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?