Growing Younger - what the heck??

Homily for the 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time B
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center
16 August 2009
Year for Priests

The quest for the fountain of youth has always captured human imagination. How is it possible to avoid aging? Now I don't mean by applying creams and botox and having surgeries. I mean how is it possible not just to delay again, but to really avoid it altogether? How is it possible to remain young? There are some people we know who seems to have access to this fountain of youth, people who don't seem to age physically. Perhaps there are even more people we know who have an ability to stay young at heart. There are people with personalities that seem forever young, forever optimistic, hearts that remain untouched by the evil and death of the world. There are people we know who seem to embody Jesus' teaching, that unless each of us turns and becomes like a little child, we will not enter the kingdom of God. The man whose name is on the building of this catholic center, the man who was here for 28 years building this campus ministry, Monsignor Vince Krische, is one of those people. He preached the Mass here last night and was on fire. He is truly forever young, forever optimistic. Monsignor Krische, who inspired my own vocation to the priesthood, is officially retired, but when you ask him to reflect on the greatest accomplishment of his 40 plus years of priesthood, he can't do it. He is completely incapable of doing it. He is fixated on what there is yet to do, on what seems impossible but might be possible if we only have the courage and faith to pursue it. He says over and over, even at 70, that we have so much work left to do, and he really believes he still has time to get to all of it! Monsignor Krische is forever young at heart, and we need people like him in our lives.

Jesus really knew what he was saying when he told us that unless we turn and become like little children, we will not enter the kingdom of heaven. He put before us that there is access to a fountain of youth, so to speak. There is a way to turn and to grow younger, there is a way to move toward eternal life. At the beginning of this new school year, optimism is everywhere. A new semester is a fresh start for all returning students, and most all students make resolutions for the coming semester that they hope will move them closer to being the person they are called to be. Freshman are a particularly interesting case. Some are hopelessly optimistic, absolutely convinced that they can be best friends with everyone on campus, cure cancer, win an election for student body president, and are convinced that KU will win the national championship every year that they are at KU. This optimism is great. Being young is great. As we all know, it is hard to hold on to the innocence and faith and enthusiasm that we had when we were in second grade. It is hard to grow younger, to stay connected to that fountain of youth.

Yet as we know, even the most optimistic among us are dying. Both the student who runs everyday and eats bananas and whole wheat bread, and the student who subsists on beer, cigarettes and kit kats, are both dying, albeit probably at different rates. That is why Jesus makes the unique promise that there is a way for even our flesh to grow younger. Jesus did not come to merely renew us in mind and heart and spirit, which he certainly does. He did not come only to redeem those spiritual things. He came to redeem our bodies as well, by taking a body himself like our own, and in the unique promise of the Eucharist, he said that our body can share in the Resurrection of his body, the only body that once was dead but now dies no more, if we eat his flesh and drink his blood. Yes, through the Eucharist, Jesus provides for us not only a way to remain young in mind and heart while our bodies grow old, he provides a way for our bodies to also rest in hope, for because our bodies too remain in Christ and He in us, through our eating and drinking of the body and blood of Jesus, our bodies carry within them the capacity to one day rise from the dead! Unlike our ancestors who ate manna in the desert, and still died, the one who eats the flesh and drinks the blood of Jesus is forever young, in spirit and in body, is the eternal optimist, is someone who grows younger and younger day by day by day.

As Monsignor Krische said last night, there has never been anyone in the history of human civilization, who has promised anything like this!