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?