Who sees me?

Homily

26th Sunday in Ordinary Time C2

25 September 2022

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

Who sees me?

I bet many of you here today are lonely.  If you're not, you might soon be.  It's a normal, common human feeling.  It's nothing to be ashamed of.

The feeling of loneliness is borne of rejection.  I have been forgotten, passed over, betrayed and let down.  I've done the same to others.  So the feeling of loneliness, and the resulting spiritual questions, come often and throughout the whole of life.  Am I alone?  Can anyone see me?  Does anyone care?  Can anyone help?

The key as we see in today's Gospel is to try to relate the feeling of loneliness to God. The Good News is that God sees, and cares, and accompanies us throughout the whole of life, as only He can, if only we let Him.  

That's why a prayer life, an intimate one of shared experience and pain, is critical to entering into life.  There are no shortcuts to relating our experience with God.  You have to put the time in, with vulnerability, if your trust in His care for you can grow.  

As always in the Gospel, my soul is at stake.  We see how easily the rich man, who remains nameless, loses his soul by trying to make a name for himself.  Instead of relating his experience to God, he indulges in self-care, which can never be as life-giving as begging someone to care for you.  In indulging in self-care, an insulated character results, and a soul is lost.

Instead, Lazarus prays.  Lazarus begs.  Lazarus relates.  If only my prayer life was like his.  Is anyone there?  Does anyone care?  Will anyone help me?  In the end that prayer is answered, through much perseverance no doubt, for the Lord hears the cry of the poor.

Why do I have a constant need to be seen, known, chosen and desired?  It's because I'm a relational being.  To be alive is to be in relationship, to be dead is to be alone.  The loneliness endemic to the human experience is a pining for life born of relationship.  It's ultimately a pining for God Himself, for He alone can fulfill what I am made for.  It's nobody's else's job, nor could it be, nor does it help to try to take care of myself, as tempting as that may be.

It's a spiritual question for the whole of life.  God, are you there?  Do you see me?

Who sees me?

Am I exceptional?

Homily

25th Sunday in Ordinary Time C2

18 September 2022

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

Am I exceptional?

When it comes to the Gospel, I think I am, but I'm not.

Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money.  Who wants to talk about money?  No one ever does, which is why the Gospel talks about it so much.  Greed is such an easy way to lose my soul, so this cardinal sin has to be confronted at every turn of my life.  Get used to the Gospel challenging my relationship to money for the rest of my life.  And thank God is does, for the sake of my soul.

Everyone thinks they can cheat in regards to money, that I can have my cake and eat it to, that I can have things yet not love them more than God.  Everyone thinks they are exceptional.  No one is.  The Gospel cannot be clearer.  If you cheat in small ways, you will cheat when all the chips are down.  You CANNOT serve both God and mammon.

Yea but what if I don't have as much as others? What if I'm more generous than the person next to me?  It doesn't matter!  There are no 'yea buts,' no exceptions, when it comes to matters of life and death, the salvation of my soul.  I can't have it all, but I can have one thing if I dare it. That thing is the salvation of my soul, which is nothing less than the capacity to suffer and die for who I love.

No one gets around this decision, no matter how much I try to excuse, avoid or put it off.  Will I suffer and die for who I love?  No one gets out of this world without deciding.  The salvation of my soul is always at stake, whether I like it or not.  At an hour I least expect, the chance to suffer and die for who I love will surely come.  The best predictor of whether I will give my life when the chips are down is to look at my bank account, my schedule and my stuff right now.

So how am I doing with that?  I'm not ready, everyone!  I have a cluttered life, one that has plenty of evidence that I am not ready or able to suffer and die for who I love.  I think I am the exception to the rule that you can't love both God and mammon.  Yet I'm not, and Jesus does me the great favor at every turn in my life of calling me out.

The Gospel standard is simple. Give 10% to God first. Then give to the poor. Then meet your responsibilities.  Do this and you will live.  There are no exceptions, no matter how much or little you have.  There are no exceptions, even if I have a hard time trusting the Church or the poor with my money.  It's not about the Church's need or the need of the poor.  It's about my soul.  If I cheat now I also will cheat when my soul is at stake. 

I can't have it all.  Yet the good news is that I can have one thing, the salvation of my soul by giving my life to suffer and die for who I love.

If only I don't try to be exceptional to the Gospel.

Am I exceptional?  In regards to the Gospel, I think I am, but I'm really not.

Who is looking for me?

Homily

25th Sunday in Ordinary Time

11 September 2022

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

Annual Feast of Dedication

AMDG

Who is looking for me?

Too often when I hear the 15th chapter of Luke, I zero in on the two sons.  Which one am I?  Who am I?

Yet I think there's a better question in play - not who am I, but where am I?

This is God's original question to man.  Adam and Eve, where are you?  It's the first question mankind has to answer.  The first question might also be the best.

Who is looking for me?

Too much of my life is spent searching for myself.  What is my true, authentic identity?  It can be a fool's journey, not unlike that of the prodigal son, who tries desperate to find himself by running away.  This approach can lead to a frustrating and endless mind game of labels and comparisons.  You know the drill.  You play this game all the time, as do I.

Am I the older or younger son?  Am I Judah or Ephraim?  Am I an old prude or reckless child?  Am I liberal, trying to cast off oppression real and perceived, or conservative trying to hold on tight to what I have.  Am I a prodigal or a Pharisee?  Am I Republican or Democrat?  Am I a modern Catholic or an old school radical traditionalist?  Am I a Pope Francis or Pope Benedict fan?  Do I watch Fox News or CNN?

The either/or label game can last a lifetime and never arrive anywhere.  It's not really the point of the parable.  Either/or comparisons never do justice to the mystery of a person in relation to a transcendent God.  As I am in the image and likeness of God, so also do I transcend human labels.  Either/or labels and comparisons can be interesting distinctions, but must give way to the both/and paradoxes endemic to the mystery of faith.  The point is that I am both the older and younger son.

Which makes room for the ultimate point of Luke 15, which are parables about a crazy shepherd, a kooky old woman, and a foolish Father.  That's who is looking for me, strange as it may seem.

The best identity available to me is to be dumb, worthless and lost.  Why?  Because God reveals Himself as a crazy shepherd who smiles when a dumb sheep pees on his neck.  He parties over a penny while not caring about millions.  He rejoices at the chance to forgiven even as His sons laugh in His face.

Who is searching for me?  It's a better question than who am I.  Apparently, there is someone who has decided He can't live without me, not matter the cost.  

Why would I search for an identity anywhere else?

Will I bet on myself?

Homily

24th Sunday in Ordinary Time C

4 September 2022

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

Will I bet on myself?

The cost of being Jesus' disciple is so high.  Will I pay it?

Hate your family.  Give away all your stuff.  Embrace what is most torturing you.  Then and only then you will be my disciple.  Blessed and happy will you be!

Is it any wonder that so many run from Jesus instead of following Him, that He has so few, if any, true disciples?  Jesus obviously failed sales in college.  Or did He/

Would Jesus even take his own advice?  Can you imagine him saying 'I hate you Joseph, I hate you Mary'?  I sat around a campfire with my family just last night.  It was hard enough to try to love each other as God commands, let alone trying to hate each other too.  

Isn't the cost just too darn high?  Do I even want to try to be Jesus' true disciple? 

Jesus' words in the Gospel are meant to get me just to this question which lies at the edge of faith.  Jesus is always extreme because He has to be, for how else could  my obsession with tinkering with my own life might give way to the question of how I will spend my whole life?

In case you didn't notice this week, sports betting is now legal in Kansas.  Don't do it. It's a tax on stupidity.  Still, if bookies were making odds of my being a real disciple, what kind of odds would those be?   Suffice is to say they would not be in my favor. Still, despite the worst of odds, would I bet on myself?

Thankfully, this question, though pivotal, is not the most important.  What matters is that Jesus would bet on you, no matter the odds.  What matters is that He already has.  You know well how it words.  He empties Himself here of everything given Him by His Father, then sends us just as the Father sent Him.  What a crazy bet.

Jesus is probably worse at betting than He is at sales.  Yet His foolishness is the wisdom of God we hear of in the first reading.  Jesus comes this morning not to buy life insurance or hedge a bet like I have, but to go all in on you.  He's too foolish to want to know any different.

It's in the context of His bet on you, that this week's pivotal question comes.  Despite all odds, will I bet on myself?

+mj