How do I know I'm fully alive?

Homily

5th Sunday of Easter B2

28 April 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

How do I know I'm fully alive?  Does anybody out there know at this moment, whether you're fully alive?

It's a critical Easter question, for in this season we proclaim not only Jesus alive and risen from the dead, but that we too rise through Him to new and everlasting life?  Yet how does this work really?  How do I know this to be true, out of everything that I know to be true?  How do I know when I am fully alive?

The traditional way of asking this pivotal question is as follows:  do you know if you're saved?  Well, first of all, what does it mean to be saved?  I hope we can all agree that it's nothing less than being fully forgiven, healed, set free to live a new life, and to lay hold of a destiny to live forever in God.  To be saved is nothing less than to experience even now the fullness of life, which is why I like to pose the question in just this way.  How do I know when I'm fully alive?

Salvation must be more than a one and done profession of Jesus as my personal savior.  That's a great start, don't get me wrong, but everything about today's readings say there is more than simply believing in Jesus. We must also abide in Him completely, as a branch on a vine.  How do I remain in Him who is life itself? That's the real question of salvation!

St. John nails it for us today in the second reading.  He says we remain in Him not just by talking the talk, but by walking the walk.  We remain in Him by keeping His commandments of love, which correspond to the love of the Holy Spirit that is meant to dwell in you.

Catholics have always taught we are saved in just this way.  We become fully alive through faith and works, the two always working together for our salvation like they do in any healthy relationship.  Abiding in each other takes both words and actions, the two always reinforcing each other.  We must say I love you, but even more, we must do loving things, for talk can be cheap and actions speak louder than words.

So how do I know when I am fully alive?  Since none of us possess life in itself, but only as it is gifted to us, to be fully alive must mean to be fully attached to the source of life itself forever.  And guess what, I have good news for you!  The author of life desires nothing more today than to fully coinhere with you. If that is true, the fullness of life is staring you right in the face at Mass.

Jesus has invited us to lay hold of a shared life with Him, especially through the sacrament of the Eucharist, which is always and everywhere celebrated as the source and summit of the Church's life.  Could Jesus be any clearer on this very point?  Anyone who eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him, and I will raise him on the last day.

Yet the same Jesus who always prunes us with his words reminds us that one of us at table with Him right now will betray Him, and it would be better for that man if he had never been born.  Thank God that Jesus has given us not only the Eucharist, but also confession!  In that same upper room, Jesus gifted confession as an Easter sacrament, so that if I have not kept God's commandments, and if I have done something that does not correspond to the love of the Eucharist, I confess before consummating my shared life and communion with Him.

A final time - how do I know that I am fully alive?  I can't do better than to remind myself of all that Jesus said, and to allow His words to prune me.  I live by abiding with Him fully in the Eucharist, and I remain by keeping His commandments to love Him above all things and to love you all as He has first loved me.  If I do an unloving thing, I confess so that the branch can be grafted back onto the vine which is its life.

That's it, disciples of Jesus. That's everything that Jesus said. That's how I know that I am fully alive.

+mj 

Who knows me?

Homily

4th Sunday of Easter B2

Good Shepherd Sunday

World Day of Prayer for Vocations

21 April 2024

AMDG

Who knows me?  Does anyone really know me?

What a pivotal question this truly is!  My need to belong, to be seen and known and and heard and chosen, is immense!  I don't make sense on my own, nor can I figure everything out on my own.  I am a mystery to myself, unless I come to know myself by first being known.

So, can there be a more critical question that this - does anyone really know me?

There's a guy in the Gospel who says He knows you.  He knows you just as He is known by His Father, so He knows you, and you know Him.  What incredible words by the most unique voice in human history, the voice of the Good Shepherd.

You know by now that nobody speaks like Jesus. No one in human history has even come close. Unbelievable and radical words that always cut to the heart, words that challenge us to metanoia, thinking not as human beings do but as God does.  Words that reveal the true and deep and hidden meaning of my life, a life I seek in greater abundance during this Easter season.

Good Shepherd Sunday and the World Day of Prayer for Vocations, is about finding the faith to let this voice find us, know us, desire us, choose us, and call us to new and more abundant life.  It's a critical moment in the Easter journey, for John 10 always invites us deeper into life that is not measured by safety or length of time, but by the vertical dimension of love, by the power to lay down one's life trusting that it can be raised again.

The Good Shepherd says He knows you.  What does He know about you?  He knows that the true and full meaning of your life will be found within His paschal mystery, the only story that ends in rising from the dead.  His voice will always invite you to lose your life before it is taken from you, in conversation with His suffering and death, while trusting the promise that it is precisely there that you will find a life that conquers all things and endures.

Yet the voice of the Good Shepherd will never dare you into this mystery.  No, He will simply invite you to follow where He goes before, where He is first shorn naked, killed and eaten, as the lamb of sacrifice Himself.

Do you recognize this voice?  I'm sure that you do, but do you trust it to really know you?  Is the voice of the Good Shepherd the voice you ultimately trust to lead you into the fullness of life?

+mj  

What's the point?

Homily

3rd Sunday of Easter B2

14 April 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

What's the point of life?  Who can tell me?

When I ask you all this question, you always say 'I don't know - you're the priest!  Aren't you supposed to be telling me the point of life?

Well, I have an idea, which I am happy to share.  Yet I know as well that there is no better time than Easter to ask this very question anew.  What's the point of life?   Easter is the time when we are meant to experience to the depths of our being what it means to be fully alive.  The most pivotal news in human history, a victory greater than all others combined, that Christ my Lord has Risen indeed from the dead as He said, is announced to us anew! And what is the announcement, made forcefully by St. Peter in today's 1st reading - that there is a love stronger than death, a love worthy of the gift of your entire life, all that you are right now and all you ever will be.

So what's the point of life again?  The longer I experience the things that really matter, the more I'm zeroing in on this answer alone - the point of my life is to participate as passionately as I can in the paschal mystery, the only process by which a universe cast down in renewed, and integrity of life is restored.

I'm all ears, truly, if you can beat that answer.  But I just can't find anything else that comes close.

I've heard so often that life is about being with those you love, or about making a difference.  These are great answers, but near as I can tell, they merely participate in the ultimate thing, and that one necessary thing is the Easter proclamation.  That Jesus Christ has appeared, and invited you intimately and personally into his suffering, death and resurrection. to help Him advance the process by which all thing are made new.

You know I love sports the the source of the best stories, and as a metaphor for life. Sports are mini-dramas played out in real time, full of surprises and pivotal plays, hail marys and comeback from the dead stories, fraught with opportunities to act with confidence and courage, accompanied by countless cameras and stats that make it impossible to hide.  In the course of just a few hours, a drama with characters and conflicts and results is played out with greater clarity than the ambiguity which often afflicts reality.

Yet sports aren't the meaning of life, even if I wish it were so, and if I make them so I worship an idol.  What then is the ultimate win that truly redeems a human life?  It's trust in the Resurrection, but more precisely, it's conforming my life to the passion of Christ, His desire to empty Himself for love of another, all the while trusting that this sacrifice is the source of new life.

The drama of my life at every turn can be inserted into the mystery of this Passion.  

There's plenty of competing world views out there to consider, plenty of things vying for your heart and soul, plenty of course to distact us into thinking nothing ultimately matters, so just make up your own meaning.

Yet there's also this mysterious news our there, celebrated each Easter, that the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is at the crux of the meaning of life.  There's more, that the meaning of your life can participate too as the raw material and nexus for the recreation of a new heaven and earth that cannot fade into oblivion.

The drama of my life at every turn fits nicely into this Easter mystery, this Passion.  The point of life, near as I can tell, is to be in anguish until this mystery is consummated and accomplished through me.

+mj

what's too good to be true?

 

what's too good to be true?

Homily

2nd Sunday of Easter B2

Divine Mercy Sunday

7 April 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

What's too good to be true?  Well, it's the Resurrection - obviously!

Now don't freak out.  I haven't lost my Easter faith in one week. The Resurrection is still the one thing I know to be true out of everything I know to be true.  On this truth I am happy to bet all that I am and ever will be.

Yet the Resurrection is also the thing I most doubt.  It's also the one thing that's too good to be true.

Is there a contradiction here?  Yea, maybe.  Is there a paradox? Yes, more likely!  Is the Resurrection a huge risk of faith - pray God, I hope so!

It makes sense actually that my deepest truth will always be found where I have made the biggest risk of faith.  Don't take my word for it. Take the words of the holy martyrs, who are willing to risk death even today for the truth of the Resurrection.

So I say it again.  My deepest truth will always be where I make the biggest risk of faith.  That is what faith is for!  Faith never goes against my reason, but always goes beyond it, seeking to receive and understand truths that are beyond what my mind can figure out, manage or control.

That's exactly why my deepest faith in the strange, mysterious, profound, dramatic, and yes most true event in human history - the Resurrection of Jesus indeed from the dead as he said - is also the thing I most doubt.

On Divine Mercy Sunday, the Risen Christ greets the doubts of Thomas, and my doubts, not with disdain but with peace.  Three times He says to us doubters - peace be with you!  Then he invites us his disciples not to put away out fears and doubts, but to let them be penetrated by his forgiveness.  Jesus appears in the upper room not to condemn, but to show mercy.  The disciples discover that in penetrating the open wounds of Jesus with their own hands, that their own interior wounds, especially the deepest wounds of fear and doubt, are healed and forgiven.

Is Thomas a skeptic, a pessimist, and a doubter?  Maybe so, but so am I.  Yet his honesty led Him to have a dramatic encounter with the Resurrection.  With his own doubts and fears healed, the Resurrection will never be something he wishes or pretends to be true, but the one thing he knows to be true.

What he most doubted, becomes his firmest conviction.  St. John says the one who is indeed victor over the world is the one who testifies with Thomas that Jesus is my Lord and my God. Thomas ended up a martyr, emerging victorious through confession of this faith that he once doubted.

You too are victor over the world with a good confession during Easter.  Yes, you heard me right. Confession is an Easter sacrament, given by the Risen Christ to the Church on Divine Mercy Sunday.  You can go to confession during Lent all you want, but the best confessions are Easter ones, when not only sins are wiped away but the ways in which we do not trust God are healed by a rich experience of Divine Mercy that makes us new from the inside out.

Jesus is not put off by your doubts.  He invites you to a deeper experience of His mercy, so that the one thing that's too good to be true becomes the one thing you most know to be true.

The victory that conquers the world is our faith in Jesus Christ Risen indeed from the dead as He said - my Lord and my God!. Alleluia!

+mj