Is the world going to hell?

Homily

15th Sunday in Ordinary Time B2

14 July 2024

St. Ann Catholic Church

AMDG

Is the world going to hell?  Of course it is.  It has been for a long time.  It will continue to go that way.

You think an assassination attempt on the President is the sure tale sign that we have lost our way?  I'm sorry to say we lost our way a long time ago,  History is repeating itself.  We are reaping what we have sown for a long time.  And there's more to come.  A lot more.  I wish I didn't believe that.  But it's real.  Now is not the time to pretend we are all safe, and to play nice. There are evils that need to be defeated. Many of them!  And we are the ones who have to do the work.  Nobody is immune from the evils that are upon us.

Violence and killing are cries for help from a people who are lost, scared, alone, unhealthy, despairing, and in terrible pain.  This is the reality we have all created because we have divorced truth and love, justice and peace.  Worse yet, we have divorced our covenant with God and each other. We reap what we sow.  We don't deserve better than what we have, and it does no good to complain about what others aren't doing.

Jesus trusts His disciples to go out and defeat many evils.  For their own good, he makes them the solution, and he tells them how to do it. He gives them no economic, political or legal solutions.  Go out and tell people to repent of the ways we have divorced God and each other, and to return to faithfulness.  Go, and take only the things that will keep you moving, and nothing that will slow you down or distract you.

Sorry if that's not a nice, safe homily from the new shepherd from Hoxie, Kansas.  It's the same message Amos, the farmer from Judah, had to deliver to the self-absorbed city folks in Bethel.  It's not fun to hear.  It's not fun to say.  But prophecy has to always sting if it's going to do any good.

Am I the reason the world is going to hell?  Of course I am!  Yes, always!  The most urgent thing needed in the world right now is my repentance, and my own commitment to defeating evil by giving life, and not taking it!  

St. Paul teaches of this destiny and dignity we all have in Christ.  We are to pass away to this world that is going to hell, and pass over through Christ, and His passion and paschal mystery, into a new creation, the kingdom of heaven.  Fulfilling this destiny is so simple!  I defeat evil by suffering and dying with Him, and God will use this sacrifice to transform reality into something new, something other than the hell we are living in!

Go!  The first apostles defeated many evils, and became salt and light, simply by realizing that the greatest evils in the world are not political, they are spiritual and moral.  These evils are overcome by faithfulness to God and each other.  

Will you be tenacious?

Homily

Nuptial Mass for McKenna Reilly and Jacob Herbek

6 July 2024

Saturday of the 13th Week in Ordinary Time

+Maria Goretti

Cathedral of St. Mary, Grand Island, NE

AMDG

Will you come to Grand Island and marry Jacob and me?  Well, Kena, I've never been to Grand Island, but I'm from a farm, so how far and how foreign could it be?  As long as I get a steak, I'll be fine!  And I'll drive anywhere for a Jayhawk!

It's true there's no place I'd rather be, even if my car gets hailed on tonight during an epic Nebraskan thunderstorm.  Nothing changes the world for the better more than a holy marriage, and there is nothing more important than two people giving their lives completely away in faith, with a love strong as death.  Nothing bring more life or hope into the world, than what you're about to do, so of course I'll be here.  I'd love to be here.  Besides, who wouldn't want to visit an Island in the middle of Nebraska?  Where is it again, by the way?

Being from a farm community myself, I get why you wanted to be married here.  This is where people understand how things really work.  Life is received here as a gift, with a responsibility to give it away in faith and love.  It's a simple formula, but one that is increasingly misunderstood, by a world that wants the meaning of life to be relative, with the highest values being privacy and choice.  Yet there is no lasting happiness nor peace, nor fruit that comes from this worldview.  It's only when we use our freedom to choose to die and suffer for something more than ourselves, that our lives fulfill their true purpose.

My German ancestors had a simple formula that I inherited.  Put the wheat in the ground in September, then go to Church until June, then go see what God has provided.  It's not a life of privacy and control, it's a life of trust and sacrifice.  That's what you enter into today, McKenna and Jacob - this is the WAY that Jesus has invited you to live, according to His Gospel.

Congratulations to you both and everyone who has poured faith and love into you.  May the beautiful work God has begun in you, be brought to fulfillment.

Another important lesson you have learned is that love doesn't control!  I've noticed how free you both are to trust the other. Maybe that's the fruit of having known each other so long, and knowing that your friendship is a gift from God that you can put your trust in.  Jacob, most guys would freak out thinking McKenna might end up with a fancy frat boy at KU, but you knew yourself, and her, and your love for each other was worthy of trust.  So your relationship grows in love when you are free to trust each other and include other friends and experiences in your relationship. I commend you for this virtue, which I don't find in everyone.

Finally, Jacob since you're marrying a Jayhawk, you get to hear a homily that I've preached to McKenna many times.  If you're going to go for a great life, do it with tenacity.  Whether or not the Jayhawks ever play or beat the Huskers again, the mascot was created to be a ferocious and nasty bird, one capable of defending freedom and dignity at the highest level!  I don't have to tell you two that because of what you have received, you are capable of living faith with amazing courage and tenacity, and bearing fruit that gives witness to the sacrifice of Christ, and the marriage of Christ to His Church.  By getting married at Mass, you witness with the courage of martyrs that this love from the cross is the most real thing in your life, and that you beg the grace today to let this love be the origin, perfection and destiny of your marriage to each other.  On behalf of all of us, thanks for marrying each other under this sign, and playing for keeps, til death do you part. Amen.

Will I come back from the dead?

Homily

13th Sunday in Ordinary Time B2

30 June 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

Will I come back from the dead?

Now don't worry, this ultimate pivotal question from me is not a threat to come back and haunt the St. Lawrence Center like a ghost. When I am gone as Director, I'm gone, as it should be.  Most of you expect to see me at KU games going forward, and I do think there's a good chance of that for sure.  But I'm not going to haunt the Center after I'm gone.  I promise.

But will I come back from the dead?

It's actually a pivotal question for every Christian.  There is no love story that is not a come back from the dead story, for true love is strong as death, and shows itself in the face of death.  The Resurrection of Christ from the dead is the cornerstone of our faith. St. Paul says unless there is a love stronger than death, our faith is in vain, and we are absolutely wasting our time, and I need to get a real job.  

Will I come back from the dead?   That is an essential and live question for every Christian.  A woman afflicted for 12 years and a little girl 12 years old are both brought back to life by the healing touch of Jesus.  Our Gospel today, of course is good news precisely because it's a come back from the dead story. For God hates death, and does not desire the death of his beloved, but that they be touched by His mercy and grace, and brought back to life.

I wanted to serve at KU at my alma mater for 12 years.  I got 8, which is also a holy number, so I"ll take it, gratefully.   I'm a spoiled brat, so not too many people think I have ever had to come back from the dead.  But I have.  I was spiritually dead and morally bankrupt when I came to St. Lawrence in 2016.  I wasn't sure I wanted to move forward in faith, or be a good shepherd at my alma mater.  Yet the Lord in his great mercy rescued me from the pit, sending me holy people who believed I could come back. Through these people, and a thirty day silent retreat, my faith was saved, and I was healed and brought back from the dead.  I shudder to think how dead I would be now if I had quit.  But because He touched me, I can now pray and live from the heart, and I'm so grateful for everyone who has prayed for me and believed in me, and never gave up on me.  I leave this assignment the most alive I have ever been in my life, and I praise God for that, for He was the one who couldn't bear to see me die.

It's been an amazing 8 years at KU.  I've seen new life come from the death of my dear friend's wife, and from the death of Msgr. Krische last year.  I've seen the Jayhawks come back from the dead many times, most notably in the largest comeback from the dead story in NCAA Basketball history when we won the Natty in 2022.  Rock freaking Chalk!  

But most of all, I've seen many Jayhawks come back from the dead in the confessional and at Mass, and I could not be more grateful to have ministered in this way on this holy hill and in this sacred space.  Each of us has been brought back to life by the healing touch of Jesus, just like and even moreso than the faithful woman and girl we hear about in today's Gospel.  That is my story, and yours, a love story stronger than death.  Whenever we trust our Lord in faith to heal us and restore us in the sacraments, He uses faith to deliver a new and different kind of life that can no longer be touched by death.  This is our faith. This is our participation in the paschal mystery by which everything passes over from death to life.  This is life, to be touched by the source of life that is Jesus Himself, whose touch is alone stronger than death.  

We got this wrong during COVID, when we forgot that social distancing is the very definition of death, and that touching our Lord is the only sure and safe path to real life.  I hope to never get this wrong again.

Hold on to this truth, that to touch Jesus in the sacraments is to come back from the dead. Be tenacious Jayhawks, and meaner than hell in laying hold of this truth.  Know that I love you all, and will miss you very much!  Amen.

+mj

Why am I so terrified?

Homily

12th Sunday in Ordinary Time B2

23 June 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

Why am I so terrified?

Most people think I have my act together. I don't.  My least favorite question in the world is this - Father, what are you afraid of?  I want to pretend the answer is nothing.  Yet the truth is I'm afraid of almost everything - failure, intimacy, suffering, and change.  Sound familiar?  Though I want so much to be courageous, I can wake up each day full of dread, terrified of what could go wrong.

Our faith if its worth anything is the power to live courageously.  Wouldn't you love to wake up and be excited to take on life as it really is, storms and chaos and all?  Can you imagine a life when you're no longer scared, not looking for ways to escape, avoid and hide, but excited to kick tail, and defeat many evils, especially through faith?  This is how you're made to truly live.

St. Paul reminds us that the love of Christ is the most real thing imaginable, and this love impels us to live courageously, meaner than hell.  Because someone has died for me with a love strong as death, I am urged to live out the truth of this love.  In fact, I am in anguish until I live with supernatural courage, and not for myself, but for Him who first died for me.

The love of Christ impels, urges, burns and bleeds and breaks, until I live no longer in the flesh, but in the Holy Spirit.  The grace of God, his unmerited love delivered precisely in a way that I can never pay it back, obliges me to instead pay it forward.  Every gift obliges the recipient to receive it and give it away.  This is most true of the grace of Christ, which I can't pay back, but must pay forward, until I fulfill the commandments of true peace, happiness and freedom - love one another as I have first loved you.

Back to those storms, and that chaos.  There is nothing that could possibly afflict you, that cannot be engaged by faith.  That's today's essential lesson.  Yes, there are things that are threatening to kill you right now - physically, morally, spiritually, mentally, emotionally and relationally - and there will be threats tomorrow.  So what.  Welcome to real life. Circumstances are supposed to be dramatic in every heroic human story worth living.  There is nothing that cannot be navigated courageously by faith.  Nothing.  Nothing.  Nothing.  Always, without exception, by the faith God has placed in you, you have the power to trust, to pray, and to give your life courageously in love before it can ever be taken from you.

This is the calm, the peace, the ability to fall asleep on a cushion even in the worst of storms, that no chaos can ever take from you.

Why am I so terrified, then?  It's because the struggle is real.  It's not fake, and not a game, and not something that you can escape, avoid or hide from.  It's because there's always a lot at stake.  It's ok to be terrified, so long as we know why we are terrified, and how to respond with courage and faith.

+mj

How do things really work?

Homily

11th Sunday in Ordinary Time B

16 June 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

How do things really work?  

The best answer is one I should know well, and remember, and repeat often.  I don't know on my own.  And neither do you.

Which of us was around when the world was created?  Who was there when spirit breathed life into dust for the first time?  I am not in control, and neither are you.  It's not that we can't know anything, it's just that we will never know everything.  I am not God.  But I am here to worship the God who has revealed how things really work.

I'm from a family of farmers, who like to remind me I've forgotten where I came from.  Maybe I have, I'm not sure.  My family knows a few things about crops, but the full process of how things grow is beyond them.  They're not in control, especially of the weather!

This is true of every living thing.  We're not in control.  The principle of life is mysterious, and we're merely stewards of it.  Only God holds the keys of life and death, and it's horrifying when we forget that.  The intersection of spiritual and material reality, the principles of why some thing are alive and others are not, is beyond us.  Human things like mind, desire, memory, imagination and free will are all affected by the body but not reducible to it.  

The process by which all thing live and grow and fulfill their purpose is beyond us, as a mystery beyond our control.  Which is why Jesus speaks to us in parables, so that we can see and hear but not yet think we define reality on our own terms.  Farming is a great parable, for we are still not in control of the process of growing the food we need to live, we are only stewards of a mystery, and we perhaps always will be.

So how do things really work?  Well, the God who knows has told us some things worthy of trust, that allow us to walk by faith, which gives us access to deeper truths beyond what we can figure out on our own.  Jesus referred to this process of how things work as 'the way' by which a person can enter fully into a life and fulfills his purpose. Anything that does not participate in this paschal mystery will not pass over, but will pass away, and die.

On Father's Day, let's imagine a potential father who takes the tender shoot of his life, and transplants it in the promised ground of marriage, and only in doing just so becomes the source of life to his family.  The father doesn't have to know how this works; in fact, it works better when he walks by faith and not by sight.  He doesn't have be perfect, or in control, and we laugh when he pretends to be.  Most often, dad just needs to show up with whatever courage, humility and faith he's got, and it's more than enough.  It's tragic when he doesn't show up though.  When he does, a great family tree results, one with abundant and lasting fruit!

Jesus told us to call no one on earth our father, unless a man participates in the fatherhood of God, a father who delights in showing his children how things really work.  This is what our father has revealed.  We should listen to the words of His Son, who has invited us into His 'way'.  For whenever I participate in the paschal mystery of Jesus, letting myself by humbly planted in the ground as He was, courageously dying to myself for love of Him who first died for me, the Father brings new life from this, and builds His Church and the everlasting Kingdom of David that is heaven itself.

That's how things really work, and those who try to pretend otherwise, are only branches that wither and fade, and amount to nothing.

That's how things work, and how you can fulfill your destiny.  That's how things really work.  Those who have ears to hear, ought to hear.

+mj

Is my faith dangerous?

Homily

10th Sunday of Ordinary Time B2

9 June 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

Is my faith dangerous?

On a recent mission trip to Mexico City with Jayhawks, I asked them that if my wearing clerics increased the likelihood of my being targeted for violence, of my being abducted and held hostage or even killed, would they want me to wear clerics?  Without hesitation they all said - YES!  Boy did I feel loved!  Thanks Jayhawks!

Yet the truth is that I did feel loved, very much so.  So I did wear my clerics, even as the aforementioned danger surely resulted.  It was a danger these young people were also desiring to experience.  These young people had a sense that if you're not living dangerously, you're not living, you're merely surviving.  They had a sense that if there is an evil to be overcome, then a person of faith ought to go about overcoming it.  They had a sense that if someone is trying to kill you, the best path is the one taught by Jesus, not to run away and hide, or play it safe, but to swallow up that evil and transform it with a sacrificial and merciful love.  They had a sense that only if there is the witness of martyrdom, will faith in a love that is stronger than death increase.  I didn't sense they wanted me to uselessly or recklessly throw my life away, they just wanted to know if it's really true that whoever saves his life loses it, but whoever loses it for the sake of the Gospel finds it for eternal life.  They knew, maybe because they're young and haven't yet learned to take themselves more seriously than evil, that as important as it is to be safe, in the condition we all find ourselves, death will come for us all, so it's better to choose what you're gonna die for before death chooses you.  It's best to live one's faith dangerously.

The first chapters of Genesis relay the truth that there is an evil in the world that wants to lie to you and kill you.  If this is really true, it's best not to pretend that it isn't.  We take this fallen reality quite seriously in baptism, don't we, choosing to die with and for Christ in baptism long before the enemy has a chance to kill us?  To die with and for Christ - this is the way by which the seed of the new Eve the virgin Mary, and all His little followers, strike at the head of the liar, the divider, and the accuser, while we are being struck by him through sin at our heel.

To pretend that this is not our reality, is to commit the unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit burns, like God who immediately searches for Adam and Eve after losing them, in order to convict the world regarding sin and righteousness.  The Holy Spirit encourages, while the liar comforts by saying there is no truth and no consequences.  To sin against the Holy Spirit is to ignore what has been revealed, that there is an original harmony to life, that has been damaged so that all must die.  The Holy Spirit convicts us that there is an evil that wants lies to you and wants you dead, and this evil must be opposed, not affirmed.

Yet the Holy Spirit also convicts us about the remedy revealed by Jesus - to call out the divisive, accusatory and empty lies of the evil one, and to oppose them together, and to participate instead in a love stronger than death.  The Holy Spirit convicts us that God wishes to forgive and reconcile, to seek and save what lost, and that whoever gives up his temporary tent in love through the paschal mystery, participates in the creation of a new temple greater than Eden, a new heaven and new earth that death can never again destroy.

The evils to be defeated are obvious, if only we don't try to escape or hide from them, or affirm the lies about them.  Secularism - that creation is a given not a gift, and does not need God - is a creation destined to fade into nothingness.  Racism - a failure to see the inherent dignity of God in all people, including the most unwanted and most unlike us and even in our enemies - is a world that must necessarily kill each other.  Materialism - that the resources available to us, including the gift and dignity of our own bodies, are merely things to be manipulated, mutilated, and discarded, rather than gifts to be received, cherished, respected and given away - is a world at war with its own environment and of human nature.  None of these evils can be affirmed, and they must all be opposed vigorously, even if it means danger to those that oppose them, lest we sin against the Holy Spirit, who convicts us regarding truth and consequences.  If we sin against the Holy Spirit we embrace a future that will only end in futility, meaninglessness, destruction and death.

Jesus says that his family are those that will take reality seriously with Him and through His Holy Spirit, and who will do something about evil.  To be with Him is to admit there is danger, and to live dangerously.

+mj  

What's the best wine?

Homily

Wedding Mass of Quinn Germann and Madison Schaefer

Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary

8 June 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

What's the best wine?

I get this question a lot, since everyone at SLC has learned I have a wine cellar.  My reputation is that I'm a wine snob, and I probably am.  

What's the best wine?  I get the question a lot.  The truth is that the best wine is not in my cellar.  It's the wine we're about to drink right now.

Quinn, you have learned that in order to marry Madi Schaefer, you have to be at your best.  Madi is not gonna drink the cheap wine, at least when it comes to her choice in a husband.  Quinn, I'm so proud of you for not shrinking from this call from God to be worthy of Madi's faith and love.  Mary has told you in prayer to 'Do Whatever He tells You' - and He has told you to become worthy of Madi's heart.  You have grown so much in virtue, maturity, faith and obedience, so much so that I am confident you are able to bathe your new bride in the good wine of your chaste and sacrificial love.  You're still a work in progress, and still dining above your pay grade, but I could not be more excited for the man you have become and for what you are about to do, which for you represents your very best.  Congratulations to you and all who have loved you and believed in you.

Madi - you crack me up.  In addition to being so accomplished and beautiful - I'll never forget how proud I was when you and Mik let your priest cut the line for a private tour of the 804 project - I was and still am so amazed at your talent - but most of all, you make me laugh.  In marriage prep you so humbly admitted that this marriage has to be from God, because you 100% planned to be stuck on yourself and your plans when you were 22.  Yet here you are, at the altar, not against your will, but to your great surprise - because when you prayed to Mary and she told you to 'Do Whatever He tells you' - you came to the conclusion that you are at your best when you live not for yourself, but for Quinn.  It's so funny that the trick is on you Madi - but the irony of it all makes me all the more excited for the beautiful and obedient gift of yourself that you make because Christ has invited you to marry Quinn, and this too represents your very best.  Congratulations to you Madi and to all who have loved and believed in you.

Even now as we celebrate the best that is within each of you - this capacity to make a complete gift of yourselves to each other in faith through the sacrament of marriage, we place this best in the context of the best wine that always comes last, the wine of the Eucharist.  

Jesus's first sign at Cana teaches that only a fool would dare attempt something as impossible as marriage, without connection to a superabundant source of faith and mercy, without access to the new and everlasting cup of the Eucharist.  The fullness of marriage is impossible for man alone - the wine will run out - but Cana teaches us that Jesus came to restore the meaning and destiny of marriage, by making the very best of wine that is the gift of Himself, and by making enough of it that it will never run out.  

I praise you, Quinn and Madi, for making the first act of your marriage to be a participation in the chaste and sacrificial love that Christ has for His bride the Church, and that you would not dare to promise faithfulness to each other til death do you part, without receiving his faithfulness to you, consummated in this best of wines that is truly His most precious blood.

The desire of Mary's Immaculate Heart for you Quinn and Madi, -  that the blood of Her Son will always be the source, perfection and destiny of your love for each other, caused Her to say Her last words at a wedding - Do whatever He tells you.  There is no greater response to Mary's command, than to drink the best wine of which Jesus says - This is a new marriage in my blood - Do this in memory of me.

+mj