Who is knocking at the door of your heart?

Homily

1st Sunday of Advent C1

1 December 2024

St. Ann Catholic Church - Prairie Village

AMDG

Who is knocking at the door of your heart?

It can be terrifying when someone knocks on the door by surprise.  Actually very few of us get excited for a surprise visit.  We are scared that we are not ready, and that we might be vulnerable and out of control.  One of my most depressing days as chaplain at KU was when at an evangelization meeting, we asked how many students knew their neighbor, or the person sitting next to them in class.  We were talking about the art of relationship, and the best ways to introduce one's self and to start a conversation.  Very few college students knew the persons they were in close proximity to, so I asked them why.  They told me it was dangerous to introduce yourself, for once someone knows who you are, they can stalk you and harm you.  It's safer to be anonymous, they said.

The conversation broke my heart.  I get what they were saying.  We live in a dangerous world, and you have to be careful who you interact with. So many people get harmed by situations when they assume the other person is safe, and they're not.  Yet still, our ultimately security is knowing the people around us, and building trust. Social distancing, and avoiding, escaping and hiding from each other, is certain death.  For we are made for relationship, and the deepest problems we all face can't be solved by self-reliance.  We need each other, and a relationship with God.  Our deepest security, and best chance for new life and more life, is if someone want to know and love and serve us, if someone is knocking on the door of our heart.

Advent announces the best news ever!  Our Lord is coming to save us, and is knocking on the door of my heart!  The one who alone brings new life, new hope, and can make all things new by the greatness of his mercy, is coming. He has come, is coming now, and will come again!  The Lord our Savior has come in history, is coming in mystery and will come in majesty, to redeem my past, my present and my forever!  Of all people knocking at my heart, his visit is the most urgent, the most powerful and the most hopeful.  How do I respond to this incredible news?  This is the great question of Advent.

The scriptures today name where my heart is, and perhaps yours as well!  I am afraid.  I am desperately afraid.  I am terrified of this Jesus who is knocking on the door of my heart.  My Advent prayer is rarely to beg Jesus to come closer, and to come sooner, and to actually mean it.  Instead, it is a constant plea that I am not ready, and that He is a threat to my control and self-reliance.  My prayer is usually to tell Jesus not now, and to leave me alone!

The one thing I most need to break out of the way I am now, and to live for more, is the thing I most fear.  Jesus is standing at the door of my heart, knocking on this first day of Advent.  How will I respond to His coming anew this Advent?

+mj

Who is in control?

Homily

34th and Last Sunday in Ordinary Time B2

Solemnity of Christ the King

24 November 2024

St. Ann Catholic Church - Prairie Village, KS

AMDG

Who is in control?

We just had a dramatic election about who should be in control of this country.  As it goes with the things of this fallen world, the rhetoric was riddled with fear-mongering.  So many people are afraid the world is spinning out of control, toward destruction.  That's probably because it is, and always will be.  The world as we know it, though exceedingly good, is broken at its core, doomed to destruction, and there is an enemy determined to make all things end in death.  There is reason to be anxious, and scared.  It's not only in politics and the economy, it's in our personal lives all the more.  I doubt there are too many people in this room who feel in control, who feel absolutely safe.  I would bet instead that most everyone is fearful about something, and experiencing a lack of control.

So who is in control?

For the Solemnity of Christ the King, we have this dramatic encounter between a prisoner and a governor, between Jesus and Pilate.  So critical is Pilate in the economy of salvation, that he appears in the creeds of the Church.  Yes, that's right, the three persons of the Trinity, Mary and you guessed it, Pontius Pilate appear in the creeds.  This conversation we hear in the Gospel is critical.  Who is in control in this critical exchange?  Remarkably, it's not Pilate.  The one who has the power to crucify or release Jesus is the one scared out of his mind.  The one with all the worldly power, with an army to back him up, is the most scared person in the world in the face of a true King, even as that king is bound in chains, scourged, condemned and seemingly overcome with weakness.

Who is in control?

Jesus of course in His passion shows that real kingly power looks like.  The one who is in control, and who participates in the true and everlasting kingdom of heaven, is the Lamb that is slain, the one who can give His life away in self-sacrificial and suffering love.  Blessed are those, happy are those, in control are those who are persecuted for the sake of truth and righteousness, for theirs in the Kingdom of heaven.  

Jesus toys with Pilate in this exchange, necessarily mocking Pilate's power through subversive questions, exposing the fear of anyone who is desperately hanging on to control and power according to the ways of the world.  Jesus in his passion is the ultimate revolutionary, overturning the power of this and forever changing how the world truly works, by his self-sacrificing and suffering love.

So you too are His children, incorporated through baptism into His suffering and death, receiving the dignity of being a kingdom of priests!  Members of this Kingdom enjoy through Jesus our King the happiness of claiming thorns as our true crown and the cross as our true throne.  No one has greater love nor power than this, to lay down one's life on this altar with Christ, through Christ and in Christ.  We share in the power to forever change how the world works, and to build a kingdom where a love stronger than death reigns forever.

It's the last Sunday of this liturgical year.  Twelve months ago, when we started this journey of faith, did you want to participate more fully in a kingdom where thorns are your true crown and the cross is your true throne?  Twelve months from now, will I be more free to recognize where true power lies, and embrace my opportunity to lose my own control and to place my suffering and the sacrifice of my life within the priestly sacrifice of Christ, my true King.

Who is really in control?

How do I go to bed?

Homily

33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time B2

17 November 2024

St. Ann Catholic Church - Prairie Village 

AMDG

How do I go to bed?

I'm really terrible at it.  I can't think of anybody worse.  I can't remember the last time I got ready for bed in a thoughtful way.  I usually complete my prayers much earlier in the day, as early as possible.  I usually limp home, after having worked as hard as possible, seeking some comfort and entertainment to cope with another day of exhaustion and survival.  Then I pass out, until I'm jolted by an alarm as early as possible the next day.

It's not a recipe for eternal life!

At the penultimate weekend of our liturgical year, it's of enormous importance for us to focus on how we end our days.  For in the new order inaugurated by the paschal mystery of Jesus Christ, the end is the beginning.  How we die determines exactly how we will live.  So how we go to bed is how we will wake up the next day.

You know this to be true. So do I, but I'd like to ignore it.  The end of our liturgical year, and our focus on the apocalypse and end times, however, remind us powerfully that it does no good to pretend that we will live forever.  It does no good to put off til tomorrow what must be done today.  It does no good to ignore the reality that we are what we eat, that our character and destiny is the sum of our actions, and that we live only as we die.

Christ couldn't have taught us more clearly, could he, by word and example, that only those who know what they are dying for will live forever.  The altar then, which is both a tomb and a bed, is the center of our faith, and our constant rehearsal and preparation for how things will be forever.  If we have died with Christ, and our life is now vertical, not horizontal, hidden with Christ in God, so we are confident we shall reign and live with Him, through Him and in Him forever!

This confidence is only ours if we know how to go to bed well!  I've never liked the vigil Mass on Saturday, for I'm a morning person not a night person, or at least I like to think I am.