What's my wooden beam?

Homily

8th Sunday in Ordinary Time C

27 February 2022

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

What's my wooden beam?

That's easy! Can I name more than one?

Jesus does me the favor again in today's Gospel of reminding me that I am a hypocrite.  The problem is never ultimately that I have a wooden beam in my eye, but when I think I don't.  

So what's mine?  I don't know if these are the biggest, but it's easy to think of three.  I don't ask for help.  I don't know how to say no.  I'm addicted to being alone

Whenever from my heart I say I got this, I can handle more, or leave me alone, I'm speaking from a store of evil, which is to say I am drawing from a store of fear and pain.  These things never inspire people, but always set a bad example.  

What sets a good example/  What teaches well?  Courage, vulnerability and generosity always sell.  Yet I prefer to pretend to know more than I know and be better than I am.  

My one job right now is to connect the truth and grace of our Catholic faith to college students, that they might be free to truly live.  I have no clue how to do that.  The more I learn, the less I know and the more confused I get.  People are mysteries to be encountered, not puzzles to be solved.  I am a shepherd not a surgeon.  I'm a dad, and dads don't know how to control the behavior of their kids.  I spent 4 hours in a friend group Friday night, a group of parents of kids ages 5 to 16.  Four hours wasn't even good enough for a warmup of discussing how to parent.  Nobody has it all together or all figured out.

When it comes to the mystery of life, what's most important is not that I fake it well, but that I live with courage, vulnerability and generosity.  Those who pretend they don't need a teacher, much less a Savior, aren't helping anybody.  They are the blind leading the blind, out of a store of evil.

What's the work of me removing the wooden beam?  I need to ask how I can get better, and stop being afraid of letting go of things.  It's also letting people into my mess, for when I hide it, it never gets better.

I have my work cut out for me.  So do we all.

What's your wooden beam?

will I be faithful?

Homily

Wedding of Paul Feighner and Laila Carter

26 February 2022

Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Kansas City, MO

AMDG

Will I be faithful?

The fate of the world depends on this question.  So history will turn on your answer today, Paul and Laila.  It's not my aim to scare you, nor to drench your wedding in hyperbole.  Yet woe to me if I hide the truth that your answer means everything.

Weddings mean everything.  You don't have to take just my word for it.  Mary told Jesus to get involved at Cana.  Did he ever, making 180 gallons of the best wine!  Why?  Cause this moment matters!

It's your turn, Paul and Laila, to bet it all and to answer the question on which the world turns - will I be faithful?

In the cross of Jesus Christ God has answered for his part.  It's there that Jesus reveals fully what marriage really is.  I give you everything I am, no matter what, even unto death.  Jesus plays for keeps, holding nothing back.  It's here for all to see and to truth.  You get married before this sign, Paul and Laila.  By coming here, you confess you are playing for keeps.  Nothing could matter more.

Praise God for you two, that you have the capacity mediated through the faith of your family and friends, to receive this question from God in the call to marriage, and even more, to answer it!  I can't wait to receive your answer.  I need it to believe.  So does everyone here, to a person.  What is more, the world desperately needs your answer now, more than ever.

Again, I'm not trying to frighten you.  Yet neither should we hide from the grace gifted to you in marriage, which is about to transform you through your vows into a new reality, no longer two but one flesh.  Let's not run from this moment, for your yes is nothing less than a participation in the answer of Jesus that makes all things new from the inside out.  There couldn't possibly be anything more intimate, or more powerful, than your answer to the question which you join to His answer - will I be faithful?

The horrific evil in the streets of Kiyv today is born from unfaithfulness.  Evil appears when people are scared, not knowing who will be faithful to them.  It turns us into monsters, capable of the worse divorces, of taking life rather than giving it.

In promising faithfulness to each other, Paul and Laila, you create new life!  Your answer allows God to renew and heal this world through you.  I praise God for you, that you have the call and capacity to dare an answer that is so needed.

What I know is that nothing could matter more.

Now is your time to answer - will I be faithful?

Do I desire poverty or death?

Homily

Thursday of the 7th Week in Ordinary Time C2

24 February 2022

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

Do I desire poverty or death?

These are the only two choices today's Scriptures give me.  So what do I choose?

St. James writes that to choose riches you have to have ignored love of the poor, which alone is the ground of true life.  Jesus says the most powerful example we will ever set for others is what we say no to, choosing poverty.  Woe to me if I think I am the exception to this rule, and lead others astray.

It's poverty or death.  I only get to choose one.  If I'm grasping I must cut off my hands.  If I am going at it solo, I must chop off my feet.  If I am lustful, I must pluck out my eye.

All others paths to life are false promises and dead ends.

So which is it, poverty or death?

Who lives rent-free in my mind?

Homily

Wednesday of the 7th Sunday in Ordinary Time C2

23 February 2022

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

Who lives rent-free in my mind?

Jesus tells his disciples to stop obsessing about what others are doing.  Mind your own business.  Quit comparing and measuring.  Assume the best in others.  

Petty jealousies and turf wars are the schemes of losers.  Jesus needs workers in his vineyard who are focused not on others, but the mission of mercy entrusted to them.

Is there anyone that should no longer live rent-free in my mind?

Where is Peter?

Homily

Tuesday of the 7th Week in Ordinary Time C2

22 February 2022

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

Where is Peter?

What is the most important pivotal question of all time?  That would be a fun exercise.  We know the greatest commandments. What is the greatest question?  What is love?  What is truth?  There are plenty of good candidates.

Who is Jesus?  An argument can and has been made that the world turns most dramatically on this question alone.  It's the question of today's Gospel.  It's the question answered only by Peter.

In the tradition of the Church, to ask Who is Jesus is identical with the question where is Peter?  The truth of who Jesus is resides of course in the entire faith of His body, the Church.  Yet this truth is most particular, personified in the rock that is Peter, to whom is given the precise keys of authority by the Lord Himself.  

As this authority is meant to set persons like us free for relationships in truth, it is neither an accident nor a surprise that Jesus would entrust the answer of who He is to a single person.  

Despite every scandal and evil that has befallen the Church, the charism of Peter's confession remains unrivaled in history.  The answer to the greatest pivotal question of all time - who is Jesus? - an answer shared by all the faithful through their bishops, remains embodied and articulated by the pope.  Just as Jesus says it would.

That's why we pray for our Pope.  For we are part of this charism too, supporting his faith that cannot fail.

Thank God we know the answer to the question - where is Peter?

+mj  

Who do I need to forgive?

Homily

7th Sunday in Ordinary Time C

20 February 2022

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

Who do I need to forgive?

Note that there is no option in this week's pivotal question, nor in the Gospel.  There is only am imperative.  Forgive, baby, forgive! The question is not should I?  It's who.  Jesus always speaks with great clarity, cutting me to the heart.  Today's revelation is this.  Mercy is at the heart of God.  It alone is the ground of reality.  If you want to live, you have to forgive.

This week's question is the easiest to answer, and the hardest to do.  Who do I need to forgive?  That's easy!  It's me.  I need to forgive myself.  To a person here today, we are all too hard on ourselves. Does that sound like weak sauce to you?  I promise you it's not.  It's as hard as anything you'll ever attempt to do - to forgive yourself.

I am my own worst enemy.  I always have been, and probably always will be.  I'm a fool to ignore this.  What do I know first and best about myself?  That I'm not good enough.  When Jesus says love your enemies, it starts and ends with me. Forgiving any other enemy is easy in comparison.

At the present moment, I have lost touch with how much God wants to forgive me.  Yet it's Jesus' favorite thing to do - by far!  He is desperately thirsting to forgive right now those who will never pay him back. That's me, and that's you.

St. John Vianney put it even better than Jesus.  Can I get away with saying that?  SJV says it better than the psalmist, who sings God's desire to forgive me spans as far as the east is from the west.  SJV puts it this way.  God forgets how I will hurt him tomorrow so he can forgive me today.  Woof.

I try to get this across in the confessional.  You are God's favorite person right now, for you give Him a chance to reveal how He really feels about you.  You give Him the chance to reveal all His love, by forgiving you at the place where you will not pay him back.  

Yet I never trust this for myself.  It might be true for others, but not me.  That's God's truth, not mine.  I know God instead by how much I deserve His mercy.  I have calculated it with the greatest precision.  Yet the measurement is the thing I'm most wrong about.

His truth is how He feels about me.  Mine is that I am not worth it.  Which makes me the enemy of God, and just as bad, the enemy of myself.

It's the scariest thing not to be able to control how someone feels about you.  Sin is trying to control in response to a fear rooted in hurt.  Jesus sees this in me, and says Father forgive them, they know not what they do.  Sin is about control, but did you notice in today's Gospel there is zero control?  Today's Gospel is again completely off the rails, defying all calculations.  Which is precisely the point.  If I ever stopped calculating what I'm worth, stopped trying to control how God feels about me, I wouldn't give a flip every again about measuring anyone else.

The key is me.  Who do I need to forgive.  I need to forgive myself. 

how's my tongue?

Homily

Saturday of the 6th Week in Ordinary Time

+BVM

19 February 2022

St. Lawrence Catholic Center at the University of Kansas (Koinonia retreat)

AMDG 

How's my tongue?

Catholics pay attention to body parts.  This is my body, given for you, says Jesus.  Catholicism will always be a full-contact sport, an engagement of the complete person, soul and body, and all the senses.  Note how many times Jesus talks about eyes and ears and such.

St. Paul famously says that no part of the body can belittle another part.  If the parts of the body could talk, not one part can say to another 'I don't need you.'

Today, however, St. James highlights a part, the tongue.  So much of life is changed through the tongue.  

Peter blurts out nonsense today out of fear of the Transfiguration.  It's a reminder to us to use our eyes and ears and tongue in proper proportion.  When I don't know what to say, I should say that and no more.

So, how's my tongue?

+mj

what wins hearts?

Homily

Friday of the 6th Week in Ordinary Time C2

18 February 2022

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG 

What wins hearts?

Ultimate choices about life are made from the heart.  They ought be directed by words and enabled by virtue, yet they are made from the energy that is the passions.  What do I feel so strongly about that I'm willing to suffer.  It's the only way to lay hold of eternal life.

Discernment is confusing when the heart grows cold, bruised as it is by life's inevitable abuses.  What can inspire such a heart?

St. John says it is works of mercy.  When the proclamation of the Gospel loses its hearing and relevance, only works matter.  To put it as bluntly as he does, faith without works is dead.

Pope Francis has always longed for a Church known first and best by her love of the poor.  There is too much talking, not enough service.  So the faith suffers when it is not proclaimed above all through works of mercy.

It's what wins hearts.  

lightly or tightly?

Homily

Thursday of the 6th Week in OT C2

17 February 2022

AMDG +mj

What must I hold lightly or tightly?

I need the Holy Spirit, particularly his intellectual gifts of wisdom, understanding, knowledge and counsel, to help me.  For knowing how and when to hold tight or let go is a dance that is hard to master.  Come, Holy Spirit!

Peter nails his confession in today's Gospel yet mere moments later is called Satan for holding on to an misguided expectation.  He needs to hold tightly who Jesus is but hold lightly to all that could mean.  What Peter is most right about is so close to what he is most wrong about.

So too for me.  I must learn when to hold tight, and when to hold light.  It's a dance whose music is the Holy Spirit.

What must I hold lightly and tightly?

am I blue collar?

Homily

Wednesday of the 6th Week in Ordinary Time C2

16 February 2022

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG +mj

Am I blue collar?

Today's scriptures reject a sanitized experience of reality.  Yes, in the end, God's mercy and grace will make us clean and white as new snow.  Yet the process to get there will be messy.

St. John cautions against an ephemeral religion.  Our encounter with the word is more than a fleeting glance into a mirror.  The encounter leads to a blue-collar perseverance in almsgiving.  That's the true way.

So is the experience of the blind man, whose therapy is not a sermon but a messy, private mud bath from Jesus, twice over.  It's followed by Jesus's instructions to not show-off, or indulge sensationalism, but to go straight home and get back to work.

True religion is more than a show.  It's for people who roll up their sleeves.

 

am I rich or poor?

Homily

6th Sunday in Ordinary Time C2

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

13 February 2022

AMDG +mj

Am I rich or poor?

That's the pivotal question I hope to answer later.  But first, I want to answer this one.  Am I am winner or a loser.

I don't know which I am, but I know this.  I like to win.  I really like to win.  My grandpa used to say one learns more from losing than from winning.  My uncles replied they wanted to be dumb then, cause winning is so much more fun.

I gave up the fear of losing long ago.  I can't stand KU fans who are afraid of close games.  Get a life, I say.  I don't let the thought of losing even enter my mind.  We are KU, who do you think you are?  Arrogant, I know, but that's my attitude.  When my team in fact does lose, like the Chiefs two weeks ago, I go into denial.  Today is not Super Bowl Sunday, and if it is, I do not care.

I like to win, you see?

Yet in this I am not a disciple of Jesus.  Jesus doesn't prefer winning to losing.  He cares living and dying! So however you get more life, that's what He prefers.  Jesus invites me his disciple to not be afraid to be a lovable loser, so long as I'm trying my best.  For He knows what my grandpa did, that failing early and often is key to learning how to truly live.  For only when I lose do I see in perfect contrast how I must change for the better.  When I win, there's always a chance that I got away with something, and became entitled.  In his Beatitudes, Jesus teaches it's better always to get caught in our mistakes, and stay hungry.

Again, Jesus is more interested in living than winning.

Now to the pivotal question.  Am I rich or poor?  Darn it, anyway, I have to say I'm rich.  I'm really rich, which by the standards of the Beatitudes means I am not happy.  I could have anything I want in this world, but the Gospel reveals that if this is so I am not dreaming or desiring nearly enough.  

If I won the lottery tomorrow, I would take the money.  What is worse, I don't think the money would destroy me. Which by the standard of the Beatitudes means I am an idiot.  I am not the exception to the rule.  I can rationalize all day long that I am 100% detached from my things, but it's a lie.  As soon as I got the money, it would occupy a place in my soul.  I would fear losing it.  The Beatitudes say that if I have a fear or losing, my soul is already lost.

All this is just to say I need to worry less and laugh and play more.  St. Luke uses the world laugh in His Beatitudes, the only time this word appears in the Gospel   How do you tell a person is beatified, that he or she is happy?  By their laugh, says the Gospel!  The Gospel standard of poverty, emptiness, availability, readiness, hunger and humility are seen in those who don't take themselves too seriously.  Those who can laugh have a lightness of heart and pure joy that will not be taken from them.

Do I laugh as deeply and as often as I could?  The key to this question lies in the Beatitudes.  Am I rich or poor?

Do I want to be well?

Homily

Friday of the 5th Week in Ordinary Time C2

Our Lady of Lourdes

World Day of Prayer for the Sick

11 February 2022

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

Do I want to be well?

I hate to say it, but I think the default answer to this question is no.  At least for me.  I prefer to get by, by masking symptoms and self-medicating.  

6 million people go to Lourdes every year seeking healing.   Yet 6 billion people are sick.  Nobody is immune from illnesses of body, mind and spirit, that are inherent at every turn in life.  I avoid my health to my own peril.

Yet to want to be well is worse.  It's a venture into the unknown.  It's to stop trusting the lie that I have the most faith in, that's there's something wrong with me that will never change.

If Jesus has touched that part of me, it will be a healing I can never shut up about.

What is truth?

Homily

Wednesday of the 5th Week in Ordinary Time C2

8 February 2022

transferred Feast of St. Albert the Great

Golden Mass 

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG +mj

What is truth?

I'm sure you recognize this question most famously said by Pontius Pilate, a Roman governor.  Pilate is exasperated by Jesus, who had responded to his questions by saying whoever belongs to the truth listens to my voice.  Whatever, says Pilate.  My truth is this impossibly treacherous political and moral trap before me.

What is truth?

I dare say it's the most pivotal and essential question at a university.  I pray today that it's a unifying question at KU.  St. Albert, our patron for today's Golden Mass, contributed greatly to several universities, even founding a couple.  He saw a tremendous value in a unified search for truth among a community of learners.  By example. St. Albert put the scientific, philosophical and theological pursuits of truth together, to mutually purify and enrich each other.

I hope you find yourself in your real life moving between these disciplines which grant access to the one fullness of truth.  I'm sure you do.  I wish I studied more, but recently I've played around with a free online class entitled from the Big Bang to Dark Energy.  The class was immediately helpful when I just read a commentary in First Things, a journal on how religion affects politics.  The commentary was a reminder that the Big Bang cannot and should not be identified with the moment of creation ex nihilo by God.  Fr. Lemaitre, the Catholic priest involved with the Big Bang theory, cautioned even the Pope against such a temptation to identify the two, reminding the Pope that the revealed doctrine of creation will perhaps always be made reasonable not by science, but by philosophy.  Then last night, my facility manager taught me how a kegerator is engineered so I can make sure we have beer for our theological discussion nights here at St. Lawrence.  

It's great fun, you see, for the scientific, philosophical and theological disciplines to enrich and depend upon one another. It's so much better than attempts to misrepresent and cancel each other.

We joke in my diocese that our best priests were STEM majors in college.  To take nothing away from other approaches that access truth, it seems that STEM majors when they want to have a special aptitude for putting the pieces together, connecting material, spiritual and theological dimensions and realities.

Anyway, today's Scriptures also point us toward a unified approach to truth that frees one to live.  Solomon, who from the dreamy subconscious psychological realm was asked by God what he wanted, asked for wisdom.  Such is a theological grace given to the baptized in the sacrament of confirmation, elevates the nature of Solomon so that he can see as God sees.  Solomon picks up a nice research benefactor today, in the Queen of Sheba.

Jesus in the holy Gospel for today corrects scruples by confirming that the moral life is never reducible to the material body, but involves a free act of the will in relation to the philosophical transcendental of goodness.

So here we are, praying to God that our pursuit to Pilate's political question - what is truth? - would be enriched through an integrative not compartmentalized pursuit of truth at KU.  I think it's what St. Albert would want.  Great doctor of the Church, pray for us!

Where are the sick?

Homily

Monday of the 5th Week in Ordinary Time C2

7 February 2022

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG +mj

Where are the sick?  

They are with Jesus.

I'll admit it.  I'm done with COVID.  I'm tired of all this sickness.  I lost my patience a long time ago.  Yet Jesus hasn't.

They brought the sick to Jesus.  Where they are, He is.

Pope Francis loves the field hospital image of the Church.  There Jesus is, in the midst of the mess.  There He is, in harm's way. There He is, searching for new ways to reveal all the compassion in His sacred heart in the lives of His suffering mystical body.

To put away the sick is to put away Jesus.  For there He is, in the midst of them.

Where are the sick?  To answer that question is to find Jesus.

When will I say 'choose me?'

Homily

5th Sunday in Ordinary Time C2

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

6 February 2022

AMDG +mj

When will I say 'choose me?'

I know, I know, if you've been Catholic long you're probably tired of hearing about vocations.  Vocation, vocation, vocation.  You have one.  You are made for something.  Jesus is calling you intimately and personally by name.  You have a mission that only you can accomplish.  Your happiness depends on your answer.

You've heard it over and over and over.  Sometimes, it can seem like just one more thing for a Catholic to feel guilty about, especially if I struggle to know or be faithful to my vocation.

Yet your vocation is not meant to be experienced in this way.  Jesus did not create you to test you.  He didn't create you to hire you.  Of course, He needs fishers of men but He doesn't need need them.  He chooses to need us for our own sake, not for His.  Your vocation will never be a means to His ends.  He will never call you to control or abuse you.

Quite the opposite, Jesus created you only to love you.  He created you to suffer for you, and to reveal all the love He has in His sacred heart for you.

That's why a vocation is not first a surrender to God's will, but first a surrender to His love.  That's what the three guys in tonight's scriptures found out.  Grace is first, then the call.  Jesus first invades our space with his mercy, only after does He call.

Isaiah got the hell scared out of him, when he received a vision.  He was sure his unworthiness meant his destruction.  Instead, an ember touched his lips and cleansed him, an ember not unlike the flesh of Jesus from His burning heart that may hit your lips tonight.  From this experience of mercy, Isaiah says 'choose me.'

Paul hated Jesus more than anyone.  He is the last person Jesus should have called, yet because Jesus wants to dump all the mercy that is in His heart, Paul is the person He most wanted to call.  From his most hateful point, redeemed by Jesus, Paul says 'choose me!'

Peter called Jesus an idiot.   Peter, who alternates between great confessions and putting his foot in his mouth, reminds Jesus that it's his boat and he knows how to fish.  He obeys not out of faith, but to prove Jesus wrong.  When Jesus turns his world upside down, Peter gets scared.  Jesus tells Peter to take courage from his more fearful place, and from there Peter responds 'choose me!'

Thank God Peter did.  My life was forever changed through the fulfillment of today's Gospel promise, that Peter would catch men.  When I was a sophomore at KU, Peter's successor John Paul II gathered a million people in Denver for the World Youth Days.  Talk about a catch!  A million people is way smellier and messier than the two boatloads of fish Peter had to deal with.  Yet it's also more glorious.  This catch changed my life forever.

Isaiah, Paul and Peter.  None of them applied for the job.  None of them told God when they were ready.  They were all invaded by God's mercy. They responded to their experience of grace at their weakest point, where Jesus revealed all His love to them.  

When will I say 'choose me?'

I confess I get caught to often not by God's grace, but by my telling Jesus what I'm ready to do for him.  Yet this is not a vocation.  A vocation is not me telling God that I know how things go in my boat, and I know this is as good as it's gonna get.  No a vocation is born when Jesus invades my boat and says I love you.  Don't be afraid. There is more.

Your vocation is not matching your skills to God's job board.  It's you're response when God rocks your world by revealing how much He loves you.  You're vocation is like Isaiah's, Paul's and Peter's - it's meant to be the greatest of upsets, something that astonishes even you.

That's the invasion of grace first, then vocation.

In this light, when do I want to say 'choose me?'

Who's gonna teach?

Homily

Saturday of the 4th Week in Ordinary Time C2

+Agnes, virgin martyr

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

5 February 2022

AMDG +mj

Who's gonna teach?

Schools are in trouble.  Teachers want out.  The pandemic has stressed educators to the limits.  It's harder to realize the desire to see students learn and grow, the reason people get into education.  Fewer and fewer think it's worth it to teach.

Jesus has a crowd that is longing to be taught.  His heart breaks for them, and He teaches.  Teaching is a sacrifice from the heart.  It is ultimately a calling received personally from Jesus the teacher.

Let's pray that our poor world can receive the teachers she needs.  Let's beg Christ the teacher for this grace.

Who's gonna teach?

 

Do I keep contrition?

Homily

Friday of the 4th Week in Ordinary Time

St. Lawrence Catholic Center at the University of Kansas

SEEK Conference

AMDG +mj

Do I keep contrition?

You know, there are not one, but two adulterers and murderers in today's Scriptures.   I'm sure you noticed Herod.  Did you notice the other?  That's right, it's King David, whose praises are sung in the Book of Sirach, who is proclaimed to love God with his whole being.

King David had a low moment as bad as King Herod's indulgent and cowardly acts at his birthday party.  King David lusted after Bathsheba and took her in an adulterous affair, then murdered her husband. Uriah  The sins are almost exactly the same between these men.  One died in infamy.  The other in glory.

What's the difference?  King David kept contrition.  He even let a nobody, Shimei, curse him to his face.  He was deeply sorry, and through his repentance he came to know the love of God more, and responded in return.

King Herod tried to save face, and so lost his very life.

I have a low point too.  So do you.  But do I keep contrition?

how do I exit well?

Homily

Thursday of the 4th Week in Ordinary Time C2

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

3 February 2022

+Blaise, bishop and martyr

AMDG +mj

How do I exit well?

Transitions are a necessary part of life.  We might as well embrace them, rather than fear them.  To live is to change, and to live well is to transition well.

Sr. Ruth Kuefler gave a meditation to our staff yesterday that was so good.   Her point was that you can't exit well if you haven't stayed well.  Her comments echoed Jesus' seemingly circular but really insightful instructions to his disciples in today's Gospel.  Stay in the same place until you leave from there.

Many of us never embrace the full reality of where we are.  We are always wishing we were somewhere else.  Sr. Ruth in echoing our Lord's advice is absolutely right.

If you are able to stay somewhere well, so too will you exit be when it happens.  Yet there's no way to exit well if you first fumble the staying.

So I guess the real question is . .  how can I be where I am? 

am I courageous?

Homily

Thursday of the 4th Week in Ordinary Time C2

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

3 February 2022

AMDG +mj

Am I courageous?

Pay attention to the great King David's final words spoken to his son Solomon.  Take courage, son.  I dare say this is the most important word a parent can ever speak to a child.

No parent can protect their child from every danger and risk inherent in life.  Helicoptering can't work.  Almost always, it cripples a child.  One can only exist and survive, but never thrive, without the virtue of courage.  It's also a gift of the Holy Spirit.

Praying for the gift, and showing children how to be courageous is a critical duty of every parent.  Too many parents call me afraid that their son or daughter might lose faith.  From my experience, if we are afraid of losing faith, in many ways we have already lost it.

The best we can do is what David did.  Pray for courage.  Tell our kids how to be courageous, and show them how.  

Am I courageous?

who am I?

Homily

Wednesday of the 4th Week in Ordinary Time C2

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

2 February 2022

AMDG +mj

Who am I?

Today's Candlemas, the 40th and final day of Christmas in the old calendar, is a Feast that sheds a special light into this question.  Who am I?  

So a final Merry Christmas to you all!  Today is a Feast of Light.  For the particular light of Jesus that has been 'epiphanied' to the whole world through the recognition of the star by the Magi, today reaches its final Christmas destination by appearing in the temple.  Today Jesus is presented by His parents in His Father's house for the 1st time.

Simeon prophesies rightly that Jesus has come for revelation, to shed light on the question of who God is.  Through the mystery of the Incarnation, God becoming man, which we have contemplated for 40 days, the question of who I am is simultaneous with the question of who God is.  Jesus's appearing shows me over and over again who I am.

The candles presented today point to Jesus' desire to shine light into the mystery of your identity.  He is desperate today to epiphany Himself and shine light into any dark recessed of your temple, into any lies you believe about yourself.  

If you dare, He begs to reveal that you are His, that who you are is whose you are.  

When you were presented in the temple you received the simplest and most profound identity possible. I am His.  

Today's Feast begs you to renew this identity at this turn in your life. 

So ask yourself in light of the Incarnation.  Who am I?

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