Who is pursuing your heart?

Homily

Solemnity of the Epiphany

4 January 2025

St. Ann Catholic Church Prairie Village, KS 

AMDG

Who is pursuing my heart?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who is pursuing my heart?

+mj 

What do I want for Christmas?

Homily

Solemnity of the Incarnation

25 December 2024

St. Ann Catholic Church Prairie Village, Kansas

AMDG

What do I want for Christmas?  For the 5th year in a row now, it's equal part scandalous and pitiful to admit.  I want someone to hold me. When I first confessed this during COVID, people thought that celibacy and social distancing were getting the best of me.  I got a lot of pity hugs.  

Yet I'm not ready to give up on this Christmas wish just yet.  It's still what I want.  I know it's what you want to.  It's a primal need and desire for every baby born into the world.  I guess I'm still a baby, and so are you.  Jesus told us that unless we constantly turn around and become like newborn children, we will forget where we came from, what it means to be human, the meaning of life, and ultimately, our soul.  When we come into this world what we need and what we want are the same, and this never fundamentally changes.  I want and need someone to notice me, to choose me, to help me, to hold me.   

It's what you and I will always want for Christmas, if we're not too proud to admit it.

Most importantly, it's what Jesus wants for Christmas.  Today we celebrate Jesus' desire to share the human experience with you and me, and to redeem it.  He's just like you, and His first desire and need are the same, just like yours.   He comes into the world as a baby, just like you.  He comes at Christmas precisely to ask you a very intimate, personal question, the original, precise and ultimate question of Christmas.  Will you hold me?

The first Christmas turned on the answer of Mary, Joseph and the shepherds.  This Christmas turns on yours.  

If Jesus asked me what I truly wanted for Christmas in any other way, I would be afraid to answer him.  Fr. Mitchel, can I hold you where you are must afraid, alone, frustrated, rejected, numb, and skeptical?  Can I heal the place where you are the most vulnerable?  Of course my answer would be thanks Jesus but I'm good.  I can take care of myself.  I'm used to my fears and doubts, and I can manage them.  I'm spent my whole life trying to not need or want anything, but thanks for asking anyway.

In order to get past our defenses, which are elite, Jesus has to don a disguise.  He has to trick me.  He has to disguise his desire for me as need, or I'll get scared.  So He finds me by hiding, trusting my faith to find Him.  He loves me by begging my love.  He shows His power to get past my defenses by becoming powerless - cold, poor, naked, and homeless.  He makes sense of my life be becoming an absolute joke.  Instead of asking me the scary question of what I want for Christmas, He simply asks me to hold Him.

How does He ask me this question?  It's through the most surprising disguise of all.  In just moments, the cave of Bethlehem will give way to this altar, the manger to that place in your soul that only the Eucharist can reach.  You're about to put the Mass in Christ's Mass you see.  Your answer to His question comes precisely when you take His body into yours.  It's at that moment that you answer the original, precise and ultimate question that Christ asks you at Christmas - will you hold me?

I have no idea how your answer will save the world.  I just know that's what Jesus wants for Christmas, and that you were born and made for this moment.  The fate of Christmas turns on your answer, and your touch, if only you're not afraid.  

Do not be afraid, Mary, to hold me.  Do not be afraid, Joseph, to hold me.  Do not be afraid, little ones of St. Ann, to hold me!  It's my decision to bet Christmas on you, and it's all I want.

If you've ever held a newborn baby, you know that you're the one being held.  If you're scared to hold a baby, you've scared of Christmas.  You've forgotten who you are, and the meaning of your life.  

Jesus appears as a baby tonight just in case any one of us will not be afraid of the original, precise and ultimate Christmas question - will you hold me?  If any one of us dares say yes, a Christmas miracle will happen here tonight, and what you want for Christmas, and what Jesus wants for Christmas, will really come true.

+mj 

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.