Homily for the 1st Sunday of Advent

For daily readings, see http://www.usccb.org/nab/120108.shtml

Advent is wanting God to come closer. Advent is wanting God to come sooner. Advent is wanting God to come closer and sooner, and actually meaning it!

To borrow a metaphor from yesterday's momentous KU game, Advent is 4 and 7 from the 21 with 27 seconds left, down by four to Missouri. Advent is 10 seconds left, down three against Memphis. It is watching Mario's shot in the air.

Advent is a hospital waiting room. It is pregnancy tests. It is biopsy results. It is keeping vigil when a child is to be born, or a loved one is about to die.

Advent is the hour before a first date. It is the moment before a first kiss. It is making the final preparations for a perfect proposal.

Advent is the fear before going into enemy fire. It is the anxiety we have in answering the phone when we know a loved one has been in harm's way.

Advent is opening the mail after taking the ACT. It is applying for a job that my family really needs, and waiting for the answer.

Advent is the excitement of getting ready to see someone we love whom we have not seen in a really long time.

Advent is wanting God to come closer and sooner, and actually meaning it!

Advent invites us to become more like those who pray in today's first reading from Isaiah, those in exile to Babylon, who actually blamed God, and His distance from them, for their plight. You and I are probably too timid to blame God for our exile, for our long-suffering inability to make ourselves into what we want to be. We instead blame ourselves, and ask God to keep his distance and to give us more time to tinker with our self-improvement projects. This is not the attitude taken by those exiled to Babylon. Isaiah reports that they refuse to believe God has decided to keep his distance from them. They want God to come closer, and to come sooner, and they really mean it!

Advent is the time for us to stop asking God to leave us alone as long as possible, so that we can mold ourselves, before having to turn in the final product for judgment at an unspecified date. Jesus tells his disciples that they may never be ready to turn in their final product, for they do not even know the deadline. Rather than despairing, however, He tells them to keep vigil. Isaiah shows us the way of the Israelites who prayed for God to come sooner rather than later. It is futile to pray that God will give us all the time we need. Rather, we are to expect that God is coming now, so now is the time to beg God Himself to mold us into what we are supposed to be, according to His will.

Most of us are too timid to blame God for our exile. We are too self-centered to ask God for less time instead of for more. Yet if we ask God to come closer, and to come sooner, and we mean it, what but good can result? If we place our lives are in God's hands, if He is the potter and we are the clay, we can and should rejoice that every situation, especially the ones we cannot control, and the ones fraught with the most excitement, vigilance, and yes, even anxiety, is a situation of God's molding us into someone beautifully ready to participate in the eternal mysteries of divine life and divine love, the mysteries that complete the mystery of who we are.

Advent is about asking God to come closer. Advent is asking God to come sooner. And actually meaning it!

Homily for Solemnity of Christ the King

President-elect Obama has outrageous expectations. Although he has never claimed to be a miracle-worker, if the crowds that cheered his election are any indication, there is a tremendous faith out there that he will do amazing things as President of the United States. The expectations of the president-elect as he prepares to enter Washington are not unlike the expectations placed on Jesus Christ, who was indeed a miracle worker, as He entered Jerusalem to the shouts of great crowds. The inauguration of the next president will be an amazing sight for all of us indeed, as was the welcome of Jesus into Jerusalem. Let's hope, however, that the President-elect will have better luck at fulfilling the expectations of his fans than Jesus did at fulfilling the expectations of His fans. Remember, those fans who chanted Hosanna to the Son of David were the same ones who chanted 'Crucify Him' when He did not turn out to be the Messiah who could liberate Israel from Roman occupation.

Who is the most powerful person in the world after the last set of elections anyway? Certainly most of the world would say president-elect Obama, the leader of perhaps the most powerful and prosperous kingdom the world has ever seen. Who is the most powerful person in the world? Well, actually we gather tonight on this great Solemnity of our Church at the end of the liturgical year to proclaim that despite the results of the most recent elections, Jesus Christ remains the most powerful man in the world, for unlike any other figure in human history, He has a kingdom that is both universal and eternal. It is a kingship, as we know, that is unlike any other kingship in the world. President-elect Obama has the secret service, even the Pope has the Swiss guard. Jesus Christ the eternal and universal King has neither, only the heavenly weapons of truth and love.

As Catholics it is especially important for us, even as we respect and support the legitimate authority of our elected leaders, and even as we challenge them, especially our Catholics in elected office, to govern us in accordance with the natural and divine law, that we do not place expectations on our elected officials that we should rightfully place instead upon Christ our eternal King. In our proclamation of Christ as the eternal and universal King, we assert that any temporal earthly authority that does not recognize and participate in the kingship of Christ is ultimately a house built on sand. Remember the question that Pilate posed to Jesus? 'Do you not know that I have the power to crucify you?' Jesus replied, 'You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above.' In the same way through our celebration tonight we recognize that an earthly kingdom that does not share in the kingship of Christ can only give limited and temporary prosperity, whereas Christ promises life in abundance to those who belong to His kingdom, and guarantees that the Church He founded to extend His mission will prevail against all evil, even the gates of hell. As Catholics who celebrate the Solemnity of Christ the King then, we are to be at the same time more detached from political life, avoiding anointing anyone a Messiah except the one who can bring everlasting life, and also more involved in political life, working to build a civilization redeemed by the love of a King at whose name every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth.

When we place expectations on political leaders, and even on political systems like democracy, to guarantee our lasting prosperity, we can fail to focus instead on the abundance of life that Christ our King provides for us, especially through the gift of the Eucharist. Christ shows Himself on the cross, where He was proclaimed to be the King of the Jews by Pilate, that He is the most self-forgetful of kings, measuring His life's worth not by any earthly standards of accomplishment but by how radically He could serve and make the love of God more visible and real to you and me. Rather than seeing his own self-importance, Christ the King gives His life for His subjects, carelessly, it would seem, forgoing any protection whatsoever and throwing His life into the hands of His enemies, out of love for them. This is why if Christ is our King, we can say with the psalmist that the Lord is my shepherd, there is nothing I shall want. Who can ask more than for a King who is willing to lay down His life for them, even when they hate Him in return? In asking Christ to be the King of our hearts, we place our ultimate prosperity in His hands. In doing so, we gain much freedom. We gain the freedom to forgo the futility of having to place a price tag on everything we might cram into our busy lives, including God Himself, in the hopes of making our lives more important and prosperous. What is more, we no longer need to employ the secret service of pride and fear to distance ourselves from those who threaten our precious little kingdoms. With Christ as our King, we escape the the sinful tendency to build a kingdom of self-importance, and we escapte the need to preserve that kingdom by neglecting our brothers and sisters in need. +m

Homily for Wednesday of the 33rd Week in Ordinary Time

For daily readings, see http://www.usccb.org/nab/111908.shtml

The way Luke frames tonight's Gospel, it seems that the Lord is instructing his disciples that things will be incomplete even after the fantastic events that will happen in Jerusalem. In Jerusalem Jesus would perform the most important signs He had performed to date, the sign of the Last Supper, and the signs of his suffering, death, resurrection and Ascension. It is in Jerusalem that the kingdom of God would be most fully revealed, as his disciples were expecting. Luke, however, points out in this Gospel that although God's revelation would be definitive in Jerusalem, the end of the world was not promised by Jesus. Quite the opposite, Jesus teaches his disciples that the road ahead may be a long one, like a king going away for a time until an indefinite return, but that the necessity to live fruitful lives in fidelity to the king would remain and would be the sure way to salvation.

We are in year 2000 or so since the Lord's Ascension. Those events in Jerusalem that established the everlasting covenant between God and man have indeed been remembered and celebrated for a long time, including our celebration of the Mass tonight. It should not be a surprise to us that the everlasting covenant has lasted for what seems like forever, nor should it surprise us if the Lord wishes it to continue for a great while longer until He comes in glory. The reading we have from the book of revelation helps us to keep the end in sight, the return of the King in all His glory. It is for this end that we prepare and for which we pray, that the Lord may come and complete the work of redemption initiated by the events in Jerusalem. We pray for Jesus to return sooner rather than later, for His coming brings good and not evil to us. We know that His presence brings eternal significance to the lives of those for whom He died. His coming raises our human dignity 5 times, 10 times, more times than any parable could signify. This is the expansion of life, human and divine, for one who has faith, for one who no longer wants to be merely a child of dust. So we so we await that coming of Jesus, experienced most intimately on this side of heaven in the Eucharist, with great joy and optimism, not with fear that He will get back while our lives are still buried in the ground. +m

Homily for Tuesday of the 33rd Week in Ordinary Time

For daily readings, see http://www.usccb.org/nab/
St. Rose Philippine Duchesne, pray for us!

St. Rose Philippine Duchesne, the only canonized saint to have done part of her work in Kansas, albeit only for a brief period of one year in 1840 with the Potawatomi indians near Sugar Creek, is a saint known mostly for the heroic virtues of patience and perseverence. The Potawatomi indians, whose language she could never master, described her as the woman who 'prays always.' Her prayer must certainly have been the source of her perseverence despite the obstacles that stood in her way beginning at the age of 17. St. Rose, even from an early age, was not known to be an especially beautiful or happy child. She was known to be quite irascible and selfish actually, and surprised many when she indicated her desire to go to the convent at age 17. After four years of formation, Rose was forbidden by her father to make final vows, as he correctly saw the impending breakup of religious orders by Napoleon during the French Revolution. Rose's vocation had to wait for about 15 years, before a Concordat between Napoleon and the Church allowed her to return to religious life. It took her another 15 years before she could convince anyone to allow her to go to the United States as a missionary, something she had wanted to do since studying history at age 17. She was named the superior of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, and founded several schools along the Mississippi for poor children, the majority of them around St. Louis, where she is today buried. Her sisters always suffered from many setbacks and the lack of money, but her saintly virtue was proven by her steadfast determination in the face of any difficulty. St. Rose lived up to the prophetic challenge of today's reading from Revelation, allowing herself to be refined and made into pure gold by the chastisements and crosses that came her way. She resigned as mother superior at the age of 71 to fulfill her final wish to establish a mission among the indian peoples of Kansas. Even though she never learned to speak the language, and was only able to stay in Kansas for a year because of declining health, she gives to our great state the privilege of having had a canonized work on our soil. She was canonized by John Paul II in 1988 and is the secondary patron of the St. Lawrence Center.

Homily for Sunday of the 33rd Week in Ordinary Time

For daily readings, see http://www.usccb.org/nab/111608.shtml

Guys, tonight's first reading from Proverbs is an encouragement for you to 'marry above yourself''! Now don't get the wrong idea. The proverb is not about marrying a girl better looking than you, although that is not a bad idea and usually not that hard to achieve. The proverb is not about marrying a girl who will make more money than you, although that also perhaps is not a bad idea, and not as hard to achieve as it used to be, since almost 57% of college students are now women. Guys, tonight's proverb is about marrying a woman that is holier than you. The proverb extols the virtues of a good and holy wife, whose worth is beyond measure. In terms of our faith, this means that the kind of woman that a guy should be looking for is a woman that knows Christ so well that a guy has to deepen his faith in Christ if he is to have any chance to get the girl. Ladies, I'm sorry that you perhaps do not have the same luxury of looking for guys who are holier than you. Although it is difficult for anyone in today's culture to live a virtuous life, especially in the area of sexuality, it is more than safe to say that women are more naturally virtuous and open to the things of God. That is why of course that God, when He was ready to make an everlasting covenant with His people, went to a woman, the Virgin Mary, as the representative of all of humanity, to receive a 'yes' to his invitation. Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord. Be it done to me according to thy word. Ladies, I pray that you will be able to find guys who desire such goodness and purity from you. I know your situation of trying to find a man who is virtuous enough to marry is a difficult problem. Besides, if I find a virtuous and holy guy, I'm not going to ask him to date, but I'm going to ask him to go to seminary. Well, at any rate, the discernment of vocations takes a lot of prayer, so I invite everyone to keep praying.

St. Paul in his letter to the Thessalonians invites them to be children of the day and not of the night. He invites his audience to invest liberally in the things of heaven, the things that last forever, and to invest conservatively in the things that provide only fleeting peace and security. Now St. Paul did not know the current condition of the stock market when he wrote his letter to the Thessalonians, but he did know the fragile nature of the human condition. If you turn on the tv this evening, you could find financial advisors telling us to do 10 different things with our money. Some will be telling us to be very conservative; others, to take advantage of the current situation and take risks that may pay off. But St. Paul reminds us that no matter what our investment strategy is with our money, based on the current conditions of the market, that our trust in money should always be conservative when compared to the trust that we put in the promises of God. In reference to God's gifts of faith, hope and love, we are to be as liberal as possible in asking for these gifts from God and sharing these gifts around us. This is how we become children of light.

The parable of the talents reflects what happens to a person who keeps his faith hidden. The parable shows that there is no 'safe way' to get to heaven. We cannot get into heaven by trying to keep some small spark of faith alive and living a barely good enough life to get in the back door of God's favor. No, if we live this kind of faith, we will be called wicked, lazy servants. Faith is a gift that can only grow when it is risked, when it is exposed to those who might try to take it away. In such an environment, however, faith grows bigger and stronger, and we grow in confidence as children of God in the midst of a generation that puts its trust in things that easily pass away. Keeping our faith to ourselves is a short road for losing our faith, and this is the path that I would say at least 90% of Catholics students take when they are in college. There will always be challenges to our faith - moral, personal, philosophical - challenges to God's goodness or to his existence. But we have to risk our faith anyway, or else it will quickly become worthless.

One of the ways we grow stronger in faith is to be generous with our time, talent and treasure. We volunteer to reach out to the poor, we volunteer to teach our faith, and we willingly sacrifice and fast from our own wants in order to contribute financially to the Church. This is the risk of faith that everyone should be taking. Thankfully, college students are mostly poor, so the temptation to keep too much money to yourself is not as dangerous as it would be for a rich person. Most of you have debt, which is a better position to be in when Jesus return than to have too much money. Still, all the same, it is possible for a rich person to be detached from his money and generous, and for a poor person to be attached to what little he has, and to be stingy. The parable of the talents show us this clearly. Our giving to the Church is an indication of our detachment from the things of this world. Giving to the Church is always more about us living our faith than about the Church's need to receive. We do want to invite students to help pay the light bills around here, and to take ownership of the Center. This is important and is a constitutive element of being a full member of the Church. It is something you will all be asked to do in your future parishes. But most of all, we want students who are only conservatively attached to the things of this world, and are liberally attached to the things of God. And so we invite you all, through the forms that are in the bulletin this weekend, to contribute $15 a month to the St. Lawrence Center, and more if you can or should. If you do an EFT, you don't have to worry about bringing cash when you come to Mass. Please take a bulletin as you leave Mass today and prayerfull consider what God might be asking you to do. +m

Students at Catholic Universities - new study

New study reported by National Catholic Register - http://www.ncregister.com/site/article/16432/

The survey’s findings also showed that the experience of attending a Catholic institution of higher education did not appear to increase Catholic faith and practice for most students.
57% said the experience of attending a Catholic college or university had no effect on their participation in Mass and the sacrament of reconciliation.
54% of respondents said that their experience of attending a Catholic college or university had no effect on their support for the teachings of the Catholic Church.
56% said their experience had no effect on their respect for the Pope and bishops.
Finally, the survey also found that 6% of students who were Catholic while in a Catholic college are not now Catholic. Only 1% who were not Catholic while at a Catholic college are today Catholic. According to the survey, “This net decline in Catholic self-identification suggests that very few convert to the Catholic faith after leaving college.”

A groundbreaking study of Catholic college students and recent alumni found:
Morality
60% say abortion should be legal.
60% say premarital sex is not a sin.
57% say same-sex “marriage” should be legal.
39% saw officials or staff encouraging contraceptive use.
31% saw officials or staff encouraging acceptance of homosexual activity.
Men vs. Women
50% of college women engage in premarital sex.
41% of college men engage in premarital sex.
23% of college women are drawn to the sacraments.
40% of college men are drawn to the sacraments.
Source: Center for the Study of Higher Education, QEV Analytics

Missouri maybe no longer a 'bellweather' state - how did Catholics vote?

from Our Sunday Visitor - http://www.osv.com/OSVNav/OSVNewsweeklyNovember302008/ObamalostCatholicvotesinsomestates/tabid/7081/Default.aspx

Obama getting few votes than Kerry only in a few states - interesting!

Who got Catholic vote?
Obama's percentage of the Catholic vote represents a gain of 7 percentage points from the vote totals for the Democratic Party's 2004 candidate Sen. John Kerry. But while Obama won the overall Catholic vote, McCain won majorities of non-Hispanic white Catholics (52 percent to 47 percent) and Catholics who say they attend Mass weekly or more often (50 percent to 49 percent). But the estimated margin of victory among weekly Mass-goers is too close to the margin of sampling error for the exit polls to be decisive. Even in losing among these Catholic sub-groups, Obama made gains compared to Kerry's results in 2004 of 4 percentage points among non-Hispanic white Catholics and 6 percentage points among weekly Catholic Mass-goers.
How about Hispanics?
The exit poll results currently do not break out vote percentages for Hispanic Catholics. However, these do reveal that Obama won 67 percent of all self-identified Hispanic voters of any faith compared to McCain's 31 percent. CARA's surveys estimate that approximately 70 percent of Hispanics in the United States self-identify as Catholic.
Bellwether no more
The Catholic vote in Missouri may have an historical consequence. At the time of this writing McCain leads Obama in total votes in the state by just more than 5,800. The state has yet to be called for either candidate. If Obama does lose this state, one of the central reasons will be his inability to attract the support of a majority of Catholics. If Missouri is declared for McCain it will have lost its "bellwether" status. Missouri has voted for the winning candidate in every election since 1960 and no Democrat has ever been elected president without winning Missouri.