do I need 2021 to be easier?

Homily

Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God

1 January 2020

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG +JMJ +m

Do I need 2021 to be easier?  Absolutely not!

I might get booed for saying that.  Yet I really believe it.  2020 was indeed a monster!.  I was not prepared.  Yet shame on me if I didn't learn anything or grow last year.  There were so many lessons to be had.  Are not the greatest stories, those with real consequences, forged in conflict, not in comfort?  Like it or not, 2020 is what we are made for.  We are made for greatness, heroic virtue, and for swallowing up evil with courage and love.  We can do hard things!

Let's do more than just wish 2020 to be over.  I k now everyone wants relief from the hardships and heartache.  Yet what if 2021 is even harder?  Will we complain and lose heart, or rise to the challenge of the times?

Fear, hate and blame are not strategies for dealing with the evil that will surely come, oftentimes sooner rather than later.  It's great when distancing, escaping and avoiding work.  Yet can we persevere when they don't?

We celebrate with Mary today the 8th day of Christmas.  8 is a huge number for us!  The 8th day is the day that we are in.  It's the process of the redemption of the world from the inside out, from least to great.  It's the time to defeat evil, darkness, suffering and death, those previously undefeated enemies, through the mysteries of our salvation.  It's a day that you're invited to play your part in, just as Mary fulfills her role.

God is all in on this 8th day plan!  He allows a member of our race, a small innocent girl, to be the Mother of all that God is.  That's right!  If that doesn't blow your mind I'm not sure what would.  God is an inseparable communion of persons, so when God is joined to a human nature in the womb of Mary, She mothers not a piece of God, but all of Him!  This is to say that God is all in!  Mary is all in!  Are you?

To play your part in this unbelievable plan to redeem the world, you have to be all in.  There's no predicting, controlling or hiding!  There is not need either for things to get easier. Circumstantial change is just that, a change of circumstances.  Real, substantial change, the kind that confronts evil rather than avoid it, doesn't need things to get easier for them to get better.

Mary's faith is a strategy for our times.  She played her part at the birth and the death of Jesus.  Her heart remains open, not closed, so that our hearts might be laid bare.  There is no need to fear or blame or hate our way through another year.  Instead, our strategy is one of coming together, a response of faith, love and responsibility!

Do I need 2021 to be easier for it to be better?  Since you are not in control of that, I hope not!  Let's pray instead that our ultimate strategy for 2021 is our faith.  Let's be more prepared for anything!

do I want closure?

 Homily

Funeral Mass for Julia Scott

Corpus Christi Parish in Lawrence, Kansas

29 December 2020

AMDG +JMJ +m

Closure.  It's a buzzword for the grieving process.  That a life has been received, celebrated, grieved and let go of.  It's a good goal.  I'm not sure it can always be achieved, or should be, on this side of heaven.

Seeking closure is a bit like seeking a complete healing from an illness.  Sometimes you get it, sometimes it's not God's holy and gracious will, no matter how hard you pray, how hard you fight.  So it is with closure.  Sometimes you get it.  Sometimes you are not supposed to.

The thing is with Julia, I'm not so sure I even want closure.  I wonder if you do.  I hope I'm not barking up the wrong tree here.  I pray this homily doesn't go terribly wrong.  Yet I don't think I'm ready for closure with Julia.  I want her life to remain an open question, and an unfinished mandate for us all.  I want to live differently not just today but always because I know her.  Such is also your mission in response to the gift of Julia's life, should you choose to accept it..

Julia certainly deserves for this instead to be her canonization Mass.  What a beautiful gift from God Julia Wagle Scott is.  Praise God for her!  You all know something about her that you love and that touched and changed you.  Hold onto that please!   Don't ever let it go.

For me, I loved the special combination of toughness and care that I saw played out.  A few times, I gave up on her living.  I admit it.  It was so hard to see her suffer.  I just wanted it to be over for her.  I didn't see a way. She outlived all my doubts by a long shot.   She is a fighter!

I was blessed to see her at several of her weakest moments.  I went in scared and helpless, not knowing what to say.  I'd leave 90 minutes later exhausted from the conversation, with her ready to talk more, with no idea how she was doing but feeling that I had been cared for by her.  I'm not built that way.  I will never care or love like that.  She fought so hard. She cared so much.  In the ends, saints are measured by heroic love, and she had that in abundance.  

Yet with all this goodness and blessing to celebrate, I'm still not ready for closure.

Julia wouldn't want us to pity her, or try to hold on to her.  I'm sure of that.  She would not want us to be stuck in our grief, or wallow in the feelings of despair and helplessness that surrounded her death.  She would want us to live our lives courageously with great faith, the faith she shared, and to fill any darkness, discouragement, fear or doubt that linger with hope and love!

Yet again for me there seems to be a mandate from her life that remains open not closed.  I like things being open, not closed.  It doesn't seem right to me to try to tie a bow on Julia's life today and ship her soul off to a safe place where no more evil or suffering can touch her.  It's a beautiful thought, and shame on me if I wish her any less than all that, which she richly deserves.

Yet I wonder if someone as tough and caring as Julia wouldn't mind keeping her heart dangerously wide open, out of love for us.  Simeon prophesied that in her vocation and mission, which is ongoing, Mary's heart would be ripped open, so that the thoughts of many hearts would be revealed.  Just so, we celebrate Julia's funeral Mass not in a safe bubble, but under the heartbreaking sign of the cross.

This for me is Julia's legacy, to not be afraid of a reality where heaven and earth are not sanitized and separated, but where the two are mixed in wonderful and terrible ways.  Julia's story, especially the latest chapters, is an invitation to fill our helplessness and lack of understanding with the sign of the cross, where love is made perfect precisely in suffering, and death is embraced, conquered and transformed into new life.  

This mandate from Jesus, to love as He has first loved us, is the invitation also from Julia not to meet one last time here at her funeral Mass, but to keep meeting here, for the rest of our lives, at the Eucharist, where we are like Christ ground into heavenly bread, and by drinking the cup of suffering that comes to each and all sooner rather than later, to be pruned and pressed into the choicest wine at this altar, where the marriage of heaven and earth is consummated.

This is the closure I want.  At the end of my life, and not before, can I say that I loved more and lived differently because I know Julia Wagle Scott?  Can I say that her suffering was not wasted on me?  I want to honor her not by closing out this question today at one final Mass, but by leaving it open.  I invite you to the same. Amen. 

what makes a family holy?

Homily

3rd Day in the Octave of Christmas

Solemnity of the Holy Family

27 December 2020

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG +JMJ +m 

Father, are you seeing your family for Christmas?  It's the #1 question I get at Christmas.  Not are you holding Jesus in your heart, but are you seeing family?

It's actually the perfect Christmas question.  The question is written right into the Church's liturgy, the second of four critical stops in the twelve days of Christmas.  Today is the Solemnity of the Holy Family during Christmas.  Father, are you seeing your family for Christmas?

Thankfully I did see my family.  I know many didn't, or couldn't because of death or distance.  Isn't everyone tired of that word distance?  Bye bye 2020!  It was a gift to be close to my widowed dad and five siblings.  My crew is far from idyllic, but I pray we haven't give up on being holy.  Everyone is making a go of it, taking a bite out of life, and trying to do it together.

That's what makes a family holy.  It's the risk of faith.  It's not settling or quitting when it all turns out harder than we thought.  It's about keeping faith when we lose control, and conflict, suffering and sacrifice become the heart of family life.  For our families are the crucibles where love is tested and learned and purified.  They are the privileged places where great stories are written, and the ultimate consequences of our lives are played out.

It was this way for Jesus.  He didn't drop into the world as an individual.  He was born into a family.  A very sinful and dysfunctional one, if you look at his ancestors besides his parents.  His was certainly the most non-traditional family the world has ever seen.  There's no need to sentimentalize or idealize the Holy Family.  I'm sure Nazareth was a quiet, peaceful place.  The world is converted most intimately and fully by the conversation that takes place at an ordinary dinner table.  Yet Nazareth was not a bubble insulated from the harsh realities of real life.  Mary and Joseph were at times refugees fleeing murderous threats.  At other times, they were setting off amber alerts.

Like Abraham the father of our family of faith, they had to trust in the unbelievable, ridiculous calling that required the total risk of faith.  That's it, the risk of faith.  It's that, not sentimental idealism, that makes a family holy.

Too many of us have given up on families because it's so hard, and the risk so great.  There is a temptation to choose something easier, rather than surrender to the vocation, sacrament and mission of the family.  Yes, it would be much easier to redefine family as those individuals that I as an individual choose to affirm my choices in life.  Yet if we make family only a choice based on the convenience of adults, we will continue to avoid God, and fear and kill children.

Yet this is not reality.  It's not our nature.  It's not the makings of a great story.  No, we were all dropped into a family, like it or not.  Ultimate meaning and relationship run through the family.  Our families is where our freedom and destiny are gifted and play themselves out.  God Himself is a family.  He is not a collection of individuals. That's capitalism.  He is not a machine of parts.  That's communism.  God is not capitalist or communist.  He is family, and so are we, created in His image.

By all means, if your family is abusive or toxic or disobedient to God's will, detach from that.  Don't get stuck in a family.  Yet to give up altogether on family is to give up on ourselves.  Family is who we are.  What makes a family holy is that we do not stop taking the risk of faith.   Yet at the heart of family life is suffering and sacrifice.  So what!  We are not made for lives of comfort, but for lives of great consequence.

John Paul II says the future of the world runs through the family.  Mother Teresa said if you want to change the world, go home and love your family!  Blood will always be thicker than water.  God invites us into His family, and asks us never to give up on family, through the gift of His own blood.

Father, are you seeing your family for Christmas?  It's a great Christmas question. Yes, and I'm praying that Jesus will show His face to my family this Christmas, and renew our embracing the vocation, sacrament and mission that is family life.  I pray that my family will be holy and keep making the risk of faith.

will you hold me?

Homily

Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord

25 December 2020

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG +JMJ +m

Will you hold me?

Last year I asked you what you wanted for Christmas.  I confessed that I wanted someone to hold me.  It was embarrassing to admit.  Yet it's still true this year.  It's all I want.  In that smallest place where I am alone and afraid, I want to be loved.  In that weakest place where I am convinced no one understands, no one cares and nothing can change, I want someone to hold me.

This year I have a better question, though.  What does Jesus want for Christmas?  Do you know?

It's a strange question perhaps, on this night we celebrate Him as greatest, and purest, and most needed gift.  Yet the question is right there in the Christmas story.  Jesus is not only gift, He is also in desperate need.  Jesus comes to reveal that God is both love given and love received.  So are we, made in His image.  So I dare say Jesus wants for Christmas what I want.  Where He is alone and afraid, where He is poor, naked, cold, homeless and vulnerable, He wants someone to hold Him.

He appears at Christmas to tell you what He wants, and to ask you the ultimate Christmas question.  Will you hold me?

You might be asking how does this question help?  How does it save me and the world?  Yet this is the great paradox of Christmas.  Jesus helps by being helpless.

He knows nothing else can work.  If Jesus appears first as a warrior King, my defenses will go up.  If He asks first how He can help, I'll tell Him what I always do.  I'm fine.  I got this.  Keep your distance.  Are you familiar with this word distance?  It's the buzzword of 2020.  It's a dangerous word.  It might preserve existence for a moment, yet distance always ends in death.

Knowing my defenses, Jesus has to slip behind enemy lines.  He has to trick me.  Yet even begging me to hold Him as a baby is not enough.  He knows I can avoid, and fear, and even kill a baby to defend my fear and doubt, my control of that space where I know nobody understands, nobody cares and nothing can change.

So God who became a baby tonight is a baby who becomes bread.   Bethlehem means house of bread.  The ridiculous scene of Bethlehem merely sets the stage for tonight.  The Christmas question sentimentally and historically present at Bethlehem appears fully in mystery on this altar.  For the same God made baby is right here, right now, a baby made bread, conceived in the womb of the Church and destined for the roof of your body.

When I put the Mass in Christmas, tonight's Christmas question is asked from the inside of me, where only the Eucharist can reach.  Sneaking behind my defenses, Jesus now asks his question from the inside of me, where I can no longer distance myself.  At my smallest and weakest space, where I most fear and doubt, and where I am convinced nobody understands, nobody cares and nothing can change, Jesus asks me to love Him.  Will you hold me there?

It's a trick, and a darn good one.  My future, and the future of the world, await my answer. Will you hold me?

If I dare a yes, then the greatest of Christmas miracles might come true.  I may no longer fear the very thing I most want for Christmas.  In holding Jesus, in the depths of my heart, I will find that I am the one being held.  I am the one being saved.

Jesus helps then by being helpless.  As you receive the Eucharist tonight, ask Him what He wants for Christmas.  I dare say He wants to appear on this altar at Christ's Mass, and enter your body, simply to ask you the ultimate Christmas question.  Will you hold me?

are you ready to let it be done?

Homily

4th Sunday of Advent B

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

20 December 2020

AMDG +JMJ +m

Father, are you ready for Christmas?  Don't ask me that unless you want to turn me into the grinch.  It's my only job as a Catholic priest, to be ready.  Yet I never am.  It's frustrating.  I need to have my best Christmas.  So do you.  If not this year, then when?  Yet here I am worried about what's left to do and how everything is going to come off during COVID.  I don't know if I'm going forward or backwards, with as many Christmas parties already past this year as remain in the future.

Yet I want to look forward with great hope and anticipation to Christmas, not just get it over with.  This year again, I need Mary to help me.  She always appears on the 4th Sunday to rescue my Advent.  Mary, are you ready for Christmas?  You got this thing started.  You're the mom of our family.  If you're ready that's all that matters.  I may as well entrust myself to you on these final days.  Mary, save my Christmas!  Are you ready, Mary?  Yes, Fr. Mitchel I am.  Let this be the best Christmas ever.  Let it be done to me.  Let it be done to you.

These four words are what matter.  Let it be done.  Before I have any chance to do Christmas well, Christmas must happen to me.  Christmas starts with receptivity.  The temple David wanted to do for the Lord was gifted to the world in the womb of Mary who let it be done to her.  That temple of God that is the Christ child, through whom God shows his face to the world, has invited you, a child of Mary, to also be his temple.  You are to become his dwelling place, his mystical temple and body.

That's how the prophecy of Nathan to David is fulfilled, through a temple and throne that is your body and mine.  That's why Christmas is ultimately named not after the scene in Bethlehem, but for Christ's Mass.  For what happens in your temple when you receive Jesus at Christ's Mass is the fulfillment of what is begun in the womb of Mary and made visible in Bethlehem.

Let it be done she says.  Make her response yours.  Your body is a gift you did not make.  It is where Jesus wants to be born and show his face this Christmas?  Will you let it be done?  Will I let him visit that place where I still want to be alone and independent, where I crave privacy, selfishness and control?  Jesus be born in me in that place.  Mary, teach me how not to be afraid.

That's how you do Christmas from the inside out.  If Mary our mother is ready, then so can you be.  Let it be done.

what does God love most about me?

Homily

Tuesday 2 Advent BI

Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

8 December 2020

AMDG +JMJ +m

What does God love most about me?

It's a hard question to answer.  Usually I don't allow God to delight in me this way.  I know best what is unlovable in me.

Today I have to answer the question, though.  The Immaculate Conception begs my answer.  If God so delights in Mary, could He also find favor with me?

The answer is a resounding yes!  God cherishes you like nobody else.  He sees Mary before anyone else can know, cherish or protect Her.  He gave her a singular fullness of grace, the prevenient grace of Christ Her eventual Son!

There's no gift in history like it.  Listen to the greeting of the Archangel, defining the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in advance of the Annunciation!  Mary a little girl is hailed as greater than an archangel, the only creature ever deemed full of grace and God's favorite place to dwell!  All of this in preparation for Her fiat.  In today's Gospel fiat Mary declares even before she conceives Jesus that She is completely His, for she speaks just like Her Son.  Not my will, Lord, but yours be done.

What's the point, here?  The point is that God loves me where no one else can.  What does God love most about me?  It's something small, mysterious, surprising.  It's something I may not yet even be aware of.  It's something only He can see in secret, a love for me He has not assigned to anyone else.  That's the message of the Immaculate Conception.  God loves best and most at our most vulnerable point available only to Him. He is jealous lover in this way.  For Mary, yes, but also for me.

For us sinners of course, our most vulnerable and unlovable points coincide.  It is the point laid bare in the story of Eden, a point marked by first by doubt, then by fear and shame.  I have to let God love my there, to experience the freedom of faith, courage and transparency always enjoyed by Mary.

She instead is the guarantee, that if I dare to let God love me at my smallest point, my story will go like hers.  She also is pure gift, having received the Immaculate Conception not to distinguish Her freedom from mine, but so that she could receive the terrible responsibility of being my mother, until I am totally hers.  What does it mean to be devoted to Mary?  It means never letting doubt, fear or shame have the last say, but instead to trust that God cherishes me like He delights in her, beginning at my smallest point.

What does God most love about me?

who do I want to challenge me?

Homily

2nd Sunday of Advent BII

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

6 December 2020

+St. Nicholas

AMDG +JMJ +m

Who do I want to challenge me?  Who do I want to give me a good old-fashioned chewing out?  Who do I want to rip me up one side and down the other?

If my answer is nobody, I am a fool.  For only fools try to motivate or guide themselves.  I must always be asking people how I can get better! If my answer is nobody, I will not be ready to have my best Christmas, and I may never will.

I need a prophet to help me.  So do you, and not just any prophet.  I need a prophet like John the Baptist, a ruthless one kicking and screaming and going nuts to get my attention.  Without someone to challenge me, I will remain forever just as I am now, and that's not good enough.

Granted, the standard for this person, this prophet, must be high.  It has to be someone trustworthy. It has to be someone who cares for me, knows me, believes in me, and desires my good.  It can't be someone abusive, manipulative or filled with self-interest.

Yet need this person I do! Without this prophet, I will surely miss the most important message, person and moment of my life.  I just will.  Fools try to motivate and focus themselves.  Saints respond to prophets!

John the Baptist always shows up on this 2nd Sunday of Advent as a ruthless prophet desperate to get our attention.  Why doesn't he just chill out?  Relax, Johnny boy!  It's because he just can't.  He announces not just a word, but the WORD after which none greater will ever be spoken.  He introduces not just another VIP, but the person prophesied by Isaiah who alone can recreate the world from the inside out.  He points to not just a big moment in history, but the moment greater than the Big Bang that will transform reality at its very core.

No wonder he's screaming louder than Bill Self at the referees!  Wake up!  Get ready!  Get your life together!  For to miss this word, this person, and this moment is to miss everything that ultimately matters.

I remember two words spoken to me by spiritual directors that changed my life forever.  You're the most ungrateful person I have ever met.  Your life is not about you.  The words stung, and they still do. Yet they were exactly what I most needed to hear.  I tremble to think who I would be if those prophets,  out of sheer love for me,  did not have the courage to call me out.

Who do I want to challenge me?

do you want to need someone?

 Homily

1st Sunday of Advent BI

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

29 November 2020

AMDG +JMJ +m

Do I want to need someone?  Of course I don't.  I'm the independent type.  I hate needy people. I love to be alone and do things myself, as much as I can.  I don't want dependence.  I want distance!  I want 2020 forever!

Yet if I continue on this path, in the end I will be the most needy of all.  Unless I want to need someone, I will become like the people I dread.  The most terrifying thing in my life is if people give me what I want, to be left alone.  

For I have been struggling with some of the same things for 46 years now. There are some things deep down, at the most fundamental levels in me, that are broken.  These are the things that can't be fixed with a plan or prescription, no matter how hard I persevere.  Some things can only be healed by relationship, by a person.

Not just any person, mind you.  I might find many friends welcome to join me in jail.  There's only one who can fully bail me out.  I need more than someone.  I need a savior.

The sooner I want to need a savior the better off I'll be.  Unless I want this Jesus to come, I will continue to stiff arm Him as much and for as long as I can.  I always have.  The results have always been the same.  I'm embarrassed to need him.  I hope I will never need him again.  I let him come the minimum amount necessary to get by.

This is not the attitude of Advent.  Advent tells Jesus to get down here, and to hurry the hell up.  It's the attitude of not wanting one more year for plans and prescriptions.  It is instead the desire for this to be the year when I truly allow this person to come and mess with my mess.

Advent is the attitude that the most terrifying thing in my life is if he gives me what I want, to be left alone.  Advent fears not the Lord's coming, but His not coming, leaving me in the slavery of my own limitations.

So I watch.  I wait for a savior, not only because I need to, but most of all because I want to.  I don't want another year.  I want this to be the year.

Come, Lord Jesus, come!

who are you responsible for?

 Homily

34th and Last Week in Ordinary Time

Solemnity of Christ the King

22 November 2020

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG +JMJ +m

Who are you responsible for?  Who's in your kingdom?  They're the same question.  Your kingdom is the people you see yourself in, and are willing to serve.  If you don't have anyone like that, your kingdom is yourself.  You're king of a universe of one.  That probably sounds like hell because it is.

Who are you responsible for?  Who's in your kingdom?

We just survived the latest election cycle, or did we?   Did we elect any real leaders, or only imposters.  Today's Feast of Christ the King is also about leadership.  Leaders are only those who see themselves in others, and are ready to serve. Did we elect anybody like that?

There is only one leadership style!  There are ways of accessing the one style, but only one true way to rule, to shepherd or to judge. The eschatological Gospel at the end of this liturgical year puts it right in front of us.  Anybody desiring control or honor on the front end of leadership is a fake.  Bad leaders hurt people and they need to stop.

It's why so many people are afraid to lead.  It's a terrible responsibility.  The reward is not power, wealth or honor.  The reward of daring to lead is exploring the mystery of who you are.  It's about setting the destiny of your soul and that of others.  To fail to try or to lead badly means death.  The stakes are real, and they're high.  It takes the most courageous of people to lead well.

Who are you responsible for?  Your kingdom is those you see yourself in, and are ready to serve.  If there is nobody you're leading, today's parable shows you your destiny.  It's the destiny where you have the most control, but are most alone.

Real leaders forsake control for relationship.  If you dare to lead, you will never be alone.  Today's Feast guarantees that.  We are here today to be led, not to be controlled.  We are here to worship not because we have to, but because we want to.  We are here to worship real leadership and the only true King.  He sees Himself in us, and is more than ready to die for us.

After worshipping this king, you got next.  Who are you responsible for?

is what you do who you are?

RISE Talk

19 November 2020

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

Is what you do who you are?  The answer is yes and no.  The answer is firstly yes, but lastly and more importantly, no.

What you do changes you.  It matters a lot.  Moral theology takes our actions quite seriously.  We form character by action, by practicing virtues and vices.  Our freedom has real and enormous consequences, for ourselves and others.  For people of faith, these consequences resonate into eternity.  You don't believe me?  Read the parable of the talents.

Our freedom to choose is what makes us most in the image of God.  What we do gives us a chance to grow in His likeness, or not to.  Our freedom is so real that it not only forms our character, it sets our destiny.  So yes, of course we are what we do.  Actions speak loudly!  Walking the walk matters.

Yet in a more important sense, we are not what we do.   For our freedom to do does not exist in a vacuum.  The ability to do is not fundamental to being a person.  I didn't start my life doing anything.  I won't end my life doing anything.  Personhood is founded instead on who loves us.  Who we are is who loves us.  I became someone when I was known, loved, desired and protected.  I will cease to be someone when these things stop.  So at a deeper level, you are not what you do.  The ability to do comes later and ends sooner.  You are instead who loves you.

It's like the difference between particle and quantum physics, perhaps.  There are rules for particle physics that are true and explain a lot.  Yet these same rules that access truth break down at the level of quantum physics.  In the same way, you are what you do at a macro level, but not at a deeper level of existence.  The laws of morality are born from deeper laws that access metaphysical truth.

So we are what we do, but we are also and moreso who loves us into existence and personhood.  Which is to say we are ultimately God's, who is love, goodness, relationship and reality all together.  Who are you?  You are God's.  

I don't mean to evade the question.  I like evading questions, but not this one.  Avoiding this question is to miss out on life.

I think the question is meant to access how we get love!  Do you get love by doing?  If we take for granted that love is what we all want, and to be someone is to be capable of giving and receiving love, then we must answer how one gets love.  Do you get love by doing?

We all know fundamentally this is a lie. We are not what we do.  Love is not earned, it is given.  Yet even knowing this, few of us have trusted it.  The lie that we are what we do is all around us.  It might be more contagious than COVID-19.  I dare say it infects everyone, and the symptoms in each of us are enormous!

I bought into this lie that I am what I do pretty on in life, as you probably did.  I learned that a sure way to get love is by performance.  You do get love based on what you do, and how well you do it.  You earn love.  It's how you become someone.  It's not how we start and end life, but it's how most of us operate in the middle.  As far as I could tell, the harder I worked, the more I was recognized.  So I began doing early in life what anyone would do.

I took the ball and ran with it.  People who know me well would say I haven't stopped running.  I've never stopped running from who I really am. I'm as close as you can get to a workaholic version of Forrest gump.  I'm so deep into it that I don't know if I can or will ever change.  I really don't.

I can't remember the last time I wasn't trying to do more than anyone else.  It's what I know.  It's what I trust.  It's what I think I can control.  It's how I think I can fill this thirst for infinite, eternal love, a hole that can only be filled by God Himself.  Yet I've substituted God with the idol of hard work.  So badly do I want love that I would kill myself working for it if I could.  I bet a lot of you tonight know exactly what I'm talking about.

When I was your age, at 19, I latched onto a hero who could do it all. That hero is St. John Paul II.  To say I had a huge crush on John Paul would be a huge understatement.  The guy had it all.  He had move-star good looks and a sharp mind.  He loved the outdoors and sports!  He had a compassionate touch, a joyful spirit, a courageous will, an irresistible voice and delivery, and so much m ore.  This is his biography of 800 pages!  The dude knew how to do things, heroic incredible things!

He had the idea of huge outdoor Masses for youth.  He was told he was too old and that the youth would ignore him.  He did it anyway.  I went to one of these in Denver when I was a sophomore at KU.  The dude was bigger than life.  He was bigger than Jesus Christ!  Jesus' largest crowd was only 5,000!  John Paul gathered almost a million.  A few years later I followed my crush to a Mass in Paris, where there were almost 3 million.  This was the beginning of the end for me.  This was the way to do more than anyone else.  I had to be like him, somehow, someway.  To hell with being loved for who I was.  I had to be him!

The plan started to work immediately!  When I told people I was going to be a priest, something so few people could do, my popularity skyrocketed!  I was a resounding victory in the sibling rivalry.  for 25 years, I had tried to do more than my older brother Chad, my archnemesis.  He was bigger, stronger and better than me at most things.  To beat him I had to get superpowers.  The priesthood, as you might know, has them!  Priests can forgive sins and make Jesus present on an altar!  Priests are known for what they can do!

Take that, Chad!  I was on m y way.  It was easy to get drunk on the power.  As a priest, I could finally do more than anyone.  I could earn love by saying Mass, hearing confessions and being a Father to everybody.  It was amazing how well it worked!

Until the day it stopped working.  Lies eventually are exposed.  If our identity is wrapped up in what we do, that well will always run dry.  It's not fundamentally who we are.  It can't replace the truth of who we are.  My plan worked until the day I had to admit it wasn't working, that it had never really worked.  I don't know exactly when I lost my way, or how.  I just know I did.  It will happen to all of us who are caught up in the lie.

I didn't want to get out of bed.  Even though I had more to do than ever, and so many things that only I could do, I didn't want to do anything.  I didn't know who I was, because we are not fundamentally what we do.  Instead, I resented having to do anything.  I was lost.  My foolproof plan, the only thing I knew and what I had bet everything on, was torn to shreds.  I didn't feel loved by God or anyone.

It's all because I fell hook, line and sinker for the lie that we are what we do.  It's now how we start or end life.  It's not fundamentally true in the middle either.  Our desire and ability to do things changes.  What doesn't change?  Our personhood is grounded not in what we do, but in being known, loved, desired and protected.  We are who loves us.  It doesn't take a genius to see it. It takes a saint to believe it, trust it and stick with it.

Why did I believe the lie?  Why does any of us believe it?  It's because we love control.  We think we can control how hard we work.  We can control judging ourselves by how hard we work.  We can control loving ourselves based on our performance.  We can control what we think we deserve.  What can we not control?  We can't control how much someone loves us.  For love is not earned.  It is given.

In so many ways, earning love is still all I know, and all I trust.  I still want to be the Pope.  I still want to be him, not Fr. Mitchel.  I want to be a lot smarter, better looking, talented and fit than I am.  I want to be noticed and for people to hang on my every word.  I want to remember everyone's name and have unlimited time and compassion for anyone who needs me.  I want to be everything to everyone.  I want an 800 page biography.

Yet how do you get this?  I should have paid more attention to my hero.  He didn't do so much by wanting to earn love.  He did so much by not being afraid to be loved, and to receive it as a grace.  Who loves you John Paul?  Mary loves me.  Who are you John Paul?  I am totally hers.  What must you do John Paul?  I must be totally hers.

It's how Jesus called me to be a priest.  He didn't call me because He needed me to do anything, much less be like John Paul.  He called me because He wanted to love me more.  The thought of it scares me.  It's frightening to let someone love you in this way.  Yet the alternative is to live a lie that always backfires.  No matter how hard I try, I can't turn love into something it's not.  It's not earned.  It's a gift.  For you are not what you do.  You are who loves you.

If you learn to trust that holy place, you can do almost anything.  It's how you do a lot.  It's how you get a million people.  It's how you get an 800 page biography.  It's how you become alive.  It's so simple, yet so scary.  You need to let God love you.  It's who you are.

If you do that one thing, there will be no limit to what you can do.

what am I afraid of?

Homily

33rd  Sunday in Ordinary Time A

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

15 November 2020

AMDG +JMJ +m

What am I afraid of?  For starters, I'm afraid of this question.  I hate it.  If I'm even afraid of the question I suppose I'm the ultimate coward.

But if I have to answer it, I would say that I'm most afraid of how much God loves me.  It's a scary thing when someone loves you.  What do you do with that love?  It's the question of today's parable.  What do I do when someone loves me?  How do I respond when someone says I choose you.  I trust you.  I believe in you.  I'm counting on you.  I want to end up with you.

I wish these words were enough to scare the hell out of me.  Instead I'm just scared.

God trusts me too much. That's what I'm afraid of.  He trusts me with a life worth much more than 5 million, 2 million or 1 million dollars.  He trusts me with a freedom that makes me in His very image.  He ultimately entrusts to me His very Son, through the sacrament of His body and blood.  What is more, He trusts me to multiply these gifts.  Can there be anything scarier than how much God loves me?

Frankly, it can be too much.  The fear can make me want to run and hide..  It's easier to plan a permanent social distance from  God.  It's seems safer to get drunk and distracted on what is cheap, instead of heeding St. Paul's advice to live sober and alert.  I want to presume upon His mercy, and to pretend my real freedom doesn't have the real eternal consequences laid bare in the parable.

What if I ultimately bury my talent in the ground?  If I do, nobody can bail me out.  The redistribution in today's Gospel is shocking to modern sensibilities.  It goes from poor to rich, not from rich to poor.  There is no equitable outcome in today's Gospel. Talent wasted is talent redistributed to the rich.

Where is there equality in the Gospel?  It's in what the master says to each servant.  It's in what God is saying to me right now. to each and all of us.  I choose you.  I trust you.  I believe in you.  I'm counting on you.  I want to end up with you.

It's a scary thing when someone loves you.  What do I do with that?  It's what I'm most afraid of.

What makes something worth waiting for?

Homily

32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time A

8 November 2020

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG +JMJ +m

Life is a whole lot of waiting, and watching, and preparing.  It sounds, boring I know, but it's not.  Life is worth living! Yet this is the way things are.  If I am bad at watching and waiting and preparing, I am bad at life.  For life is less about making things happen, and more about being ready for the pivotal moments of life that are about to come.

These crucial moments of my story will surely come.  They always do.  It might seem as if they are delayed, like nothing is going on, but the moments won't be late.  If all I do in life is grab what fast, cheap and easy, I'll miss these moments that change everything.  I

What must I be most ready for?  Today's Gospel parable is crystal clear.  God wants to be married to me.  God is coming for me, to be married to me.  It's going to happen!  Am I ready?   I am watching and waiting and preparing for the coming of the bridegroom.

What makes something worth waiting for?  I hate to beg this week's pivotal question, but I must.  The things that are worth waiting for are the things that take time.  We value most the things that take the longest to develop.  Valuable things, like relationships, are valuable precisely because they take time.  Try rushing a relationship, and let me know how that is working for you.  It can't work.  It won't work.  Love is spelled T-I-M-E.  Show me your schedule, and I will tell you what you love.

What about marriage then? What makes it worth waiting for?  The scriptures propose marriage to God as the ultimate destiny of every person.  The readings today are dripping with nuptial invitations.  Wisdom is desperately searching for a husband in today's first reading, for someone who might be watching, and waiting and worthy of her.

St. Paul talks about the bodies of our loved ones waiting in patient hope in the ground for the day of resurrection, the day of ultimate consummation of creation's marriage with God. Death, like life, is a whole lot of waiting. This month especially we watch, and wait and pray with the names of our beloved written in our chapel book of the dead.

Finally, there's more wedding talk in the Gospel.  The parable present marriage as a waiting game.  The bride, through her maidens, is waiting for the groom to come down the aisle, as it were.  This might seem strange at first, until we remember how slow guys are at relationships, and how hesitant they are to commit.

Yet hopeful and ready waiting pays off in spades in the parable, just as it will for you.  Those who choose fast, cheap and easy, who think marriage won't take much time, are the fools.

Don't be a fool!  Be ready for your marriage to God, the ultimate invitation of your life.  Almost everyone likes a fast Mass, including me.  I like everything as fast as possible.  Yet the Mass doesn't work like that. Life doesn't work like that.  Love doesn't work like that.  This nuptial banquet takes time to reach fulfillment, both in me and in its destiny to marry the world to God is a single and true communion.  The question of this Mass is not how long it lasts, but whether I have oil in my lamp.

Do I spell love T-I-M-E?   Do I realize that  God will surely come to be married to me?
Am I ready?  Do I recognize this crucial moment lies at the heart of everything, that marriage takes time, and that it's worth waiting for?

  

what will you say when you see God's face?

Homily

Solemnity of All the Saints

1 November 2020

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG +JMJ +m

What will you say when you see God's face?  

I don't think we have ever had a better pivotal question.  I don't think we ever could.  Maybe that's because it's hard to have a better feast than All Saints.  What a great family reunion this is!  Today we celebrate our friendship and communion with all our members who did whatever it took to become like God.  Whether or not they have been raised to the altars, today they are first in our hearts!

Today I'm celebrating Grandma and Grandpa Ochs. They both passed away in this tough year of 2020.  My grandparents were saints.  They kept the faith.  They finished the race.  They did things the right way.  They loved God. Their lives bore great fruit!  They are my saints for 2020.  Who are yours?

When I decided to become a priest, it was for one reason only.  I wanted to be a saint.  I wanted to be just like John Paul II, whom I met in 1999 and who was canonized in the 10th year of my priesthood, in 2014.

The last 21 years have been tough.  They've been good, but becoming a saint is not easy.  It's not for wimps.  I'm not there yet.  Tell me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure about this.  Back in 1999, I promised I would do whatever it took to be a saint.  I had no idea what I was saying.  It's easy to say you want to be a hero.  It's much harder to walk the road less traveled.  Joining the chorus of the 144,000 greatest of all time is not for the faint of heart.

If I don't know what I would say when I see God face to face, then I'm not yet a saint.  It means I've settled too often.  It means I haven't walked the path of the beatitudes, the recipe for saints.  Instead I have let myself become addicted to wealth, power, pleasure or honor.

If I don't know what I would say to God when I see His face, I've left the battlefield, tried to do it on my own, and wondered off the path.  I bet that all sounds familiar, right?

Worst of all, I've failed to embrace how the world would be different if I were a saint.  I haven't fully considered what a horrific tragedy it would be if I don't become a saint.  This is not to put myself at the center of the universe.  It's only to be a Catholic.  It's only to receive the great opportunity to grow into the likeness of God. It's only to embrace the invitation from Him to grow perfect in love.  It's only to let God believe in you.

Yet it's not over.  There are chapters to be written, in my story and in yours.  Today is a new day.  It's especially new because of the (p)hog of witnesses surrounding us right now, showing us that there is a way for us, cheering us on, and telling us it's all worth it.

We don't have to wait.  We can see God's face today at this very Mass.  The only thing between you and sainthood is your willing it.  Nothing matters more.  I dare say that embracing your opportunity to become a saint is the most dramatic thing happening in the world this week.  Yes, you heard me right.  I know there is an election with tremendous consequences.  Your vote matters.

Yet it doesn't matter nearly as much as your becoming a saint.  The future of the world isn't decided on a ballot.  It runs right through the chapters of your story.  The battle lines for a love that conquers all things are not in politics. They are written on your heart.

I know what I want to say to God. Thank you.  Thank you for the chance. Thank you for the call.  Thank you for believing in me.  Thank you for never giving up on me.  

What will you say to God when you see His face?

what's your rule of life?

 Homily

30th Sunday in Ordinary Time A

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

25 October 2020

AMDG +JMJ +m

Just do it. I have a dream.  Make America Great Again.  Yes we can. 

Can you match the slogan with the brand or the person?  I bet you can.  Certain words fit.  Some phrases define or capture the essence of a thing, or the personality or purpose of a person.

What about you?  What is your life's motto?  What is your unique why?  What is the one rule that you live by? What phrase do you want on your tombstone?

These are some of my favorite questions in spiritual direction.  I think St. John Paul II answered them best.  In three words he captured his key relationship, identity and mission.  Totus Tuus Maria.  Who loves you, John Paul?  Mary does.  Who are you, John Paul?  I'm totally hers.  What is your mission, John Paul?  I live to become totally hers.  He is the gold standard for personal mottos.  

Go ahead and give it a shot. What is your life's motto?  What is the lens through which you look at life?  What words capture how you lay hold of the gift of your life?

I like the motto I have now, but I don't think it's my final final.  Compete in what matters to God.  It's working for me now, but I'm still editing.  I'm open to improving it if something better comes along.

At St. Lawrence we have defined a unique why, a way of being the Catholic Church at KU.  We exist to guide great stories.  This year we are trying to come up with a couple house rules that sum up in a compelling, succinct and memorable way our culture and operating values.  

Jesus was asked to do the same.  Of the 613 rules in the law, which one is the greatest, Jesus?  What is the essential rule to live by, that captures the essence of the entire law?

Believe it or not, Jesus actually answers the question.  He's usually the best at begging the question.  This time he answers directly.  He distills 613 rules into two.  Love God and the image of God in yourself and your neighbor.  Later he will give us, his disciples a new commandment.  Love one another as I have loved you.

Whatever rule or motto you come up with for your life, it has to increase your capacity to love.  If not, your life is a joke.  St. Paul put it this way.  If I have life by the tail, but have not love, I should be roundly mocked.  Love is ultimate.  Love is everything.  It is who God is, in whose image we are made.  Love is our origin, our constant calling, and our ultimate perfection.

Let me put it this way.  What if you were offered the chance to solve all the problems plaguing mankind in 2020.  You get to be the hero that fixes this miserable year.  In return you simply have to give up your freedom and capacity to love.  Nobody would take that deal.  You should not take that deal.  Give me instead the problems inherent in the freedom to love.  Bring it on.  Love is worth that much.  It's worth it all.

Love is the ground and meaning of life.  There might be existence, but no life, if we did not have the capacity to fall in love, be loved, and to love in return.  

As Jesus says, love is what ultimately relates us to God.  So the real measure of our life, in the end, is how much we love God.  Go ahead and give yourself a score today.  How much do you love God?  How much do you love His image in yourself and your neighbor?  For me it's a 3, and a 2.  I want to love God and his image in others so much more than I do now. What's your number?

Now come up with a rule of life, a life's motto, that can transform that number into a 10.  If you can do that, you have the key to eternal life.

What is your life's motto?

legal recognition of same-sex unions?

 Comments

Pope Francis and recognition of same-sex unions.

21 October 2020

Dear KU Catholics:

Pope Francis makes another headline!  Buckle up!

I wanted to comment as soon as I could regarding Pope Francis' openness to the legal recognition of same-sex unions.

Let me comment, knowing that I need to do more research, and I reserve the right to edit or change my comments based on better information coming in.

First of all, these are the comments of a pastor not an official statement of the Pope that is binding on all the faithful.  The comments are significant.  Yet this is not a change in Church teaching.  Pope Francis is commenting on a pastoral situation to an interviewer for a documentary, not writing a binding papal encyclical!  So this is more commentary than teaching.

Pope Francis is a merciful pastor.  This is nothing new.  He wants to reach out to outsiders.  His heart breaks for those who feel alienated by the Church most responsible for giving Jesus' mercy.  He knows most people, especially the young, are put off by the Church's teaching that marriage is only between a man and a woman, even as that teaching is right, confirmed in natural and divine law, and by Jesus Himself.  He wants to reach out, not stay closed in.

Pope Francis wants to reach out, and to change Himself as much as He can, imitating the self-sacrificial love of Christ.  He does this while also living in the tension that love and truth must never be separated, for to separate truth from love is to lose both.

Pope Francis knows that he cannot equivocate same-sex unions to marriage between a man and a woman.  This would be confusing and harmful to everyone, including those Pope Francis wants to reach out to.  He cannot equivocate.  Still, in these recent comments, he might see that the Church can still uphold its teaching on marriage without actively opposing same-sex unions.  

The Church might recognize that naturally, persons of the same-sex can be drawn into deep friendships of love and support that can be good for them and others.  These potentially could be recognized, without undermining the Church's responsibility to safeguard and promote traditional marriage.

The Church could potentially maintain her commitment to fostering chastity and the reservation of sexual intimacy to its most fruitful expression in marriage, without having to actively oppose recognition of same-sex unions legally.  Those relationships would not enjoy any special recognition in the Church, just not a pro forma outright rejection, which is what most same-sex couples feel now.

Again, the Holy Father is trying to show us how to be good pastors, rich in mercy.  He is not trying to confuse or destroy the essential goods of marriage.  He is not trying to change Catholic sacramentality ormorality.  He is trying as try might, to find a place in God's family for all God's children who want to live and love as Jesus did.

I do not know if this approach will work.  I do not mind that he is exploring what is possible.

grandpa and grandma for president

Homily

Funeral Mass for Eulalia Goetz Ochs

Sacred Heart, Park, KS

19 October 2020

I wish the Chiefs hadn't won the Super Bowl.  There, I said it.

After 50 years of frustration, the experience of the Chiefs winning was bound to be like dying and going to heaven.

Grandpa, and now grandma, have taken it a bit too literally.

Things were better when Chiefs were losers and grandma and grandpa were alive.  Their passing  in the same year is a huge loss.

But today we celebrate that their lives are a huge win!  Much bigger than any Super Bowl win could be.

Grandma and Grandpa won an incomparable victory in the game of life.

Give them a trophy!  Better yet, we should elect them president.

With the world around us being torn apart by danger, lies, fear, hate, distance and division, Leo and Eulalia leave the opposite as their legacy.  A safe home, an honest living, giving more than they took, an experience of love and forgiveness, doing it together.

What grandma and grandpa did is the recipe for fixing everything that is wrong in the world.

We should elect them president.

At the very least, today by our prayers we vote for their election into Jesus' Hall of Fame.  They will get in on the first ballot!

Plant seeds.  Make a commitment. Choose life.  Build a home.  Go to Church.  Make time for family. Trust God.  See if He gives a good harvest.  Rinse and repeat, day after day, for two days short of 70 years.  Then watch it add up!  Those who are faithful in small matters will be given great responsibilities, says the Lord!

Look at the beautiful mess, the bountiful harvest that came from the seed of their faithful marriage.  It's bigger than any Vegas jackpot they ever imagined.  

I dare any one of us to do it better.  Grandma and grandpa weren't perfect.  They never claimed to be.  Yet they did their best and did it the right way.  The door was always open.  There was always food.  There was always time!  I got to know my family, because Grandma and Grandpa created a home.

I'll never be happier than a Thanksgiving or Christmas at Grandma and Grandpa Ochs's.  I could have spent a lifetime playing football in the yard.  Heck, I was so happy I even learned to like cauliflower salad, which is more than I can say for Aunt Jean.

Grandma and grandpa.  Nobody did it better than you.  We are blessed to be your family.  We love you and miss you.  I am sorry the Chiefs won the stupid Super Bowl.

On the plains of western Kansas you filled up what Dorothy meant when she said there is no place like home.

Give them a trophy.  Elect them president.  Let them hit the jackpot.  They deserve it all.

There is no place like home.  Be at rest and at peace, Leo and Eulalia, in the home Jesus has prepared for you in the heart of our Father.  Amen.

What do you worship?

Homily

29th Sunday in Ordinary Time A

18 October 2020

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG +JMJ +m

What do you worship?

I pray for God's sake it's not politics, the presidency, or money.  These are a huge trap.  Jesus escapes the trap so easily in today's Gospel.  Do with the coin whatever the hell you want.  I don't care.  It doesn't matter, especially when compared to returning to God what is God's.

What does matter instead?  You matter.  You mean everything, for God's image is inscribed on you.  You belong to Him, so much so that He cherishes you even at this very moment.  So you are what matters, so much more than politics, the presidency or money.  Thus, your chance to return to God what is God's is what ultimately matters.

What a great Gospel we have for election season!  I got my ballot in the mail yesterday!  It's time to vote, folks!  Your vote matters a lot.  Catholics must vote, without exception.  For even if there are no good choices, your conscience must be formed to choose the least evil.  Politics, the presidency and money do dramatically affect the common good. We are responsible for our neighbor.  We must vote.

Yet your vote does not matter nearly as much as how you're living your life.  It never will.  So don't make an idol of voting or of politics.

Don't ever let me catch you as a disciple of Jesus complaining about politics, the presidency or money.  We have to be better than that.  Jesus says 'whatever' to being trapped by these things, and so must we.  If our politics are bad it's because we are bad.  Politics reflect who we are and where we are.  If we complain we are no better than the hypocrites of the Gospel.  You do not get to whine, revolt and tear down unless you are ready to repair, replace and rebuild.

Jesus teaches us how to repair, replace and rebuild.  Return to God what belongs to God.

Politics and the politics of religion will never be able to do anything until and unless you and I become more like God in whose image we are created.  A good country cannot and will not ever exist without faithful citizens who are givers, not takers.  A just society is impossible without citizens who dare to pursue truth, goodness and charity, ultimately because it fulfills their destiny to return to God what is God's.

That is why freedom of religion is the #1 freedom the United States can give its citizens.  It's not just a freedom of the church from the state, it's the freedom for religion to do it's best work! What is the best work?  It is the work of faith in forming responsible and virtuous leaders that our communities so desperately need.

That's the kind of voter you have to be. Not one who blames, but one who embraces responsibility.  Not one who complains, but one who works like crazy to grow in God's likeness. You have to be a giver not a taker.  You need to be that citizen who knows how to multiply your gifts and give them away, rather than fighting over the last slice of the pie.  You do this not because you have to, but because you want to.  You are made to return to God what is God's.

I'm not going to insult your responsibility by telling you how to vote.  Figure it out, and do the right thing.

I am going to ask you to do something more more important than voting, something that will make a bigger difference long after this election is over.

What do you worship?

I pray for God's sake that you do not worship politics, the presidency or money.

I invite you to worship the image of God inscribed on you, by laying hold of the gift of your life.  Choose the fullness of life taught us by Jesus our Lord, for yourselves and everyone around you.

Return to God what is God's.

kiss me, you fool

 Homily

Fr. Robert Pflumm Funeral Mass

16 October 2020

St. Joseph Parish Shawnee

AMDG +JMJ +m

Kiss me, you fool!

I know a line from Gone with the Wind is not the most orthodox way to start a funeral homily for a Catholic priest.  But Fr. Bob was unique.  It's the line I'll most remember from Fr. Bob.  Kiss me, you fool.  Sounds scandalous, I know.  But it's chaste and innocent enough.  It's the flirt that Fr. Bob always used to get off the hook.

Kiss me, you fool!

Hollywood and the Gospel melted together for Fr. Bob.  He was a unique cocktail of a priest.  The recipe?  Equal parts Bing Crosby, Don Johnson, Vidal Sassoon and Bob Barker.  Shaken and stirred in persona Christi capitis.

Sounds complicated, but it wasn't.  To know and love Fr Bob was to learn how simple he was. And how simple he kept things.

Be yourself.  Follow through on whatever swing you take.  You might get away with it.  Or better, God might make something beautiful with it.

Fr. Bob wanted to be beautiful, I'll give him that.  I was jealous as hell of him.  Driving around like a movie star, whipping in and out of Mass like it was a red carpet cameo - flipping punchy stories and phrases as everyone swooned about how young and good-looking he was.  Good grief.  It was over the top sometimes.

He had is routine at a restaurant down to a science.  He would order a Ketel One on the rocks with two olives, an extra glass of ice and a water back.  The server would always get it wrong, then the food never came out hot enough, and Fr. Bob would throw a fit.  Then he would flirt to get out of it.  Kiss me, you fool.  Worked every darn time.  

Fr. Bob wasn't politically correct.  He was too much a throwback for the BLM or me-too movements.  He would rather be dead that woke.

He was going to be himself.  What he lacked in meekness or mortification he made up for in spades with conviction.  If he wanted to tell a kid to thank his parents for his braces as a penance, he told him.  If he didn't want to go to Prairie Star because it would get dirt on his car, he didn't go.  If he wanted you to know how good-looking his family was, or how fabulous his famous twin sisters were, you knew it.  If he wanted to gently touch your cheek or give you a sweet, innocent kiss, he did.  If he wanted to flirt, he flirted.  If he wanted to blow-dry his hair, he blew it.  If he liked a new car, he usually waited a couple years . . . . no, he bought it!  If he wanted to tell you to hurry up, he did.  If he wanted to say a fast Mass or deliver a punch homily, he did it.

I can't believe how it all came off.  The priesthood of Jesus Christ on tour through Rodeo Drive, Pebble Beach and Camelback Mountain, seen through the windshield of a new car as clean as the Immaculate Conception.

There won't be another like him.  At times he seemed untouchable.

Except I got to touch him.  As I held his hand Sunday and told him I loved him, I was there for a lot of people.  We all loved him.  We were all touched by him.  We will all miss him.  Praise God for the beautiful life that was Fr. Bob's.

Kiss me, you fool! Keep it simple, silly.  Be yourself.  Follow through on whatever swing you take.  For 90 years and for 60 if you dare.  You may not only get away with it.  God might do something beautiful with it.

What are you preparing for?

 Homily

28th Sunday in Ordinary Time A

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

11 October 2020

AMDG +JMJ +m

I can handle anything that comes my way.  I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.  That's quite a boast, St. Paul!

You can handle anything?  If so, what do you think is the worst thing that could happen to you?

The worst thing that can happen is to become selfish.  That's not my answer.  It's the answer of a Phi Delt freshman from Bible Study this week.  He said the worst thing that could happen to him is his becoming selfish.

I can't think of a better answer, can you?.

For to become selfish is to become incapable of marriage.   Yet marriage is everything.  Marriage is the ground of all reality, the source of life, the meaning of our lives, our constant calling, the fulfillment of all desire, and our highest destiny!

As we see clearly in the Gospel, to fail to RSVP for marriage, or to crash the wedding unprepared, is the worst thing that can happen.  To fail at marriage means death.

So, don't let the worst thing happen to you, ok?  Don't become selfish and incapable of marriage!

What are you preparing for?  That's this week's pivotal question!

I pray that I'm preparing for marriage.  Yes, as a celibate priest, I am vowed not to marry a woman.  I am not called to that unique participation in, and sign of, the ultimate marriage between Christ the eternal bridegroom and His bride the Church.  Yet I am no less called to marriage.  

So are you, whatever your state in life.  For nothing changes the world more than marriage.   Look around!  Divorce is always trying to have the last say.  The evil one is so good at dividing heaven and earth, Christ and His Church, husband and wife, body and soul, truth and love, justice and mercy, faith and reason.  In marriage the two become one, and new life results.  In divorce, they are divided, and the result is death!

You are invited to participate in marriage, in bringing and holding these things together!

What are you preparing for?  It has to be marriage.  Nothing could be more important.  I dare you to come up with a better answer.

You are invited right now to a wedding Feast the Father is throwing for His Son.  You are invited to be married directly to God now, and to consummate this communion by eating the body and drinking the blood of the eternal bridegroom!

The worst thing is to become selfish and incapable of this marriage.  The worst thing is to fail to RSVP or to try to crash this wedding unprepared.

What are you preparing for? 

how do you handle rejection?

 Homily

27th Sunday in Ordinary Time A

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

St. Francis of Assisi, pray for us!

AMDG +JMJ +m

Rejection stings. Right up there with betrayal!  I want people to like me gosh darn it!  Why doesn't everybody like me?  Why am I not everyone's favorite?

I was made to be chosen.  It stings badly when I'm not.

How do I handle rejection?

I've toughened up a little over the years.  I don't care what people think as much as I used to.  I'm not nearly as afraid of conflict, or of being disliked.  Jesus says woe to you when everyone thinks well of you . . it's a sign that you have no spine!

Still I want everyone to admire Fr. Mitchel - it's part of why I became a priest - to be admired.

Yet rejection is something we can't avoid, and even perhaps, something we are to prefer

God handles a ton of rejection, and so must I.  Rejection is all over today's Scriptures.  Rejection hurts God.  His own Son gets killed by my rejection!  In today's parable, God does everything possible to be accepted - He shares everything in this beautiful vineyard, even His own Son.

But I don't want to share.  I want it all.  I want it all for me.

Out of sheer greed the tenants are willing to kill.  That's weak sauce my friends!  Because I won't share, I will kill.  Me me me me mine mine mine mine leads to violence!

Sound familiar?  It describes precisely our culture of death.  My body.  My choice.  My rights. My reality.  My truth.  My way.  And I demand not just tolerance for my obsession with privacy, I demand affirmation, even and as I kill another.  Me me me me mine mine mine mine - results in the culture of death.

All because I won't share.  All because I say mine instead of ours.

Listen to these same words spoken by the Son from the cross as He is rejected by the culture of death.  My body.  My choice.  My right.  My reality.  My truth.  My way.

In response to rejection based on selfishness, He shares all of Himself.  When rejected, He becomes pure gift.

This stone that the culture of death has rejected is the cornerstone for the culture of life. By the Lord has this been done, and it is wonderful in our eyes!

Will I flip the culture of death into the culture of life as Jesus' disciple?  If I fail, this awesome responsibility to live life to the full will be taken from me and given to someone else. To someone who will cherish the gift of life, who will defend it in its most vulnerable forms, who will multiply and share it, who will teach it to grow into the likeness of God.

What is my choice?

It's a good time to choose.  The signs of the times leave life and death hanging in the balance.  What a year 2020 is!

If I do not choose life, God will let the culture of death play out and give me what I choose - a wretched death.

If you courageously choose the path of life, there will be rejection.  The cost of reversing the culture of death is right above and before us as we worship at Holy Mass today.

Rejection hurts.  But it can be flipped by faith into new life.

How do I handle rejection?

will you give up your spot?

 Mission Formation Talk

4 October 2020

Memorial of St. Francis of Assisi

The longer I'm in this Jesus business, the more jacked-up it seems.

As the Father has sent me, so I send you.

This plan bothers the crap out of me.  It bothers me more everyday.  It's just the worst plan you can imagine.  As the Father has sent me, so I send you.

Jesus leaves his home and his status in the heart of the Father, to be born homeless into a pile of crap that is our reality, only to end up bloodied and humiliated.

You want to send me - send us?  Like that?

You want us to go announce peace?  I say peace out, Jesus!  No wonder the laborers are so few.  Who would sign up for that job?

Except that you did.  I did,  We did.  Welcome to Mission Formation.

I was duped.  You were duped. We let ourselves be duped.

Fools for Jesus - if we accept Jesus' mission just as he offers it, can there be any other tagline?

You thought you were going to a party school.  Now it's your mission field.  

As the Father has sent me, so I.  Send.  You.  To KU.  Rock Chalk!

Jesus needs you.  Not because he need needs you.  Not because there is no other way.  But because this is his favorite way.  He could choose not to need you but he chooses not to not need you.  I know - that hardly makes sense.  And that's the point.  I don't really know what he's thinking.  His strategic plan for mission is super jacked up.  In his messed-up, paradoxical, my way is not your way kind of game-planning, he has devised a mission at KU in which He delights in watching you fumble around and screw things up, and I'll be darned if things don't turn out better than if He had done it all Himself.

Jesus needs you.  Not because He need needs you. But because He delights in needing you, in seeing you come alive by his needing you.

As the Father has sent me, so I send you!

The mission is super-jacked up, but there's more.

Jesus needs you also to fail.  On purpose.  The instruction  manual - build a kingdom with no money, no authority and no weapons.  Build our kingdom by being willing victims, lambs among wolves. Let everyone mock you.  Announce peace and a new kingdom by swallowing up violence with poverty, humility, generosity and mercy.

The plan will fail. Guaranteed! But that's the point.  It's supposed to.  He sends you to fail on purpose.  He needs you to watch the plan not work.  Then you get to say - peace out! After your time at KU is over.

What a pathetic strategy . . . but that too is the point .. pathos means to suffer.  The strategy is to fail, and to suffer.

As the Father has sent me, so I send you.

One more jacked-up thing about this mission.  The place that you have right now belongs to someone else.  Jesus gives up his status in the heart of God so that you can have that place.  He puts Himself on the outside to put me on the inside.  He loses so that I can win.  He is rejected so that I can favored.  He is bound so that I can be free.  He dies for me to live.

As the Father has sent me, so I send you.

Your place here at SLC belongs to someone else.  So does mine.  Wait a second, you might say, it's hard enough to feel at home at KU, to fit into this community, and I'm not even sure I have a place at St. Lawrence yet, and you're telling me I have to vacate?

Yep I don't care if you are God's gift to Slow Drip, or you're Sr. Raffaellas' very favorite spiritual directee, or if you're the GOAT at Focus Discipleship, or if you're clever enough to fool Dr. Murray - even if you're the greatest chaplain St. Lawrence has ever seen . . your place belongs to someone else.

Yep, in this jacked-up mission it's the only way this thing works.  The only things we have are those we give away.  It's why missionary discipleship is not an oxymoron, it's the only thing that makes sense.  The follower is also the one sent.  Having a place and having a mission are two-sides of the same coin.  In God's logic you can't have one without the other.  You don't know how to live unless you know how to die.  You can't keep something until and unless you give it away.

I have been blessed with this awesome  mission to my alma mater, of having the responsibility to shepherd this campus into the fullness of reality, truth, goodness, relationship and life - to guide the best stories and to lay hold of the sacred opportunity and terrible responsibility that we all have here together to grow into the likeness of God during our time on the Hill. 

But this mission will never be mine unless I give it to you.  And it'll never work until you take it from me, and give it to somebody else.

In our playbook for this mission, we call this student ownership. It's right in line with the jacked-up, paradoxical, strategic planning Jesus outlines in the Gospel.

As the Father has sent me, so I send you.

Today I choose to need you, not to need need you.  But I choose not to not need you.  I choose to believe in you and to delight in needing you.  This thing doesn't work unless you make this mission yours, believe in this jacked-up plan, embrace your role, and then go find someone to take your place.

As the Father has sent me, so I send you.