Who have I quit on?

Homily

29th Sunday in Ordinary Time C

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

16 October 2022

AMDG

Who have I quit on?

I'll make this pivotal question multiple choice.  Who have I quit on?

a) myself

b) my family

c) my friends

d) God

e) all of the above

f) none of the above

Today's scriptures are about not giving up on anyone, for any reason whatsoever.  The reason is that there is no quit in God.  He doesn't even consider quitting on us.  Jesus is always praying to His Father for us.  He doesn't want to know any different.  So too his disciples.  We are to pray always, without ceasing, with patience and perseverance.

Who I have I quit on?  The answer lies in the ways I have stopped praying.

Firstly, don't quit on yourself.  You are made to be a master of prayer!  Yes, you!  I roll my eyes whenever my spiritual direction reminds me of this, but it's true.  You are made for a never-ending conversation with God.  So don't quit.  To quit praying is to quit on yourself, for nothing happens in life without prayer!

Have I quit on my family?  Yea, in many ways I have.  I forget so easily that every great story is a miraculous comeback story!  Look at your favorite story or movie.  I guarantee you it's a story of prayer, a story of faith.  There has to be a less than 1% chance of things working out, for the story to be compelling.  The hero has to dare faith, to attempt the impossible, or the story lags.  When the impossible happens, glory results!  It can happen in your family.  It will happen.  Believe and pray!  Don't quit.

Friendships are costly!  I have betrayed friends and let them down.  I've been beat up myself. There is such a temptation to quit, to stop praying for friendships, for it's easier to go it alone.  Don't do it!  You are made to have friends and be a friend.  Believe, and pray!

Finally, have I quit on God?  I get it that it's hard to tell if prayer is working a lot of the time.  God can seem distant and slow.  Yet Jesus reassures us that He is merely increasing capacity for something more incredible, some more, to happen sooner than we dare ask for or imagine!  Believe, and pray!

I wish I prayed like I rooted for sports.  I decided long ago to be the best fan in the world.  Without bravado, I don't think there's a greater fan of his teams than me.  I always believe.  I never quit.  There's always a way for an incredible comeback.  I never quit.  I get mad at people who do.  I've been a part of too many comebacks to lose faith, or to stop praying.  It's a big reason why I take interest!

+mj

Do I need to give thanks?

Homily

28th Sunday in Ordinary Time C2

9 October 2022

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

Do I need to give thanks?

I'll never forget the time my dad showed up his priest son.  One Thanksgiving morning in Hoxie, Kansas, I confessed to my dad that I was in vacation mode, that I hadn't prepared for Mass.  Ninety minutes before Mass, I hadn't even looked at the Gospel for the day.  My dad told me on the spot without looking what the Gospel was - the 10 lepers being cleansed, with only the single Samaritan returning to give thanks to God.  I guess my dad has been going to Thanksgiving Mass a lot longer than I have.

My dad isn't particularly articulate about his faith, but he doesn't need to be.  He remembers more, and is affected by Mass more than I give him credit for.  Best of all, he walks the walk.  He never even considers missing Mass.  For him it is right and just to give thanks for the gift and responsibility of life.

There are two needs that I have that could use more attention.  There is the need to give thanks, and to give my life.  Notice that perhaps my greatest need is not to get, but to give.  The things I take for granted or hoard own me more than I own them.  I have been stuck in selfish mode more than once in my life, obsessed with what I don't have rather than responding with gratitude and generosity for what I do have.

The Mass is the ultimate thanksgiving.  It is the ultimate place to get more by giving thanks and giving our lives to God.  Eucharist means thanksgiving.  Is it any wonder that if my greatest need is to give thanks and my life, that the largest crowds in human history have been gathered by the Mass.  I've been blessed to have been a part of those crowds.

Mind you, nothing of my worship adds anything to God.  Yet, it brings me life by opening me to the truth that all is gift, all is grace, and my best freedom is to respond generously to said grace.  Worship brings me into right relationship with the source of all grace, and to the part I'm invited to play in the great battle for life everlasting.  

So let us give thanks to the Lord our God.  It is right and just!

Do I need to give thanks?  You bet I do, more and more!

Jesus calls out the nine who get what they need, take it for granted, and go back to their own way.  That sounds about right.  Ninety percent of the time I come not to truly worship, but to check a box before going back to my thing.  The Samaritan leper, and Naaman the Syrian, shame me as foreigners who worship better than I do.

Worship is right and just.  It's proper to our nature; it's what saves and heals more than anything.  May I resist an atheistic world view that takes life as a given, as only what I make of it.  The problem is that I didn't make the world.  I certainly didn't make myself.  Atheism by its incompleteness backfires where worship succeeds.

My dad still teaches me that life is about grace and responsibility.

For that, I want to give more thanks!