Catholics holding on!

More religious statistics are out showing what most Catholics are experiencing. Because of demographic shifts, some areas of Catholicism are experiencing tremendous growth, but overall, we are losing ground as a percentage of the U.S. population. We're holding on for dear life! We've gone from 26% to 25% of the population. We have so much evangelization to do! We are losing the most Catholics in the northeast and among the young. At the St. Lawrence Center, our Masses are mostly full, but there is room for more. Our Mass numbers are up for this academic year. We certainly see an increase as well, however, in the number of apathetic/agnostic students. It is still true that more students regress in their Catholic faith during the college years than grow in the practice of their faith. St. Lawrence has done a lot this year to continue to be more present on campus and to invite, invite, invite. We are fighting against a trend across the United States that shows the number of Americans who are completely free of religious affiliation has grown from 8% to 15%. If these trends continue for the next 15 years, you will be just as likely to meet someone who is not religious at all as you are to meet a fellow Catholic.

Runnin Revs hit the floor tonight at Miege

Come out to Miege High School tonight for a great relaxing time during March Madness. I can't guarantee that the basketball will be as good as what the Jayhawks, Tigers and Wildcats are playing, but I promise it won't be too bad, and I promise you will get a kick out of watching area priests and seminarians take on the Serra All-Starts (8th graders and high schoolers from the area). The Revs are on a long winning streak but are taking nothing for granted. Providentially, seminarians from Kenrick (Danny Schmitz and Quentin Schmitz) are coming in for the game since it is their spring break. This will give some of us regular priests who are getting older limited exposure, and will greatly enhance the probability of victory! The Leaven will be doing a bigger story on the history and impact of the game this year. Click here for coverage of last year's memorable game! Go Revs! The game is March 9th (tonight) at 7pm at Bishop Miege. Click here for directions if you need them.

Sunday Supper at St. Lawrence

Every Sunday during the semester we have supper at St. Lawrence after the 5pm Mass and before the start of 6:45pm catechetical classes. I am usually in the confessional between 6:00 and 6:45 (hearing confessions, not confessing!) so the food is usually gone by the time I get to the social hall, but tonight I did get to sample some baked potatoes with all the trimmings and some great conversation. We are all happy at KU because we love Lent, and because we are celebrating our 9th Big XII title in 13 years! Rock Chalk!

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

Click here for daily readings.

+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