what's the point?

Homily

18th Sunday in Ordinary Time C2

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

31 July 2022

AMDG

What's the point?

Last Christmas, my five siblings and I had a meeting with my dad.  It was to go over the family assets, my dad's really, so that everyone was on the same page.  It was a great meeting!  There was no greed, only gratitude.  I appreciate my dad trying to have his affairs in order, though he's in good health at 72 years old.  My affairs are not in order!  I could die tomorrow and leave a mess. Maybe you would too.

Still, what's the point of it all?

Quoheleth puts forth this question to us today.  He reminds me of what I know but like to conveniently forget.  Anyone I love I'll have to eventually let go of.  Anything I have will one day belong to someone else.  Is life just vanity, he says?  Is it nothing more than evanescence?

A true Christian cuts this question off at the turn.  Long before I consider this question, I am invited to aggressively give my life and all I have away.  A Christian refuses to be a victim in the face of this seemingly desperate situation.  If he is a victim, he's a most willing one.  In short, the life of a Christian is nothing but a holy sacrifice, chock full of courage and generosity.  It's really as simple as that. Multiply the gift of your life by risking faith and daring courage.  Then give it all away, so that nothing can be taken from you that is not already given.  A Christian always choses death long before death sneaks up on him.

Since I have died with Christ in baptism, my human experience is not something to cling to, but something that is free to be elevated into the very life of God which cannot fade.  My life can be transformed from fear of loss into divine love, which endures and conquers all things.

What's the point?

The point is to not let this doubt and fear of Quoheleth get the best of you.  Instead, through your freedom to live courageously and generously, turn the question on its very head.

That's the point.

does second place suck?

Homily

Monday of the 17th Week in Ordinary Time C2

Feast of St. James the Greater, Apostle

25 July 2022

St. Lawrence Catholic Center at the University of Kansas

Does second place suck?

It certainly can.  There are worse things, for sure, so long as one gives his very best.  Yet there is a unique sadness to coming up just short, as a runner-up.  Think if KU had lost to North Carolina this year, how devastating that would have been.  Can you remember the last time you finished second, and how it felt?  I bet not so good.

James and John have some work to do, given that they had their mom give voice to their ambition, instead of risking the question to Jesus themselves.  Yet their boldness in saying that will do whatever it takes to be first, leads to the prophecy by Jesus fulfilled in St. James that he would be the first of the apostles to give all in martyrdom!

Be careful what you ask for, especially if you ask Jesus to be first.  Still, dare to ask boldly. It sure as hell beats being second.

will I pray?

Homily

18th Sunday in Ordinary Time C2

St. Lawrence Catholic Center at the University of Kansas

24 July 2022

AMDG

Will I pray?

In the 2018 Final Four, the Jayhawks seemed to be the least Catholic team left.  Sr. Jean was chaplain for Loyola. Fr. Bob for Villanova.  Coach Beilein for Michigan went to daily Mass, it was reported.  Reporters called the Catholic Center asking if Catholics were praying for the Jayhawks.  I have to admit I wasn't.  Basketball is not something I pray about.

As you perhaps know, KU was blown out by Cathoilc Villanova right during the Easter Vigil.  Not fair, not fair at all.

If KU had lost to Villanova this year, I was going to call Coach Self and see if he was open to a different approach in playing Catholic schools.  I never had to make the call. We're the National Champs, and the system seems to be working.

Will I pray?

I don't think basketball is worth praying over, at least not for victories. That in all things God will be glorified, including sports, now that is a worthy prayer.

Jesus invites his disciples to pray more personally, more intimately, and for relationship.  He says to cry 'Daddy' and promises the answer to be nothing less than the love that lies at the heart of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit.

Will I pray?  Not for outcomes, for that is too little, but for relationship?  Prayer is our relationship with God who is life itself.  Prayer is always and nothing less than a matter of life and death.

You can distill life down to one question if you wish.

Will I pray?

why am I weeping?

Homily

Friday of the 16th Week in Ordinary Time C2

Broomtree Retreat Center, South Dakota

22 July 2022

Why am I weeping?

It's not right to say there's no crying in Christianity.  Jesus wept.  He wept for the same reason as Mary Magdalen, over a tomb, over the loss of a loved one.

Yet when I do lose someone truly?  It's when I lose hope in the resurrection. It's when I conclude a story is over, when I conclude a person, even sometimes myself, will forever live in the grave I assigned to them.  The people I give up on are the only ones that are truly lost.

Yet Lazarus and Jesus are risen!  It is the mark of love to feel and mourn a loss.  Yet that weeping is not a conclusion, it's the seedbed of new life, if only I stop holding on to the boxes I put people in.

Including myself.

who's for dinner?

Homily

16th Sunday in Ordinary Time C2

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

17 July 2022

AMDG

Who is for dinner?

That sounds cannibalistic, but it's not.  If anything is clear about today's Scriptures, it's that every meal is less about the food, and more about the people.  Ultimately, meals are about feeding on God and each other.  The right question is our pivotal one.  Who is for dinner?

Tell me about your dinner table?  Is it one of the most important places in the world?  It's meant to be.

Your dinner table is meant to participate in the one right before us now.  At this Mass, this table is your table.  It's also your tomb.  The Mass is the place where you put your life on the line, that as St. Pauls says, your sufferings might be taken up and fill out the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for the redemption of the world.  This altar is your table, and your tomb.  

Your dinner table at home is a participation in this. Don't take my word for it.  Look at how Abraham and Sarah hosted God at their table, and were blessed in turn with the conception of Isaac their son.  Then go straight to Mary, Martha and Lazarus' table.  From there go to the table of the Last Supper.  Then don't tell me that your dinner table doesn't matter.

You won't hear this on the news, but the future of the world runs through your dinner table.  It doesn't run through your phone, nor through the ballot box.  To be sure, a historical vote as consequential as any in Kansas history, a matter of life and death, has already started.  Voting has a critical place in affecting the common good.

Still, the ballot box is less important than your dinner table, and it's not even close.  Conversation, relationship and communion, the ultimate sources of love and of life, are meant to run through your dinner table.

The reason the world is so messed up, the reason we have to vote on the right to rip children out of their most intimate relationships, is because we don't have dinner like we used to, like we are meant to.  I stink at dinner.  Maybe you do too.  Dinner is not just a bodily function, a checking of the box, something else to worry about.  If it's just that, than to hell with it, as Jesus tells Martha.  

Unless I feed on God and my family and my neighbor at dinner, I have no chance for the communion, conversation and relationship that gives life.  I neglect giving attention and intention to dinner at my own peril.

If not dinner, than what's your thing where you experience that depth and intimacy of conversation and communion?  

What's been revealed to us is that we can't live without it.

Let's face the pivotal question.  Who is for dinner?

am I lost?

Homily

15th Sunday in Ordinary Time C2

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

10 July 2022

AMDG

Am I lost?

The Samaritan certainly was, as lost as a Missouri Tiger in Lawrence, Kansas.  There is no reason in the world that a Samaritan from the north, one who hated Jews and vice versa, to be heading further south in enemy territory, down the steep path from the heights of Jerusalem to the depths of Jericho.  Yet there he is.  Jesus points him out as a hero.

Kansas is lost too, not completely, but getting closer.  In a terrible twist of history, the state of Missouri is more free today than Kansas. Free to choose life over death.  You heard me right.  In Missouri, a state that fought to preserve the right to own slaves, it's now illegal to kill unborn children.  Not in Kansas, a state that fought for just the opposite, to be a free state where human dignity is upheld.

Voting starts this week to see if Missouri of all places remains more free than Kansas.  At the moment, Kansas is lost.

I never thought I'd see a day like this, when Missouri, or Oklahoma even, showed Kansas what it means to be free.  For to be a free and just society is to begin by protecting the right to life to every person without exception.  You can't expand rights to autonomy, privacy and equality by killing children.  It makes no sense at all.

I don't care what our problems are.  Taking an innocent human life is never a solution and is never just.  The denial of the right to life has led to the greatest holocaust in American history, and it's not close. No one has been harmed in American history more than unborn children, and it's not even close. 

The right to life is not complicated or confusing. Human personhood and dignity can never be relativized for any reason.  Period.  This law is very near to us.  It's not hard.  It's written in our minds, our consciences and our very nature.

I beg you to vote YES August 2nd.  There could be no vote since the founding of our state in 1861 that affects more lives in a more fundamental way.  A YES vote protects Kansans, especially its women and children, from the most evil, predatory, racist, violent and inhuman industry ever known, the abortion industry.  A YES vote removes the right to kill children from the original Kansas Constitution.  It once again makes Kansas free.

All that being said, still the fullness of life that is the destiny of every person, including the unborn, will be granted not ultimately through the law or voting, or politics, as critical as these are for the common good. Ultimately, it will be granted by courageous Jayhawks who recognize that with the gift of life comes the responsibility to give life rather than to take it. That responsibility falls to each and every Kansan.

Those who instead value secondary rights to privacy, autonomy and equality over the right to life are lost and scared.  So am I.  I get scared when I come face to face with the responsibility of my life.  I too am obsessed with my body, my choice, instead of the opportunity to expand human rights for others by making a gift of my life.  I too am lost, and scared to live unselfishly, chastely and responsibly.  I too harm others because I am lost and afraid.

Jesus still shines light in today's beautiful parable on how a culture of life will prevail over a culture of death.  See yourself in others who are lost and afraid to choose life.

Love your enemies.  Pray for those who persecute you.  Do good to those who hate you.  Its' ok to be lost.  Don't be afraid to be a stranger who suddenly finds and sees Himself in an unlikely stranger on a road neither of you should have been on.

For the culture of life and love and salvation is built most of all by people who are lost, people like the Good Samaritan, strangers who do good in a strange land in the most unlikely of ways.

Am I lost?

on dobbs

Statement 

On the Occasion of the Supreme Court of the US Decision in Dobbs vs. Jackson Co.Women's Health

11 July 2022

Dear Jayhawks:

As the mission of the Catholic Church to the University of Kansas, the St. Lawrence Center (henceforth SLC) embraces the opportunity to respond to the recent Supreme Court decision in the matter of Dobbs vs. Jackson Co. Women's Health, a decision that has the attention of the KU community. So too does the upcoming proposed Constitutional Amendment on the ballot August 2nd in Kansas that would allow restrictions to abortion that are currently deemed unconstitutional by the Kansas Supreme Court per the Nauser & Hodes vs. State of Kansas ruling in 2019.

SLC recognizes that many at KU are upset by the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling.  Some Jayhawks  perceive the overturning of Roe v. Wade as detrimental to women's rights to privacy, autonomy and equality.  Not only this, but many in the KU community have been personally involved with or affected by abortion.  SLC seeks mutual respect, conversation, reconciliation and relationship with all at KU, including those who disagree with the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in this case.

At the same time, St. Lawrence invites recognition  that there are many others in the KU community who see the court's recent decision as a just and necessary one, if there is to be a meaningful chance to build a just society founded on the right to life for every human person without exception.  In fact, there are numerous Jayhawks who have worked many years with the hope of seeing the ruling just rendered.  Roe vs. Wade is considered by many Jayhawks to be an unjust and unconstitutional ruling that has contributed to the greatest holocaust of human life in American history.

SLC furthermore invites respect for members of the KU community who have pro-life convictions that rely not merely or primarily on faith, but on right reason and good conscience, convictions founded on the following principles:

• That a unique and unrepeatable human life exists from the very moment of conception, a fact verified by the most vigorous sciences.
• That the decision to relativize the value of any human life for any reason historically leads to the most monstrous of human holocausts.
• That any sincere effort to care for children must begin with not killing them.
• That a society which fails to grant the right to life to each of its persons should not pretend to justly deliver the rights that proceed from the right to life to any 
• that a society shows its strength by extending its best protection and care to its weakest and most vulnerable persons, especially its children.
• That the ability to see ourselves in our children, and to prioritize their rights over the will of adults is critical to a nation with a hopeful future.
• That the right to life for all must entail the responsibility of all to never kill an innocent person for any reason.

SLC admits that one of the most serious responsibilities a state can require is for women to carry children to term, especially in the worst of circumstances. Such a responsibility, though necessary for the common good, must be supported by the best resources that can be made available by the state and its people, with exceptions granted when the life of the mother is gravely at risk.

This responsibility to always choose life must fall not only to pregnant women, but to each of us in this decisive moment.  Each of us must ask ourselves - what more must I do to give life rather than to take it?  This is a question of special meaning for Jayhawks.  KU takes its mascot from those ferocious fighters in Civil War times who risked their very lives so that Kansas came into the union as a free state, one where no person is owned, controlled or discarded.   

Giving life rather than taking it means participating as much as I can in building a chaste society whose virtue is shown in granting more children the dignity of being conceived in relationships where there is commitment, care and support.  It means knowing that the right to life for all can only be extended if I am responsible for living an unselfish life that gives more than it takes.  That's how Jayhawks build a culture of life where abortion is never the best option.

SLC envisions our free state not as an abortion destination for the Midwest, but as a generous society where every Jayhawk embraces the responsibility to give life to others. To this end, we encourage all Kansans of right mind and generous heart to vote YES on the upcoming Constitutional Amendment on the ballot August 2nd, a vote that will keep alive the hope of our state remaining free to be a place where no person is owned, controlled or discarded.  To the stars through difficulties, Jayhawks!

The Catholic faith has always shown light into the responsibility of all to choose life, and will always deepen and strengthen the commitment to do so.  SLC is honored to bring this faith to bear on the KU educational experience.  Yet once again, the convictions herein shared do not in any way depend on religious faith, but can be embraced by anyone who wants to expand human dignity and rights for all.

With a commitment to partnering with KU to lift students and society by educating leaders, and with equal commitment to making amends and asking for forgiveness for any and all ways the our Church has violated these same principles and harmed life rather than serving it, still SLC appreciates any and all persons of good will who receive these remarks on their own merit.

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

1631 Crescent Road

Lawrence, Kansas

  

am I absolutely poor?

Homily

14th Sunday in Ordinary Time C2

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

3 July 2022

Independence Day Weekend

AMDG

Am I absolutely poor?

I don't know how long you've been listening to the Gospel, but there's no way around this question.  It keeps coming from Jesus, over and over.  It arrives again today.  Am I absolutely poor?

He asks for my good.  He thirsts for my faith.  For the Kingdom of Heaven can only be entered through faith, by those who are available, detached, ready, open, vulnerable, empty and generous. He sends the 72 in just this way.  He wants to send you in just this way.  His Kingdom cannot be lived if I am attached, addicted, afraid of losing, trying to control, manage and figure out my life.

Am I absolutely poor?

I'm sorry folks.  It's the only way.  It's how Jesus lived, hand to mouth, owning nothing.  It's how he instructs us in true freedom.  My life can only grow in the measure I give it away.  Every gift hoarded is lost.  Every gift given is multiplied.  You cannot be a disciple without also being a missionary.  There is no faith without action.  Most of all, the only way to be a missionary is through poverty.

The biggest criticism of the pro-life movement is that pro-lifers don't put their money where their mouth is, that there couldn't possibly be enough care for every child who is born.  I take this criticism with a grain of salt, for skeptics are impossible to satisfy.

Still, Jesus invites us win or lose, to put it all out there.  I was blessed last weekend to witness a Jayhawk vow poverty with the Sisters of Life in New York, an order that wants to own nothing but the chance to walk with moms struggling to choose life for their children. I was not merely inspired by Sr. Miriam's Bethel's vow of poverty, I felt small knowing how much I hoard what I have.

Am I absolutely poor?

The laborers are few because all of us in some way calculate what I'm willing to give, and what is not going to work, instead of simply trusting the path Jesus has invited us on for our own good.

Each of us will live poverty in our own way, not recklessly, but yes absolutely.  Everything I have that I do not need or am not using is a gift that comes with the responsibility to place it at the service of the Gospel of Life and the Kingdom of Heaven.

It's how I will be truly free, through poverty.  The freedom we celebrate in the US this weekend is like any gift.  It can only grow the the measure it is given away.  May I celebrate this weekend not a freedom from anybody getting in my way, but a freedom to give my life to someone I believe in.

To do that well, I have to be absolutely poor.  The Gospel of Life could not be clearer.

Am I absolutely poor?