guys are slow . . so what

Homily
32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A
12 November 2017
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings

How about a little battle of the sexes for today's homily?  Everybody ready?

Ok, here's the contest, and the question.  Who is slower, girls or guys?

Well, if you take the question at a surface level, guys are faster.  They are faster athletes.  They are faster eaters.  Guys are much faster at getting ready to go out.  Wedding days kill me.  It's still the tradition for the bride to take her time, to take all day to get ready, and minutes before the wedding there are still details to finish.  The groom usually takes less than 30 minutes to get ready, and stands around all day with his groomsmen looking at his shoes.  So at an initial glance, guys are faster.

Yet today's Scriptures tell us that it's gals who are faster, who are more ready.  The first reading speaks of feminine wisdom, searching for a groom ready to marry her.  St. Paul is anxious in today's second reading to explain why Jesus seems long-delayed in his second coming.  Then there is the dramatic delay of the groom in the Gospel parable.  The three readings seem to agree.  Guys are slower.  They are not ready.  I dare say they are late.

As a former vocation director celebrating the end of vocation awareness week in the Church, I have to agree with the Scriptures.  Guys take a long time to develop.  I was always worried that guys would never grow up and mature into men capable of being the priests the Church needs.  In their formation, I grew impatient at how immature they were.  My impatience as vocation director, however, paled to the impatience of women desperate to meet a guy ready and worthy to be a groom, a husband and a father.

 It holds true at St. Lawrence as much today as ever.  Gals are way, way, way ahead of the guys.  Not only in middle school, but into college as well.  Ladies are much more ready and prepared for a holy vocation, to make a commitment of their lives.  I see many ladies give up on the virtuous and prayerful and patient waiting for their bridegroom to come.  Too many college students settle and compromise who they are too quickly, because there just aren't enough good guys out there.

So where does that leave us in the battle of the sexes?  Well, it's clear, that in the things that really matter, gals are faster, and guys are slower.  Case closed.  So let's move on to the next question, what are we to do about it?

The parable suggests that anyone who waits with vigilance, anyone who perseveres in prayer and virtue, will be rewarded.   The groom will come.  He will indeed come.   Those who wait will not be disappointed.  A Church that waits for the Lord will not be confounded in her expectations.  A bride who does not cut corners, but waits for her husband, will be rewarded. My dear friends, that is good news, if only we do not doubt or fear.

It's a lot to ask, I know.  I am the most impatient person I know.  You are the most impatient generation in history, as the dopamine drip from the constant barrage of messages and pleasures cripples us all and renders us nearly incapable of waiting for greater things.  Yet wait we must.  There is no other way.  If there was I would tell you.

Yet the parable tells us something that we know to be true, and something that we cannot afford to ignore.  That just as you can't pour knowledge at the last second into the brain of someone who hasn't studied, and just as you can't pour energy at the critical moment of the game into someone who hasn't trained, and just as you can't pour courage into soldiers like our veterans unless they have prepared, so too you cannot pour faith, hope, patience, and perseverance into a person who has not practiced receptivity and readiness.  There is no substitute for practicing our faith, friends.  Practice we must.

I'm sorry if I'm asking the impossible.  Yet nothing will be impossible with God.  We know that guys are slow, and that the bridegroom will be late.  So what.  Let's not shy away from the challenge of faith.  Let's not fall asleep or be foolish or give up, but light our lamps with works of piety and mercy, and go out to greet Him when He comes. Amen. 

be a team

Homily
Saturday of the 31st Week in Ordinary Time IA
+Martin of Tours
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Veterans Day
11 November 2017

Teamwork.  Unity.  Communion.   It is perhaps the most convincing transcendental.  And perhaps the most lacking and most needed.

St. Paul introduces his team in today's reading.  I wonder how this year's Koinonia team stacked up with St. Paul's group of all-stars.  If you went head to head on proclaiming the mysteries of Christ, who would win?  Well, you know me.  I'm competitive.  I would want you guys . . us, rather, to win!  Why not?  Who says St. Paul is always and forever the GOAT?  Is there a rule that we can't pass him in zeal?

Competition for holiness, and for loving God and glorifying Him, is worthy and contagious.  So is teamwork and unity.  People are always looking for that deepest and most powerful unity that produces the greatest love, the greatest life, and the greatest fruitfulness and joy.  There are powerful forces always trying to destroy unity.  There are more powerful forces that create it, if only we put our trust in them.

Forces like the grace and mercy of today's Eucharist, the most powerful and unifying force ever given to man.  The Eucharist, the source and summit of the Church's Koinonia.  It is right and good that the review of this year's Koinonia is centered here.

Because we are here we have the chance for the deepest and most lasting unity.  The unity that the hearts of all students at KU were made for.  A unity that is the GOAT.  Do you have the faith now to live that unity, and dare to increase it, outside the parameters of this year's retreat.

Teamwork.  Unity, Communion.  This is perhaps the greatest transcendental because unlike truth, and goodness and beauty, unity more immediately involves getting to know and trusting the person next to us, made in the image and likeness of God.

I dare you to not retire from Koinonia, but to double down on it, from this point forward.  Amen.

transcend labels

Homily
29th Sunday in Ordinary Time A
22 October 2017
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

"Do you have to be Catholic to get coffee here?"
"No!" Actually I'd prefer it if you weren't Catholic."

This is a dialogue that I have heard at our Slow Drip coffee initiative on Fridays this semester.  It's a dialogue I'd like to hear more and more.

The reason that we're serving free gourmet coffee on Fridays here at St. Lawrence is to meet new people.  We especially want to meet those who do not agree with us.  A culture shift for St. Lawrence would mean that our center is not just for orthodox Catholics who behave in an expected way, a way that makes everyone comfortable.  Mind you, those people are most welcome - but our mission cannot end there.  Instead, the center should be for everyone, especially for those who make us uncomfortable.  Wouldn't it be great if we were engaging new students at the university everyday, discussing questions that really matter.

The predominant religion at KU these days is the religion of tolerance.  It is a religion of isolation and distance.  You do you, and I'll do me, and unless we can agree on everything and affirm each other at every turn, we will avoid each other.  Sounds nice, doesn't it?  Except that a religion of tolerance backfires every time.  It has no choice but to descend further into a religion of hatred.  What do I mean? I mean exactly what we see all around us.  That tolerance never works, because we as human persons are meant for relationship and closeness, not isolation and distance.  Avoidance rarely works long-term in the area of conflict management, and insofar as tolerance is avoidance, it is destined to fail. 

Because we are created for relationship and closeness, when we lack conversations and spaces that allow us to engage those different than us, tolerance necessarily becomes hatred.  When avoidance fails, than anyone who does not affirm me in everything I think, do and say, becomes a hater.  What does this mean for Catholic Christians?  Even if you have not a ounce of hatred in your heart, you are labeled a hater.  When it comes for example, to gender identity, marriage, and the moral paths to authentic love and happiness, Christians have settled understandings that cannot and will not change. Ten years ago they were the norm.  Now these very same commitments are labeled as hate.   It's a irrational transformation and a false narrative of hate.

We see our Lord escaping such a false narrative of hate in today's Gospel.  He escapes the trap deftly, and so should we whenever anyone tries to label us as haters.  When supposedly forced to choose either Rome or Israel, either the Herodians or Pharisees, Jesus choose neither, or rather, both.  This is not because Jesus is weak or sees gray instead of black and white, but because He calls out a false narrative of hate and chooses to stay close to all people while still holding fast to the truth.

Such is our challenge today.  We must imitate our Lord's ability to escape labels, and to both go deeper in our commitments to truth and authentic love, and yet in mercy be more engaging to those who disagree with us.  There can be no labeling or 'campiness' within our dear Church family to start.  From there we must must model to the world not a church of isolation and distance, but one of  relationship and closeness.  We do this by listening over coffee to someone who disagrees with us.

All this is done not by hiding or watering down our Christian faith, but by becoming real Christians, by remembering whose image and likeness we ourselves bear.  Catholics must render to Caesar what is Caesar's, and for the common good of all participate fully in the political process of building up a just society where human persons can flourish.  Yet such participation yields little fruit unless those of us who participate politically are ourselves fulfilling our destiny to grow in the likeness of God.  The point in the Gospel is subtle but profound. The coin bears Caesar's image, so give it to him.  We bear God's image, and are to become a living sacrifice, a gift to God alone!  And this is the far, far greater thing.  We give God glory when we become virtuous and mature persons, when we grow in his likeness by following Christ more closely.  We render to God what is God's when we embrace responsibilities before rights - when we become capable of great love - to make commitments to family, Church and society that give life rather than take it.

So what are we to do and why does it matter.  Simple things that destroy false narrative of hate. 
Transcend and escape the labels people put on you.  Do not hate or label your neighbor.  Make your life a gift to God.  Have a cup of coffee with someone who disagrees with you.  When everyone and everything is inviting you to hate, instead draw closer to God and your neighbor.  Amen.

treasure Christmas in your heart

Homily
Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God
8th Day in the Octave of Christmas
1 January 2017
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings
Audio

Happy New Year, or Merry Christmas?  Which is more important to say?

We might rather ask the question of what event is more important - the birth of Jesus or the dropping of the ball in Times Square.  As glittery and glamorous as that ball is, the birth of Jesus caused the world to explode much more dramatically.

So it's more important to say Merry Christmas today than to say Happy New Year.  Don't be bashful or awkward about saying Merry Christmas!  For to say Merry Christmas on January 1st is to say that the Christmas celebration gets deeper and more fruitful and more full and joyful, as it gets to its 8th day.  The number 8 is huge, remember.  In 7 days, God created the universe out of nothing.  But on the 8th day, he did something even more miraculous - he showed his face!

As the Gospel tells us, Mary pondered all these things in her heart.  As we should know, we are to contemplate Christmas for a minimum of 12 days!  So on the 8th day of Christmas we turn especially to her, knowing that we will not have a better Christmas than Mary is having.  Nobody knows how to welcome Jesus, how to allow Him to be born in the deep recesses of our souls, or allow our lives to be changed by contemplating his face, more than Mary.  So as Catholics we entrust the 8th day of Christmas to her, knowing that being with her is the surest path to our best Christmas ever.

The turning of the new year, and the 8th day of Christmas, is also Catholic Mother's Day!  Today's Marian celebration specifically names Mary as Theotokos - God bearer!  We honor as the Mother of God, which is to say so much more than Mary simply giving a human nature to Jesus.  It means that all of God the Father entrusts Himself to this daughter, all of God the Son is completely dependent upon this mom, and all of the Holy Spirit is espoused and made perfectly one with this woman and bride.  There is no greater honor given to motherhood than to say that Mary is the mother of a God who is a Father but has no father.  So Happy Mother's Day!

So don't just say Happy New Year this year - celebrate Christmas - to the end and in all its fullness, and with Mary, ponder these great mysteries in your heart!

come let us adore Him

Homily
Christmas Eve 2016
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
25 December 2016
Daily Readings
Audio

O come let us adore Him!  Christ the Lord!

Why did you come here tonight?  Answer honestly . . if you dare.  Have you come here to adore the Lord? Although I want to start this homily by welcoming everyone . . our regulars, our visitors, Catholics and non-Catholics, saints and sinners, those who are here all the time and those who are here only on nights like this.  All are welcome.  Yet my initial question and challenge goes out to all . . to each one of you the same.  Have you come here to adore the Lord?  For if you have come here tonight for any other reason, for anything less, then we are all wasting our time, and we should all go back to egg nog, cookies and Santa!  I do not want to go forward with this Mass unless we are all on the same page.  Each of us, and all of us.  We're all the same tonight, and we all must be one.   Come let us TOGETHER adore Him, Jesus Christ the Lord!

What does it mean for us to adore the Lord?  Adoration means nothing less than the deepest form of love and affection.  So if we have come tonight to do anything less than to fall ridiculous, helplessly, and hopelessly in love with God and each other again, so much so that after tonight we will never be the same, then we are in the wrong place.  If we have come tonight to do anything less than to confess that we need this night, for each of us has fallen out of love with God and each other, then forget the whole bit.

For the scene of Bethlehem that we have come to experience, contemplate and celebrate, is way too absurd for any kind of lukewarm response from us.  The biggest and most invincible person imaginable, the one through whom all things were made, the one before whom the whole universe if but a speck of dust, the one who doesn't need any one of us for anything - that person shows his ultimate power in allowing Himself to be made small.  Irresistibly small.  Helplessly small - begging us tonight to hold Him and take care of Him.

Our Lord at Christmas desperately wants to break through our fears and indifference.  He shows tonight that he is ridiculously in love with each of us and everything it means to be a human person, especially our weaknesses.  Knowing that we have an amazing capacity to resist love and to fall out of love and to fear love, even rejecting the depth of His love revealed on the cross, Christ comes as a baby at Christmas - begging our love,  - pleading that if He comes among us poor, naked and helpless that we may no longer fear God.  Do not be afraid, the angel tells Mary.  Do not be afraid, the angel tells Joseph.  Do not be afraid, the angel tells the shepherds.  Do not be afraid of this baby.

God is desperately in love with you.  Yes you!  He loves every circumstance of your life exactly where you are this Christmas.  Do not be afraid to allow him to be born in your heart tonight, and if you have come to do anything less that to fall madly, completely and hopelessly in love with God tonight, so much so that after tonight you can never be the same, the you are DEFINITELY in the wrong place.  We're here to do adoration tonight, and to do it together.  Come let us adore Him!  Jesus Christ the Lord!

Tonight we come to fall in love with God more than ever, but that is not all.  We also come to reclaim in a powerful way what it means to be a human person.  For not only do we confess tonight that we have fallen out of love, we also confess that we need this night to remember who we are.  Our smart phones makes us capable of so much more, and we are busier than ever, but we are horrible at keeping things simple.  We are in danger of becoming worse at prayer, and worse at having intimate, personal, meaningful and spiritual conversations with each other.  We are less capable of falling in love and staying in love. We are worse at making and keeping promises to God and each other.

We have forgotten that to be a human person is to be known and loved and desired beginning at our weakest point.  We don't become persons by getting big and important.  We don't becoming persons by pretending we are smart enough to create the meaning of our own existence.  We do not become more human by pretending we do not need God!  No, we become human persons by remembering where we came from, and by finding a way to remain small and poor and vulnerable.  We become persons only insofar as we remain like children, by keeping things simple, and by entering with awe and wonder into the great adventure of discovering reality as it is!  We become more human by rejecting the temptation of trying to manufacture or control the meaning of our lives.

Man has forgotten how much he needs God - and when we give into the agnosticism of our day we make ourselves miserable.  Man needs God - not as a slave needs a master - but as each one of us needs to be known and desired and loved at each moment of our life to reach our highest destiny and happiness.  Love is man's origin, love is his constant calling, and love is his perfection in heaven!  And only God can know us, desire us and cherish us in the deepest parts of our soul, where we cannot love or change ourselves.

Man needs God - and this Christmas must not pass with our giving into the pride and laziness of pretending we can manufacture the meaning of our own existence.  For this is a lie that makes man increasingly miserable.  Tonight we come to remember who we really are, and if we remain like a baby - poor, and vulnerable and dependent upon God and each other - we will always be able to realize the meaning of our lives - that for which we were created - to fall in love, to be in love and to stay in love.

When we do these two things - remembering who we are and falling in love - we participate as well in the remaking of our poor world from the inside out.  Tonight is a night chock full of hope!  For the sign we celebrate tonight - the sign of a baby born to a virgin mother - is THE SIGN that a new creation has dawned on the earth, a creation that is stronger and meant to last longer than the first creation of the entire universe out of nothing by our virgin Father!  Jesus, who alone has the power to rereate our poor world, makes himself as small as possible, being born through a tiny, insignificant mother, with complete vulnerability and poverty, at the darkest hour of the darkest night, adored at first only by the most uneducated and mangiest of shepherds, to show us that our world will be remade beginning with the weakest.

Jesus spends every second of his earthly life in perfect humility, always taking the lowest place and preferring the poor, the weakest and most neglected, the greatest sinners, to show us that the recreation of our world will take a different path.  For the first creation of everything from nothing began big but will be reduced to nothing.  It started in goodness but has been touched by evil.  It started with life but will end in death.

But the new creation is different.  It starts small but ends big.  It starts weak but ends strong.  It starts in poverty but ends in riches.  It starts with sinners but ends with saints.  It embraces death, but rises to everlasting life.  Caesar's kingdom that seemed so intimidating when Jesus was born is now gone, as will every kingdom that does not belong to Christ.  But Jesus' kingdom that started with nothing is still gaining strength, and His kingdom celebrates with exceeding joy throughout the whole world each Christmas.

Whenever you choose the path just described, you participate in recreating a world that will last forever.  So never fear the times!  Never give into the pessimism or discouragement regarding the evils that threaten our world and our lives and souls.  Choose to love, no matter what.  No compromise.  No excuses.  The hope of Christmas will continue to grow until the enemies of evil and sin and death are destroyed forever!

All that would be enough tonight - more than enough - falling in love, remembering who we are, recreating the world from the inside out with Jesus - but these three things are not the final and ultimate meaning of Christmas.  Christmas takes its name not from the miraculous birth that took place in Bethlehem, but from the birth about to take place on this altar.  For as small as Jesus made Himself at Bethlehem, he makes Himself much smaller, and more vulnerable, and more beautiful to fall in love with, as He allows Himself to be born on this altar.  So we fall in love with Him tonight not just by remembering Bethlehem, but in encountering Bethlehem becoming real for me at Christ's Mass.  It is through Christ's Mass that with Joseph we allow Jesus to be born under our roofs, and with Mary allow Jesus to be born physically in the deepest recesses of our own bodies.  This precise and original meaning of Christmas is what changes in our lives at the moment we receive the Eucharist at Christ's mass.  So dear Catholic Christians, let's put the Mass back in Christmas this year!

Let us recognize the richness of our Catholic sacramental faith, and confess that Christmas makes no sense at all without Christ's Mass.  Let us be present to the reality that Mary, the mother of our Church, is more excited for this Christmas than she was for the first Christmas - yes you heard me right - for what is happening here tonight, right now, in Lawrence, Kansas 2000 years later, is more dramatic, and more fruitful than what happened in Bethlehem, if only one of us, if any of us, let alone all of us, humbly accepts Jesus' desperate plea to be born in our hearts.

Jesus is begging us to receive him worthily in tonight's Mass.  Do not be afraid, my dearest friends, of this Christ who once came among us as a helpless baby, but who come to you now - yes you - even more helplessly at Christ's Mass.  This is the meaning of Christmas - right here, right now!  If you resist Him tonight, can you honestly say that you will ever receive Him?  So I beg you . . with Jesus . . do not let this Christmas moment pass with fear or indifferent in your heart.  Do not be afraid to fall helplessly, desperately and completely in love with God tonight, so much so that you will never be the same.

Come, let us adore Him!  Christ the Lord!

compassion is surrender to God's mercy

Homily
15th Sunday in Ordinary Time C
Year of Mercy
10 July 2016
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings
Audio

I'll never forget my first spiritual direction appointment in seminary.  My spiritual director asked me which character I was in the parable of the good Samaritan.  I was initially relieved when after accusing myself of being either the priest or Levite, because I don't always have compassion or like to get dragged down by other people's problems, that he told me I was neither or those characters.  Since I was a new seminarian and had left a lot behind to be of service to God's people, the next option I hoped and thought, was for the Lord to use me as a Good Samaritan to heal and care for his people as a shepherd.  I couldn't have been more wrong.  After telling me that I was neither the priest or the Levite in the story, my spiritual director told me bluntly that I was the man in the ditch.  He told me that until I identified myself in that role, I would never be a good shepherd!

Boy was he right!  The key of course to being a compassionate person is to be able to see Christ, or one's self, in the suffering of others.  As a pastor, I was asked many times to accompany people through their suffering.  I would oftentimes ask God why there was so much, and why the suffering last so long, and why it was so unfair.  The answer continues to haunt me.  So big and stubborn is my pride, so persistent is my desire to be self-sufficient and independent like the priest and the Levite in the story, that I need the presence of constant suffering and vulnerability lest my soul be lost.  To put it another way, when I ask God the question of why there is so much suffering, he asks the question back of me - why are you so proud and stubborn?  Again and again, I see that I need the suffering of others more than they need my care.  Even after 17 years now since my admonition from my first spiritual director, I still don't see myself as the man in the ditch.

Jesus tells the proud young man who wishes to justify himself that if he wants life, he must love with everything that he has and everything he is.  Love is the ground of life.  There is life because God is love and He through Christ loves everything into existence.  So Jesus says it plainly.  If we love, we will live, and there will be a superabundance of life, welling up to life eternal.  If we do not love, we will die.

Moses told the people that the commandments of the Lord, the demands of loving God with all your heart, mind and strength, are not written in the sky.  They are written on the human heart.  They are closer to us than we are to ourselves.  The reason we are sinners is rather simple.  It is not so much that we resent the commands of God that are imposed on us from without. It is rather we do not have the humility to pray and to discover the commands of God that are written within ourselves.  St. Augustine perhaps put it best of all in his Confessions, saying that the Lord was within him, but he was outside of himself, and it was there that Augustine searched for God.

Certainly God can be found be looking at his creation, for as St. Paul says in his high theology for today Jesus Christ is the author of all creation.  Yet more intimately, perfectly and personally, Jesus is the Good Samaritan.  He is the one who is forgiving our sins, and binding up our wounds.  The reason we fail to be compassionate to our neighbor is really quite simple.  We are afraid to admit that we are the man in the ditch, that we need the Lord, and are afraid of being healed and set free by him.  Compassion can certainly be cultivated as a virtuous habit of the heart and will.  It is more spiritually and originally a surrender to the mercy of God.  

celibacy is for many

Homily
Wednesday of the 14th Week of Ordinary Time II
Year of Mercy
6 July 2016
+Maria Goretti
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at KU
Readings


Audio

So far in my 12 years in being a priest, my ministry has been centered around youth. At my last parish, Christ the King, I spent Sunday nights starting a new Mass and a youth group, trying to engage the young.  Before that I spent three years in a young parish, was chaplain of a high school, and spent six years calling forth vocations, as we see Jesus doing in today's Gospel in calling and sending the first apostles.

I have greatly greatly enjoyed the work I have done with married couples and families, and with those valiantly striving to live marriage, and with those preparing for marriage.  I have loved what few weddings I have been able to do.  Yet the vast majority of my ministry has been to the young, the unmarried.

Such unmarried young people have a champion in today's saint given us by the Church, St. Maria Goretti.  She is a 20th century saint, relatively new!  She was one of the first saints of the 20th century.  She died at age 11, showing that holiness is not just for the old after their passions have run out.   Quite the contrary, some of the greatest saints in the Church have been teenagers, or in this case, even younger!  Holiness is for every stage of life.

The Catholic Church's sure teaching on sexual morality is quite simple actually.  The world needs the light of the Church's teaching amidst all the shifting sands and confusion regarding gender, marriage, etc.  Let me restate the teaching as simply as possible.  Some people are called to holy marriage, which is the total communion of one man and woman promised for life to each other and to any children that may result from this union..  Everyone else is called to celibacy for the sake of the kingdom of heaven and so that the meaning of our sexuality may attain and retain its highest honor and fruitfulness within marriage.

It matters not whether you are young or old, straight or gay, or even your gender identity.  You are either called to traditional marriage or celibacy, depending on your state in life.

No one called to celibacy has reason to complain or to charge discrimination!  Celibacy is for many, not for the oppression of a few.  There is solidarity in marriage, and in celibacy.  No one is called to something harder than the great martyr St. Maria Goretti, who gave the entire potential of her life on the altar of chastity, so that love in its fullest meaning, as witnessed to us by Christ Himself, may reach us safely in today's modern times!

St. Maria Goretti, may you be remembered forever - thanks for pointing out the way to us!