How much do I care?

Homily

16th Sunday in Ordinary Time B2

21 July 2024

St. Ann Catholic Church, Prairie Village

AMDG

How much do I care?

It's not lost on me that on my first weekend preaching as your new shepherd, the Church providentially contrasts the difference between good and bad shepherds.  I don't have to tell you the difference.  You already know.  Good shepherds show up. Good shepherds care.  Good shepherds give their lives.  Good shepherds smell like the sheep, as Pope Francis famously has sad.  Good shepherds govern in justice and in truth, bringing people into right relationship by speaking and acting with integrity.  Good shepherds share in the sacred heart of Jesus, a heart that moves with compassion and the desire to have a shared experience of suffering, dying and rising.

Bad shepherds get scared and run.

I beg your prayers that I will try my best in this sacred responsibility for your souls that has fallen to me.  Please pray I don't run away scared at the sight of danger.  I hope you will find me zealous in teaching the faith and witnessing to it with integrity, for I truly believe in its power to bring new life to all of us when taught with conviction.

Most of all, I want to be a pastor that cries with and for you.  In this, I want to be like my grandpa Leo, who cried both when all his family was together, and even more so when someone was missing.  I'll never forget his tears at my ordination, since my mom had already passed and was missing.  I remember the same tears at his 90th birthday, when all 47 of his kids, grandkids and great-grandkids, and their spouses, gathered for the Mass and celebration.  I'm not a crier yet, but I'd like to be by the time I'm done shepherding St. Ann's.  A good shepherd cries for his sheep.  A good pastor has a heart that moves.  Please pray that I will try my best for love of God and for you.

Our common pasture is our parish boundary, that extends from 63rd to 83rd, north to south, and State Line to Nall east to west.  Jesus wants us to smash any wall that separates us from each other within this boundary.  Jesus's heart for us will not stop moving until each and all of us are with and for each other, without exception, and no one is missing.  This is his beautiful prayer for St. Ann's - I have not lost one of those that you gave me.  

Here at Mass we worship the source of unity that is God Himself.  Each of the persons in God is with and for the other; hence, those of us who would dare to grow in His likeness must do likewise.  Jesus always loved his enemies first and best. He always smashed hostility through forgiveness.  If you are looking ultimately to create a lasting and meaningful unity apart from the Mass, you're wasting your time.  It is here alone that we consummate our relationship to the ultimate source of reconciliation that is Jesus Himself.

Psalm 23 is fulfilled right here at Mass, for here we are refreshed by the waters of baptism and confession.  Here our heads are anointed with both the oil for the sick and the confirming love of the Holy Spirit.  Here a table is spread before us, even in the sight of our foes!  Within the pasture of this parish, the Eucharist will always be the gate by which we come in and go out, and find true unity and the source of eternal life.

I invite you to pray for me, and cry with me whenever someone is missing.  May our hearts always move in compassion like Jesus' Sacred Heart until everyone is here.

May I be honest with the Lord right now as I answer this question:  how much do I care?

Is the world going to hell?

Homily

15th Sunday in Ordinary Time B2

14 July 2024

St. Ann Catholic Church

AMDG

Is the world going to hell?  Of course it is.  It has been for a long time.  It will continue to go that way.

You think an assassination attempt on the President is the sure tale sign that we have lost our way?  I'm sorry to say we lost our way a long time ago,  History is repeating itself.  We are reaping what we have sown for a long time.  And there's more to come.  A lot more.  I wish I didn't believe that.  But it's real.  Now is not the time to pretend we are all safe, and to play nice. There are evils that need to be defeated. Many of them!  And we are the ones who have to do the work.  Nobody is immune from the evils that are upon us.

Violence and killing are cries for help from a people who are lost, scared, alone, unhealthy, despairing, and in terrible pain.  This is the reality we have all created because we have divorced truth and love, justice and peace.  Worse yet, we have divorced our covenant with God and each other. We reap what we sow.  We don't deserve better than what we have, and it does no good to complain about what others aren't doing.

Jesus trusts His disciples to go out and defeat many evils.  For their own good, he makes them the solution, and he tells them how to do it. He gives them no economic, political or legal solutions.  Go out and tell people to repent of the ways we have divorced God and each other, and to return to faithfulness.  Go, and take only the things that will keep you moving, and nothing that will slow you down or distract you.

Sorry if that's not a nice, safe homily from the new shepherd from Hoxie, Kansas.  It's the same message Amos, the farmer from Judah, had to deliver to the self-absorbed city folks in Bethel.  It's not fun to hear.  It's not fun to say.  But prophecy has to always sting if it's going to do any good.

Am I the reason the world is going to hell?  Of course I am!  Yes, always!  The most urgent thing needed in the world right now is my repentance, and my own commitment to defeating evil by giving life, and not taking it!  

St. Paul teaches of this destiny and dignity we all have in Christ.  We are to pass away to this world that is going to hell, and pass over through Christ, and His passion and paschal mystery, into a new creation, the kingdom of heaven.  Fulfilling this destiny is so simple!  I defeat evil by suffering and dying with Him, and God will use this sacrifice to transform reality into something new, something other than the hell we are living in!

Go!  The first apostles defeated many evils, and became salt and light, simply by realizing that the greatest evils in the world are not political, they are spiritual and moral.  These evils are overcome by faithfulness to God and each other.  

Will you be tenacious?

Homily

Nuptial Mass for McKenna Reilly and Jacob Herbek

6 July 2024

Saturday of the 13th Week in Ordinary Time

+Maria Goretti

Cathedral of St. Mary, Grand Island, NE

AMDG

Will you come to Grand Island and marry Jacob and me?  Well, Kena, I've never been to Grand Island, but I'm from a farm, so how far and how foreign could it be?  As long as I get a steak, I'll be fine!  And I'll drive anywhere for a Jayhawk!

It's true there's no place I'd rather be, even if my car gets hailed on tonight during an epic Nebraskan thunderstorm.  Nothing changes the world for the better more than a holy marriage, and there is nothing more important than two people giving their lives completely away in faith, with a love strong as death.  Nothing bring more life or hope into the world, than what you're about to do, so of course I'll be here.  I'd love to be here.  Besides, who wouldn't want to visit an Island in the middle of Nebraska?  Where is it again, by the way?

Being from a farm community myself, I get why you wanted to be married here.  This is where people understand how things really work.  Life is received here as a gift, with a responsibility to give it away in faith and love.  It's a simple formula, but one that is increasingly misunderstood, by a world that wants the meaning of life to be relative, with the highest values being privacy and choice.  Yet there is no lasting happiness nor peace, nor fruit that comes from this worldview.  It's only when we use our freedom to choose to die and suffer for something more than ourselves, that our lives fulfill their true purpose.

My German ancestors had a simple formula that I inherited.  Put the wheat in the ground in September, then go to Church until June, then go see what God has provided.  It's not a life of privacy and control, it's a life of trust and sacrifice.  That's what you enter into today, McKenna and Jacob - this is the WAY that Jesus has invited you to live, according to His Gospel.

Congratulations to you both and everyone who has poured faith and love into you.  May the beautiful work God has begun in you, be brought to fulfillment.

Another important lesson you have learned is that love doesn't control!  I've noticed how free you both are to trust the other. Maybe that's the fruit of having known each other so long, and knowing that your friendship is a gift from God that you can put your trust in.  Jacob, most guys would freak out thinking McKenna might end up with a fancy frat boy at KU, but you knew yourself, and her, and your love for each other was worthy of trust.  So your relationship grows in love when you are free to trust each other and include other friends and experiences in your relationship. I commend you for this virtue, which I don't find in everyone.

Finally, Jacob since you're marrying a Jayhawk, you get to hear a homily that I've preached to McKenna many times.  If you're going to go for a great life, do it with tenacity.  Whether or not the Jayhawks ever play or beat the Huskers again, the mascot was created to be a ferocious and nasty bird, one capable of defending freedom and dignity at the highest level!  I don't have to tell you two that because of what you have received, you are capable of living faith with amazing courage and tenacity, and bearing fruit that gives witness to the sacrifice of Christ, and the marriage of Christ to His Church.  By getting married at Mass, you witness with the courage of martyrs that this love from the cross is the most real thing in your life, and that you beg the grace today to let this love be the origin, perfection and destiny of your marriage to each other.  On behalf of all of us, thanks for marrying each other under this sign, and playing for keeps, til death do you part. Amen.