Homily for Friday of the 5th Week of Lent

Daily readings here.

Pope Benedict, in sharing his personal reflections through his book, Jesus of Nazareth, tells of his admiration of Rabbi Jacob Neusner. Although Rabbi Neusner is not able, after trying to encounter Jesus, to believe in Him, the pope admires the rabbi's conclusion that in the Gospels, the only new thing that emerges in Jesus Himself. The rabbi while regarding Jesus as a tremendous prophet, ultimately says that Jesus carries the same message as all the prophets. The only addition is that Jesus proposes Himself as the way, the truth and the life. No one can come to the Father, except through me (Jn 14:6).
In the gospel passages from John given by the Church in these days before Palm Sunday, Jesus proposes Himself as something new. In today's Gospel, it is the claim that He is in the Father and the Father is in Him, which leads also to the conclusion that He is the Son of God. Jesus reminds his accusers that they too share in the likeness of God, who has begotten them (Ps 82:6), so they should not rush to charges of blasphemy if Jesus calls Himself the Son of God. Yet still, there is this difference between sharing in God's likeness and sharing in His very nature, as Jesus does, but Jesus' words foreshadow His new mission to bridge in His person this great divide between God and man. This is precisely what is new; through Jesus, man will receive a new destiny to share in the divine nature. This becomes the new definition of eternal life.
It is Jesus' proposing Himself that rightfully gets him killed. In these passages from John, the debate is clarified. Either Jesus is the Son of God, greater than all the prophets, or He is not. Either He brings something new, or He does not. It is here that Jesus makes His stand. "Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God." Things could not be any clearer.

Where were you four years ago?

Today makes the fourth anniversity of the death of John Paul II (or the great, if you prefer). Do you remember where you were when he died? I have had the privilege of visiting his tomb twice at St. Peter's Basilica. The Polish press has started a rumor that April 2, 2010 will be the date of his beatification, but I find this almost impossible, since that will be Good Friday next year. John Paul II, pray for us! Here is the most requested photo in the Vatican archive of John Paul II - taken in 1999.

XXX Campus Culture

When I was at KU, there was always a big debate about 'safe sex' week - that was the 1990s, when 'condom man' always made an appearance on campus and there was a perennial debate about the popularity of Dr. Dennis Daily's sexual education classes, where sexually explicit material was used. It seems now that xxx movies are being promoted as a natural and healthy part of student recreation at universities around the country. The debate is once again on as to whether xxx movies are protected by the first amendment and to whether they are an acceptable part of student life. XXX content is already allowed freely through the internet offered by public universities. Now the student government is showing xxx movies as part of student life activities. See the recent firestorm at the University of Maryland - College Park

Lots of confessions

The week before Holy Week. My friends jokingly ask me if I do phone confesssions, or more frequently online confessions. Of course they can give me an online confession. But there is no online absolution. The reasons are obvious - there is no way to guarantee who you are talking to - the identity theft reason. But also, of course, a sacrament has a physical dimension - a sight and sound and touch, and sometimes smell dimension, that cannot be reproduced online. You are to come away from the sacrament with some idea of what it may have been like to be forgiven by Jesus himself. Today he is sacramentally represented by the priest. If Jesus wanted to meet you today, would you stay in your home and try to catch him on facebook chat, or would you run out of your house to wherever he wanted to meet you - in person? That is the difference a sacrament makes.

Fr. Steve said last night at the St. Lawrence communal penance service that confession is a sacrament of joy. We say that Lent is a season of joy as well; obviously not because of its comforts, but the stripping away of sin and superficiality produces its own distinctive joy. It is a joy of purchasing something with our freedom that is more valuable than the fleeting pleasure of sin, or the fading exuberance of convenience. Oftentimes, we can emerge from the confessional with a greater joy than almost anything else gives us. We know that the momentum of sin has been broken, and we sense the new moment of grace moving us to seek and to pursue the highest things once again, without counting the cost.

As a priest, it is really a special way to go through Lent. Hearing hundreds and hundreds of confessions is a duty, no doubt, and requires perseverance. But it is not monotonous. It is not like checking people out at the grocery store. It is more like that speed dating icebreaker that young people do on bus trips, and yet you get to go infinitely deeper, because of the courage, humility and faith of people, and because the mercy of Jesus accomplishes so much!

The Royals - is anybody ready?

With the Jayhawks out a little earlier this year in the tournament, we do not have an overlap of the KU National Championship and Opening Day for the Royals. Yet I have heard very little chatter about the Royals. Yes, I know, they have been pathetic for the last 24 years, but still, with the new K and a promising spring, there is no reason not to get excited for the Royals home opener which is a week from tomorrow. April 6th, 1pm - against the Chicago White Sox - where will you be? Well, of course, no one has to seriously start caring about the Royals until April 13th, after Easter. Holy Week is no time to start a baseball season; neither is 3pm on Good Friday a good time for the Royals to throw out their first pitch. Can you imagine hot dogs and beer and play ball at the very hour we commemorate the Lord's death? Of course I am out for Opening Day this year. Instead, I will be on the KU campus for our living stations. But I'm confident the Boys in Blue will be in the hunt this year. Stay tuned!

Year of the Priest coming up!

Pope Benedict XVI has named the upcoming year the Year of the Priest. The holy year will run from June 19, 2009 to June 19, 2010, beginning and ending on the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This is appropriate since the distinguishing virtue of a priest is pastoral charity! I am looking forward to the Pope's reflections on how the priesthood can be renewed. The pope has hinted that he wants priests to recommit themselves to spiritual perfection. He has put the year under the patronage of St. John Vianney, the Cure of Ars, who is already the patron of parish priests but whom the Pope intends to make the patron of all the world's priests. Among other things, I think the Pope will challenge priests to have an even stronger identifiable character through which they can bear greater witness. The Pope had this to say regarding how priests present themselves: "Priests must also be "present, identifiable and recognizable -- for their judgment of faith, their personal virtues and their attire -- in the fields
of culture and charity which have always been at the heart of the church's
mission," he said. This holy year will commence about the time the holy year of St. Paul will end, and will be a great transition for vocational ministry. Thank you, Holy Father! St. John Vianney, pray for us!

Homily for 5th Sunday of Lent

Now is the time. My hour is here. These are words that bring both excitement and dread, for Jesus, as we hear, and for us. We understand this physiologically as an adrenaline rush. The time fight or to flee. The moment we have been preparing for and waiting for, but aren't quite yet ready for.

Sometimes life changes in an instant, unexpectedly. As I was driving guys to Conception Seminary College yesterday during the worst of the snowstorm, I saw people going off the road and spinning and crashing. Talk about an adrenaline rush. For me who was watching this, adrenaline turned into a quick Hail Mary for their safety. For them, some other choice words may have come out before they screamed or yelled 'O my God!' I had coffee this morning with a young man who has been told he needs brain surgery to correct a tumor. Life is changing for him rapidly. Too fast, actually. Sometimes life changes in an instant, unexpectedly.

Other times, life meanders on. We get depressed with our normal routine. We long for something extreme, even as we are afraid of such things. At the very least, we long for meaning in our lives, and for the chance to give our lives to something beyond us. We want to live lives that matter, and we want to matter to someone. We want to live lives that bear fruit that will last longer than we will. We want to find something worth dying for, and if we don't, we depress ourselves by settling for small pleasure after small pleasure that never finally satisfy.

Jesus names this desire of the human person to give perfectly of Himself. To love perfectly. Without an opportunity to love perfectly, to die to self, to find something worth dying for, the human person collapses in on himself. He remains adolescent, complaining when things do not go his way or when his comfort is compromised. We see this unhappiness in ourselves and in others. We experience many great things in life. We pursue many things. Yet none of it adds up to perfect satisfaction. Our greatest desire is exactly what Jesus says it is. We want to die to ourselves. That is the only way to be free. We can spend a lifetime trying to satisfy as many of the millions of desires that we have as we can. Yet there still remains that deepest desire. We want to make a perfect gift of ourselves to something. We want to love perfectly. Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat. Yet if it dies, it bears much fruit.

When the Greeks who had come to worship at the Passover asked to see Jesus, it was the sign He was waiting for. I do not know why this was the sign that Jesus needed, I only know that it was. He says, 'The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.' We can be sure that Jesus had been preparing for this hour for many years, and He was still troubled. We can never know how we will react when our hour comes. We can be sure that we will be troubled, for God who loves us and calls us to love, will ask us to make a perfect gift of ourselves, and this will not be easy. It will take perfect trust in God, and this is the hardest thing any of us has to do. It is hard to trust God, because He asks in faith to give more than we can ever be ready to give.

There are billboards running on buses in Canada that say, 'There probably isn't a God. So quit worrying and get on with your life.' Clever billboards. They remind us not to believe in a God of mythology or to be adolescent in our faith. They remind us not to serve God simply because we are His slaves, who fear punishment from our master. But as far as getting on with our lives, what can these billboards mean? Certainly the billboards are promising a life free of worry. But they are not promising anything close to what Jesus is promising. Jesus promises that whoever finds something worth dying for, and whoever gives his life perfectly, will bear abundant fruit. This is obviously a much greater promise that don't worry, be happy!

Next Sunday we will enter into Holy Week. We will gather to announce that the most important hour in the history of the world, the hour of Jesus passion, death and resurrection, is an hour that can come forward and encompass the present hour. We can insert our lives within the paschal mystery of Jesus Christ, and in so doing, our lives can once again be filled with that adrenaline rush of believing that now is the time when we are called to die to ourselves, and to love perfectly, as Christ has first loved us!