Homily

Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Jesus Christ

26 June 2011

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

Daily Readings

The grace present in a single Eucharist received by one person is enough to save the entire universe. This is true. It might be hard to believe, given that billions of Eucharists celebrated and received across the world for centuries, are easy enough to ignore. The grace of a single Eucharist is enough to save the world, and the grace of the Eucharist has indeed saved the world already, although the world does not fully know it. Which makes it all the more amazing that I can receive the Eucharist today doubting that I will change very much. I may receive the Eucharist a thousand times or more across the span of my life, and not change very much, at least as far as I can tell.

Part of this is Jesus' fault, of course. He does not force our conversion. Just as the Lord did not force the conversion of the Israelites, who like us were more afraid of conversion than slavery, so too Jesus did not force the faith of the Jews who were skeptical of his claim to give his flesh as real food. At least the Jews were honest, saying they did not believe what Jesus was saying, and realizing that to accept Jesus' words is to accept what the Cure of Ars said about the Eucharist - that if I realized what was really present in the Eucharist, I would die. The Jews, like us were not ready quite yet for this vertical unmeasured life that lies on the other side of death. They realized maybe better than us sometimes that Jesus is either crazy or the way, the truth and the life. They found no middle ground in his words like we do. To receive the bread of which Jesus spoke was to enter into a new faith, and profound conversion. The Jews who first rejected the Eucharist were more honest that we who receive the Lord without much hope of changing. Jesus allows this of course, hiding himself perfectly in a sacrament so ordinary, begging for our faith, allowing Himself to be ignored virtually every time, while never ceasing to believe that in this Eucharist right now a saint can be born, a beyond all odds at this moment a unity in love might be achieved that produces the extraordinary gift of eternal life. If there is one chance in a million, one chance in a hundred billion, that today's Eucharist will produce a saint, Jesus will allow Himself to be spent completely and made present perfectly - body, blood, soul and divinity - by the words of an ordinary priest.

In one sense, 75% of Catholics not receiving the Eucharist regularly is honest, for who of us receives the Eucharist worthily? Yet, of course, in the more important sense, such a statistic is a great tragedy, for most people avoid the Eucharist not out of humility, but out of pride, and an unwillingness to become what we receive in the Eucharist. In rejecting the Eucharist, we pridefully reject the sacrament of unity that will remain forever the surest path to the redemption of every human heart that this world will ever know. If we can imagine a love that the greater chance it will be rejected, the more readily and humbly that love gives itself, then we have discovered the Eucharist. In the Eucharist is that same perfect love that created everything out of nothing, and the same perfect love that even more powerfully recreates a human heart and renews its desire to live in perfect love. To give up on the Eucharist, is to surely give up on ourselves and our neighbor. May we set our pride aside and admit in this Eucharist, that no matter how likely it is that I will become a saint today, still what Jesus is ready to perfectly give to me - his body, blood, soul and divinity - is what I most need to receive. Amen.

Relationship is Ultimate Reality

Homily
Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
19 June 2011
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center
Daily Readings

For God so loved the world that He sent his only Son.

On Trinity Sunday, thankfully we don't have a Gospel for our meditation that reads like a theology textbook. For simple minds like that of your preacher today, we have a simple Gospel. The mystery of the Trinity, deepest and most inaccessible mystery that it is, is known as a preacher's nightmare. What can be more remote and difficult to preach than God's most inner triune life, God who cannot be and is most definitely not a part of the world in which we live, who despite every sharing of himself, even the perfect sharing of his Son, remains in his perfections more unlike us than like us? Theologians have written volumes, and will continue to do so, regarding the possibility of this mystery, revealed to us by the coming of Jesus Christ into the world, that God is an indissoluble and eternal unity of three persons. Yet, thankfully, we don't have their textbooks, as good as they are, for our meditation this morning. Instead, we have one of the most pithy and accessible, and yes memorizable, even for a Catholic, lines in all of Scripture - God so loved the world, that he gave us his only Son.

This scripture challenges us to simplicity. For when we say that God is Trinity we say nothing greater than God is love. Which is to say more than God is a lover who does loving things. He is that, but he is more. To say God is love is to say that in his essence, God is communion. The revelation of the Trinity is a revelation that before we say things like God is almighty, that which nothing greater can be thought, not a part of the world, which adds nothing to his greatness, the only being whose essence and existence are the same, et cetera et cetera, we say that God is love. Before we consider God to be the greatest thing, we consider him to be the greatest person. Deeper to the mystery of God than being the greatest thing, is his being the greatest relationship, the deepest communion.

Our own definition of personhood, then, comes from the definition of the three persons of the Trinity. When we baptize a new baby in the Church, we know that this new being is indeed a human person not because all his potential has been realized, not for the decisions he has made, and certainly not for any kind of independence he has achieved. The poorest definition of a human person is that definition that tries to discover what a person is in isolation, before entering into relationship with others. No, our definition of person is grounded more properly in the three persons of the Trinity, who are so completely persons to each other that they are able to share one nature, in a communion of love where everything is given and received. So too our definition of a human person is greater than the definition of a human being. A human person is one who is in relationship -we become persons when someone knows us and desires us to exist. We know well that this recognition of a human person should begin at conception, but unfortunately does not always, because we focus on an arbitrary definition of a human being instead of the definition of a person. We can have a definition of a human being in isolation, but not a definition of a human person. A human person comes into existence through relationship, and this is an inheritance from being made in the image and likeness of God, who is himself a communion of persons. At a baptism, parents profess to teach their children that their ultimate identity and personhood come from God, who is able to know and to love the child in ways a parent never can, and thus is able to bestow a new kind of life, described to us by Jesus as eternal life.

All this is not to reduce the mystery of the Trinity to something we can fully understand, something simple that those who have written textbooks have missed. The Trinity remains for us the original and most inaccessible mystery, since is truly does name God's inner life, to which we would have no access were this life not revealed to us by Jesus in the mysteries of the Incarnation and our Redemption. The Trinity should always confound us, and yet with joy we know that we have not been set against this mystery, as an insolvable crossword puzzle, but invited into the heart of it, as Jesus has placed us His beloved, at the heart of this ultimate love, this ultimate relationship and community. He wants to share with us his divine life, and so in every liturgy we are invited into an intimate and full sharing in the Trinitarian mystery. The mystery hits our ears, our eyes our minds and our hearts in the sacred liturgy, and it is here where we are invited to contemplate in light of the relationship of Jesus with His Father and their Holy Spirit, the relationships that give us our personhood. Jesus says plainly that those who are not open to relationship are not open to the full discovery of their personhood, and in a way have already condemned themselves to a llife that can no way become eternal.

On this Trinity Sunday, we are reminded that before God is a thing, He is love. He is a love perfect in himself, but a love overflowing into a creation that involves you and me in the most intimate of ways.

For God so loved the world, that He sent His only Son.

Jesus is doing His works, rapture or no rapture.

Homily
5th Sunday of Easter A
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Graduation

Amen. Amen. I say to you. Whoever believes in me will do the works I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father.

Perhaps this line from Jesus is a small consolation prize for all of us who missed the rapture yesterday. The severe thunderstorm warning was not the end, at least not for us, and I'm planning on good weather today, not utter destruction, so that I can fish with my dad a little bit. But these words from today's Gospel of course are not meant to be a small consolation prize. What profound words at the end of the Gospel! Those of us who believe in Jesus will do his works, right here and right now - today! and will do greater ones than these, because He is going to the Father.

These lines from Jesus are important to my own vocation story. The opportunity to do his works, and greater ones if I might dare to believe him, helped to make the priesthood the answer to what I wanted to do with my life, and made everything else pale in comparison. To spend my life doing his works, sharing life with him, became the purpose of my life and the greatest joy of my heart.

Jesus offers in these lines a different picture than that painted by yesterdays rapture predictors, as pitiful as the prediction was. Christians are not to be selfish individualists, trying to predict that moment when God will finally put this world out of its misery and havy pity on a predestined few. No, this is a most impoverished view of Christianity. Christians instead are to be those who are doing the work of Jesus here and now, allowing Jesus, just as Jesus first allowed the Father, to be present and at work in them, with them, and through them. Without believing in Jesus' promise to come and to take us to the Father any less, nor desiring heaven, that place so beautiful that if we saw it we could never turn our gaze back to earth, any less, Christians are ready for heaven to come to earth not only in the most unpredictable of moments, but also in constant and enduring ways. More important than searching for that perfect moment when God will whisk us away to heaven, is to know that God wishes to make the present moment perfect by visiting his people and continuing his saving works in us, and with us and through us.

When those who have not yet met Jesus through the sacraments are able to laugh at Christians as superstitious and ultimately selfish, which happens whenever the rapture is falsely predicted, then the full proclamation of the Gospel suffers. God has made his dwelling place with men; this is the mystery of the Incarnation that we proclaim in all its fullness. God in becoming one of us has more reasons than anyone could count to be patient with us, as his patience is directed toward our salvation, and toward Jesus' desire to not lose one of those the Father gave Him. The prophetic urgency of the Christian then, is not only to proclaim that man is running out of time, but to proclaim with even more urgency the need to beg God for more time, so that he can continue his saving work in us, and with us and through us. This is what makes Christianity the most humanitarian of worldviews, and a faith that we must share urgently with those who have only the most superficial knowledge of the heart of Jesus Christ.

Let us be those who in addition to inviting the world to be ready for the rapture, and to trust in God not in themselves, invite those who are not yet members of the Church to become living stones in the spiritual house founded on the cornerstone who is Jesus Christ. This is the great humanitarian mission Jesus left us, while promising to work in us, with us and through us for the redemption of the entire world. Let us share the mission with joy as long as Jesus gives it to us, and let us ask Him urgently to give it to us more! and know ourselves most perfectly as a holy priesthood working together here and now as his Church, his mystical body, to build a heavenly kingdom that will not pass away.

Amen. Amen. I say to you. Whoever believe in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, for I am going to the Father.

I am the gate

Homily

4th Sunday of Easter

Good Shepherd Sunday and the World Day of Prayer for Vocations

15 May 2011

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center

Daily Readings

Amen, Amen I say to you. I am the gate for the sheep.

I am the gate for the sheep. We more familiarly know Jesus to be the good shepherd, and indeed he is. But in today's passage he repeats twice with emphasis that he is the gate. Anyone who does not use the gate, but climbs over the fence, is a thief and a robber.

Those who are called on this World Day of Prayer for Vocations to help Jesus shepherd his flock, especially those priests who long one day to be called a pastor, one who gathers God's family together, must pass through the gate that is Jesus. Jesus promised to be with his Church most perfectly through the gift of the Eucharist, so the Eucharist can be considered the gate through which a priest must come and go. A priest can be simply defined as a man who is always either celebrating the Eucharist or bringing people to the Eucharist. If this is true of a priest, then his vocation is authentic. He is a good shepherd. If this is not true, he is a thief and a robber.

The Eucharist is the gate through which every Catholic Christian comes and goes. To be sure, through the action of the Holy Spirit each one of us has a radically unique relationship with Jesus, which means that each of us is called by him to a vocation that is ours and no one else's. Yet to make sure that we are following Jesus' voice and not our own voice, we must follow him together. The Eucharist is the gate through which we come and go. The less our vocation is filtered through the gate of the Eucharist, the greater the chance that we are being led by thieves and robbers.

Whatever we feel called to do in life, must make sense in relation to Jesus' voice as we hear it at Mass, where the good shepherd is always giving his life for the sheep. Whatever I have decided to do with my life, must be able to be confirmed and deepened by Jesus' voice as we hear it at the consecration - this is my body, broken for you. This is my blood poured out for you.

It is often said that the moment after receiving the Eucharist is the best moment for discerning one's vocation. For it is at this moment that we are most inclined to hear Jesus' voice not with fear - not as do this because I told you so, or do that, or else - but with trust. We fear Jesus' voice when our pride tells us that Jesus cannot know us as well as we know ourselves, when our selfishness tells us that it would be foolish to turn any decisions over to him. We trust Jesus' voice when we realize he only desires to free us to be what we have always wanted to be, and to live a life of love that is measured by the beauty of his glorious cross. May Jesus then, fully present in the Eucharist, be the gate by which we come and go through life, and arrive at the true discernment of the vocation he has given to us, and to no one else.

Amen, Amen I say to you. I am the gate for the sheep.

Mary, teach us how to go to Mass

Homily
3rd Sunday of Easter
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
8 May 2011
Daily Readings



The paschal victory of Christ which we celebrate during this long Easter season is a victory for yesterday, today and forever. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. He is for us a past, a present and a future. He is doing right now what he did yesterday, and what he will do tomorrow. The disciples on the road to Emmaus, in the aftershock of the paschal events, obviously needed a visit from the master to understand this new mixing of time.

The paschal event is the hour of history meant to contain all other hours, including the present moment. Jesus' suffering death and resurrection if it is be the hour of the world's redemption, must be an ever present hour, an hour that never fades as the clock of history keeps ticking. It must be an event that happened in real historical time but yet an event that never ends nor fades from memory like other events do. If this were not true, our doing this Eucharist in memory of the paschal event would be a futile exercise indeed, for none of us historically were there. The power of our memory is not what makes Jesus present right now. If the disciples who were the first to hear of the Resurrection were headed west instead of east just hours after these things had come to pass, what power could our distant memory of these events have to get us moving in the right direction?

The paschal events thus must themselves have the power to come forward in history, or they cannot accomplish what we need them to. This of course is the lesson of Emmaus. Before Emmaus, the empty tomb was confusing to the disciples. They did not know what to do. After Emmaus, confusion gives way to excitement that Jesus Christ is truly Risen, which means he is eager to visit his disciples. Being a Christian, then, cannot be a figuring out on our part what to do in response to a past event; no, it is an excitement of being visited by One who wishes to live his paschal events anew in us, and with us and through us.

We receive the Eucharist, then on Mother's Day, and we rejoice rightly now with Mary, mother of the Eucharist. For unlike the disciples on the road to Emmaus, our mother Mary was, is and will always be excited to show us how to be visited by Jesus. After someone in the crowd shouted 'Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that nursed you' Jesus gave his mother higher praise by saying 'Rather, blessed is the one who hears the word of God and observes it.' Jesus then teaches us how to honor all of our mothers, of course by praying for them and their vocation, of course by remembering to thank them for the irreplaceable and irreducible love that they have shown us, but most of all, by asking Mary the spiritual mother of us all to lead us in a fruitful reception this Sunday of the Holy Eucharist. What better thing could we do for our mothers than to receive the Eucharist with the same burning hearts of those first disciples? Mary, the pattern and perfection of motherhood, and of every Christian, always corrects those of us who might come to Mass proudly as one of the many things we need to do, toward her humble excitement that Jesus will acoomplish more in us, with us, and through us, that we could possibly hope for or imagine, if only we allow it to be done to us according to His word. May all mothers be blessed by Mary today, and like her help us to trust in God, and to remain with her on that beautiful path of suffering love that begets life that is stronger than death. Amen.

Mercy begets eternal life!

Homily

Divine Mercy Sunday

1 May 2011

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

Daily Readings

+ Beatification of John Paul II, Pope

Give thanks to the Lord for he is good, his mercy endures forever.

John Paul II gave us the 2nd Sunday of Easter to be Divine Mercy Sunday. As we remember well on this day when the church confirms his sanctity through his beatification, John Paul desired to witness to the very end of his life his confidence in God's mercy, allowing millions to keep vigil with him until his death in 2005 on the eve of this great feast of divine mercy that he gave us.

By 2030 it is projected that there will be as many agnostics in the United States as Catholics. The proclamation of the Resurrection fails to win every heart and mind today, far from it. When I hear the story of the doubting Thomas, it first occurs to me that now is the time to get defensive, and to make a vigorous apologetic for the truth of the Resurrection of Jesus, using Thomas as an example of the rampant skepticism and individualism that plagues modern man.

Yet John Paul II forever took this 2nd Sunday of Easter in a different direction. Meditating on the sacred heart of Jesus, he realized that Jesus never became defensive. He responded to doubt with greater trust in people's faith, to sin with greater mercy. Living in the modern age which can easily find more and more reasons to doubt the Resurrection, John Paul II fought back not simply with better arguments, but with a better proclamation of the Lord's mercy that goes beyond human logic and control. John Paul II knew that the truth of the Resurrection could only flourish if man is capable of meditating on a mercy that is man's origin, his constant calling, and his perfection in heaven.

Indeed, it is our poverty in meditating upon God's mercy, and in allowing God's oceans of mercy to wash over us and make us new, that makes the Easter proclamation of the truth of Jesus' Resurrection limp, and be so easily ignored. Archbishop Emeritus Keleher told his priests constantly, that no matter how much you tell people God loves them, they still don't believe it, so you can never stop telling them that God's mercy endures forever. So too, John Paul II has give us this feast of Divine Mercy, which is key to the Easter proclamation of the Church to the world.

We have to escape the poverty of calculating the minimum amount of God's mercy we need to bail us out of jail and to squeak into heaven. Thinking this way is why Catholics love Lent and are lost during Easter. We think of Lent as work and Easter as vacation, when in reality Lent is merely a warm-up for the great work of Easter, when oceans of God's mercy are unleashed through the Paschal mystery upon the world for its redemption, and you and I are personally sent out to be witnesses of a divine mercy that is redeeming the world beautifully from the inside out, beginning with our own hearts.

We are all guilty of minimizing the effects of the divine mercy. God's mercy does bail us out, to be sure, but we must know mercy to be God's deepest attribute, the best definition of who God really is, and what he wanted to reveal about himself through the gift of Jesus. St. Thomas Aquinas steers us away from superficiality by saying that 'mercy consists in bringing a thing out of non-being into being.' When we think of mercy then, we should think of big things. Not just bailout money, but the creating of everything from nothing at the beginning, and the redemption of everything right now beginning from the nothingness of the cross. We Christians rejoice that we are awash in an ocean of mercy that has revealed itself the conquerer of sin and death, and we live a life right now that is no longer measured horizontally by a clock, but vertically by the depth of God's love for us.

The Church's proclamation of the truth of the Resurrection is built on a rock-solid foundation, and it is not going away. Yet when when modern man is convinced that he can find more reasons to doubt than to have faith, John Paul II proposed not just more arguing, but reminded us that the Church must wash herself anew in the ocean of divine mercy. For in the wounds of Jesus are the best answers for those who might doubt him. A question remains to be answered by anyone who might meet Jesus Christ: who can say no to this man who responds to doubt by allowing himself to be wounded and doubted all the more?

God will always allow himself to be doubted, for in his divine mercy he has freely chosen to always trust us more and to love us more. We even hear it said that it is absurd to believe in a God who would allow anyone, but especially his own Son, to be tortured. Yet what kind of a project is it to disbelieve God only because we cannot reduce him to our own expectations and judgments? If we had recourse to a divine mercy that only met a standard agreed upon from below, how could we ever hope in a more profound life that eye has not seen, or ear has not heard, nor has it so much as dawned upon the mind of man, what God has in store for those who love him? Let us instead praise God who thankfully surpasses our understanding, for if we only worshipped a God whom we could reduce to our own expecations, we would be doomed to worshipping ourselves.

Let us proclaim today with our late Holy Father, on the glorious day of his beatification, that the work of divine mercy in all its fullness is an Easter mystery, and belongs forever to the Easter proclamation of our Church! May we begin to know the divine mercy, and its power to recreate the world, as John Paul II knew this divine mercy. Let us rejoice that this divine mercy redeems the hearts and minds of man today, and has given us the holiness of John Paul II to inspire us. Blessed John Paul II, pray for us who now have recourse to thee, as the newest blessed of our Church!

With Blessed John Paul II, let us give thanks to the Lord, for he is good! For his mercy endures forever! Amen. Alleluia!

we zig, he zags

Homily
Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord's Supper
21 April 2011
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings


Whenever we zig, Jesus zags. Whenever we go away from Jesus, he goes toward us and ahead of us. If we think we have begun to plumb the depths of the Lord's humility, then we have not even begun to know our Lord, and we will have no inheritance with him.

The instant we first used our freedom for evil, when our Lord still remained far away in heaven, Jesus responded by trusting us more, not less. The no of the garden made Jesus yearn for the yes of the annunciation. Whenever we zig, he zags. Whenever we love him less, he loves us more.

The incarnation was a long way for Jesus to go, an unbelievably amazing condescension from our Lord, a move to counter our going away from him by moving toward us in our very nature. Yet Jesus' journey from heaven to Mary's womb was only the beginning. Tonight we celebrate that Jesus allows himself to be moved just the same, and be made present in time and space and matter over and over again, not only by the yes of sinless Mary, but by words spoken by sinful priests. When Jesus instituted this sacrament, and then trod the rode to Calvary, he knew precisely what he was doing. Tonight, he lets himself be moved just as surely, by the liturgy of a Church that cannot really know what she is doing. The distance from heaven to Mary's womb is bigger than the span of the entire universe. The distance from Mary's womb to the tabernacle is perhaps even farther, and the institution fo the Eucharist perhaps an even more amazing condescension from Jesus. And still, Jesus is just getting started on his journey. He still has only begun to form his mystical body, the Church.

It is in the formation of his mystical body that Jesus really zigs when we zag. Our precious Lord never stops being more willing to hand himself over to his enemies, so could it be that he is more ready to ride into the evil of my heart right now, than he was ready to enter into his passion for the first time? It is within the mystical body that Jesus at this moment perhaps goes farther than he did entering Mary's womb or assuming the silence of the tabernacle.

Who do you say that I am? 'I don't know' is my default response. Yet, instead of being disappointed in my answer, Jesus decides to trust my faith even more. He gives Thomas a sign so that the Church's faith would never completely fail, but more often Jesus hides himself. When we doubt, he trusts us more, and hides himself trying to draw out the most perfect faith from us. Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed are his words to us. When we doubt him, he yearns for our faith all the more.

When his disciples scattered, Jesus went ahead of them to Galilee. Whenever we go away from Jesus, he goes before us. The more places we find to hide, the more places he appears. So every step of our lives, whether good or evil, he can transform into a step toward him. The extension of the Eucharist around the world is the physical sign of a spiritual reality, spoken of by the psalmist: Where can I go from your love? If I climb the heavens you are there. If I go down to Hell, you are there. If I take the wings of the dawn, and fly to the sea's furthest end, still you are there.

Even if in my pride I refuse to be a part of God's life, he stands ready and small enough to enter under my roof, no matter how worthy I am to receive him. When I spit in his face, he leaves 99 people who are not spitting at him to give me 100X his mercy and attention. When I zig, he zags. He loves sinners so much, that to know ourselves as anything but sinners costs us our relationship with our Savior who loves us precisely where no one else can. For he says plainly that people who are well do not need a doctor. Sick people do.

When my schedule is busy, Jesus waits for me never tempted to look at a watch for he does not wear one. When I am in a hurry, he is more patient. When I zig, he zags. He'll take whatever smallest part of a second I might give him, no matter how pitiable the sacrifice. Just so, the holy hour of his life, suffering, death and resurrection is forever patient, always present in the mystery of His Eucharist, and is waiting to enter into the smallest second of my life, so that I too may enter into eternity in Him, with Him and through Him.

Still, after all of this, Jesus in traveling far in the Incarnation, perhaps even farther in the Eucharist, and maybe farthest of all healing the wounds within his mystical body, does not take away the possibility of my ignoring him. No, he only serves our freedom, only becomes smaller and smaller and makes it more possible for us to reject him. A bruised reed will will not break, a smoldering wick he will not quench. He only makes it more easy for us to take him for granted, especially in the sacrament of the Eucharist.

Even given how far he has traveled, and how I struggle to take a single step toward him in return, still it is more possible than ever for me to think that what I am doing at this moment is more important than what he is doing. Even knowing Mary to be the greatest, and my pattern of holiness, my project remains superior to letting it be done to me according to His word. Peter's words are really mine. Lord, you will never wash my feet. Our pride desperately hangs on, wanting to have the authority to tell Jesus he has done enough already, and to give him our permission to stop serving our faith, our hope and our love. If we are still stuck there, Jesus reminds us that we do not know who he is, and we will have no inheritance with him. Let tonight, then, be the night when I permit him to wash my feet.