what do I need to face?

Homily

1st Sunday of Lent BI

21 February 2021

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG +jmj

What do I need to face?

Lent if it's worth doing is a time of brutal honesty.  Lent is a gift to draw us away from pretense and avoidance.  Jesus goes to the desert right off the bat in Lent to show me how to fight.

St. Mark is a straight shooter.  His Gospel isn't decorated.  In a few short lines, Jesus goes from his baptism, to the desert, then back to Galilee to get to work.  Things happen fast.

So too for me there is no time to waste.  Lent is a sacred time that I waste to my own detriment.  It is in the desert, the place of silence, prayer and fasting, where the most important victories of my life must be won.  Why is this?  It's because placed in the garden, I like Adam when I have every reason to say yes to God and no to temptation, I mess up.  So it has to be from the place where Adam is exiled, from that place where I have every reason to say yes to temptation and no to God, that I must reverse the curse.

Jesus didn't need to be baptized or tempted.  Yet he takes on our nature, and does both, not merely in our place but to go there with us and to show us the way.  Baptism gives us a chance, a real chance, to win the ultimate struggle for life and death. Yet fight we must, as Jesus' temptation after his baptism teaches so clearly.

What do I need to face?  If I waste Lent with pretense and avoidance, this vertical dimension of reality, the kingdom of heaven, will remain in a galaxy far, far away.  Yet if I repent, the kingdom of heaven is right here.

What do I need to face?  For me personally, I need a new heart, with which to love God's people.  I can't fix the one I have, and I'm not meant to.  I need to face the temptation to hold onto the heart I have, instead of daring to receive a new heart.

There's something everyone in this church needs to face.  The Gospel could not be more clear.

Be as honest as you can be.

What do I need to face?

where do I see honesty?

Homily

Ash Wednesday

17 February 2021

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG +JMJ +m

Free dirt.  Free insults.

It's the best marketing strategy the Catholic Church has ever come up with.  Give free dirt, and free insults, and watch people line up.  Nothing else works quite like it.

We've tried other strategies.  Free food, and even free beer, attract a few of you.  Yet you seem to still prefer Mass St for these things instead of coming to Mass.  We're good at selling guilt.  Yet you don't need a Church for that.  Most of us are quite capable of feeling badly about ourselves on our own.

So what gives?  Why does free dirt and free insults work better than anything else?  I can't answer for you, only for me.  It's on this day, Ash Wednesday, that I see what I most want to see from my church.  On this day I see honesty, and the more brutal it is the better.

The brutal truth is that I pretend to be better than I am.  You do too.  It's something we all have in common, and something Jesus calls out especially today.  I want to live my life from the deepest questions.  Why do I exist?  Does my life matter?  Does my story have a happy ending?  Yet I always end up finding a way to avoid these questions.

But not today.  Today I let a stranger throw dirt on me and tell me I'm gonna die.  It's a huge does of reality.  It's brutal honesty.  It's what I most need.

Jesus invites his disciples to live only one kind of life.  It's a life of honesty, simplicity, vulnerability and humility.  He says this is the only way, and the easiest way.  When I look at His cross, I wonder what He is smoking.  Yet in the cross is truth.  The truth stings, but it is easier than keeping up the sham of pretending to be better than I am.

364 days a year I'm afraid to live as He asks.  But not today.  Today I let a stranger throw dirt on me and call me a fake.  I do this so I can embrace both the gift and the responsibility of my life.  Today I say publicly, in front of all of you, that I know I get one shot to write a great story with my life.  I say that my time is now, and that I'm still in the game.

I'm glad you're here.  I want to build a Church that is tired of pretending, one that is done with the labels, price tags and timers we stick on each other.  The Church I want to belong to isn't afraid to get honest, and to have conversations that bring real and lasting change.

Help me make St. Lawrence this kind of Church, unafraid to live the way Jesus invites us to.

This day is different.  Our time is now.  Let's begin again to make all things new.

when did God last change you?

Homily

6th Sunday in Ordinary Time BI

St. Lawrence Catholic Center at the University of Kansas

14 February 2021

AMDG +JMJ +m

This week, five fraternities were banned from campus for partying during a pandemic, and putting the community at risk.  They broke the rules, and received consequences.  Many of these men are members of the St. Lawrence Center.

I'm not going to judge these men or KU's response.  I do want to note, however, that the more things change, the more things stay the same.

This time, it's not leprosy.  It's COVID-19.  Yet the leprosy of Gospel times and our current pandemic bear so many resemblances.  You think modern medicine has eliminated the need for quarantines, distancing to limit exposure, and rules to keep the community safe?  Hardly!  The same rules in place for leprosy 2000 years ago are all in play today.

Like the fraternity party, in today's Gospel rules are broken!  The leper wants to go to church.  He can't live without being part of a worshipping community.  For him, life means right relationship with God and his community, expressed in public worship.  Good for him!  I wish we all saw such meaning in going to Church.  I get asked all the time if people will come back to Mass after the pandemic.  I honestly don't know.  I know there is no going back, only going forward.  I also know if we're afraid of losing people, in many ways we have already lost them.

That's not the case with this leper.  Banned from the Jerusalem temple, not be a county health order but by the religious authorities in charge of keeping worship safe, the leper breaks quarantine and instead goes right up  and kneels before the new meeting place between God and man, the new temple which is Jesus himself.  

Jesus makes it worse.  Instead of enforcing the rule that this man should declare himself unclean from a distance, Jesus touches him.  Imagine doing this during COVID-19.  Bypassing all rules, all PPE, and just touching someone deliberately.  Jesus in so doing shows that He has come to take our infirmities to Himself.  He makes Himself unclean so that the leper might receive healing, cleansing and saving grace.

The leper then breaks Jesus' rule to shut up about it.  The result is that while he is restored to right relationship, Jesus gets kicked off campus.  He can't go in town, or near the temple, but has to go to the desert to create some space.

When is the last time God touched you in such a way you couldn't shut up about it?  Did it happen in confession?  The sacrament is the spiritual parallel of the Gospel story we just heard.  After declaring ourselves unclean, and unable to contribute to the unity of the worshipping community, a priest speaks for Jesus in telling us He wills to make us clean, and restore us to full communion with God and each other.

If not confession, when did God last touch you?  I am touched right now by the men in RCIA who like the leper in today's Gospel have decided they can't live without being a full member of the Catholic communion and laying hold of salvation by touching Jesus in the sacraments.  When everyone expects this generation of college students to all be lost and cut off forever, these men have gone the opposite direction, and proclaim that to live means to go to church, and to be physically in communion with Jesus.

That's my God moment, that I want to share with the whole world.  What's yours?

what am I made for?

Homily

5th Sunday of Ordinary Time BI

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

7 February 2021

AMDG +JMJ +m

What am I made for?

If you look at everyone's schedules today, it looks like we are all made to watch the Super Bowl!  I hope I get special graces for not canceling Mass.

What am I made for?  I'm still not sure.  My life's motto is to compete in what matters to God.  I like it, but I'm not done discerning yet.  It's not my final final.  I want a unique why as good as John Paul II's.  I am made to be totus tuus Maria.

Do you know what you are made for?  It's a great question for the whole of life.  

Today's Scriptures give us options.  Job at this point of his journey asks whether he was made simply to suffer and to die.  Paul says he was made to preach the Gospel.  He wants to become a slave to all to save at least some.  Paul senses a duty, a responsibility that comes with his freedom.  He aims to play his part in Jesus' mission of redemption.

Jesus on his first day of public ministry shows what He is made for.  He preaches, He casts out evil, and He prays.  It's a pretty good plan!  Can you think of a better way to live?

What if I got up everyday and tried to announce the Gospel?  The good news is that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.  The way things are now are not how they will always be.  Evil, suffering, death, doubt, despair and division do not have the final say.  They have been defeated by Jesus, who now invites me to apply his victory in the context of my life.  Every day I am invited to do what I can to defeat evil, moral and natural, and in so doing I lay hold of the gift of salvation for others and myself.  

Then Jesus prays.  He receives over and over again His mission in conversation with His Father.

That's it, disciples of Jesus!  It's a great recipe.  What am I made for?  What if I am made to proclaim the Gospel, to defeat evil and to pray?  What if I kept it that simple?

What am I made for?

who do you trust?

Homily

4th Sunday in Ordinary Time BI

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

31 January 2021

AMDG +JMJ +m

Who do I trust?

One thing is for sure.  Only fools trust themselves.  Scripture could not be more clear.  There are too many things I can't know about myself, too many things I can't see nor can I fix.  To learn, to grow, and to lay hold of the gift of my life, I have to trust in someone else.

But who do I trust?

Before I venture an answer, I want to lay the conditions for trusting another.

First of all, they have to be able to see me, and to know things about me I can't know about myself.  My eyes point outward, and even with mirrors there's so much I can't see.  I am a blind spot to myself, in so many ways.  Is there someone else who can see and know me.

Secondly, trust is born in love.  Is there someone who desires my good for my own sake.  Is there someone who won't manipulate or use me, and love me more than I can love myself?

Finally, is there someone who can say something to me that will make a difference?  Is there someone who can tell me something I don't already know and could never discover?

That's it.  If you don't have someone who can see you, know you, love you, and speak something new to you, there's no reason to trust.

Yet even then, even if there is somebody, I won't trust unless I want to change.  If I am comfortable in my distraction and division, I'll just go with what I know.  St. Paul speaking 2000 years ago, long before smart phone notifications and the 24 hour fake news cycle, describes life as one big distraction!  Can I get an Amen to that?

So also with division.  What have you do to with us, Jesus of Nazareth. I know who you are!  Who is us?  There's one man talking, right?  Is it me or we?  The man is scattered, confused, divided, and so am I.  Jesus can speak a new word that makes a difference, one that heals division.

What is this?  A new teaching, with authority. It's something I have never heard before, a voice of wisdom, love and authority.  Yet do I even want to trust this voice?

I'm blessed with a spiritual director who is the voice of Jesus for me.  I obey him, not because I have to, but because I trust him.  I trust that he sees me, knows me, loves me and can say something new to me that makes a difference.  When I excuse and rationalize my distraction and division, he speaks with authority.  What the hell are you thinking?  How can you be so stupid?

If I want to change, to learn, to grow and to lay hold of the gift of my life, I have to trust someone other than myself.  Trust is not easy, but it's necessary.

Do you even want to trust?  If so, who do you trust?

what time is it?

Homily

3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time B

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

24 January 2021

AMDG +JMJ +m

What time is it?  The time is now.  That's always true.  It's true literally, of course. What time is it now?  it's now now.  Yet it's just as true in the spiritual and moral sense.  When is the time of repentance and conversion?  Of course it's not limited to Advent or Lent.  The time is now.

The time we are in right now is ordinary.  Yet ordinary is not boring, unless I make it so. Quite the opposite, it's the best time to put our lives in order.  It's about making resolutions and forming habits in response to the Gospel that substantially change our lives.  Ordinary time is about increasing our freedom to live beautifully and differently.  It's true that in Ordinary time we do not highlight any particular piece of the Christian mystery.  Yet Pope Francis declared this 3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time as Word of God Sunday.  It's an urgent call to take a new journey through the Good News, and to translate that encounter into doing the will of God.

This last week, for example, was not ordinary!  A practicing Catholic was inaugurated as President of the United States, for only the second time in history.  History is always being made, yet it always comes with the urgency and challenge of the moment.   President Biden stands publicly athwart of essential, fundamental, life-giving moral teaching of his own Church, regarding the sanctity of life, the definition of marriage and the meaning of sexuality.  For his own good, and the good of all, the Church cannot and will not stop seeking his conversion on these issues.  Guess what?  There's nothing new here.  We live in urgent, dramatic times. We always have, and we always will!  So we pray for, support and challenge each other to get better.  Now is the time, an urgent time for conversion and repentance.

Jonah was sent to challenge the morality of the secular society of his enemies.  He hated it.  He tried to excuse, avoid, escape, complain and procrastinate in the mission that came with the gift of his life.  His is like me.  Yet in the word of God, the time is always now!  The apostles instead fulfilled the call of St. Paul in our 2nd reading to be completely free and detached.  They heard the word of God in the voice of Jesus, and put that word into practice.

My job, and yours if you choose to accept it, is to receive the mission that comes along with the gift of your life.  You have a problem to solve.  You have a life to touch.  You have a path of penance and conversion to walk.  So do I. Now is the urgent time for me to put the word of God into practice.  Now is the time for me to set aside obsessions and excuses, and to order my days aright.

The time is now.

who is pursuing you?

 Homily

Solemnity of the Epiphany

3 January 2020

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG +JMJ +m

Who is pursuing me?

I'm going into this year wanting to be more present, more available.  When I dare ask people how I can get better, they usually say that they want to spend time and get to know me and be known by me.  It's very simple.  People want their father to be around.  Love is spelled t-i-m-e and h-e-r-e not g-o-n-e and b-u-s-y.

I think God is trying to get to my heart through the people he has given me to serve.  I don't know why He wants my heart.  It's who He is, I guess.   He wants yours too.  He will stop at nothing to get it.  

He pursues the hearts of the magi by teasing their minds.  It's a fantastic story, the story of Epiphany.  God lets Himself be pursued through the guidance of a star.  The magi are seekers, not skeptics.  They know that both faith and reason together lead one to the fullness of truth.  They are open. They are curious.  They are eager.  

Why does the universe exist if it is not necessary?  Why is there so much intelligibility to reality, so much mind embedded in nature?  Why does there seem to be a relationship and a story at the heart of things?

Herod is a skeptic.  He lives out of fear and control.  He knows well that space that we can all find ourselves in.  Skeptics take things for granted, are selfish in how they approach learning, and lose zeal for the great adventure of discovering the heart of things.

The magi want to know. God lets Himself be pursued by their minds so that He can eventually pursue their hearts.  When He finds them, the relationship of love that lies at the heart of all reality is revealed in the beautiful face of Jesus.  Sciences leads to worship, and worship reveals the true meaning of science.  It's not an either/or, it's a fascinating both/and.

The fourfold meaning of Christmas, that God want to pursue us by revealing Himself in our hearts, our families, our Churches and in our world.

Those who are open to his revelation will find a neat Christmas trick.  That in being a seeker, not a skeptic, you are the one being pursued by love Incarnate..

Who is pursuing you?