What needs to get out into the open?

Homily

22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time A

3 September 2023

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

If you were pope, what is the first thing you would do?

That's a great question, but one I will leave for another day.  Let me just say this.  Don't do what Peter did.  In the Gospel of Matthew, in just a matter of moments Peter goes from making the great confession of faith in Jesus, and being named the first Pope, to being called Satan.  Why?  Because his first act as Pope, as royal steward of the kingdom of heaven, is to try to cancel the cross, to cancel suffering.  Jesus correct him, sternly.  

Yet in saying what he's really thinking, Peter mysteriously becomes a hero once again.  Because he is honest Peter gets his fear out in the open.  Even though his answer is dead wrong, because it is visible, in play, and not hidden, the answer is corrected by the light of truth.  Which leads to our pivotal question for this week - what needs to get out in the open?

A key to holiness is vulnerability.  Vulnerability and honesty is what makes Jeremiah such a great prophet.  He wears his emotions on his sleeves.  He relates the tensions and conflicts of his heart, instead of hiding, avoiding, escaping or coping.  In doing so, Jeremiah fulfills his destiny.  He saves his own soul, and perhaps the lives of those around him.  Simply for telling the truth.  I feel used by God, overwhelmed by him and his mysterious ways.  I hate the cross.  Yet there is still something that I need to get off my chest, something burning in my heart, something imprisoned in my bones.  It's the capacity to live the truth of my reality in love.  It's to believe in myself as God does.

The more we get the tensions, paradoxes and conflicts of life out in the open, the more they can be healed and find resolution in their relation to God and to reality.  You know those conflicts well.  I trust God but I doubt.  I want to live courageously and change but I'm afraid and stay stuck.  I want to be free but keep going back to my coping mechanisms.  I want to give my life away but I'm afraid to let go of who I am right now.  I want to embrace my cross but I like comfort.  I want to participate in the redemption of the world but I want my privacy, my choice, my control too.

When those tensions get out in the open, however they do - in prayer, in conversations in shared experiences, they are related in a way that saves our soul, and brings life.  When they are hidden, escaped or avoided, they get the best of us.

What do I need to get more out in the open?  It's the shared human experience, it's the conflicts and tensions of the heart that are the foundations of every great story that ends in life.  They are the emotions expressed by Jeremiah and Peter.

What do I need to get into the open?