Must I be joyful?

Homily

3rd Sunday of Advent C2

Gaudete Sunday

15 December 2024

St. Ann Catholic Church - Prairie Village, KS

AMDG

Must I be joyful?

The Church on Gaudete Sunday, Pink Sunday, Rejoice Sunday, forces the issue more than a little.  Everywhere we turn in this liturgy, there is a command.  Rejoice! Did you hear me?  Rejoice or else!  Rejoice no matter what!  Hey I'm talking to you, and I'll say it again, rejoice!

What gives?  Can the Church demand that I be joyful? Is that how this works?  What if I don't feel joyful this Christmas?  What good does it do to shout at me and demand that I rejoice?

Trust me, I wish it was this easy.  Sometimes when I come to Mass, I don't feel joyful.  I can be tired, skeptical, anxious.  Sometimes I wish I didn't have to bring the faith and energy every time.

Yet in commanding joy, the Church is simply asking me to live in reality.  I am here to recognize the truth that my Savior is near.  The command to rejoice is never asking you to feel differently than you do. Feelings can't be commanded.  It's not wishing upon a star, for joy is not a shifting emotion nor a naive optimism.  Joy must be something else.  It's an objective reality.  It is a truth.  It's a fruit of the Holy Spirit, a love that endures and conquers all things, that is dwelling near me and indeed in me.

Must I be joyful?  Only if I want to live in reality, the reality that I am wheat, not chaff.   Must I be joyful?  If I embrace the truth of who God is, joy will certainly result.  For if God was not closer to me than I am to myself, I could not exist.  Still more, if there is not a mercy greater than sin, evil and death, that is coming to visit me, then I am doomed.  My days are numbered.

John the Baptist is the greatest true prophet, announcing the good news of reality!  Jesus wants to be born for you and in you, precisely as you are on Christmas, 2024.  The shifting circumstances and cocktail of emotions you are experiencing are as nothing compared to this truth.  If Jesus is asking you intimately and personally to hold Him in your heart this Christmas, you have nothing to fear.  Living in this reality, has only one response, which the Church command on Gaudete Sunday.

Yes I command you, because I have to tell you the truth, and I say it again, rejoice!

+mj

What have I learned from my worst travel mistake?

Homily

2nd Sunday of Lent

8 December 2024

St. Ann Catholic Parish - Prairie Village

AMDG

What did I learn from my worst travel mistake?  My Christmas may depend on my answer.

I have too many mistakes to count.  I'm a terrible traveler.  I arrive at the airport usually just 30 minutes before my flight.  I run my tank on empty a lot of the time, and yes I do occasionally run out of gas.  Everyone wishes me a safe trip, but I'm never as careful as I need to be.  I drive all night sometimes just so I can maximize my time.  I need to tip my guardian angels big time!

Yet two mistakes trump the rest.  I've been caught in blizzards twice.  The first one was before smartphones, in 2001.  When I left Hoxie for Colorado Springs, the sky was blue.  When I got to Goodland, Kansas the Interstate was closed, but I had no idea why.  I hadn't listened to any forecast.  I though maybe it was just a detour and took a country road until I could get back on the interstate.  

Before I hit Limon, I was in big trouble.  My life was perhaps saved by a truck that jackknifed in front of me, blocking the interstate.  I had to stop, which was good for my two-wheel drive car.  Thankfully I had a cell signal so I could stay in touch with my dad by phone, and enough gas to idle the car every once in awhile so I could stay warm.  I sat on the interstate for 8 hours until the blizzard passed and the road cleared. making a 3.5 hour trip in 14 hours.  

Why I was going to Colorado Springs that day is another story, and one that you'll have to try to get out of me by persuasion.  Suffice it to say it was a trip motivated by pride that made me rash and blind!

I didn't learn my lesson from that blizzard though.  In early 2020 I took an epic trip through Phoenix, Vegas, Zion, Salt Lake, Palm Desert, San Diego, LA, Sequoia, Yosemite and Napa Valley in my two-wheel drive Ford Fusion.  All was well until I needed to pass through the Sierra Nevadas and Tahoe on my final way home.  An atmospheric river was heading east but I thought I would be ahead of it.  Stuck for hours in traffic while dropping a friend at the Sacramento Airport, the atmospheric river got ahead of me.  I had to drive in torrential rain until I got to Tahoe, where the rain turned to blizzard conditions.  I had been warned I would never make it home on this epic journey in January in a two-wheel drive car, and I was too proud to admit defeat or spend an extra four days or more in Tahoe that I didn't think I had time to give.  So I put myself and others in danger, white-knuckling through the chain law signs until I got on the other side of the blizzard infally.  Again, my pride go the best of me.  I heard later that several people died in avalanches while skiing the massive amount of snow I had just driven through.

Today's Advent scriptures beg us to learn from our travel mistakes.  Please learn better than I have.  Your Advent depends on it.  If you are going to have your best Christmas, there has to be a smooth and level highway to your heart, so the Lord can arrive and find a place to be born there..  You need to improve the travel conditions to your heart, and you can.

The valleys are my sins.  The mountains are my pride.  The rough and windy roads are my stubbornness, my insistence on controlling things my way instead of following 'the way' that Jesus marks out for me.

What have I learned from my worst travel mistake?  My Christmas depends on the answer.

+mj

Who is knocking at the door of your heart?

Homily

1st Sunday of Advent C1

1 December 2024

St. Ann Catholic Church - Prairie Village

AMDG

Who is knocking at the door of your heart?

It can be terrifying when someone knocks on the door by surprise.  Actually very few of us get excited for a surprise visit.  We are scared that we are not ready, and that we might be vulnerable and out of control.  One of my most depressing days as chaplain at KU was when at an evangelization meeting, we asked how many students knew their neighbor, or the person sitting next to them in class.  We were talking about the art of relationship, and the best ways to introduce one's self and to start a conversation.  Very few college students knew the persons they were in close proximity to, so I asked them why.  They told me it was dangerous to introduce yourself, for once someone knows who you are, they can stalk you and harm you.  It's safer to be anonymous, they said.

The conversation broke my heart.  I get what they were saying.  We live in a dangerous world, and you have to be careful who you interact with. So many people get harmed by situations when they assume the other person is safe, and they're not.  Yet still, our ultimately security is knowing the people around us, and building trust. Social distancing, and avoiding, escaping and hiding from each other, is certain death.  For we are made for relationship, and the deepest problems we all face can't be solved by self-reliance.  We need each other, and a relationship with God.  Our deepest security, and best chance for new life and more life, is if someone want to know and love and serve us, if someone is knocking on the door of our heart.

Advent announces the best news ever!  Our Lord is coming to save us, and is knocking on the door of my heart!  The one who alone brings new life, new hope, and can make all things new by the greatness of his mercy, is coming. He has come, is coming now, and will come again!  The Lord our Savior has come in history, is coming in mystery and will come in majesty, to redeem my past, my present and my forever!  Of all people knocking at my heart, his visit is the most urgent, the most powerful and the most hopeful.  How do I respond to this incredible news?  This is the great question of Advent.

The scriptures today name where my heart is, and perhaps yours as well!  I am afraid.  I am desperately afraid.  I am terrified of this Jesus who is knocking on the door of my heart.  My Advent prayer is rarely to beg Jesus to come closer, and to come sooner, and to actually mean it.  Instead, it is a constant plea that I am not ready, and that He is a threat to my control and self-reliance.  My prayer is usually to tell Jesus not now, and to leave me alone!

The one thing I most need to break out of the way I am now, and to live for more, is the thing I most fear.  Jesus is standing at the door of my heart, knocking on this first day of Advent.  How will I respond to His coming anew this Advent?

+mj

Who is in control?

Homily

34th and Last Sunday in Ordinary Time B2

Solemnity of Christ the King

24 November 2024

St. Ann Catholic Church - Prairie Village, KS

AMDG

Who is in control?

We just had a dramatic election about who should be in control of this country.  As it goes with the things of this fallen world, the rhetoric was riddled with fear-mongering.  So many people are afraid the world is spinning out of control, toward destruction.  That's probably because it is, and always will be.  The world as we know it, though exceedingly good, is broken at its core, doomed to destruction, and there is an enemy determined to make all things end in death.  There is reason to be anxious, and scared.  It's not only in politics and the economy, it's in our personal lives all the more.  I doubt there are too many people in this room who feel in control, who feel absolutely safe.  I would bet instead that most everyone is fearful about something, and experiencing a lack of control.

So who is in control?

For the Solemnity of Christ the King, we have this dramatic encounter between a prisoner and a governor, between Jesus and Pilate.  So critical is Pilate in the economy of salvation, that he appears in the creeds of the Church.  Yes, that's right, the three persons of the Trinity, Mary and you guessed it, Pontius Pilate appear in the creeds.  This conversation we hear in the Gospel is critical.  Who is in control in this critical exchange?  Remarkably, it's not Pilate.  The one who has the power to crucify or release Jesus is the one scared out of his mind.  The one with all the worldly power, with an army to back him up, is the most scared person in the world in the face of a true King, even as that king is bound in chains, scourged, condemned and seemingly overcome with weakness.

Who is in control?

Jesus of course in His passion shows that real kingly power looks like.  The one who is in control, and who participates in the true and everlasting kingdom of heaven, is the Lamb that is slain, the one who can give His life away in self-sacrificial and suffering love.  Blessed are those, happy are those, in control are those who are persecuted for the sake of truth and righteousness, for theirs in the Kingdom of heaven.  

Jesus toys with Pilate in this exchange, necessarily mocking Pilate's power through subversive questions, exposing the fear of anyone who is desperately hanging on to control and power according to the ways of the world.  Jesus in his passion is the ultimate revolutionary, overturning the power of this and forever changing how the world truly works, by his self-sacrificing and suffering love.

So you too are His children, incorporated through baptism into His suffering and death, receiving the dignity of being a kingdom of priests!  Members of this Kingdom enjoy through Jesus our King the happiness of claiming thorns as our true crown and the cross as our true throne.  No one has greater love nor power than this, to lay down one's life on this altar with Christ, through Christ and in Christ.  We share in the power to forever change how the world works, and to build a kingdom where a love stronger than death reigns forever.

It's the last Sunday of this liturgical year.  Twelve months ago, when we started this journey of faith, did you want to participate more fully in a kingdom where thorns are your true crown and the cross is your true throne?  Twelve months from now, will I be more free to recognize where true power lies, and embrace my opportunity to lose my own control and to place my suffering and the sacrifice of my life within the priestly sacrifice of Christ, my true King.

Who is really in control?

How do I go to bed?

Homily

33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time B2

17 November 2024

St. Ann Catholic Church - Prairie Village 

AMDG

How do I go to bed?

I'm really terrible at it.  I can't think of anybody worse.  I can't remember the last time I got ready for bed in a thoughtful way.  I usually complete my prayers much earlier in the day, as early as possible.  I usually limp home, after having worked as hard as possible, seeking some comfort and entertainment to cope with another day of exhaustion and survival.  Then I pass out, until I'm jolted by an alarm as early as possible the next day.

It's not a recipe for eternal life!

At the penultimate weekend of our liturgical year, it's of enormous importance for us to focus on how we end our days.  For in the new order inaugurated by the paschal mystery of Jesus Christ, the end is the beginning.  How we die determines exactly how we will live.  So how we go to bed is how we will wake up the next day.

You know this to be true. So do I, but I'd like to ignore it.  The end of our liturgical year, and our focus on the apocalypse and end times, however, remind us powerfully that it does no good to pretend that we will live forever.  It does no good to put off til tomorrow what must be done today.  It does no good to ignore the reality that we are what we eat, that our character and destiny is the sum of our actions, and that we live only as we die.

Christ couldn't have taught us more clearly, could he, by word and example, that only those who know what they are dying for will live forever.  The altar then, which is both a tomb and a bed, is the center of our faith, and our constant rehearsal and preparation for how things will be forever.  If we have died with Christ, and our life is now vertical, not horizontal, hidden with Christ in God, so we are confident we shall reign and live with Him, through Him and in Him forever!

This confidence is only ours if we know how to go to bed well!  I've never liked the vigil Mass on Saturday, for I'm a morning person not a night person, or at least I like to think I am.  

What way will I go?

Homily

30th Sunday in Ordinary Time B2

27 October 2024

St. Ann Catholic Church Prairie Village

AMDG

What way will I choose? My way, or THE way?

Jesus tells Bartimaus at the end of his Gospel to go on his way.  Bartimaus instead follows Him on THE way?  What way will I choose?

I can't stand beggars.  In fact, I'm terrified of them.  I bet you are too.  Beggars are incredibly annoying.  I'm rarely ready to encounter them.  I'm not sure how to help, yet haunted by Jesus' saying to give to everyone who asks.  I usually conclude that I will pray for them, while concluding that allowing begging is enabling and dangerous.

I'm really annoyed by people that beg for a living.  Monday night I was asked to celebrate Mass for the Little Sister of the Lamb, a religious community from France that have established a convent and monastery in KCK.  I don't like to go there, but I suppose I chant their liturgy better than some other priests.  They are also concerned for my soul, which is why they keep inviting me.  They are professional beggars.  I can't say no.

These mendicants are annoyingly humble and small.  Around their necks they wear a wooden lamb, engraved with the words 'Wounded, I will never cease to love.' What a crazy way to live.  They live the Gospel precisely as Jesus teaches it.  They compromise on nothing. They don't have real jobs.  Their favorite thing to do is to beg from the violent, and even for prisoners. They intentionally live in dangerous neighborhoods, and prefer to hitchhike, while remaining unharmed and creating peace wherever they live.  

Because of their faith and love and courage, they are more secure than you and me, living in the Prairie Village bubble.

It's annoying as all get out, and terrifying.  I told them as much while I was there.  I asked why they kept inviting me, since they know I hate it so much and am terrified of poverty.  The lead sister said "We know, Father,, and we love you.  You're scared of poverty because you're so deeply attracted to it?"

I was so embarrassed that she read my soul so easily that I wanted to throw a fit and storm out of the room.  I hated that she was right. There's nothing more attractive, free, compelling, disarming or magnanimous that living the Gospel.  It's THE way that Jesus taught.

Bartimaus threw off his old cloak of sitting by the roadside to spring up and go beg Jesus, as annoyingly as He could.  If only I could start Mass with the same fervor, asking Jesus three times as Bartimaus did, to have mercy on me, a sinner.

Instead my prayer is to leave me alone, to let me try to fix everything myself, to let me be the exception to the human experience of vulnerability.  I just want to do things my way, instead of begging Jesus and all of you to forgive me, and to help me.

I'm terrified of begging because I'm so deeply attracted to it.  Still, I'll do almost anything to keep from being one, even though beggars always the heroes of the Gospel, of THE way that leads to new life.  

What way will I go from here?  My way or THE way?

+mj 

Who has paid the price for you?

Homily

29th Sunday in Ordinary Time B2

St. Ann Catholic Church  - Prairie Village, KS

20 October 2024

World Mission Sunday

Who has paid the price for you?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

+mj