What's my wooden beam?

Homily

8th Sunday in Ordinary Time C

27 February 2022

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

What's my wooden beam?

That's easy! Can I name more than one?

Jesus does me the favor again in today's Gospel of reminding me that I am a hypocrite.  The problem is never ultimately that I have a wooden beam in my eye, but when I think I don't.  

So what's mine?  I don't know if these are the biggest, but it's easy to think of three.  I don't ask for help.  I don't know how to say no.  I'm addicted to being alone

Whenever from my heart I say I got this, I can handle more, or leave me alone, I'm speaking from a store of evil, which is to say I am drawing from a store of fear and pain.  These things never inspire people, but always set a bad example.  

What sets a good example/  What teaches well?  Courage, vulnerability and generosity always sell.  Yet I prefer to pretend to know more than I know and be better than I am.  

My one job right now is to connect the truth and grace of our Catholic faith to college students, that they might be free to truly live.  I have no clue how to do that.  The more I learn, the less I know and the more confused I get.  People are mysteries to be encountered, not puzzles to be solved.  I am a shepherd not a surgeon.  I'm a dad, and dads don't know how to control the behavior of their kids.  I spent 4 hours in a friend group Friday night, a group of parents of kids ages 5 to 16.  Four hours wasn't even good enough for a warmup of discussing how to parent.  Nobody has it all together or all figured out.

When it comes to the mystery of life, what's most important is not that I fake it well, but that I live with courage, vulnerability and generosity.  Those who pretend they don't need a teacher, much less a Savior, aren't helping anybody.  They are the blind leading the blind, out of a store of evil.

What's the work of me removing the wooden beam?  I need to ask how I can get better, and stop being afraid of letting go of things.  It's also letting people into my mess, for when I hide it, it never gets better.

I have my work cut out for me.  So do we all.

What's your wooden beam?

will I be faithful?

Homily

Wedding of Paul Feighner and Laila Carter

26 February 2022

Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Kansas City, MO

AMDG

Will I be faithful?

The fate of the world depends on this question.  So history will turn on your answer today, Paul and Laila.  It's not my aim to scare you, nor to drench your wedding in hyperbole.  Yet woe to me if I hide the truth that your answer means everything.

Weddings mean everything.  You don't have to take just my word for it.  Mary told Jesus to get involved at Cana.  Did he ever, making 180 gallons of the best wine!  Why?  Cause this moment matters!

It's your turn, Paul and Laila, to bet it all and to answer the question on which the world turns - will I be faithful?

In the cross of Jesus Christ God has answered for his part.  It's there that Jesus reveals fully what marriage really is.  I give you everything I am, no matter what, even unto death.  Jesus plays for keeps, holding nothing back.  It's here for all to see and to truth.  You get married before this sign, Paul and Laila.  By coming here, you confess you are playing for keeps.  Nothing could matter more.

Praise God for you two, that you have the capacity mediated through the faith of your family and friends, to receive this question from God in the call to marriage, and even more, to answer it!  I can't wait to receive your answer.  I need it to believe.  So does everyone here, to a person.  What is more, the world desperately needs your answer now, more than ever.

Again, I'm not trying to frighten you.  Yet neither should we hide from the grace gifted to you in marriage, which is about to transform you through your vows into a new reality, no longer two but one flesh.  Let's not run from this moment, for your yes is nothing less than a participation in the answer of Jesus that makes all things new from the inside out.  There couldn't possibly be anything more intimate, or more powerful, than your answer to the question which you join to His answer - will I be faithful?

The horrific evil in the streets of Kiyv today is born from unfaithfulness.  Evil appears when people are scared, not knowing who will be faithful to them.  It turns us into monsters, capable of the worse divorces, of taking life rather than giving it.

In promising faithfulness to each other, Paul and Laila, you create new life!  Your answer allows God to renew and heal this world through you.  I praise God for you, that you have the call and capacity to dare an answer that is so needed.

What I know is that nothing could matter more.

Now is your time to answer - will I be faithful?

Do I desire poverty or death?

Homily

Thursday of the 7th Week in Ordinary Time C2

24 February 2022

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

Do I desire poverty or death?

These are the only two choices today's Scriptures give me.  So what do I choose?

St. James writes that to choose riches you have to have ignored love of the poor, which alone is the ground of true life.  Jesus says the most powerful example we will ever set for others is what we say no to, choosing poverty.  Woe to me if I think I am the exception to this rule, and lead others astray.

It's poverty or death.  I only get to choose one.  If I'm grasping I must cut off my hands.  If I am going at it solo, I must chop off my feet.  If I am lustful, I must pluck out my eye.

All others paths to life are false promises and dead ends.

So which is it, poverty or death?

Who lives rent-free in my mind?

Homily

Wednesday of the 7th Sunday in Ordinary Time C2

23 February 2022

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

Who lives rent-free in my mind?

Jesus tells his disciples to stop obsessing about what others are doing.  Mind your own business.  Quit comparing and measuring.  Assume the best in others.  

Petty jealousies and turf wars are the schemes of losers.  Jesus needs workers in his vineyard who are focused not on others, but the mission of mercy entrusted to them.

Is there anyone that should no longer live rent-free in my mind?

Where is Peter?

Homily

Tuesday of the 7th Week in Ordinary Time C2

22 February 2022

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

Where is Peter?

What is the most important pivotal question of all time?  That would be a fun exercise.  We know the greatest commandments. What is the greatest question?  What is love?  What is truth?  There are plenty of good candidates.

Who is Jesus?  An argument can and has been made that the world turns most dramatically on this question alone.  It's the question of today's Gospel.  It's the question answered only by Peter.

In the tradition of the Church, to ask Who is Jesus is identical with the question where is Peter?  The truth of who Jesus is resides of course in the entire faith of His body, the Church.  Yet this truth is most particular, personified in the rock that is Peter, to whom is given the precise keys of authority by the Lord Himself.  

As this authority is meant to set persons like us free for relationships in truth, it is neither an accident nor a surprise that Jesus would entrust the answer of who He is to a single person.  

Despite every scandal and evil that has befallen the Church, the charism of Peter's confession remains unrivaled in history.  The answer to the greatest pivotal question of all time - who is Jesus? - an answer shared by all the faithful through their bishops, remains embodied and articulated by the pope.  Just as Jesus says it would.

That's why we pray for our Pope.  For we are part of this charism too, supporting his faith that cannot fail.

Thank God we know the answer to the question - where is Peter?

+mj  

Who do I need to forgive?

Homily

7th Sunday in Ordinary Time C

20 February 2022

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

Who do I need to forgive?

Note that there is no option in this week's pivotal question, nor in the Gospel.  There is only am imperative.  Forgive, baby, forgive! The question is not should I?  It's who.  Jesus always speaks with great clarity, cutting me to the heart.  Today's revelation is this.  Mercy is at the heart of God.  It alone is the ground of reality.  If you want to live, you have to forgive.

This week's question is the easiest to answer, and the hardest to do.  Who do I need to forgive?  That's easy!  It's me.  I need to forgive myself.  To a person here today, we are all too hard on ourselves. Does that sound like weak sauce to you?  I promise you it's not.  It's as hard as anything you'll ever attempt to do - to forgive yourself.

I am my own worst enemy.  I always have been, and probably always will be.  I'm a fool to ignore this.  What do I know first and best about myself?  That I'm not good enough.  When Jesus says love your enemies, it starts and ends with me. Forgiving any other enemy is easy in comparison.

At the present moment, I have lost touch with how much God wants to forgive me.  Yet it's Jesus' favorite thing to do - by far!  He is desperately thirsting to forgive right now those who will never pay him back. That's me, and that's you.

St. John Vianney put it even better than Jesus.  Can I get away with saying that?  SJV says it better than the psalmist, who sings God's desire to forgive me spans as far as the east is from the west.  SJV puts it this way.  God forgets how I will hurt him tomorrow so he can forgive me today.  Woof.

I try to get this across in the confessional.  You are God's favorite person right now, for you give Him a chance to reveal how He really feels about you.  You give Him the chance to reveal all His love, by forgiving you at the place where you will not pay him back.  

Yet I never trust this for myself.  It might be true for others, but not me.  That's God's truth, not mine.  I know God instead by how much I deserve His mercy.  I have calculated it with the greatest precision.  Yet the measurement is the thing I'm most wrong about.

His truth is how He feels about me.  Mine is that I am not worth it.  Which makes me the enemy of God, and just as bad, the enemy of myself.

It's the scariest thing not to be able to control how someone feels about you.  Sin is trying to control in response to a fear rooted in hurt.  Jesus sees this in me, and says Father forgive them, they know not what they do.  Sin is about control, but did you notice in today's Gospel there is zero control?  Today's Gospel is again completely off the rails, defying all calculations.  Which is precisely the point.  If I ever stopped calculating what I'm worth, stopped trying to control how God feels about me, I wouldn't give a flip every again about measuring anyone else.

The key is me.  Who do I need to forgive.  I need to forgive myself. 

how's my tongue?

Homily

Saturday of the 6th Week in Ordinary Time

+BVM

19 February 2022

St. Lawrence Catholic Center at the University of Kansas (Koinonia retreat)

AMDG 

How's my tongue?

Catholics pay attention to body parts.  This is my body, given for you, says Jesus.  Catholicism will always be a full-contact sport, an engagement of the complete person, soul and body, and all the senses.  Note how many times Jesus talks about eyes and ears and such.

St. Paul famously says that no part of the body can belittle another part.  If the parts of the body could talk, not one part can say to another 'I don't need you.'

Today, however, St. James highlights a part, the tongue.  So much of life is changed through the tongue.  

Peter blurts out nonsense today out of fear of the Transfiguration.  It's a reminder to us to use our eyes and ears and tongue in proper proportion.  When I don't know what to say, I should say that and no more.

So, how's my tongue?

+mj