What gate am I gonna smash?

Homily

21st Sunday in Ordinary Time A

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

27 August 2023

AMDG

What gate am I going to smash?

There appear to me to be two gates in play in today's Gospel from Matthew. There's a gate that needs to be smashed with a rock, and a gate that will be unlocked with a key.

Peter, you are a rock with keys.  One gate you will smash.  The other you will open.

I'm gonna leave the second gate for another homily.  It's the gate guarding the authority Christ gave to His Church in and through its first royal steward St. Peter, a gate that 2000 years later Pope Francis also has the key to unlock as our papa, the steward of our Catholic faith, the vicar or most visible representative of Christ in the world.

I want to talk about the first set of gates, the gates of hell.  They are the gates holding those who have lost their souls. Right after calling Peter a rock, Jesus says these gates will not stand!  Take that as you wish.  I take it to mean the faith of the Church will smash the damn things.

Do you remember that as a member of the Catholic Church whose founding we rehearse in today's Gospel, that you exist to save souls and defeat evil?  Yes you!  I'm talking to you, as a I talk to myself.  You exist to smash the gates of hell.  It's your legacy.  Permission granted today for you to be a criminal trespasser past the gates of hell.  I ask you to break and enter, please!

A part of the mission of the Church is to break down the gates of hell. It's my mission, and it's yours.

Too often I automatically interpret today's Gospel in a soft, weak, defensive way.  That even though my faith might be threatened, and I'm scared to lose faith, that someone I'll be able to hang onto it.  Jesus says so.  I don't think that's the interpretation of this Gospel at all.  Those afraid of losing faith in some ways have already lost it.  It's a losing mentality.  The faith we celebrate and lay hold of has the power to smash evil.  The Catholic faith is powerful and offensive.  If it's not, to hell with it, pun intended.

What gate am I going to smash this year?

I'm determined to witness that the Catholic faith retains its power to help me live fully, live differently.  I'm especially excited to profess the times the Holy Eucharist has rescued my soul from death, and to invite more and more to the transformative experience of the Mass, confident that KU students will respond to God's desire to change their lives through the sacrament of His Body and Blood.

The gate I am going to smash is my fear that I can't do anything to get people to Mass, that I have to accept the ways things are.  I'm tired of worrying whether students will show up for Mass.  I'm going to move past my fear and boldly witness my faith, confident in its power to defeat the evils that afflict us.

You got next.  What gate are you gonna smash this year?

+mj 

Who do I need to learn from?

Homily

20th Sunday in Ordinary Time A1

Transferred Feast of St. Lawrence

20 August 2023

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

Who do I need to learn from?

In today's shocking Gospel, Jesus learns from a nobody.  When's the last time you learned something from a nobody?

I know, I know, it's uncomfortable to say that Jesus learns, that Jesus is a student.  Yet in taking on our human nature, Jesus becomes like us in all things but sin.  He is obedient to human parents, meaning He listens to them.  The letter to the Hebrews says that Jesus learns obedience from what He suffers, until He is perfected in love.  Today He learns from a Canaanite woman that She deserves the scraps from the table.  He is wrong today in telling the Canaanite woman, an enemy of Israel, to bug off, just as He was wrong to tell his mother Mary to bug off when She asked Him to make wine as His first sign at Cana.  Jesus is wrong, not in a sinful way mind you, but that He might learn just as we do.

Who do I need to learn from?

In God's mysterious ways, which are so different than ours, our best lessons in life come from nobodies..  God uses the weak to shame the strong, the poor to convert the rich, the nobodies to change the somebodies, the outsiders to save the insiders.  It's prophesied throughout the history of Israel, that all the nations will come to adore the God of Israel.  It's foreshadowed by the magi from the east, men with presumably no faith, being the only ones with enough faith to recognize the newborn Savior of the world.  It's played out even today, where the Catholic faith is growing wherever it is most persecuted in the far corners of the world, whereas here at home where it's comfortable the faith is being lost.

Who does the St. Lawrence Center need to learn from?  This is a great question!  This Catholic mission to KU is not just to keep insider Catholics from losing their faith. That's a loser mentality, and Jayhawks aren't losers. No, the St. Lawrence Center is for everyone, and the most dramatic stories of faith written on campus again this year will come from outsiders like the Canaanite woman, those least likely to have faith.

In the radical prediction of St. Paul, the insiders will only come fully to faith after all the outsiders have come into the Church. That makes the most important people at KU those who are farthest from the Catholic faith. We call them the E's - those who are enemies of the Church and think that religion harms people and leads them astray and participates in white imperialist privilege and should be canceled.  Of all the audiences St. Lawrence wishes to reach with the goodness, truth, beauty and meaning of our Catholic faith, the E's are the most important.  If you're wondering what the other groups are, the A's are those who are sold out for the faith. The B's are those who are drifting away. The C's have decided they don't want to be Catholic. The D's havent' heard the Gospel.  Then there are the E's, those who hate the Church.

The Catholic Church is mother and shepherd of them all.  We pray equally for them all.  For anyone who concludes the Catholic Church is exclusive, they might want to take a second look.  The Catholic Church is filled with diversity, with Gentiles from all the races of the world.  The Church is filled with equity, where everyone is adopted equally into the family of God's beloved.  Then there's inclusion, as the Church is on mission to gather all people into one, for everyone has a part to play in the redemptive mission of Christ.  The Catholic Church had a DEI office long before KU thought of it.

Back now to the point of today.  I'm here to learn, and St. Lawrence is here to learn, and most importantly, Jesus is here to learn, from the least significant, from the farthest outsider.  The least likely person, the Canaanite woman, showed up with the strongest faith, and Jesus was amazed.  He learned from her.  This is not a loss of omniscience from Jesus, not a sinful mistake, but a humble move to draw out the faith of this amazing woman.  Jesus chooses to hide what he could have known to learn from this woman, and to teach us how to learn faith from the last significant.

Who do I need to learn from?