The interior journey of the elder son

Homily
4th Sunday of Lent Year A
Laetare Sunday
10 March 2013
Holy Spirit Catholic Parish (Overland Park) and St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

Daily Readings

Living at KU, I perhaps get to hang onto the college experience more than others.  I can walk to Allen Fieldhouse in five minutes, to Memorial Stadium in 10, and on Jayhawk Boulevard in 3.  Many adults who are stuck in 'real life' ask me jealousy how things are at KU, like I'm living the dream.  Maybe I am.

As vocation director with responsibilities throughput the Archdiocese, I'm attached somewhat nominally to the day to day life of students at KU.  Yet I get enough interaction for the parable of the prodigal son to come alive.  It's hard to come up with a closer modern parallel to the ancient story of the prodigal son, than the ritual of a college freshman taking off with his parent's money to his new-found freedom at the college of his choice.  It's one thing for a junior high student to confess disobedience to his parents.  The transition of a young person away from his parents to college is infinitely more dramatic.

It is at college that I came to my senses, and realized the richness of my faith and the depth of my relationship with God.  That came through my involvement at the St. Lawrence Catholic Center, and the Center is there for students today with all the resources they need to encounter God in the new and different circumstances in which they find themselves.  By exploring new relationships and ideas at KU, and by making the normal mistakes born of selfishness, immaturity and inexperience, and comparing this new data with what I was learning at St. Lawrence, I eventually concluded that there is nothing more important or greater than being Catholic.  The Catholic Church had a greater purchase on reality than any other knowledge I encountered at the University.  What is more, the Catholic Church gave me the greatest sense of family, even more than my fraternity.  For the relationships I formed at St. Lawrence were anchored in the relationships I had with God - with a Father who gave me a dignity and destiny I could find nowhere else, with Jesus who as my Savior loved me at my weakest and most sinful point, where I could not love or change myself, and with the Holy Spirit, who believed in me and sent me out not to pursue my own selfish happiness, but showed me the meaning of life through the revelation of my mission and vocation.

Yet as you all know very well, this is not the experience of the majority of  Catholic students at KU.  St. Lawrence is a great place, but we can't reach everyone.  The story of the prodigal son is played out in different ways in the lives of KU students who arrive at KU without a spiritual game plan.  Too often, lots of money is spent by students and their parents for an education and experience that eats away at the foundation in faith, morals and relationships that has been painstakingly nurtured for 18 years.  It can be painful to watch so much thrown away so fast.

The fastest growing part of the religious landscape for today's college generation is agnosticism and atheism, so especially on liberal campuses, students are always being encouraged through the air they breathe to find their uniqueness as individuals apart from their relationships with family or Church.  The tragedy of this is that just the opposite is true.  We only find ourselves, and our own uniqueness, in and through our relationships with those that love us the most.  The story of the prodigal son makes this truth so palpable to us.  Yet the wisdom of the parable is not necessarily the wisdom of the secular humanism that can dominate the thinking at universities.  And just because the situation of the prodigal son turns out well in this particular parable does not make the prodigal son a hero.  The reality is that only a small percentage of those who go away from their relationship with God ever get it back.  If you walk on the cliff long enough, you'll probably fall off.  Don't get the idea from the parable that it's a good idea to send your kids to far-off places with lots of money with no other direction than 'have fun!'  There are plenty of parables where the kids are lost forever.  Turn on the news if you don't believe me.

So the story of the prodigal son is not a recipe, mind you, for how to send your kids off to college - with as much freedom and money as possible.  Please don't take the story that way.  The story is absurd and extreme to show us how incomparably beautiful and deep is God's love for us, and that we are fools to seek any identity for ourselves apart from that love.  Still, as far as the prodigal son went away from his father exteriorly, so far as to long to eat corn husks, we see even more dramatically in the parable that the older son went even farther from his father interiorly.  At least the younger Son remembered his Father's love.  The older son had forgotten it completely, while being next to his Father the whole time.  His life was a pitiful, slavish obedience to a rule.  His life was devoid of the vocation of man that brings meaning to life - to love with all one's heart, and all one's soul, and with all one's mind.  The resulting lesson is even more dramatic than that learned through the mistakes of the younger son.  The older son shows that it is better to have tried and lost, than never to have tried.  As bad as the prodigal son got, there is nothing worse than the situation of the older son, who simple settled for a vocation less than what he was made for.  For without love, man is nothing.  He is nothing at all.

It is a privilege for me to work as vocation director with the young men of our Archdiocese, who lie on this continuum between these two sons, between losing their vocation because they instead believe the lies about happiness that the world is telling them like the prodigal son, and between their being too scared to believe in themselves and to radically pursue God's plan for them like the older son.  All men of the Archdiocese fall somewhere in between.  It's a joy to work with all of them.  It's easy, for sure, to look at an aging priesthood that has been damaged by scandal, to listen to media report after media report saying the solution is married priests or so on or so forth, and to be discouraged.  It's not always easy to look at a narcissistic and secular culture, where Catholicism is challenged at every turn, and where men are struggling to grow up and find strong examples of fatherhood to inspire them, and think things will be okay.  But to tell the story from the inside out, I can tell you that a renewal of the priesthood is coming, and it's coming in a powerful way, and that these challenges are forging better men, including the two men Thomas Maddock and Evan Tinker, from this parish, to be your priests of the future.  The real story is that our local Church is producing more and better vocations, though you may not see it or feel it everyday, it's true and it's the real story that needs to be told.  It is a story that like the story of the prodigal son, will take time to play out, but will have a beautiful ending.  The story of the prodigal son should tell us that the Father's love for us, his children, and his Church, will never fail.  We are on the winning side.  Thank you for your support in helping me call forth the future priests of our Church.

God is on your team

Homily
3rd Sunday of Lent C
sede vacante
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
3 March 2013
Daily Readings


Videbo visionem hanc magnam quare non comburatur rubus.  I will see this great vision in which the bush does not burn.  Guess where this inscription, and the corresponding depiction of Moses kneeling before the burning bush, appears?  That's right, on the seal of the University of Kansas.  Not at Notre Dame or Rockhurst.  At KU.  On the seal is not a Jayhawk or a field of wheat or Allen Fieldhouse.  On the seal is a religious symbol and an inscription that is markedly supernatural.  The goal of the education at the University of Kansas, if you take your clue from the seal, is a heavenly goal, one that goes beyond science or mere human knowledge.  Those are the words and that is the image that will be on your diploma someday, if you get one.

It's safe to say that the seal is not a centerpiece of the university now.  Nobody talks about it.  The seal is not discussed in class.  Theology is not the highest department at KU, nor Smith Hall for religious studies, with its statue of Moses and the stained glass window of the burning bush, a prominent building.  The seal seems to be a vestige of the past, something the ACLU hasn't gotten around to protesting yet, because no one pays any mind.  On the KU website, there is the shortest description of the seal, a reference only to fire as knowledge and Moses as depicting a humble student who knows the pursuit of knowledge and truth is unquenchable.

There's nothing on the KU website about the bush however.  And the bush is the problem, isn't it?  If there were a bush on campus that was noncompetitive with fire for matter and energy, you better believe the whole science departments from KU would be running experiments on that bush.  The part of the scene that is most remarkable, the reason that Moses went over in the first place, is the part that KU ignores on its own website.  There seems to be no understanding or curiosity about the bush.  Yet there's nothing unusual about a man watching fire.  We've all done that.  What is interesting about this scene is the bush.  There's a bush that is not consumed by fire.

In the story we heard, God tells Moses that his is a unique category of being. I am who am - when God says this, it is not a tautology of meaninglessness but tells us that God is not a part of the world, that God does not have being but ISbeing.  Therefore, the burning bush tells us something about the interplay between man and God.  The two are non-competitive.  Because God is not part of the world, he can visit the world without displacing man, without obliterating man.  Moses is afraid, like we all would be, because our assumption is that when the bigger appears the smaller disappears.  Yet the burning bush shows the uniqueness of the God of Israel.  Moses needs to respect God, but not fear his being competitive.  This is new in the history of the religions of the world.  The relationship between man and God is not a either/or, zero sum game.

A key way to understand the debate between Christianity and atheism is to notice what happens when God visits people, when fire visits the bush.  For Christianity, the bush becomes more alive, more fully itself, when it welcomes God, when it surrenders to the fire.  For atheism, when God visits man is diminished, he is bullied, he is displaced and discarded.  For the atheist, a no to God is a yes for man.  For the Christian, as St. Irenaeus would say, the glory of God is man fully alive.  For the Christian, a yes to God is a yes for man, and vice versa.

Now, I don't want to oversimplify this.  God's being noncompetitive does not mean that he loses his power.  There are times when God's visitation to his people is less like his visit to the bush and more like the visit of the orchard owner to his fig tree.  God for our own good visits us not to destroy us but to admonish us and give us a deadline for bearing fruit.  In this way God is still non-competitive - he does not want to bully us but to serve us and share life with us.  Yet this love of God in some instances must take the stance of tough love, of not allowing us to make ourselves selfish and unhappy and unfruitful.  What is more, if we do not bear fruit at some point we must be cut down, so that we do not make others unhappy.  It is more merciful to cut a tree down than to let it be eternally unfruitful.

That is why we have the season of Lent, and this time is so important to us.  There is for each one of us personall a kind of spiritual physics, a point of no return, when our habits and attitudes get to the point where our nature is stable and the chance for conversion passes us by.  Lent is the time of radical pruning, of detaching from unhelpful things, through our prayer, fasting and almsgiving, so that the chance to be set on fire by the love of God remains real for us.  The fire of the burning bush should allow us to see today through the resurrection of Easter all the way to the fire of Pentecost, for to be set on fire by God for sanctity and to bear fruit that will last forever, is our highest mission and destiny in life.  Amen.  

Pass over to greater realities

Homily
2nd Sunday of Lent Year B
24 February 2013
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings

To borrow another metaphor from KU basketball, when the crowd gets wrapped into a frenzy in the Fieldhouse, it's like an out-of-body experience.  It's almost like a drug.  It's entering into a new reality.  There is a loss of control.  Passion takes over, and you enter into a new dimension of human experience.  It's pandemonium.  It's fun.  You feel like you're in a place you've never been before.

We are wired sexually to enter into a new dimension of human experience as well.  So powerful is this wiring, that it alters human experience in even more profound and permanent ways than drugs do.  There is once again passion and a loss of control.  The sexual experience is a fire that can create amazing good and fruitfulness if channeled in the right way, and incredible damage in the wrong circumstances.

Our experience of Mass can also be a passing over from the ordinary to the extraordinary, from the real to the more real.  Going to Mass can be like exiting the matrix of ordinary life, and waking up to a reality that is always there but one that we are not always aware of.  Certainly for the priest saying the Mass, the Holy Spirit makes available the reality of the Lord's words and presence in ways that the priest himself doesn't normally experience.  There is a waking up, a super-reality, that is mysteriously entered into.

Lent is not about making slight adjustments in our lives with the final goal being self-improvement.  No, it is waking up to greater realities.  We all vacillate between being asleep and waking up.  We go back and forth between experiences of the super-real, which when they happen cannot be doubted, and the daily grind, which when we are in the middle of it, seems more real, and causes us to doubt our experiences of more.

Just as we once passed over from our mother's womb into the light and drama and greater reality of this world, so also for the Christian there remains another passing over, from the sleepiness of our daily experience to the glory foreshadowed by the Transfiguration.  This passing over can take many forms - committing to the things we are passionate about, the things that get us outside of ourselves.  It comes from trusting the inspirations of the Holy Spirit that are beyond reason but are not for that reason any less true.

Most of all, however, for the Christian, this passing over takes place through prayer.  Jesus takes Peter, James and John up the mountain because it is there, from a high spot, that we are able to see more.  Prayer is always a greater seeing, because it is allowing God to give us his vision.  Prayer is always a waking up from less to more, by asking ourselves what is most real, most necessary and most eternal, and then listening for the answer.  Christianity is impossible without prayer.  Without it, we will always settle for less, and allow the less real to become our ultimate reality.

The Transfiguration shows us that the Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus is not just something that happened temporally at the end of his life, after his work was done.  Jesus' passing over from this world to the Father was something he was always doing. It was made manifest at the end, but also in the middle.  This is a great lesson for the three blessed apostles.  They learned on the mountain that the passing over from less to more is not something just for later, it is something to be rehearsed, something to be experienced even now.

They learned as well that this passing over is accomplished most of all through prayer.  Lacking the faith demonstrated by Abraham, Peter and James and John fear this change, this passing over, this death to self.  Desperately seeking control of the situation, a way to manage it to fit their readiness, they neglect prayer and come up with no better idea than to build three tents.  Yet Jesus tells them the key for passing over, the key to entering into the greater reality, is nothing more but nothing less than prayer. The three are told instead to listen to him.  The ideas was not to capture the Transfiguration, but letting that experience give us the greater confidence in the greater coming of the Holy Spirit, which will teach us how to listen to Him.  It is in listening to him, that we are transfigured not from the outside in, but from the inside out.  Amen.

Love tests the self

Homily
1st Sunday of Lent Year C
17 February 2013
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

Life is a journey.  Life is a battle.  These are the two great metaphors for story-telling.  You can't tell a story without these metaphors.  Today's Gospel presents third metaphor, which is related to these two and has the ability to join them.  Life is a test.  Now I'm not saying that God created people in order to test them.  Humanity is neither God's experiment nor his entertainment.  We are neither robots nor pawns.  God created out of love, not because he was bored or had to create, but because love gives of itself, love shares of itself, love desires the good of another.  So God created us because he loves us.  Yet he further loves us by training us, allowing us to be challenged and chastised, by testing us  For as we learn in the Gospel of temptation, there is cheap love, and then there is real love.  The testing that God allows does nothing but purify love, and keep us from settling for imitations.  We might not like testing, but it is easier than the alternative, which is the pain of living without real love.  

So Jesus is led not by the devil, but by the Holy Spirit, to be tested in the desert.  Jesus had just emerged from his baptism, and had just heard in a human way the voice of the Father say - this is my beloved son.    Jesus goes to the desert, then, to show us what this status and dignity as a beloved son looks like under extreme circumstances.  The testing of the desert makes love more visible and real to us.  He goes to the desert to be tempted, to show us even when we think we are most alone and vulnerable, we do not lose our status as God's beloved son.  Jesus goes to show us that we are never alone, and so never have to act apart from our dignity as God's beloved.  He goes to show that the world can offer us nothing that we do not already have.

Specifically, Jesus shows us that sensual pleasure adds nothing to who we already are.  Not that sensual pleasure is bad in and of itself.  It is a good and natural part of the human condition.  But when it replaces God, it leaves us weak and empty.  For man lives not from sensual pleasure to sensual pleasure, but upon spiritual words that create real and lasting relationships. (Rom 10:8-13).

Next, Jesus shows us that having control of some part of the world or of our reputation is also an illusion.  We can fight so desperately against vulnerability and dependence, and yet these are the true language of love, and going away from them means going away from our true dignity and security.  Jesus shows that security comes from being known and desired by God, and no kingdom of the world, from the presidency of  a superpower to the wealth of billionaires, to the smallest man-cave, can give a security that God alone can give a person.  We see Jesus alone in control, even though he is completely vulnerable, poor and alone, because his power rests in nothing but God alone.

Finally, Jesus shows us that there is no security in making ourselves the most important person in the world, nor in thinking the world revolves around me.  We either see the world around us through our ego or through our mission.  There are only two ways.  We either judge the world by how it affects me, or we judge it by the opportunity it gives me to focus radically not on myself, but upon God and others. My life is either about me, or about others.  There are only two ways.  Ultimately, love doesn't make itself God by testing God.  Love always tests the self.  The Lord certainly goes before us in this - in the desert he was testing himself to give us an example, out of love for us.  That's what love does.  It even welcomes testing, because it detaches us from ourselves and orients us toward our mission in life.

Pleasure, control, ego.  These are the enemies we are fighting this Lent.  Let us not be afraid to allow ourselves to be tested, not because God told us so, not because the Church says we have to, but because we're not ready yet to give up on ourselves.  Amen.

Family over everything

Homily
Ash Wednesday
St. Lawrence Catholic Center at the University of Kansas
13 February 2013
Daily Readings

It is so much more fun to put on purple for the first time when KU just destroyed K-State in basketball a couple of days ago.  Purple means penance.  Think about that.  Yet even though Catholicism is bigger than sports rivalries, and we have no choice but to don the purple beginning today, it's a bit easier than thinking that wearing purple is our punishment for losing to the Cats.  Didn't happen.  Rock Chalk.

I like whoever made the Withey for Pope sign.   Monday was quite a day not only for KU basketball, but also for Catholicism. If there is one thing the Catholic Church knows how to do, it is how to grab headlines.  Pope Benedict shocked the world on Monday!  An 84 year old man caught the whole world off guard by his resignation.  We hear all the time how the Church is less relevant and out of touch with modernity, yet there was the old guy rocking the twitterverse with his announcement.  Why?  Because Jesus Christ matters.  The Church matters.  Catholicism matters.

We are here today because our membership in the family of Jesus Christ matters.  At KU, the acronym FOE means a lot.  It's popularity reached a peak when the mother of Thomas Robinson died his junior year, and led by the Morris twins, the term Family Over Everything reminded everyone of what's important in life.  In the same way, if our membership in the Church is not about being family to each other, we should just go home.  As the Gospel says clearly, if there is anything showy or superficial, anything fake or insincere about our checking in to get our ashes tonight, then for God's sake, we might as well go home.  Joel says unless you are here to rend your heart, not your garment, then go home!  If the Church is anything less than the most important family to which you belong, a family that you are willing to die for, then we should not eat and drink judgment on ourselves through the Eucharist, we might as well just go home.

But I invite you to stay, and to never stop coming back, because the Catholic Church is your family.  It is your home.  It is where God wants you to be.  It is where you deeply want to be.  We don ashes today to proclaim that we are no better the ordinary sinners, no more deserving of God's love than anyone, but to also proclaim that God's mercy is the most powerful force in the universe.  We pledge prayer, fasting and almsgiving not as a superficial self-improvement project, not like the Pharisees, but because we need change from the inside out, the kind of change that comes from radical dependence upon God.  We abstain from meat on Fridays not because it's a gimmick, but because families do things together, and because we need to stick together for the fight and journey ahead.  Family over Everything.

Bill Self challenged his team this week to play with freedom.  Funny thing, coming from a basketball coach, because in saying the word freedom he did not mean for his players the license to do what they wanted to do when they wanted to do it.  That is how the world thinks about freedom - freedom as license to have things my way as long as I don't hurt anyone else.  That is not what Bill Self meant. That is not the full definition of freedom.  Bill Self meant that his players shouldn't play tentatively or fearful of making mistakes.  He meant that the tradition and discipline of KU basketball was meant for players to flourish - for their full talent and personality, their utmost joy and virtue, to shine forth.  They should take the court with confidence that everything is ordered to their playing their very best  They should play free.

So too for us Catholic Christians.  We should play the game of life with freedom.  We should know and live our faith not with fear and timidity, but with freedom.  For the practice of our faith gives us confidence that we are ready to play our very best, at the highest level.  St. Paul says we are all chosen to be ambassadors for Christ; God, as it were, appealing to the world through us!  Each one of us is to live out the incredible story of what it means for God to choose a sinner to be transformed into a saint.  Our Church exists for one purpose only - to provide the tradition and discipline that produces championships, first-round draft picks - in other words, SAINTS!  That is the genius of the Church to which we belong, the Catholic Church, and if we are here for any purpose less than to pursue the sanctity that represents the very best of who we are, and who we always promised ourselves we would be, then we should just go home.  Isaiah was right - why should the world look at the family of God and say -  those pathetic Christians.  If that is the kind of Christian we are - pathetic, private, scared of the world and fearful of becoming saints - we might as well go home.

But I invite you to stay.  And to keep coming back.  And to never give up.  Being a Catholic is the most adventuresome, extreme, and alternative lifestyle you can imagine, and it's also incredible fun.  If being a Catholic is not fun, trust me, you're not doing it right.  Instead of taking ourselves too seriously, and shooting anyone who makes fun of Catholicism, we can make 'Withey for Pope' signs and it's all good.  We are the most diverse group of people the world has ever seen, and yet we enjoy a mysterious unity that can never be understood nor destroyed.  We are the Church of celibates, who also stands up for the true meaning of marriage.  We are always fighting against evil, but celebrating the good at the same time.  We are most active in politics, but will always transcend politics.  We are the Church of the greatest fasts and the greatest feasts.  We are the Church of the greatest sinners and the most extraordinary saints.  We are the Church of chastity before marriage, so that we might have the most children within marriage.  We are a Church whose male leaders act in the person of Christ, but who celebrate the example and power of our mother Mary, who is also the mother of God, more than feminism has ever celebrated women in human history.  We are the Catholic Church - the greatest tradition the world has ever seen, and today that Church proclaims a fast, so that her members can return to God with all their hearts, all their minds, and all their strength.

So live your Catholic faith today in a way that will bring you this freedom, this chance to be all that you are, all that you promised yourself you would be, all that God has called you to be.  Keep coming back.  Put family over everything.  And be not afraid.  Amen.

Extreme Christianity

Homily
5th Sunday of Ordinary Time C
10 February 2013
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings

Record breaking.  You love it.  I love it.  We all love it!  When Felix Baumgartner jumped from his balloon in what looked like a spacesuit, from the very edge of our atmosphere, in order to set a record for the highest jump, and to break the speed of sound, the whole world was mesmerized.  Nothing gets attention like going where no one has gone before, and doing what heretofore seemed impossible.

Attempts to break records show us human nature in a new way.  They show us human calculation and genius - figuring out how to do things that have never been done.  It also shows the human heart.  Just because you can calculate the odds of breaking a record, doesn't mean you will have a volunteer with the courage to try it.  Record breakers often have a unique combination of genius talent and a fearless heart.  

I'll never forget what an impact the World Youth Days in Denver had on me.  In 1993, after my freshman year at KU, I was able to be on stage with the St. Lawrence choirs for the final Mass, which had just shy of a million people in attendance.  Talk about a catch of fish.  Talk about being a fisher of men.  It was true that there were so many people that the place was chaos, not unlike the tearing of the nets in today's Gospel.  Yet the Lord himself had set the stage and there was incredible unity and meaning in the scene as well.  The Mass forever changed what it meant for me to be a Catholic.  For me being Catholic was about being part of a record-breaking church, a record-breaking catch of fish.  Christianity became for me that day an extreme sport, a quest to build with Jesus the largest and most unified and most powerful family the world could ever know.

Saints are those heroes of our game, those record-breakers, who cooperate with the grace of Christ when he gets into their boat.  Most of us relativize what it means to be a Christian, always trying to manage how God might be a little bigger part of my life.  Saints instead lose their life within the mystery of God's life.  Saints allow the scene of today's Gospel to play out in their lives. They realize that Christianity can be about nothing else than taking Jesus at his word, than about allowing him to pick for you a bigger life than you could pick for yourself.  Sainthood is about putting out into the deep.  This is the only way that Christianity survives and thrives - the only way it was meant to exist in the world - as an extreme sport.  Saints understood this.  The saints of today understand it.

Jesus gets into the boat of our lives to show us what is really possible.  As was the case with Isaiah, the purges our sins so that we no longer make excuses with our lips, but we begin to proclaim the Gospel instead.  Jesus gets into our boat to activate those deeper parts of us that we would never have the courage to explore ourselves.  Jesus gets into our boat to take us to that line near death where life truly begins.  He gets into our boat to show us that self-abandonment is the key to self-discovery.

Christianity as an extreme sport is not always safe.  The martyrs show us that.  Yet what is really reckless and irresponsible is not that we have the courage to live our faith to the utmost, but that we relativize the one who believes in us more than we believe in ourselves.  

Love tests the self

Homily
4th Sunday of Ordinary Time C
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
3 February 2012
Daily Readings

You can't be a Christian without a prophetic dimension to your life.  You can't be a Christian without embracing the truth with all your heart, mind and strength, but perhaps most importantly, you can't be a Christian without proclaiming the truth and living the truth by what you say and do.  Like Jeremiah in tonight's first reading, each one of us, especially by virtue of our baptism, has a truth placed in us, a word of truth that comes from God, that must be spoken and lived.  It is a truth as unique to each one of us as our personhood itself.  We neglect this proclamation to our own peril, and all of us know this too well.  It is no fun to be false or duplicitous, to pretend to be something we are not.  Joy is found in authenticity, and in not being afraid to be truthful.

Still, the temptation to be popular or look better than we really are can easily take over our lives.  Most of us  confess our tendency to lie, or to gossip, mostly for the trivial reason of wanting to look better.  We know that this sin particularly gains momentum.  The adage that each lie needs seven more to cover it up rings true.  Most of all, we fail to speak up for the truth and for our faith particularly, when it is maligned.  Whether something blasphemous, immoral or untruthful is said, we are not usually ready to stand up. We can use the excuse that we do not know how to defend every inch of our faith, but not knowing everything does not excuse us from not saying anything.   The disdain for faith that we sometimes encounter can be discouraging, but we need to keep learning our faith, especially in this Year of Faith, and keep fighting.

The Lord encourages Jeremiah in today's first reading in his prophetic fight.  He reminds Jeremiah of something very simple.  He is not alone.  Neither are we.  In our prophetic witness, we should always remember that it is the Lord himself who wishes to speak through us.  It is he who has planted his word within us, who has given us this prophetic dimension of our lives, and who stands with us always.  Not only him, but the hosts of heaven, and the tradition of the saints, encourages us not to cower as if we are outnumbered.  At all times, we are on the winning side, and we should act like it.  Take courage, the Lord says to Jeremiah, and know that I am with you.

St. Paul in the second reading correctly tells us that this prophetic dimension of our lives, while essential, is not fundamental.  The vocation to love is fundamental to the life of a Christian.  Love is the reason there is something rather than nothing.  As we say in the Mass preface, love is our origin, love is our constant calling, and love is our perfection in heaven.  Compared to love truth is nothing.  Truth belongs to God, but love is his most central reality.  God is love, and he is nothing more and nothing less than love.

Pope Benedict XVI followed the lead of St. Paul when he released his first encyclical Deus Caritas Est.  Archbishop James Keleher, the bishop who ordained me, always told his priests that there is one thing you must never fail to say in every homily.  That one necessary thing is to tell people that God loves them.  It is necessary because we have such a powerful sinful tendency within us to equivocate what love is.  Love for french fries and love for God cannot be more different, yet we use the same word.  We have a powerful tendency to replace love with indirect egotism, and this must always be purified within us. Christians must never stop purifying how we understand and speak about love.

The Holy Father traces in that first encyclical the movement from eros to agape, from the addition of good things in one's life to the full maturation of love, which is addition by subtraction, for a falling in love that is agape is finding something worth dying for.  St. Thomas Aquinas says the ultimate definition of love is an act of the will, precisely willing the good of the other as other.  Love is falling so far so as to forget yourself, so much so that St. Paul says love can bear all things and suffer all things and endure all things.  Love allows a person to truly find himself through a disinterested gift of himself.  In the end, as St. Paul teaches, this is all that matters in life.  Falling in love and staying in love determines everything about human personhood, human dignity and human destiny.  The two essential questions that every person must answer at each moment of their lives are these:  who loves you the most and who do you love the most?  St. Paul is right on that nothing else matters.

Through the gift of his son God has shown himself madly in love with us.  God is so in love with us that if we dare compare the love of Christ to any human love, we are the most pitiable people of all.  There is no point in being a Christian if the love of Christ is not the most unique and powerful love in the universe.  Yet if it is, we have to stop playing games with God, like those who encountered Jesus in Nazareth.  Love doesn't measure what's in it for me.  True love does not play childish games with another person.  You can't fall in love if you're still thinking like a child and acting like a child.  Love doesn't test the other, it tests the self by serving the other with all one's heart and mind and strength.