3 C C - Being On Fire

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

In my mind, there’s nothing better than sitting next to a fire on a cold winter’s day like yesterday. It reminds me of when I was a kid and we’d go camping as a family. We’d always have a campfire at night and share stories and eat campfire food right before bedtime. Nowadays, I have a small electric fireplace that safely mimics a campfire with less of a chance of starting my house on fire. One of the few things I can look forward to in winter is one of those snowy days where I can’t go anywhere or do anything so I sit next to that fireplace and read between naps. 

For some reason, the theme of fire has regularly appeared in my spiritual life this Fall. It started when I showed a video from the priest-physicist Fr. Robert Spitzer about the Shroud of Turin for one of my Thursday morning Koffee Klatsches. In the video, he said two things of which I was unaware. First, to make the shroud, it would “require billions of watts of light energy, far exceeding the capabilities of any known UV source today”. He attributed this to the kind of energy it took to provide the resurrection. I thought about the descriptions the four evangelists use to describe Jesus at the Transfiguration. St. Matthew and St. Luke both say, “his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white..” St. Mark says “his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.” Fr. Spitzer also reported about something called  "’zinc sparks,’ where a fertilized egg releases a burst of zinc ions, creating a tiny, visible flash of light when a sperm meets an egg, essentially marking the moment of conception…” So, there’s a kind of fire in creation and recreation. Shortly thereafter as part of my daily prayer, I re-read the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, the three men from the Book of Daniel who refused to worship the King of Babylon as though he were God. Their punishment, you may remember, was to be burned alive. However, despite heating the furnace warmer than usual, not only did they survive but the text says that the King and his advisors saw “one like a son of man” protecting them in the fire, a reality Christians have attributed to Jesus’ presence. Lastly, on this past Friday, the church celebrated the memorial of the martyrdom of St. Lucy. She was betrothed to be married to a man but had secretly consecrated herself to remain a life-long virgin, sort of an early church Nun. When she refused to break her vows of virginity they decided to put her to death by fire. However, like those three young men in the Old Testament, she was protected from the flames by her savior. 

All of this has made me pause and think about the two ways St. John the Baptist talks about fire in today’s gospel. First, he says that Jesus will baptize us with the Holy Spirit and fire. Then, toward the end of the passage, he says that the chaff will burn in unquenchable fire. It seems like St. John isn’t sure if fire is a good thing or a bad thing. If we’re being baptized into it, it seems like the warm comfort of a fireplace, whereas when he says that the wheat will go into the barn but he will burn up the chaff in fire, that appears that the fire is divine punishment, thus not something we’d want to mess with. However, I think that’s the advantage of using fire. It’s something we can sit around to keep warm but it’s also something that can start a field on fire. If you let wheat drop upwind from a hot fire, the wheat itself will fall unharmed on the ground or into a basket because it is heavy enough to do so but the garbage or chaff, which is much lighter, will be caught by the wind and blow into the flames to be burnt up. 

That’s the image St. Luke wants us to have today. It’s what we do to our sins when we go to confession, we keep the good deeds we have done but allow the fire of God’s love to burn up our sins. That’s also what happens, in the Mass, when we offer our less serious sins to God. We have that fire inside of us from baptism and can burn up our sins before they burn us up. Is our faith life on fire burning up our sins and drawing into a life of resurrected faith or do we need to ask God to take out his winnowing fan to fan it back into flame?

2 A C: God uses the lowly to humble the proud

 Friends

Peace be with you.

Tomorrow/today is a very important day for the church in Mexico and all of Latin America really. It is the feast day of St. Juan Diego who was a simple peasant under Spanish rule and who, in 1531 while walking to Mass, found himself visited by a woman dressed like an Aztec princess who identified herself as “ever-perfect holy Mary, who has the honor to be the mother of the true God." When St. Juan Diego recounted this story to his local bishop, the prelate was understandably skeptical. He told St. Juan Diego he needed to ponder over what he was telling him to decide if he thought it was legitimate or not. The next day, Mary appeared to St. Juan Diego again and sent him back to the Bishop with a gift that knocked the cleric to his knees: fresh roses that wouldn’t have grown this time of year in their climate and her image fixed on Juan’s cactus-based coat in such that way that does not seem to have been painted and has lasted five hundred years despite being made with materials that typically last 10-15. Why would Mary appear to Juan Diego? Why appear in Mexico? Why not come slightly farther north to a country that would eventually be a world superpower and convert the colonies from the beginning? Imagine how much different things would be if she had just waited a little while longer, say 1774 or 1777, and been Our Lady of Philadelphia or New York or even our Lady of Cedar Rapids. Yet, that is often not the way God works. 

It is within this context that we hear of Jesus’ cousin, St. John the Baptist. St. Luke, situates the beginning of John’s ministry both in time and in contrast. In other words, he lists the names of a group of leaders so that the hearer will know in what year it takes place and will have a reminder of the corruption of those leaders as well. Luke is using these names to remind people of the murder and corruption these men did. He does this so he can contrast St. John the Baptist, a man of unparalleled holiness who spoke truth to power. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that St. John the Baptist was a political revolutionary or a competitor with Caesar and Pilate and all those folks. I’m saying the exact opposite of that. The truth he spoke was about the fulfillment of the Old Testament Prophecy spoken in our first reading about God leveling mountains and filling valleys to prepare for his coming. St. John the Baptist called on people to be prepared for the coming of the Lord

At the time of St. Juan Diego, Spanish Franciscan missionaries had been working to convert the people of Mexico for 20 years with very little success. Because of this revelation of our Lady, approximately 90 million Latin American people would be converted in the next 10 years, a feat only possible through the action of God. And that happened, not through the most powerful of subjects or to the most powerful country in the world but to a peasant, considered less in dignity by most of the Europeans trying to colonize Mexico. And, as I said before, Mexico itself is a country that has always struggled to provide adequate resources for its citizenry. Why would God there to this man, this peasant saint?

To remind us that human power pales in comparison to the power of God, that human wisdom seems like foolishness compared to the wisdom of God, and the good things we prize on earth seem pathetic compared to the great things God wants for us. In this world where powerful people seem to constantly want all of our attention in order to have a greater control of our lives, we remind ourselves that God’s plan is always better than human plans. We just need to be humbly open to the way God appears in our lives.

CTK B: the son of man is coming testify to the truth.

Friends

Peace be with you. 

In a few weeks, a friend of mine is taking me to see the musical Dear Evan Hansen down at Hancher. I’m excited but I know it will be an emotional time. I’ve seen the play a few times and each time it has been. It’s not for everyone so please don’t read this homily reference as an endorsement. There’s no references to faith in it and it is a very postmodern morality play. Still, I appreciate it because, like many people who have seen this play, I can sympathize with the main character. Without giving away too much, the main character is named Evan and he is an awkward high school kid who doesn’t have any friends. Early in the show, he interacts with another kid who also has no friends because he a is very angry teenager. Evan is just really shy and awkward. When the angry kid ends his own life, the boy's parents find a note that seems to indicate he and Evan were friends, This leads Evan down a road of lies that seems to spiral out of control. 

I think we need to talk about lying. I think it’s not something that priests talk about much anymore, or at least we don’t talk about it as the focus of our homilies. We may bring it up at the end as a kind of morality example but it’s something we should probably talk about more because it affects our integrity. Oftentimes people will distinguish between lies of commission and lies of omission but I was thinking of a couple of other distinctions  as well. Lies of commission are when we actively tell someone a false statement. Most of the time we do this because we are embarrassed by our actions and we want to protect our reputation or we do it to get out of being punished. An example of a lie of commission would be telling your spouse that the kids returned the car empty instead of admitting to her that you forgot to stop at the gas station on the way home. A lie of omission, on the other hand, happens when we leave out important details or pretend we don’t know what happened when we do. An example of a lie of omission would be when you overhear an annoyed coworker talking about how someone left the door to the office unlocked last night and someone stole her computer and you realize you were the one who forgot to lock it but you don’t say anything because you don’t want to get in trouble. I was also thinking about lies of presumption, when we make up an allegation against someone or a motivation why someone did something when we don’t know the facts. For example, we may think that our spouse deliberately left their socks on the bathroom floor instead of in the hamper because you got in a fight the night and they did it spite you. I was also thinking about lies of convenience, which we do when we don’t want to admit to someone that we disagree with them or are not going to follow their advice. I find myself doing this when someone gives me driving directions to their house, I generally let them talk without paying any attention instead of thanking them but letting them know I’d prefer to follow my GPS. Lastly, how about lies to the self. A lie to the self is when we have an impression of ourselves that doesn’t match the choices we make to live our lives. For example, we may think we are a good person even though we tell a lot of lies or are racist or sexist or just a mean person in general. We may also have a deflated sense of self, though, where we believe we are worthless when, in fact, we are using our gifts and talents to the best of our ability but someone else just has more gifts and talents than we do. 

As I said before, the challenge with all these lies is that they destroy our integrity. We are meant to be holy as God is holy and the word holy is related to the word whole or integral. Lies split us into a truthful side versus an untruthful side, a trustworthy side versus an untrustworthy side. 

Jesus had a hard truth to pass on to Pilate today; that he came into the world to testify to the truth. It would have been easy to justify remaining silent in the presence of someone who had no way of understanding who he was but, instead, he speaks the truth knowing that it will be used against him by the man who will pronounce his death sentence. Can we have that same integrity and be people of truth?

33 OT - B: messengers sent

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

Have you ever had to stay calm while scary things were happening around you? How did you do that? What tactics did you use to not let the adrenaline take over? I would guess most of the time we did this because we had to stay calm for someone else, for instance a child who is under our care and responsibility. I have a friend who cannot stand the sight of blood but, when her daughter dropped a glass bowl of popcorn, my friend was the one to calmly wrap her finger in a paper towel and apply pressure until they could hand her daughter off to the ER staff.

Deep in the heart of Autumn and starting to head to Winter, our readings turn to the cold reality of Apocalyptic literature. We focus on the end times, or the tribulation as Jesus called it. Let me admit that I’m going to use this word very differently than the writers of the Left Behind series use it. If you look at the previous few verses between last week’s passage and this week’s, Jesus issues five warnings. First, he says the Temple will be torn down, a reality that happened somewhere around the year 68 when the Romans stopped a Jewish revolt of their leadership by destroying the Temple. Then Jesus warns of wars and insurrections, some of which happened before the destruction of the Temple and some after. Next, Jesus warns that they will be taken before councils and tried, a reality we know that happened to both St. Paul and St. Peter and would be the norm for the first four hundred years of Christianity. Fourth, and most cryptically, Jesus warns of a “desolating sacrilege”, a phrase that also appears in the Old Testament Book of Maccabees to describe a statue of Zeus that was put in the Temple by the Greek occupiers of Jerusalem. It’s not entirely clear what Jesus means by using this phrase, possibly the fact that the Temple was used as a war planning center before it was torn down but it’s also possible that the Romans did terrible things on the Temple Mount after. Lastly, and possibly most challengingly, Jesus warns that false messiahs will appear and there will be a lot of people claiming to have knowledge of his second coming but Jesus makes it clear that we aren’t to listen to them. Why?

There is certainly a lot of tribulation, reasons to be afraid. If I were to go throughout the church, I bet each of us has something that causes us concerns. I would also bet that, the person or activity that is causing one person a lot of concern may well have the opposite effect on other people. Not being all that far from a rather ugly election, you probably understand to what I’m referring. Personally, the worst part of the past election was how much time all the media spent making us afraid of what the other side said. They spend so little time telling us about most of what any given politician actually believes and focuses on what they find scary about them and then they report that in the scariest way possible. And then they say that religion uses people’s fear.

If we listen to Jesus, he acknowledges that there will be tribulations. Yet, he makes it clear that, when the second coming happens, it won’t be because of a virgin birth in Bethlehem. He’s coming with power and glory from the clouds and the whole world will see it. He’s taking the guesswork out of it for us, in a sense. 

In the heart of this passage, Jesus says, “he will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the end of the earth to the end of the sky…” The word “angel” means messenger. We tend to, quite rightly, think of the purely spiritual beings fighting satan on our behalf when we hear this word. One commentary reminded me, however, that St. John the Baptist was called a messenger and, indeed, we are called to be messengers of God’s Good News to this world. I think this is what Jesus is really trying to get across to us in this passage: while the world is filled with tribulations, we have to keep spreading the good news, keep going out to gather people from all over the world to come to know Jesus before he comes again. Our lives are finite. Fear is finite. Jesus calls us to be messengers to others of his hopeful message of eternal life.  

32 OT B: She gave more

Friends

Peace be with you. 

Dr. Peter Kreeft relates a story in his commentary on today’s gospel. “A six-year-old boy had a three-year-old sister who had a disease that she would die of if she did not have a blood transfusion. But she had a very rare blood type, and the only person who could be found with that same blood type was her brother. As soon as he heard this, the brother volunteered to give her the transfusion. While the transfusion was going on, the boy looked sad, and when they asked him why, he said, ‘How long will it take me to die’” 

Imagine being just six years old and not being afraid to die if it will mean your little sister lives. Thankfully, that’s not the way a blood transfusion works but it’s a good illustration of the point that Jesus is trying to get across. The Jewish people, on top of the Old Testament, have a book called the Talmud, which clarifies and further lays out how to live in relationship with God. One of the precepts of the Talmud is that people of inferior Biblical knowledge should greet those of greater Biblical knowledge first. The scribes, being the most biblically knowledgeable, would apparently walk through the market so people would make a spectacle of greeting them and then they would look important. 

From archaeological digs, we know the synagogues of Jesus’ time had benches along the walls and the ones along the wall with the cabinet where the Bible scrolls were kept were reserved for those who were literate, again the Scribes. Everyone else had to sit on the ground, especially if you were poor, with the men on one side and the women on the other. 

Being a scribe would have been seen as a pretty good job. The trouble Jesus has with it is where they make their money. It’s off the Temple taxes that are being collected. Apparently, there were seven trumpet shaped donation buckets in the temple in which the temple tax was deposited. It was designed that the larger sums of money would make a bigger sound going in than smaller amounts. So, people who could put in more would be recognized whereas a poor widow, who can put in one sixty fourth of a day’s wage, which is described as a couple of small coins, would have gone virtually unnoticed. Yet, as he notes at the end, she gave more because they gave from their surplus wealth and she has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood. 

We need to be cautious to hear Jesus the way he wants to be heard. The context and words Jesus uses makes it clear that he’s not commending her for giving her all. She has no choice but to pay this tax. This is a condemnation of those who make money off the poor. Jesus laments the fact that she has to give her whole livelihood to pay off vain people walking through markets to be greeted. He laments that those people are sitting on couches in the synagogue while the elderly and widows are sitting on the floor and that, when invited to their homes, they eat the best food at the most comfortable chairs. 

It’s a challenge to me, probably more than anyone. I have one of the few chairs in church with a cushion. People greet me when I’m out and about at least in part because I’ve got a collar on. And the poor are often the ones putting money in our candle boxes for prayers and putting money in the collection baskets. We need to make sure we are helping the poor as much as possible through MCO and St. Vincent de Paul. 

But we also have to think about things like a casino. It sounds great and I’m sure our politicians will tell us it will help create jobs and create business down here in the time-check area. But, at what cost? The poor are often the ones who go to casinos and spend the money they don’t have in the hopes of winning it big. We don’t need a casino. We need real jobs that will help real people make real money. We need to help those struggling with homelessness and mental illness not take advantage of them. Like the scribes, we deserve severe condemnation if we take advantage of the poor to make money. 

28 OT B : Give!

Friends

Peace be with you. 

Generally around this time of year, priests give a sacrificial giving homily. I haven’t done one since coming to St. Patrick’s so you’ll have to forgive me if this sounds a little clunky. Some priests, in fact, feel so uncomfortable about talking about money that they ask a lay person to do it. In a previous assignment, the pastor would give the lay presenter talking points but they’d have to make them a part of  their own story. One of the talking points was to talk about a time you received something unexpectedly after giving something. People would universally talk about a time they were down to their last twenty dollars and they saw a poor person and gave it to them only to get paid a hundred dollars by a person who owed them money or to find some forgotten cash in a pocket. My concern was that people may get the wrong message about why it’s important to give. 

Our gospel for today tells a story that has provided a lot of discussion for me throughout the years. The question people ask me is if I think this is the last interaction Jesus had with this rich young man. Some are convinced it is not, that he went away but eventually came back willing to give up all that he had to follow Jesus. It may even be that, the reason that the man’s name is not mentioned but his youthfulness is is because he was known to the community Mark is writing to but that he is older at the time. This is, therefore, seen as a moment of youthful indiscretion. However, I’m not convinced. Maybe I’m just a pessimist but I think the reason the man’s name was not mentioned was because he walked away and is now seen as unmentionable by the community. Imagine being the person who walked up to Jesus and asked what he had to do to inherit eternal life and was told that he was already doing it, just follow the commandments. But, that’s not a good enough answer so you ask if you can do more and, when you were told what you could do in order to do more, it’s too hard so you just give up. You abandon Jesus as he is surrounded by people who HAVE given up everything to follow him. Remember, this is the time when it’s easy to follow Jesus. I don’t get why people would think the man would come back when people are screaming “crucify him, crucify him” and he’s being nailed to a cross.

We stand in the footsteps of those apostles who have given up everything in order to follow Jesus. Some of this has to do with giving our time and talents to help serve the fish fries or sit for an hour in the reservation chapel at adoration or help teach Catechesis of the Good Shepherd or volunteer in some other way. But the parish also has financial needs and I would ask you to prayerfully consider how much you can give. As a parish, we have worked to live within the means we have while we do the improvements to our campus like repairing cracked and broken sidewalks and driveways and adding to our parking lots. We have made sure that when things wear out, we replace them with high quality materials that we can afford. I’m exploring the possibility of putting solar panels on the parish hall anticipating that energy prices will continue to rise and we will benefit from the affordability and reliability of the products that are out there. However, as you have undoubtedly experienced, inflation has affected us in things like garbage bags, toilet tissue and other staples. And we need to continue to work to pay our great staff salaries that are a living wage. So, I ask that you look at your financial situation and consider if you are able to increase your overall tithing. You can give electronically or in person, that’s up to you. Also, please consider talking to the Catholic Foundation to include this parish in your will. If, when you die, you want to contribute to St. Patrick’s parish endowment fund, it will ensure that you leave a legacy that will help this parish pay bills long after you have passed. 

Jesus challenges us to give today. We can’t do so expecting that we’ll receive more money afterwards. What we will receive has to do with being unburdened with the distraction of chasing after more and more money and, instead, being rewarded with the freedom of being able to focus on Christ.

26 OT B: Don’t harm the little one’s faith

Friends

Peace be with you.

This past week, while driving in Nebraska, I turned on a podcast about the origins of Angel Studios. In case you don’t know, Angel Studios is a crowd funded television and movie studio that gave us the Chosen, Sound of Freedom, Cabrini, and other morally positive content that the mainstream studios don’t seem to want to produce. I’ve recently joined their streaming service, called the Angel Guild, because I wanted to watch the Story of Possum Trot. I learned from this podcast that the founders are three brothers who developed the Angel App a few years ago, a streaming service that sanitized major Hollywood blockbuster movies of any racy content. They were sued by those same studios for copyright infringement and lost a lot of money because of it. But, in the process, they learned that there was a sizable market of people that wanted movies and television shows that promoted the life of faith and that there were plenty of content creators who were being blocked by the mainstream studios from telling their stories. All of that appealed to me. In the middle of the story, however, they dropped a bomb on me that, frankly, I should have seen coming because the names they choose for their projects always involve the word angel. These brothers are Mormon, or Latter Day Saints as they prefer to be called. At that point in the podcast, I started to question whether I should participate in Angel Studios.

I’ve spent a lot of time this past week reflecting on the Ninth Chapter of Mark’s Gospel. The passage we just heard comes from the end of that Chapter. The beginning tells the story of the Transfiguration, which is why I spent so much time reflecting on this chapter. The spiritual direction program in which I’m starting to participate is called the Institute of the Transfiguration. At the beginning retreat past weekend, which is the reason I was gone by the way, we spent an hour a piece praying over each of the three passages that describe the transfiguration. Then, starting on Monday, I kept praying in my holy hours until I got to this passage at the end of Chapter 9. Something kind of interesting jumped out at me when I got there. You see, as Jesus, Peter, James, and John came down the mountain, they encountered the apostles who weren’t called up the Mount of Transfiguration arguing with some Scribes about a man whose son was possessed by a demon that mimicked symptoms of a seizure. They’re arguing because no one seems able to cure the boy. Jesus heals him and, when his own followers ask why they couldn’t, he replies that this demon could only be exercised with prayer. Now, just a few verses later, the Apostle John tells Jesus that there is some guy driving out demons in His name but he isn’t a follower of Jesus. What is he really asking? A few moments before, Jesus’ followers tried to drive a demon in His name and they couldn’t do it because it had to be driven out in prayer and, now, some dude who isn’t even a follower is driving out demons in Jesus’ name. You’d think Jesus would be as outraged as John obviously is but, instead, he says that they shouldn’t prevent him because you generally don’t talk poorly about someone in whose name you are doing mighty deeds. If he isn’t against them, he must be for them. So I guess it’s okay to be affiliated with three Mormon brothers if they are working with us and not against us, right?

Remember also that, last week, Jesus encouraged his followers that, if they wanted to be great, they had to become the least and he placed a child in front of them and said, ““Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me.” This week, he offers the more negative side of this same argument when he says that, if you harm a little child, it would be better to go jump off a cliff with a rock around your neck. Even as important as protecting little children is, the point that Jesus is driving home is more about the age of people’s faith. He’s really talking to the apostles, and therefore to us, and telling us that we’ve got to be the adults who help people with a less developed faith to grow in it, which may involve having to remove aspects of ourselves that get in the way.

Jesus uses body parts as examples but, in today’s world, the question we may want to ask ourselves is does our need to be right or our impatience or our skepticism of the other affect our ability to reach out in charity to the stranger who may just be beginning a life of faith and, if so, how can we cut it out?

23 OT B Jesus goes on sabbatical and still gets graded!

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

I had four internships in my years of seminary, three that took place in parishes in the Archdiocese of Dubuque and one at a hospital in Des Moines. I found them all to be times when I felt like I was being affirmed on my journey to priesthood. Yet, there were also times when I felt like I was being challenged and totally unworthy of being a priest. Most of the time, this happened at the end of my time when I would sit down with the director of seminarians and the internship director to reflect on my growing edges that need to be softened. A particularly hard evaluation took place at one of the parishes in which I didn’t get along well with the pastor and expected a very poor evaluation. Yet, when I opened up the form on which the pastor had written his evaluation, I was kind of shocked to read glowing reviews. He said things like “Dennis preaches well. Dennis sings well. People feel like they can talk to and relate to Dennis well.” He honestly even wrote “Dennis does all things well.” There wasn't a single negative comment on the sheet. I thought to myself, "I'm not perfect! This isn't right. Where's the negative feedback?" I felt cheated. 

That was kind-of my reaction to today's gospel. We're used to criticism being heaved at Jesus from all sides. He gets criticism from the Pharisees, Sadducees, disciples, and crowds. It's very rare that people say, "He does all things well." What’s surprising is where he is when he gets these rave reviews. The area called the Decapolis incorporates, as the Greek name suggests, ten towns. Think “deca” as in decade, ten years, or decathlon, ten sporting events. And the last part, polis, is the Greek word for town, which is why Minneapolis, Indianapolis, and Annapolis end with it. The fact that the word derives from Greek tells you that these probably aren’t predominately Jewish towns in nature. Jesus grew up in Nazareth, which, from archaeology, we know had a large synagogue capable of fitting almost the whole town in it, so it was predominantly Jewish. When Jesus preached in that synagogue, he couldn’t heal anyone because of the hardness of their heart and they got so upset at him because of that, that they almost threw him off a cliff to kill him. Yet, now that he’s on a kind of sabbatical in this diverse town with Jews and Gentiles alike, he finds such tremendous faith that, right from the start, he heals a deaf man. Now this man will be able to hear him preach. He even tries to tell the people who are present for the healing not to speak about him but it says, the more he ordered them not to, the more they proclaimed it. They say,  “He does all things well. He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.” This is the evaluation he gets from strangers while his friends and family try to kill him. 

At a recent conference, they talked about negative self-talk. That’s that inner monologue we have that says we’re not good enough. Garth Brooks described it as “a tape of my failures playing inside my head”, which I think is really good description. Negative self talk says we can’t do something even before we try usually because we tried before and failed. Negative self-talk says our heart is bad because we make mistakes. Negative self-talk says that person doesn't like me because I’m not likable or lovable. Negative self-talk hears about original sin and says we can never be free of it, that we can never walk as free children of God. Negative self-talk says God may care for people in general but He doesn’t care about me in particular. Negative self talk sees only the bad things that happen and says we deserve them. Negative self talk is a self-defeating prophecy. It’s a false sense of humility that, ultimately, stifles the spirit inviting us to throw into the deep or go places to spread the gospel because we aren’t worthy. But you are worthy, not because of how talented you are or because you do all things well but entirely because Jesus does all things well and wants to open your ears to hear his word and your mouth to proclaim his praise to the ends of the world. 

How does negative self talk stop you from seeing Jesus do all things well for you and proclaiming that to the world?

22 OT B Finding what was here all along

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

The other day, after showing a video in the Fireplace Room on the first floor of the rectory, I picked up my Roku streaming device and started walking it back up to my apartment to put it away. Before I hit the first step to go upstairs, I thought to myself that I needed to grab the remote control for it. So I retraced my steps back to the TV but it wasn’t there. I had gone into the kitchenette to put away my plate so I must have put it there. But It wasn’t there. I walked to the place where I was sitting for the video to see if it was sitting on the table but it wasn’t there. I started to get frazzled wondering how you misplace something in such a small space, a feeling I have often by the way, and then looked down at my hands and realized I had been carrying the remote control the whole time. 

This past week, we celebrated the Memorial of one of the most influential theologians in church history: St. Augustine. One of his most quoted sayings comes from a book called The Confessions. It says…

“Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! 

You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you…”

St. Augustine was admitting that, in his search for God, he was a bit like me looking for that remote control that was in my hand. God was nearer to him than he could have ever imagined but he was looking everywhere else for him. Moses, in talking to the Israelites in the first reading, says that the whole point of the law is to remind the people how near God is to them, how close to them that they are to Him. Their neighbors will see how they prosper because they know what God wants. It’s like the people of the Old Testament will be the best baseball or football team because their coach worked directly with them and showed them how best to live a holy life. That’s the role of the law, to show the people how to live such a just life that they begin to live a life like God would live if he were incarnate. Which is what makes it so uncomfortable when he did become incarnate and, instead of worrying about living the way God wants them to live, they have taken a law that was intended for a specific group of people in a specific situation and applied it to everyone in every situation. The priests were meant to wash their hands before they served in the temple and that somehow became a demand for everyone to wash their hands before they eat anything. The point obviously isn’t that you shouldn’t wash your hands before you eat, which is a good hygienic thing to do, but that a rule broadened by their ancestors to apply to everyone is being treated as just as important as God’s laws. But God’s laws show how close God is to His people and how much He cares for them. 

Thankfully, Jesus simplified this relationship so that it’s not based on obedience to the law but on the grace of being called his brother and sister through baptism. That’s why St. James, in the second reading for Mass today, says that “(The Father) willed to give us birth by the word of truth that we may be a kind firstfruits of his creatures.” We share a unique relationship with the Father through Jesus, the first fruit of all creation, by being reborn in baptism. God is so close to us that he is inside of us. Personally, this is hard for me to understand because why would God want to hang out with a guy who is so often unaware that he is here. I get annoyed if I go visit a friend and they ignore me. I eventually find a reason to leave. Why would God want to keep hanging out with this guy who is so often oblivious or even offensive to him to be around? Yet He does. 

Moses, in the first reading, reminded his people and us of how important it is to listen. I talk too much to God. He’s here with me always. I just need to listen t Him better. Don’t we all? Don’t we all need to stop looking for that remote control in our hand and just listen to Him who is closer to us than we are to ourselves? Isn’t that the whole point of adoration?

21 Ot B: f they can't accept that he came down, how are they going to believe when he goes up

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

In college, some friends asked me if I would remain a Christian if they found the body of Jesus. I hadn’t thought about it but I told them I would. After all, they’re constantly doing archaeology in the Holy Land. There’s a chance they’ll find a tomb or a burial box purported to be the burial box of Jesus, right? I remember going to my spiritual director, Fr. Doug Wathier, and telling him about his conversation and kind of being proud that, even if they found the remains of Jesus, I would stay a Christian. I remember asking him if it would affect his faith and being shocked that he was quite adamant that it would. He said that, if Jesus hadn’t been raised bodily, there’s no reason for us to believe. Further, if Jesus still died after the resurrection and wasn’t taken up body and soul into heaven, then it wasn’t really a resurrection but merely a resuscitation. People are resuscitated every day using CPR and defibrillators. There’s nothing really miraculous about getting the heart to start pumping blood again. Even people who seem to be dead but who are more in a comatose state who awake after days or weeks because of ventilators and other modern medicine isn’t an example of a miracle in the same way that Jesus, who really died and never died again, is.

As we conclude the Bread of Life Discourse from John chapter six, we hear that the people who came to Jesus because he gave them free bread and fish start to walk away from him when he explains that the bread they ate wasn’t just simply food, but was food from heaven and that, unless they eat the Eucharist, they cannot have hope for eternal life. The reaction that the crowd has is, once again, to question the reality of eternal life. Who can accept that they have to eat the Eucharist to have eternal life, they ask. Jesus’ response is, basically, if you’re not going to believe that he became incarnate, how are you going to believe that he resurrected? Think about it like this, these people could see his flesh and touch his body. The incarnation of Jesus wasn’t an issue for them. I think that’s partly why the flesh is of no avail for them, because he’s right there. It’s a challenge for us but not for them. If they can’t believe that the bread they are eating, the true food they are eating, is his flesh when they can see that he has flesh and blood, then how are they or anyone else going to believe in the resurrection when no one will see him any longer? For some of them it’s just a step too far so they walk away. Actually, not just some of them but the text says that many of them walked away and returned to their former lives. For the first time in the Gospel of John, Jesus refers to the twelve apostles at this point, and asks if they’re going to abandon him too. In a typical way, it is Simon Peter who makes the strong statement of faith, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” 

In every generation, there’s a tendency to water down the gospel, to make Christian teachings more in line with society or more palatable with other religions or religious movements. And, while sometimes we can use connections to other religions as a bridge to true the religion, like St. Paul did at the Areopagus in the Acts of the Apostles or Pope Francis was trying to do with the Pachamama statue a few years ago, we have to be careful not to water down the faith in the process. Joshua, in the first reading, made it clear to the people of the Old Testament that we have to choose to follow the one true God and not the false gods of our neighbors, especially the false gods that we or others create to make the gospel more palatable to a skeptical generation. Jesus was willing to let people walk away in freedom back to their old lives. 

The beginning of our second reading told us that we need to be subordinate to one another out of reverence to Christ before going on to talk about the type of subordination particular to married life. In a previous homily, I talked about how the word subordinate would be better translated as submissive, or under the mission. We all need to be under Christ’s mission, which demands an informed faith. There’s a reason the remains of Jesus have never been found. It’s because they’re not here. The only place you will find the body of Christ is in our tabernacles because it is our food for the journey, his real presence in this bread from heaven. If we can’t believe Jesus has come down in the true bread we eat, how are we going to follow him to heaven?

20 OT B: God’s wisdom is more knowledgeable than the world portrays it

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

One of the more notorious biases the world has against Christians is that we are stupid…or at least not as curious or demanding of proof as they are. Think about Ned Flanders from the Simpsons or the way the guys from Monty Python portray belief in their sketches and in the movie The Life of Brian or the way the new atheists like Neil Degrasse Tyson or Christopher Hitchens will bend over backwards to use science in a way that seems to disprove the never notion of God, as though belief in science is diametrically opposed to belief in God. I hear it on college campuses, sadly more on our historically Catholic campusesthan on state campuses, that the church is an outmoded institution imposing rules and laws that are long disproved on largely ignorant individuals because faith is out of step with more modern, secular, intelligent people. I’ll sometimes even hear people say that they can’t wait until religion is a thing of the past because people will outgrow the need for it as more questions are answered that disprove the need for religious, hocus pocus answers. And, while I take consolation that these tend to be attitudes of people who have good lives and that these same attitudes stand like the Great and Wonderful Oz unveiled for the sham that he is whenever the person encounters any kind of struggle in life such as illness or age, it doesn’t mean that the depiction of Christianity as blind followers is accurate, let alone that it will be the fallback place these folks come to when they need help. 

The challenge with faith is when it becomes too intellectual, too abstract, too much of the leap of faith as the philosopher Soren Kierkegard called it. It makes perfect sense to me that Soren Kierkegard is the gate between philosophers who generally believed in the existence of God and existentialist philosophers who generally didn’t. If faith is like the scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where you have to take a step into what appears to be a bottomless pit onto the hidden walkway below, I can understand why more people don’t believe.

Faith is more relational than a leap of faith, specifically having a relationship with Jesus Christ who is the intermediary between God and human beings. Mary, who is often called Sedes Sapientia or Seat of Wisdom, can help us in this because she knows her son better than anyone else so she can pray for and with us to get to know her Son but Jesus wants to reveal himself to us. He does it most preeminently in the Eucharist. That’s why this parish has such a strong tradition of adoring the Blessed Sacrament and why Fr. Ivan, Fr. Greg, and I have consistently encouraged people to take time at least once a week to spend an hour with the Lord in our chapel. When Fr. Ivan started this, he was almost alone in this town in terms of weekly adoration and now I believe every Catholic church in town sets aside at least some time every week to adore the Lord. In adoration, we can take the time to reflect upon what happens at Mass, upon Jesus taking simple bread and wine and fulfilling his promise in John’s bread of life discourse “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” You see, God didn’t just leave us a pit to fall into as proof that we believe. He left us food to keep nourishing our faith and to keep us in relationship with him. He also made us into his body, the Church, so that we can be in relationship with others and see the presence of Christ in them. But that means we have to be living a Christ-like life so that others can see him in our life too, which is a challenge. We have the sacrament of reconciliation for when we make mistakes but we need to be working to live a Christ-like life and not just trying to constantly clean up the mess when we don’t. 

Part of the way we do this is by learning about God from other Christians, especially Christians who are deeply prayerful individuals. There are many profoundly intellectual people who are also deeply prayerful like St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Bishop Robert Barron, St. John Paul II, or Sister Bethany Madonna of the Sisters of life. These people remind us that faith needn’t be a leap for the foolish but accepting an invitation to get to know God in his transcendent simplicity. How do we keep seeking to get to know the God who knows us so well?

19 OT B: Jesus’ takes us to his Father

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

If I were to walk up to you and say to you “I am the Big Mac of Burger King”, what would be your reaction be to me? Or if I were to say, I am sort of the Labron James of football, what would you say? Just put up with one more; what would be your reaction be to me if I were to say I’m sort of the Sears Tower of St. Louis? Would you question overall if I’m feeling okay or would you question when I worked at Burger King, or do I have the talent to play football, or have I ever been to St. Louis? The reason I’m asking this is because, as we continue to move through the Bread of Life Discourse from the sixth chapter of John’s gospel, there is this really interesting question that I kind of find baffling. It’s coming from this group of Jews who received from the feeding of the five thousand. Last week, they falsely attributed the miraculous gift of manna from the Old Testament to being a gift from Moses instead of what it was, a gift from God. So Jesus set that straight. Jesus identified himself as that manna from heaven, which is where our passage begins this week. The part that confuses me is, when Jesus said to this group of his fellow Jews, that he was the bread from heaven, they didn’t ask how he was bread. Instead, they couldn’t believe that he came down from heaven. So they’re fine that he identified himself as bread? I guess it’s possible that this was just their first point. Like, if I said, “I’m the Sears Tower of St. Louis”, you may say, first of all, the Sears Tower is in Chicago not St. Louis. But I’d hope you’d want to know what in the heck I meant identifying myself as the Sears Tower. I’d hope there’d be a follow up question. 

I feel like they’re really saying that Jesus can’t be from heaven because they don’t like the idea of someone coming to earth from there. I’m sure part of this has to do with the emphasis on God’s transcendence that our Jewish brothers and sisters emphasize to this day. The Jewish people recognize better than anyone else that we are not God and God is not us: that he is completely different. This means that we can’t control God or manipulate God as though we are in charge. But I can’t help but think that they also had a problem with a carpenter’s son believing that he came down from heaven. If God was going to become incarnate in their minds, it wouldn’t be through Joseph and Mary. My guess is that they would expect a messiah to either appear out of nowhere without a father or mother or to at least be born to one of the high priestly families. But certainly no messiah is coming from a family with calluses on their hands. 

That’s the amazing thing about God. If God didn’t want us on this earth, he doesn’t need to kill us in the desert, as it appears the prophet Elijah wants in the first reading. If God wants us gone, you know what he has to do? Stop wanting us. That’s all it takes. If God stops wanting us for a second, we don’t exist. You exist because God wants you to exist. I exist because God willed me into existence. God knows everything about us. He wants us to get to know everything about him. How does he do that? Is it by leaving an instruction manual? Sort of, but we made the Bible under his inspiration. He mostly does this by inviting us into a relationship with himself.

He invites us to get to know him in a sacramental relationship. What does that mean? To preserve the transcendence of God, the “otherness of God”, he gives us things like bread, oil, water, wine, and people to bridge the gap between him and us. As we know, the Eucharist looks and tastes like bread and wine and, if we are Catholic and in a state of grace, we are allowed to consume it but we know that it’s really his body, blood, soul and divinity. It’s the bread that came down from heaven that is meant to be a connection between the transcendent God and we fallible humans. It’s a sacrament because it’s intimately connected to Jesus who, himself, transcended heaven and earth by being fully God and fully human.

I can understand why this group of Jews was confused that Jesus said he was from heaven but you’d think they’d be just as baffled at the idea that he called himself bread. Maybe they could understand something our generation can’t: that God himself came to his people in the manna in the desert. What makes it hard for our generation to see the God who wills us into being, willing himself into our life by becoming the Bread of Life in the Eucharist? Imagine how that could change if more people spent an hour every day, or at least every week, adoring the Lord in adoration…

18 OT B The Eucharist transforms us from the futility of our minds to new life in Christ

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

If you have ever seen the movie “The Lord of the Rings'', you may remember that, after the wizard Gandalf gave custody of the Ring of Power to Frodo, he disappeared. Frodo lived in the house of his Uncle Bilbo, named Bagend, for seventeen years until Gandalf reappeared. At this point, Gandalf reveals that, while Frodo was growing up, keeping the ring secret and safe, and living his best hobbit life, Gandalf had been searching for information about it. He reveals that forces of the evil wizard Sauron are searching for the ring and, since he cannot take the ring himself, Gandalf sends Frodo and Sam on a journey with it. Yet, rather than accompanying them, he disappeared again off on what turns out to be a futile journey seeking help from his friend and mentor, Saruman, who has become a servant of, Sauron. When Frodo makes it to Rivendell and sees the face of his friend Gandalf for the first time since he left home, his first disappointed question is where Gandalf has been and why he didn’t meet them. Frodo has no idea of the torture his friend has undergone.  

Have you ever had an experience where you realize someone has been working for you without your knowledge? I feel like this often happens with kids, or at least it did for me. I was never as grateful for the work of preparing a meal my Mom and Dad did for me daily as a kid as when I started working at Loras College. My Mom did all the food prep, though Dad sometimes had to put the food in the oven when Mom was working late. She’d set the table and then the two of them would wash the dishes after the meal so they could have a little time together while the kids went out to watch TV or do homework. Now, I’ll acknowledge we were spoiled but I think this kind of things happens a lot. From changing furnace filters and light bulbs to encouraging kids to get involved in sports and the arts and working so that the family has money to do all of this, parents have to do things that the kids won’t appreciate until they are much older. 

Today’s gospel follows closely after last week’s, the feeding of the five thousand. Between now and then, Jesus got into a boat and sailed from one side of the Sea of Galilee to the other where the town of Capernaum lies. It’s sort of his homebase with Peter and Andrew’s family located there. Shortly thereafter, some of the people who have received the bread and fish get into boats and follow them to the other side. When they arrive, they awkwardly ask when he got there. I can’t help but wonder if they were asking if he’s been there long enough to multiply more bread and fish. Jesus knows that they are not there because of a conversion of faith but because they think he’s a traveling cafeteria. The apex of this beginning of the Bread of Life discourse is when the crowd says that, like the sign Moses provided in the First Reading, Jesus should provide bread from heaven. The problem is they give Moses the credit they should be giving to God. Moses is God’s servant, not God himself. Like me, Moses has a position of leadership granted to him, for a time, from God. But God provides the bread, not Moses. Jesus also reveals that he was there with Moses when the manna was distributed in an answer that had to be absolutely baffling to his hearers. He was and is the bread from heaven. He is the gift God gave from heaven that we always have when we gather as the church at Mass. He has been working with the Father in the Spirit for the salvation of the world from the time of Moses to the time of Jesus and all the way to our times, even if we aren’t always aware of it. We can be like children unaware of how hard our heavenly Father has worked for us through his Son in the Spirit, can’t we? 

As we begin several weeks of reflecting on the Eucharist, it’s good first to ask if we are aware that the one who comes to us under the appearance of bread and wine has, is, and will continue to be working for our salvation?

14 OT B I am the thorn in my flesh

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

After confirmation, I started teaching 5th grade Faith Formation on Sunday mornings. My parents always preferred Saturday afternoon Mass but I figured that, since I was going to be at church on Sunday morning anyway, I would just start going to Mass by myself then. Faith Formation took place from 9:00-9:55 between the 8:00 and 10:00 Mass so, most of the time, I would go to 10:00 Mass by myself. At this point in my life, I was pretty seriously discerning what would develop into my vocation to priesthood. I remember going over to Mass after Faith Formation and reading the readings for a couple of minutes and then deciding what I would preach about if I were the priest. I can remember being disappointed if the priest didn’t preach about what I would have preached about, which was the majority of the time. Sometimes, I would look at the readings and pick out what I thought was a pretty clear theme in them only to find that the priest was doing a special appeal or that he didn’t seem to be preaching on the central point at all. For me, it was part of what spurred on my vocation because I thought that I could do better. However, as I look back at that, I wonder how many people do something similar, not because they are discerning priesthood, the diaconate, or religious life but simply because they feel like what they are hearing isn’t helping them grow in faith. 

I was really struck this week by St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. It’s really important for us to listen to every sentence that St. Paul says in this passage. First, he admits that he’s been given an abundance of revelations. I’m sure St. Paul would say being born a Jew was among these because he came to know the Father of Jesus Christ intimately and how much the Father cares for him by giving him the law. However, I’m sure the pinnacle of these revelations happened when Jesus himself appeared to St. Paul to convert him to become one of his followers. Yet, despite how close the relationship that St. Paul had to Jesus, he was given what he described as a thorn in the flesh, an angel of Satan, given to him to keep him from being too elated, not in the sense of excited but in the sensd of puffed up or proud. St. Paul said he asked three times for it to be removed, a number symbolizing fullness or completeness, but God revealed, not a cure, but that “My grace is sufficient for you.” So, St. Paul says that, rather than boast of the revelations that he has been given or the gifts that he has been given, he boasts of what he initially called the thorn in his flesh, his failures, hardships, persecutions, constraints and other weaknesses so that when he is weak, Christ will be able to work through him in strength.

Thorns in the flesh are hard to just accept, however. For St. Paul, commentators think this was a person that made his ministry difficult. What thorns in the flesh do you have? Another way of asking this question is who makes it hard for you to practice your faith? Perhaps it is me or other church leaders, especially with how we have dealt with the clergy sexual abuse crisis or other scandals in the church. Maybe it’s a judgemental church goer that has a particular spirituality and seems intent on imposing it on you. Or maybe it’s lackadaisical family members who have abandoned their faith but who seem to be leading a better life than we who are practicing. You may struggle to believe parts of Sacred Scripture or some of the teachings of the church that don’t seem to make sense, like how the story of creation in the Bible isn’t completely contradicted by evolution and our understanding of a heliocentric universe. 

Personally, I am my own worst thorn in the side. I know that faith comes from spending time with Jesus but I am pretty good about sleeping in and missing my half hour of sitting with the Lord in the morning. I know I don’t really grow in faith or intelligence when I turn on the TV but I do it all too often instead of going to my comfy chair at night to sit and read one of the journals sitting next to it. I could go on but I think you get the point. 

As I look back on that kid critiquing my priest’s homily, I wish I would have been able to realize how arrogant I was being and how it wasn’t helping my growth in faith. It may have, in some ways, helped me want to become a priest but it was for the wrong reasons. I’m not saying you can’t critique homilies, don’t get me wrong. That’s not my point. Some of them are, undoubtedly, more a thorn in the flesh than a gift. But, if we put too much blame on other people for not helping our faith we may be missing the fact that our own actions are often hurting us much worse than the worst homily we’ve ever heard. How can we stop being our own thorns in the flesh?

10 OT B - Satan divides, Jesus unites.

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

If you’ve ever seen the movie “Dead Poets Society”, you may remember a scene in which Mr. Keating, played by the incredible actor Robin Williams, talks to how students about how we tend to view Shakespeare’s plays as though they were written to be very one dimensional, very serious, and very boring. He asks what it would be like if Marlon Brando or John Wayne did Shakespeare as he perfectly imitates their voices as only he could do. Then he performs a comedic scene from Shakespeare while the boys in his class laugh along to each joke. It was one of those moments that teachers dream about when an entire class gets it. 

I suspect sometimes we have the same problem with Sacred Scripture. We tend to think that the Word of God is meant to be entirely serious and entirely boring. However, I suspect that there are two uses of sarcasm in today’s Gospel and, even though we probably aren’t going to laugh out loud at either one, I think it’s good to understand them. The first has to do with who it was that thought Jesus was possessed by demons. I have no doubt that some members of Jesus’ family thought he was demon possessed. We only know of one relative, James the lesser, who was one of his followers. What do you think the rest of his family thought of him? As a person who is fairly religious, I can tell you that some members of my family think I’m crazy. Especially if they have walked away from practicing the faith, they can’t understand why I would be a priest in this time of abuse. I can only imagine how difficult it would be to say to your cousin that you believe you’re the messiah, although in Jesus’ case his cousin was John the Baptist so maybe that’s a bad example. We know that, when Jesus went to Nazareth, the people there tried to throw him off a cliff to kill him. Some of them were his family members. I think the joke happens when, instead of naming the relatives who thought Jesus was possessed, St. Mark says Mary and Jesus’ brothers are the ones who show up. They aren’t the trouble makers. They’re the ones who do the will of God. It’s the old switcheroo. 

The other humorous moment we probably don’t hear correctly is when Jesus asks “How can Satan drive out Satan?...if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand; that is the end of him.” The Philosopher Rene Girard wrote in his book I See Satan Fall Like Lightening that Jesus is showing how divisive that Satan is. Look, for instance, at the first reading from Genesis Chapter 3. Satan’s actions cause division between Adam and Eve in that they each blame each other for eating the fruit. But, in some ways, the most depressing division happens right at the beginning of this passage when God asks “Where are you?” He can’t see them because they are hiding. Satan separates. He uses shame to make us hide from each other and from God.

The good news however is that, while Satan divides to conquer, Jesus unites us as his body. And, as Rene Girard said, Satan cannot stand. He has already lost, he’s just trying to convince other people to join the losing team, not out of solidarity but so others can be as miserable as he is. Jesus, on the other hand, wants to unite us to the very heart of his life, to his family. He invites us to be his Mother and his brothers and sisters. I’m comfortable being Jesus’ brother. I’ll spend time with Jesus in adoration. I’ll read the Bible to learn about his life. When I’m riding my bike or jogging, I’ll be conscious of the fact that he’s there with me. But how could he invite any of us to be…his mother? See why I think this is meant to have a little humor in it? But, when we act as a Godparent for a baby, committing to help that child grow in faith, aren’t we kind of like Mary? When we talk to others about our own faith and how God has made a saving impact on our life, aren’t we bringing Jesus into this world like Mary did?

If we are to be Jesus’ brothers and sisters and, yes, even his mother, how can we help unite people to his body and not divide them?