are you in the fight?

 

are you in the fight?

Homily

2nd Day in the Octave of Christmas

Solemnity of the Holy Family

26 December 2021

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG +mj

Are you in the fight?

What's the question I get most for Christmas?  Father, did you get to see you family?  I wonder why people care so much.  Is it anybody's business?

Actually, there can be no more important business than this question.  It's the second critical question of Christmas, asked on this Solemnity of the Holy Family.  Father, did you see your family.

I was having trouble recently naming both my desires and the desires God has for me.  My spiritual direction, knowing I have 4 brothers and 1 sister, suggested I ask my sister what she desires for me.  I said no thanks.  My family is all over the place.  I bet yours is too.  I am not in the habit of taking clues from my family.  Yet Fr. Paul had  made his point.  God reveals a lot of things through our families, whether we like it or not.

In today's Gospel, God reveals to the Holy Family how critical it is to be dedicated to prayer.   How critical it is that we show up at the temple together to pray.  Many things are revealed in this way. If I don't thank you all as much as I should for making the pilgrimage to Mass 58x a year in imitation of the Holy Family, forgive me!  It makes all the difference in the world.  Thank you for always being here.

Now back to my family.

I'm embarrassed by my family, and I bet I embarrass them plenty.  I was always nervous to bring girlfriends home to meet my family.  I didn't trust them to behave well.  My mom never liked my girlfriends.  She said I wasn't myself around them.  Now this isn't why I'm a priest, but it's a piece of the puzzle.  Mom knew plenty about me that I didn't know about myself.

This Christmas my sister played a nasty trick on us all.  My mom passed in 2001.  Shauna has been the only girl for quite a while in a family of boys.  She cares about all of us in her own way.  Naturally, when my mom's parents passed away from COVID in 2020, Shauna was the one to receive the box of memorabilia grandma had kept on our family.

For Christmas, Shauna copied and framed a letter grandma wrote to all of us after my mom passed.  The message was simple, but it wrecked us all.  Your mom was special.  We are so proud of her and your dad and all of you.  We hope that you will stay close to us and ask for anything you need, anything at all.  We love you so much.

Well, Norman started crying, and then everybody had to get up and get some fresh air before we could go on with Christmas.  Darn it anyway, Shauna. Why do you have to reveal God's desires for me in this way.  I hate it when my spiritual director is right.  Merry Christmas!

I'm embarrassed by my family, but I shouldn't be.  We're a motley crue.  We don't look good on social media.  I don't know that we resemble Jesus, Mary and Joseph that much.  But that's ok.  We're still in the fight.  That's what God really cares about.

Today's 2nd of the 4 great Christmas feasts is not about idealizing nor idolizing the Holy Family.  Yes, they are our great example and inspiration, and constant help. They are the icon of who God is.  He is a family, a communion of persons that share life and are for each other.  Jesus, Mary and Joseph will always and forever be the definition of what a Holy Family is.

Yet we do them a great disservice today if we adore them only from afar, if we put them on a shelf only to admire them.  The 2nd of the 4 great Christmas visits is from the Holy Family, who wish to appear this Christmas day not to be idealized but to be born right in the middle of our embarrassing families.  

For the Immaculate Conception, the only Begotten Son of God and the just man St. Joseph were refugees.  Jesus was born in the middle of it, and you know what I mean by IT.  He set off amber alerts.  What is more, this Holy Family fought!  Did you hear the sass in today's Gospel?  Holy sass, by the way.  Creative conflict on a divine plane!  Yet conflict nonetheless.  Son, what the heck were you thinking?  Mom, what were you thinking?

Oh yeah, and Jesus had ancestors and cousins just as sinful and dysfunctional as yours are.  I can only imagine the motley crue of characters in that infamous caravan. Those rascals who lost track of the Son of God.  Sounds alot like my family, and probably yours.

What makes a Holy Family, then?  It's not idealizing Jesus, Mary and Joseph, but relating to them, and sharing life with them.  It's inviting them into our mess, so that we might stay in the fight like they did.  Holy families don't give up on each other, hoping with absurd hope that the will of God can be accomplished in prayer.  That's all a Holy Family is.  

By all means if your family is toxic or abusive, or leading you away from God's will then set up the boundary you need to.  Yet insofar as your family is still in the fight, then keep fighting for each other.  Resist the urge to redefine family as tribalism, that my people are those who affirm me in every way.  That's not family.  Family is the people God gives to you to reveal His desires for you.  Is there anything more Christian than loving the people God gives to you, even when you don't like them?  That's what family is.  It is our best chance to learn how to live and love. That's why John Paul II said the future of the world must go through the family.

Let's fight for family.  That includes not giving up on the nuclear family of mom, dad and children, as that natural place where children learn and grow the best.  When this is not the norm we have to do the best we can.  What we can't do is cancel the nuclear family, and the great and unique good that can only come from the intimate communion of mom, dad and kids.  To cancel that is to give up on ourselves.  We can be for everybody and every family while still saying what's true. If this stance gets me canceled or makes me bigoted and hateful then so be it.  It's a good and truth worth fighting for.

Wherever you family is, to be a holy one is just to stay in the fight.  We celebrate the Holy Family today not as a idol but as helpers who want to appear right in the middle of your mess, if only you will continue to dare the risk of faith.

So let's end with the 2nd question of Christmas, regarding our families.

Will I stay in the fight?

will you hold me?

Homily

Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord

25 December 2021

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG +mj

Will you hold me?

Two years ago I confessed that all I wanted for Christmas was for someone to hold me.  I feel like it's what everyone wants for Christmas, even if we're afraid to ask for it.  Well, the homily failed. Everyone just felt sorry for me.  I got a lot of pity hugs after Mass.  

What I meant is that I want to be touched in that place where I feel nobody knows or cares, and nothing changes.  I want to feel God there, for only He can do something about that smallest, darkest and weakest part of me.  I want the touch of a Savior there.  It's what I will always want for Christmas.  I want to feel God.  I dare say it's what you want as well.

Last year to avoid the pity I asked a better question.  What does Jesus want for Christmas?  Remarkably, when I asked Him He shared that He feels that same way I do.  Jesus longs for human touch, my touch and yours.  He wants you to hold Him.  That's all He will ever want for Christmas.  Surprising?  Yes!  Yet maybe not unexpected.  Tonight's mystery of the Incarnation is about God's desire to be like us in every way.  This includes our longing for human touch.  This includes my most embarrassing desire, that I want someone to hold me.  Well guess what? Jesus does too.

On a retreat this summer I learned the God is so desperate for your touch that He disguises His desire as need.  On this very night that we celebrate Jesus as perfect gift, and the sole hope of the world, we see Him in abject need.  It's a clue of what's to come.  Jesus disguises desire in need.  He helps by being helpless.  He loves by begging for yours.

We could go on and on, and perhaps on this ridiculous night we should and we must.  Jesus feeds the world by lying in a feeding trough.  He restores life by getting Himself killed.  He finds us by hiding from us.  He crushes the enemy by becoming as weak as possible - by being poor and naked and homeless and cold and forsaken, et cetera ad nauseum unto infinity.  Jesus makes sense of our world by being an absolute joke, by being absurdly ridiculous.

He appears at Christmas now to reveal His desire disguised as need.  Jesus is born to reveal the ultimate Christmas question.  He comes tonight to ask you as desperately as he can - will you hold me?  He bets the success of Christmas on your answer, and your answer alone.

Try to talk Him out of this strategy if you can.  Let me know how that goes!  I know I can't figure it out, how my holding Jesus would make any difference.  How does His begging for my touch save the world?  Heck if I know!  Don't ask me!  Ask him, He is right here!  Dare to ask Him what difference your answer is about to make.

When I ask Him, His answers baffle me.  They bother me!  Jesus says that He can't save the world without me.  I mean, He could, but He chooses not to.  You see, for Him saving the world starts and ends with His saving you.  He can't imagine His life without you in it.  He could I guess, but He chooses not to go there.  He chooses never to go there.  He wants the future of the world to run through your faith, and your touch.  I'm sorry if you don't like that.  That's just the way it is.

So to save the world, Jesus chooses to start with me.  And to save me, He has to come up with the best disguise, and the greatest trick.  For my defenses against Him helping me are elite!  I bet yours are too.  When He offers to help, I'm quick to say I got this and I'm fine!  I defend well what I know, that place where I am alone, and I am afraid to give it up.  The only way past this fear is the trick of Christmas, a baby begging for my touch.  If I say yes, then in the great paradox of Christmas I discover that I am the one being held.  If I hold him, then both of our Christmas dreams come true.

The only thing left then is for my imagination to be consummated.  Tonight as I imagine touching Jesus in the circumstances of Bethlehem, that imagination passes deeper into reality as I put the Mass in Christmas.  In Christ's Mass, Bethlehem is transformed into the intimate details of my life.  The cave becomes this little chapel and then the sacred space of my body.  The manger gives way to this altar, and then to the space I have prepared for Him in my heart.

Bethlehem becomes more real tonight than ever in history, right here, right now as the baby becomes bread, when Jesus asks me even more desperately from the Eucharist - will you hold me?

Jesus will not change the world without you. Try to talk Him out of it, but that's just the way it is.  It's his desire, His Christmas wish, that the hope of the world passes through your touch.  He trusts your answer now to the ultimate  Christmas question.

Will you hold me?

what's bothering me?

Homily

3rd Sunday of Advent C2

12 December 2021

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG +mj

Are you ready?  I don't like this questions.  I never have.  The Church today however invites me to greet this question not with anxiety, but with deep joy!

Where do I lack joy?  That's the pivotal question for the 3rd Week of Advent.  For the church announces that there is always cause for joy, no matter what!

My anxiety is in 3 places as I approach Christmas this year.  I worry about people not coming to Mass, and not knowing how to fix that.  How did we get to the point where so many are inoculated to the faith?  So many do not feel the nuptial dimension of our faith.  The Lord is near because we are married to God, both physically in communion and spiritually through the indwelling of the Spirit.  Yet so few feel it.  So few sense how life could be so much fuller through our marriage to God, consummated when we worship together at Mass.  I lose joy when I think of the lack of Eucharistic amazement.  I don't know how to solve this.

I lose joy when I see the lack of reverence for others, especially in myself.  I ignore people I'm not interested in.   I prefer my tribe to outsiders.  Yet this life of a real Christian demands that we reverence each person that God knows, loves and desires, especially if they are not like us!  Love your enemies admits of no exceptions.  When John the Baptist was asked how to increase joy and expectation, his advice was practical.  Welcome God in your neighbor.  Be better to others.  Be generous and don't use anybody.  If you do this you will find joy!

Finally, I lose joy when I give in to the negativity that is out there.   The question of faith is not why there are so many bad people, but why there are so many good.  The good news of Advent is that the Lord wants to visit his people now more than ever, right where we are!  These are not the worst of times!  It's hubris to think so.  I lose joy when I give into the blame game, instead of praying for the Lord to come and make all things new.

Am I ready for my best Christmas?  Yes I am, especially if I welcome that the Lord is near, and wanting to draw nearer.  This indeed is cause of constant and great rejoicing!

What am I anxious about?

Homily

1st Sunday of Advent C2

St. Lawrence Catholic Center at the University of Kansas

28 November 2021

AMDG +mj

The goal is Pentecost.  Yes, you heard me right.  I'm not making a liturgical snafu.  The end of Advent is not Christmas.  It's Pentecost.  We must begin with the end in mind, and as sweet as it will be to celebrate the mystery of the Incarnation at Christmas, things do not and cannot end there.  Advent prepares for 3 comings of Christ.  His coming in the flesh in history, which we mark at Christmas, is the first. Next is His coming through His Spirit after accomplishing the work of redemption in the paschal mystery. This second coming reaches its apex not even at Easter, but at Pentecost, when the fullness of God's Spirit is revealed and gifted.  Then at last, is His coming at the end of time.  So the goal of today, the start of something new at Advent, is not Christmas!  I repeat, the goal is not Christmas!  It is at the very least Pentecost, if not something more.  So let us begin with the end in mind.  It's nice that we prepare for God to join the human race.  It is more to prepare for the redemption of that same race with a full celebration liturgically of the Christian mysteries.

So come, Lord Jesus come!  That is the great cry of Advent. Come in history!  Come right now!  Come again!  Advent can and must jolt us out of our complacency.  Instead we want to say hold on!  I'm not ready! Give me a minute! Stay away, please!  Advent flips this all to human procrastination on its head.  Advent could not be more simple.  Come, Lord Jesus!  Come Lord of history!  Come Lord of my life!  Come and be born in my mess.  Come and be born in my heart, in my family, in my Church and in my world!  Advent is a cry!  Advent is a dare!  Come sooner Lord Jesus!  Come closer Lord Jesus! I dare you to come, Lord!  This time I actually mean it.

A guy approached me recently with the mess he was in, so of course I asked him how things came to be this way.  He was refreshingly honest.  It's simple, Father.  I'm a simple guy.  I like new and shiny things, and they get me in trouble!  His witness reminded me of how great a difference there is between circumstantial and substantial change. Who doesn't like new things, superficially?  Who doesn't want a clean break and a fresh start?  Who doesn't like a new chance, like the one Advent promises to us this weekend each year?

Yet none of us want substantial change.  To want change from the inside out, at the level of the soul and our affections, takes a terrifying readiness for cleaning house and renovations!   Our pivotal question this week is this:  what are you anxious about?  If I'm honest, I'm anxious about change!  It's terrifying, just as Jesus says it is and always will be.  I've worked so hard to get an ounce of control, and now Jesus wants to come this Advent and wreck the whole project!  No wonder I tell him not now, not in this way.  Stay away please!  Give new new and shiny things on the outside, but leave me alone on the inside.

Jesus desires a passionate, personal, particular and powerful visit to you in this new year.  He chooses this day to stand at your door and knock.  He begs you not to be afraid of His visit, and the substantial change that will mean for you.  What is your heart telling you today?  Do you want Him to come?

What miracle do I want to see?

Homily

Solemnity of All Saints

1 November 2021

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG +mj

What miracle do I want to see?

Miracles can be spookier than ghosts.  So is holiness.  Halloween gives way to All Saints today.  I dare say today is scarier than yesterday.  For the fun of pretending to be someone I'm not gives way to the call to become who I was created to be.  It's easier to don costumes than to wash my robe in the blood of the Lamb.

I want to see the miracle of my becoming a saint!  That desire is still in me.  It's still in you.  The miracle of transubstantiation in front of us, as improbable as it may be, dares yet more!  The grace of the Eucharist invites the miracle of my becoming a saint.  If only I dare faith.  If only I do not get scared.

How terribly awesome is the capacity to become a saint, which is nothing less than to love like God!

My freedom is an intimidating gift.  It's much safer to pretend to be someone of something else rather than who I am.  It's easier to say I don't believe.  I'm not sure.  I don't care.  It doesn't really matter.  Leave me alone.  Good enough is good enough.

Yet these are the lies the saints never believed.  Their witness haunts me.  Their encouragement intimidates me.  If they are real I have no excuse and no escape.  Holiness really is the scariest thing of all.  

Yet here I am again on All Saints.  I'm confronted by the miracle of the holy ones, who were once just like me.  Because they are real, I know the greatest tragedy today is if I do not become a saint.  I know the most urgent thing is whether I try to become a saint.

This is not to make myself the center of the universe.  It's to see and feel and receive and answer the universal call to holiness that comes to each of us. This call is nothing if it is not utterly urgent and personal.

Holiness is scary.  Beware of the 'phog'.  This great cloud of witnesses wishes to answer the pivotal question for me today!  What miracle do you want to see, dear saints of God?  They want to see me become a saint.  They pray for me a love that casts out my fear of my deepest potential and desire.

How well do I love myself?

Homily

31st Sunday in Ordinary Time B

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG +mj

How well do I love myself?

This is a tricky pivotal question, even if it's an essential part of the two greatest commandments.  Jesus says I can't love my neighbor unless I know how to love myself.  Yet the very nature of love is not self-centered.  Love is a gift of self to others.  To love is to put someone's will above your own.  So it's tricky.  How do I love myself in the right way?

You've been a Christian long enough to know the wrong way, I hope.  To feed my selfish ego, or to make myself the center of the universe, is not the way to love of self.  Loving self is not to disregard others.  It is not to make myself a God.

Love is free.  It's a grace.  It's a grace with a responsibility.  To love myself must mean to receive the gift of my life, and to be the best steward of that gift.  To love myself is to know my life is stamped with the very image of God.  I have a capacity to be His child and to grow in His likeness.  Ultimately, I have the chance to love like Him.  This is the very heart of truth and goodness and all reality.  Today's scriptures take dead aim at the ultimate meaning of my life.

To love myself is to nourish this incredible gift and capacity.  Because my potential to love is so great, it's ok to prioritize my health that preserves my freedom.  This includes my physical, spiritual, mental, emotional, relational and psychological health.  It's a sin to intentionally damage my health and thus my freedom to love.  It's a strength, not a weakness, to ask for help to stay healthy.  This is what it means to love one's self.

I struggle most with trusting that I deserve someone to take care of me.  I bet you do too.  It's where I most often fail to love myself.  I try to earn affection and to fix myself to the point of exhaustion.  The approach is futile.  It can backfire in so many ways and lead not to self-love but self-hatred.  There is some health that can only be received in relationship to others.  It's a strength, not a weakness, to trust that I deserve someone to take care of me.

How well do I love myself?  I'm not sure.  Like most all of us here, I think I am the exception to the rule.  I don't trust that I deserve love, so I do lots of prideful things to earn affection.  It backfires every time.

Yet I am getting better.  I hope you are too.  I have received some incredible consolations this last year from Jesus Himself.  I've heard new things from Him in prayer that have helped me immensely.  He's told me He's sorry for those who have hurt me.  He's told me He's sorry that things have to be this way.  He's told me He's sorry for the ways I have felt used.  Most of all, He has revealed how much He wants to share life with me, and how He doesn't know how to live without me.

The result is that I am more free to love God and neighbor than ever.  Why is this?  It's because I'm finally allowing God to love me first.  

Honestly, if I don't trust that I am loved first, what chance do I have to be free enough to love God with all my heart, mind, soul and strength?  For me the key to loving myself is letting myself be loved.

Maybe that's why even these greatest commandments of the law give way to Jesus' new commandment to us His disciples.  Love one another as I have first loved you.

Let's play with this tricky pivotal question this week.  How well do I love myself?

How am I affecting people?

Homily

Thursday of the 29th Week in Ordinary Time BI

AMDG +mj

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

How am I affecting people?  Jesus is today's Gospel says that before He can be the true Prince of Peace, He must be a source of division.  A lasting peace can't be built on tolerance and affirmation.  It must come from people playing for keeps, who take the risk of faith necessary to pursue the fullness of life.  Is there anything about my life that makes anyone else uncomfortable?  If not, I might ask why today.  I don't need to go around picking fights or starting arguments.  Yet the goal of my life is neither to get everyone to like me.  Rather, it's to be who I was created to be, without excuse or exception.  Guess what?  That might offend someone.  In fact, it probably will.

what is good leadership?

Homily

29th Sunday in Ordinary Time B

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

17 October 2021

AMDG +mj

What makes a good leader?  Wow, what a question!  There are countless answers in today's scriptures.  Let's begin with a brief litany.  A leader must be willing to suffer, to sympathize and to serve.  Anything less is a bad leader.  May I suggest something at the onset?  If you're going to be a bad leader, please don't be a leader at all.  Bad leadership hurts people, and we've seen enough of that.

Yet not leading isn't really an option for me, is it?  The prophetic dimension of my life, begun in baptism and hence confirmed by the full gifts of the Spirit, requires that I not shy away from leadership.  What I do affects others.  That's just how it is.  I run from this to my own peril.  Ask Jonah if running away works!  The gift of my life comes with a responsibility to serve.  Again, I avoid this to my own detriment.

I have to lead somehow.  So I may as well find a way to be a good leader.  Hence today's pivotal question.  What makes a good leader?

When I ask KU students how I can be a better father, the answer is utterly simple.  They want to see me more.  Father, just spend time with us.  Good leadership can be as simple as answering the bell.  My pivotal word for this year is 'here.'  I don't want to be a dad who is gone or busy, but one who is here.

My favorite author on leadership is Pat Lencioni.  He has done a series of fables on leadership, starting with the five dysfunctions of a team.  He has started a Catholic apostolate called the Amazing Parish.  He knows pastors are notoriously unprepared and unsupported as leaders, so he helps by coaching priests to lead through prayer and vulnerability.

Pat keeps it simple too.  Pray with people.  Stay in touch with them.  Be visible.  Let them see you sweat.  In a nutshell, Pat would say that if people trust you they will follow you to the ends of the earth.  

His latest books is called The Motive.  There is only one good reason to lead.   It's if you want to grow perfect in love, putting others before yourself.  That's the motive.  If your leadership is about you, you will hate it. The criticism will destroy you.  Leadership has to have as its deepest motive love for others.  

I have to lead. So do you.  It's in your bones.  It's your calling.  You affect people.  The gift of your life comes with a responsibility to make a difference.

May I be affected by Jesus' words on leadership at this turn of my life.  I lead to serve, and to give my life as a ransom for many.

What brings me life?

Homily

21st Sunday in Ordinary Time BI

Transferred Feast of St. Lawrence

Opening Weekend at KU

22 August 2021

AMDG +mj  

What if I were to serve today my own blood, and jerky made from my arm that I just cut off?  What if I said that unless you gnaw on my arm and throw back my blood, you're dead to me?  How many of you would get in line?  How many of you would leave?

So we let ourselves be affected by Jesus' most disgusting sermon, and his most challenging.  The guy is nuts.  He doubles down on his most offensive sermon, causing most to walk away.

I'll have to admit I don't know why I'm still here.  I don't know why you haven't canceled Jesus.  It's the biggest risk, the greatest act of faith, and the most ridiculous thing, to respond each week to the most disgusting invitation.  Jesus chased a lot of people away by saying exclusive and challenging things, but this takes the cake.  Unless you gnaw on my flesh and drink my blood you are dead to me.

It's way beyond the offense Paul makes by saying wives must be subordinate to their husbands in everything.  Paul's words in their context would only have shocked men, not women, who are being told to wake up to their leadership responsibilities and to bathe their wives in sacrifice, even as Christ does for his bride the Church.  Still, the words pale in comparison to what Jesus says.

What brings me life?  That is the first pivotal question of the semester.  These disgusting words of Jesus bring me life, as much or more than any other!  He calls his disgusting words spirit and life, for they are an invitation to live as God does, to live differently, to live fully, a life only possible through faith.  The flesh is of no avail.  Everyone who thinks and acts in ways they can control, manage or measure will die.  Yet it is the Spirit that gives life.

That's what gets us fired up at St. Lawrence. It is the risk of faith.  It is the improbable story of a student courageously living their faith in college, and applying these words of life to the experiences, relationships and learning that takes place at KU.  It's what brings us life, guiding great stories.

What brings you life?  I dare say it is those who go for it, who make the risk of faith, never moreso that each Sunday when we decide not to be offended by Jesus most challenging sermon, but to be affected by it.  I invite you to engage, not cancel your faith, and to courageously walk the path that leads to life!

Where am I from?

Homily

19th Sunday in Ordinary Time BI

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

8 August 2021

AMDG +mj

I am from heaven.

I've actually tried this answer out on people.  They think I'm full of myself.  They don't believe me, whether or not it's true.  It's not what they want to hear.

Father, where are you from?  I'm from heaven, can't you tell by looking?  Can't you see?  I try answering like Jesus, as his disciple, as one incorporated into His body and conformed to His image by baptism.   Yet people don't want to hear it.

My name is Mitchel!  It's a take on Michael, which means one who is like God!  Again, can't you see it?Can't you see I am from heaven? Whoever has seen me has seen God!

No, Father.  We mean where were you born?  Who are your parents?  I was born from above.  I have been adopted into the family of God.  My mother and my brothers are those who do the will of God!

They don't want to hear it.  They want to know that I am from Hoxie, Kansas, second son of Elmer and Yvonne's six children. That's what they want to know.

Try telling someone you're from heaven and let me know how it goes!

My dear friends, we are in the middle of Jesus' most annoying sermon.  The guy knew how to teach and preach.  He could make people angry.  He could command attention!  Where did he get all this!  We might tend to think his most effective sermon was the Sermon on the Mount.  You know that one.  If your eye cause you to sin, pluck it out!  Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.  Yea, that one.  The one calling me to be perfect, as God is perfect.   The one that makes us exasperated like Elijah in the first reading.  I have no chance to finish this race.

Yet that's not his most annoying sermon.  The Bread of Life discourse is.  It bothered people like none other.  How can He say He is from heaven?  His parents are right here!  How can He give us His flesh to eat.  Especially for a Jew, that is the most offensive thing imaginable!

When pressed Jesus doubles down, and says I might also drink His blood.  How can I not be bothered by this?  Jesus is insane.  How can I believe?  What if I brought a quart of my blood to Mass and told you all you must drink it.  How many of you would remain?  What if I chopped off my arm and said you have to eat it lest you die.  How many of you would remain?

Yet this is precisely what Jesus is asking us to believe in, and to remain in.  It is the most bothersome, offensive and incredulous thing He could possibly say.  It is his hardest sermon.  Thankfully, with the Assumption next week, we are spared the end of the homily, when he insists we gnaw on him like a piece of jerky, leading nearly all his disciples to abandon him.

Will I let myself be bothered by Jesus' hardest sermon?  Will I dare by foolish enough to say I am born from above, and fed by bread from heaven?  I can certainly say there are things that bother me much more than the absurdity of the Eucharist.  The nun sitting right behind me during 30 days of silent Holy Hours cleared her throat every 30 seconds.  Can you imagine what I wanted to scream at that sweet nun if I could have talked?

I get bothered by people eating at meetings.  I'm annoyed by people who sit on counter tops and tables!  Those are for preparing food and for eating, not for your backsides people! That's gross.  Oh I can be bothered for sure.

What's crazy for me is to see that those who didn't believe were more bothered by Jesus' words than we who believe.  Will you let the absurd reality of the Eucharist affect you?

If so you might have a new answer to some pivotal questions. Where am I from?  Where am I going?  Do I have what it takes to get there? 

Who's for dinner?

Homily

18th Sunday in Ordinary Time BI

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

1 August 2021

AMDG +mj

Who is for dinner?

Yes, you heard me right.  The pivotal question is not what's for dinner.  It's not who is coming for dinner.  It's who is for dinner!  For I think it's the ultimate question from today's Gospel, and the Eucharist.  Just so, it can also serve as the ultimate question of life.  Who is for dinner?

The Israelites questioned the gift of manna - what is this?  Thus the precise meaning of the word manna - what is this?  Apparently it was a strange, if not also disappointing, replacement for the savory bread left behind in Egypt.  They grumbled.  What is this?  Yet as Jesus points out later, the better question is who is this?

Who is for dinner?  There's nothing more human than eating and drinking.  So it's a key and essential piece of the incarnation.  Jesus says it's why people are looking for him.  I feel badly for my poor mother.  We never stopped asking her relentlessly.  Mom - what's for dinner?  It's a question that sometimes made her cry, for she could never escape it.  Jesus invites his disciples to see food differently, and to relate to it not ultimately as a what is this, but as a who is this!

Jesus invites us to be in touch with a deeper hunger, for food that only serves the body perishes every time.  It's the food that feeds relationship that endures to eternal life. So who is for dinner?  It can easily be the central question of your life.  To have companions is to have those you break bread with.

Yet Jesus is offering more.  Much more!  I am the bread of life.  You feed on me.  Ultimately in the Eucharist, it's much more a question of who than what.  This is the work of God, to believe in who Jesus is and how He offers the gift of Himself.  

I can't believe that I am a wine snob!  Nothing is farther from my German wheat farming blue collar roots.  I like bread, mind you, but my favorite, most life-giving conversations now are usually over a glass of wine.  I have friends who love to explore wine, even the theology of it.  Sometimes in the hope of a great conversation a rare bottle is savored, and we are intensely interested in what is it!  How is it? Which makes me a snob.  My poor mother who used to clip and save her way to feeding a family of 8 on $50 a week, would roll over in her grave at some of the bottles I get to share with friends.  

I'm a snob.  I don't really know as much about wine as I pretend to.  Yet again, it's not ultimately about the wine.  It's the who I am with, and the persons I am thirsting for.  For life is nothing more, and nothing less, than thirsting for that conversation that brings life.

Make sure you get the ultimate question right, and be super intentional about how you answer it.  It's not what's for dinner.  It's who is for dinner!

can Jayhawks fly?

Homily

Solemnity of the Ascension

16 May 2021

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

Graduation Weekend 2021

Can Jayhawks fly?

It seems the appropriate pivotal question on this weekend when Jayhawks leave the nest and the Church celebrates Jesus going up up and away through His Ascension.

I don't know the answer.

I've been told definitely not.  Have you ever seen a Jayhawk fly?  Certainly not the dozens of Jayhawks affixed to pedestals all over campus.  There are vulgar legends on what it would take for those Jayhawks to fly.

Then again, Jayhawks seem to fly through the air at Allen Fieldhouse. We've had some incredible dunkers in our history.

Maybe it's a pivotal question best answered by the Aerospace Engineering department.

Actually, Jayhawks are not known for flying.  They're know for being mean.  The mascot was chosen for KU in the aftermath of the Civil War, in 1865.  The Jayhawkers were those fierce fighters who wanted Kansas to come into the union as a free state.  Two ferocious birds, the sparrow hawk and blue jay, were put together to make a singularly nasty hybrid called the Jayhawk!  

To be a Jayhawk is to be fierce and tenacious.  Is that you, class of 2021?  Do you know what you're fighting for.  Is it for the fullness of life, dignity and freedom?  Is that why you came to KU, to know what you will fight for.  Is that how you're leaving?

Jesus invites his disciples to a vertical way of life.  In his paschal mystery, we have seen Jesus free fall from the heights of heaven, from the heart of His Father, all the way to the depths of hell.  Today we celebrate the law of life and love, that what goes down must come up!  Jesus takes all of history and our redeemed humanity all the way back up. From there Jesus begins to work from home!

Up down, up down!  Jesus for sure has taught his disciples how to live horizontally, embracing responsibility and the chance to choose good and build virtue.  Yet He invites His disciples to a more courageous vertical way of life.  Jesus directs now from home through His Holy Spirit the risks taken by His disciples, to throw themselves into the battle against evil, and to rise through the Spirit into the dignity and destiny that His Ascension unlocks for them.

Mysteriously, Jesus is closer to us through His Spirit and sacraments, working from home, than He ever was before.  He makes room for His disciples to go, and to extend and complete His salvific mission to defeat evils!

So I know I have to speak figuratively, but I will speak with conviction.  Catholic Jayhawks are born to fly.  It has been such a privilege to guide these graduates during their KU years to be fierce!  Look out world, here they come!  Our graduates are capable of risk, vulnerability, commitment, communion, self-gift and contagiosity!  

So fly Jayhawks, fly!  Show us the evils that you will go forth and defeat, especially by living your faith with tenacity -as vertically as you can!

who loves you unconditionally?

Homily

6th Sunday of Easter B

St. Lawrence Catholic Center at the University of Kansas

+mj

Who loves me unconditionally?

Just my mom, I think.  I miss her more than I let on. 

It's in the DNA of moms of love unconditionally.  Moms aren't perfect, yet they're setup to fulfill what Jesus says about the greatest love. It's to lay down one's life.  Moms are wired to give everything.  My mom would die for me in a second.  I know because she did in so many ways.  Again, not all moms are perfect, but it's in the definition of motherhood to give life.  I don't expect anyone to love me as unconditionally as my mom did.

This capacity of my mom is grounded in God Himself, or so the scriptures propose to us.  Being love itself, God has no need to receive our love.  He can be pure grace, pure gift to us.  St. John puts it right.  Only God can initiate unconditional love.  In this is love, not that we love God, but that He loves us, totally through the gift of only begotten.  Jesus says the same.  You don't choose me.  I choose you.  My mom needed to receive love before She could give it.  Unconditional love must start with God Himself.  We can only respond to the commandment, to love others just as He first loved us.

Still, unconditional love doesn't make a friendship.  Did you catch that?  Friendship is conditional, very much and quite so.  Jesus is friends with His Father because He keeps the rules of the relationship.  Jesus says we are His friends not through unconditional love, but only as we keep His commandemnts.

Mind you, this is not a slave/master relationship.  Jesus is clear.  Master's don't give everything first, without condition.  Still, unconditional love cannot make a friendship.  Only conditional love does that.  There is no relationship without rules.

If I have taken my mom's love for granted or hoarded it, I am not her friend.  Jesus talks about the conditions not for receiving but for remaining, abiding, and bearing fruit.  Every gift given, especially unconditional love, requires a response.  Friendship is a responsibility.

So which is better, unconditional or conditional love?  It's hard to say atually.  It's hard to see unconditional love wasted. Which is why I would like to add a second pivotal question.  It's not just about who loves you unconditionally.  It's about your response in friendship. Love only bears fruit that will last, if you remain and abide.  Only if you truly become a friend.

am I safe?

Homily

4th Sunday of Easter B

World Day of Prayer for Vocations and Good Shepherd Sunday

25 April 2021

AMDG +mj

Am I safe?  

There's been so much talk about safety.  Am I safe?  Are you safe?  Is anybody safe?  Who is safe in this dangerous world beset by violence, disease and disaster?  

Are we safe now that we have a COVID vaccine?  Maybe a bit, but plenty of danger remains.  You can't take the vulnerability out of being human, no matter how hard you try.  Try to avoid, hide or insulate yourself for a lifetime, and let me know if it works.

The Gospel presents generosity and courage as the path to safety.  Salvation is the word used.  Instead of offering safety which is mere protection from evil, Jesus offers salvation, which is the only real safety.

Jesus, are you safe?  He flips the question on his head.  Those who wish to save their lives will lose them, but those who lose their lives will save them.  Jesus, are you safe?  Of course I am, because no one can take my life from me.  I freely give it.

Am I safe?  The Gospel says this - only if you receive your life as a gift, and courageously give it away.

where is my peace?

Homily

2nd Sunday of Easter - Divine Mercy

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

11 April 2021

AMDG +mj

Where is my peace?

My peace comes when I am free to be myself.  It comes when I can explore my fears and doubts, never having to pretend to know something I don't.

My peace comes from honesty.  My anxiety from pretense.  Where is your peace?

It's a word chosen by the Risen Christ in response to fears and doubts.  Jesus is not back from the dead for revenge, though He deserves it.  He is back to reveal wounds transformed by divine mercy.  Peace is His chosen word.

Jesus says that if my peace comes from being able to explore my fears and doubts honestly, it's game on!  Start digging, Thomas!  Let's engage my wounds, then yours.  Because Thomas is honest about his fears and doubts, his reward is getting to feel the Resurrection.

Last week I said that of everything I know or will ever know to be true, I know that Jesus is Risen! I know it for lots of good reasons, most of all that I have tried to be a real disciple of Jesus. When I die to sin, fear and myself, I begin to truly live!

Yet Jesus invites me and you not to stop there!  Keep digging!  For faith in the Resurrection is meant only to increase, insofar as I let more of my fears and doubts be healed by divine mercy!

John Paul II showed us how it's done.  He died in 2005, on the eve of this great feast that he gave the Church.  He died not in hiding, but showing us his open wounds until the end, letting them be filled with divine mercy.

That's peace.   I have peace because my doubts and fears are never something I have to put away.  I never have to pretend to be more or better than I am.  My faith in the Resurrection instead rises up precisely from the point of my wounds which I know to be redeemed by divine mercy.  Amen.

what's your word?

Homily

Easter Sunday of the Lord's Resurrection

4 April 2021

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG +mj

What's your word?

If you had one word to proclaim to the world, what would it be?

Can you guess what mine is?  I bet you can! 

Risen!  Risen!  Risen!  He is Risen.  Jesus Christ is truly Risen.  He is Risen from the dead, just as He said!  Alleluia! Alleluia!

That's my word.  That will be my last word tonight and forever.  On this word - Risen - I bet all that I am and all that I will ever be.  

What's your word?  Tonight is a night set apart to have this conversation, so let's have it!  What is the one word that you were made to shout into the world?

Tonight I witness to you that this word - Risen - is the most mysterious, profound, dramatic, and TRUE word that has ever been spoken in human history or could ever be spoken.  Tonight I speak this word - Risen - in liturgical concert with the angels, the saints, and yes, the martyrs who died for this conviction even today, shout into the darkness that this word - Risen - is the one thing I know to be true out of everything I know to be true!

Tonight my prayer is that you too will speak a word.  Tonight my prayer is that each and everyone of us, led by our catechumens and candidates and the word of faith they speak tonight, gets off the couch tonight.  There is no virtual Easter!  To hell with that!  Tonight this is no sideline, no bench, and no room for bystanders.

You have my answer to the one word I want to speak to the world!  What is yours?

Why this word for me?  Because without it, even the most heartfelt words of love I ever say, words first spoken by Jesus - this is my body broken for you - lose their meaning.  Without the word Risen even the greatest sign of love I have every known, the cross to which I gave the most passionate kiss of my life last night, is powerless in the face of death.  St. Paul said it best.  Unless Jesus is Risen, nothing else matters.

But I don't profess this word tonight because I need it to be true.  My conviction about the empty tomb is not a vain wish that justifies my life.  It is the fruit of my being a disciple of Jesus.  Jesus invites His disciples not to a wishful faith.  He invites them to follow Him all the way to the cross to verify for ourselves whether there is a love stronger than death.  I pray my discipleship has been a courageous one, filtered through the cross of Jesus where I have learned how to fear nothing and avoid nothing.

My conviction comes from the times I actually dared being a real Christian, and I'll be darned if Jesus wasn't right.  Every time I die to sin and myself, I lay hold of a new, different and powerful life that does not fade.

Jesus Christ is Risen!  He is truly Risen!  Shame on me if this is ever something I have to pretend to be true, instead of something that because I am a disciple I have through the risk of real faith discovered to be true in my real life.

On this truth I am happy to bet everything that I am and every will be.  Not because I need to, or I'm afraid not to, but because I want to.

My word is Risen. What is yours?

You're invited to beat me or join me.  If you dare join, renew your baptismal promises.  If you join, please don't do anything cheap, easy or pitiable tonight.  On conviction night, let's decide with sharp minds, and pure hearts and courageous wills.

So, I propose to you now, a word that has rocked the history of the world, and changed the meaning of life and the destiny of man, to be the word of your life.  On this most holy night set apart precisely for this decision, I invite you to say the mysterious, dramatic, profound and true word that has ever been or could ever be spoken.

Jesus Christ is Risen!  He is Risen!  He is Risen from the dead just as He said.  He is Risen!  Alleluia!  Alleluia!

How will you use your last kiss?

Homily

Good Friday of the Lord's Passion

2 April 2021

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG +mj

What if you only had one kiss left for the rest of your life?

Would you use it tonight?  

How would you use it?

The celebration of Good Friday is marked with a liturgical kiss.  Why would I waste it?  How can it be anything less than the most passionate kiss of my life.

Just last night I betrayed Jesus with a kiss on his lips.  Tonight the consequences are splayed out before me.  Evil triumphs.   A new nothing results.  It's a nothing so much darker than before the creation of the world.  It's a new nothing so much more hopeless than the absence of that first abyss.  Back, then evil was just absent.  In this new nothing, evil reigns.  For what could be a deeper darkness than the death of God?  Wherever ground zero is, we are way south of there at Calvary.  God is dead, and I killed Him.

That's the end of God's love story, and of mine, unless there is another kiss that counts.  Good Friday is pure evil unless my kiss of betrayal gives way to a more passionate kiss.  This kiss must be precisely where God emptied all of Himself.  It must mean nothing less than my deepest embrace for that cross of mine that I least want, least understand, and that draws out a love that empties all of myself.

Only this kiss could turn the tree of death into the axis for the recreation of the world.  Anything less, and death wins forever.  Only a kiss that holds back nothing, can reverse the new nothing of the cross.

You're invited to kiss tonight only if that cross is never again the place where your story might end, and only and always and forever where you story begins.

What if you had one kiss for the rest of your life?

Would you use it tonight?

If so, how would you use it?

got any no's left?

Homily

Holy Thursday of the Lord's Supper

1 April 2021 No Foolin'

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG +mj

No no no no no no no . . . never!  How many no's did you bring to Mass tonight?  What's your last no? What's your never?  That's our pivotal question for Holy Thursday.

Whatever your never is, know this.  You're up against a God who is the worst at taking no for an answer.  So hang onto your never tonight, if you can.  I dare you.

For whenever I say no, this guy moves, so that my every no that is initially a step away from him might eventually be a yes that takes me to Him.  And when He moves, He moves decisively, and dramatically!

Our first parents said no in the garden, and as their child so do I!  No I will not love.  No I will not obey.  No I will not serve.  In response, He moves!  From the no of the garden he can see the Fiat of the greatest member of our race.  So He moves, decisively and dramatically, from the abundant heart of His Father to the womb of a poor little girl.

What do I say to this baby?  I say no!  I will not hold you.  Away with Him.  Crucify Him.  Yet from this no of Calvary, from the denial of Peter who ran away scared, Jesus could see the meager courage of a man like Fr. Dan, and the pathetic yes of a priest like me.  So He moves.  He moves not only through the yes of the Immaculate Virgin, He moves even more dramatically, and decisively, through my sin-soaked words, to be born anew on this altar.  This is my body, broken for you.  This is my blood, poured out for you.

What do we say to the gift of the Eucharist?  We say no!  What will you give me to hand Him over to you?  Yes, one of you eating with me is the one who will betray me! Surely it is not me, Lord?  You have said so!  What does Jesus say to this no?  That's right, He moves.

From the no of those who rejected Him in the flesh to the no of those who reject His sacramental presence at table, He can see your yes.  He can see your little yes.  Lord, I am sorry for hurting you.  I do not deserve for you to come under my roof, but only say the word.  In response to all these no's, He moves tonight through your Amen from this altar into your body.

Still, the greatest distance remains.  Still, Jesus is only getting started.  For there are more no's to be overcome with love.  Unless I wash your feet, you have no part in me.  Unless He gets past your last no, your never, all of this is for naught.  All of this, His moving from the heart of His Father, to Mary's womb, to Calvary, to this altar, and into your body, doesn't work unless you also let Him wash your feet. You will never wash my feet. What is your last no?  What is your never?  Whatever it is, just know what you're up against.  You're up against the guy who's the absolute worst at taking no for an answer.

He has come all this way, in case just one of us might allow Him to travel past our never, and wash our feet.  The sign that our never has been conquered once and for all by His love, is that we will wash each other's feet.

what is hard rn?

Homily

5th Sunday of Lent BI

21 March 2021

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG +mj

What is hard for you right now?

Originally, I was asked to comment on what stinks right now.  I think we ought to go deeper that just improving our hygiene or taking out the trash.  So how is this question instead?  What is hard right now?

Life doesn't have to be easy!  It's often better when it's not.  Heroes defeat evil by facing the enemy with courage.  When the hour of Jesus' crucifixion arrives, He is troubled. This is hard.  Yet what should He do?  Should He run from this moment?  No, for He is made for this moment, to be lifted up for all to see.

A sound rarely heard in the Gospel, the Father in His own voice, booms at this critical moment.  The Father announces Jesus' identity at His baptism, and echoes it at His Transfiguration.  Now the Father announces Jesus' mission clearly, not for His sake by for mine.  Jesus is to be raised up so all can see the Father's glory!  What glory is this?  It is the glory of loving to the end, holding nothing back, until all is emptied and accomplished.

What's hard for me right now is to be and do what the Father says.  Who am I?  I'm God's beloved Son.  What is my mission?  It is to love to the end.  So is yours. Where is the equality in this chapel tonight?  It's that we are all equal in dignity and vocation.  We are God's children.  We are chosen to empty ourselves.  For whoever seeks to save His life will lose it.  Wherever I am my servant will also be.  Unless a grain of wheat dies, it produces no fruit.

That's hard for me.  I wonder what's hard for you?  Whatever it is, I know Jesus thinks you can face it.  I know that when you face what you least want and understand, you help defeat evil at its root, where it scares us deep down inside.  I know that when you face it, you will be truly free, and people will see the glory of God in you.

Naming it is the beginning of facing it. What is hard for you right now?

why do bad things happen to good people?

Homily

4th Sunday of Lent - Laetare Sunday BI

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

14 March 2021

AMDG +mj

Why do bad things happen to good people?

I confess.  This is not my favorite pivotal question.  Others write these questions for me, so that I'm answering what others want to know.  For me though, this question is tired.  It's overused for those who want to complain about life or doubt God.  The problem of evil is not new, and it's not going away.  For me, the mystery of suffering is more a question to be embraced than a problem to be solved.

Ultimately, we're asking whether life is fair.  It's not.  We all know this.  Good things happen to bad people, and vice versa.  We all have different gifts and crosses.  The sooner we face this, the better, for facing the unfairness of life gets us into life as it really is, not as we would pretend it to be.  For me, the better question is whether life is worth living.  I say a resounding YES!

Still, I'm avoid the question that still needs to be faced.  Why do bad things happen to good people?

The short answer is this.  Evil is permitted so that good people can conquer it with love.  Suffering is redemptive and salvific.  What do we mean by this?  We mean that bad things open up a new path to the fullness of life and salvation.  In short, God permits bad things so that you might have a path for becoming a saint.

You don't have to like this answer, but I'm sticking with it.  Look at human tragedy, especially the most senseless, and I dare say you will also find new heroes being born.  Saints are forged in the worst circumstances.  Especially when life is unfair, when the response is not to complain or avoid, but to embrace and transform evil with love, a new a different way of life emerges.

That's why the cross must be lifted up.  So that we might always be looking at the worst thing happening to the best guy.  That's why we reserve the most passionate liturgical kiss for the cruelest form of torture suffered willingly by the most innocent.  For its precisely when I embrace my own cross and follow Him, that I lay hold of a new and vertical way of living that the Gospel calls eternal life.

Bad things happen to good people so that good people can become better people, and defeat evil at its very core.  The ultimate question is not whether life is fair.  It's whether I am going to do something about it.

what am I looking for?

Homily

3rd Sunday of Lent B

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

7 March 2021

AMDG +mj

What am I looking for? 

Well, for starters, I shouldn't end this week's pivotal question with a preposition.  So if you are looking for better grammar, I've failed you right off the bat.  .

Still, the question remains.  What am I looking for?  

Last week I confessed I'm looking to have it all.  I only want to add things to my life, never subtract!  My life looks like the scene Jesus opens a can on in today's Gospel.  It's a noisy and cluttered bastion of consumerism.  I'm not focused on the one necessary thing, the right worship of God, that puts me in right relationship with everything else.

So I'm going to change my answer.  I'm not looking to have it all.  I'm looking to cleans my temple.  I want to feel sharp in mind, body and spirit!

Jesus cleanses the temple so that He can be asked about the temple of His body!  In Jesus, the temple, its priesthood, its altars and sacrifices are to be fulfilled all in Him, through the three days of His paschal mystery. 

Yet there is a 4th day, prefigured at the Last Supper, when the temple of Jesus' body passes over into the temple of His disciples. The cleansing of the Jerusalem temple gives way to the cleansing of Jesus the new temple by His passion.  That passion passes over in the Eucharist into your temple, and mine.

I'm looking for this temple, to be cleansed!  I want to be sharp!  Through a good Lent and holy confession, I want to offer Jesus a clean space, the space of a pure mind, courageous heart, strong will and chaste body.

I want to offer him a blank slate so that He can write not just the ten commandments of stone but the new commandment of love, right on my open heart.  I want to offer a temple that cane transformed into the power and wisdom of God!  

That's what I'm looking for this Lent.

What are you looking for?

What word would God use to describe you?

Homily

2nd Sunday of Lent BI

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

28 February 2021

AMDG +mj

What's the word God would use to describe you?

Like it or not, the right answer is BELOVED.  The Father speaks once, and only once in the Gospels.  He uses one adjective.  You guessed it.  It's beloved.  St. Paul takes it a step further.  God loves you so much He gave away His only beloved.  So what does that make you?  At a minimum, you're just as beloved as Jesus.  That's the right answer.  God describes you as BELOVED. 

Yet none of us believes it, not in our bones anyway.  I sure don't.  What do I know instead?  I know the worst about myself.  It's the thing I can trust and can control more than God's love.  It's what I deserve.

I deserve to be described as CLUTTERED!

My life is messy, not clean.  I hoard.  I hang on.  I obsess over what I don't have, and what I can add to m y life.  I hate pruning and love pleasure.  I add and add and add and add.  I add to my workload, my schedule, my things.  I'm hang on to memories, resentments, relationships, and things I don't need.  I'm afraid to throw away pretty much everything.  Ask Fr. Dan my roommate.  He can tell you the story of the cheese sauce that I hung onto for 4 months!

What word would God use to describe you?  I bet the first word you thought of was not BELOVED but something you hate about yourself.  

It's time to let it go, and not cling to what you deserve, but only to God's love.

That's it.  We are invited to cling to one thing in life, and one thing only.  It's God's love.  Take Abraham as the standard.  He received Isaac when his wife was 90 years old, as a miraculous sign promising fruitfulness through faithfulness.  Then God asked for Isaac back.  It makes no sense.

Yet when I cling to anything less than God alone, my life gets smaller.  It's only when in faith I realize I only have the things that I'm willing to let go of, that my life grows.  Think about your life.  Think about that thing you most wanted to hold on to, that relationship you least understood why you had to give it up.  I bet it led to your life mysteriously getting bigger, and to greater fruitfulness.

When I cling to anything less than God, I am not free to live the law of grace.  When I am not free, I cannot rise to the likeness of God, nor can I be transfigured or transformed by grace which is not cluttered, but clean and free.

This of course is the point of Lent.  It's an invitation to let go of anything, and I mean anything, that distracts me from the ultimate reality and truth that I am God's beloved.  For Lent I need to let go of the word I cling to, the one I think I deserve, to receive the greater word that God uses to describe me.

So what will it be?  What word does God use to describe you?

what do I need to face?

Homily

1st Sunday of Lent BI

21 February 2021

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG +jmj

What do I need to face?

Lent if it's worth doing is a time of brutal honesty.  Lent is a gift to draw us away from pretense and avoidance.  Jesus goes to the desert right off the bat in Lent to show me how to fight.

St. Mark is a straight shooter.  His Gospel isn't decorated.  In a few short lines, Jesus goes from his baptism, to the desert, then back to Galilee to get to work.  Things happen fast.

So too for me there is no time to waste.  Lent is a sacred time that I waste to my own detriment.  It is in the desert, the place of silence, prayer and fasting, where the most important victories of my life must be won.  Why is this?  It's because placed in the garden, I like Adam when I have every reason to say yes to God and no to temptation, I mess up.  So it has to be from the place where Adam is exiled, from that place where I have every reason to say yes to temptation and no to God, that I must reverse the curse.

Jesus didn't need to be baptized or tempted.  Yet he takes on our nature, and does both, not merely in our place but to go there with us and to show us the way.  Baptism gives us a chance, a real chance, to win the ultimate struggle for life and death. Yet fight we must, as Jesus' temptation after his baptism teaches so clearly.

What do I need to face?  If I waste Lent with pretense and avoidance, this vertical dimension of reality, the kingdom of heaven, will remain in a galaxy far, far away.  Yet if I repent, the kingdom of heaven is right here.

What do I need to face?  For me personally, I need a new heart, with which to love God's people.  I can't fix the one I have, and I'm not meant to.  I need to face the temptation to hold onto the heart I have, instead of daring to receive a new heart.

There's something everyone in this church needs to face.  The Gospel could not be more clear.

Be as honest as you can be.

What do I need to face?

where do I see honesty?

Homily

Ash Wednesday

17 February 2021

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG +JMJ +m

Free dirt.  Free insults.

It's the best marketing strategy the Catholic Church has ever come up with.  Give free dirt, and free insults, and watch people line up.  Nothing else works quite like it.

We've tried other strategies.  Free food, and even free beer, attract a few of you.  Yet you seem to still prefer Mass St for these things instead of coming to Mass.  We're good at selling guilt.  Yet you don't need a Church for that.  Most of us are quite capable of feeling badly about ourselves on our own.

So what gives?  Why does free dirt and free insults work better than anything else?  I can't answer for you, only for me.  It's on this day, Ash Wednesday, that I see what I most want to see from my church.  On this day I see honesty, and the more brutal it is the better.

The brutal truth is that I pretend to be better than I am.  You do too.  It's something we all have in common, and something Jesus calls out especially today.  I want to live my life from the deepest questions.  Why do I exist?  Does my life matter?  Does my story have a happy ending?  Yet I always end up finding a way to avoid these questions.

But not today.  Today I let a stranger throw dirt on me and tell me I'm gonna die.  It's a huge does of reality.  It's brutal honesty.  It's what I most need.

Jesus invites his disciples to live only one kind of life.  It's a life of honesty, simplicity, vulnerability and humility.  He says this is the only way, and the easiest way.  When I look at His cross, I wonder what He is smoking.  Yet in the cross is truth.  The truth stings, but it is easier than keeping up the sham of pretending to be better than I am.

364 days a year I'm afraid to live as He asks.  But not today.  Today I let a stranger throw dirt on me and call me a fake.  I do this so I can embrace both the gift and the responsibility of my life.  Today I say publicly, in front of all of you, that I know I get one shot to write a great story with my life.  I say that my time is now, and that I'm still in the game.

I'm glad you're here.  I want to build a Church that is tired of pretending, one that is done with the labels, price tags and timers we stick on each other.  The Church I want to belong to isn't afraid to get honest, and to have conversations that bring real and lasting change.

Help me make St. Lawrence this kind of Church, unafraid to live the way Jesus invites us to.

This day is different.  Our time is now.  Let's begin again to make all things new.

when did God last change you?

Homily

6th Sunday in Ordinary Time BI

St. Lawrence Catholic Center at the University of Kansas

14 February 2021

AMDG +JMJ +m

This week, five fraternities were banned from campus for partying during a pandemic, and putting the community at risk.  They broke the rules, and received consequences.  Many of these men are members of the St. Lawrence Center.

I'm not going to judge these men or KU's response.  I do want to note, however, that the more things change, the more things stay the same.

This time, it's not leprosy.  It's COVID-19.  Yet the leprosy of Gospel times and our current pandemic bear so many resemblances.  You think modern medicine has eliminated the need for quarantines, distancing to limit exposure, and rules to keep the community safe?  Hardly!  The same rules in place for leprosy 2000 years ago are all in play today.

Like the fraternity party, in today's Gospel rules are broken!  The leper wants to go to church.  He can't live without being part of a worshipping community.  For him, life means right relationship with God and his community, expressed in public worship.  Good for him!  I wish we all saw such meaning in going to Church.  I get asked all the time if people will come back to Mass after the pandemic.  I honestly don't know.  I know there is no going back, only going forward.  I also know if we're afraid of losing people, in many ways we have already lost them.

That's not the case with this leper.  Banned from the Jerusalem temple, not be a county health order but by the religious authorities in charge of keeping worship safe, the leper breaks quarantine and instead goes right up  and kneels before the new meeting place between God and man, the new temple which is Jesus himself.  

Jesus makes it worse.  Instead of enforcing the rule that this man should declare himself unclean from a distance, Jesus touches him.  Imagine doing this during COVID-19.  Bypassing all rules, all PPE, and just touching someone deliberately.  Jesus in so doing shows that He has come to take our infirmities to Himself.  He makes Himself unclean so that the leper might receive healing, cleansing and saving grace.

The leper then breaks Jesus' rule to shut up about it.  The result is that while he is restored to right relationship, Jesus gets kicked off campus.  He can't go in town, or near the temple, but has to go to the desert to create some space.

When is the last time God touched you in such a way you couldn't shut up about it?  Did it happen in confession?  The sacrament is the spiritual parallel of the Gospel story we just heard.  After declaring ourselves unclean, and unable to contribute to the unity of the worshipping community, a priest speaks for Jesus in telling us He wills to make us clean, and restore us to full communion with God and each other.

If not confession, when did God last touch you?  I am touched right now by the men in RCIA who like the leper in today's Gospel have decided they can't live without being a full member of the Catholic communion and laying hold of salvation by touching Jesus in the sacraments.  When everyone expects this generation of college students to all be lost and cut off forever, these men have gone the opposite direction, and proclaim that to live means to go to church, and to be physically in communion with Jesus.

That's my God moment, that I want to share with the whole world.  What's yours?

what am I made for?

Homily

5th Sunday of Ordinary Time BI

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

7 February 2021

AMDG +JMJ +m

What am I made for?

If you look at everyone's schedules today, it looks like we are all made to watch the Super Bowl!  I hope I get special graces for not canceling Mass.

What am I made for?  I'm still not sure.  My life's motto is to compete in what matters to God.  I like it, but I'm not done discerning yet.  It's not my final final.  I want a unique why as good as John Paul II's.  I am made to be totus tuus Maria.

Do you know what you are made for?  It's a great question for the whole of life.  

Today's Scriptures give us options.  Job at this point of his journey asks whether he was made simply to suffer and to die.  Paul says he was made to preach the Gospel.  He wants to become a slave to all to save at least some.  Paul senses a duty, a responsibility that comes with his freedom.  He aims to play his part in Jesus' mission of redemption.

Jesus on his first day of public ministry shows what He is made for.  He preaches, He casts out evil, and He prays.  It's a pretty good plan!  Can you think of a better way to live?

What if I got up everyday and tried to announce the Gospel?  The good news is that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.  The way things are now are not how they will always be.  Evil, suffering, death, doubt, despair and division do not have the final say.  They have been defeated by Jesus, who now invites me to apply his victory in the context of my life.  Every day I am invited to do what I can to defeat evil, moral and natural, and in so doing I lay hold of the gift of salvation for others and myself.  

Then Jesus prays.  He receives over and over again His mission in conversation with His Father.

That's it, disciples of Jesus!  It's a great recipe.  What am I made for?  What if I am made to proclaim the Gospel, to defeat evil and to pray?  What if I kept it that simple?

What am I made for?