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.