Allowing yourself to be chosen

Homily
Friday of the 5th Week of Ordinary Time I
11 February 2011
Danforth Chapel at the University of Kansas
Optional Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes
Daily Readings



Today's memorial and readings give us a chance to think about the difference between choosing and being chosen. One is greater than the other, but we usually get them backwards. Oftentimes, we think of holiness as choosing the good, and this is true in part, but it is more true to say that holiness is allowing the good to choose you. There is a big difference between Eve, who is seduced into choosing what is good only for herself, and Mary, who allowed goodness to choose her. There is a difference in using the freedom that makes us in God's image and likeness to determine goodness for yourself, and only yourself, and using that freedom to allow yourself to be chosen for a good that goes far beyond anything you might ever choose for yourself. There is a difference between Eve, who in eating the fruit of the tree dared to act like a god, and Mary, who in letting it be done unto Her according to His Word, was elevated above all the gods, and who is truly called the Mother of God.

So too our Lord's mission to redeem the world through sacrificial love was not a mission that He chose, but something He accepted in obedience, and His greatest act was foregoing His ability to save Himself from the cross, but saying to His Father not my will, but your will be done. In our Lord's cross we find the fullness of freedom, not in self-determination, but in allowing one's self to be chosen for a destiny and mission that is beyond one's self. The cross is always a more perfect symbol of love and freedom than any self-made man. So also in our vocation, Christ asks us to trust Him in obedience, and reminds us that as great as it is that we might choose Him, it is not we who choose Him, but He who chooses us, and gives us a mission in life that is greater than anything we could choose for ourselves.

People have been coming to Lourdes for 150 years now, to be healed of their illnesses to be sure, but perhaps moreso, to imitate Mary who was the greatest among mere men in allowing something to be done unto Her. Of all those cured of bodily illness at Lourdes, there are many others who have found there the ability to conform their own sufferings to the mystery of the Lord's cross, and to find through their disabilities and sufferings a greater freedom than they would have ever had without them. Though few who come to Lourdes would choose the heavy cross that they have to bear, it is there with Mary and Jesus that they allow themselves to be healed from the inside out, and allow themselves to be chosen to bear a fruit that goes beyond the understanding of the world. Like the deaf man and his friends who could not stop proclaiming not what they had done, but what God had done for them, so too Lourdes remains a profoundly joyful place, where those who have more reasons than us to distrust God nevertheless shame us by proclaiming what God has done for them. For God indeed looks upon us in our lowliness. He heals the brokenhearted. And for those who let it be done to them according to His word, He gives a peace that this world can never give.


Let us pray today for our Church, that Mary's appearance at Lourdes would continue to give comfort and hope to those chosen to participate in the redemptive sufferings of Christ, we pray

Let us pray for the world, that the most vulnerable among us would be protected and served by the strong, and that the dignity of human life would never be measured as much as it is celebrated, we pray

Let us pray for the mission of the St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center, to proclaim the goodness of the Lord and his healing power to those who suffering in mind, body or spirit at KU, we pray

Let us pray for those areas of the world torn by violence and discord, for a peaceful and just resolution in Egypt and in all areas of the world in need of reconciliation, we pray

Let us pray that following the pattern of Mary, that more people would be open to receiving from the Lord vocations to priesthood, the religious life, and to the sacrament of marriage, we pray to the Lord . . .

Let us remember those for whom we have promised to pray, especially the sick, the lonely and the doubtful, that our prayers may bring them healing, we pray . . .

Lord, through the powerful intercession of Our Lady of Lourdes, continue to give us hope and strength to endure whatever may come, for your greater glory and the salvation of souls. We make our prayers known to you also, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

It is not good for man to be alone

Homily

Thursday of the 5th Week of Ordinary Time I

St. Lawrence Chapel at the University of Kansas

10 February 2011

St. Scholastica, pray for us!

Daily Readings

You get a sense from today's Gospel that Jesus needed a break, or a nap, or time to pray, but he couldn't escape notice. When approached by the Greek woman, he says what hits our ears as the rudest thing we have ever heard our Lord say. He tells the woman that she is cutting the line, that Greeks should be behind Jewish people in receiving His teaching and healing. The Greek woman's faith is more than up to this unique challenge by our Lord, and by her faith her daughter is healed of the demon.

Those called to the priesthood and religious life cut the line as well, skipping over a step that is natural and good for man, the call to marriage, so that they might participate as fully as they can already now in the eternal marriage of Christ to His Church. Taking nothing away from marriage, which remains as we see clearly in the reading for Genesis God's usual way of calling men and women to a good and holy life, those called to the priesthood in the western Church, and to religious life universally don't really skip over marriage, but sacrifice this natural good to attend to a supernatural call to spiritual marriage to the Church or to Christ Himself, respectively.

Just as a man and wife complement each other perfectly in a marriage, so in the Church, laity and religious complement each other perfectly. Families are the domestic Church, where vocations can be born and first heard and answered, and religious serve families by making present the eternal marriage of Christ to His Church in a way that enables sacramental marriage to remain a real possibility. The family provides the first setting where a person knows himself to be loved. Religious in turn give a witness to families that our deepest desire to be loved can only finally be answered in God alone.

It is marriage to God, perfectly celebrated and achieved in the wedding banquet of the Eucharist, that enables every vocation to be heard and answered in the Church. Today we celebrate St. Scholastica, the twin sister of St. Benedict, and champion her virginity for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. As the well-known legend about her testifies, even though her twin brother was famous for setting up a rule that allowed religious to pray and work in harmony, a rule that has always served the Church and civilization so well, still the greater of the twins could easily have been Scholastica, whose love for God even exceeded her brother's. Just as Mary's virtue exceeded that of all the other apostles, so also we celebrate the gift of women religious in the Church, who like St. Scholastica, show the true heart of the Church, and who show us how to allow God to love us into our true vocation to holiness, which is always a gift received from the Holy Spirit. If there is a vocation in the Church that we need the most, it is surely vocations to the religious life for women. Let us pray more for vocations to the religious life, especially for women, confident that their consecration will renew the Church in the most beautiful way possible.

Let us pray for the Church, especially for our Benedictine brothers and sisters, that as they celebrate today they will find strength to continue to serve the Church with fervent joy, we pray . . .

Let us pray for the world, that the monastic example set by the Benedictines will inspire people to allow their work to be inspired by prayer, we pray . . .

Let us pray that the Benedictines would be true to their charism to pray regularly for us and for the needs of the world, and celebrate the divine liturgy with great skill and devotion, we pray . .

Let us pray for the mission of the St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center to open the minds of all students at KU to the source of true and lasting Wisdom, we pray . . .

Let us pray in thanksgiving for the impending installation of KU alum Bishop Paul Coakley as the new archbishop of Oklahoma City tomorrow, we pray . . .

Let us pray for a greater openness to vocations to the priesthood and religious life, we pray to the Lord . . .

Let us pray for all those in need, and all those for whom we have promised to pray, especially the lonely, the sick and the doubtful, we pray to the Lord . . .

Heavenly Father, through the intercession of St. Scholastica, may we receive those things we need to serve you more joyfully in purity of heart. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Where is your heart?

Homily

Tuesday of the 5th Week in Ordinary Time

Optional Memorial for Josephine Bakhita, virgin, canonized 2000 by John Paul II

St. Lawrence Chapel at the University of Kansas

8 February 2011

Daily Readings

Today we pray with one of the Church's newest saints, the patron saint of Sudan, Josephine Bakhita. Bakhita was the name give her by those Arab slave traders who bought and sold her as a young girl. It means fortunate, although Josephine in her early years was anything but. She was bought and sold by Arab slave traders five times, and branded over 140 times and abused constantly. Her body was covered with scars from the abuse. So horrible was her childhood, that this saint could not remember her birth name, nor what year she was born.

The fifth time she was sold, Bakhita was sold to an Italian family, who had to eventually flee Sudan and took their slave with them. When her Italian owners had to take an extended trip, they left her with a group of sisters, where Bakhita first learned of Christ. There Bakhita, after suffering at the hands of many masters, learned that the ultimate master, the Lord, was good, and that although the masters she had had mistreated her, she found in the wounds of Christ a master who had always loved her and who awaited her in heaven. She was baptized at age 21 and entered the convent, and received the name Josephine, and served the rest of her days in quiet and holy service and simplicity. She finally discovered that slavery was illegal both in Sudan and in Italy, and decided to use that freedom to become a religious. She was an incredible sister. When asked how she was, even when she suffered greatly at the end of her life, Josephine said . . .. as the Master wishes.

Pope Benedict XVI featured this incredible saint in paragraph 3 of his second encyclical Spe Salvi. He goes on at length about Josephine, offering this new saint to us as a modern model of what it means to live in hope of salvation. All the suffering that Josephine endured did not destroy her heart, which always hoped for a better master before she even met him who made heaven and earth, and who alone is the true Master. When she did meet him, she forgave her persecutors and lived a life of prayer and service. Nothing of what she suffered destroyed the hope of this incredible saint. She is now the patron saint of Sudan, which continues to endure unimaginable suffering, and a political struggle for religious freedom and self-governance. The Catholic heavy has south has voted to secede from the heavily Arab north, but no one knows how bloody and difficult and long the struggle will be for the impoverished south of Sudan. They need the prayers of their powerful saint, and ours as well.

Jesus tells us through his undressing of the Pharisees that our relationship with him must be heart speaking to heart. The life of St. Josephine Bakhita shows us what holiness is - it is not looking clean from the outside in, it is living with faith and in hope despite every reason to abandon these virtues. It is moving beyond our excuses and rationalizations to stay where we are, to move to where God can speak to us heart and heart, and help us to live in the pure hope for which St. Josephine is greatly honored.

We pray for the Church, especially for bishops and priests and leaders of the Church in southern Sudan, that they may lead their people through this difficult struggle for religious freedom and justice, we pray to the Lord

We pray for the world, especially for those who are persecuted, that they may not live without hope, and that their dignity as children of God will be respected, we pray to the Lord

We pray for the mission of the St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center, to bring the light of the Gospel to bear on the learning at the University of Kansas, we pray to the Lord

We pray that through the intercession of Josephine Bakhita, there may be an increase of vocations to the priesthood and religious life in our country, we pray to the Lord

We pray for all those for whom we have promised to pray, and those to whom we wish to offer the fruits of this Mass, especially, the lonely, the sick and the doubtful, we pray to the Lord

Heavenly Father, through the intercession of St. Josephine, listen attentively to the prayers of your faithful people, and help us to live with greater detachment from ourselves and with greater hope in seeing you face to face, we ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen

Salt and Light

Homily
5th Sunday of Ordinary Time
St. Lawrence Chapel at the University of Kansas
6 February 2011
Daily Readings


Within the next 10 years, if things keep going the way they are going, it will be just as likely that the person sitting next to you on plane will be agnostic as it is likely that he will be Catholic. Catholicism is holding steady in the US at around 20% of the population, neither growing nor declining at a great rate. Agnosticism is climbing exponentially, however, especially among former Catholics. Even with our pro-life pro-family position, and the influx of Hispanic Catholics here in the United States, our Catholic sacraments and conversion statistics are flat. We're not dying, but we're not thriving as well. For every place where the faith is doing well, there are places where we are getting crucified, so to speak.


There are tons of reasons for this, all of which are worth exploring, and many of which accuse the culture around us. Yet our Lord in tonight's Gospel I think wants his disciples to focus on themselves. Tonight I want to point the finger at those of us in the pews, those of us who practice our faith, and say something that needs to be said again and again. I know that most of us who go to Church regularly do not think we are part of the problem, that the people who aren't here are the problem, and in many ways, we are the good guys. But that is exactly what I want to speak about. We have to be more that the good guys, because just being the good guys (and gals) doesn't cut it anymore. It didn't in Jesus' time. It still doesn't make converts today. It just doesn't. The reason our Catholic faith is not thriving is that we have plenty of good guys and gals, and plenty of hypocrites and sinners too, but we have too few saints. There are not enough saints in our Church. I'm not here to say the problem is that we have too many sinners in the Church, although those seats are reliably taken. The problem is that there are too few saints. The reason agnosticism is climbing, the reason why our faith is so easy to ignore, the reason why most people see no particular advantage to being Catholic, is that most people have never met a saint, or they are not consistently around saints. Our faith is meant to build saints, not relatively good people. That is the only thing that distinguishes our faith, the making of saints. It is the only reason we exist, the only reason we should exist. Yes, the loss of religion says a lot about the people who are losing it, and they bear their share of the blame, but it always says more about us.


It's not just agnostics who have never met a saint. Most lukewarm Catholics have never met one either, or even if we have, we aren't around them enough, or we limit our exposure to them, or we ignore them, or there simply aren't enough of them. Most of all, we've lost our determination to become saints ourselves. Most of us eventually settle to be good compared to someone else, to rationalize and excuse ourselves into lukewarmness, comfort, and mediocrity. We can turn Christianity into a spectator sport. This not only fails to make converts to the Catholic faith, it is the surest way to kill our own faith.



I say that as sad as it is to see agnosticism growing around us, and so few Catholics living the full beauty of their faith, there might be God's will in all of this. Not that he desires a single soul to be lost, nor should we, but agnosticism may eventually be the means for Catholicism to find its heart again, for more souls to be saved, for us to realize that if our Church is not making saints, we should indeed fold up the tent. That is the challenge that agnosticism, indifference to God, proposes to us, and it is a worthy challenge. An argument can be made that it is better that agnosticism is growing instead of lukewarm Catholicism. Now I'll tell you why I say this. I say this because Jesus said it first. Jesus Christ tells his disciples after preaching the Sermon on the Mount that they are to be the salt of the earth, and the light of the world. They are to be different than those around them, not only from the outside in, but especially from the inside out. Jesus points to the unique dignity and opportunity that is given in the Catholic faith. He tells his disciples that they are to be uniquely the ones who preserve what is good for the future, who bring out the full flavor of human experience, who make barren those areas where evil tends to take root, and who show the world the full and incomparable dignity of man who may dare to use his freedom to participate in the divine love that made and redeemed the world, and the dignity of man as one who is called to participate in the divine life of God. Never will you see Jesus calling his disciples to be good people compared to others. No, he calls them to the highest of heights. He calls them to sanctity, to fullness, to transcendent goodness. When he tells them that they are to be salt and light, he calls them not just to be a good part of the world, but to be with him the co-redeemers of the world. He calls his disciples to be saints.



That agnostic who will sit next to you on the airplane tomorrow, and the next day, and ten years from now, deserves if he is sitting next to a Catholic, to be sitting next to a saint. At the very least, he deserves to be sitting next to a person who has not given up on being a saint. Most of us settle for sitting next to a person who is not annoying, who will just leave us alone, but beyond the categories of introversion and extroversion, and no matter what you level of etiquette and on a plane, if you are an agnostic and you meet a Catholic, you deserve to be meeting a saint, or someone who is pursuing sanctity with all his heart, and all his mind and all his strength.



The challenge of agnosticism is a good one that must be answered by the lives of real saints. The challenge to us by agnosticism is that you do not have to be religious to be a good person. There are many good people who do not go to Church, plenty of hypocrites who do go to Church, and many heroes who are not consciously motivated by their belief in God. These are the arguments we must meet, and meet by answering the call to holiness, or we should admit defeat, and fold up our tents. Beyond the anecdotal evidence that the Church is not producing enough saints to renew the faith, are the intellectual arguments that religion distracts people from solving real problems in the real world, that religion causes as many arguments as it resolves, and that religious people are of two kinds, those who are insecure about themselves, or those who are deceived into thinking that they can live and act for something outside of their own evolutionary self-interest.

The challenge of scientism is that human freedom is not transcendent or spiritual, but only works within the parameters of the world, so that even when a person claims he is acting for a higher purpose, he is really only acting for himself within a closed system governed by the principles of evolution. Scientists then want a more realistic version of morality where a man recognizes that acting morally is ultimately about utility, and the more we give up on religion, the more we can agree on a common baseline of morality and quit arguing about whose God is right. It is not in itself a worthless project.

But St. Paul answer this objection beautifully by pointing us to the cross. He says that I as a disciple of Jesus am not very smart, so you should not pay attention to my arguments, and I am not that good, so you should not pay attention to my goodness, for I am a sinner, but I come among you hoping that you pay attention only to Jesus Christ crucified. Whenever you are tempted to think you do not have to be religious to be good, whenever you think that science can provide a better baseline for morality than religion, then look at Jesus Christ crucified. Even though the creation of all the universe could not add one iota to God's glory, but He created it anyway, and even though the redemption of one sinner could add nothing to God's goodness, He redeemed us anyway. The cross speaks not of necessity, but of freedom and love that originate beyond the confines of the world. The cross speaks a wisdom that begins to answer the true questions of spirituality that found the moral life. Why is there something rather than nothing? Where is there me instead of not me? Is there someone that loves me more than I love myself, and loves me more than He loves Himself, and who loves me for my own sake to the point of forsaking Himself? Is there within me the possibility of loving someone more than I love myself, and of giving myself not because of anything I would receive back, but out of sheer love for the other?

These spiritual questions are the true ground of the moral life. It is not the goodness that is naturally found in the world, to which man is called according to the laws of nature. This is real goodness, but the goodness that founds the moral life is a goodness that man does not naturally discover in the world, but the goodness that first created the world, and a goodness that appeals to a freedom that is not confined to the laws of time and space, matter and energy. It is the goodness that is revealed most perfectly in the cross of Jesus Christ.

Pope Benedict reminds us that just as a scientist sees no end to the questions he can ask about the universe, the athlete never ceases to set new records that beforehand were thought impossible, and telling an engineer that something is impossible makes no impact on his desire to do it anyway, so it is saints who are drawn to strive for the goodness and holiness made present to us by the cross, who set the standards of morality of the world. Just as we are inspired not by people who do what is most reasonable, but people who never give up hope despite all the obstacles in their way, so also the baseline of the moral life is not set by the goodness that exists below us, but by the saints striving for the goodness that lies beyond us. Pope Benedict reminds us that unless the world has saints, striving to love God with all their heart, and mind and strength, that humanity will eventually forget what goodness is.

There is a good reason to be Catholic and not agnostic. Being Catholic is no guarantee of holiness, it doesn't automatically make you a better person, even though it may protect you from many evils it is not a golden ticket to heaven because you are better than someone else. No, being Catholic is the best chance to realize the best that is within us. It is our best chance to be a saint, and to be as Jesus has asked us to be, the salt of the earth, and the light of the world.

happiness 2.0

Homily
4th Sunday of Ordinary Time
30 January 2011
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings

Almost every scientist and philosopher agrees now that our universe has a beginning. The universe is neither necessary nor eternal. The universe is not God. It can be measured and a date can be given to its beginning. So far all efforts to show that the universe always existed or always will exist have failed. The most interesting debate currently, is between those smart people who postulate that the something of our universe arose out of the nothing of possibilities. Such agnostics point to the theoretical possibilites of billions of parallel universes to explain how such a statistically improbable universe like ours came from nothing. Theists instead say that it is takes less faith and is more reasonable actually to conclude that given the immense improbability of something coming from nothing, the beginning of the universe points to the action of a supernatural metaphysical intelligence that is the ground of all being.

Smart people likewise disagree on the moral universe. There are some who think the universe proposes a morality, a natural law, that can be agreed upon by human minds without reference to metaphysical universals or supernatural revelations. There are others who say that matter and energy while obeying physical laws have no capability of defining good and evil; as such, natural law must be grounded in divine law, a law that supersedes nature. Because of this we have a divergence between smart people who think that human actions while appearing to be free are ultimately determined by broader evolutionary laws, and those who find a radical spiritual freedom in man that is irreducible by nature.

Finally, there are smart people who argue that religion is the greatest problem in the world, for it distracts people from a real humanism that solves real problems in this real world, and those who while admitting that religions will always be filled with sinners, find in the contemplation of God's revelation of Himself, and obedience to God's commands, the most enduring hope for man understanding his deepest dignity, actualizing his greatest happiness, and realizing his greatest destiny.

Smart people will continue to debate these questions at the highest level. We should join them as much as we can, for such questions are always worth considering, and they pay great dividends for those who pursue better answers. The world will continue to be changed by smart people engaging such questions as well as they can, just as the world is changed by the honest debate between liberalism and conservatism, between capitalism and other economic systems, between democracy and others forms of government, between Christianity and other kinds of religion. The list can and does go on and on. The discussion goes on and on and on, like the rivalry between Mizzou and K-State and KU. Most of us have taken sides on many of these questions, and perhaps we're pretty sure of our position, and pretty sure we'll never understand how the other side thinks, just as we'll never fully understand how smart and good-hearted people can root for the Wildcats and the Tigers. Still, we know the discussions and the rivalries and the questions will persist, and human history will be written by how these questions play out.

The smartest people among us continue to make amazing discoveries and human knowledge grows at an exponential rate, so much so that college freshman today are the most anxious of any group of freshman in history, for you are going into debt so that one day you might find a way to be successful in a world that is changing faster than anyone can predict. Yet as much as human knowledge is progressing, an argument can be made that we are forgetting as much as we are learning. The great promise of progress gives way to discouragement when we see that we are not becoming better people. The science that can save lives can also be used to destroy lives. We have as much war, famine and persecution as ever. The same religions that produce saints are used as cover by suicide bombers. We have moved past the age of Enlightenment into the age of postmodernism, an age that desperately wants to hope but is devoid of new ideas on how to define and secure human happiness.

Happiness. This is Jesus' theme for tonight. What is happiness? Who is happy? Jesus on the surface in his beatitudes seems to try to trick his disciples, convincing them that misery now will pay off with happiness later. Yet contemplation of the beatitudes produces another payoff that goes beyond making an exclusive backroom bet or trade with our Lord. Jesus in pointing us toward heaven offers a transcendent happiness that can be lived from the inside out even as we try to realize a happiness that is delivered to man by the world from the outside in. In departing from the natural definition of happiness in such a radical way in the beatitudes, Jesus is proposing a transcendent happiness that begins not merely in a heaven far away from here, but a happiness that begins precisely where heaven and earth meet in the human heart.
So even as the fire rages on in the world, and the world is changed by human debates and struggles, between the smartest and the most powerful, and even as those of us with courage go into the world as Jesus taught us to redeem it by the bold proclamation of the Gospel to all people and nations, today's contemplation of the beatitudes command us to pay greater attention to how God desires to redeem the world from the inside out. Jesus chose to begin his mission with the weak of the world, with those who were sick in body and in spirit, and he never deviated from this mission until He had given His life like a lamb led to slaughter. Jesus never tried to win over the smartest, the most powerful or the most religious. He served the poor and defenseless, and gave his life like a lamb as a ransom for many, and in this He has changed the world more than any human person ever has. So St. Paul reminds us Jesus' disciples, that God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being may boast before God.

As much as the world is changed by exchanges between the richest, the most powerful, and the smartest, Jesus tells his disciples that the most enduring human progress is not achieved by these people, for too often we forget more than we learn, and too often we repeat the same mistakes, but man progresses most of all by those saints and heroes who pass over from earth to heaven in their hearts. Humankind only makes progress when that progess begins first in the human heart, in those who are not proud, who can weep for their friends, who want little for themselves, who work for justice, who know how to forgive and bring people together, who are single-hearted, and who offer their sufferings, and allow their blood to be shed, so that others may have life. This is where human happiness begins, deep within the heart of a human person who is capable of responding to Jesus' command to love others just as He first loves us.

In this week, we KU basketball fanatics will be changed more by praying for Thomas Robinson and his family, by mourning with him, and by supporting him as he moves through the grief and uncertainty of his situation to continue to sacrifice and to love and to become his greatest self despite having reasons not to. We will watch closely as Gabrielle Giffords in the coming months perhaps miraculously survives an unthinkably evil and senseless shooting, and pray God one day returns to the House floor to serve our country. More than any weather forecast or stock market report or debate about the origins of the universe, these stories and others like them, will continue to change the lives of real people like us as we watch people walk that line between earth and heaven drawn in the human heart, and we too seek the happiness that comes to those who are invited by Jesus tonight to cross over.

Paul and Mary

Homily

Conversion of St. Paul the Apostle

25 January 2011

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center

Daily Readings

Paul was a proud person before his conversion. If Mary was the most humble of all the apostles, the one who proclaimed that the Lord looked upon her lowliness, the one who was most ready to receive Jesus Christ, then Paul was the opposite. Paul and Mary represent the bookends of the apostles. One was perfectly humble and ready to receive Jesus. The other was perfectly proud and ready to persecute Him. One was chosen even before Jesus' birth, and carried Him in her womb. The other never met the Lord face to face, but only met Him after His ascension into heaven. Yet both became super-apostles, the apostles of the apostles, the apostles par excellence. Paul, because He eventually was called to outwork the other apostles in the mission of evangelization. Mary, because from her beginning she was to be the pattern of the apostolic Church, teaching us how to receive Jesus before being sent by Him. She too, like Paul, eventually outworked all the other apostles, eventually winning converts by the millions, most notably here in the Americas sixteen centuries after Her assumption. If there is any apostle who has brought the Gospel here to the Americas, it is Mary herself, and our Lady of Guadalupe is the apostle to the Americas.

The vocational stories of Mary and Paul could not be more different really, and yet their lives bear similar fruit. They are both zealous for the law of Moses, Mary by virtue of her Immaculate Conception lived the law of Moses even more perfectly and intensely than did Paul, whose life was based on enforcing righteous laws that preserved goodness, not only for himself but out of love for God and nation. It can easily be said that Paul loved the law to the point of neglect to the law-giver, and Paul would be the first to say that his conversion was from being a murderer to being an apostle, yet the zeal with which Paul lived the law of Moses was exactly what God desired for the preaching of the Gospel. The conversion of Paul is the greatest conversion in history; it is God's healing of pride and turning that extraordinary pride that Paul possessed into a zeal for souls that the rest of the apostles could never dream of imitating.

Paul ended upon proclaiming, as does Mary in her magnificat, that God looked upon his lowliness, his unworthiness, and began to love Paul and to heal Paul and to call Paul precisely beginning at that point where Paul was weakest, where because of his pride he did not yet know the love of God. Paul then like Mary boasted only of his lowliness, and teaches us to boast to others only of our weakness. Our proclamation to the world as Christians is not to show how the law of Christ has made us better than other people; even if it has, this is not the story that is to be proclaimed. No, our story is to proclaim with Paul the story of our conversion, of how Jesus Christ comes to visit us in our lowliness, how he has personally healed my sinfulness, and beginning with my weakness, has called me into His great apostolic mission.

March for Life 2011

Saturday marked the 38th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion in our country, and began a civil rights moment seeking to re-establish the right to life from conception to natural death ni this country. This movement, while doing incalculable good in the minds and hearts of Americans, and saving many lives, has yet to return the right to life to a right guaranteed by law. I have had the honor, as a post Roe v. Wade survivor, to march in Washington many times and to demonstrate before the Supreme Court, praying for the unborn, and speaking for the millions in my generation whose lives have been lost to abortion. I pray for what has been lost, commending all who have been hurt by abortion to the mercy of God, but perhaps even more, I pray for family life and for the virtue of chastity to be strengthened in our country. For the longer I am part of this battle for life, the more I see clearly that the battle must be won in the family if it is definitively to be won anywhere else. I preached on the feast of the Holy Family this year during the Christmas season, that unless we pass on to the next generation to ability to hear and to answer the call to sacramental marriage, as established by Christ and understood fully by the Church, then we are living without hope. For as the family goes, so goes the nation. I want to take this chance to honor all our seminarians, young people, their sponsors, and our Church, for standing up for life today in such a beautiful way as they March on Washington. I am with you in spirit and in prayer.

The event will probably be underreported, but it is awesome!