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.