what do you doubt?

Homily
Sunday in the Octave of Easter
Divine Mercy Sunday
19 April 2020
St. Lawrence Catholic Center at the University of Kansas

Jesus Christ is Risen!  He is truly Risen! Alleluia!  Alleluia!
So what.

Don't worry, I haven't lost my faith one week into Easter.  The Resurrection is still the one thing I know to be true out of everything I know to be true.  These words are the most mysterious, dramatic, profound and true words that have ever been or could ever be spoken in human history.  They change everything about the meaning of life and human destiny.  Martyrs are dying for this mystery even today.  I professed them with all I had through my baptismal promises on Easter Sunday.

So what.
Jesus Christ is truly Risen!
So what.

That's today's Easter move, and it's a big  one.  Thomas's skepticism and empiricism pays off in spades.  He is the patron saint of today's 'nones' - those who will not be told what they should believe by someone else. 

But here's the difference - he is not a lazy none.

No, he's a hero because he doesn't check out.  He shows up.  And his skepticism is one that not afraid to probe for the truth.  As a result, he gets to feel more than the other disciples.  He gets to feel the Resurrection - what wounds redeemed by love feel like!  Thomas is my hero.  He shows me that my Easter faith can come from a deeper place - where I most fear and doubt. 

This week's pivotal question is:  what do you doubt?

This question is easy peasy today!
I doubt the Resurrection!
Yes, you heard me.
Following, Thomas, I doubt the Resurrection.

For it's precisely because this mystery is the most profound, dramatic and true event in human history that I must explore it, test it, wrestle with it, with all that I have.  Thomas keeps digging, literally, where the other disciples stop.  I can't stop digging!  The Resurrection either becomes more or less true at every turn in my life.  It only becomes more true if I'm like Thomas - exploring the places where I am most trapped by doubt and fear TODAY with the Risen Christ.  That's Divine Mercy!  That's my Easter duty.  That's what makes this Easter new!

Doubts and fears are never something to be put away.  Jesus says to Thomas - let's engage!  They're always going to be there, so let's deal with them.  Let's probe and face them - together.  The wounds are never removed.  They must be redeemed.  Again, the wounds, his and mine, are never removed.  They are redeemed.

The result if I dare to follow Thomas is an Easter faith that never barely escapes my lips on the outside.  It's a faith that wells up from my wounds on the inside.

That's Divine Mercy.  John Paul II not only proclaimed this Feast in 2000.  In 2005, he showed us exactly how to do it.  His open wounds were there for the whole world to see. We watched him suffer - where his doubts and fears were greatest.  And he allowed the Risen Christ to fill him and us with Divine Mercy.  He died on the eve on this great feast that he gave us.  Remarkable.

My friends, the Resurrection is never a magic trick that allows us to pretend to know more than we do or that everything will be ok.  It's the central mystery that engages our real lives, moreso every day.

Blessed am I, says Jesus, who get to encounter this Divine Mercy in a mystical and sacramental way, seeing less than Thomas.  Yet, he will always be my hero.  For because of Him, I know that Jesus wants me to keep digging, so that I never skip His invitation to put my finger in the nailmarks and my hand in his side.

Only then will the truth of Easter come from Divine Mercy, where he has truly healed my wounds.

So that's why today's Easter move is so important.
If I'm going to doubt anything, let me doubt the one thing that most matters.
I don't want my Easter faith to be superficial, passive, boring, innocuous, and nothing new.
Let my Easter faith be something that I have the honesty and guts to doubt.
Jesus Christ is truly Risen!
So what.

do a 180 in your real life

Homily
Friday in the Octave of Easter
17 April 2020
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

One surprise after another.
The Risen Christ is popping up anywhere and everywhere.

First in a garden.
Then on a road.
Next in the locked room.
Now at the Sea. 

He's not mad the boys went back to fishing.
He told them to meet him where it all began.
For the resurrection is not an escape from real life.
It's moving from death to life right where we are.

Easter invites us to live our real life differently.
From the left side to the right.
From empty to full.
Right where we are.

what is your Easter duty?

Homily
Thursday in the Octave of Easter
16 April 2020
St. Lawrence Catholic Center at the University of Kansas

Jesus is Risen!  He is truly Risen!  Alleluia!
Shocker, right?
No, of course you've heard it before.
You've heard it a million times.

The disciples had plenty of advance notice for today's visit from the Risen Christ.
All the prophets prepared them.
Jesus foretold it.
They had at least two eyewitness reports that he was alive.
Surely they were ready.
Nope. They were scared to death.
They fell apart.

Jesus had a right to ask why.

I can tell him why.
The scariest thing imaginable
is someone who comes back from death to life.
It's always enough to scare us from life to death.
And that's the point.

For the Resurrection is an entirely new way to live.
We can't begin if we aren't first scared to death.

The good thing is we don't have to imagine this encounter with the Risen Christ.
It's here. Right in front of us.
We've been told of it a thousand times.
It's our Easter duty.
To receive the Eucharist even more intimately than the first disciples who touched his hands and sides.
It's the chance of a lifetime.
Just once to allow the Risen Christ to scare us to death.
So through his Resurrection, we can begin to truly live.

does the resurrection change everything?

Homily
Wednesday in the Octave of Easter
15 April 2020
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

The Resurrection is not a myth.
It's a historical fact.
The evidence is overwhelming!
The proclamation of the deepest truth and greatest victory is going forth - He is Risen!
It changes everything.

So why are we still moving in the wrong direction?
Why do we still doubt?
The story of Emmaus is a precursor to doubting Thomas.

The Resurrection might be true.
But it's too much to take in.
And the message on the outside doesn't automatically change me from the inside.

I can still run.
I can still doubt.
I can still see only what I want to see.

The intimate and personal visit from the Risen Christ is far from automatic.
The Resurrection changes everything on the outside,
but the truth wants to operate from the inside.

It's why the Church gives us 50 days for the Risen Christ to come heal our fears.
For being disciples of the Risen Christ is the scariest thing of all.

how are my feet?

Homily
Monday of the Octave of Easter
13 April 2020
St. Lawrence Catholic Center at the University of Kansas

How are my feet?

Seems on the surface to be a rather pedestrian question.
Yet this is not a homily about my needing a pedicure.

Feet are a big deal in the Gospel.
Jesus' mandatum at the Last Supper was to wash each other's feet.
The most humble and contrite disciples wash and anoint his feet.
On Good Friday, we're invited to kiss his feet.

Mary Magdalen was the first to touch his Resurrected body!
She went for the feet.
How did Jesus leave the tomb?
By using his feet!

Peter's feet walked out of the locked room to witness the empty tomb.
The soldiers took a buyout instead to stay put where they were.

Notice all the running that takes place during Easter.
How are my feet?
Easter is a time for my feet to physically take me someplace new!
Post-quarantine, would anybody think first to embrace my feet?

what's your real cross?

Homily
Funeral Liturgy for Leo Ochs (grandfather)
13 April 2020
St. Lawrence Catholic Center at the University of Kansas

That tear in grandpa's eye.

I first remember seeing it at my priestly ordination.  I met his eyes as I came down the aisle with dad, but not mom. 

I saw that tear more often the last couple years during the few times I got to see him.  It would come when he was missing someone.  Grandpa always knew is someone was missing.

Shorty is known better for the twinkle in his eye.  He got excited about a lot of things.  You always knew when he was happy to see you.  I'm sure grandma and the kids can tell you about his dark side, but I'm a grandson.  I never knew it.

Happy memories came flooding back on Thursday when I learned the bad news. I can't turn them off, and I don't want to.

Cauliflower salad and goat terds as gag gifts.  Grandma's foil-wrapped harvest burgers.  A four-pound Ackerman catfish on the end of a fly rod. Doughbait.  Ew.  Roger's giggle.  Or cackle.  Or snicker.  Whatever it is.  Thanksgiving football.  The wide-open canvas that is my western Kansas home.  My Catholic faith. All because of my grandpa.

My life changed forever in 1st grade when I was dispatched to take grandpa and mom a pop on the  dam at Cedar Bluff.  They had to be a half-mile from the camper. Armed with slip bobbers and slipshot, they were perfecting the art of casting 30 yards into a 30 mile per hour wind without losing your shiner.  They thought the world turned on one more crappie.  They wouldn't even stop to pee.  They were plum stupid crazy insane. 

Anyhow, on the way with the pop I dashed my head on the rocks.  I have the scar to prove it.  After I recovered a started testing in the 99% in verbal intelligence, won the county spelling bee 3x, and haven't stopped talking like I know everything since.  All thanks to grandpa.

I'll never be happier then I was in 1985 when grandpa's faith in the infamous experiment known as 'the dam' hit the jackpot, and I reeled in one 3 lb largemouth after another for 4 days. 

Your stories I'm sure are better than mine, as most of you were closer to him than I was.  I'm just proud to have been his grandson.  The twinkle in his eye changed everyone who ever met him.  Shame on us if we don't tell every story, as soon as we can, for as long as we can.  He deserves it.  He lived a faithful and fruitful life.

But I think I'll remember most the times that twinkle in his eye twisted forth a tear.

The real cross of Jesus Christ whom grandpa taught me to trust,  is always that thing we least want, the thing we can't change, the thing that most isolates us, that thing that we know we can't do, but have to try.  It's that place where we eventually give all of ourselves.

We can wax eloquently about how to offer up all the hard parts of life, but those things are just a shadow of the real cross.

The real cross is what grandpa just went through.  Not knowing for sure how to do these last few years of life or what they were for, but giving it his best try.  Wanting to be close to those he loved, but dying with all of that stripped away from him.

That's the real cross, and Jesus taking grandpa to Himself through it.

I'll remember most of all that tear in his eye whenever someone was missing.

Now that we all miss him, let's keep that tear in our eyes, until we can all be together again.

does love win?

Homily
Wednesday of Holy Week

Love doesn't always win.  Because it chooses not to.

Love never forces its way.  It proposes.  It gives.  It forgives. It sacrifices.  It does not dictate.

Love doesn't always win.  Not that it's not stronger than anything.  It is.  Yet love shows its ultimate strength in not controlling the outcome. In not having to have its way.  In not having to win.

Today's Gospel is the harsh reality of when love doesn't win.  It would be better for that man if he had never been born.  The voice of mercy speaks these words. Is there anything harder for us to hear?  For Judas is us.

Today's story does not have a happy ending.  Jesus is neither condemning for judging Judas.  He loves Judas.  But because love never forces, he allows Judas to condemn himself.

Surely it is not I rabbi?  You say so.

And so, Easter Sunday doesn't arrive for everyone.  It's doesn't have to arrive for me.  Tough news to hear, but the voice of mercy wants us, needs us to hear it.  Never moreso, when on the cusp of this Holy Week, each one of us is tempted to say.

I don't care.  I can't change.  I won't change.  I quit.