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!