do I welcome input?

Homily

Monday of the 4th Week of Ordinary Time

31 January 2022

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG +mj

Do I welcome input?

Jesus' beatitudes are so upside-down.  Words of affirmation are great.  I need them.  Yet words of criticism are more blessed.  Blessed are you when all speak ill of you.

David is tormented by the insults of a nobody, Shimei, whom his companions regard as no more than a dead dog.  Yet David has been so humbled by life.  He assumes Shimei has been sent from God.  David prays that if even his own son Absolom, seeks to kill him, a spirit of contrition is the right response.  

The Gerasenes do not welcome such input.  As is clear by the Gospel, they are more fearful of Jesus than the demoniac.  They prefer their demons to grace.  They ask Jesus to leave them alone.  

The contrast in today's readings might cause me to ask.  Do I welcome input?

What hill will I die on?

Homily

4th Sunday in Ordinary Time C2

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

30 January 2022

AMDG +mj

What hill will I die on?

Jesus didn't die on every hill.  Neither can you.  He said no to Satan's temptation for Him to fall from the parapet of the temple.  Today He escapes the hill in his hometown of Nazareth.  Jesus didn't die on every hill.  You know what hill He chose.

You get to die once, and for all.  If you get to choose, what hill will you die on?  Please don't be a person who tried to die on every hill.  So, which one is it?

Jeremiah and Jesus both are able to courageously speak prophetic words that must be said, knowing God will deliver them from the hands of those that hate them.  Yet both prophets will eventually die, and it is there that they speak the ultimate words of their life.  

St. Paul knows what this perfect word is that must be spoken.  The perfect word is love.  Jesus is destined to die on the hill where He says that perfect word with his entire life.  From the cross Jesus says I love you.  

What hill will I die on?  I keep feeling in prayer that Jesus is wanting to suffer more in me, so that I can feel the compassion He feels for His people.  It's not a hill I'm excited to visit.  

Yet it's a hill where I can give all of myself.  It's a hill where I can say I love you.  It's the same hill that Jesus died on.

I wonder if you're being invited there too.  I can't die on every hill.  The question is this:

What hill will I die on?

does God care?

Homily

Saturday of the 3rd Week in Ordinary Time C2

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

29 January 2022     Kansas Day!

AMDG +mj

God, do you care?

What a great question posed by the disciples.  What a great prayer!

Yes, that's right.  Asking God if He's awake is a tremendous prayer.  It may seem that the disciples are losing faith in the face of what must have been a terrible storm for experienced fishermen to be so afraid.  Yet they're praying. 

Would that I would have the faith to pray in just this way.  Jesus, are you awake.  Do you see this?  How do you feel about it? Are you who you say you are?  Are you going to do anything?

I dare say it's God's favorite prayer, when I have the faith to dare Him to do something.

It's crazy the storms I'm willing to go through if only He reveals that He cares.

Make this your prayer today.  God, do you care?

what's your low point?

Homily

Friday of the 3rd Week in Ordinary Time C2

St. Lawrence Catholic Center at the University of Kansas

+St. Thomas Aquinas, doctor

AMDG +mj

What's your low point?  

I have one.  You have one.  David had one.  We see it in today's 1st reading.  Lust, followed by adultery,  and covered up by willful murder.  David's is pretty bad.

Knowing my low point is important, for God wants to reveal who He is especially there.  God is just, so must punish wrongdoing for my own sake.  It's never good to get away with anything.  Yet God is even more mercy, never forsaking me, no matter what.

My capacity for holiness has a dark side.  I'm equally capable of the worst evil.  If I want to live at my greatest capacity, I must know this and fear it.  I am like David.

It's critical too that you know how God see your lowest point, and how He feels about it.  I pray you will always be able to respond to the truth that God forgives you beginning from your lowest point.

Hold up your lowest point to God today.  Then ask, where do I go from there?

am I out of touch?

Homily

3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time C

23 January 2022

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG +mj

Am I out of touch?

Finally, after many years of resistance, I'm ready to cry uncle.  For quite a while, the signs of the times have pointed to a smaller Catholic Church, one in exile and in scandal.  I didn't want to believe it.  It's not what I signed up for!  When I said yes it was in response to the World Youth Days of John Paul II, when millions upon millions of young people came together to be affected by the Catholic faith and Her beautiful Eucharist.  When I started, I only saw success in our future.

It's hasn't quite worked that way.  God's ways are strange and different.  I don't have to tell any of you that.  How does it feel to be Catholic in these strange times?  I've been warned that the Catholic Church must be pruned.  Ouch!  I've been told she must get smaller to get better, before She can ever bear fruit again.  No way, I said!  The Church is like Allen Fieldhouse - 16,300 every game, no exceptions . . well, unless there's a pandemic of course.

But finally, I give up.  Not to resignation, mind you, but to the reality that I'm in a Church that has ended up in exile, one that has lost touch with its own story.  It happens even to me, though I am hear rehearsing spiritual ideas.  I can lose touch with my own story, and how God desperately want to touch it.

When's the last time I cried at church?  Weeping in church like the Israelites first reading from Ezra would be like the Jayhawks winning a road conference game for the first time in 8 years.  Oh wait, that just happened, and it was glorious!  Rock Chalk! We're a football school again.

Crying in Church would be like coming home as Jesus does to Nazareth, to a place and people you have desperately missed for a long time.

Or of course, it could just be that Ezra's homily was four hours long. That would make anyone cry.  At any rate, the tears become joy when the people of God get back in touch with their own story again, a story they had become numb to.  St. Paul describes such a Church, one that is sensitive to all the parts of the body, a Church that can feel its needs.

My vision in this new year is not for a Church that no longer fails, but one that can feel again.  I want to worship with you this year, so we can feel together how much God desires to touch us here as His body with His body.  I see a Church in touch with the Eucharist!

I no longer want to look at the empty seats here. I want to see you, so that I can share the difference affecting each other in this way makes in our story.

I'm tired of being out of touch.  I hope you are too.

did I show up to my wedding?

Homily

2nd Sunday of Ordinary Time C2

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

16 January 2022

AMDG +mj

Did I show up to my wedding?

First, a side story.  My sister called the sheriff on my dad last Sunday.  The Zimmermans are off to a great start in 2022.  Happy New Year to us!  Now, this is not a common thing.  My family has never knowingly broken the law, or had a domestic disturbances.  

What we had last Sunday was a missing person!  You see if there's one thing you can trust in my family, it's my dad answering his phone.  He always answers, without exception.  That's why my brother Norman was worried last Sunday when he called my dad at 4pm, then 6pm, then 8pm, without an answer.  Norman called Shauna, who knew the quickest way to check on dad would be to call a neighbor.  Yet in Hoxie, Kansas, the sheriff is your neighbor.  So she called the sheriff to check if my dad's truck was in his driveway.  It was gone.

So a couple siblings high-tailed it to Hoxie to solve the mystery, while Shauna put the rest of us on prayer alert.  I'll admit.  I was worried to death.  Either dad's phone was broken or he had an accident.  Or, there was just one other possibility. The only time dad doesn't answer his phone is when he goes to Church.  He doesn't know how to silence his phone, and he's scared to death of it ringing in church. so he doesn't take it.

Well, it turns out that my dad was not the victim of a crash or bad farm accident.  It turns out he was at church from 3pm to 9pm, first for a wake service then for a parish council meeting.  None of us knew he had those commitments, so we assumed the worst. Thank God he's fine.  He got a kick out of us calling the sheriff to report him as missing.

Which brings me to the second thing I can always count on. Dad always goes to Church.  His priest son has missed several times over his lifetime.  My dad and his dad Jake, who turned 104 this week, have never missed.  They have never missed.

We hear in today's Gospel Mary's last 5 words in recorded scripture - Do whatever He tells you!  What will your last words be?  What do you want them to be?  The witness of my dad's life are these eight words.  I answered the call.  I went to Mass.  

Here would be my 7.  I showed up for my wedding.  I know that sounds strange from a celibate priest, but it's not.  This Mass is nothing less than the consummation of my marriage to God.  It's no less for you, for we are all married to Jesus in the Eucharist.  Today's Gospel sign is that of Cana, the last of the triple play of signs that consummate the Christmas season.  The first was Epiphany.  The second the Baptism.  The third of the last signs of Christmas is a wedding, Jesus' revelation to be the eternal bridegroom, the ultimate and definitive fulfillment of God's desire to be one flesh with His bride.

The last two years have desensitized me to this marriage.  This time of social distancing and Mass abrogation has made it less clear than ever who has to be at Mass, and who doesn't.  Yet my desire is not for a Church that goes back to obligation, but one that moves forward to a new sensitivity.  It's been scary for me to see how easily I can divorce God.  It's too easy to fill my need for intimacy with secular distractions and obsessions.  There have been moment when I can no longer feel how I am different because I have been touched by the Eucharist, by the physical consummation and intimacy this sacrament alone can give.  Too many of us are addicted to getting along on our own.

Let's take this year to restore our sense of touch.  So much damage has been done to our sense of touch by scandal and distancing.  Yet to stop being affected by the Eucharist is the ultimate definition of being out of touch.  To think only about what I want, or what I get, is to be insensitive to Jesus' invitation to consummate his marriage to you at Mass.

Let's not go back to Mass.  Let's go forward yearning for the sense of touch to be healed.  Let's go to Mass because I love the person who wants to consummate his marriage with me here.

This is the pivotal question I want to answer with my entire life.

Did I show up to my wedding?

who has fear of the Lord?

 Homily

Thursday of the 1st Week in Ordinary Time C2

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG +mj

Who is fearful of the Lord?

I hope you realize I mean a holy fear, not a slavish one.  I speak of true reverence for the holiness of God.  Who has that fear?

It turns out in today's reading from Samuel that the Philistines do, moreso than the Israelites.  After a defeat, the Israelites go grab the ark of the covenant, to use as a prop in battle.  Their bravado, instead of real fear, backfires as it reminds their enemy the Philistines of the great battles the Lord has won for Israel.

So the Philistines fight more bravely in response.  Their fear exposes the fear of the Israelites as a sham.

It's a reminder to not fake my fear of the Lord, nor use it as a prop.

Do I truly fear the Lord?

do you have a sacred sweet spot?

Homily

Wednesday of the 1st week in Ordinary Time C2

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG +mj

Do you have a sacred sweet spot?  

It took Samuel a few tries to find his.  He wasn't familiar with hearing something new, personal and intimate from God.  Yet he ends up finding that spot and from there is recognized as a prophet.

Jesus could feel when He lost his sacred sweet spot.   After an exhausting day, he runs from his tasks to that spot where His Father can reveal a personal, intimate and new word.  From there Jesus knows what is next.

No excuses, please.  You gotta find that sacred sweet spot for yourself.

what can't God do?

 Homily

Tuesday of the 1st Week in Ordinary Time

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

11 January 2022

AMDG +mj

I'm an expert at telling God what He can't do.  I pray to resign myself to the way things are.  I don't often have the faith to dare God to do something new.

Hannah prays differently., so differently that it startles the priest  She dares God to do the impossible.  The demons in today's Gospel also dare Jesus to do something if He is who He says He is.  

God loves your dares more than your resignation.  Dare to ask him boldly for what you desire today.  Dare to ask Him for something new.   

God loves it when you tell Him what He can't do.