The Title!

Actually, there was a part of me that didn't want another Big XII title for the Jayhawks. That sounds silly, I know. But I didn't want to become even more spoiled. Or maybe I wanted the Big XII to raise up some more worthy teams who could make a Final Four besides KU and Texas. Maybe I thought the program deserved a break after achieving so much. Maybe I was satisfied, and just wanted to root for a season as an underdog. But this Big XII championship is sweet! This team should have had 3 or 4 hiccups like the Tech game, but it only had 2. I really don't think we are that much better than the rest of the Big XII, but Bill Self showed that if you make teams shoot a low percentage, and get good shots yourself, you will win games. KU gets more easy buckets, and gives up fewer, than any team in the Big XII. That is why they consistently win. They are more talented than many Big XII teams, but this year, their talent was comparable to the first six teams. But they don't give up easy buckets like KSU and Mizzou do, they have a great rebounder in Cole Aldrich, and a fireplug in Sherron Collins who can take over games. What a great acccomplishment this year. Nobody expects a Final Four out of this team, but they just keep overachieving. Who is going to take this team out? Rock Chalk!

Visiting Seminary

Here is a pic of a recent visit to Kenrick-Glennon seminary in suburban St. Louis. After praying evening prayer, we went to a local 'fish fry' to support St. Cecilia's parish near the seminary. I regularly take guys who have a strong interest in the priesthood to visit seminaries. We have a few guys headed to Mundelein in a couple of weeks for their Exploring Priesthood Weekend, and then a few others guys are headed to Conception Seminary College March 28-30 for theri Encounter with God's Call. A visit to a seminary can do a lot for a guy's discernment, for after visiting a seminary, a guy knows better what he is discerning. It is important not to discern God's call in the abstract, or try to gain certainty without the benefit of certain experiences like visiting a seminary. Let me know if anyone would like to make a visit in the near future, or if you know somebody who should! Email me!

Homily for 2nd Sunday of Lent

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+JMJ

Mary, Queen of Vocations, pray for us!

'Do whatever He tells you! (Jn 2:5)'

At this time, ten years ago, I was planning to enter seminary. It was a dramatic time in my life. I cried when I left Lawrence to go to St. Meinrad, Indiana. I knew I was moving toward something better. I knew I was answering God's call. Yet it was hard to sacrifice the life that I had built for myself. It was such a good life. I had so much invested in it. Why would God ask me to leave something so good behind?

Ten years ago, I probably had some idea of what the priesthood would be like. I had some idea of the kind of priest I wanted to be. Yet I can't honestly remember what those ideas were. I am sure some of my expectations have come true. Many have not. Some things about priesthood are far more difficult than I could have imagined. Other parts are far more fulfilling. I can say this for sure, though. God has provided me with a bigger life than I would have ever have picked for myself. It is more mysterious. It is more unpredictable. Yet it is bigger. It is more fruitful. What I gave to God ten years ago seemed so big then. I would give it again in a heartbeat now. God has not been outdone in generosity.

Well, that was the last ten years. What about the next ten? As much as I have changed in the last ten years, most of me would like to change less in the next 10. I would like to think that I am well down the path of conversion to God. Maybe I don't have too much farther to go. Maybe life will be more predictable. Yet I know if I made a prediction today of how the next ten years will go, and wrote it down in this homily or in my diary, I would be laughing my rear end off ten years from now. I am sure the same is true with you. Some of what we want for the future will come true. Yet we know that the next ten years will prove how little we really control things.

I probably entered Lent this year like you did, trying to make a few slight adjustments. Trying to fine-tune things. Lose a few pounds. Pray a little more. Do something charitable. Eat fish. Give up some control and listen to God more in silence. These are the ordinary activities of Lent. They are good activities They give us a chance to be more aware of the closeness of God. They challenge us to be more dependent upon Him. Yet these ordinary activities of Lent are not the final goal for us. Being like Abraham is the final goal. The story of Abraham and Isaac jolts us on this second Sunday of Advent, especially if we have spent the first week of Lent focused on little things. The story reminds us that our prayer and fasting and almsgiving are not ends unto themselves. Lent is not a time of slight adjustments. It is not a time when we decide to give a little more of ourselves to God. No, Lent helps us to realize that God is asking great things of us. He is expecting us to change a hundred times more in the next ten years than we did in the last ten. Lent is supposed to save us from the illusion that God is asking us for small things, when in reality, He is asking us for big things.

Lent is my time to realize than even though I became a priest in the last ten years, God will ask me to change even more radically in the next ten than I did in the last ten. Of course this scares the living daylights out of me. I know I will whine and rationalize that I've already given more than others. I might feel sorry for myself and give with resentment. Worst of all, I might try to set more 'reasonable' goals for myself, goals I am comfortable with, like the goals I set for myself during Lent. I might try to cut a deal with God to be a good priest when I know I can be a great priest. This would be like Bill Self telling us that he wants his team to be good in the next ten years, but don't expect them to win any more Big XII or national titles. This won't do, of course. God does us the same favor in asking great things from us. He does us a favor when He asks us to make leaps of faith instead of slight adjustments.

When God asks us for more than we are ready to give, we usually go into denial. We pretend we didn't hear Him correctly. We pretend that He is really asking for something more reasonable. Abraham does not react in this way. His trust in God is complete. God can ask the most unreasonable thing of Abraham, so unreasonable in fact, that it appears that God is commanding something evil, which is not in God's power to do. This is the supreme test of faith, and Abraham passes with flying colors.

Lent is a time for us to dare God to test our faith, for our own good. It is a time to resensitize ourselves to the call to change more in the future than we have changed in the past. Our fear makes us want to cut a deal with God, to meet Him halfway, to presume upon His mercy and to pretend that maybe slight adjustments are enough. Yet this is not God's way of giving. Even if the creation of the world was God's decision to share partially of Himself, St. Paul reminds us that in giving us His only begotten Son, God has shows that He will never withhold from us anything that is good. God will not be outdone in generosity.

The project of our lives, my dear friends, is to trust in the goodness of God, who has revealed Himself to be love. The project of our lives, a project much more profound and difficult than giving up chocolate for forty days, is to enter into this great drama of trying to outdo God in generosity. This is what makes the story of Abraham on Mt. Moriah so great. It is a man of faith trying to outdo God in generosity, and in doing so, the glory of God shines through Abraham. Even when we find that we cannot give back to God all that He has given to us, the joy of trusting Him and allowing Him to lead us far beyond where our reason could ever take us, is a joy that doesn't fade, but grows stronger with time. Faith takes us beyond our own small expectations. Faith makes us less aware of the life we are losing. It makes us more aware of the life we are gaining, as God always calls us away from less, and to something more. Faith shows us the life foreshadowed by Jesus in the Transfiguration. This is the life that eye has not yet seen, and ear has not yet heard. It is the life that we cannot imagine for ourselves 10 years from now, a hundred years from now, or ever. It is the life that is God's generous gift to us His beloved children. It is the resurrected life of Jesus that we will share with God forever! +m

Homily for 1st Sunday of Lent

For daily readings, click here.



Lead us not into temptation, This is a good prayer, obviously. It is the prayer our Lord taught us to pray. It is a prayer that saves us from the near occasion of sin. It is a prayer that saves us from overconfidence. It is a prayer that saves us from thinking we have power over sin when in fact the opposite is true. Sin has power over us. We can learn a lesson from the story of Noah. A little rain can really lead to a flood. Satan always wants us to think we can play with fire without getting burned. He only needs an inch to take a mile. Jesus knows how dangerous sin really is. He knows how quickly sin gains momentum. Sin avalanches. Once we begin to sin, it is hard to stop. Lying is the perfect example. One lie begets seven others. This applies to all other sins as well. Once we begin to sin, as we all know, it can take years of work, sometimes decades, to stop. To protect us from all of this, Jesus taught us to pray that Our Father would keep us far from temptation. Prevention really is the best medicine.



Yet what if we are already deeply infected with sin? What if we have already reached the point where our sins have more control over us than we have over them? What if the damage is already done? When faced with this reality, we sometimes give in too easily. We can listen to the morality that does not come from the Church but from our culture, a morality that encourages us to lie to ourselves and to pretend that we are not really sick. We might intentionally dull our conciences to that we are not aware of our sins. We go to confession less so that we are able to ignore and forget most of our sins. We pretend that our sins have not deeply separated us from ourselves, from God and from one another. We pretend that we never promised God we would be holy, that on the day of our baptism we promised not to be mastered by sin. We settle for being relatively good compared to somebody else, rather than being absolutely good. We presume upon God's mercy instead of actually becoming more reliant upon it. Worst of all, we pretend to a friend of Jesus without remembering that we are only His friends if we do what He commands us.



If we are already deeply infected with sin, pretending that we are not sick only makes things worse. Ignoring our sins does not make them go away. As much as we try to hide our sins from ourselves and from one another, we know that we cannot hide them from God. Pretending that our sins do not damage our friendship with God only makes that friendship grow even colder. Lent is a time for us to let go of pride and dishonesty. It is a time for courage, humility, honesty and faith.

Our sins do indeed separate us from God. Pretending otherwise gets us nowhere. Yet this is not the end of the story. Just because we made the mistake of playing with sins that have gotten the better of us doesn't mean the story is over. No, we cannot pretend that our sins do not separate us from God. Nor can we pretend that we can heal ourselves of our addiction to sin by our own power. Once infected, we do not have the power to cure ourselves. St. Peter tells us, however, that the chasm between us and God caused by sin has been bridged by the suffering of Jesus Himself. Sin causes the most intense kind of loneliness imaginable, but still there is hope. Jesus' decision to suffer for the unrighteous means that no matter how far sin has separated us from God, Jesus has descended even farther in order that we might never be alone. St. Peter says that Jesus even went to preach to the spirits in prison, a reference to His decision to descend to the depths of hell so that no sinner would be able to say that he is unloved and forgotten by God.

Jesus' decision to suffer and to die for us is not a 'get out of jail' free card. It is not a cheap grace. It is not Jesus' decision to save us even though we give no evidence of wanting to be saved. It is a way forward, however, for one who has been infected by sin. The story of the Lord's temptation in the desert shows that even though we do not have power of sin, He does. Even though Jesus' advice to us is to pray to be led away from temptation, we see that His love never changes even when we ignore this advice. If anything, the Lord seeks us lost sinners all the more, that He might be able to deliver us from evil. Yet we know He will not save us without ourselves. When we pray that the Lord might deliver us from evil, we know that we have a part to play. The way forward for us is a decision on our part to remain closely united to the one who can lead us out of hell. Our part is to stay with the one who has the power over temptation and evil.

Sin at its root is not a choosing to be an evil person. It is a failure remain close to God. It is a failure to trust God. It is a failure to trust that what God has promised, He will deliver. Sin is a decision to go through the drive-through and to grab something easy when we know that we were made for something better. The gifts of God take patience and faith to harvest. The treasures of heaven are expensive, and it takes a long time to save enough spiritual capital to purchase them. The vocation to which God has called us can seem mysterious and remote. We get tired of waiting for it with faith. We want something easier, something now. Sin is a failure to wait for what God has in mind for us.

Sin results from believing the great illusion that God is farther away that He really is. It is believing the great illusion that God is so far away, that maybe He doesn't care. Maybe He doesn't see. Maybe He doesn't exist at all. Jesus came to be as close to us as we are to ourselves by taking on our humanity. He was born to be God-with-us! He came to save us from this illusion that ultimately we are alone. Still, it is hard to trust Him.

When we do not trust God, our tendency to give into illusions grows. Damaged by sin, our faith does not see as far into the future. Our hope dims. Our love grows cold. St. Peter tells us however, that God is still there. Even if we decide to move away from God, if God decides to be with us, we can't get any farther away. We can ignore how close He is, but we cannot move Him away from us. Even a mustard's seed of faith can tell us what is true. Even a tiny bit of faith tells us what our senses fail to perceive, that God is still there. Jesus who descended into the depths of hell is still there. Deciding to acknowledge His presence and His help is the way forward.

In Jesus there is no sin. None of us could make it more than five minutes with the devil in the desert. Jesus made it for forty days. He made it through the final agony in the garden. He is there to help us at our weakest point, to begin loving us there. If we acknowledge His presence, we have a way forward no matter how sick we have become.

Being delivered from evil is a decision to be with Jesus who alone has the power over temptation and evil. Jesus is right next to us, and if we acknowledge His presence, sin has no more power over us. If we really want Him to, He will deliver us from evil. Yet He will not take back one ounce of the freedom that He gave us. Jesus has made His decision to be with us no matter what. Yet we must still make our decision +m

Ash Wednesday at KU

This was an exciting day as always, at KU. So many students come for Ash Wednesday who do not normally come to Sunday Mass. This is in part because so many students travel on the weekends, but also because Ash Wednesday is for some reasons that are constantly under scrutiny a 'can't miss' event for Catholics. At any rate, I do look forward to seeing what the day will bring. We had a big crowd for the 8am Mass, and then not as big of a crowd at Danforth chapel on campus at noon. The big benefit of being at Danforth was the exposure of getting the priests on campus and making everyone wonder - what's going on over there! The 5:15pm Mass at St. Lawrence was jam-packed. More people standing than sitting. Ash Wednesday never fails. It is as predictably packed as Easter and Christmas. Go figure. But it's great! Thanks be to God for bringing so many Catholics to St. Lawrence today. May today's services bear fruit in eternity! +m

Homily for Thursday after Ash Wednesday

For daily readings, click here.

President Obama Tuesday in his address to Congress gave an Ash Wednesday kind of exhortation. He said that America has reached the day of reckoning. Like Moses in today's first reading, the President was giving the country a choice between economic prosperity or continued decline. He was outlining how our country could remain strong enough to thrive under difficult circumstances. I'm not saying that President Obama is as prophetic or trustworthy as Moses, mind you. I am just pointing out the similarities in the two speeches.

President Obama was right to point out that a country filled with irresponsibility and greed will not prosper. His appeal to patriotism contained within it some vestiges of natural law, of doing good and avoiding evil. He did end his speech with God bless America, but of course, there were no other references to God. Moses, as we hear, is giving a similar life and death speech to the Israelites. Unlike President Obama, Moses' appeal to patriotism is tied directly to the Divine Law. President Obama appealed to fidelity to an American way of life. Moses appeals to the abundant life promised by God, a life lived in close friendship with the one true God who has revealed Himself. This abundant life grows stronger when the Israelites are faithful to the Divine Law given to Moses, and their chance of inheriting the promised land grows faint when the Israelites are unfaithful.

In telling his disciples that they are to lose their lives by following Him, Jesus is obviously claiming to lead His disciples to a promised land greater than that promised to Moses. Jesus is no longer promising first of all an abundant life within a physical land flowing with milk and honey. He seems to promise just the opposite in asking his disciples to take up their cross and to lose their lives. Jesus is leading his disciples to a physical kingdom not marked by mountains or fruit trees or rivers, but by the temple of His body. That kingdom grows into its fullness as new members are incorporated into His body. This is the pilgrimage for the Christian, to be incorporated into the body of Christ. Fittingly, the Divine Law given to Moses that guarantees a close friendship with God in the promised land gives way to a Divine Law that guarantees instead a perfect union with Jesus within the kingdom of His body. What is that Divine Law? In today's Gospel, it is summed up in two words. Follow me. In other words, find a way to be exactly where I am, even if you have to take up your cross.

Jesus claims that the kingdom of God is not ultimately found in a more prosperous America, nor in an Israel that is no longer marked by violence, although both of these would be nice. No, the kingdom of God is ultimately present through persons redeemed by the blood of Christ and incorporated into His eternal body the Church through the sacrament of the Eucharist. This is the everlasting kingdom that will have no end. It is a kingdom with unusual physical boundaries. God has made His home with us not in America or Israel or China or wherever, He has made His home with us by taking on a human body. It is these human bodies that are invited to share in the very Trinitarian life of God. That my friends, is the definition of ultimate prosperity. It is why Jesus is right to ask to to lose our lives and to follow Him, in order to find everlasting life! +m

Homily for Ash Wednesday 2009

For daily readings, click here.



We can't fake our way into heaven. Of course this should come as no surprise to us. Everything that happens in the darkness will one day come to light. Our freedom has consequence, both now and in eternity. God cannot be fooled, as much as perhaps we would like to fool him. God sees in secret so we must be good from the inside out, not the outside in. Our prayer, fasting and almsgiving this Lent cannot be just for show. It cannot be fake. It must be sincere. It must be a real expression of contrition. It must be a rendering not merely of chocolate, spare change and an extra Hail Mary, but a true rendering of our hearts. We must do better than the scribes depicted in Matthew's Gospel. So let's begin in earnest.



Lent is here to remind us that we have sinned against God, who is all good and deserving of all of our love. We have not lived up to the promises we have made to God. Yet we know the Lord is merciful. In Christ we have access to reconciliation with God. In Christ, we have a chance for an open-ended final chapter to our biography, rather than the familiar 'to dust you shall return' ending.



Lent reminds us as well that we have sinned against ourselves. We have betrayed the promises we have made to ourselves that we would live a life pursuing the best and highest things. Lent reminds us that we have been seduced, and have let ourselves be seduced, by the attractiveness of evil. We have exchanged real love for a counterfeit. Faith in what is possible with God has given way to doubt that I will ever be great. We have exchanged what is truly good for what is conveniently good for me. We have given up on ourselves, and it doesn't feel very good.

The pain of giving up on ourselves and on God is greater than the fasting, prayer and almsgiving we begin with sincerity this morning. We take time this morning to resensitize ourselves to this truth. Praying, fasting and giving alms is painful, but much less so than the alternative of not doing so. As the Gospel tells us, in praying, fasting and giving alms, we are not doing anything that will make us outwardly holy. We have no reason to boast at all, because deep down, we know we are choosing to do the less painful thing, not the more painful thing. The more painful thing is letting the world take our spirit, and turn us back into dust long before we die a final, physical death. This is the pain we are trying to avoid, the loss of our spirit.

On the one hand, God will not give us a break. He will never stop calling us to perfection. Being his greatest creation comes with expectations that we will do great things. Being temples of the Holy Spirit comes with the expectation that we will live spiritual lives. Having the love of God poured into our hearts comes with the responsibility that we must love others exactly as God has first loved us. God is not a God of good enough. He loves us too much to see us mired in mediocrity.


On the other hand, however, we have in God's mercy the only break we really need. Beginning today, and for the next 40 days, we put our worst foot forward so to speak. We repent of our sins and ask mercy from God and from the Church, our spiritual family. We never find God's mercy wanting. If we have contrition, the Lord has mercy on us. So there is no need for us to fear God's judgment. There is no need for us to try to settle for mediocrity, to cut a deal with God to leave us alone, to let us stay where we are. No, with His mercy there is always a way forward, a way to destroy sin and the grace to move in a new direction. God sees our condition and through His Son He has taken it upon Himself. Because of Him we matter and can live a life that matters. In Him, we are loved and can live a life of love.

So let us set out on our Lenten journey with faith and courage and humility. Let us pray for one another. Together, let us return return to God with all our hearts. +m