don't lose hope

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


Today's readings give us great cause for hope, no matter the circumstances in which we find ourselves.  In each of the readings, the circumstances are dire - they are dramatic - much more so when we care to look deeply into the context of the readings.  In each case, hope seems to be lost - there seems to be no way to turn around - and yet God acts dramatically.  He brings new life out of hopelessness.  For he is the God who has, who can, and who does being something out of nothing.

Let's take the first reading as perhaps the most dramatic example.  Elijah was sent as a prophet to a faraway land, and in obeying the command of the Lord he finds himself at the mercy of the widow of Zarepheth.  It was during a severe famine, and the last place you would want to be in a famine would be far from home and security, and dependent upon a widow, who had nothing.   In fact, prior to today's reading, we learn that the widow of Zarepheth was down to her last bit of oil and flour.  Still, the Lord commanded Elijah to be dependent upon her, and he and the widow trusted in God, and they ate and ate and the flour and the oil did not run out.

Yet even after this dramatic miracle that saved Elijah and the widow, we see how quickly we can forget the power of God to bring something out of nothing.  Once her son falls deathly ill, the widow loses faith and hope quickly.  She accused Elijah of playing a trick - of coming first for food but ultimately to expose her sin and to kill her son.  The widow quickly loses hope, until Elijah prays to God to save the boy and he is made well.

The Gospel follows the same pattern.  The widow of Nain has lost her only source of support and her dearest relationship.  She has lost her son.  Yet Jesus intervenes dramatically to show that God can act in the worst of circumstances.  God has power over life and death.  Jesus shows as well that God cares about our condition, and there is no reason for us to despair in any circumstance, for God sees us and knows us and loves us and desires what is good for us.

We have just completed our 50 days of dramatic celebration of Jesus' Resurrection - the power and wonder of the Easter season.  We have celebrated the dramatic and final victory that Jesus has won over sin and death, a victory that only needs to be extended into time and space.  The victory is the fruit of a love that is beyond our imagination, a love stronger than anything, and a love that attends each one of us as we live on the edge of life and death, as we pass over constantly from this world to the world to come, a love that casts out all fear.  Yet even with the depth of our celebration of Easter, how quickly do we get frustrated when things don't go our way.  How quickly do we lose hope when our life in this world is messed up.  How quickly does despair set in when we lose control?  We are challenged by today's readings to not lose hope, for God has, and does, and will bring good things out of the worst of circumstances.  He can even bring life from death.

We take St. Paul as a great example as well that we should not give up on our mission and vocation in life either.  Wherever we are at this moment, St. Paul was further behind when he was called to be an apostle.  He says plainly that he was the greatest persecutor of the Church you could imagine.  He hated Christians perfectly and with great zeal.  Yet out of this God called him, and without ever meeting Jesus face to face he became the greatest of the apostles in evangelical zeal, having a greater impact perhaps than all the other apostles combined.  This is meant as an encouragement to us, wherever we are, to not quit, and to find hope that we too can fulfill our destiny and mission in life.

The readings today are straightforward.  Do not despair.  God is with you.  He can act in the worst of circumstances.  Do not lose hope!  Don't give up!

Corpus Christi

Homily
Solemnity of Corpus Christi
2 June 2013
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Year of Faith
Daily Readings 



Today's Solemnity of The Body and Blood of Christ - popularly known at Corpus Christi - is the last of what I like to call the Catholic hangover solemnities.  It's as if the Church begrudgingly lets go of Easter, her most fruitful and meaningful time of year, when oceans of mercy and grace are opened up as the Church celebrates faithfully the suffering, death, resurrection and ascension of the Lord, and then the incomparable power that is Pentecost, the gift of the Holy Spirit.  Baptisms, weddings, first communions, confirmations, ordinations, graduations . .. the season grows stronger and stronger, at least it should, before begrudgingly giving way to summer.  The Church hangs on, wearing white as long as she can - tacking on, as it were, the solemnities of the Most Holy Trinity, and today, of Corpus Christi.

Today's solemnity is the traditional day for taking Jesus outdoors, taking the Blessed Sacrament to the streets to show at least a few things.  Firstly, it is to show that our Catholic faith that Jesus is fully present body and blood, soul and divinity, in the Eucharistic species, is not a private faith, but one meant for the whole world.  The Eucharist is not ultimately a private cultic trick for Catholics to get into heaven, it is the sacrament of salvation for all people.  Some of the largest crowds in human history have been gathered when Jesus is taken outside, and his Church has gathered millions at a single instant at the table of the Lord, and so fulfilled his promise that his Church would do greater thing than he himself did.  So we take him to the streets as an invitation to the whole world to come to know Jesus who gives himself so fully and humbly in the wonder that is the Blessed Sacrament.  What is more, we take Jesus to the streets not just for others, but to strengthen our faith ourselves.  For Catholics know all too well that we are the absolute worst at receiving the Eucharist casually, and taking the sacrament for granted.  Most of us have received the Eucharist thousands of times with little or no change taking place within us.  Yet the Eucharist can never become routine . . . it's not just an innocuous Catholic ritual.  No, the sacrament is powerful - the grace of one Eucharist is enough to save the whole world - and to break out of our apathy, it is important that we take our Lord in procession before the world, and to continue to dramatically change our Eucharistic piety.  Either our Eucharistic piety is growing stronger or weaker . . . there cannot be any staying the same.

The Church gives us this Solemnity begging us to realize the opportunity that is before us every time we receive the Eucharist.  On the surface, there doesn't seem to be enough here for me to become a saint.  How can ordinary bread and wine, and such a small amount it couldn't feed me for an hour, contain the superabundance of grace, Christ's love and power, that can transform me instantly into a saint?  How can it possibly be so?  We hear in the Gospel the same dilemma.  There does not seem to be enough.  No one in their right mind would think it is enough.  People who have eaten thousands of times were sure there was not enough.  Yet when the food is blessed and broken by Christ himself, there is a superabundance of food.  So too as this sign gives way to the greater sign of the Eucharist  - no matter how many times we have received the Eucharist and it wasn't enough, no matter how sure we are tonight that it is not enough, still the reality is greater than our faith.  Just as in the sign of the loaves and fish everyone was fed, so too we have heard and have seen that the Eucharist is the food of saints, and the grace is superabundant for those of us still daring to become more than we are right now.

What is most amazing about the Eucharist perhaps, is that Jesus gives himself more readily the more he is rejected.  Even if there is only a one in a million chance that a saint will be born through today's reception of the Eucharist.  Even if there's only a one in a billion chance - still Jesus will make himself available, and allow himself to be doubted, misunderstood, ignored and ridiculed, so that he can be present to us once again.  He never tires of loving us, and whenever we go away from him, he finds a way to get in front of us again, especially in the amazing condescension that is the Holy Eucharist.  The Lord who feeds you tonight believes in your more than you believe in yourself.  That's why he is here again for you.  Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word, and my soul shall be healed.

Schmitz first Mass

Homily
Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
St. Dominic's Parish - Holton, Kansas
1st Mass of Thanksgiving of newly ordained Fr. Danny Schmitz
26 May 2013
Year of Faith
Daily Readings

Annuntio Vobis Gaudium Magnum!  Habemus Presbytero!  Congratulations on this glorious day to David and Gail and the Schmitz family, to Fr. Chris and the parish family of St. Dominic's on the ordination of one of your very own to the sacred priesthood!  What a glorious day and the Church does indeed rejoice at the new reality that is an ordinary man, Danny - configured through the action of the Holy Spirit to act in the person of Jesus Christ, the great high priest!  This ordinary man, our son and brother, has been recreated by his ordination, most of all to offer the holy sacrifice of the Mass, at which he presides for the first time today! This has been done, because Danny has like Mary let it be done unto him, according to the Father's will and the word spoken to him personally by Jesus, and finally, through the powerful action of the Holy Spirit!  What a glorious feast day to celebrate one's first Mass of Thanksgiving, the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, as we celebrate how personally, and intimately, yet powerfully the Father, Son and Holy Spirit have worked in the life of Danny - now Fr. Danny - our son, our brother and our friend!  Congratulations to all, but most especially to you Danny.  Your road to the priesthood enlivens our heart and stirs our faith and gives us all hope.  We see Jesus Christ through you, today in an even more perfect way as you preside at this Mass in persona Christi capitis!  Thank you, thank you, thank you, from all of us who love you and will be with you to support you in your many days of priesthood!  We are full of love for you!  It is an honor to pray with you at your first Mass!  Congratulations - now don't mess it up!  We're watching for any mistakes as well!  We know how Mass goes, and we want you to do it right!

We rejoice today with Danny because in him we see someone who has heard the call of Jesus to follow him in such a perfect and powerful way, that 2000 years after the Lord's Ascension, a man like Danny can decide to drop everything and follow this call.  How is this possible?  Every vocation is an improbable miracle.  We all know Danny could be 1000 places besides here, be doing a 1000 things other than this.  How did this happen?  Every vocation, every falling in love, even with God, is an improbable miracle.  Things could have easily have gone a different way.  Danny told the vocation director and bishop he would give it a year!  Now the joke is on him!!  Not really, Danny is receiving a life so much bigger and better, and yes, harder, than he can imagine on the day of his first Mass.  He is receiving an amazing gift.  But how?  How can Danny hear accurately and give himself with such confidence 2000 years after the Ascension?  Is he nuts?  No, as we hear clearly from today's Gospel, it it through the sure and perfect action of the Holy Spirit that Danny has accurately heard the voice of Jesus, just as surely as it was spoken to those first Apostles years ago.  As we heard in the Gospel, the Holy Spirit will speak to us what he hears, for the Holy Spirit is the interpreter of the conversation had between the Father and the Son.  Jesus said that he would call through his Holy Spirit, for the Holy Spirit would take from what belongs to Jesus and declare it to us.  So no, Danny is not nuts!  He has heard the will of the Father, and the call of Jesus, through the action of the Holy Spirit.  Danny's vocation story is a trinitarian story - it is his relationship with each person of the Holy Trinity, whose mystery we celebrate today, that has brought him to the priesthood and to his first Mass.

That same Holy Spirit that changed Danny into a priest yesterday, will be invoked by Danny himself to change the ordinary elements of bread and wine into the body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ.  This is Danny's sublime and intimate and most perfect duty as a priest, to say the words that change reality, and to say the words that make Christ fully and perfectly present, if yet mysteriously and hidden, through the Holy Eucharist.  Danny will pray to the Father with the Son in the Holy Spirit each time he presides at Mass.  He will do this thousands of times as a priest.  Despite his rich theological training of 6 years, and his two Masters degrees, Danny would be the first to admit that he can not even begin to explain the mystery of the Trinity, and would not even know the slightest bit about it, had the Holy Trinity not revealed himself to us.  Yet as a priest Danny will express something more important than deductive intellectual knowledge of the Trinity, of which he has a bit - he will express that the Trinity is not the kind of mystery like a crossword puzzle we are to solve  - it is a relationship that we are invited to be at the very heart of.  Danny will demonstrate, especially in his prayer at Mass, that without trying to eliminate the mystery of who God is, the mystery is not inaccessible, but something we are invited to experience personally.  Danny's celebration of Mass, then, is never something joblike or mechanical . . it is something deeply personal to him, a reflection of the most intimate relationships of his life - his relationship with Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to which we are all invited.

Danny, as a priest your crowning virtue will be zeal for souls, a desire to bring persons into full relationship with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  You will do this in a world that is losing touch with the definition of what a human person is, let alone the sublime dignity that we have as children of God.  Indeed, the future of humanity, and the destiny of souls, rest precisely in the personhood that has its origin and perfection in the Trinity.  For we are persons insofar as we are known and loved and desired by other persons, and this is so true of the Holy Trinity that the persons share a common life, the same nature.  That is why we call God love . . . because at his core he is an intimate exchange between persons.  Yet our vocation is the same - to become persons through the depth of our love - and this is precisely how you will save souls, Fr. Danny, by helping each soul in your care to realize their destiny to love according to Christ's commandment - to love one another as he has first loved us!  Your own prayer and relationship with the Trinity that grounds your personhood, and now your priesthood, should inspire you confidently to believe in the people you will serve, that they to can become the persons that God has destined them to be.

Our prayers and affections are with you Fr. Danny, and they are yours throughout each day of your priestly life, for we are proud of you, and inspired by your sacrifice and generosity in serving our beloved Church. Serve us well, Fr. Danny, and say a good first Mass!  But even if you don't, we'll give you another chance!  May God bless you in every way, our dear brother and friend, and our beloved priest!  Amen!

Ascending to the heart of the Father

Homily
Solemnity of the Ascension
12 May 2013
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings


A blessed Mother's Day to all mom's out there today, from a Church who knows how to celebrate motherhood!  In every Catholic Church around the world, our devotion to motherhood is on display.  Mary has an icon in every Catholic Church I've ever been too.  Every one!  Tons of our Churches are dedicated specifically in honor of the motherhood of Mary. Of all the world's religions, there is not a close second to how deeply the Catholic Church celebrates motherhood.  No one else proclaims a mother to be the most perfect person who ever lived, and the first member of heaven, like the Catholic Church honors Mary her Mother!  No one else dares to claim the unthinkable, that Mary a human person is the Mother of a God that is a Father but who has no Father.  Our Church never stops celebrating Mary as the mother of the Church, the mother of Jesus, the spiritual mother of all of us who receive the gift of eternal life through her intercession, in the same pattern that we received life on this earth through our dear moms!  Happy Mother's Day to all our mothers, living and deceased, from a Church who knows how to celebrate a mother!

Just as Advent must not cave in too early to Christmas, nor Lent to spring break, so also Easter can not cave into the transition into summer, as busy a time as this is for all of us.  Our Easter celebration is not a decrescendo from Easter Sunday to Pentecost, but just the opposite!  The Ascension is a crescendo of anticipation and hope, a last stop before the unleashing of the greatest gift of Easter, the incomparable outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the Church at Pentecost!  Woe to us if our Easter celebration is waning!  Today in a special way we celebrate that Jesus ascends to the Father taking with him something he did not have before the Incarnation!  He takes back the gift of a redeemed humanity - his Risen and spiritual body ascends to the heart of the Father, from whence the Word first came.  Today we rejoice that just as Christ in the Incarnation and Paschal Mystery filled humanity with his divinity, so today heaven begins to be filled with our humanity.  This my friends, is cause for increased rejoicing!

This joy of ours at our Lord's Ascension is not a fantastically pious and far-fetched hope that one day we too might get to fly around in new dimensions of time and space with spiritual bodies like super-heroes!  This will be great, don't get me wrong!  The little kid in each one of us I'm sure can't wait to try out the spiritual bodies that will be ours in the Resurrection!  Yet there is a deeper joy to be celebrated today, a joy much more real and profound.  The Ascension represents not just the hope of entering the new time and space of a new heavens and new earth, it is an entering more deeply into what makes us most human - our relationships.  What good would super-human spiritual bodies that could ascend and descend and be untouched by death and transcend so many of the limitations we now experience be, if those spiritual bodies were not filled by love and relationship, the things that make us human?  The reality is that without love and relationship, even spiritual bodies wouldn't amount to a hill of beans in the end.  For heaven for us is less of a place and more of a relationship.

For love is our origin, love is our constant calling, and love is our perfection in heaven.

In the Ascension, Jesus ascends most importantly, then, to the heart of his Father.  The Ascension becomes the sacrament then of the most important journey each one of us is making right now, a journey deeper into relationship with the one who knows us the best and loves us the most, our heavenly Father, and through this relationship to enter more deeply into our relationships with one another.  This journey to the heart of the Father, our final home, is more important than the peripheral gifts of the Resurrection - escape from sin and death and the reception of spiritual bodies.  This journey to the Father ensures that our hope in the Ascension is not a vain hope of escaping what it means to be human, but is always a desire to enter more deeply into the relationships that make us most human.  Throughout human history, it is those great saints who have contemplated the heart of the Father on high, to which the Ascension points, who who amazingly taught us how to love one another more perfectly here below.

The promised gift of the Holy Spirit, which comes in all its fullness at Pentecost next week, is here today, sent from the Father and the Son, to lift our hearts and minds in this sacred liturgy, to that place where Jesus and the Father dwell together.  May that Holy Spirit give us increased rejoicing as the Easter season grows stronger, not weaker, and in our contemplation of heaven teach us how to order our lives so as to journey together toward the heart of the Father, where we are destined to live forever.  Amen!  Alleluia!

beauty entering into reality

Homily
6th Sunday of Easter C
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
5 May 2013
Daily Readings
Audio

Every once in awhile, I'll get a question about why the Church needs beautiful things.  Jesus was poor.  He had no temporal power or wealth.  He did not have expensive things.  Would he want expensive Churches?  Does he need beautiful Churches? If not, then why do we have them?  Why does the Church need St. Peter's Basilica?  Many have been enthralled with our new Pope Francis eschewing some of the peripheries that come with the papacy.  Taking after his namesake, Pope Francis is showing us that great joy comes through simplicity and poverty.  Which is all good and an important part of the fullness of truth.

Other times, however, I get just the opposite comment.  People crave beauty. People desire to be beautiful.  When a bride gets married, she wants a beautiful Church in which to celebrate the beauty of the moment.  When I pray, I yearn to pray in a beautiful place, like St. Lawrence.  This beautiful chapel in which we pray tonight changed my life, and I'm not sure I could say I would be a priest if this church was not beautiful.  I am sure I would not be a priest if the prayer and liturgy here was anything less than breathtakingly beautiful.  On the one hand, people say beauty is an unnecessary escape from reality, even the opposite of the real world. Some would put beauty low on the list of essentials. Some people want more beautiful homes and secular buildings than churches.  On the other hand, people crave beauty and the desire to be beautiful is inescapable.  Churches have always been built to enter more deeply into the human experience, especially the experience of beauty.

Beauty is not just for the rich, either.  It's not just for those who can afford it.  It can be argued that the poor need beauty as much as they need food and water.  Perhaps food is more immediate, but being human and becoming human depends on the essential nourishment of the human soul.  If the soul of any human person, rich or poor, is not fed by the transcendentals of goodness, truth, love, unity and beauty, that soul will cease to be human.  I'm arguing here that beauty is not dispensable for anyone.

Catholic Churches then, are supposed to be sacraments of the heavenly Jerusalem that we hear described with such utter beauty in the book of Revelation.  It is a city born from heaven, and is not an escape from the created world or material reality or the human condition, but is a city that represents the world fully redeemed and made new.  Lest we lose a vision of what the world is supposed to be like, we are to continually visit our Churches, which are supposed to be our best guess at what the new Jerusalem will be, and what the destiny of the world looks like. Our Churches are nothing less than previews of what a world that is fully the dwelling place of God would look like.  And of course, Churches are at their most beautiful when they are filled with people yearning for transcendent beauty.  No, God does not need beautiful Churches.  He has no problem with vision or imagination.  But we do.  We need beautiful Churches for our hope to be sustained.  We need beautiful and sacred spaces to be human.

Jesus assures us in the Gospel as well that his Ascension to the Father is no escape from the world, but is entering more deeply into reality.  No, after taking a redeemed humanity with him to heaven, as a gift for his Father, Jesus promises us a greater gift; namely, that he will visit us and be with us and make his home with us in an even more perfect way through the gift of his Holy Spirit. The greater gift of the Holy Spirit solves the physics problem of how 6 billion plus people in the world can all be close to Jesus at the same time.  Before the Ascension and gift of the Holy Spirit, this is impossible.  Before Pentecost, we would all be fighting each other to get close to Jesus.  Through Pentecost, however, Jesus becomes more present, not less - more real, and less speculative, than if he were walking the earth today.  Through the gift of the Holy Spirit, which will make him present in the Eucharist in just a moment, we take our Lord in even more perfectly and really than those first disciples.  Through the Holy Spirit, Jesus fulfills his promise to come from heaven and to make his home with us, first in the sacred space of our Churches, then also in the very lives of those who belong to his body, the Church.  This Eucharist tonight is nothing less than a real foretaste and participation of what it will be like for the world to reach it's highest destiny. Going to Church is never escaping reality, but is going deeper into the mystery of the world's destiny and redemption.

In the month of May our devotion to Mary increases, for she is the first and best among us to allow herself to become a living tabernacle for Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit.  May we have recourse to the humble example and powerful intercession of our Lady, who teaches us how to allow the Lord to make his home within us, especially through the Holy Eucharist we are about to receive.  Amen.

love of the new creation

Homily
5th Sunday of Easter C
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
28 April 2013
Daily Readings
Audio


In today's reading from the Book of Revelation, John sees a vision of a new heaven and a new earth, coming down out of heaven.  What is distinctive about the new creation?  Many things, but one line from today's reading grabs me in particular - God's dwelling place is with men.  During most of the book of Revelation, we see the great battle for souls - the cosmic struggle between good and evil, and souls being whisked away to heaven or lost to hell.  Yet in the end we do not see that God regrets his decision to create the earth, nor does he discard his material creation in favor of a return to a simply spiritual heaven.  This first creation is not a failed experiment. No, what we see is quite the opposite.  The plan is brought to fulfillment.  John sees a new earth being created.  The creation of the first earth is not temporary - it is meant to be redeemed forever. As the one on the throne says - I make all things new.  The fruit of the Resurrection of the Body is not the rescue of some souls for heaven, it is the beginning of the birth of a new earth as well.  What is remarkable about this new earth?  It is where God prefers to dwell.  The emphasis of the reading is not that man's dwelling place is with God, which of course is none the less true.  No, the emphasis is that God's dwelling place is with man - that's what's distinctive of the new creation.  The first garden was made out of love to be a dwelling place for Adam and Eve, but not for God.  In the second creation, a new earth is created for man and God to dwell together.  This second creation begins with the Resurrection of Jesus, the first born from the dead, which we are still celebrating with incomparable joy in this holy season.

A lot of times I see young people abandoning Christianity in favor of humanitarianism, and it boggles me and frustrates me that we have so dumbed down our vision of heaven, the new creation, that some people find a false dichotomy between the two.  The new creation described in the book of Revelation is precisely man as we find him today in the world fully alive and fully redeemed.  Some leave Christianity today because they think it is detached from reality and belongs to those afraid to live who hope in a fantasy afterlife of souls being whisked away from a wicked earth.  Yet the vision in Revelation shows just the opposite. A Christian is not interested in escaping humanity, but in welcoming God into the depths of humanity, so that humanity can be redeemed beginning from its weakest point, and sin and death conquered by love.  A Christian has not less incentive, but more, to co-operate with God in the redemption of the world, since such a redemption of precisely the human condition in which we find ourselves is the definition for us of what it means to pass over into heaven, and into the reality of eternal life.  Again, I repeat a Christian and his desire for heaven is never a flight from being human - it is a more courageous entering into humanity, so that God can fulfill his desire to make his dwelling place with men.

How do we go about entering into the depth of our humanity?  Jesus shows us the way in his new commandment.  What we have in the Gospel today is of course not just a repetition of love your neighbor as yourself.  Neither is it commensurate with other humanitarian versions of trying to love unconditionally.  No, in this commandment - there is a condition.  There is no love that is the basis of the Resurrection, and the creation of a new heaven and new earth, except the precise love that Jesus made perfectly manifest.  His commandment couldn't be more simple nor more precise.  Love one another as I have loved you.  This is almost the opposite of saying we must love unconditionally.  No, the condition is simple.  We must encounter and receive the unique and powerful and salvific love of Jesus in our lives, and try to learn about it in every possible way that we can.  We must meditate on the cross, and conform our lives to the mystery of the cross, knowing that the cross is the precise beginning point of the new creation, for it is there and at the empty tomb, and nowhere else, has a sign been given that there truly is a love stronger than death.

When this condition is filled, then and only then do we try to love, for it is only then that the precise love of Jesus, the only love that is the instrument of the new creation, flows through us.  Not our own love, as beautiful as it is, but the love that because it is Christ working in us, with us, and through us, can alone fulfill the new commandment our Lord gave us.  Love one another as I have loved you.

the voice of Jesus

Homily
4th Sunday of Easter
Good Shepherd Sunday and the World Day of Prayer for Vocations
21 April 2013
Daily Readings


I know my sheep.  They hear my voice.  They follow me.

Sounds perfectly simple.  Know.  Listen.  Follow.  Yet ask any parent, or coach or teacher, or pastor, if simple things are easy, and they will laugh at you.  No sometimes the simplest things are the hardest to keep simple.  Know.  Listen.  Follow.  Sounds incredibly simple, but in practice, it is incredibly hard.

The 4th Sunday of Easter each year is nicknamed Good Shepherd Sunday, and is also given to us by the Holy Father as the World Day of Prayer for Vocations.  It is the Sunday when we Catholics are challenged to admit where we are in knowing and following the voice of Jesus.  For there is no such thing as having a deep relationship with someone, and not being able to know or hear their voice.  A voice is something unique to each person.  Not only the sound of the voice, but the words that are chosen as well.   Each unique person has a unique voice.  For our deepest friends, we recognize that voice instantly, and we miss it when we are apart from them.  Most importantly, for our deepest friends, we can internalize their voice, and remember and hear them even when we are apart from them.  It is fun to know friends so well that we know what their voice is going to say before they say it.

So it is with Jesus.  No one can say that he is an intimate disciple of Jesus, much less best friends with our Lord, without knowing his voice.  Today we reflect on our hearing, from the depths of our being, the most unique voice in human history.  A distinct and powerful voice, a voice that alone has the words of eternal life.    We should recognize instantly this voice when we hear it.  This is my body broken for you, and my blood poured out for you  - that's the voice of Jesus, the unmistakable voice of our Lord.  Leave everything and follow me - again, the voice of Jesus, and no one else's.  Whoever does not deny himself, take up his cross and follow me, cannot be my disciple - guess who?  That's right, the voice of Jesus.  It is a very different voice than when we are told to 'follow your heart' or 'do what makes you happy.'  On Good Shepherd Sunday we are challenged to do more than to listen to our own heart and to find our own voice.  No, when we go into the innermost parts of our person, we are invited not to be alone, but to conform the desires of our heart to the will of Jesus, the Good Shepherd, who knows us and loves us more than we know and love ourselves.

When I was a teenager, my mom knew me much better than I knew myself.  She told me that I should be open to the priesthood, and listen to what God was asking me to do.  It used to make me so mad.  I hated the pressure. I had my own ideas, and wanted to follow my own voice.  The last thing I wanted was someone telling me what to do, neither my mother, nor the voice of Jesus.  This is a reaction we all have when we doubt that anyone can know us as well as we know ourselves. Yet in reality, man does not make sense by himself.  He can only find his mission and vocation in life through relationships with others.  And so it is that in many of our relationships, we find that others know parts of us that we do not know.  My mom, who knew me intimately from my conception, who changed my diapers, and who had been watching me for years and years, and loving me, of course knew me better than I knew myself as a teenager.  Yet the only voice I wanted to hear, and to trust, was my own voice.

As vocation director for the Archdiocese, I tell men all the time they would make a great priest. Yet in order for my words to have any effect, a man must also be able to hear the voice of Jesus deep in his heart, in that place where the man prays.  Pope Benedict XVI rightly said about calling forth vocations in our Church, that if we fail to teach our young people to pray, there will be no way to talk them into a vocation.  Yet if we dare to teach them how to pray, to enter into that space where the unique and life-giving voice of Jesus may be heard, then there will be no way we could talk them out of their vocations.

It is at the Eucharist, my dear friends, where the voice of Jesus is most intimately and perfectly spoken.  Here the Holy Spirit makes present the voice of Jesus, not only in the scriptures, where we listen to things only Jesus can and does say, but most perfectly at the time of consecration, when we Catholics hear the most intimate and perfect words that can be spoken - this is my body, broken for you.  This is my blood, poured out for you.  The Eucharist, then, becomes the privileged place of discernment for each one of us - a chance when we hear the voice of the Good Shepherd, and ask ourselves if we have responded with generosity and faith.

It is on Good Shepherd Sunday when we are challenged to ask ourselves if we have kept something simple simple, or made it complicated.  I know my sheep.  They hear my voice.  They follow me.  Amen.