on this side of heaven - the truth of the resurrection and the reality of the heavenly Jerusalem, to which we are called and within which every human desire finds its fulfillment. In a recent lecture about heaven here at St. Lawrence, John-Mark Miravale reminded students of how beautiful heaven really is; that if we were ever granted a real preview of it, that it would be impossible to think about anything else, or to turn our gaze away from it.

We get an understanding then, of how thrilling was the metamorphosis taking place not only in Jesus, but in Peter, James and John as well. Because heaven was opened in such a dramatic way, there was an instant demand for Peter, James and John to die to themselves and to spiritually pass over from death to eternal life. For once we get a glimpse of the beauty of heaven, which at present eye has not seen, nor ear ever heard, what God has prepared for those who love him, then it becomes impossible for us to think of anything else or desire anything else.

Peter, James and John turn away in fear, and who can blame them. For when given opportunities in the moment to pass over from death to life, we usually prefer to stay where we are. The dying to self that enables dramatic change within us is usually not our first choice; it is a risk that we save as a last resort. The metamorphosis of the Transfiguration is too much, too soon. We would rather wait and pass through the gate of death to eternal life at the last possible moment, only as a backup plan, our last resort, after squeezing every bit of life out of this world that we can.

What Peter, James and John see in the Lord is that although the cross still lay before him, our Lord was already perfectly detached from his life in the world. He could receive it as a gift, as willed by the Father, but he was not holding on to it. He was free to give it away at a moment's notice. The Transfiguration was not too sudden or dramatic for Jesus; it was something He was always ready for. Our Lord had already passed from death to life even as he walked among them, was already in the process of laying down his own life, had already decided that at every moment he would do not his own will, but the will of the one who sent him. So our Lord even as he walked among them was ready to be transfigured, was already living the eternal life from which he came and to which he would return through the glory of the Resurrection. Jesus' future Resurrection was thus a present reality at the moment of the Transfiguration, and the Transfiguration becomes a key for understanding the Resurrection not as a distant wish for the apostles, but as something that they were invited to begin living from the moment of the Transfiguration onward.

Jesus touches his chosen disciples at the Transfiguration, for his touching us, our being one with him in and through our bodies is the mechanism of the bodily resurrection. Then he tells them to rise, to begin participating even now in the truth of the Resurrection. He tells them that now they have experienced what heaven is like, to not be afraid to pass over from death to life even at this very moment. He invites them to rise and to begin living the metamorphosis of the Resurrection, and to do so with him, and in him and through him. Of course Jesus' suffering, death and Resurrection is something that still lie ahead, and something he will eventually have to do alone. He tells his disciples that where he is going, they cannot come. But he knows that they will follow later, and he shows through the Transfiguration that faith in the Resurrection is a prerequisite for those who will try to undergo the same metamorphosis they will see the Lord accomplish at Calvary, for those who will indeed after his Ascension will each in turn drink the cup of suffering that Christ Himself drank.

This, then, helps us to know how to live Lent properly. Lent is less about tinkering in self-improvement, so that perhaps after this life is over, there may be a lucky ticket to a vacation destination of our choice. No, Lent is praying, fasting and giving alms so that we are more open to the reality of heaven, so that if God wants to give us revelations of heaven, that we will not look away in fear, not hold on to what we can control, but allow ourselves to be captured by the beauty of heaven and the truth of the Resurrection so that we cannot think of anything else, but begin even now to pass over from death to life. It is not delaying the decision of whether to enter heaven until the last moment of our earthly lives, but to see that the Passover is right in front of us, and that we are capable of being transfigured even now by God's grace. Jesus touches us in the Holy Eucharist today, and tells us, do not be afraid to pass over with him, in him, and through him, into the transfigured reality of eternal life. For the Resurrection is not a vain hope, it is a certain reality that we are meant to experience even now in our earthly lives, as Peter, James and John experienced at the Transfiguration.

But Jesus came and touched them saying, Rise, and do not be afraid!

JMJ AMDG +m

forgive others this Lent

2011-03-15T06:05:00.000-07:00

Homily
Tuesday of the 1st Week of Lent
15 March 2011
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings

JMJ AMDG +m

The final line of today's Gospel reminds us that Lent in the end cannot be only a self-improvement project. Jesus gives immediate emphasis to the prayer he has just taught the disciples, by repeating the need to forgive others. In a word both exciting and frightening, Jesus reminds us that God will allow us to measure ourselves, with the measure we use on others. If our repentance this Lent does not end with a greater forgiveness of others, then our fasting, prayer and almsgiving is in vain.

On the Friday after Ash Wednesday, the prophet Isaiah said plainly that it is not enough to don sackcloth and ashes when we fast, which is an exterior sign only; no, the kind of fast the Lord desires is to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke that binds people, including our own unforgiveness. Isaiah predicts what happens to most of us during Lent - we are eager to don sackcloth and ashes, but we end up in our own pursuits, and few of our relationships change from the inside out through sincere forgiveness.

St. Paul asked us to remember on Ash Wednesday that we are ambassadors for Christ; God, as it were, appealing through us. He asked us not to receive the grace of God in vain, but to use it and to show that this Lent we are engaging not just in a baptism of repentance, but are renewing our baptism in the Holy Spirit and with fire. It is important for us not to use Lent to be only concerned about our own salvation. No, the grace of confirmation must be stirred in us so that Lent is not so much about ourselves but is about how we love others, how we forgive them, how we serve them, how we build God's kingdom. To this end, may we today stir up the grace of the Holy Eucharist, and not dare to approach this sacred mystery unless we have heeded God's command to forgive each of our brothers from the heart.

JMJ AMDJ +m

For the Church, that our almsgiving may be a sincere sign of our repentance and our willingness to forgive others, we pray

For the world, for relief in mind, body and spirit for all those suffering from natural disasters, and for the safety of all those trying to help, we pray

For the mission of the St. Lawrence Catholic Center at the University of Kansas, that we would find ways to effectively proclaim Christ's victory over sin and death to those who are sincerely looking for the meaning of life, we pray

For those for whom we have promised to pray, and those to whom we wish to offer the fruits of this Mass, including those in purgatory, and those who are lonely, sick and doubtful, we pray

Heavenly Father, we a deep trust in the love that flows from the heart of your Son, and by the gifts of your Holy Spirit, give to the seminarians, novices and all young people of the Archdiocese the courage to respond generously when you call them to the priesthood and religious life. Give them strong examples of holy priests and religious, and may they be helped by the intercession of the saints and by our prayers to pattern their lives after Mary, who was not afraid to let it be done to her according to your word. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

the first temptation

2011-03-13T06:07:00.000-07:00

Homily

1st Sunday of Lent I

13 March 2011

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

Daily Readings

AMDG JMJ +m

You shall not put the Lord your God to the test. The Lord your God shall you worship and him alone shall you serve.

On the First Sunday of Lent, the Church invites us to ponder the fundamental temptation that gives rise to every other sin in our lives. Before working on our sins in detail this Lent, the Church focuses us on the temptation that reaches the depths of who we are. It is the temptation faced by our Lord in the desert. It is the temptation to doubt God. It is the temptation to wonder whether we would be better off if we never had to do anything anyone told us to do, to wonder whether we are better off defining good and evil for ourselves. At the end of this homily, I hope we can receive the Eucharist together agreeing that it is better to serve in love in heaven forever, responding to the love that Christ first shows us, than to reign in hell.

Most of us are working on trusting God. The Pope's new book Jesus of Nazareth Part II leaped to the top of the best seller list this week. People want to know God and to learn how to trust Him. Yet there are also books by the new atheists on the same best seller lists. As much as we want to trust God, the temptation to doubt Him is equally there. There are no shortage of atheists who make fun of those who believe a good God could allow something like the Japanese earthquake and tsunami this last week. There are plenty who will try to convince us that the universe is the cause of its own existence, and that there is no God beyond the laws of nature. It is remarkable to me how far some people will go in doubting God. There are plenty who are willing to explain away the reality and meaning of what makes us human, the experience that that we are not determined but are radically free, as an illusion operating within the laws of nature. There are many who would more readily be a slave to the laws of nature than to admit that God can exist and that He might be good, and that He is the reason there is freedom and something rather than nothing. There are many who doubt that love is the base of all reality, and who are willing to stop asking the question of why there is something rather than nothing. We all have a sense that the temptation to doubt God is as strong today as it was on the fateful day in the garden of Eden.

This is not to say that it is always a sin to question God, or to desire to go deeper in our understanding of God and to find better reasons to believe in Him. This is a natural progression of the intellect, and insofar as modern atheists can help us to answer better questions about God, their project can in a way be helpful. But what we are talking about tonight is pride, the temptation not to just question God, but to doubt Him, and this is the temptation that runs deep within each one of us. It is the temptation to exalt the beautiful, radical, transcendent freedom we have above and against the good for which freedom was made.

Our country is great among nations precisely because we believe so strongly in the potential of human freedom, in the American dream of self-determination. We know as Americans that man can and should become great through making great and risky choices, and this is a great Christian vision of man as well. Yet we know sadly that the freedom we exalt as Americans sometimes is used for evil, and is used over and against the good for which freedom is made. We are tempted, as much in this country as anywhere, to understand freedom minimally, as a license to do whatever I want without having to listen to anybody, instead of understanding it maximally, as freedom to pursue the highest things for myself and for my neighbor. The temptation is to forget that freedom is only good when it is ordered to the highest good and is used to choose the highest good. We forget that freedom without goodness is meaningless, and we get this wrong to our own peril and destruction. We forget that being placed in God's garden, as a gift of a Father to his children, is better than reigning in hell, where we only have the opportunity to choose what is evil. This exaltation of the will over and against what is truly good is the fundamental temptation of our lives, and so radical is our freedom that makes us in the image and likeness of God, that we are free to choose death and to destroy ourselves rather than to serve the good for which we are made.

This is how we become rivals and enemies of each other. When I exalt freedom over goodness, when I place my own freedom above everything else, then reality changes and other people become threats to my freedom, and I become suspicious of others just as Adam and Eve began to be at emnity with each other. When my freedom is divorced from the good, then I even begin determining who should live and die, and I use others for my own pleasure. It is no wonder that since man became capable of choosing death instead of life, that God in his justice decreed that a creature that does not always choose what is good should not live forever. And so through the choice of man, death entered the world.

Tonight's scriptures remind us that although we can question God, since we are contingent beings, and not the cause of our own existence, we do not possess the ability to ultimately determine what is good and evil, nor could we possibly make infallible judgments about the goodness of God. Yet our intelligence and will are what relate us directly to God. They are what make a meaningful relationship with God possible, so we should not throw them away as an illusion operating merely within the laws of nature. The transcendent freedom we experience relates us directly to God, and has great potential to be conformed to the ultimate and eternal good, if only we do not use our freedom to become enemies of God or enemies of each other.

Our Lord in his forty days resisted every temptation to doubt God. In the end, our Lord by the purification of his mind, heart and body, who was tempted in every way we are, but who never sinned, used his human life to reveal who God is, a God who is deeply in love with his creation, and who was willing by the sacrifice of Himself to reverse the curse begun by Adam. Strengthened by our Lord's example, let us not be cowards in the face of temptation this Lent, but engage in the spiritual battle that leads to the revelation of the best that is within us, the capacity to love and to reveal to the world that God is real and He is love.

You shall not put the Lord your God to the test. The Lord your God shall you worship. Him alone shall you serve

AMDG JMJ +m

doing the least painful thing

2011-03-08T07:47:00.000-08:00

Homily
Ash Wednesday 2011
St. Lawrence Catholic Center at the University of Kansas
9 March 2011
Daily Readings

JMJ AMDG +m

Brothers and Sisters. We are ambassadors for Christ, as if God were appealing through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ. Be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

To me this reading from St. Paul has Pentecost overtones. I know, I know. I'm jumping the gun. Today is not about being sent by the Holy Spirit to extend Christ's mission of salvation to every time and place, to the very ends of the earth. But as with anything in life, knowing where we want to end helps us to begin. Our Lenten sacrifice gets its jump start by the sobering words - Remember man, that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. We know how to start Lent from the perspective of our eventual death. Yet we begin Lent for another reason as well. We begin Lent is in response to God's invitation to eternal life. Beginning Lent is remembering how our lives on earth will end, to be sure, but it is more a proclamation that we do not wish our natural death to be the end of the story for us.

St. Paul urges us to be reconciled to God, because God wishes us to be ambassadors for Christ. We repent of our sins beginning today so that we will be ready to be Christ's ambassadors at the end of the Easter season, at Pentecost. St. Paul narrates an incredible inversion in reality that we cannot afford to miss contemplating. For our sake God made him who knew no sin to be sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. This is the exchange God proposes to us - that the most innocent person ever would be seen by ordinary men as the greatest sinner, so that anyone who is a great sinner, might one day be seen by ordinary men to be a saint. If Christ was not seen as a sinner, there would be no way not to be envious of his heavenly perfection, but because He humbled himself, he wishes for us to be seen as holy more than he desires himself to be known as holy. That is why Christ is so clear in the Gospels - don't worry whether or not other people see you as holy. He himself was counted as the greatest sinner. What is more, Christ came to begin loving us at our most unlovable point, so that we would not go through life wondering who will notice us, who will love us, but might be free in the love of Christ to go out and begin loving others exactly where Christ first loves us. So we begin repenting of our sins today in Lent, so that we might be sent by him to be his saints at Pentecost. Knowing the end of our journey helps us to begin it well.

God is love. He will not love us more if we give up chocolate, or say extra rosaries, or give all that we have to the poor. We should do these things, but not to earn God's love. He already loves us completely. He could not love us any more than He already does. God will always be love. He does not change. So Lent is not about making ourselves more lovable in the sight of God. Lent is not a contest to see who can punish themselves the most for the sins they have committed. While it is true that we can become distracted, complacent, and mired in ruts of mediocrity, and the prayer, fasting and almsgiving of Lent can provide some relief from this, the reality is that we are all sinners, and we all know we will always be sinners, and we all know ourselves already by the worst things we have done, and we usually hate ourselves fairly perfectly, and we know deep down how sin has damaged us, and we know we are not worthy of eternal life. Although Lent can strip us away from comforts and distractions, deep down we already know that we are dust and to dust we shall return. Lent reminds us of this, but deep down we have never really forgotten it. We all know that there is a real possibility that our final breath will be the end of the story for us.

Lent then is more than a contest to see who can punish themselves the most. It must be more than this. It is not a contest to get other people to see us and love us better, least of all God, who knows us already today more than we know ourselves, who will never forget us, and who already loves us perfectly. Sometimes we can see Lent as a contest of willpower to see who is worthy of heaven, and who is worthy of death. Yet in many ways, this is the opposite of what Lent is.

We pray, fast and give alms not so that we might be more worthy of heaven, but to give priority to the reality that we in many ways have already passed over into heaven by virtue of our baptism, and that we exist now primarily not to worry about our salvation, but to build the kingdom of God everyday by what we say and do in the days we have on this earth. We pray, fast, and give alms not because these things are harder, but because they are easier than forgetting that we have already passed in baptism from death to life. Praying, fasting, and giving alms is easy, compared to the spiritual pain of forgetting who we are, temples of the Holy Spirit called to build heaven with Christ. Praying, fasting and almsgiving is easy compared to living in this world with a cowering fear, not knowing if we have done enough to merit heaven, and having no way of knowing for sure. Living in fear and uncertainty, especially at a spiritual level, is painful. So we pray, and fast and give alms for a much nobler purpose, to which St. Paul calls us, not merely move away our sins by our own willpower, although this too is good, but to recover that dignity of those who are even on this side of heaven already ambassadors for Christ. Praying, fasting and giving alms can increase our willpower against temptations, but more importantly, it moves us back into the mission of forgetting our earthly attachments because we are emerging saints intent on proclaiming to the world what God has done for us in Jesus Christ, and are building with Christ from this inside out a new kingdom that will last forever. Praying, fasting and almsgiving is much less about perfecting ourselves, but is about re-orienting ourselves to God's perfections and his glorious works. Praying, fasting and giving alms is less about making ourselves good, and more about giving witness to the goodness of God and his many blessings. Praying, fasting and giving alms is less about making ourselves more lovable, but is a way that we proclaim the strength of the love of Jesus Christ, a love that is stronger than death. Amen.

JMJ AMDG +m

the role of government

2011-03-08T06:10:00.000-08:00

Homily

Tuesday of the 9th Week in Ordinary Time

Mardi Gras 2011

8 March 2011

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

St. John of God, pray for us

JMJ AMDG +m

Daily Readings

Money. Sex. Politics. Sports. Weather. Crime. Am I missing anything? This litany takes up most of an evening news cast, and most of our lives as well. People care much more about taxes and benefits, are much more willing to get upset if you mess with their money, than they do about contemplation of the highest things, and things that will never pass away. The Pharisees and Herodians tried to show how paying taxes to Caesar could be against God's will, since the Romans were occupiers of the Holy Land. Jesus in his flippant reply indicates that taxes and politics are the least of one's worries, when there is still hatred of others and love of money in one's own heart. Jesus is interested in healing people from the inside out. He knows well that the Romans are occupiers, but He points out that it is less of a crime to pay to Caesar what is Caesar's in terms of money, than to give one's soul over the tyranny of sin that destroys a human heart.

This is not to say that government should never be opposed. Perhaps in our day we need even more civil disobediencein the things that matter to God, more outrage when our government fails to protect the basic right to life, and fails in its ability to see and to know and to choose the common good of all people, so that human persons may not just exist minimally but may have life in abundance. It seems that politics is in dire need of saints, who can cut through old rhetoric and inspire Americans beyond the stale conversation that is all too often a concern over money alone.

Yet as great as our country is and can be and should be, it is not the American way of life that produces saints. It is the mission of the Church to do this, and since a Christian lives his life from the inside out, being concerned with purity of heart before attending to money or any other external thing, then it is the Church who must seek to change the world more than money or politics or war or weather ever can, through the lives of her saints. The Church must produce new saints today. It is her great privilege and mission to do so, now as much as ever.

For the Church, that she might be a light to all nations who wish to seek the common good of their peoples, we pray to the Lord.

For the world, that leaders may never lose sight of the highest common good of their people as they strive to solve the everyday problems of man, we pray to the Lord.

For the mission of the St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center to the University of Kansas, that we might bring the truth of the Gospel to bear on the formation of the future leaders of American society, we pray to the Lord.

For the intentions of our Holy Father, and for all those who suffer unjustly because of violence, injustice, poverty, disease or ignorance, we pray to the Lord.

For our own personal intentions, for those for whom we have promised to pray, and for those to whom we wish to offer the fruits of this Mass, especially for the lonely, the sick and the doubtful, we pray to the Lord.

Heavenly Father with a deep trust in the love that flows from the heart of your Son, and by the gifts of your Holy Spirit, give to the seminarians, novices and all young people of this Archdiocese, the courage to respond generously when you call them to the priesthood and religious life. Give them strong examples of holy priests and religious, and may they be helped by the intercession of the saints, and by our prayers, to pattern their lives after Mary, who was not afraid to let is be done unto Her according to your Word. we ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

JMJ AMDG +m

the three progressions

2011-03-06T06:50:00.000-08:00

Homily

9th Sunday in Ordinary Time

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

6 March 2011

Daily Readings

Not everyone who says Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.

Tonight's readings provide for us a convincing pattern for our life, a way to be rock solid in our approach to reality and our expectations for life and for ourselves. There is a great progression from the first reading to the second reading to the Gospel. It is a pattern that we will do well to pay attention to.

The first challenge any person faces in life is to find a way to live a good life. Each of us must find a way to know what is good, to love what is good, and to choose what is good. The alternative is to allow ourselves to be destroyed by evil, and to become less and less of a person because our lives are dominated by evil. The first challenge in life is to be a good person instead of a bad person. We make this distinction all the time. When we talk about someone, we usually say that he is a great guy, or she is a great gal. We recognize that for the most part, even though the person in question is far from perfect, that their lives are not dominated by evil. They make more good choices than bad choices. Therefore it is easy to have a relationship with these people. This is not the case with people whose lives are dominated by evil. If a person's life is caving in on itself, it is frustrating to be in relationship with that person. There is no goodness on which to base the relationship. The relationship is always shaky.

Moses pleads in the first reading for the Israelites to take the commandments of the Lord into their hearts and into their souls. He tells them to bind the commandments of the Lord as a band on the wrist, or as a pendant on the forehead, so that they might never forget them. Moses knows from experience that the Israelites are a broken people. They are sinners. He knows that their natural desire to do good and avoid evil needed the reinforcement of God's commands. The commandments that Moses is telling to the Israelites - do not be idolatrous, honor your father and mother, do not kill or steal or lie, are not rocket science. Any naturally good person can endorse these commandments by the light of natural reason. Yet in delivering the commands of God, Moses reminds man that our reason can and must always be purified by faith in God's revelation of Himself. The rules of how to be good are ultimately grounded in and guaranteed by God who is the source of all goodness, who is goodness itself. So our reason and our desire to do good must always be purified by the light of faith, in the context of our responsibility to stay in relationship with God. We always need God's commandments, lest we go off the path toward authentic goodness.

We see this played out in our moral culture today. A person does not need God's commandments to come to the conclusion that abortion, contraception and same-sex marriage are not good things. A non-Christian can reasonably conclude this. An atheist can be against abortion, contraception, and same-sex marriage by the light of reason, without believing in God. Yet what we see is that reason can easily be clouded, and can readily use the light of revelation and God's commandments. Even though abortion and contraception reduce life instead of increasing life, and do not cure an illness but interrupt a natural goodness in the body, there are many who have concluded that abortion and contraception are exactly like all other health care. Yet they are obviously different. In the same way, notwithstanding the subjective desire to love other people and to be in meaningful relationship with them, there are some who wish to minimize the uniqueness of marriage between a man and a woman, and the natural advantages inherent in the complementarity and fruitfulness of this union, so that any relationship can be called a marriage, can be considered identically the same, even though objectively they are not the same. So when the natural light of reason fails to create a consensus among thinking people, the light of faith, and God's commandments, are there to purify reason, and to give light to true and lasting goodness. In turn, reason also can and does purify faith, as when suicide bombers reduce life in the name of God, any reasonable person can identify the inconsistency here. Faith and reason thus have a necessary and complementary relationship to each other.

So Moses tells us that our first responsibility in life is to become a naturally good person, aided by our obedience to God's commandments. Our first responsibility is given by baptism, when we refused to be mastered by sin. It is to not to settle for mediocrity instead of goodness, and not to rationalize our sinfulness so that we might not inherit a curse instead of a blessing. Yet St. Paul tells us in the second reading that this is just the beginning for us. We are not ultimately made to follow rules of how to do good and to avoid evil, either nature's rules or God's rules. No, man is not ultimately a slave to rules. He is a free creature created in the image and likeness of God so that he might love with all his heart, and all his mind and all his strength. Thus, we strive to be good so that we have the greatest opportunity to love God and to love one another. Love is man's origin, love is his constant calling, love is his perfection in heaven. We are good so that we can fulfill our ultimate destiny to love, so that we can respond to Jesus' commandment to love one another just as He first loves us, so that if God is the one who loves us most perfectly in Christ Jesus, that we can in turn fall in love with Him and make our friendship with Christ the fundamental relationship of our lives. St. Paul says this is the second opportunity and responsibility that we have, to mature beyond the rules that keep evil from destroying us and to move into an intense relationship of love with Christ Jesus, who is both the law of goodness and goodness itself. Because Christ Jesus took on our humanity in the incarnation, it is possible for us to enter into the most personal and intimate relationship with the one through whom all good things come, for He created all that is good. Thus, being a good person naturally leads us to the perfect intimate communion of the Eucharist, where the creator of all goodness makes Himself small enough for us to have the most personal and intimate of relationships with Him.

Then Jesus in the Gospel is clear that those who are in intimate communion with Him, will make the final progression in life toward the freedom of obedience, or loving not their own will but the will of the Heavenly Father for them, who knows them and loves them more than they know and love themselves. Jesus came not to do His own will, but the will of His Father, and He did it within the strength of His intimate relationship of love with the Father. Because of His love for the Father, Jesus did His will not because He had to, not because it was easy, but because He wanted to. Jesus in turn tells us who wish to be His disciples that the final progression of our lives is our imitation of His obedience, the freedom that comes not from loving our own will, but in doing the will of the Father, who knows us and loves us and desires what is best for us, even if we do not yet know ourselves, or love ourselves, or know what is best for us. This is the fruit of a real realtionship of love with the Jesus, that in seeing his beautiful obedience to the Fahter, we in turn want to do everything in life with Him and in Him and through Him, and we want to do nothing in life except what He is doing, and we desire in life only to do what He desire for us, only what He asks of us. This for the Christian is ultimate freedom, it is ultimate security, it is basing our lives on the most solid of rock. If our progression in life stops with our loving Jesus but loving our own will more, than the storms of life will come and will tear down our desire to be good, and our intimate friendship with Him. If we love our own will above all things, we are only pretending that we will one day go to heaven. For not everyone who says Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one whose house is built on solid rock, only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.

God has deep pockets

2011-03-01T05:04:00.000-08:00

Homily
Tuesday of the 8th Week of Ordinary Time I
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
1 March 2011
Daily Readings

God will not be outdone in generosity. This is the promise emphasized both in Sirach and by our Lord today. God's gifts might be quite strange at times. Jesus throws in persecutions right in between more land and eternal life, as if persecutions will be as sweet as the other things he promises. Strange, but he lists them as a gift nonetheless. God will not be outdone in generosity. The most adventuresome life he proposes for us is to have as much fun as we can trying to outdo him in generosity.

When we start counting the cost of discipleship, as Peter begins to do, or begin to put a relative value on God's gifts that He has given and is giving and will give, or if we give to God only as a bribe, then the relationship with God breaks down. We can put no relative amount of our lives on the altar when we come to Mass. If we do, we speak a different language of love than the language the Lord speaks from the cross, and the relationship breaks down. The result of a measured discipleship is always a deep suspicion on our part that God is defrauding us, or treating us not as children, but as slaves.

God's ways, especially if we might see even the trials of our lives as his personal gifts to us, only make sense when we allow Him first to speak His language of love deep within our hearts, and we allow Christ to speak it perfectly from the cross, from where that love is made perfectly present to us. If we can look at the cross and trust in God's love and his justice, then our lives can truly become the great adventure of trying to outdo God in generosity. We can enter into the great adventure of losing ourselves and finding that in putting ourselves last, God is ready to give us more than we would ever choose for ourselves, and He places us first in His heart.

For the Church, that all Christians would never tire of making sincere offerings of themselves to God and to one another, we pray . . . .

For the world, that reconciliation may be possible through mutual sacrifices made for the common good, especially for the most vulnerable, we pray . . ..

For the mission of St. Lawrence Catholic Center, that charity may reign in all that we say and do to bring the Gospel of love to campus, we pray . . .

For the personal intentions that we bring to Mass today, especially for the lonely, the sick and the doubtful that are close to us, we pray . . . .

Heavenly Father, with a deep trust that flows from the heart of your Son, and by the gifts of your Holy Spirit, give to the seminarians, novices, and all young people of the Archdiocese the courage to respond generously as you call them to the priesthood and religious life. Give them strong examples of holy priests and religious, and may they be helped by the intercession of the saints and by our prayers, to pattern their lives after Mary, who was not afraid to let it be done to Her according to your Word. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Heavenly Father, with a deep trust in the love that flows from the heart of your Son, and by the gifts

Even if a mother could forget

2011-02-27T05:02:00.000-08:00

Homily

8th Sunday of Ordinary Time

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

27 February 2011

Daily Readings

Even if a mother could forget, and be without tenderness for the child in her womb, I will never forget you. Please allow me to use these words from Isaiah, who was worried that He had been forgotten by God, to talk about abortion. Let me preface the remarks by saying that if you have had an abortion, or if you have been involved in an abortion as a father or as a family member or as a friend, that God has not abandoned you. He will never forget you, and His love for you is as strong today as ever. So if you have been injured by abortion, do not be afraid to come to confession if you haven't already, for the Lord's mercy awaits you there, and God will forgive you and make you whole again if you allow him to do so. I make remarks on abortion never to the shame of those who has been hurt by abortion, but so that no one may be afraid of God's mercy, so that many can be healed, and so that many people might be able to choose life today and tomorrow, and to choose it in the abundance that Christ offers it to us his disciples.

Some of you have been touched by abortion, but many others of you have not. Most of us, however, are personally involved in a culture that is promiscuous and contraceptive, and few of us are more than a few steps away in our personal lives from some kind of mistake, from perhaps being faced with an unplanned pregnancy, and the ensuing temptation to choose abortion. What is more, the reality is that only by fortunate circumstances are we here to worship God together today, for our right to life was protected at its beginning, not by law, but by our own mothers and families. So even if we are not sexually active ourselves, or involved in contraception, or have never been involved in an abortion, still we are survivors in a generation where abortion is legal. None of us can say that we have not been personally touched by abortion. When it is possible by law for a mother to forget the infant in her womb, society is deeply damaged, and each one of us personally as well.

In this homily, I will not talk of the struggle to restore legal protection to the unborn child, but of the virtue of chastity. This is a virtue that we all need, and need in abundance, a virtue that frees a human person in a unique way to live without the fear and anxiety that Jesus talks about in today's Gospel. It is because this virtue of chastity is so lacking in our culture, that reasonable people who have already been born think they must have the right to an abortion. It is because chastity is so underdeveloped as a virtue, that abortion will continue to be the defining civil rights issue of our generation. It is a battle that we cannot pass on to another generation to fix. It is our personal battle, and it is a battle that must be won today, beginning not only in congresses and coursts, but more fundamentally in the hearts and minds of those who know it is possible to live and to love in the most perfect and sacrificial and beautiful way.

I would like each one of us tonight, to recommit ourselves to cultivating that virtue of chastity in our lives, regardless of how pure or impure we are, regardless of what our habits or experiences are that we bring to Mass tonight. Let's all look back in our lives, to the innocence of our youth, to the time when we knew that we could and would love people in a most beautiful way, and together look forward to the end of our lives, forward to the day, pray God, of our own wedding, and recommit ourselves to what we want our lives to say and mean. Let's recommit ourselves to the virtue of chastity, no matter how difficult the re-conversion might be for us, so that we might restore the opportunity in our lives to make another person holy by the way that we love them.

Chastity at its minimum means training ourselves to habitually avoid the temptation to have sex outside of marriage, so that if we are called to marriage someday, a sacrament that is becoming less and less a possibility for many Catholics, we can hear and answer that call, and have a chance of meeting someone who can also make a sincere gift of themselves to us in return. Chastity at its minimum means training ourselves to learn from our mistakes and to not put ourselves in situation where we know we will fail. It is also a refusal to settle for mediocrity, to allow temptation to dominate our lives, but to continue despite failures to pick ourselves up and to learn from our mistakes and to try harder.

There are those however, in the culture around us, and the evil one who speaks inside of us, who will tell us that such a struggle for chastity is in vain. We might even be ridiculed for trying by certain friends, and the evil one can easily get us to hate ourselves for the things we have already done more than the sin we are trying to avoid, and many of our efforts to become chaste can seem rather futile. Chastity is not an easy virtue to cultivate, and so many give up and take the path of least resistance. Yet we give up to our own peril, if we settle for a diminished view of sexuality and of ourselves.

Chastity, if it is a real possibility for us, must be a virtue that we choose to train ourselves in, a virtue which requires effort on our part, but more importantly, chastity is a goodness, a habit, a virtue, that is ultimately spiritual. In this chastity is not only a goal to be achieved through our own efforts, it is something for which we are chosen. It is ultimately possible mostly because God right now wants to share with us his perfect chastity, the gift of his love, a divine love that defines the inner Trinitarian heart of God. He wants to share this perfection with us because He is deeply in love with us, his children. Even if a mother could forget, God will not forget us, and He will never stop wanting to pour his divine perfections, and his perfect chaste love, into the hearts of those who wish to receive it. Jesus when talking about our mission in life, to not merely be chaste but to participate in His mission of redeeming love, told those first disciples that it is not we that choose Him, but He who first chooses us, and appoints us to go out into the world, and to bear fruit that will remain. His great commandment to us is similar, love one another as I have first loved you.

Chastity at its most beautiful then, is much more than our choosing to be chaste even when we don't want to because we're afraid of what will happen if we aren't chaste. It is this, yes, but it is much more. Being chaste is a being chosen by God to first receive but then to give the very love through which the world was first created, and by which it is redeemed and made new again from the inside out. Our pure desire to build the virtue of chastity in our own lives reveals a great understanding on our part that we have an incomparable dignity as children of God, and our lives have meaning because we have been chosen to make the world holy again by the way that we love people. Chastity at its highest is being an instrument of the divine love that recreates the world in a more powerful way than any other economic, political or physical force.

When our Lord tells us not to be anxious in the Sermon on the Mount, and not to be worried about food or clothing, He is not telling us all to become Trappist monks, and to flee the world. No, He asks us to help him heal the world of its anxiety, by seeking first the Kingdom of God, and by teaching the world that God Himself through His Son takes away the ultimate anxiety that all of us have in wanting to be noticed and to be loved from the inside out. He asks us to welcome Him, and the workings of his divine love, into every aspect of our lives, especially those areas of our lives where we feel the most insecure. He asks us that if we feel insecure enough to have given up on the virtue of chastity, to not be afraid of His love, and to try inviting Him to share His perfections with us in the most intimate and personal areas of our lives.

As we are fed by the perfect love of Jesus made present, let us be saved from every mediocrity and discouragement in our battle to be chaste, and in our desire to free the world from the evils of our generation. As we allow God to make us Holy by pouring his love into our hearts tonight, let us see clearly how we are part of the solution in making the world holy once again, by the way that we love one another. Let us not be afraid to be chaste lovers, and to heal the world around us of its anxiety, as we seek first in our lives the Kingdom of God.

You already have what you need . . . .

2011-02-14T07:53:00.000-08:00

Homily
Tuesday of the 6th Week of Ordinary Time I
St. Lawrence Catholic Center at the University of Kansas
15 February 2011
Daily Readings

Watch out for the leaven of Herod and the leaven of the Pharisees. Jesus lumps Herod and the Pharisees into a single sentence, even though the pair is outwardly very different. Herod represented the height of preoccupation with worldly things - power and wealth. The Pharisees represented the height of obsession with religious things, observing carefully the Mosaic law. Yet Jesus lumps them together. He says their leaven, their core motivation, is the same. He tells his own disciples to watch out.

The disciples were afraid of being chastised because they had forgotten to bring something that was needed, the loaf of bread. Jesus instead chastises them, not for forgetting to bring bread, but for continuing to have in their hearts the same fundamental question that poisoned the leaven of Herod and the Pharisees. The question is this: do I have what I need? Jesus recognizes both in Herod and in the Pharisees that this was the fundamental question of their hearts. Even though Herod lived this question is a secular way, and the Pharisees in a religious way, the fundamental question of their hearts, their leaven, was the same. Do I have what I need? Jesus chastises his disciples for worrying about the same thing.

Jesus rightly teaches that once you start asking this question, you never quite finish answering it. It is a question that destroys a human person, a leaven that does not allow a human person to be free or to flourish. For there is no end to the needs that a human person can identify, and no end to human desiring on this side of heaven. Once you start asking the question, do I have what I need, there is no way to stop. Consequently, even today we see many people who live in fear.

The leaven that Jesus wishes for his disciples is a question of how they are called to serve. In this country, JFK coined a phrase that has echoed through the centuries - ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. JFK was seeking to motivate patriotism so that America could compete again. Jesus' motivations are much deeper, but the question is similar. The fundamental question he wishes to be in the hearts of his disciples, is not whether they have what they need, but do they have an opportunity to serve? Jesus recalls the story of the loaves and fishes, to remind them that the correct question in that situation was not do we have what we need? No, the question was did we have an opportunity to give, to love, to serve others? The answer to that question was yes. So too in the redemption of the world, if every human person asks first whether he has what he needs, there will never be enough to go around. If instead, every human person seeks only an opportunity to love and to serve, then there will be superabundance. As Pope Benedict XVI said in his encyclical God is Love, charity grounds justice. Charity goes deeper than justice, and even when there is justice, with everyone having what they need, it never eliminates the human need to show charity.

We see this played out so often in the lives of real people. There are those who seem to have everything, and yet are unhappy, and those who seem to have nothing, who are eager to give away what little they have as fast as they can, needing only an opportunity to love. There are those who live in fear, like Herod and the Pharisees, and those who live in gratitude. The mere fact that there is something rather than nothing, that there is me rather than not me, is enough evidence to saints that they are known and loved, that they have already everything they need, that the only thing lacking ever in their lives is the next opportunity to give. On the other hand, the mere fact that there is something I could want that I do not yet have, is enough evidence for many to quit believing in God.

Jesus tells us to beware of the leaven in our hearts, the fundamental question of our lives. The first question we ask is usually the one we never stop asking.

He's good, and that's what matters

2011-02-12T06:52:00.000-08:00

Homily

6th Sunday of Ordinary Time

St. Lawrence Chapel at the University of Kansas

13 February 2011

Daily readings

Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. In a way, the Lord might as well be telling a sixth grade basketball team to go out and find a way to beat the mighty Kansas Jayhawks. Nobody knew the law better than the scribes and Pharisees. They were the lawyers, the law enforcement, and the best observers of the law. Nobody cared about the law of Moses, to which Jesus refers throughout today's Gospel, more than the scribes and Pharisees. Jesus, as he oftentimes does, puts before his disciples an impossible task, like 6th graders taking the court against the Jayhawks, but says there is a way for the impossible to become possible. As great as the scribes and Pharisees are, they have not resisted sin and observed the law to the point of shedding their own blood. They have not given 110% as coaches often say. So Jesus uses hyperbole to show the kind of effort to be righteous that his disciples must give. If necessary, they should gouge their eyes and cut off their hands, and when we see our own Lord stripped and beaten on the cross in order that he might fulfill all righteousness, we know that our Lord even when using hyperbole is telling us that we can always try harder.

Still, there is an aura of hyperbole and impossibility in today's Gospel that makes us want to search for its deeper meaning. Those sixth graders might go out on the court believing that they can win, and doing everything that they can think to do to beat the Jayhawks, but might never beat the experts, the pros. So also is our chance of exceeding the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees who care about the moral law more than the average Joe in the pew. In the moral life, trying to be perfect is like being those sixth graders trying to be the Jayhawks. And if we were advising ourselves, most of us would say that you don't beat the Jayhawks by playing harder, but by playing smarter. The best solution if you don't have the players to beat them is to recruit a player to help you, preferably the greatest player who ever played the game, a player who makes everyone around him better, a player who makes winning a real possibility again.

Jesus tells us to do impossible things, but he never commands that we do them alone. He tells his disciples that they must be perfect, as their heavenly Father is perfect, or they will not be worthy of the kingdom of heaven, while at the same time also telling them that without Him they can do nothing, and that no one approaches the perfect Father except through him. Jesus not only challenges his disciples to perfectly fulfill the moral law, to perfectly do good and avoid evil, even to the point of beating the pros, he more importantly tells them that he will be the captain of the team, that without him they really have no chance, but that with him all things are possible.

So while it is important for us to resist sin as much as we can, to renew the promises of our baptism to refuse to be mastered by sin, to hate our sins with a perfect hate, and to not allow the evil one to push us around and turn us into someone we never wanted to be, it is our relationship with the Lord who has the victory over sin that is most important. Those who want to be holy and successful in the moral life realize that every struggle in the moral life, doing good and avoiding evil, points to a more fundamental struggle in the spiritual life, a struggle to trust God, and to welcome him into every area of our lives. To exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees means trying harder, yes, even to the point of shedding our blood, but more importantly, it means allowing Christ who has already shed his blood, and his perfections to be more present to us, and to allow Him, the best player on our team, to do more in us and with us and through us.

There is no reason, then, for us to get frustrated with our weakness, with our own sinfulness. There is no reason for us to hate ourselves more than we hate our sins, which is what the evil one would like us to do. In our battle to be holy, of course we should be calling timeouts, making adjustments in our strategy, practicing harder, and drawing up new plays. But most of all, we should know that Christ Himself is on the bench ready for us to put him in play in the time and circumstances of our lives.

It is the spiritual life, a life of prayer, and a life of true discipleship that is most important. Through a spiritual life we tend to forget ourselves because we are truly following the Lord and are attentive to what he is doing. It is the spiritual life that allows for the greatest progress in the moral life, becoming the people we really want to be. In a sense, because Jesus always was, and is, and will be, the one who fulfills all righteousness, and because at every moment He is in conversation with His heavenly Father and fulfilling the will of His Heavenly Father, then it is not really up to us to find our own individual way to be perfect by our own power. It is a matter of plugging into his perfection, of our entering into something that is already being accomplished. It is a matter of allowing the Holy Spirit to overshadow us as it did Mary.

Mary then in the moral life, since she was sinless, is our pattern of holiness. She is our nearest example. We think of Mary not as one who had supernatural power over sin, although the gifts of the Holy Spirit made her incredibly strong. We do not think of her as always doing right when mere mortals would falter, although this is also true. We think of her instead as the lowly handmaiden of the Lord, who allows the Lord to help her, who allows the Lord to share his perfections with her because he loves her. We think of her as being placed in the middle of this incredible conversation and mission of love between the Father and the Son, and so she is full of grace, filled with the Holy Spirit, and she accomplished more by her fiat than the strongest scribe or Pharisee could ever accomplish by his willpower or attention to the law.

Let us move forward in this Eucharist toward being the people we deeply want to be, by realizing that our Lord Jesus is just as ready to fulfill all righteousness in us, by the power of his suffering, death and resurrection, as he was ready to fill the sinless heart of the virgin Mary. Unless our righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, we are not fit to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Allowing yourself to be chosen

2011-02-11T06:28:00.000-08:00

Homily
Friday of the 5th Week of Ordinary Time I
11 February 2011
Danforth Chapel at the University of Kansas
Optional Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes
Daily Readings

Today's memorial and readings give us a chance to think about the difference between choosing and being chosen. One is greater than the other, but we usually get them backwards. Oftentimes, we think of holiness as choosing the good, and this is true in part, but it is more true to say that holiness is allowing the good to choose you. There is a big difference between Eve, who is seduced into choosing what is good only for herself, and Mary, who allowed goodness to choose her. There is a difference in using the freedom that makes us in God's image and likeness to determine goodness for yourself, and only yourself, and using that freedom to allow yourself to be chosen for a good that goes far beyond anything you might ever choose for yourself. There is a difference between Eve, who in eating the fruit of the tree dared to act like a god, and Mary, who in letting it be done unto Her according to His Word, was elevated above all the gods, and who is truly called the Mother of God.

So too our Lord's mission to redeem the world through sacrificial love was not a mission that He chose, but something He accepted in obedience, and His greatest act was foregoing His ability to save Himself from the cross, but saying to His Father not my will, but your will be done. In our Lord's cross we find the fullness of freedom, not in self-determination, but in allowing one's self to be chosen for a destiny and mission that is beyond one's self. The cross is always a more perfect symbol of love and freedom than any self-made man. So also in our vocation, Christ asks us to trust Him in obedience, and reminds us that as great as it is that we might choose Him, it is not we who choose Him, but He who chooses us, and gives us a mission in life that is greater than anything we could choose for ourselves.

People have been coming to Lourdes for 150 years now, to be healed of their illnesses to be sure, but perhaps moreso, to imitate Mary who was the greatest among mere men in allowing something to be done unto Her. Of all those cured of bodily illness at Lourdes, there are many others who have found there the ability to conform their own sufferings to the mystery of the Lord's cross, and to find through their disabilities and sufferings a greater freedom than they would have ever had without them. Though few who come to Lourdes would choose the heavy cross that they have to bear, it is there with Mary and Jesus that they allow themselves to be healed from the inside out, and allow themselves to be chosen to bear a fruit that goes beyond the understanding of the world. Like the deaf man and his friends who could not stop proclaiming not what they had done, but what God had done for them, so too Lourdes remains a profoundly joyful place, where those who have more reasons than us to distrust God nevertheless shame us by proclaiming what God has done for them. For God indeed looks upon us in our lowliness. He heals the brokenhearted. And for those who let it be done to them according to His word, He gives a peace that this world can never give.

Let us pray today for our Church, that Mary's appearance at Lourdes would continue to give comfort and hope to those chosen to participate in the redemptive sufferings of Christ, we pray

Let us pray for the world, that the most vulnerable among us would be protected and served by the strong, and that the dignity of human life would never be measured as much as it is celebrated, we pray

Let us pray for the mission of the St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center, to proclaim the goodness of the Lord and his healing power to those who suffering in mind, body or spirit at KU, we pray

Let us pray for those areas of the world torn by violence and discord, for a peaceful and just resolution in Egypt and in all areas of the world in need of reconciliation, we pray

Let us pray that following the pattern of Mary, that more people would be open to receiving from the Lord vocations to priesthood, the religious life, and to the sacrament of marriage, we pray to the Lord . . .

Let us remember those for whom we have promised to pray, especially the sick, the lonely and the doubtful, that our prayers may bring them healing, we pray . . .

Lord, through the powerful intercession of Our Lady of Lourdes, continue to give us hope and strength to endure whatever may come, for your greater glory and the salvation of souls. We make our prayers known to you also, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

It is not good for man to be alone

2011-02-10T09:12:00.000-08:00

Homily

Thursday of the 5th Week of Ordinary Time I

St. Lawrence Chapel at the University of Kansas

10 February 2011

St. Scholastica, pray for us!

Daily Readings

You get a sense from today's Gospel that Jesus needed a break, or a nap, or time to pray, but he couldn't escape notice. When approached by the Greek woman, he says what hits our ears as the rudest thing we have ever heard our Lord say. He tells the woman that she is cutting the line, that Greeks should be behind Jewish people in receiving His teaching and healing. The Greek woman's faith is more than up to this unique challenge by our Lord, and by her faith her daughter is healed of the demon.

Those called to the priesthood and religious life cut the line as well, skipping over a step that is natural and good for man, the call to marriage, so that they might participate as fully as they can already now in the eternal marriage of Christ to His Church. Taking nothing away from marriage, which remains as we see clearly in the reading for Genesis God's usual way of calling men and women to a good and holy life, those called to the priesthood in the western Church, and to religious life universally don't really skip over marriage, but sacrifice this natural good to attend to a supernatural call to spiritual marriage to the Church or to Christ Himself, respectively.

Just as a man and wife complement each other perfectly in a marriage, so in the Church, laity and religious complement each other perfectly. Families are the domestic Church, where vocations can be born and first heard and answered, and religious serve families by making present the eternal marriage of Christ to His Church in a way that enables sacramental marriage to remain a real possibility. The family provides the first setting where a person knows himself to be loved. Religious in turn give a witness to families that our deepest desire to be loved can only finally be answered in God alone.

It is marriage to God, perfectly celebrated and achieved in the wedding banquet of the Eucharist, that enables every vocation to be heard and answered in the Church. Today we celebrate St. Scholastica, the twin sister of St. Benedict, and champion her virginity for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. As the well-known legend about her testifies, even though her twin brother was famous for setting up a rule that allowed religious to pray and work in harmony, a rule that has always served the Church and civilization so well, still the greater of the twins could easily have been Scholastica, whose love for God even exceeded her brother's. Just as Mary's virtue exceeded that of all the other apostles, so also we celebrate the gift of women religious in the Church, who like St. Scholastica, show the true heart of the Church, and who show us how to allow God to love us into our true vocation to holiness, which is always a gift received from the Holy Spirit. If there is a vocation in the Church that we need the most, it is surely vocations to the religious life for women. Let us pray more for vocations to the religious life, especially for women, confident that their consecration will renew the Church in the most beautiful way possible.

Let us pray for the Church, especially for our Benedictine brothers and sisters, that as they celebrate today they will find strength to continue to serve the Church with fervent joy, we pray . . .

Let us pray for the world, that the monastic example set by the Benedictines will inspire people to allow their work to be inspired by prayer, we pray . . .

Let us pray that the Benedictines would be true to their charism to pray regularly for us and for the needs of the world, and celebrate the divine liturgy with great skill and devotion, we pray . .

Let us pray for the mission of the St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center to open the minds of all students at KU to the source of true and lasting Wisdom, we pray . . .

Let us pray in thanksgiving for the impending installation of KU alum Bishop Paul Coakley as the new archbishop of Oklahoma City tomorrow, we pray . . .

Let us pray for a greater openness to vocations to the priesthood and religious life, we pray to the Lord . . .

Let us pray for all those in need, and all those for whom we have promised to pray, especially the lonely, the sick and the doubtful, we pray to the Lord . . .

Heavenly Father, through the intercession of St. Scholastica, may we receive those things we need to serve you more joyfully in purity of heart. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Where is your heart?

2011-02-08T08:21:00.001-08:00

Homily

Tuesday of the 5th Week in Ordinary Time

Optional Memorial for Josephine Bakhita, virgin, canonized 2000 by John Paul II

St. Lawrence Chapel at the University of Kansas

8 February 2011

Daily Readings

Today we pray with one of the Church's newest saints, the patron saint of Sudan, Josephine Bakhita. Bakhita was the name give her by those Arab slave traders who bought and sold her as a young girl. It means fortunate, although Josephine in her early years was anything but. She was bought and sold by Arab slave traders five times, and branded over 140 times and abused constantly. Her body was covered with scars from the abuse. So horrible was her childhood, that this saint could not remember her birth name, nor what year she was born.

The fifth time she was sold, Bakhita was sold to an Italian family, who had to eventually flee Sudan and took their slave with them. When her Italian owners had to take an extended trip, they left her with a group of sisters, where Bakhita first learned of Christ. There Bakhita, after suffering at the hands of many masters, learned that the ultimate master, the Lord, was good, and that although the masters she had had mistreated her, she found in the wounds of Christ a master who had always loved her and who awaited her in heaven. She was baptized at age 21 and entered the convent, and received the name Josephine, and served the rest of her days in quiet and holy service and simplicity. She finally discovered that slavery was illegal both in Sudan and in Italy, and decided to use that freedom to become a religious. She was an incredible sister. When asked how she was, even when she suffered greatly at the end of her life, Josephine said . . .. as the Master wishes.

Pope Benedict XVI featured this incredible saint in paragraph 3 of his second encyclical Spe Salvi. He goes on at length about Josephine, offering this new saint to us as a modern model of what it means to live in hope of salvation. All the suffering that Josephine endured did not destroy her heart, which always hoped for a better master before she even met him who made heaven and earth, and who alone is the true Master. When she did meet him, she forgave her persecutors and lived a life of prayer and service. Nothing of what she suffered destroyed the hope of this incredible saint. She is now the patron saint of Sudan, which continues to endure unimaginable suffering, and a political struggle for religious freedom and self-governance. The Catholic heavy has south has voted to secede from the heavily Arab north, but no one knows how bloody and difficult and long the struggle will be for the impoverished south of Sudan. They need the prayers of their powerful saint, and ours as well.

Jesus tells us through his undressing of the Pharisees that our relationship with him must be heart speaking to heart. The life of St. Josephine Bakhita shows us what holiness is - it is not looking clean from the outside in, it is living with faith and in hope despite every reason to abandon these virtues. It is moving beyond our excuses and rationalizations to stay where we are, to move to where God can speak to us heart and heart, and help us to live in the pure hope for which St. Josephine is greatly honored.

We pray for the Church, especially for bishops and priests and leaders of the Church in southern Sudan, that they may lead their people through this difficult struggle for religious freedom and justice, we pray to the Lord

We pray for the world, especially for those who are persecuted, that they may not live without hope, and that their dignity as children of God will be respected, we pray to the Lord

We pray for the mission of the St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center, to bring the light of the Gospel to bear on the learning at the University of Kansas, we pray to the Lord

We pray that through the intercession of Josephine Bakhita, there may be an increase of vocations to the priesthood and religious life in our country, we pray to the Lord

We pray for all those for whom we have promised to pray, and those to whom we wish to offer the fruits of this Mass, especially, the lonely, the sick and the doubtful, we pray to the Lord

Heavenly Father, through the intercession of St. Josephine, listen attentively to the prayers of your faithful people, and help us to live with greater detachment from ourselves and with greater hope in seeing you face to face, we ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen

Salt and Light

2011-02-03T14:01:00.000-08:00

Homily
5th Sunday of Ordinary Time
St. Lawrence Chapel at the University of Kansas
6 February 2011
Daily Readings

Within the next 10 years, if things keep going the way they are going, it will be just as likely that the person sitting next to you on plane will be agnostic as it is likely that he will be Catholic. Catholicism is holding steady in the US at around 20% of the population, neither growing nor declining at a great rate. Agnosticism is climbing exponentially, however, especially among former Catholics. Even with our pro-life pro-family position, and the influx of Hispanic Catholics here in the United States, our Catholic sacraments and conversion statistics are flat. We're not dying, but we're not thriving as well. For every place where the faith is doing well, there are places where we are getting crucified, so to speak.

There are tons of reasons for this, all of which are worth exploring, and many of which accuse the culture around us. Yet our Lord in tonight's Gospel I think wants his disciples to focus on themselves. Tonight I want to point the finger at those of us in the pews, those of us who practice our faith, and say something that needs to be said again and again. I know that most of us who go to Church regularly do not think we are part of the problem, that the people who aren't here are the problem, and in many ways, we are the good guys. But that is exactly what I want to speak about. We have to be more that the good guys, because just being the good guys (and gals) doesn't cut it anymore. It didn't in Jesus' time. It still doesn't make converts today. It just doesn't. The reason our Catholic faith is not thriving is that we have plenty of good guys and gals, and plenty of hypocrites and sinners too, but we have too few saints. There are not enough saints in our Church. I'm not here to say the problem is that we have too many sinners in the Church, although those seats are reliably taken. The problem is that there are too few saints. The reason agnosticism is climbing, the reason why our faith is so easy to ignore, the reason why most people see no particular advantage to being Catholic, is that most people have never met a saint, or they are not consistently around saints. Our faith is meant to build saints, not relatively good people. That is the only thing that distinguishes our faith, the making of saints. It is the only reason we exist, the only reason we should exist. Yes, the loss of religion says a lot about the people who are losing it, and they bear their share of the blame, but it always says more about us.

It's not just agnostics who have never met a saint. Most lukewarm Catholics have never met one either, or even if we have, we aren't around them enough, or we limit our exposure to them, or we ignore them, or there simply aren't enough of them. Most of all, we've lost our determination to become saints ourselves. Most of us eventually settle to be good compared to someone else, to rationalize and excuse ourselves into lukewarmness, comfort, and mediocrity. We can turn Christianity into a spectator sport. This not only fails to make converts to the Catholic faith, it is the surest way to kill our own faith.

I say that as sad as it is to see agnosticism growing around us, and so few Catholics living the full beauty of their faith, there might be God's will in all of this. Not that he desires a single soul to be lost, nor should we, but agnosticism may eventually be the means for Catholicism to find its heart again, for more souls to be saved, for us to realize that if our Church is not making saints, we should indeed fold up the tent. That is the challenge that agnosticism, indifference to God, proposes to us, and it is a worthy challenge. An argument can be made that it is better that agnosticism is growing instead of lukewarm Catholicism. Now I'll tell you why I say this. I say this because Jesus said it first. Jesus Christ tells his disciples after preaching the Sermon on the Mount that they are to be the salt of the earth, and the light of the world. They are to be different than those around them, not only from the outside in, but especially from the inside out. Jesus points to the unique dignity and opportunity that is given in the Catholic faith. He tells his disciples that they are to be uniquely the ones who preserve what is good for the future, who bring out the full flavor of human experience, who make barren those areas where evil tends to take root, and who show the world the full and incomparable dignity of man who may dare to use his freedom to participate in the divine love that made and redeemed the world, and the dignity of man as one who is called to participate in the divine life of God. Never will you see Jesus calling his disciples to be good people compared to others. No, he calls them to the highest of heights. He calls them to sanctity, to fullness, to transcendent goodness. When he tells them that they are to be salt and light, he calls them not just to be a good part of the world, but to be with him the co-redeemers of the world. He calls his disciples to be saints.

That agnostic who will sit next to you on the airplane tomorrow, and the next day, and ten years from now, deserves if he is sitting next to a Catholic, to be sitting next to a saint. At the very least, he deserves to be sitting next to a person who has not given up on being a saint. Most of us settle for sitting next to a person who is not annoying, who will just leave us alone, but beyond the categories of introversion and extroversion, and no matter what you level of etiquette and on a plane, if you are an agnostic and you meet a Catholic, you deserve to be meeting a saint, or someone who is pursuing sanctity with all his heart, and all his mind and all his strength.

The challenge of agnosticism is a good one that must be answered by the lives of real saints. The challenge to us by agnosticism is that you do not have to be religious to be a good person. There are many good people who do not go to Church, plenty of hypocrites who do go to Church, and many heroes who are not consciously motivated by their belief in God. These are the arguments we must meet, and meet by answering the call to holiness, or we should admit defeat, and fold up our tents. Beyond the anecdotal evidence that the Church is not producing enough saints to renew the faith, are the intellectual arguments that religion distracts people from solving real problems in the real world, that religion causes as many arguments as it resolves, and that religious people are of two kinds, those who are insecure about themselves, or those who are deceived into thinking that they can live and act for something outside of their own evolutionary self-interest.

The challenge of scientism is that human freedom is not transcendent or spiritual, but only works within the parameters of the world, so that even when a person claims he is acting for a higher purpose, he is really only acting for himself within a closed system governed by the principles of evolution. Scientists then want a more realistic version of morality where a man recognizes that acting morally is ultimately about utility, and the more we give up on religion, the more we can agree on a common baseline of morality and quit arguing about whose God is right. It is not in itself a worthless project.

But St. Paul answer this objection beautifully by pointing us to the cross. He says that I as a disciple of Jesus am not very smart, so you should not pay attention to my arguments, and I am not that good, so you should not pay attention to my goodness, for I am a sinner, but I come among you hoping that you pay attention only to Jesus Christ crucified. Whenever you are tempted to think you do not have to be religious to be good, whenever you think that science can provide a better baseline for morality than religion, then look at Jesus Christ crucified. Even though the creation of all the universe could not add one iota to God's glory, but He created it anyway, and even though the redemption of one sinner could add nothing to God's goodness, He redeemed us anyway. The cross speaks not of necessity, but of freedom and love that originate beyond the confines of the world. The cross speaks a wisdom that begins to answer the true questions of spirituality that found the moral life. Why is there something rather than nothing? Where is there me instead of not me? Is there someone that loves me more than I love myself, and loves me more than He loves Himself, and who loves me for my own sake to the point of forsaking Himself? Is there within me the possibility of loving someone more than I love myself, and of giving myself not because of anything I would receive back, but out of sheer love for the other?

These spiritual questions are the true ground of the moral life. It is not the goodness that is naturally found in the world, to which man is called according to the laws of nature. This is real goodness, but the goodness that founds the moral life is a goodness that man does not naturally discover in the world, but the goodness that first created the world, and a goodness that appeals to a freedom that is not confined to the laws of time and space, matter and energy. It is the goodness that is revealed most perfectly in the cross of Jesus Christ.

Pope Benedict reminds us that just as a scientist sees no end to the questions he can ask about the universe, the athlete never ceases to set new records that beforehand were thought impossible, and telling an engineer that something is impossible makes no impact on his desire to do it anyway, so it is saints who are drawn to strive for the goodness and holiness made present to us by the cross, who set the standards of morality of the world. Just as we are inspired not by people who do what is most reasonable, but people who never give up hope despite all the obstacles in their way, so also the baseline of the moral life is not set by the goodness that exists below us, but by the saints striving for the goodness that lies beyond us. Pope Benedict reminds us that unless the world has saints, striving to love God with all their heart, and mind and strength, that humanity will eventually forget what goodness is.

There is a good reason to be Catholic and not agnostic. Being Catholic is no guarantee of holiness, it doesn't automatically make you a better person, even though it may protect you from many evils it is not a golden ticket to heaven because you are better than someone else. No, being Catholic is the best chance to realize the best that is within us. It is our best chance to be a saint, and to be as Jesus has asked us to be, the salt of the earth, and the light of the world.

happiness 2.0

2011-01-30T08:05:00.000-08:00

Homily
4th Sunday of Ordinary Time
30 January 2011
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings

Almost every scientist and philosopher agrees now that our universe has a beginning. The universe is neither necessary nor eternal. The universe is not God. It can be measured and a date can be given to its beginning. So far all efforts to show that the universe always existed or always will exist have failed. The most interesting debate currently, is between those smart people who postulate that the something of our universe arose out of the nothing of possibilities. Such agnostics point to the theoretical possibilites of billions of parallel universes to explain how such a statistically improbable universe like ours came from nothing. Theists instead say that it is takes less faith and is more reasonable actually to conclude that given the immense improbability of something coming from nothing, the beginning of the universe points to the action of a supernatural metaphysical intelligence that is the ground of all being.

Smart people likewise disagree on the moral universe. There are some who think the universe proposes a morality, a natural law, that can be agreed upon by human minds without reference to metaphysical universals or supernatural revelations. There are others who say that matter and energy while obeying physical laws have no capability of defining good and evil; as such, natural law must be grounded in divine law, a law that supersedes nature. Because of this we have a divergence between smart people who think that human actions while appearing to be free are ultimately determined by broader evolutionary laws, and those who find a radical spiritual freedom in man that is irreducible by nature.

Finally, there are smart people who argue that religion is the greatest problem in the world, for it distracts people from a real humanism that solves real problems in this real world, and those who while admitting that religions will always be filled with sinners, find in the contemplation of God's revelation of Himself, and obedience to God's commands, the most enduring hope for man understanding his deepest dignity, actualizing his greatest happiness, and realizing his greatest destiny.

Smart people will continue to debate these questions at the highest level. We should join them as much as we can, for such questions are always worth considering, and they pay great dividends for those who pursue better answers. The world will continue to be changed by smart people engaging such questions as well as they can, just as the world is changed by the honest debate between liberalism and conservatism, between capitalism and other economic systems, between democracy and others forms of government, between Christianity and other kinds of religion. The list can and does go on and on. The discussion goes on and on and on, like the rivalry between Mizzou and K-State and KU. Most of us have taken sides on many of these questions, and perhaps we're pretty sure of our position, and pretty sure we'll never understand how the other side thinks, just as we'll never fully understand how smart and good-hearted people can root for the Wildcats and the Tigers. Still, we know the discussions and the rivalries and the questions will persist, and human history will be written by how these questions play out.

The smartest people among us continue to make amazing discoveries and human knowledge grows at an exponential rate, so much so that college freshman today are the most anxious of any group of freshman in history, for you are going into debt so that one day you might find a way to be successful in a world that is changing faster than anyone can predict. Yet as much as human knowledge is progressing, an argument can be made that we are forgetting as much as we are learning. The great promise of progress gives way to discouragement when we see that we are not becoming better people. The science that can save lives can also be used to destroy lives. We have as much war, famine and persecution as ever. The same religions that produce saints are used as cover by suicide bombers. We have moved past the age of Enlightenment into the age of postmodernism, an age that desperately wants to hope but is devoid of new ideas on how to define and secure human happiness.

Happiness. This is Jesus' theme for tonight. What is happiness? Who is happy? Jesus on the surface in his beatitudes seems to try to trick his disciples, convincing them that misery now will pay off with happiness later. Yet contemplation of the beatitudes produces another payoff that goes beyond making an exclusive backroom bet or trade with our Lord. Jesus in pointing us toward heaven offers a transcendent happiness that can be lived from the inside out even as we try to realize a happiness that is delivered to man by the world from the outside in. In departing from the natural definition of happiness in such a radical way in the beatitudes, Jesus is proposing a transcendent happiness that begins not merely in a heaven far away from here, but a happiness that begins precisely where heaven and earth meet in the human heart.
So even as the fire rages on in the world, and the world is changed by human debates and struggles, between the smartest and the most powerful, and even as those of us with courage go into the world as Jesus taught us to redeem it by the bold proclamation of the Gospel to all people and nations, today's contemplation of the beatitudes command us to pay greater attention to how God desires to redeem the world from the inside out. Jesus chose to begin his mission with the weak of the world, with those who were sick in body and in spirit, and he never deviated from this mission until He had given His life like a lamb led to slaughter. Jesus never tried to win over the smartest, the most powerful or the most religious. He served the poor and defenseless, and gave his life like a lamb as a ransom for many, and in this He has changed the world more than any human person ever has. So St. Paul reminds us Jesus' disciples, that God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being may boast before God.

As much as the world is changed by exchanges between the richest, the most powerful, and the smartest, Jesus tells his disciples that the most enduring human progress is not achieved by these people, for too often we forget more than we learn, and too often we repeat the same mistakes, but man progresses most of all by those saints and heroes who pass over from earth to heaven in their hearts. Humankind only makes progress when that progess begins first in the human heart, in those who are not proud, who can weep for their friends, who want little for themselves, who work for justice, who know how to forgive and bring people together, who are single-hearted, and who offer their sufferings, and allow their blood to be shed, so that others may have life. This is where human happiness begins, deep within the heart of a human person who is capable of responding to Jesus' command to love others just as He first loves us.

In this week, we KU basketball fanatics will be changed more by praying for Thomas Robinson and his family, by mourning with him, and by supporting him as he moves through the grief and uncertainty of his situation to continue to sacrifice and to love and to become his greatest self despite having reasons not to. We will watch closely as Gabrielle Giffords in the coming months perhaps miraculously survives an unthinkably evil and senseless shooting, and pray God one day returns to the House floor to serve our country. More than any weather forecast or stock market report or debate about the origins of the universe, these stories and others like them, will continue to change the lives of real people like us as we watch people walk that line between earth and heaven drawn in the human heart, and we too seek the happiness that comes to those who are invited by Jesus tonight to cross over.

Paul and Mary

2011-01-25T04:32:00.001-08:00

Homily

Conversion of St. Paul the Apostle

25 January 2011

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center

Daily Readings

Paul was a proud person before his conversion. If Mary was the most humble of all the apostles, the one who proclaimed that the Lord looked upon her lowliness, the one who was most ready to receive Jesus Christ, then Paul was the opposite. Paul and Mary represent the bookends of the apostles. One was perfectly humble and ready to receive Jesus. The other was perfectly proud and ready to persecute Him. One was chosen even before Jesus' birth, and carried Him in her womb. The other never met the Lord face to face, but only met Him after His ascension into heaven. Yet both became super-apostles, the apostles of the apostles, the apostles par excellence. Paul, because He eventually was called to outwork the other apostles in the mission of evangelization. Mary, because from her beginning she was to be the pattern of the apostolic Church, teaching us how to receive Jesus before being sent by Him. She too, like Paul, eventually outworked all the other apostles, eventually winning converts by the millions, most notably here in the Americas sixteen centuries after Her assumption. If there is any apostle who has brought the Gospel here to the Americas, it is Mary herself, and our Lady of Guadalupe is the apostle to the Americas.

The vocational stories of Mary and Paul could not be more different really, and yet their lives bear similar fruit. They are both zealous for the law of Moses, Mary by virtue of her Immaculate Conception lived the law of Moses even more perfectly and intensely than did Paul, whose life was based on enforcing righteous laws that preserved goodness, not only for himself but out of love for God and nation. It can easily be said that Paul loved the law to the point of neglect to the law-giver, and Paul would be the first to say that his conversion was from being a murderer to being an apostle, yet the zeal with which Paul lived the law of Moses was exactly what God desired for the preaching of the Gospel. The conversion of Paul is the greatest conversion in history; it is God's healing of pride and turning that extraordinary pride that Paul possessed into a zeal for souls that the rest of the apostles could never dream of imitating.

Paul ended upon proclaiming, as does Mary in her magnificat, that God looked upon his lowliness, his unworthiness, and began to love Paul and to heal Paul and to call Paul precisely beginning at that point where Paul was weakest, where because of his pride he did not yet know the love of God. Paul then like Mary boasted only of his lowliness, and teaches us to boast to others only of our weakness. Our proclamation to the world as Christians is not to show how the law of Christ has made us better than other people; even if it has, this is not the story that is to be proclaimed. No, our story is to proclaim with Paul the story of our conversion, of how Jesus Christ comes to visit us in our lowliness, how he has personally healed my sinfulness, and beginning with my weakness, has called me into His great apostolic mission.

March for Life 2011

2011-01-24T06:15:00.000-08:00

Saturday marked the 38th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion in our country, and began a civil rights moment seeking to re-establish the right to life from conception to natural death ni this country. This movement, while doing incalculable good in the minds and hearts of Americans, and saving many lives, has yet to return the right to life to a right guaranteed by law. I have had the honor, as a post Roe v. Wade survivor, to march in Washington many times and to demonstrate before the Supreme Court, praying for the unborn, and speaking for the millions in my generation whose lives have been lost to abortion. I pray for what has been lost, commending all who have been hurt by abortion to the mercy of God, but perhaps even more, I pray for family life and for the virtue of chastity to be strengthened in our country. For the longer I am part of this battle for life, the more I see clearly that the battle must be won in the family if it is definitively to be won anywhere else. I preached on the feast of the Holy Family this year during the Christmas season, that unless we pass on to the next generation to ability to hear and to answer the call to sacramental marriage, as established by Christ and understood fully by the Church, then we are living without hope. For as the family goes, so goes the nation. I want to take this chance to honor all our seminarians, young people, their sponsors, and our Church, for standing up for life today in such a beautiful way as they March on Washington. I am with you in spirit and in prayer.

The event will probably be underreported, but it is awesome!

unforgivable sins

2011-01-24T05:53:00.000-08:00

Homily
Monday of the 3rd Week in Ordinary Time
24 January 2011
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center
Daily Readings

Most of us have encountered this biblical passage before about the unforgivable sin, but it appears so rarely in the Gospels that there can be large gaps between our meditation on what it really is. Over and over and over, we hear of Jesus forgiving sins, of his desiring that not one person be lost. This makes his words about the unforgivable sin all the more shocking to us. We are almost never ready to hear them. We might even say that they don't sound right coming from Jesus, almost as if he got up on the wrong side of the bed. Of course, we ascribe no such thing to Jesus nor to the Gospel authors. Jesus means what He says. Sins against the Holy Spirit truly are unforgivable.
The Catechism helps us to understand what Jesus must mean then. He doesn't mean just any blasphemy, but specifically a refusal to believe that the Holy Spirit can forgive sins. This makes sense in the context of today's Gospel. Even for Jesus, whose mission is to love sinners and to forgive every sin, there must be a sin, if our freedom is real and God respects our choices, that is unforgiveable. That sin against the Holy Spirit is a refusal to believe that forgiveness of sins is possible. This is a denial of the action of the Holy Spirit. In the Gospel, it is attributing the casting out of demons, and the forgiveness of sins, to the work of the devil, not the work of the Holy Spirit.
The unforgivable sin does not limit God's power nor His desire to forgive every sin. It preserves a correct anthropology of human freedom, and a correct understanding of salvation as something offered but something capable of being rejected by men who are made in God's image and likeness. Hell is a possibility not because God desires it, but because man can possibly desire it.
St. Frances de Sales is honored today for his zeal in defending the true faith agains the errors of the reformation. Along with great figures like St. Vincent de Paul and St. Jane Frances de Chantal, his special love for the poor, his expert defense of the true Church, and His zeal in teaching people how to live a devout life, saved the Church from losing many more souls, and helped Her to preserve the deposit of faith against all attackers. His example gives hope to all those who lament the endless splintering of Christianity, and who long to see the unity of Christ's Church which is a gift of the Holy Spirit working within Her.

A bruised reed He will not break!

2011-01-08T08:56:00.000-08:00

Homily

Baptism of the Lord

8/9 January 2011

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center

The Church Fathers teach us that Jesus is not made holy by the waters that baptize him. He is already holy. Even John the Baptist knows this. He asks Jesus - what is the world are you doing? Holy people should baptize sinners, not sinners baptize holy ones. Yet Jesus' baptism was still necessary. He was not made holy by the water, but He made the water holy by allowing Himself to be baptized.

Jesus' first public act is not to perform some great sign. It is to allow something to be done to him. It is to accept his mission to be identified with sinners. In allowing something to be done to Him, Jesus shows Himself truly to be the son of Mary, who was not known for her great signs she worked, but for her great yes, her acceptance of a mission to let something be done to her according to His word. The name Jesus, which means the one who will save them from their sins, indicates Jesus' mission to prefer sinners, to love sinners, to be with sinners. Jesus does not need to be baptized, no more than he needs to die in punishment for sin, but He allows it to be done to him, to fulfill all righteousness, to fulfill the mission given Him by the Father to identify with sinners. Jesus' first public act mirrors His last and greatest public act. Although He is not a sinner nor will He ever be, He refuses to separate Himself from sinners, but prefers to be called a sinner Himself, even being spat on and mocked, so that sinners might have a chance once again to live. The prophet Isaiah tells us precisely the mission of Jesus. He will not discard a single sinner. A bruised reed He will never break. Rather He will allow Himself to be bruised out of love and in solidarity and in hope for sinners. Jesus the full revelation of God shows God's desire to save us rather than judge us. He is willing to be judged in our place. His baptism is a willing entering into his eventual suffering and death of the cross. Yet thankfully, the cross is not the end of the story. The story does not end in God's defeat, nor in ours. The appearance of the Holy Spirit at the baptism is a foreshadowing of the same Spirit that will raise Jesus from the dead.

The baptism of Jesus is the first full revelation of the Trinity, the central mystery of our Christian faith into which we were all baptized - Father, Son and Spirit. The Father declares that He is well pleased with His Son, and He sees the same in us who through baptism are members of His body and truly children of God. How easily do we believe the worst about ourselves, and fear the judgment of God, even knowing Jesus' great desire and mission to forgive us rather than to judge us? In my experience as a priest, most Christians dwell on their sinfulness much longer than they dwell on the dignity of their baptism. If only each one of us would hear the Father's voice at the beginning of every morning, before ever having a negative thought about ourselves. You are my beloved son. You are my beloved daughter, in whom I am well pleased. My brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus, this is the dignity of our baptism, and the sure gift of faith, to be able to hear and to trust this voice in the depths of our being. You are my beloved sons and daughters, in whom I am well pleased. If only we could believe in how much God delights in us His children, before He ever counts a sin against us, I believe we would be different. I'm not saying that ours sins don't matter, I'm just saying that we will be converted by love far more than we will ever be converted by the law.

As we celebrate the great baptism of Jesus, and recall the greatest day in each one of our lives, the day of our baptism, the day when something was done to us that changed us far more than anything we could or will ever do to change ourselves, let us make it our goal this year to live out the Christmas mystery that we finish celebrating today, and to know how many times and in so many ways that the Lord wants to come visit us and make us holy by His presence in the coming year. No one who has been baptized into the death of Christ should turn his life into a self-improvement project. If we have been baptized, we are dead to this world. Nothing has to go our way in this world for us to be perfectly happy. If we focus on life in this world, and only hang around Jesus in case He has a lucky winning ticket for eternal life waiting for us after death, then we have no need of baptism. Those who are baptized only care about eternal life, a life that is not measurable but consists in depth of relationship with a person who Himself is the way, the truth and the life. If we have been baptized, life is not about self-improvement, it is about the self-forgetfulness that is the special mission of those who belong to Christ. Christ didn't worry one second about self-improvement. I dare say He never made a New Year's resolution. His mission was self-forgetfulness. That is all. Our only resolution in the new year, the only one that really matters for those who have celebrated Christmas, is to allow Jesus to come and visit us always as surely as He did on the day of our baptism. The only thing that matters to a Christian is to remember and most of all to believe in the dignity that we have as children of God, and to not allow the world to steal this dignity away from us. I'm not saying it is wrong to try to lose weight, or save money, or work on relationships. That is all fine and good. But for the Christian something else is primary. It is to use the gift of faith given at baptism to allow God to say to you at each moment of your life - you are my beloved son or daughter. In you I am well pleased. If we receive this dignity and truly believe in God and in ourselves, then we may not be perfect as the world judges things, but we will be the priests, prophets and kings in Christ that is the full dignity of our baptism. If we do anything new this year, let us be priests who pray for each other, let us be prophets who allow God's light to shine in new areas of the world, let us be kings who create a world in which people can believe in God and in one another. Amen.

Joseph, Mary , Jesus - the Advent inversion

2010-12-18T06:43:00.000-08:00

Reflection
4th Sunday of Advent A
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center
For daily readings click here

If you can't imitate Jesus perfectly,
be like Mary.
Allow Jesus to come into your life.
Make room for Him.
But if you can't be like Mary
always ready to receive Him.
If you need your space.
And tend to think about yourself a lot.
Then try to be like Joseph.
Not that He was selfish in any way.
But having neither Jesus' divine nature
nor Mary's fullness of grace
Joseph still found the way to do the right thing.
He is a righteous man.
Those who find it hard to be perfect
like Jesus or His mother
can still do the right thing
that is right in front of them.
They can be like Joseph.

Joseph spent more time with Jesus
than any apostle.
He spent years with Jesus
and Jesus was obedient to Joseph.
In this Joseph is more than an apostle.
We can go to him.
For Jesus is still dependent upon Joseph
and Jesus will do whatever Joseph asks.
Our imitation of Joseph in Advent
brings us closer to Mary his wife
so that with her and him
we can welcome Jesus into the world.
With Joseph through Mary to Jesus.
There is the way
for a perfect Christmas.

In the light of Abraham's faith,
knowing the promises made to David
and his posterity
Joseph confronts the apparent evil of adultery
as a righteous man
knowing that the law takes evil seriously
and demands that there be truth not deceit.
Still he sees the good
to which the law points
Joseph observes the law
but knows the good the law preserves
and he sees the good
of divorcing Mary quietly
and the demands of justice
doing the right thing
do not keep his heart from loving
his wife and this child.
His love that went beyond
the demands of the law
and the knowing of the good
his love that was beyond
what is reasonable and just
allowed him to believe
against great statistical odds
that what the angel said in a mere dream
that the savior would be born
from the house of David
and that the virgin would conceive
and bear a son.

Joseph in being righteous
and knowing the good
and cultivating love
and believing that faith
makes all things possible for God
was able to do the next right thing
in front of him.
He took Mary and Jesus into his home.

There would be more right things
to do tomorrow
Joseph did what was right today.
Joseph was neither perfect by nature
like his Son
nor full of grace
like his wife
yet he found a way to do the right thing.

John the Baptist tells us to repent
or we will miss the Lord's coming.
Mary shows us how to wait in silence
for the Savior to come to us.
Joseph guides us
to do the next right thing.

Listen to John the Baptist.
Make room like Mary.
Act like Joseph.
The Lord Jesus is surely coming!
He is coming soon!

where I am there also will my servant be

2010-12-14T04:06:00.000-08:00

Reflection
Tuesday of the Third Week of Advent I
Memorial of John of the Cross, priest and doctor
14 December 2010
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center

John of the Cross
teach us how to desire the cross
how to want to be where the Lord is
especially when He is there.

Conforms our lives to the mystery of the cross
not to desire suffering for the sake of suffering
but for the sake of Him
for the sake of being where He is
for the sake of relationship with Him
and through Him
with everyone else
especially those who suffer now.

Conforming our lives to the mystery of the cross
not because life is suffering
but because life is joy
and knowing that this joy
is found far beyond superficial comforts
that this joy belongs to the pure of heart
whose hearts have been tried
in the crucible of the cross.

We can still expect things to go well for us
and thank God for everything
and rejoice in the goodness of the Lord's creation
and yet at the same time
not expect things to go my way,
but expect things to go His way
and to know that when a cross comes my way
He is present to me in a perfect way.

So we rejoice when things go well
and rejoice twice when they don't.
We rejoice in the Lord always,
again, I say to you rejoice
for when the cross comes
the Lord is near.

Where I am
there also will my servant be.
Anyone who wishes to be where I am
must deny himself
take up his cross
and follow me.

from least to greatest

2010-12-11T04:24:00.000-08:00

Reflection

Gaudete Sunday

12 December 2010

St. Lawrence Catholic Center

For daily readings click here

Rejoice in the Lord always!

Again, I say rejoice!

The Lord is near.

Not anxiety today.

But rejoicing.

Pink Sunday is about rejoicing.

But don't call is pink.

It's rose - get it right!

Priests don't wear pink.

But rejoicing nonetheless.

Not the anxiety of finals at KU.

Not the anxiety of shopping days remaining

or how much money is left

or who is going where and why.

Not the anxiety of how to make Christmas perfect

from the outside in.

But rejoicing, because the Lord is coming.

Rejoicing that He will do what essentially needs to be done.

Rejoicing, for He is coming

to make our Christmas perfect

from the inside out.

Again, I say rejoice!

John the Baptist in prison

perhaps had a second thought

for he had decreased

so that the Lord could increase

yet now the Lord was decreasing.

Why is Jesus messing up the plan?

John the Baptist was not worthy to untie his sandal

yet the Lord who could change everything

was only changing the smallest of things.

The Lord who could change everything,

was healing people who could change nothing.

Is this the one who is to come?

The one who can change everything

has no interest in politics

or macroeconomics.

Is this the one who is to come?

He makes himself smaller and smaller and smaller,

healing people from the inside out

changing little from the outside in

content to teach the dumb not the learned

to heal one by one.

At this rate he could live a thousand years and never finish

yet he makes himself smaller

and smaller and smaller.

Patience St. Paul tell us today!

Patient rejoicing, like a farmer waiting for the fruit!

This is the one who comes.

He is coming with his power that could make us obey

yet he would not break a bruised reed

and he shows the power that once made the universe

not in annihilating us

but in redeeming us

in serving us

in making Himself smaller and smaller

until I believe that He came for me

and me alone

that He came not to be served, but to serve me

not in showing himself bigger

but by making himself smaller and smaller

until he is irresistible

not by his bigness

but by his smallness.

He becomes smaller and smaller and smaller

until it is just me and Him

until I can hold Him in my arms like Mary and Joseph

until He disarms my defenses

and heals me from the inside out.

Rejoice,

for the Lord our God is coming!

He is coming to heal us by relationship,

by dependence

by intimacy

by vulnerability.

These things alone heal from the inside out.

They free a person more perfectly

than self-help

self-esteem

or any gift under the tree that promises what it cannot deliver.

He alone is perfect gift.

He alone is perfect fulfillment and peace.

He alone can satisfy.

His coming is the reason we travel,

his giving is the reason we give,

his closeness is the reason for our wanting to be close to each other,

for closeness is healing

being together in Him is what will heal our hearts

and give us the hope

to endure with patience and perseverance and love

whatever may come

until God has redeemed the world in His way

according to His promise

to begin with the least of us.

The least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

Behold the lowliness of his handmaiden.

Behold Mary, the first to be raised from

least to greatest.

Mary, take now the baton from John the Baptist

and take us to Bethlehem with you.

John told us to be ready with his words,

but you show us how to be ready with your silence.

Remind us how to have a heart like a child

a heart that is not anxious for Christmas

but rejoices that it is near,

give to us all your immaculate heart

the heart of a mother expecting her first child

in just days

not with anxiety or fear

but with joy

in letting yourself always be made new by His coming

pure joy in letting it be done unto you according to His word!

Rejoice in the Lord always!

Again, I say rejoice!

The Lord is near!

from John the Baptist to Mary

2010-12-06T06:20:00.000-08:00

Homily

Gaudete Sunday

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

11 December 2010

For daily readings click here

Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I say rejoice! The Lord is near!

We have rounded the corner toward Christmas. Pink Sunday reminds us of what we already know, that Christmas is coming fast. Pink Sunday means something else at KU. Most years, it means the start of finals week, and amazing amounts of stress, for it is the time of reckoning on campus. Know of our heartfelt prayers for you as you fulfill your responsibilities as students, while praising God for the abilities and opportunities He has given you.

Even though it falls during Finals Week here at KU, Gaudete Sunday is not supposed to be about stress. It is about rejoicing because the Lord is near. Gaudete Sunday is not supposed to be a warning bell that there are only so many more shopping days before Christmas, and is not to set off alarms that we are neither spiritually nor materially prepared for a perfect Christmas. The reality is that if a perfect Christmas was the fruit of our own labors, it would never happen. No, Christmas is perfect not because we are perfectly prepared, but because the Lord is perfectly ready to come into the world. The Lord with His presence makes every circumstance and every moment perfect, through His closeness to us. Once finals week is over, KU students should not trade one stress for another, the stress of finals for the stress of Christmas. No, Gaudete Sunday tells us that the time for rejoicing is near, not only because Finals are over, but because the Lord is perfectly prepared to visit us, no matter how unprepared we might be.

We can have a perfect Advent in a short amount of time by watching the children, for Jesus tells us that unless we turn again and again, and become like children, we will not enter the kingdom of heaven, nor will we recognize the kingdom coming among us. The kids know for certain that the gifts under the tree will satisfy their deepest desires. They know down to the minute when Christmas will arrive. We have to feed off of their joy this Christmas, for although no material gift can perfectly satisfy us when we grow older, the perfect gift of God's presence in Christ does satisfy. For a person is satisfied insofar as he has an opportunity to love perfectly, and at Christmas the God of all creation makes Himself as vulnerable as a newborn child, whom no one can hold in his arms without his heart changing for the better.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Again, I say rejoice! The Lord is near. Gaudete Sunday is a great Sunday for us to rejoice because the mystery of Christmas is a mystery that continues to change the world, and to change hearts, in the most profound of ways. The world is far from perfect, and frustration and despair and discouragement easily settle in, but on Gaudete Sunday we are asked to imagine a world without Christmas, a world that did not stop to contemplate and to celebrate that love is the reason there is something rather than nothing, love is the reason we are someone instead of no one, and love is the answer to the mystery of the human person, and love is what makes an outwardly imperfect world inwardly perfect.

It truly is amazing how much one baby changes the world. The mystery of God's being close to us, in taking up our flesh out of love for us, is the mystery that leads to our taking time to be close to each other. It is through the mystery of God's closeness to us that we choose to be close to each other, and exchange affections and gifts with each other that otherwise we might never exchange. Christmas shows that it is because God is close to us that ultimately, it makes sense for us to continue to be close to each other. Because God made Himself vulnerable to us, coming irresistably as a newborn child, that it makes sense for us to eschew every kind of independence, self-realization, self-esteem, self-help, and anything else that begins with the word self, and instead to seek above all things dependence, closeness, intimacy, vulnerability and love. For in this season we celebrate that love is our origin, love is our constant calling, love is what makes life worth living, and love is our destiny forever in heaven.

It is God's closeness to us; his willingness to visit us, that makes an outwardly perfect world inwardly perfect. On Gaudete Sunday we rejoice not in naive optimism, not because we can prove the world is getting better day by day, but we rejoice with supernatural hope, the virtue that says that God's closness makes life worth living, and being close to each other is the key to getting through the rough patches and pressing on toward the promises God has made to us. We rejoice that God's presence makes things better in this world, that His presence brings real healing, but also that His presence is assurance that every promise He has made will be fulfilled in the world to come.

John the Baptist then hands the Advent baton over to our Lady on this Gaudete Sunday. John the Baptist rejoiced from prison when he realized that his mission had been accomplished, that the long-awaited Messiah had arrived! John the Baptist has told us that our patient expectation and perseverance in hope would be rewarded. He has told us to be ready! Now on Gaudete Sunday Mary will take us the rest of the way, for as great as John the Baptist was, the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. Mary is not only the least in the kingdom, she is the greatest in the kingdom, and with the expectation and joy that only a mother can understand, She leads us the Church, with an incomparable excitement for the coming of Jesus.

Today's Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe is obscured somewhat by its coincidence with Gaudete Sunday. Our Lady's Appearance to Juan Diego in 1531 led to more people believing in God's closeness to them, and delivered to more people God's supernatural gift of hope, than the work of any other apostle. Mary, the Queen of the Apostles, proclaims the Gospel of her Son like no other, and she has personally watched over the growth of the faith in the Americas. She is the patronness of all Catholics in the Americas, and with 60% of Catholics in the United States under the age of 35 now being Hispanic, it will be nearly impossible in the future to be a Catholic in the United States in the coming years without having a devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe. Let us ask our Lady to help us to finish our Advent journey with the same heart that welcomed Jesus into the world!

Mary not a temp employee

2010-12-05T07:17:00.000-08:00

Homily

Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception

8 December 2010

St. Lawrence Catholic Center at the University of Kansas

For daily readings click here

Today's great Solemnity celebrates a dogma of the Church, that Mary was full of grace from the first moment of Her conception. As St. Paul writes to the Ephesians, each one of us has been predestined and chosen, before the foundation of the universe, to be in Christ, and to be holy and without blemish before Him. Today we celebrate that of all those so predestined, Mary was the first to be fully in Christ, to stand before Him holy and without blemish. It is clear from Luke's Gospel that Mary was already fully in Christ, already full of His life, before She conceived Christ in Her womb. She alone, among all women, was perfectly in Christ, and so was perfectly and singularly chosen and capable of conceiving Him and carrying Him and being a mother to One who is perfect. It is clear that the grace given to Mary so that she might become the mother of God was given to her well in advance of Her conception of Jesus. The angel says to Mary that she is 'full of grace' before she is to conceive a son. So at what moment did Mary become full of grace? Today's dogma proclaims that if Mary was ever full of grace, she was always full of grace and always will be full of grace. Today we proclaim that the gift of this holiness began from the first moment of Her conception.

Through the prayer of the Church, we have come to understand Mary's fullness of grace to be a gift that was not meant not just for a temporary assignment but for an eternal assignment from God. If Mary had no such eternal assignment, she could have been perfected by God for the minimum amount of time with the minimum amount of grace needed for the job, to give birth to the Savior. Yet the Church in her prayer has come to understand this being full of grace to mean much more. Mary was already full of grace by the time the angel Gabriel appeared to her, a clue that her mission from God was not at all temporary, and this same fullness of grace accompanied Mary throughout her life and impelled Her to appear at the cross of her Son, where she was given the responsibility of being a mother to the apostle John. It is at the cross that we see Mary's fullness of grace just as surely as we hear of it at the Annunciation, and it is a fullness meant for the motherhood of the apostolic Church, as Mary, like Eve before her, becomes the mother not just of one son, but of all the living. Just as in the order of nature, anyone who has life can trace his beginning back to Eve, the mother of all the living, so in the order of grace God willed the same pattern, that there be a mother of all who have eternal life, and all who have eternal life can trace their beginnings back to her. In the economy of salvation, Mary appears before Jesus, and the Lord Himself is dependent upon Mary to receive His own flesh. Just as the Lord Himself was dependent upon Mary, so we too are always dependent upon Her who always mediates the coming of Jesus, who always mediates the world's welcoming of Jesus and the world's giving birth to Him, who always mediates His grace as pattern and mother of the Church. Mary is the one most like Her Son. She is the one closest to Him. She is the one He loves the most in all creation. She alone is pronounced full of grace. So if Jesus always was, is and will be important, so also Mary whom He always loves and always honors was, is and will always be important, in the mind and heart of Jesus, and in ours as well. It is right then, that the mother of God and the mother of the Church who is given such an eternal role in the economy of salvation, be understood by the faithful as being full of grace not just temporarily, in a minimum, way, but in a superabundant way, in a way that proclaims Mary to be most like her Son, the same yesterday, today and forever, always full of grace from the beginning to the end.

Today is a singularly important Solemnity in the United States, a solemnity that is never abrogated or moved, for any reason. Today's Solemnity outranks all the other Holy Days of Obligation here in the United States. Mary of the Immaculate Conception is the patronness of the United States. In a special way, Mary herself is the apostle to the Americas, for none of the original twelve apostles brought the Gospel to this land. We have always had a special devotion to Mary because it is she herself, who personally inspires and protects the proclamation of the Gospel in this land with a mother's care. The new bishops of our country, who were working with great sacrifice, to establish the Church in the United States, always had special recourse to Mary, and so they had the privilege of representing the Catholic faith of Americans, and our new Church here, and our own personal devotion to Mary our mother, at the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1854. This was a great achievement of theology, that almost 1900 years after the coming of the Lord, the theologians of the Church were able to proclaim with great precision, in a way that was reasonable and could be defended against every attack, what had been believed through the prayers of the Church, and in the hearts of the faithful, for centuries, that it was a matter of divine faith and sure revelation that Mary was conceived without sin. It is really theology at its best, not making up new theology as we go along, but the faith of the Church always seeking new understanding. Our young bishops of the United States were there, and Mary under the title of the Immaculate Conception became the patronness of our country soon afterwards. With Mary Herself as the apostle to the Americas, may we in the United States see our special responsibility and opportunity to be a mountaintop, from which the Church, under the powerful intercession of Mary, may shine the light of the Gospel to the ends of the earth. Amen.

sin changes us, but not God

2010-12-05T06:59:00.000-08:00

Homily

Tuesday of the 2nd Week of Advent

St. Ambrose, bishop and doctor

7 December 2010

St. Michael the Archangel School Mass

For daily readings click here

God comes closer and closer and closer. That is the great proclamation of Advent. Against all deistic tendencies, against all temptations to think that God is absent, the Advent proclamation, spoken with conviction again today by the prophet Isaiah, is that God is coming closer. He is always coming closer. Here He comes, with power, who rules with His strong arm, with His reward with Him. He comes like a shepherd who feeds his flock, carrying in His arms His lambs, carrying them in His bosom.

The mystery of the Incarnation is the mystery of God's coming closer. He comes to shepherd His people, following them wherever they go, no matter how far they stray from Him. When we strayed so far that there did not seem to be a way back for us, God not only pursued us, leaving everything else aside to rescue those of us who had thrown Him aside, He Himself became the lamb, taking on our nature, and then even more, taking our sins upon Himself in order to bear the punishment of death in our stead.

Our sins prevent our ability to be present to God, and so we must repent of them with all our hearts, for the Lord will not rescue us without ourselves. Yet lest we think that our sins prevent God's ability to be present to us, God came closer, taking on our human nature and even its sinfulness, so that no matter how far we have strayed, our sins do not prevent God from being present to us.

Let us rejoice in the mystery that although we have millions of ways to move away from God, we never change His desire to come closer to us, and let us marvel that He has tens of millions of ways to make Himself present wherever we are. No matter how we have sinned, He wishes to carry us back in His own arms.

you're in jesus' way!

2010-12-04T04:01:00.000-08:00

Homily

2nd Sunday of Advent

5 December 2010

St. Lawrence Catholic Center

For daily readings click here

You are in Jesus' way. Your ego. Your plans. Your stuff. Your sins. John the Baptist comes on the 2nd Sunday of Advent to remind us that we are the problem. Notice that I changed from you to we there. I'll throw myself in as part of the problem as well. We are in Jesus' way. The reason so few things change is that most of us are self-absorbed. Life is a self-improvement project for us. John the Baptist comes on this second Sunday of Advent to remind us not to equivocate the Lord's coming with another opportunity to tinker with our own lives. The Lord's coming is not another revolutionary diet, not another revolutionary workout, not another once in a lifetime investment opportunity, nor is it the perfect material gift at a price too good to be true. No matter how dramatic the commercials and infomercials make these things sound, in the end they are about small adjustments, not real conversion, not real change. John the Baptist wears camel hair and eats locusts to try to get us not to equivocate the Lord's coming with any other special offers that bombard us during this holy season. No, the Lord's coming is different because it is a change of focus. Our life is not about us. Our life is not about self-improvement, it is about self-forgetfulness. John the Baptist is the greatest prophet because his message is the most powerful. If we are to recognize the Lord's coming, it requires a complete re-orientation of our lives. Our life is not about us, it is about God and neighbor. If our focus is anywhere else, we are part of the problem.

Repentance, then, is central to the prophecy of John. We do not spend as long detaching from sin in Advent than we do in Lent, nor do we engage in the penitential practices of prayer, fasting and almsgiving. But real repentance has to be a part of a real Advent. Actually, for some of us, we give more alms during Advent than Lent, and this is good, for giving our stuff and our money away is a cleansing practice, one of the three best ways to detach ourselves from ourselves, and from our sins. John the Baptist can help us be better shoppers then. If the message of John the Baptist gets through to us, our shopping habits should change not based on how the economy is doing, but should reflect that Christ is present, that welcoming His presence is the reason of the season. The goal is to become more generous, not less, but the gifts we give are a way of expressing the coming of Christ, not a replacement for Him or a distraction from Him. John the Baptist in requiring us to detach from our sins reminds us of what we know to be true, that we will not allow Christ to come if our lives are already too full, too full of our own pride and self-absorption. If Christ is to move in, something has to move out. We must repent of our sins. So make a good confession this Advent, one in which you sincerely act to move away from the temptations that threaten to dominate your life.

Heeding the prophecy of John the Baptist should make us want to do something to ensure that this Christmas is different. Perhaps many of the traditions we have are great traditions, and externally, it really is a beautiful season with so many opportunities to focus on what is important. Yet can we afford to let yet another Christmas go by when thousands of things happen externally, but almost nothing changes on the inside. Can we go through the motions yet another year? When John the Baptist speaks about a baptism of fire, he is saying that Christmas, the coming of Jesus, is not just a gentle reminder from God to focus on the most important things. Our problem is not that we don't know what's important, it's that we can put it off to tomorrow, while working on ourselves today. The reason so little changes each Christmas in our interior life is not that we are ignorant of what is important, it is that we do not really know that Christ is present. John the Baptist shouts at us to do whatever we can, in a desperate way, to get out of the illusion that Christ is distant, that we can control His coming and going by tinkering with our lives. He tells us to get over ourselves, and to realize that we control nothing, and that our freedom only gets greater when shared with God. John the Baptist is not about tinkering. He invites us to a complete re-orientation away from self and toward God, and he challenges us to let ourselves be baptized by the Lord's coming, a baptism by the Holy Spirit and by fire.

what are we seeing?

2010-12-03T05:12:00.000-08:00

Homily
Memorial of Francis Xavier
3 December 2010
Danforth Chapel, University of Kansas

Francis Xavier as one of the great missionaries in Church history got to see a lot of things. Bringing the Gospel to the new lands of India and China, Francis only saw opportunity to teach, to baptize, to bring the good news of the Incarnation that God is truly with His people. Francis Xavier wrote to Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, how people's lives would be changed if they could see what he saw, and what a joyful mission it was to share the truth of the Gospel with those who had never heard it.

Even in Francis Xavier's time, there were those who had been surrounded by the Gospel all their lives and yet did not know the Lord, did not see the Lord. Francis Xavier abhorred that souls were being lost because Christians hid their faith, and lacked the courage to be missionaries. The blind men in today's Gospel are different. The blind men remind us that then, and now, just because we are living in a Christian culture, albeit an increasingly agnostic and secular one, doesn't mean that we see the Lord. The blind men who saw nothing were one of the few to see the Lord. This lack of seeing is especially true in the Eucharist. Jesus promised to be with us in this perfect way, but many cannot and will not see Him here. The blind men in today's Gospel teach us what it is like to see with eyes of faith. Many people with perfect sight but no faith did not find Jesus because they were not looking for him, yet the blind men with no sight but great faith could see Him perfectly. In the same way, those of us with perfect sight can see millions of things everyday but can go a whole day through without ever seeing Jesus, but those with faith can see nothing but Christ and His presence in the world.

If we have made room for Christ, and sincerely look for His coming, as Advent encourages us to do, then we will find ourselves a bit more like Francis Xavier. The blind men, having had a real conversion through the encounter with Jesus, even without his permission could not stop telling people about Him. The great Francis Xavier, who could not stop seeing Christ in the people he met in the Far East, died witnessing to this same Christ who was always with him.

focus on what is present, not what is lacking

2010-12-01T22:00:00.000-08:00

Homily

Wednesday of the 1st Week of Advent A

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center

1 December 2010

For daily readings click here

We are a nation that diets incessantly and yet still gains weight. We are a nation where the more we have, the less we give. We are a nation that despite our ability to work harder and get things done more efficiently, finds itself increasingly slothful and depressed. We have more entertainment options, and yet people are lonelier than ever. We yearn for true enduring love, and yet marriage is on the decline. We are an inherently ungrateful people, who focus habitually not on rejoicing in what is present, but in lamenting what we perceive to be lacking.

It has always been true that if a person is fulfilled and happy on the inside, there is no way to make them unhappy, and vice versa. There are people who in poverty only see superabundance of opportunity and gifts, and those in abundance who only see unfulfilled desire and who only know boredom.

Today's scriptures remind us that the Lord sees the world, and has each one of us in His hands. He knows our needs before we ask Him, and through His Son every human longing has been satisfied in superabundance, so that not only can we say that the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, but we can without reservation share what we have in faith with those who have no faith. For with the Lord there is superabundance, and to the one who has much, more will be given, and He will grow rich in what matters to God, but for the one who has not, even what he has, will be taken away.

Andrew was first

2010-11-30T12:18:00.000-08:00

Homily

Feast of Andrew, Apostle

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center

30 November 2010

For daily readings click here

The vocation story of one of our youngest seminarians is almost too simple to be true. As a senior in high school, he was sitting around with his siblings discussing whether to go to KU or Rockhurst University. He was interested in being an orthopedic doctor at that time, and was weighing the merits of both schools. One of his sisters said somewhat out of the blue - maybe you should be a priest. Our seminarian said to her - you know I probably should be. His mother caught wind of it and told him to call the vocation director. The next day he was signing up for seminary. I'm not kidding. This is a true story.

Not every vocation story is this simple on the outside. And as this seminarian gets into formation, he realizes that he has much work to do on the road to priesthood. Most vocation stories, like mine, are pretty complicated when told out loud. I ran away from my priestly vocation tens of thousands of times. Part of me always knew I should be a priest, but there were thousands of reasons I could think of for waiting to call the vocation director. Yet in the end, it all worked out.

What strikes us about the calling of Peter and Andrew, James and John, is the simplicity of the story. It is too simple to be true. We wonder what Matthew is leaving out of the story, for these four apostles, like us, surely had tens of thousands of hesitations, quid pro quos and questions that are left out of the story. We think the apostles must be like us, who do not respond to the Lord's voice so simply. Maybe it is easier for us to doubt Christ today, but probably not. Those apostles could have told Jesus to jump in the lake. But they didn't. What we see in the calling of the first four apostles is the core of what constitutes a vocation. Christ calls. We leave everything and follow Him. Christ calls, and because He loves us with a perfect love, and knows us better than we know ourselves, we take His voice as an absolute authority, and because we prefer nothing to being with Him, we detach ourselves from our sins, our things, our plans, and our every desire in order to follow Him perfectly. In reality, it gets complicated, but a true vocation always goes back to this simplicity that we see in tonight's Gospel.

Andrew, then, is honored to be the first apostles to hear and to respond. His is the first apostolic vocation, and one we celebrate on his feast with great joy! Andrew's vocation shows us that holiness consists in simplicity. He was called to be a fisher of men, to be someone through whom Christ could know and love His people, someone through whom the Lord could capture His people. Anyone who responds to a vocation from Christ knows that it is not we who choose Christ, but Christ who captures us in His net of pure love, and because He is active within us, we share in this mission of fishing for men, this ministry of capturing souls for His eternal kingdom. St. Andrew is the first vocation director, introducing his brother Simon to Jesus. So say a prayer on this feast for your local vocation director, if you know who he is.

Andrew and Simon follow Jesus together. So do James and John. The first apostles come in pairs. One of the mistakes I made in joining the seminary was failing to bring someone with me. I should have tried harder to bring a friend to seminary with me. While it is true that vocations can be heard and answered in isolation, anyone knows that there is wisdom in strength in doing things together, and this includes responding to vocations. If the Lord is calling you, ask Him today if He is calling someone close to you. Talk to that person. Perhaps your responding together will be the key to either of you responding at all.

when nothing is happening stay awake, be ready

2010-11-28T22:00:00.000-08:00

Reflection for the 1st Sunday of Advent Year A
28 November 2010
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center
For daily readings click here

Welcome to the new liturgical year, the first Sunday of Advent. If we had to chart our liturgical year along the hours of a day, the first Sunday of Advent would be nightfall. Just when we are relieved that the bustle of the day is over, when the temptation to have a beer and kick back and watch television and forget about the troubles of day is strongest, the Church tells us to stay alert. Be ready. This is the season of Advent. When the rest of the world is getting drowsy, we are to become more alert. It is when things seem to be slowing down that we are told to look for something important to happen.

If we had to plot Christmas along the hours of the day, the Lord's birth would happen at midnight. The Lord's birth happens at the darkest hour of the darkest night of the year, at least here in the northern hemisphere, when the greatest number of people are asleep. So when things are starting to wind down, the Church tells us not to veg out, but to be alert. For those who are asleep at the unexpected hour of the Lord's coming in Bethlehem, will still be asleep the morning of the Lord's Resurrection at Easter. Today begins our liturgical year, whose high point is the Easter celebration, the finding of the empty tomb early, at daybreak, on Easter morning.

How we start our litugical year gives some indication of how we will finish it. The Church teaches us not only is it inadvisable to start celebrating Christmas too early, but it almost guarantees that if we even attempt to celebrate Christmas without observing Advent, we will miss the meaning of Christmas. And if we miss the meaning of Christmas, how can we be so sure we will be ready to understand and celebrate the Easter mysteries? How we begin gives a good indication of how we will end. Advent is a time to remember that when the Lord came at Bethlehem, the whole world was asleep, save a very few people. The chance that we will miss the beginning of the world's redemption is very high indeed, and so we are given this season of Advent to prepare our hearts and minds for the mysteries to be revealed to us.

It is easy to take Christmas and Easter for granted. They happen every year. We get the general idea, and we never skip the celebration entirely. Yet how often are these celebrations key turning points in our lives? How do the mysteries change and renew us every year? Do Christmas and Easter become more and more personal or more and more general the more times we celebrate them? Even though we observe Christmas and Easter, the mysteries can lose their power to change us because spiritually we are asleep. We are not expecting anything new.

I know that no one can literally stay awake all the time. We have to sleep sometime. But Advent teaches us that now is not the time for us to become spiritually lazy. If we are spiritually asleep, the church gives us this time to wake up. We are to anticipate Christmas with the same watchful expectation that we have when anticipating a first kiss, waiting to hear back on a job offer, waiting for Mario's shot to drop out of the air, waiting for a new baby to be born. This is the joyful anticipation of Advent. When the world is falling asleep, giving into the temptations of mediocrity, expecting little to change, that is when we are to be more awake.

If we know anything about our God, He is the God of great surprises. You cannot be a Christian if you do not love surprises. God has a knack for coming among us in the most unpredictable of ways, when we are the least ready. We have to learn how to enjoy this and to anticipate it. God who is bigger than the universe delights in surprising us. This is the Christian mystery, beginning with the Incarnation of Jesus. No one is powerful enough to stand before God, yet He makes Himself so small and vulnerable that only the most spiritually awake person can detect His presence. In a way, just as scientists try to see smaller and smaller particles in order to unlock the great mysteries of the universe, so also in our spirtual lives, being awake to the small movements of God is the key to big conversions in our spiritual lives.

This is true here at the Eucharist as much as anywhere else. Here in the Eucharist the Lord is fully present to us. The mystery of the Incarnation we celebrate at Christmas is already here. The Lord is with us. But are we awake? Are there any surprises left for us within the Eucharistic mystery? It is precisely when nothing seems to be happening that we Christians are to stand alert, for it is precisely at these moments that something new is happening. The seeds of new life and our own conversion begin with preparing ourselves for Christmas, for the mystery of God making Himself present to us, His truly being with us, in the most humble of ways. It is when we awaken to the reality that God is more present to us than we are to ourselves, and is always ready for new beginnings with us, that the mystery of the Incarnation begins its saving work in us. So stay awake. Be ready.