give me mercy

Homily
Divine Mercy Sunday
15 April 2012
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings


Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, his mercy endures forever!

It was about a year ago that John Paul II was beatified on this Sunday's Feast of Divine Mercy.  Many recall in 2005 Blessed John Paul died on the eve of this newly named solemnity, the last day in the octave of Easter.  It was as if his last witness was to allow us through his weakness to see his great confidence in God's mercy.  He allowed millions to keep vigil with him, and to contemplate the Holy Father's wounds at his moment of greatest vulnerability, the hours before his death.

By 2030, not that far away, it is projected that there will be as many agnostics as Catholics in the United States.  Not that the Church won't grow in number during that time as well, but agnostics will also grow, exponentially faster as a percentage of the population, unless something happens.  There are many who will ignore or even disdain the great truth of the resurrection of Jesus that has been passed down so carefully and courageously by our Church through the centuries.  When I hear again each year the story of doubting Thomas, my first reaction is to use this apostle as an example of the rampant skepticism and individualism that plagues modern man, and to wonder if any vigorous apologetic for the truth of the Resurrection will ever be enough for modern man, and turn the tide back in our favor.

Yet John Paul II forever took this 2nd Sunday of Easter in a different direction than I would have taken it.  John Paul II did not see the truth of the Resurrection as something that must merely be vigorously defended, but more importantly, as a truth that captures man and must be surrendered to.  For we never see our Lord get defensive, but always we see him responding to doubt with greater faith in man, and to sin with greater mercy.  Knowing that there would be no end to man's ability to doubt the truth of the resurrection, John Paul fought back not just with better arguments, but with a greater witness of how one surrenders to the truth of divine mercy as the greatest power at work in the world, a power even stronger than sin and death.  John Paul II witnessed to a mercy that is not so easily doubted because it goes beyond human logic and control.  John Paul II knew that faith in the resurrection could only grow in an age of skepticism if man is capable of surrendering to a mercy that is his origin, his constant calling, and his perfection in heaven.

Faith in the resurrection then, often limps because people at their core do not believe God loves them.  Archbishop Emeritus Keleher told us priests over and over and over never to stop telling people that God loves them, because for most, it will be the one thing they doubt the most and the longest.  John Paul II has done as much by naming this second Sunday of Easter Divine Mercy Sunday, and telling us that mercy is the  key to the Easter proclamation.

So my friends, we need to move beyond the poverty of calculating the minimum amount of God's mercy that we need to bail us out of jail and to squeak into heaven.  This kind of thinking is why Catholics love Lent and are lost during Easter.  We think of Lent as work and Easter as vacation, when in reality Lent is merely a warm-up for the great work of Easter, when oceans of mercy are unleashed through the Paschal mystery upon the world for its redemption, and you and I are sent personally by Jesus to be witnesses that our wounds too have been healed by the grace of the Resurrection, and to allow ourselves to be vulnerable before others, letting them put their fingers and hands into our lives that have been redeemed by Christ.

God's mercy does bail us out, for sure, but rather than minimizing the effects of divine mercy, we must come to a contemplation like St. Faustina of mercy as God's deepest attribute, the best definition of who he is, and what he wanted most to reveal about himself through the gift of Jesus. St. Thomas Aquinas gives us an astonishing definition of mercy as that power that brings a thing out of non-being into being.  When we think of mercy then, we should never think of small things, but always of big things.  We should think of mercy not just as bailout money, but that power that is recreating everything right now and bringing it into full being from the nothingness of the cross.  We Christians must never forget that we are awash in an ocean of mercy that at every moment is conquering sin and death.

Jesus responds to our doubts about his resurrection by letting us touch his wounds, by making himself more vulnerable again and again, even daring to allow us to touch him once again in the Holy Eucharist today.  Still, he asks us to put out into the deep, and to move beyond our ability to demand more and more proof, into an ability to surrender to a truth that is bigger than us.  He invites us not to settle for a truth that we can control, but to surrender to a truth that makes us younger and our lives bigger.  He promises those to be blessed who have not seen, and still have believed.

Let us surrender today to the awesome mystery of divine mercy.  Agnostics like to scoff sometimes at belief in a Father who would allow his Son to be tortured.  Yet what kind of a project is it to disbelieve God only because we cannot reduce him to our own expectations and judgments?  If the only mercy we had recourse to is one that met a standard we could agree upon from below, how could we ever hope for a life that flows from that mercy that is more than eye has seen, or ear has heard, or has so much as dawned upon the mind of man, the life prepared by God for those who love him.  Let us instead praise God with full hearts and minds on this Easter day, for surpassing out understanding and expectations, so that we are never doomed to worshipping ourselves, or hoping only in ourselves.

This Solemnity of Divine Mercy belongs perpetually now to the Easter proclamation of the Church.  Let us pray to know this divine mercy, and its power to recreate the world, as John Paul II knew it.  Let us celebrate the holiness of our late Holy Father, and ask him to pray for us who have recourse to him.

Give thanks to the Lord for he is good!  His mercy endures forever!  Amen

risk of faith

Homily
Easter Vigil
7 April 2012
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

Jesus Christ is truly risen from the dead.  Alleluia!  Alleluia!  Sounds good, doesn't it?  And not just because Lent is over, and we get to chow down on whatever we want as soon as this longest of liturgies is over.  No, not just for that, but because these words are as mysterious, and dramatic and profound as any words that have ever been, or could ever be, spoken in human history.  Without these words - Jesus Christ has been raised - even the words Christ says in the Eucharist - this is my body broken for you, this is my blood poured out for you - would be said in vain.  And if these words do not represent the thing I  most know to be true out of all the things that I know, then we might as well all go home right now.  Because of this, it feels great to say these words on the most holy night of the year, to sing these words!  Jesus Christ is truly risen from the dead.  Alleluia!  Alleluia!

These are words that are easy for us to say tonight.  For we do not say them alone.  There are lots of us here, and we are led by our catechumens who profess faith in Christ's resurrection for the first time.  We say these words with special attention tonight for at this liturgy we do not simply repeat the creed, but we renew the faith of our baptism with unparalleled meaning and attention.  It is easy to profess our faith in the Resurrection today, for it is Easter.  There are signs of new life all around us, confirming that death does not have the final say.  There are new sights and sounds in the Church alerting our senses to the resurrection of Jesus.  On Easter Sunday we call upon the cloud of witnesses who have gone before us, our ancestors and especially the saints in heaven who have gone to the end of the earth and paid for our faith with their very lives, so that the historical truth of the resurrection would be strong enough to traverse all of human history and safely reach us here in Lawrence, Kansas on April 7/8, 2012.  In this context, it is easy for us to say the words that are supposed to be as true or moreso than any other words we ever say - words that are as mysterious and dramatic and profound as any words that can be or ever have been said - Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.  Alleluia!  Alleluia!

Let us be glad that it is easy for us to profess this faith tonight.  But let's not let the confidence of this day make us forget the risk of faith that we are taking. For being a Christian is never to go with the flow.  Renewing our baptismal promises is pointless if we do it only because everyone else is doing it.  Let us find ever better reasons for doing what we are about to do, not just going with the flow, not just tinkering with becoming a better person, not just vainly wishing that there might be a magic ticket for bonus time waiting for me on the other side of death.  If this is all we profess tonight, we are the most pitiable people of all.

Let's instead profess a faith that is exciting and dramatic.  There are plenty of people around us who have become anesthetized to Christianity and the resurrection, those who no longer feel at all the historical truth of the resurrection shaking the story of the world like an earthquake and dramatically changing the destiny of man.  There are plenty around who conclude instead that Christians are dumb, and afraid of scientific reality.  So if we only profess something small, and profess it meekly, the Church's proclamation will limp into tomorrow, and too many will remain unimpressed, even with those who today join the Church.

Against any person who would say that the Christian story is a myth for weak thinkers who need a fantasy to avoid their fear of suffering and death, we must be able to profess without equivocation that we are not avoiding anything.  Instead, Christians must be known as those who more than anyone else on the planet are more radically and intensely searching for a love that is stronger than death.  That my friends, is why being a Christian is the most adventuresome way to live, and if we have made it routine and boring, we are doing it all wrong.  Christians instead profess that this quest to find a love that conquers all has led them to the cross of Christ.  It is because a Christian knows this love revealed on the cross to be ultimate reality and truth, that that same Christian may profess the resurrection, the fruit of the cross, to be the most certain truth of his life.  A true Christian then fears nothing, and avoids nothing, but eagerly enters into suffering and death, knowing that only those who follow Christ with love all the way through the cross and into the tomb, may arrive at the truth of what our Lord said, that whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, but whoever seeks to lose his life, will save it for eternal life.

So let's do more today that buy a ticket for the eternal life lottery.  Let's do more than make grandma proud that I made it to Mass on Easter Sunday.  No, let's profess our faith in the resurrection not only because the faith has been courageously and carefully passed onto us, but because I have most personally and intensely taken Jesus up on his word, and have actually tried being a Christian.  The resurrection is not something we have to pretend to be true, it is something we find to be true, because I know myself to be getting younger, and my life getting bigger, everytime I lose myself in the adventure of following Jesus more closely.

So when we profess our faith tonight let's not say something easy.  Let's not say something pitiable.  Let's say something with sharp minds and pure hearts and courageous wills.  Let us say together words that are as mysterious and dramatic and profound as any words that have been, or ever could be, uttered by the lips of a human person.  Jesus Christ is truly risen from the dead.  Alleluia!  Alleluia!

This is how you kiss

Homily
Celebration of the Lord's Passion
6 April 2012
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

On February 20th, I reposted a story to my facebook timeline from the Kansas City Star.  That paper hasn't always put the Church in a good light, but I was excited that they honored the extraordinary life of a junior at one our Catholic high schools, a kid that I knew a little bit from saying daily Mass at the school.  The headline of the story was "St. James' Connor McCullough loses battle with cancer."  I reposted the story with the comment  'rip Connor McCullough' hoping people would take the time to read the story.  Less than a year before learning he had terminal brain cancer, this young man was at least a four-star basketball recruit.  Connor was on Bill Self's radar, perhaps the best player in a line of family basketball players, including a few McCulloughs I knew when I was chaplain of St. Thomas Aquinas.  He was a stud on the court, and for many, including those who are frenetic about KU basketball, who could only dream yet never achieve the opportunity to play at KU, this made his tragic death all the more newsworthy.

So I reposted the story, after hearing that dozens of his Catholic school peers flooded adoration chapels all over the city after learning of his death, and thousands of young people, including the best basketball players all over the city, attended his wake and funeral.  So devout was Connor and his family, that as people waited hours to view the body and greet the family, tv's were set up with the EWTN nuns praying the Divine Mercy chaplet, and basketball players who had never been in a Catholic church found themselves following along on the pamphlet handed to them, praying for the conversion of sinners and for the salvation of the world through a devotion most Catholics have never used.  You can imagine the scene.

So I felt pretty good reposting the story about Connor.  Little did I know that the headline that I reposted - St. James' Connor McCullough loses battle with cancer - would be so offensive.  The headline was offensive to the teammates and friends of Connor who had been going to daily Mass with him and for him for many months, those who had prayed with complete faith for a miracle, but in the end, that God's will be done.  Here is one of the comments made in response to my post - More like St. James' Connor McCullough OWNS battle with cancer.  Connor won.  Last time I checked, cancer didn't make it to heaven.

That's the comment I should have posted.  Instead, an 18 year old had to remind me that the headline was wrong.  Dead wrong.  This made we wonder why I wasn't more offended by the headline - St. James' Connor McCullough loses battle with cancer.  It was so clear to the kids who knew him and  loved him most and prayed for him most.  Cancer was Connor's cross.  The cross is the tree of victory, the tree of life.  Connor won.  The headline was wrong.  Dead wrong.  End of story.

It is so important for us who dare to kiss the cross of Jesus tonight to celebrate that the wood of the cross is the axis of the recreation of the world.  And the second creation is better than the first.  On the cross Jesus hands over the power to create everything out of nothing, a power given by the Father in the first creation, so that he can create everything out of nothing.  That sounds dumb, until you see the difference between what was created in the beginning and what is created from the axis of the cross.

In the first creation of everything from nothing, a light was shared that could one day be touched by darkness  A goodness was shared that could one day be touched by evil.  Happiness was shared but could one day be touched by sorrow and pain.  The breath of life was shared that could one day be conquered by death.

This cannot be said of the new creation.  The one who knew he had the power to lay down his life and take it up again accepted the mission from the Father to recreate the world beginning from the wood of the cross.  For it is at this location, the location we dare to kiss with our lips, that a new reality and everlasting life is created.  And this creation is better, because it is born not merely by God's decision to share himself, but by God's decision to take up a human nature so that he could share all of himself.

When God creates, he bring something out of nothing.  That's what makes his creation different than ours.  And on the cross from the nothing of evil he creates everlasting goodness.  From the nothing of darkness he creates unquenchable light.  From the nothing of pain he creates irreducible joy.  From the nothing of death, he creates eternal life.

The commenter on my facebook got it right.  It is at the cross, and nowhere else, that the only victory that matters is won.   It is at the cross that the Passover from the old reality to the new happens.  That is why it makes sense for us to kiss the greatest instrument of hatred and torture the world has ever seen with the most passionate kiss of our entire lives.

It's strange when a facebook comment from a 18 year old becomes something that pricks my conscience all the way to Good Friday.   Those who prayed for a friend who was given a heavy cross were not disillusioned that his life was too short; no, they concluded that the rest of us are living too long, if we are living a life apart from the life that comes only from the cross.   If I am willing to repost a headline article saying that cancer defeated the life of a promising young man who was a disciple of Jesus, how can I say that I really know what the cross of our Lord means?  For the cross for us is not where life ends.  It is where life begins.

don't be scared to play

Homily
5th Sunday of Lent
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
24 March 2012
Daily Readings

With the KU/North Carolina game on today, it's a hard day to preach at KU about Jesus.  Basketball is on the minds of almost everyone - a near religion.  We reach today what we hope will be another epic game in the rich history of KU basketball, and this is perhaps the only year, with our last year playing Mizzou, that we have already played a game perhaps as big as the one today against North Carolina and Roy, for the trip to go to the Final Four. If you care at all about basketball, and it's hard not to get caught up in it around here, today's game is huge.  Basketball is perhaps the only metaphor available for preaching, and not surprisingly, it's the one I'm taking.

Bill Self was asked yesterday if he had any trepidation of taking the job at Kansas with its unreasonable expectations and pressures, especially following Roy and all the games he won while at KU.  Self answered confidently, saying that he hesitated for a moment, but had confidence in his abilities.  He said the turning moment was a phone call to his dad, who told him that if he was scared to take the job, he wasn't the right man for the job.  Bill Self could tell instantly that his dad was calling him soft, and telling him that the Kansas job was right because it was the biggest challenge.  Almost to a person, we're all glad that Bill Self accepted the challenge, and we wish him well today in the epic battle.  The funny thing is, even though we know he wants to win even more than we want him to, Bill Self seems ready.  He seems relaxed.  Not because he thinks it's just another game.  He knows it's not.  But because he's ready.  He's confident.

Just like accepting the job, today's game is a game that you shouldn't play if you're scared to play it.  KU fans worry too much.  Even though we're spoiled beyond belief, we worry.  We worry about what could go wrong. We've been both thrilled and burned by our team. Yet today's game is not a game to be scared of.  It's the reason you are a Kansas fan, not simply to dominate lesser opponents, but for the chance to beat the best.  If you're scared to play this game, you shouldn't play it.

We hear in today's Gospel that after conversing with his Father over and over in prayer, so that he may be intent on doing not his own will, but the will of the Father, Jesus receives a sign indicating that now is the time for the Son of Man to be lifted up and glorified, so that the Father may be glorified in Him.  Through many years of prayer and preparation, being human like us and choosing to learn the Father's will in a most human way, Jesus had learned obedience from what he suffered.  He sensed that now was the time of fulfillment, the time of consummation.  Now was his time to give his life perfectly in obedience, to fulfill the mission and vocation for which he came into the world.  Jesus was not scared of this moment; he relished it, because he had not shied away from the Father's will thus far.  Our Lord says of this moment; unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains but a single grain.  But if it dies, it bears much fruit.

When asked yesterday if he was going to do anything different in the North Carolina game because of North Carolina's instability at the point guard position, with perhaps Kendall Marshall playing injured or a freshman taking his spot, Tyshawn Taylor said that at this point in the season, he is what he is, and he plays how he plays.  Bill Self said about as much.  That at this late juncture, sure you can make adjustments and go over a scouting report, but that will not be as important as what the team has internalized throughout the season, not as important as the rules and discipline and principles that have come to define this Kansas team.  We would love to hear intstead, that Bill has a trick or gimmick that he has been saving just for this game, but he told us the truth, that at this point, KU is what we are - a good but flawed basketball team.  Self went on to joke that no rule or punishment will keep Thomas Robinson from trying to bring up the ball - he's going to make this mistake about every game.  It is who he is. love him or leave him.

All of this might bring us to ask the question - who am I?  What have I internalized?  What am I scared of?  What moment have I prepared for?  Who have I become?  The prophet Jeremiah foretells the kind of relationship with God in which he will write his laws internally on the hearts of his people, so that they do not have to be afraid of moments of opportunity and trepidation, but can rely not on external laws but on internal relationship to get them through the tough times.  As we eat and drink the body and blood of the ultimate lawgiver and the fulfillment of the law, Jesus Himself today, may we be ready for Him to live out his perfections in us and with us and through us.  Even more, may our internalizing of his paschal mystery, his story, help us not to be afraid to fall to the ground and to die, nor to follow Him more closely, but help us to be excited for the big game, the big moment for which we were made.  May we realize that if we are too scared to play the game, we shouldn't play it.  If we're scared, we haven't internalized what we were meant to eat and drink.  Let us instead allow love to conquer fear again today in this Holy Eucharist, and as we internalize Jesus Himself, may we be excited that he chooses to live out his paschal mystery, and the perfect obedience that he learned through suffering, in us and with us and through us.  Amen.

live in the light

Homily
4th Sunday of Lent B
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings

Most of us have heard the story of the man who kept refusing help in escaping an impending flood, telling the rescuers that he was putting his trust in God alone to help him.  Finally, the flood got the man, and in heaven, he asked why God let him down, and God pointed out that the many rescuers who offered help were God's helpers.

The first reading today from Chronicles notes how stubborn the people of God are.  I'm a Volga German, born on St. Patrick's Day, mind you, but not a drop of Irish blood that I know of, and I've been told numerous times how proud we Volga Germans are to be of our stubbornness.  We are help yourself kind of people.  Hardworking.  Independent.  Which is ok for many things, and I've benefitted from this upbringing immensely, but this doesn't always make one attentive in the spiritual life to God's rescue operations that he is sending.

The Navy SEALS make a lot of news these days.  People are impressed with their training, which can be used for lethal strategic missions, like taking out Usama bin Laden, to be sure, but also for daring, precise rescue missions.  It is inspiring that our country will still send a team of people to rescue even a single captured or imperiled American citizen.  It is what made the story of Saving Private Ryan so inspiring, that a whole team of men was put in harm's way in order to save the last surviving son of the Ryan family.

The first reading from Chronicles says that God had to go to Plan B because the Israelites were so stubborn.  His plan of sending messenger after messenger from within Israel was being met with resistance.  So in his anger he allowed the Israelites, who had a law and prophets greater than any other nation, to be taken into captivity by a nation less moral, a nation less connected to God.  It was left to a Persian king eventually to tell the Israelites to return home and to reclaim their religion, and to build a temple, for they had failed to listen to their own prophets.

So too the moral teaching of the Church today.  What is happening our midst today follows the storyline from 1st Chronicles to a T.  There are courageous teachers and prophets in our midst, but they are not winning the culture when everyone is looking at the world through the lens of their own viewpoint, whether politically, economically, or through the entertainment industry.  We are stubborn, independent, I did it my way kind of people.  God is sending us lots of teachers, messengers and signs, but we are missing most all of them because we prefer to look at the world through our own view, not as God sees the world.

The white elephant in the contraception debate between the president and the bishops is that too many Catholics use artificial birth control, despite the solid teaching and good scientific and moral reasons to consider not using it.  The horse is so far out of the barn now that if things don't change, it will be up to history to judge why Catholics were unable to live up to such a beautiful and solid moral teaching, a teaching that favors the sanctity and gift of human life and is pro-marriage and pro-family.  Talk about a case of history repeating itself.  The Israelites forsook their own beautiful teaching for the opinion polls of their day, ignored their own prophets, and were humbled to learn from someone else, a Persian king, that they should return to their faith.   History might say the same thing about our generation, as we see the pillars the build a society - chastity, marriage, and a respect for human life from conception to natural death, being eroded slowly but surely, one by one.  The bishops are right to try to draw attention away from the use of contraception to the deeper issues of religious freedom, and the forced payment for sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs.  I applaud their effort.  Yet whenever people pay more attention to polls than to arguments, the popular opinions and practices become the law of the land, and it is hard to tell if the bishops can make their voices heard.  There are many things, as we know, working against them.

I want to also today add a perspective to the arguments around sexuality that are raging, and to suggest that behind it all is a deep crisis in masculinity.  There wouldn't be as much room for discussing a war on women as the media likes to frame things, if there were more men like St. Joseph, a chaste and just man, obedient to the mission of protecting the holy family.  Behind the debate on sexuality is the reality that we are producing fewer and fewer men in our society, and in our Church, who mature so as to desire and become capable of the sacrament of marriage and/or the priesthood.  As much as anything, what we are seeing today is a crisis of fatherhood, a deep confusion in what it means to be a spiritual and a natural father.  There can be no oppression of women where the definition of being a true man is to imitate Christ, who wishes to make his bride holy and without blemish by giving his life to her.  See Ephesians chapter 5 if you need a refresher on what it means to be a Christian man. I encourage you that if you devotion to St. Patrick is greater than your devotion to St. Joseph, you should go to Mass tomorrow on St. Joseph's solemnity, to at least make your devotion to these two men equal.  Let's us all pray to St. Joseph to restore our ability to be men, and to know how to be chaste and to do what is right.

Finally, since you've never studied the Theology of the Body written by John Paul II, if you've never watched the Catholicism videos of Fr. Robert Barron, if you've never read Jesus of Nazareth, a reflection of Holy Week, by Pope Benedict XVI,  please do so this Lent, so that we can be assured that God is sending us messengers and prophets to help us turn the lights on!  Let us let ourselves not be filled with the darkness of the culture, but let's live up to the promise of our baptism, and allow ourselves to be filled and enlightened instead by Christ, who scatters every darkness and reveals each one of us fully to ourselves.  Amen.

love conquers all

Homily
1st Sunday of Lent
St. Lawrence Catholic Center at the University of Kansas
26 February 2011
Daily Readings

The story of man's salvation as told in the Bible unfolds the infinite mercy of God.  At his core, God is love.  He is mercy.  That is his innermost reality.  The story of the bible is a story that gets to the heart of God, slowly but surely, page after page.

The story of Noah, as we know, is near the beginning of the bible.  At this point of the story, we have yet to be shown God's heart, his innermost reality.  In the story of the flood, we see God's justice.  As unfair as it may seem to us for men to have to die for their sins, and as much criticism as God gets sometimes for permitting bad things like the flood to happen, we all know deep down that it is a greater injustice to allow sinners to live forever.  What would it mean for man to live forever temporally and horizontally but never realize his full potential to love spiritually and vertically?  The result would not be eternal life but eternal frustration, never realizing that ultimate reason for which we are made.  Death then, no matter how difficult it is to face, and as unfair as it may seem at times, is a gift to a sinner, for it gives shape to life and forces man to face the reason he was made and the meaning of his life.  Jesus announces in his Gospel this urgency that should strike every human person to the heart; repent, and believe in the Gospel.  It is his first message and a starting point in our Lord's desire to reveal man to himself.

In the story of the flood we see God's justice, that as tragic as the flood is, it is more merciful than to let man continue down the path of total frustration.  Yet although God is just, the moment after the flood is a chance for us to learn that there is a deeper attribute of God than his justice, and that deeper attribute is mercy.  Although the flood was a perfectly reasonable way for God to reorder man toward his own good, by discarding the unrighteous and moving forward with the righteous, God instead sets a rainbow in the sky as a sign that he doesn't want to continue down that path, but instead wants to increasingly reveal his love for his people, and to make a covenant with them.  This covenant will be not merely an exchange of justice but an exchange of love.

We see by the end of the bible, and by the end of Christ's revelation, that God has shown his heart completely through the gift of his only son.  By sending his son ultimately to the depths of hell, farther away from himself than even those who were destroyed in the flood, God reveals his desire that all men be saved, especially those who once were thought to be lost to the power of death.

In the sacrament of baptism, a sacrament that St. Peter urges us to contemplate and to renew, we have already died.  If we have been baptized, are dead.  There is nothing for us to fear, not even an untimely or arbitrary death, because with Christ there is no such thing.  In baptism, we have chosen to die with Christ well before an earthly death can choose us.  We have died but also risen with Christ, and so all is completed for us, and we live a new life now, an eternal life, alongside our earthly life, a life that earthly death cannot destroy.

Lent is not a time for us to earn God's love, to make ourselves more worthy of it.  As sinners, that would be futile, and we would use this season only to grow in frustration and despair at our inability to make ourselves perfect.  No, Lent is something much different.  It is a time to stir up the grace of our baptism, not to earn our salvation, but to accept it.  We do battle not to earn our salvation, because God cannot love us any more than he has in Christ, he could no do any more than he has done for us in sending his son to the depths of hell.  No, we do battle for these forty days so that the victory of Christ over sin, as exemplified in the desert, may be accomplished anew in the time and space of our lives.  Lent is not a self-improvement project, but a surrender to the reality of our baptism, and the reality of Christ wanting to win his victory again in us and with us and through us. As fun as the 19 point comeback was yesterday against Missouri, so too is the adventure of allowing Christ to accomplish his victory of sin and death and evil in each one of us.  So let us take another step on our Lenten journey, and listen to him tell us to repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Sin is the greater evil

Homily
7th Sunday of Ordinary Time B
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
19 February 2012
Daily Readings

At first glance, our Lord can seem a bit insensitive.  He ignores for a time what is obvious to everyone in today's Gospel, that the paralytic needs a physical healing.  He says to him first - your sins are forgiven.

Upon further reflection, it becomes obvious that the Lord is the most sensitive person in the room, even as he is the most merciful and compassionate as well.  The Lord senses something that everyone else has become desensitized to, that spiritual evil can do much more damage that natural evil or evil of external circumstance.  What does the Lord see exactly?  He sees that being physically healthy but unable to become the person you truly want to be is a more grave paralysis than the physical paralysis in front of him.  Your sins are forgiven is the most compassionate thing the Lord could possibly say.

The sacrament of the anointing of the sick follows today's Gospel is a particularly profound way.  Although the sacrament is properly given at the onset of a serious illness, and prayers for physical healing are always made with great faith, the sacrament entails at its core the forgiveness of sins, and can be used as we know as part of the last rites given to ensure that a soul is free from sin, free to move from death to eternal life.

Ash Wednesday arrives in a few days, and once again as Catholics we are invited to enter into this season of penitence with sincerity, and not to treat this holy season as merely a self-improvement project.  Lent is essentially the opposite of self-improvement - it is self-forgetfuless as we begin humbly admitting that we are dust, that we are unnecessary and that our lives are merely fleeting and superficial unless they are joined to that which is necessary and eternal.  We make promises to move away from our sins, and to hate them with a perfect hate, but more importantly, we make ourselves available to be moved by a love that is powerful enough to forgive our sins.  And we begin not in isolation, but like the courageous friends in today's Gospel we enter Lent together with our brothers and sisters in the Church, for as most of us have learned the hard way, our individual promises are worth little unless they are sustained by true friendship and accountability.

Let us use the Eucharist today to be true friends to each other, and as we confess that we, as sinners, are not worthy to have the Lord enter under our roofs, let us help each other to enter sincerely under the roof of his grace and mercy, and so have our sins truly forgiven.  Amen.