How do things really work?

Homily

11th Sunday in Ordinary Time B

16 June 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

How do things really work?  

The best answer is one I should know well, and remember, and repeat often.  I don't know on my own.  And neither do you.

Which of us was around when the world was created?  Who was there when spirit breathed life into dust for the first time?  I am not in control, and neither are you.  It's not that we can't know anything, it's just that we will never know everything.  I am not God.  But I am here to worship the God who has revealed how things really work.

I'm from a family of farmers, who like to remind me I've forgotten where I came from.  Maybe I have, I'm not sure.  My family knows a few things about crops, but the full process of how things grow is beyond them.  They're not in control, especially of the weather!

This is true of every living thing.  We're not in control.  The principle of life is mysterious, and we're merely stewards of it.  Only God holds the keys of life and death, and it's horrifying when we forget that.  The intersection of spiritual and material reality, the principles of why some thing are alive and others are not, is beyond us.  Human things like mind, desire, memory, imagination and free will are all affected by the body but not reducible to it.  

The process by which all thing live and grow and fulfill their purpose is beyond us, as a mystery beyond our control.  Which is why Jesus speaks to us in parables, so that we can see and hear but not yet think we define reality on our own terms.  Farming is a great parable, for we are still not in control of the process of growing the food we need to live, we are only stewards of a mystery, and we perhaps always will be.

So how do things really work?  Well, the God who knows has told us some things worthy of trust, that allow us to walk by faith, which gives us access to deeper truths beyond what we can figure out on our own.  Jesus referred to this process of how things work as 'the way' by which a person can enter fully into a life and fulfills his purpose. Anything that does not participate in this paschal mystery will not pass over, but will pass away, and die.

On Father's Day, let's imagine a potential father who takes the tender shoot of his life, and transplants it in the promised ground of marriage, and only in doing just so becomes the source of life to his family.  The father doesn't have to know how this works; in fact, it works better when he walks by faith and not by sight.  He doesn't have be perfect, or in control, and we laugh when he pretends to be.  Most often, dad just needs to show up with whatever courage, humility and faith he's got, and it's more than enough.  It's tragic when he doesn't show up though.  When he does, a great family tree results, one with abundant and lasting fruit!

Jesus told us to call no one on earth our father, unless a man participates in the fatherhood of God, a father who delights in showing his children how things really work.  This is what our father has revealed.  We should listen to the words of His Son, who has invited us into His 'way'.  For whenever I participate in the paschal mystery of Jesus, letting myself by humbly planted in the ground as He was, courageously dying to myself for love of Him who first died for me, the Father brings new life from this, and builds His Church and the everlasting Kingdom of David that is heaven itself.

That's how things really work, and those who try to pretend otherwise, are only branches that wither and fade, and amount to nothing.

That's how things work, and how you can fulfill your destiny.  That's how things really work.  Those who have ears to hear, ought to hear.

+mj