2012 Pentecost B

Homily
Solemnity of Pentecost B
27 May 2012
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Readings
Audio

This is the day that the Lord has made.  Let us rejoice and be glad in it!  Alleluia!  Alleluia!

Most of you recognize this great refrain from Easter Sunday morning.  In fact, this glorious refrain is used as the psalm response for the entire octave of Easter.  This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.  Alleluia!

My dear friends, our challenge this morning is to come to Pentecost Sunday, the end of the Easter season, with the same joy that we had on Easter morning.  And yet even this is not enough.  It is not nearly enough.  For to come to Pentecost Sunday with anything less than a more perfect and profound joy than even that joy we had on Easter Sunday, is to fail to appreciate and celebrate the unique and powerful gift of the Holy Spirit.

For did our Lord not tell us what He told those first disciples to whom he appeared after his resurrection - that it would be better for you if I ascend to the Father, for if I do not go, I will not prepare a place for you there, and if I do not go, the Spirit who will remind you of everything that I did and said, and the Spirit who will send you out to do greater things than I do, will not come.  If I do not go, the Advocate will not come.

This promise of our Lord gives us no option but to gather with a more perfect and profound joy on Pentecost Sunday, for things have gotten better for us over the last 50 days, profoundly better.  The Easter season has not been for the Church a desperate hanging on to the memory of the Resurrection, nor has it been a careful attention to the last remaining ripple effects of the power of Easter morning.  No, if this Easter season was worth celebrating at all, it has been a great crescendo of 50 days of witnessing to the power and truth and grace of the Lord's Resurrection redeeming the world from the inside out through the working of the Holy Spirit!

By the power of the same Spirit, you and I have become witnesses to greater things than those who were with the Lord during his Resurrection appearances.  The Lord said it would be better for us if He returned to the Father, for his Spirit would do better things, and we have been witnesses not of lesser things, but of greater.  Easter has not been a desperate remembering of how nice it would have been to have put our hand in Jesus' side like the apostle Thomas; no Easter has been a proclamation that we have seen greater things than this!

For we have seen our Church filled with the Spirit of Pentecost do everything that Jesus did and say what he said, and in more places around the world.  We have seen streams of living water flow out through the baptism of the old and young.  We have been touched by the newness and innocence of those being fed from the altar for the first time in holy communion.  We have seen the Risen Lord active through his holy spirit in the sacrament of confirmation, and that same spirit stirred up in the graduation of many students.  Couples too have come to the Church to call down the Holy Spirit upon each other in the sacrament of marriage, leaving the altar no longer two, but one flesh.  Finally, I can testify as vocation director of the Archdiocese, that through the working of the Holy Spirit men even today are being conformed to the living image of Jesus Christ through the sacrament of Holy Orders.

So if those women who were first present at the tomb had reason to proclaim on Easter morning - we have seen the Risen Lord!  So much moreso do we on Pentecost, we who have lived through the 50 days of Easter in the year of our Lord 2012, have reason to proclaim - we have seen the Risen Lord.  In the power of the Spirit given at Pentecost, we have seen greater things than those first women.  Our Lord promised that we would, and we have.  Woe to us if we do not celebrate and pray with a greater and more profound and perfect joy on this great Solemnity of Pentecost.

For this is the day that the Lord has made.  Let us rejoice and be exceedingly glad in it!  Alleluia!  Alleluia!

2012 Pentecost B

Homily
Solemnity of Pentecost B
26/27 May 2012
First Mass of Thanksgiving for newly ordained Fr. Oswaldo Sandoval
St. Agnes Catholic Church - Roeland Park, Kansas
Readings
Audio

This is the day that the Lord has made.  Let us rejoice and be glad in it!  Alleluia!

We all recognize this refrain from the Mass of Easter Sunday.  It is the psalm response for the entire Octave of Easter actually - this is the day that the Lord has made.  Let us rejoice and be glad in it!  Alleluia!

It is with the same joy of Easter Sunday that the Church ends the great season of Easter with the solemnity of Pentecost this weekend.  But of course, if you're paying close attention, you know that what I just said is false. We do not gather on Pentecost Sunday with the same joy that we had on Easter morning; quite the contrary, we gather with a greater joy, a more profound joy, and more perfect joy, on the Solemnity of Pentecost.  For Jesus said to those first apostles after His Resurrection - it is better for you that I go!  Can I get an Amen?!?  It is better for you that I go!  For if I do not go, the Spirit, who will remind you of everything I did and said, and will send you to do greater things than I myself did, will not come!

 If we take our Lord up on his word, we have no choice but to gather with an even greater and more perfect joy.  In fact, how we gather at Pentecost tells us a lot about what we believe happened at Easter. For the Easter season has not been for us not a desperate hanging on to the memory of the Resurrection, not a careful attention to the last remaining ripple effect of the power of Easter morning.  Quite the contrary, the Easter celebration of the Church, if it has been anything, has been a great crescendo of witnessing the power and truth and grace of the Resurrection redeeming the world from the inside out through the working of the Holy Spirit!

By the power of the same spirit, we in this very Easter season have been witnesses to greater things than those who were with our Lord during his Resurrection appearances.  So Easter has not been a desperate remembering of how nice it would have been to have put our hand in Jesus' side like the apostle Thomas; no Easter has been a proclamation that we have seen greater things than this!  For we have seen the Church filled with the Spirit at Pentecost do everything that Jesus did and say what He said.  We have seen streams of living water flow out through the baptism of the old and young, through the incomparable newness and innocence of those receiving first communion.  We have sen the Risen Lord active through his Holy Spirit in the celebration of confirmation, and that same Spirit stirred up through the graduation of many students.  That same Spirit has created a new reality in the couples who have come for the sacrament of marriage.

If the women present at the tomb had reason to proclaim - We have seen the Risen Lord - so much more so do we who have lived through these 50 wonderful days of Easter.  In the power of the Spirit given at Pentecost, we have seen greater things, and woe to us if we do not proclaim the Resurrection in an even more perfect and powerful way as we gather on this great Solemnity.

Oswaldo - Fr. Oswaldo - thank you for adding to our Easter joy, for giving us another chance to see the Risen Lord and the working of His Spirit, through your ordination this weekend.  We have seen the Risen Lord today, Oswaldo - in you! as you have allowed yourself to be conformed into his living image through ordination.  And thank you for the honor of preaching your first Mass of thanksgiving, an honor that I cherish and will never forget.  You could have told me in advance that the Archbishop and his mother would be here, and although I now share with you the power to forgive sins, I haven't forgiven you for that quite yet, but even with the additional pressure, it is an honor nonetheless.  You are a great man, Oswaldo, and I am happy to call you friend and brother, and I have been looking forward to sharing the priesthood with you.

You have the gifts of the Spirit in abundance, and the fruit of the Spirit in manifest in you.  This was true even before you were ordained, which is why there are so many people surrounding you today excited that the Spirit that conformed you to Christ so that you may truly work in persona Christi capitis as His priest, will flow out from you in even more perfect and profound ways through your teaching and action as a priest.  We expect great things from you, Oswaldo, not only because you have been given many gifts, but most of all because like Mary you have let the Holy Spirit overshadow you, and you have accepted the beautiful vocation to be a priest.  Fr. Oswaldo, bring this same vulnerability and dependence on the Holy Spirit into your prayer, along with the humility, readiness and joy you have learned from our Blessed Mother into your priesthood, and our expectations for you will be as nothing compared to what God accomplishes in you, with you and through you.

Fr. Oswaldo, every vocation story is a miracle, but today we are particularly inspired by yours.  Even in the Leaven the last two weeks, you have had a longer article and more pictures than the Archbishop who sits in choir in the sanctuary with you today - your story, and your ordination is a big deal!  In fact, being the selfish guy that I am, I'm kind of tired of hearing about it.  Just kidding.  Thank you, Oswaldo, for letting us rejoice in your story, for in your story we see the protection of many angels, perhaps a miraculous intervention or two,  the love of family and friends, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  How else could a young boy from El Salvador be here at this moment about to do what you are going to do, an act so amazing, the confection of the Holy Eucharist, that your patron the Cure of Ars remarked that if a priest knew what he was doing, he would die.  Now that would be one heck of a first Mass, Oswaldo, but it might ruin the reception downstairs if you tried it.  More seriously, Oswaldo, thank you for allowing the Holy Spirit to conform your life's story to that of our Lord's paschal mystery.  May that same Spirit give you a passion for allowing Jesus to write his story within the time and circumstances of your life, and inspire you to conform your life to the mystery of the Lord's cross.

Finally, Fr. Oswaldo, I would be negligent if I didn't tell you at your first Mass that this priesthood that you accept with great joy, the cause of much rejoicing today, will cost you your life.  There is no resurrection wtihout the cross, and no sending of the Spirit without our Lord first being lifted up.  The priesthood if it is anything will be both better and harder than you expect.  As much as you have changed in the past in order to reach this point, Fr. Oswaldo, and your story is truly inspiring, you will need to change even more within the priesthood than you have changed in the past.  You must enter the priesthood with your eyes wide open, knowing that there are enemies who do not wish you to be a good and zealous and holy priest.  You enter a Church and a priesthood that is indefectibly holy, but also in great and constant need of purification, pruning and conversion.  You are asked to be a fearless instrument of the new evangelization in a time when the priesthood is marred by scandal, where the foundations of the family and society are being eroded at alarming rates, and where the fastest growing segments of religious landscape are agnostics and atheists.  And then there is the more immediate concern of putting up with your first pastor, and surviving the weaknesses of your brother priests and of the local Church. This is not a job for the faint of heart.  It will cost you your life.  But thanks for giving your life today to us, and in gratitude it is a great honor for many of us to offer the fruit of this first Mass, and the pledge of our constant love and prayers, as you embark on the adventure of the priesthood.

In you, Fr. Oswaldo, we have seen the Risen Lord!  This is the day that the Lord has made.  Let us rejoice and be exceedingly glad in it!  Alleluia!

2012 Ascension B

Homily
Solemnity of the Ascension
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
20 May 2012
Daily Readings
Audio

When I give spiritual counsel to people who are having a bad Lent, I always tell them that how you end is the most important thing.  I say the same for Advent as well.  Sometimes we get off-track is this preparatory seasons, and rather than throw in the towel, we do what we can to end Advent and Lent as well as we can.  A good start, and a good spiritual game plan for growth, is important during these seasons, but how you end is more important than how you began.

What about Easter then?  Yes, that's right, you heard me correctly - how about Easter?  We are still celebrating Easter - more than 40 days into it - and we have another week to go still.  Actually when you look at the Easter holdover solemnities - the solemnities of the Most Holy Trinity and Corpus Christi, which we celebrate before finally reverting to Ordinary Time, we have another three weeks plus to go.  If you think keeping your Lenten penances for forty days was hard, how much harder is it to remain in party made - rejoicing and drinking in the graces of Easter, living in the new power and life of the Lord's Resurrection - for 50 days plus?  So I ask you - sincerely - how is your Easter celebration going?  Are you going to make it to the end?

Just as we have to work like mad to keep Advent from caving in too soon to gift-giving and Christmas parties, and we have to fight to keep Lent from caving into spring break, so also we have to keep the great Easter season from caving into summer.  We have a little ways to go folks, and as in everything in life, how we started was important, but how we end the Easter season is even more important

It is important on this Ascension Sunday which turns our meditation sharply toward the coming gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, to think about all the ways Jesus has been present to us in the Easter season through the gift of His Spirit.  As far as I know, none of us here tonight saw the Risen Lord during the Holy Season of Easter.  No one that I know was able to put their hand in his side to test the truth of the Resurrection.  Yet by the power of the Holy Spirit I confess as your priest that I have been a witness to the Lord's Resurrection throughout this glorious Easter season.  I have seen the Risen Lord in his body the Church through the many baptisms, first communions, weddings, graduations, and today, especially, through the ordination of new men to serve the Church as priests and deacons, who will make Jesus really and fully present for decades to come by calling down the Holy Spirit in the Holy Eucharist.  Woe to me if I do not have the same excitement and courage of those first disciples to go out and to proclaim to others - I have seen the Risen Lord - for by the power of his Holy Spirit, I have seen him over and over and over this Easter season.  Just as it seemed I never left the confessional during the Lenten season, so also in this Easter season time has flown by as I move from one Easter sacrament to the next.  Alleluia!  Alleluia!  Alleluia!

This my friends, is what it means to end the Easter season well.  Because of the Ascension and Pentecost, we are not gnostic Christians, those who hold onto secret resurrection appearances and magic tickets for getting into heaven.  No, quite the contrary, we rejoice that it is better for us that Jesus has gone home to heaven, to the heart of His Father, so that he can prepare a place for us there, but also that he might send the fullness of His Holy Spirit upon the Church.  For through the surpassing power of the Holy Spirit, the truth of  his Resurrection is visible to all people, and by that same spirit we are called to be witnesses and apostles and evangelists and teachers of this truth.  St. Paul tells us that Jesus did not ascend to the Father to get away from us, but so that he might fill his body, the Church, and through it, all things, in a more perfect way, through the gift of His Spirit.  And as we have heard in the Gospel, Jesus has been true to his promise to bless his Church today and throughout the centuries, with the signs and healings and miracles that she needs to continue her great mission.

So why shouldn't our celebration be getting greater my friends?  Why shouldn't we turn the music up a little louder, for Jesus tells us that it is better for you that I go?  For Jesus our Lord is not going on vacation, even though he deserves one - not to a galaxy far, far away where even our Hubble telescope cannot find him.  He's not trying to get away from us, although who could blame him for trying?  He ascends not to a far away dimension of time and space, but into ultimate relationship and reality, into the heart of love, into the heart of His Father.  Just as on the cross he was lifted up to show he had entered into the heart of darkness to redeem humanity, He ascends today taking with him that humanity. In the Incarnation Jesus began his mission to fill humanity with divinity; in his glorious Ascension, he begins to fill heaven with the humanity he received from us.  So let's not gaze at the sky, let's await the Holy Spirit together, and in the fullness of his Spirit let us endeavor to live in the exact time and circumstances of our earthly lives our vocation, and journey with our Risen Lord to the heart of ultimate relationship and reality, to the heart of His Father.  Through the gift of the Spirit, let us complete the good work our Lord has begun in us.  Alleluia! Alleluia!

2012 Easter 6th Sunday B

Homily
6th Sunday of Easter B
Graduation Sunday at the University of Kansas
Mother's Day 2012
St. Lawrence Chapel
13 May 2012
Daily Readings


Check this out on Chirbit Dear graduates:

Of all the things you have learned while you are at KU, the making of friendships is the most important.  Now don't be dismayed - I know that you could have made friends elsewhere, without spending tens of thousands of dollars and switching majors one or more times.  There are other places where you could have made friends than at KU.  Still, of all the learning that took place here over the last 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 plus years, the art of friendship is the most important.  For as Jesus reveals in today's beautiful Easter Gospel, the vocation to love is deeper than the vocation to learn.  And the most important lesson of life is not measured by a GPA, but whether or not you have learned something worth giving your life to, whether you have mastered the art of laying down your life for your friends.  The University of Kansas is measured by many standards, but in the end it is more than a place where you come to learn stuff, it is a community of learners.  It is a place to make new friends, and a place to be changed through friendships.  So yes, although it is essential to go to class, the most important lessons in life take place outside the classroom.  You may one day forget some of the calculus or French you learned here, and its importance may fade, but what you learned about friendship will remain.  On this day, many will want to know your degree and major and GPA, but the deeper question is . . . .who loves me, and who knows me, and who do I know and love?

For some of you graduates today, your friendship with our Lord Jesus has changed significantly during your time at KU.  St. Lawrence has offered classes and liturgies and spiritual direction and retreats and pilgrimages and missions, and most importantly, a place to make better friends.  Still, not every Catholic student at KU takes advantage of these opportunities, for one reason or another, and even for those who do, a secular university like KU is a place where the gift of the Catholic faith is tested.  Whereas on the day of our first communion we might enthusiastically say that Jesus is my best friend, there have been many temptations over the past few years to see your faith as an obligation, and perhaps you have been told by others that a relationship with Jesus is an affront to your personal freedom, as a relationship that must be discarded as a slave must escape his master.

Yet St. John tells us plainly that it is only because of Jesus that the world knows what love truly is; without Jesus, the definition of love is hopelessly up for grabs, and no university can define it. So we know Jesus to be our best friend because being love itself, he alone can define love, and show us what it is, and fulfill the demands of love, in a way that no one else at the university can.   In this is love, says St. John, not that we have loved God, but that he has loved us, and sent his son as expiation for our sins.  St. John tells us two essential things in one sentence.  First of all, that God is the only one who can love unconditionally, since being love himself, and not needing love whatsoever, he is the only one who can love us truly and unconditionally for our own sake, seeking absolutely nothing in return.  What is more, although many can forgive and overlook our faults, only Christ is our redeemer and savior; only he can and does love us most strongly where no one else can love us, where we cannot even love ourselves, with a love strong enough to redeem us.

Not even the best of friends nor the closest of family can generate this unconditional love, for we ourselves must always confess we need love in return.  Still, without first generating this love, we can imitate this love by living up to Jesus' commandment to love one another just as he loves us.  Although God loves us without condition, and he loves us solely because of his choice, unconditional love can only be kept on the condition that it is given away.  This is the great paradox and mystery and adventure of love, that love and friendship remain insofar as they are able to move; they are retained insofar as they are given away.

It is our prayer, graduates, that the day of your graduation from KU will mark your graduation as well deeper into the mystery of God's love for you, a love that will keep your life focused on bearing fruit that will remain forever.  On this beautiful mother's day, the Church, the mother of the family that is destined to last forever, rejoices that you her children are here to be fed by God's unconditional love, made perfectly present again in the Holy Eucharist.  You graduates know well, however, that this unconditional love can only remain in you, and can only bear fruit, insofar as you are not afraid to receive like Mary did, the mission and vocation that comes along with the gift.  Accepting your vocation is not a condition for receiving God's love; it is the way to remain in it.  May Mary, the exemplar of mother Church and of every mother who wishes to be the instrument of God's love that produces eternal life, bless your mothers and the pursuit of your vocation in every way on this graduation Sunday. Amen.  

2012 5th Sunday of Easter B

Homily
5th Sunday of Easter B
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
5/6 May 2012
Daily Readings

Check this out on Chirbit

When I was getting ready to be ordained a priest, I have to confess that I didn't think much about pruning.  My brother Rodney is in horticulture; he knows all about the necessity of pruning.  He's good at it.  I take great pride that he is a devout KU fan getting a paycheck from Kansas State University.  I readily admit, however,  that not only do I not know much about plants, I also am one who likes to add things, not subtract them.  I like to be busy, to add things that make life more full.  I like Easter and Pentecost better than Lent.  Pruning isn't my favorite thing, either in the garden, nor more importantly, in my soul.

I did not foresee that the Church I was being ordained to serve 8 years ago would herself need to be pruned.  I should have seen it , but I didn't.  My vocation to the priesthood was heard and answered during experiences like World Youth Day, when alongside millions of other exuberant Catholics I could see the truth of Jesus' promise that his apostles would go to the end of the earth and do greater things than he himself did.  My desire was to be part of this exciting growth.  I was much more drawn to the idea of being a pastor who did not lose a single one of those souls given to me, than I was to this idea of serving a Church that needed pruning.  

I hate the idea in fact, that we are perhaps in a period of the Church when we will need to get smaller before we get larger.  It's what I signed up for, but I didn't prepare for it well enough, to shepherd in a time when the fasting growing segments in the religious landscape are agnosticism and atheism, when the second largest denomination is fallen-away Catholics.  Not exactly what I was looking for.  Nor can I say that the priest scandals, nor the culture wars regarding contraception, homosexuality, religious freedom, the definition of marriage, and the reasonability of believing in God, have been exactly what first excited me about becoming a priest.  Don't get me wrong, I'd be ordained again in a second, and the priesthood is so much better than I could have imagined; but still, I see how unready I was for many things.  What is more, these battles take place not only between the Church and the world, but within the branches of the vine itself, within the Church.

I asked Archbishop Naumann if he gets frustrated that the truth of the Gospel is increasingly hard to preach, and that the public discourse on morality never seems to do anything but get more divisive and superficial.  He said simply that the first apostles were pruned to the point of giving their very lives in service of this truth, so why would we be dismayed by opposition and difficulty?  I hate it when he's right.  No, I love it actually, and his response gave me courage that when the going gets tough, the tough get going.

Jesus points us today to consider the need for pruning.  Sometimes we need to subtract during Lent in order to bear more fruit during Easter.  Sometimes we have to get smaller before we can get bigger, get more focused before we can grow, go deeper and closer in our relationships before we can accept our mission, say no to many things so we can say yes to the one necessary thing.  Jesus who is the most inclusive person imaginable regarding his love for every sinner, regarding his desire not to lose a single one of those the Father gave him, says the most exclusive things ever uttered from the lips of man.  He says today that He is the vine and we are the branches, so that without him we are worth nothing and can do nothing.  What we would not allow any other leader or teacher or hero to ever say - without me you are worth nothing and can do nothing - is something that Jesus must say.  For he is not just one teacher among many, he is truth itself.  He is the one through whom all things were made, the one who gives intelligibility and being to all things, so much so that not even an atheistic scientist can begin his work without first being grounded in Jesus.  Though many do not know him, nor do many confess him, he must say the most exclusive thing ever said - that without me you are worth nothing and can do nothing - in order that he might truly be the most inclusive person ever - and be true to his mission to reconcile everything to the Father.  

This is how Jesus prunes us - by his word - by speaking to us the most exclusive things ever said, things that he alone can say.  He does this out of love, so that we are not dismayed when the time comes for us to be pruned, and to be more focused and true to our vocation, to the unique fruit that we are meant to bear in the world, a fruit that will remain forever.  He prunes us as well so that we do not shrink when living the Gospel truth becomes more difficult, even if our beloved Church becomes smaller so that she might retain the ability to one day include all people in a new heaven and a new earth.  In this great Easter season, let us allow ourselves to be pruned by the word that we hear today, and not be afraid to be sheep who are more devout followers of Jesus, nor branches that bear more apostolic fruit.  Amen.