Wedding Homily

We speak words of love. We exchange gifts. Then we embrace. This is a natural expression of human love. We say what we feel as best we can. We exchange gifts that express that affection. Then we embrace, sharing that love in a physical way.

The vows. The rings. The kiss. The three natural progressions that take place during a wedding. Yet in the liturgy we are in the midst of celebrating, the vows and the rings do not immediately give way to the kiss. They give way to something else - they give way to the celebration of Mass.

Chris and Sasha, when you are asked if you come here today freely and without reservation to give yourselves to each other in marriage, you will be able to say yes in a way that gives a witness to what true freedom is, and what it is for. When you say yes to this question of your freedom, you say much more than simply stating that it didn't take any shotguns to get you here, nor did you have to resort to anesthesia to get the courage to come down the aisle. At least I hope you did not. No, those that know you, Sasha and Chris, know that you have found freedom in Christ Jesus, for it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. In Christ, you have discovered the truth that as unnatural as it is for man to live alone, without the benefit of human companionship and love, it is far more unnatural for man to live without God. You have found in Christ the completion of the mystery of who you are, for Christ came, as our late Holy Father John Paul II said, to fully reveal man to himself. Christ has set you each free, and so you enter into this sacrament with real freedom, the freedom of one whose heart and whose life has been completely redeemed by the love of Christ, the freedom of one who has decided to follow Jesus by loving another person just as He has first loved you.

In the spirit of this freedom you have received from Christ your Lord, it is natural for you to direct the minds and hearts of those who have come with great joy to celebrate the beauty of your romantic love for each other toward the love of Christ revealed most fully in the Holy Eucharist. After the exchange of vows and rings, there is of course great momentum for you to celebrate the new ontological reality of your marriage in a physical way, beginning with a kiss. Yet directed by the liturgy of the Church, you will turn instead and offer your bodies not first to each other, even as a new married couple, but to Christ. After the vows and the rings, you first act as a married couple will be to offer your bodies on this altar of sacrifice, asking God to take your bodies up into the one perfect sacrifice of His only Son, the acceptable sacrifice that brings salvation to the world.

Chris and Sasha, you proclaim in and through the liturgy of the Church today, that Christ is the source and the seal of your marriage. You place your new marriage within the eternal marriage of Christ to His bride, the Church, the one marriage that is fully free, and faithful and fruitful, as you wish your new marriage to be. You proclaim that the vocation you have received from Christ is to complete the mystery of another person, your spouse, by first sharing with your spouse the truth that Christ has completed the mystery of who you are. Before you kiss your spouse for the first time as a married couple, you turn to remember that you have first been kissed by Christ Himself, and are already one flesh, one mind, one heart, one Spirit with Him through the Holy Eucharist.

Chris and Sasha, as essential as it is that you use the human freedom given you by God to choose one another today, you proclaim all the more loudly that you have been chosen by God to be his adopted son and daughter through Jesus Christ, and by Christ you are chosen to go out and to bear fruit that will remain. May the eternal salvation that flows from the Holy Eucharist be always the greatest gift that you offer to each other and to your children, and to those of us so privileged to share in your marriage as your family and friends. Thank you for coming here in freedom today to strengthen the faith of all of us who know Jesus to be the way, the truth and the life. +m

Catholicvote.org video

While I think that catholicvote.org made a great video regarding the potential of President Obama's life that was protected because his mother gave birth to him, perhaps in less than perfect circumstances, I have to admit that I was not a fan of the campaign to run the ad during the Super Bowl. Although I realize the ad would have had a great impact in addition to the impact it has already had through youtube, having been viewed over 700,000 times already, I cringed at the thought of paying NBC $3 million. In my humble opinion, and perhaps I could be talked out of this, I think NBC losing money on the SuperBowl would do more for the pro-life cause than this ad. NBC has plenty of air-time, more than enough to make up for a 30 second ad, so if their network does not agree with the pro-life position, and there is ample evidence that they do not, then they have thousands of opportunities to counteract this one pro-life ad, none of which cost them a dime. Which is why I was shocked today that they decided to turn down such a benign ad, not that the pro-lifers had raised the $ anyway, but they turned it down not wanting to run political advertisements during the Super Bowl. The video is not very political, but regardless, I am surprised that they would turn down the $ were the catholicvote.org people to be able to raise it. I know we should be open as pro-lifers to every opportunity to evangelize the culture, and should be looking for great opportunities. Yet given that NBC stands to profit as much as we do from this ad, I would rather see us promote the ad in other ways. I say this knowing there are many good pro-life Catholics and people of good will who work for NBC, and who work for the cause of life in their workplace as best they can. Thank you to all such people, and our prayers are with you! +m

St Lawrence Staff Retreat

Thursday morning was spent with the staff of the St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at KU, where I serve as Associate Director alongside my responsiblities with vocations for the Archdiocese. It was a brief but fruitful retreat. Sr. Debbie Li's meditation on the placing of the papyrus basket containing the baby Moses into the Nile even before the oppression of the Israelites at the hands of the Egyptians worsened, shows how God takes care of us in small ways and prepares for our good, even when we do not perceive it. She meditated further on how the exodus through the desert may have challenged the Israelite people, and caused them to grumble, that the result was that they were forged by God into a nation once again. The exodus erased the tribal affiliations of the Israelites, and prepared them to enter into the promised land together. So too in the Church is can be the trials we endure together than can prepare us for the good things to come, good things that are meant for us together, as Christ's body, the Church, moreso than for individuals. The sisters treated us to a great pasta lunch and homemade cake afterwards - the spiritual feeding made me want to return to work right away - the physical feeding, which I also greatly enjoyed. Made me want to take a nap!

Homily for Friday of the 3rd Week in Ordinary Time

For daily readings, click here.

God is capable of big works. He is capable of big signs. The great flood. Check. The parting of the Red Sea. Check. He is the almighty. He can overwhelm us anytime He wants to.

Yet He chooses to come among us like a mustard seed planted in the ground. He chooses a young virgin to be His mother. He is born most humbly in an out of the way town. He throws his life away, delivering Himself into the hands of sinners.

The Lord loves our freedom so much, He finds us human beings to be so very good, created in His image and likeness, that even though it is His right to demand obedience from His creation, He humbly asks for it instead. The Lord usually invites in small ways. The Lord whispers to us. Our vocation usually starts out this way. As a seed. As a whisper. As an invitation to move forward in faith rather than in fear.

The author of the Hebrews tells us that if we move forward in fear, we will avoid sufferings, and latch on to the things that require no faith, the simple pleasures that are closest and easiest. If we move forward in fear, we will conform our lives to the standards of the world.

But the just one will live by faith, and joyfully endure whatever sufferings are necessary for him to move toward the fullness of life and his eternal destiny. To move towards life with faith instead of towards death with fear requires endurance. Once we move forward in faith, we must not turn back. Building upon that initial gift of faith, that initial vocation to holiness, that first invitation to follow the Lord, each time thereafter that we choose faith and not fear, we grow closer to bearing that beautiful fruit that the Lord has called us to produce! +m

Homily for Wednesday of the 3rd Week of Ordinary Time

For daily readings, click here.

Is Jesus intentionally trying to confuse us? The Gospel might make us think so. Jesus taught the crowds in parables, which are uninterpreted metaphors that do not have an allegorical or literal meaning. Parables are puzzles that point to a truth but do not give it away. You have to work for them, and even after you think you have figured them out, there is still more to be discovered. That is why Jesus says that it is important for his followers to look and see but not perceive, and that they listen and hear but not understand. It is not that Jesus wants to confuse us. But He wants us to realize that if we think we understand God, we are not understanding Him. For God is not like a sudoku puzzle or a rubik's cube, He is not something that we can solve and be done with. No, God because He is shrouded in mystery is always able to stretch our minds even further. Like a parable, there are an infinite number of ways to try to understand Him.

This does not mean that our search for God is hopeless. No, the life of St. Thomas Aquinas, perhaps the greatest Church theologian ever, shows how exciting it can be to develop our minds so that we can say something excellent about who God is. Nobody gets excited when we learn about the obvious, but when we strive to stretch our minds to understand things that at first seem impossible to understand, then we are doing something exciting. We are stretching the capacity of human reason. St. Thomas Aquinas did this in a beautiful way, and was able to penetrate the mysteries of God with great clarity. The great result of his intellectual search for God, however, was that he realized that God was still so far beyond him. This did not lead St. Thomas to despair, however, but made him more prayerful and ready for Christ to come and dwell within his heart. St. Thomas had a great mind, to be sure, and wrote incredible things, but even more importantly, He allowed Christ Jesus to write on his heart. +m

Viva Miege!

Had a great time today visiting Bishop Miege high school during Catholic schools week and giving a homily today. Of course it was about vocations and prayer. After the Mass, Fr. Greg Hammes, their chaplain, led the Miege students in a short time of adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. This is the first time any kind of silent adoration has been done with such a large group at Miege in a number of years. It went great! Tomorrow I'm headed for the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas to my old stomping grounds, STA high school in Overland Park! Archbishop Naumann will be there to preside and give the homily. Looking forward to seeing all the saints! Although these two schools are great rivals, and really don't like each other, I have great affection for them both!

Homily for Monday of the 3rd Week in Ordinary Time

For daily readings, click here.

Before there was a Bible, there was a Church. Yes, even a church with presbyters. Our reading from Titus, a very early letter from St. Paul instructing Titus to appoint presbyters, or priests, testifies to this fact. From the earliest days of the Church, there was the reading of scripture and the presence of priests who both proclaimed the word, broke the bread just as Jesus had asked his disciples to do, and who worked to build the family of the new Church. There is no shame in our being the institutional Church. Paul, the great apostle, worked hard to build a family with structure that could sustain itself and be effective in proclaiming the Gospel.

The unforgivable sin described by Jesus is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Obviously, we lead others away from God by our sinful actions, but according to the words of the Gospel, such sins are forgivable. It is forgivable for us to tell our fellow Christians - do as I say, not as I do. What is not forgivable, however, is deliberately telling people that they cannot believe in God. Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, who directs people toward truth and the knowledge of God, is deliberately leading someone away from faith that God is real, that He is love, that He is omnipotent, and that He is with us. Jesus came to reveal these eternal truths about God in the most humble and intimate of ways. To characterize Jesus as a master of deceit, as the scribes do in today's Gospel, is blasphemy against the one sent from God to give His life to reveal the truth of who God really is.