What's the most glorious thing I've ever seen?

Homily

2nd Sunday of Lent B2

25 February 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

What's the most glorious thing I've ever seen?

For me, it's when suffers for love of me.  It's the most glorious thing I can ever see, or feel or experience.  It's also the most terrifying.

Father, let me help you.  Father, let me pray for you.  Father, let me offer this suffering for love of you.  it's all any of us ever want, for someone to love us like that.  Yet it's also the thing I'm most terrified to ask for, receive or look at - someone suffering for love of me.

The 2nd Sunday of Lent we are rocketed from the desert floor of temptation to the glorious heights of Mt. Tabor.  Jesus in His human nature is transfigured by a divine light that reveals fully who He is.  It's way too much, way too bright and terrifying for our buddies Peter, James and John to look upon.  Mercifully, the scene quickly disappears before our friends die of fright.  Jesus returns to His normal disguise, and we remain confused as to what He is saying.

The transfiguration was meant to encourage, so that the apostles wouldn't lose heart on the hard road to Calvary. I won't call is a failed experiment, but the scene seems to terrorize just as much or more.  If I am already too terrified to look at Jesus beautifully transfigured on Mt. Tabor, how could my little faith bear to gaze on the disfigured, terrible, and yes more brightly glorious body of Jesus on Mt. Calvary?  

Today's scriptures force a conflict, and I hope you feel it, setting the transfiguration against the horrible preview of Calvary that is the proposed slaughter of Isaac many years prior on that very same hill.  If I am terrified of the transfiguration, there's no way I'll keep my eyes fixed on the cross.

Abraham and Isaac show us what absolute faith really looks like, and it's terrible.  Imagine now if you will our heavenly Father's first look at Jesus on the cross, on that same spot where Abraham first looked with horror that his only-begotten son Isaac would willingly suffer slaughter sheerly for love of him.  Imagine that our heavenly Father, though horrified at what He sees, cannot look away.

At Mt. Tabor there were words for how beautifully glorious the scene way - this is my beloved Son, listen to Him.  Mt. Calvary is too terribly glorious for words.  Imagine that.  The Father, simultaneously horrified and infinitely pleased, hardly knows what to say.  The glory of the cross demands silence.

St. Paul saw it.  Our Father looking forever at His only-begotten suffering sheerly for love of Him, is a Father whose heart has been transformed from justice to mercy.  He can only and forever be for us, never against.

St. John finally saw it.  Though terrified at Mt. Tabor and drowsy in the garden, he mustered the courage to show up and look a the disfigured yet more glorious face of Christ on the cross.  Mary Magdalen was also there, she from whom the Lord had cast out 7 fearful demons.  Because John and Mary did not look away, they saw the most glorious thing one can ever see.  They were thus the first witnesses to the Resurrection, the first to see with faith, and believe.

So what is the most glorious thing you will ever see?  To gaze at one who loves you is glorious.  To gaze at someone suffering for love of you is more glorious, and more terrifying.  Look anyway.  Look with faith.  Look always, and don't look away. For looking at the most glorious thing you will ever see will transfigure your eyes, transform your heart and transport you from death to life.

+mj  

Why do I need a road win?

Homily

1st Sunday of Lent B2

18 February 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

Why do I need a critical road win this Lent?

The men's basketball team finally got one at OU yesterday!  See ya Sooners have fun in the SEC. We won't miss you.  After starting 0-5 on the road this year, the Hawks will need a couple more really tough road wins to have a chance to win the Big XII.

You heard the knock against Patrick Mahomes, didn't you?  Before this year, he had never had to win a road playoff game.  He had rarely been a playoff underdog.  The criticism didn't make sense to me, since to get home field advantage in the playoff he had to win lots of road games.  Anyway, he won both playoff road games as an underdog, and that made this Chiefs Super Bowl more improbably and thus more glorious.  The best stories, if you're paying attention, are always the underdog, Hail Mary and comeback from the dead stories.  Fans of Jesus Christ ought to know.

So Mahomes got his road wins as the underdog.  Why do you need a critical road win this Lent?

The first Sunday of Lent sets the tone for a big road win.  It's necessary because Satan routinely kicks our tails on our home field.  This angers our Lord, and motivates Him to be a road underdog on our behalf.  There was no reason for our parents to listen to Satan's temptations in the garden.  None.  But they caved, and He got us.  He still gets the best of us, especially when we're complacent on our home turf.  When things get easy, we lose focus and motivation.  It's our fallen human nature.  Satan is still getting the best of us, and that needs to anger and motivate us.

Jesus shows us exactly how to reverse the curse, and redeem this fallen nature of ours. Right after His baptism, He goes to the desert where He has not advantage, no inherent comfort, control or status.  He prays and fasts and faces temptation, in silence, solitude and suffering.  That's Lent.  The time is at hand to learn from Him that the Spirit given me at baptism is enough to win even as a road underdog.

If the Spirit within me does not drive me into the desert this Lent, I'll never know who I am when everything is against me or how I'll respond when an active shooter is trying to kill me, when things are most intense.  I need the silence, solitude and suffering of Lent as a training ground, so that I know I will choose to trust and love even when I have every reason to lose heart.

For my own sake, I need to go get this road win, with and for Jesus and through His Spirit.  My true character is built on the road, in the desert, at practice, when no one is rooting for me or looking.  I need to know my story, and my nature, and face the fact that when I'm comfortable, I'm selfish.  Yet when my story begins in repentance, it ends in glory.

If the confetti is gonna drop on my head this Easter, and for the victory over evil and death to be real not fake, it will be because I had a real Lent as a road underdog.  Jesus leads me there in these first days of Lent.  It's up to me to know why I need this critical road win.

+mj  

why am I here?

Homily

Ash Wednesday

14 February 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

Why am I here?  I don't have to be here today, and neither do you.  So why is everybody here?

For me, this is always the best question for Ash Wednesday, especially at KU.  Because today, everyone's first choice is to be here, even if it's Valentine's Day and the Chiefs SuperBowl parade is on.  Everyone wants to know why - why is Mass everyone's first choice on Ash Wednesday?

This day marks the greatest marketing strategy in Catholic history, apparently.  Come get free dirt, and free insults.  Of all the things we offer at St. Lawrence - community, entertainment, formation, prayer, and yes, even FREE BEER - you prefer to get all those things elsewhere better.

So what gives?   Today the Catholic Church apparently solves a unique problem for you, and gives you precisely what you most need.  Believe it or not, that's free dirt and free insults, letting a stranger remind you that you're not that great and you're gonna die real soon. 

What a strange, strange day.

I'm so glad we are here together the play the game of life for keeps. Still what gives? Why am I here?

The more I pray about it, I think it's honesty!  Jesus speaks so honestly directly to my heart in today's Gospel.  He gives voice to how exhausted I am with pretense, hypocrisy, fakeness and artificiality.  He knows I need more honesty to live from the inside out, to be more fully human and more alive.  He knows my heart, that getting along and getting by and getting away will never be good enough.

Here's what I'll say - every time I go to Mass, I get an honest encounter with someone who is real with me, and truthful, and who loves me better than anyone else because He reveals to me honestly who I am, and who He is, and the life we are meant to share together.  I know this much - every time I go to Mass I am able to live more honestly.  I know that Mass is the conversion and transformation I was made for.

Why am I here?  Because Jesus through the Mass has invited me to the most honest lifelong and lifegiving conversation I can possibly have?

Why am I here?  Because He solves a problem for me, and provides what I most need.  Yes, even by throwing dirt and shouting an insult, He invites me to more than what I'm afraid of, and what I've settled for.

That's why of all the places I could be, it's my #1 choice today and always, to be here.

a weight of glory?

Homily

Funeral Mass for Janet Copeland

Immaculate Conception Parish in Springfield, Missouri

13 February 2024

AMDG

Affliction produces a weight of glory, something so glorious that Jesus calls it a yoke that is easy and light!

St. Paul writes well of this experience of a soul being purified through suffering, through the process of conformation to the mystery of the Lord's holy cross.  For Jan, this happened in a particular way, for every human story is a unique, and precious one.  The outer self wasted away, and at times it can feel like a waste.  Yet there is a faith proposed that turns this agonizing process into a weight of glory, a renewal of the inner self, the purification of a soul until it shines like a diamond, a participation in the redemptive sacrifice of Jesus Christ that redeems all things and makes them new.

Jesus accompanies us, most blessedly and surely in the Holy Eucharist, and as our bodies slowly and surely participate in a death like His, He invites us to come to Him, those of us tired and burdened with the responsibility of living a worthy life, and begs that we might do it together.  In the Eucharist, which Jan was blessed to receive at the end of this process and journey, Jesus abides with us and for us, until His paschal mystery is accomplished.

It is finished!   There is rejoicing that Jan has rest from her labors!   Jan's story of faith has been written, and it ends in a weight of glory, in a love story that produced good fruit that remains forever.

Praised be Jesus Christ, who has invited us all to this yoke that is easy, and a burden that is light, for we do it always and forever together, through Him who strengthens us.  Amen!

How healthy is my community?

Homily

6th Sunday in Ordinary Time B2

11 February 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

How healthy is my community?

We all sure hope the Chiefs have a healthy community today!  This pivotal question will fall right to our favorite team.  How healthy are the Chiefs? After a long season, are they still fast, strong, smart, together, passionate and determined?  Will they glorify God by writing an incredible story of faith at the Super Bowl?  It will depend on how healthy their community is - relationally, spiritually, psychologically, physically and emotionally.

I need a healthy community to fulfill my purpose too.  So did the leper in today's Gospel.  To be alone, to be cut off, is to be dead.  Social distancing is the original and precise definition of death.  As smart as it can be to quarantine ourselves to preserve physical health for others, ultimately to be alone is to die.  

Human persons are relational at their core.  Love only exists within relationship and community.  Relationships for bodily persons are necessarily sensory experiences, and this includes the healing power of life-giving touch.  This year at SLC we're talking about not being able to live without the Mass, for it is here that the health of our community is consummated by our teaching and becoming the body of Christ.

Too many people are unhealthy because they do not live in healthy communities.  Unhealthy behaviors thrive in isolation.  We can be addicted to choice and privacy when we are meant to experience life by seeking the good of others more than our own good.  Life depends on being a part of something bigger than ourselves.  Life is a gift with a responsibility and capacity to give life rather than take it.  Healthy communities consistently touch our lives in a way that is healing and freeing.

How healthy is my community?  And as much as I believe the Chiefs will win today, I'm not talking about the community that is the Red Kingdom.  I'm talking most of all about the Church, and the healing touch of Mass and confession especially.  The touch of these sacraments consummate the ultimate communion that is the body of Christ.  Are we healthy enough as a St. Lawrence community - relationally, morally, spiritually, psychologically and emotionally - to win together the ultimate victory that is the gift of new and everlasting life?

+mj

How will Jesus find me?

Homily

5th Sunday of Ordinary Time BII

4 February 2023

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

How will Jesus find me?

In the Gospel today, everyone is looking for Jesus, and for good reason.  He has the words of eternal life.  He is the fulfillment of every human heart.  He speaks a word that heals and defeats evil.  I am made for a relationship with Him who is my life.  Anyone who is searching for life, in some manner is looking for Jesus.

Yet I want to flip this on its head.  What's more important is that Jesus is looking for you.  He came to seek and to save what was lost.  He can't stand the thought of losing you.  So He searches for you, relentlessly.  He initiates.  Yet He will not force himself, for love never does that.  He invites. He begs.  He desires to make His dwelling within me.

Yet I can be elite in my defenses against Him finding me, or at least I think I can be.  Whenever I want privacy, choice or control, I hide, praying that He won't find me.  In this I break His heart, for I was created to be loved, forgiven, redeemed and found by the Lord, not to escape and hide.

How will Jesus find me?  Today's Gospel shows the way.  In order to be online with His Father, in order to go deeper into the mystery of the Father's will, in order to relate the affairs of His heart with His Father, Jesus goes to a deserted place, and prays.  It is there too that He wishes an intimate conversation with me.  In the desert that is silence, solitude and suffering, He thirsts to look at me, and to be seen by me, through faith and from the heart.

Jesus retreats from the noise, where there is much good to be done.  He doesn't settle for the status quo, but wants to explore the more that His mission entails.  So He lets go of the present, and prays.  I need this too.  Prayer is always susceptible to become transactional, superficial and repetitive.  Job describes a malaise that is familiar to many in February, a hardening of the heart, a loss of hope that God's promises can still be fulfilled.

It's in the desert, in that place of solitude, silence and suffering, that intimacy can be restored and hope reborn.  It's in the desert especially that I can relate the suffering that is beyond my understanding to the mystery of the Lord's cross.  Complaints, so long as they are not selfish or childish, are welcome as part of our prayer.  Job complains, and it's a good prayer!  Our evaluation of things based on fairness needs to be placed within the wounds of Christ, for it is at the cross that the worst thing imaginable happened to the best person, and produced the greatest fruit of the resurrection.  That's where my questions and lack of hope are meant to be related, at the cross.  It's hard to relate suffering though, and not let it get the best of us, without a sacred space of silence, solitude and suffering in my life.

He went off to a deserted place, and prayed.  What does that space look like for me?  How will Jesus find me?