33 OT C Perseverant Testimony

 Friends

    Peace be with you. 

    In the past few months, I’ve talked with several people who are concerned that we are seeing events that point to the end times. Whether it’s the ongoing escalations in the war in Ukraine or the immoral and selfish political choices evidenced in the last election or some statements and actions by church leaders that are not in keeping with the Sacred Scripture or Sacred Tradition, these events can cause us a lot of concern. We may be tempted to look to the Book of Revelation and the Book of Daniel and look for the signs of the apocalypse that are present in our world today. 

However, before we do that, and before we get too far into those themes which are more prevalent as we draw closer to the end of the church’s liturgical and the beginning of the Advent season, let’s hear, with open hearts, the caution that our Lord has in the Gospel for today. Jesus says that we shouldn’t be fooled by those who think they know when the Lord will come again. We may see “wars and insurrections” and be tempted to start screaming about the end of the world but “do not believe them” he says. The implication is, also, that we shouldn’t become them. Why? Because there’s a tendency when you become fixated on the end-times, to fear. You can become so worried about looking for the signs of the end-times that you become selfish and worry so much about taking care of yourself and your own salvation that you forget to evangelize your neighbor. That’s why our Lord tells us that we are to persevere in giving testimony to the gospel. That is our job, to persevere in giving testimony that God loves us so much that he gave us his only son, Jesus Christ, so that we might have forgiveness of sins and the grace of the Holy Spirit.

    This past Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, many of us were taught one way we can persevere in giving testimony. Fr. Greg Bramlage, who preached at all the Masses last weekend, taught us about the power of intercessory prayer for healing. We, not just the ordained but all the baptized, can ask Jesus to heal a person just as he did when he walked among us so that the power of his healing of our sins may be outwardly manifested in the healing of our bodies. At the end of Mass, there will be people available if you’d like them to pray over you to ask Jesus to heal you. You may be suffering from something drastic like cancer or some other serious illness or serious physical injury or something smaller like if you’ve struggled with impurity or depression. It doesn’t matter. Two people will pray over you for two or three minutes saying repeatedly something like “Lord Jesus, heal this child of God.” While that sacramental is happening, I’ll also be standing in the front of church celebrating the sacrament of Anointing of the Sick for any of you who are ill or at a certain age where it will help strengthen you. I’d ask that those who do not want to participate in either, leave church by the side aisles and the people wanting to be anointed or prayed over walk up the center aisle.

    In doing this, we persevere in giving testimony to our hope in Jesus Christ. It’s easy to find reasons to struggle in hope in this world. But we must be the ones to give the hope of Christ to others. May our every word and action be an exercise in allowing God to use our lips and our hearts to praise him in hope.

24 OT C God searches for us even though we’re still lost

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

The other day, I was sitting in my office and I realized I needed to ask Shannon a question. I saw a receipt on my desk that needed to be turned in and a book that needed to go back on my bookshelf on my way out the door. I walked to my mailbox past the candy bars and resisted the temptation to grab the tiny Milky Way which sat at the top of the glass jar. Nonetheless, I continued on to the mailboxes and dropped the receipt into Tom’s mailbox before noticing that there were several pieces of new mail in my mailbox. I sorted through them, throwing out the junk mail and quickly opening the one bill that was in the stack. My cell phone buzzed in my pocket so I pulled it out and noticed that my friend sent me one of his daily comedy messages on facebook messenger. I turned the corner to Shannon’s desk and looked across the alley and remembered that I forgot to bring something from my house that morning that I was going to need for an upcoming meeting. I then turned my attention to Shannon, resolving that my next step would be to go across the alley to my house to get what I needed and I realized that I had no idea what the question was that had started this whole process. I stood there with this blank look on my face. Did it have something to do with Milky Way candy bars or the mail? No, neither of those. I walked back to my office in an attempt to jog my memory. I sat down at my desk because I felt like it had something to do with something on my computer but I couldn’t, for the life of me, remember what it was. The good thing was that, after a couple of minutes of looking, I realized what the question was so returned directly to Shannon’s desk to ask her and then went back to my office feeling like I still was forgetting something…a feeling that would be fulfilled when I went to a meeting that night without a form which was still sitting in my apartment. 

Does this ever happen to you? It seems to happen to me a lot, to the point where I’ve worried that I may be prematurely losing my memory. Thankfully, my previous doctor told me that I’m simply trying to do too many things at one time and my memory can only hold about six or seven things at any given time. 

You know what I didn’t do when I finally remembered the question I needed to ask Shannon? Call the staff together and celebrate. That’s the irony of Jesus’ two short parables in today’s gospel. A man has a hundred sheep and he loses one. Now, it’s absolutely ridiculous that the man would leave 99 sheep alone in search of a lost one when you think about it. I’ve always imagined that the shepherd just left the 99 under the protection of another shepherd or a paid laborer but that’s not what’s implied. In this parable, the ninety nine sheep are in danger while he’s looking for the one that just wandered away such that, when he found it, he’s undoubtedly relieved but probably also quite annoyed, enough that the last thing he’s thinking about doing is celebrating. Or, think about the woman with ten cents who searches everywhere for one lost coin. It wasn’t stolen, it was simply misplaced by her carelessness. If I celebrated every time I found something I’d lost by carelessness, I wouldn’t get anything done in the day and, quite rightly, people would be annoyed with me. In both cases, the reaction the people have, “Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep” or “my lost coin” is silly. They would have, at best, felt relief but they probably wouldn’t want to draw too much attention to the fact that she can’t keep track of ten cents or he can’t keep his sheep safe. 

But, thankfully, that’s not how God thinks. God rejoices over a sinner who repents, even a foolish one, even more so than over all those who don’t need to repent. We may feel unworthy of God’s forgiveness, like we haven’t fully repented or like we aren’t as sorrowful as we need to be, but God wants to celebrate our forgiveness with him in the sacrament of reconciliation. What’s stopping us from feeling a little foolish and celebrating God’s forgiveness? 

20 OT C Jesus came to set our hearts on fire

 Friends

    Peace be with you. 

    In the past, I was asked if it would be okay for a certified Yoga instructor to come into a Catholic School to teach the kids a variation of Yoga. I did some research and found out that the stretching part of yoga can be a very good way for people to destress the body and even a way of staying fit. Given the level of stress our school kids are under, it was thought this could be a way for us to offer an outlet for them. However, when I looked into it a little deeper, I found that there are chants that go along with the particular poses that are directly tied to Eastern religion and the idea that one can become god. Even the names of the poses themselves are tied to pantheism, the idea that everything is made up of god and we can become god by becoming at peace with everything. When I asked the leader if she could leave out the chants and the names of the poses and just teach the stretching part, the leader basically told us she wouldn’t do that because it wouldn’t be loyal to the essence of Yoga. So we told her we couldn’t allow her to teach in our Catholic school. The more I reflected on it, the more comfortable I was with the decision, especially in the light of this particular passage of scripture. 

    This passage is unique to Luke’s gospel but is one I think about quite often. Jesus didn’t come to bring peace. He came to set the world on fire. Now, before we draw too many fiery conclusions, I learned a few things that may be helpful in understanding this passage. In the sandy middle east, it can often be seventy or eighty degrees in the day and thirty or forty degrees at night. They don’t have the vegetation we have that helps moderate the temperature. So, at the time of Jesus, they had these clay, or earthen, fireplaces that you would light at night to keep warm. Jesus is saying that, like those earthen fireplaces, he wishes we, his followers were like them on fire. He seems to switch to baptismal imagery quickly but this is another contrasting element of Christiantity. Jesus' baptism with fire will be his death on cross. You see, Jesus wants to light the earthen fireplace of our own persecution.

    St. Maximilian Kolbe was a Franciscan priest. He had to sneak around during World War II in order to join the Conventual Franciscan Friars. At one point, he offered to take the place of a Jewish Man who was to be killed in a concentration camp and he was killed. During his canonization process, there were some who dug up statements made by St. Maximilian that they deemed to be anti-semitic. Everything I read from Jewish commentators about this controversy was that they lauded St. Maximilian for his willingness to die for Jews. However, it was mostly what we might call “woke” Catholics who felt we should exclude St. Maximilian from the litany of saints because of these past statements. Thankfully, St. John Paul the Great knew sanctity isn’t halted by any amount of outrage and or offense of the politically correct. He followed the procedures set up and, when the appropriate miracles were verified, he recognized this great saint for the powerful intercessor he is, which is why it’s so fitting for us to have a relic of him in our chapel. I think we can say with certainty that St. Maximilian Kolbe set the world on fire with his own persecution, just like Jesus, even if it meant a mother was set against her daughter or a son against his father.

    If we are to be the earthen fireplace, filled with the Holy Spirit, it often means we will feel like we are the source of division. It may mean having to say to someone that we won’t go to yoga with them because it’s in conflict with our faith. Or it may mean we offend a family member who doesn’t feel like we should have to pause for prayer before our meal. Or it may mean we upset someone because we help an immigrant rather than toss them aside as garbage. Jesus wants us to be baptized with a fiery baptism like his own. Can we take the heat of other people’s outrage because we’re living the gospel?

17 OT C God’s will to forgive above my will to succeed.

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

Have you ever been reluctant to ask God for something in prayer? There have been times when I have felt like there is no need to ask God for prayers because the outcome was inevitable. I think this realization comes about the first time we ask for something and our request doesn’t get answered in the way we want it to. For example, a number of years ago, I made a plan with God that, if I won a large amount of money in the lottery, I would create investments in the Catholic Foundation of the Archdiocese of Dubuque so that parishes that are struggling financially, especially the smaller rural parishes I’m accustomed to pastoring, would be able to earn some interest income and possibly be able to stay open even if their weekly giving can’t keep up with expenses. I asked God to be able to make me win on a particular Saturday night when the jackpot was in the hundreds of millions of dollars. I bought one ticket with numbers that I thought were significant for me because I was certain that God knew my plan and thought it was brilliant and would help me win this money. I watched the news that night as the drawing took place…and I didn’t even get one number correct. I could have rationalized it by saying that I needed to try again next week but I didn’t. I just assumed that this wasn’t the will of God and so I stopped asking, seeking, or knocking. That probably seems at least a little superficial of a petition to start off with but I would guess many of us have asked for God to intervene in sporting events that someone might win, in plays or concerts so that your kid would remember all the lines or play his trombone perfectly, or in a party or get together so that everyone comes, has a good time, and leaves in a timely manner. 

Our readings today are focused on how prayer can be an exercise in asking and seeking. I would point out that, in Luke’s version of the Our Father, which is shorter and less complex than Matthew’s, the whole point of the prayer isn’t just about asking God for stuff. We call God our Father and give honor to his name. We invite the Kingdom of God and forgive so that we may be forgiven. But, at the heart of the prayer is the petition “Give us this day our daily bread”. A commentary I read said that this is an echo of the daily bread the disciples would eat in the desert on their pilgrimage from Egypt to the Holy Land. From a Christian perspective, this bread is the Eucharist, our bread that gets us through our days, which is the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ. 

The context the church provides, however, isn’t focused on sports, plays, or even the lottery. We are encouraged to ask for forgiveness of sins, despite the fact that God has no need to forgive our sins. In the parable, God is the landowner with a full belly in bed and we are the persistent neighbor asking him for bread. The word they translate as persistent can also mean shameless or audacious. We shamelessly turn to God asking for forgiveness even though he is perfect and is faithful to us even when we are unfaithful to him and our neighbor. I think that’s why there is such a strong connection between Eucharist and confession in the Catholic church, between forgiveness of sins and receiving the author of forgiveness. If we are going to receive the body of him who offers us forgiveness, we must offer forgiveness to those who have wronged us.

We know that God offers to save all the world for the sake of one good person, his son Jesus. We eat his body and drink his blood and reconcile ourselves with him. Now if we can just recognize that the most important prayer isn’t about winning the lottery but about putting God’s will above our own by seeking forgiveness and freely offering it to those who have wronged us.  

16 OT C When we welcome Jesus to our house, everything else is secondary

 Before I begin my homily, I want to make you aware of a convention I use to begin every Sunday and Holy Day homily that can trip people up. I begin my homily, following the custom of many christian preachers, by saying, “friends, peace be with you” Now, when I do that, I’m not looking for a response of “and with your spirit”. It’s just something I do to get started on what I believe to be the right food. Jesus calls us friends and so I call you friends. And I pray for peace so that my homily may make us at peace with God. In that vein, I say…

Friends

    Peace be with you. 

    It’s been interesting to reflect on this gospel during a week where I moved halfway across the state of Iowa, from Bellevue to here to Cedar Rapids. Most of the time people reflect on this passage, they focus on the contrast between contemplative Mary versus laborious Martha. I’ve had many people, especially women, say that this is frustrating to them because preachers tend to imply that contemplation is superior to the active life of charity. Even though there is some merit to that argument, I’m not sure that is the lesson Jesus is hoping to teach these sisters and anyone else who was listening to the master teach. 

    Another problem is that we tend to associate this with teachings on hospitality, because that is the focus of the first reading when Abraham greets the three divine travelers. That means that the message most preachers are going to focus on is that, when people come to our house, we shouldn't spend so much time clearing and cooking, that we miss out on seeing the image of God within them. Again, that’s a good message but I’m not convinced that’s the message of this gospel. Jesus is in the home of a woman who is never identified as a relative and there is no husband or brother or father mentioned as also being present. This is significant because Jesus is breaking a bunch of middle eastern social norms that could have gotten him killed unless he knows Martha and Mary well enough that he is like a relative, such a close friend to them that he is like a brother. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but I prefer this understanding of his relationship with these two sisters. 

    So, if the point isn’t the pitfalls of working too hard when hospitality is called for or the predominance of the contemplative life over the more active, charitable life, what is the message of the gospel? All this week, I’ve been staring at plastic totes filled with clothes and books and nick nacks. I sit down to pray and I look around and think that I can say a Psalm and hang up those clothes or I can pray a rosary and unpack a box of books. I think the point is that, when we invite Jesus to our homes, we need to be ready to spend all our time with him. Prayer gets so easily cluttered up with other concerns, even if we haven’t just moved. We may intend to spend fifteen minutes in prayer and end up spending all that time thinking about a harsh conversation we had with a friend or coworker. We may put on Fr. Mike Schmitz’s Bible in a Year Podcast and have it playing in the background and scroll through Facebook or Twitter or other social media platforms and realize we didn’t hear a single passage Fr. Mike was reading. It’s way too easy to get distracted in prayer, to allow concerns about work or our house or our family to crowd out any thought of God, let alone actually having a conversation with our dearest friend Jesus. I think that’s the context of this passage. It’s important to set aside time in prayer. That’s one of the many reasons I’m very excited about being your pastor: you have a dedicated adoration chapel where people can go throughout the day to pray and know it will be quiet there and they will be left alone with the Lord. It’s okay, in that context, to pray for our coworkers and even talk to Jesus in our hearts about how we can work out our problems. But, when we invite Jesus into our homes and our lives, we need to put our focus on him. There’ll be time to clean the clutter afterward. 

15 OT C The law of mercy.

 Friends

    Peace be with you. 

    This past week, our Muslim brothers and sisters started their great pilgrimage festival called the hajj. It is a pilgrimage all muslims are expected to make at least once in their lives to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the place Muslims believe Abraham encountered the one true God. A pilgrimage is a common experience among world religions. For Buddhists, there are four sites in Nepal and India that are considered sacred pilgrimage sites. Even in Christianity, it’s kind of common to make pilgrimages. A group of parishioners left to go to Germany, Austria and, of course, Luxembourg on pilgrimage this past week. Christian Pilgrimages are so common, in fact that we have built one into our architecture. In almost all Catholic Churches, you can see the stations of the cross which was created as a kind of local pilgrimage when it became too dangerous for people to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to the actual walkway that Jesus took from being condemned to being placed in the tomb. 

    For Jews, the great pilgrimage they would have made from the time of King Solomon to the year 70 A.D. was to the Temple. It was the place of encounter with God and receiving forgiveness through the offering of sacrifice. It was a place of prayer and healing and debate. No other place in the world is as important to the Jewish people as the Temple. 

    That’s what makes our first reading, from the Book of Deuteronomy, so surprising. Now, at this point in history there is no Temple. This book is written when the chosen people were on their 40 year pilgrimage through the desert from Egypt to their promised land. Moses is conveying to the chosen people the message that God has for them; which is that they need to remain faithful to the law. Yet, what is surprising is how they are meant to learn the law. Actually, it’s even a bit of a misnomer to call it “the law”, as we can kind of tell from this passage. When we think of the phrase “the law”, we probably think about law enforcement pulling us over for speeding or driving on the wrong side of the road. That’s not really the point of the law in the Bible, especially as it is conveyed in the first five books of the Bible. The law is God’s way of being in a relationship with his people. It’s his way of passing on to them the ways he expects them to live if they intend to live in his land. It’s a way of life as much as anything and, it’s not something, as it said in the first reading, that is extrinsic to us, not something that is imposed on us. It is very much intrinsic, very much something inside of us. But how do we get in touch with it? If it is, indeed, something very near to us, already in our mouths and in our hearts, we have only to carry it out”, how do we do that?

    Let’s look to the gospel. Jesus talks about a scholar of the law who approaches him and asks for a summary of the law. Jesus, being a good rabbi, gives what we tend to refer to as the Great Commandment, which comes from two passages, one from Deuteronomy and one from Leviticus, wherein we are called to love God and neighbor. However, kind of like the rich young man, this scholar asks a follow up question of who is our neighbor. It’s a good question, when you think about it. If, as I’ve heard some preachers contend, our neighbor is someone of our same religion or someone to whom we are related, it shapes the Great Commandment one way. 

However, Jesus doesn’t answer that way. He answers with a story, the story we’ve come to know as the Good Samaritan. A man gets beaten up and left for dead along what is, at the time, a very dangerous road between Jerusalem and Jericho. A priest and a Levite see the man but pass by out of fear of ritual condemnation. In both cases, had they helped, they wouldn’t have been able to carry out their sacred duties because of the rules associated with their professions. However, a dreaded Samaritan stops and saves the man, even going so far as to pay for his recovery. Now, remember that Samaritans are like the Jehovah’s Witness neighbors to the Jews. They were a group created by the Babylonians in an attempt to water down Judaism to make it more amenable to other religions. They believe in one God but have their own Bible, their own temple, their own rules, though many of them are at least similar to Judaism because they’re sort of based on it. But, Jews do not trust them. So, the idea that a Samaritan was the one to take care of an injured Jew would be impossible for them to face. I love how this story ends. Jesus asks the scholar of the law who is the neighbor. Now, you’d think he’d say all three because the Levite and the Priest were just doing their best to live according to the law. But, instead the scholar says, “the one who treated him with mercy”. And the response that Jesus gives, therefore, is “Go and do likewise.” He calls this scholar of the law and ourselves to go and do likewise, to live a life of mercy. 

    This is, in many ways, quite a challenge Jesus is offering us: to live a life of mercy. But, I think it is related to the first reading because in living the life of mercy we can see the face of God. Mother Teresa used to talk about how she could see the face of Christ in the face of the poor and lepers. St. Damien of Molokai said the same thing when he was ministering in Hawaii. The late Cardinal John O’Connor, much maligned because of his strong pro-life views, used to go into AIDS wards late at night and empty the chamber pots of the men there because he felt he was serving Christ in doing so. This is what the Lord means when he says we don’t have to go on a pilgrimage, we don’t have to look for something mysterious in the sky or sail across the sea in some Indian Jones type of search for the truth that will reveal the hidden mysteries of God. It is in our mouths and in our hearts. It is revealed in mercy, in forgiveness, in helping those who are in need, in reconciling. For too many people, being religious means perfectly following a set of rules. But, the truth is that being a Christian means being merciful, forgiving even when we don’t have to. Pope Francis, the pope of mercy, has this beautiful quote from 2013, “I think we too are the people who, on the one hand, want to listen to Jesus, but on the other hand, at times, like to find a stick to beat others with, to condemn others. And Jesus has this message for us: mercy. I think - and I say it with humility - that this is the Lord's most powerful message: mercy.” 

    Who is the beat up person in our life who we have left by the side of the road. We may even think they deserve to be beaten up. They may have wronged us in some way or may have said something that hurt us in such a way that we basically wrote them out of our life. If mercy means being the Good Samaritan, allowing the mercy that God put into our hearts and minds to affect us toward them, what does that mean? How can we be people of reconciliation, of healing, and of mercy?

14 OT C In simplicity, announce the Kingdom of God is at hand.

 Friends

    Peace be with you.

This past week, I was up at an Air B&B in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, finishing up my sabbatical. This was my first experience staying in an Air B&B. It felt like I was staying at someone else’s house but they weren’t home. I kept waiting for them to come home and start yelling at me to get out of their house, even though I knew that wasn’t going to happen. But, after a day without someone yelling at me, I was finally able to realize I was safe in this home and started to relax. It was the first time since in three weeks that I had watched any kind of television. I was behind on two science fiction television shows I generally watch so, on Tuesday night when it was cold and rainy up there, I decided to watch them. Both had a common theme that I found kind of disturbing but also rather typical of a lot of science fiction. In both shows, there was a being that far surpassed humans in power and intelligence and this being basically decided to play with humans as though we were animals in a scientific experiment. It read the minds of the humans and projected what it thought would be the perfect or the most terrifying world. The conclusion is what I found disturbing. Both shows said that, in order for human beings to progress, we had to get rid of the idea of family and gender and God and nations and, one of them even said we to get rid of the notion of self, in order to progress as a society. It turned into a form of scientism, the belief that eventually science will be able to answer all the questions that humans have if we just give it enough time. Please know, when I talk about scientism, I’m not referring to all of science, which is a really good and useful tool for humanity. And, not all scientists ascribe to scientism. There are many scientists who have a deep faith and would never in a million years believe science will answer all the world’s questions. In fact, most scientists I know say that the struggle with science is that, in answering one question, they unearth five more questions that are as difficult if not more difficult to answer. However, the most outspoken believers of scientism tend to be scientists and would all, in general, say that we have moved past a point of needing religion to explain why things exist or giving us morality because science will explain it all. You can probably understand why a priest would be a little disturbed by this trend, especially among young people, to buy into this attitude wholesale. Yet, I can’t entirely blame them. As I said, it is a viewpoint that shapes the way a lot of television shows, not just science fiction by the way, operate under. The presumption is that, if you are intelligent and forward looking, you believe in science and if you are a simpleton or regressive in your belief system, you believe in God. Whether it’s a political talk show or a cartoon or a 30 minute sitcom, chances are this attitude has been present for you at some point. 

So, if atheistic scientism has its disciples, who is speaking for God? In today’s gospel, we hear that Jesus calls 72 disciples to go and prepare for his visit to various towns in Galilee. The number of disciples echoes an Old Testament experience in which Moses, realizing he can’t deal with all the disputes that are being brought to him as he is leading the people to the Holy Land, asks God to take some of his power to empower people to help him. God calls forth 72 people to help Moses in the desert just as Jesus now empowers 72 people to go and prepare the way for him. Let’s talk about what that preparation looks like. I hear two interrelated categories of preparation that may guide us today. First, we need to simplify. We need to ask ourselves if we really need something or if it is more of a distraction. This is the question that someone who moves a lot should constantly ask himself, by the way: do I really need this? It’s not to say we can’t have nice things, things that we find relaxing or recreational. But, I think we’re at a point for a lot of people where we think we are entitled to have stuff simply because society tells us we need it. For instance, I got rid of the internet at my house. I have it on my phone if I really need it but that’s the only device that has it at my house. And, you know what, I’ve survived. In fact, I’ve continued reading more, which I started during my three weeks in the monastery. I know most people would consider internet a necessary thing in today’s world but are we becoming dependent on it? It’s useful, yes, but we can probably live with out it in our homes. Other things to think about are clothes or food or fishing gear, do we have too much of it? It’s not even a question of whether we can afford it. It’s a question of do we need it.

But why is this simplicity necessary? Because having and marinating the stuff of our lives stops us from being the kind of disciple we are called to be. I have a friend who has a dog. Dogs are great. I love them. I see a dog and I smile. But, I couldn’t get a dog because I know I would spend all my time taking care of that dog. When people came into the confessional, I would be thinking about getting them out so I could go pet my dog. I would probably try to have my dog with me at Mass, sitting on the left side so the deacon could sit on the right and he may even have some part in the Mass like carrying up the gifts. When people called me in the night to come and anoint them, I would think that I’m sure the dog will hear me if I leave so I first have to walk the dog before going. He would stop me from doing the kind of evangelization that I know needs to be done, even if he is the bestest boy. I would use my dog as an excuse to get out of meetings. And, if we hear and believe Jesus, the message is too important to allow anything to get in its way. The message is that “The Kingdom of God is at hand for you”. God wants us in heaven. We shouldn’t count on being able to repent tomorrow for yesterday‘s or today’s sins. It is here and it is now and we need to be prepared. It’s kind of like, instead of it being July of 2022, we’re in Philadelphia in July of 1776 and the nation of the United States of America is at hand for us. That’s the kind of urgency Jesus wants us to have. It’s not meant to be a frightening or threatening message. It’s a very hopeful message. It’s time to be prepared. But how can we help people be prepared? We can help them to know the maker of the kingdom that is at hand for them, the God who loves them and wants to get to know them. Invite them to Mass with you. If they say “no”, tell them you’ll ask again later. If they say yes, help them to know what’s going to happen if they have never been to Mass or if it’s been a while. Make sure they know not to receive communion if they aren’t Catholic but that they can receive a blessing. If coming to Mass is too much, we can pray with them. Say an Our Father or a Glory be. I’ve heard of grandparents teaching their grandchildren or great grandchildren the “Now I lay me down to sleep prayer” as a powerful means of evangelization. 

The reality is, the forces of atheistic scientism have their disciples. Jesus calls us today to be his, to tell people the Kingdom of God is at hand for you. Are we prepared with simple lives or do we need to simplify a little and are we open to reaching out to our neighbor tell them this message of hope in the kingdom of God?

Pentecost C: Beg the Holy Spirit to empower us to let go of our hurts

 Friends

    Peace be with you. 

    In a previous assignment that I’ve talked about a couple of times in my homilies, I was the pastor of six parishes in six small towns in two counties in north central Iowa. It was a challenging assignment for many reasons, not the least of which were the expectations with which I walked into the assignment. I had been taking a Catholic leadership training course for pastors called Good Leaders, Good Shepherds that was all about building unity around common purpose and setting forth a vision of leadership. I walked in believing that my goal was to get these six parishes to work together, to move towards being a cluster rather than a loose grouping of six parishes, and possibly one day to even get them to a point where they would agree to being one corporate parish with multiple church buildings in multiple towns. It sounded great in my mind but not so much in other people’s minds. There was a great deal of resistance to this change that I hoped would decrease over time and that we would be able to work together. We made it to the point of officially being a cluster but, even when that process was finished, I could see the dream of being one parish with multiple church buildings was going to remain just that; a dream. When I was reassigned, I found some time to reflect upon the experience and I realized something that may sound rather shocking to you all: throughout the whole experience I really don’t think I asked God if that type of unity was his will. I asked for help in accomplishing what I wanted to get done and I asked for forgiveness and healing for those who were struggling to accept the changes that were happening but I don’t remember asking what God’s will was.

    Today is Pentecost. Both the first reading and the gospel describe an imparting of the Holy Spirit on the apostles. And both have fascinating details surrounding that imparting. However, they also have messages that I think may help us today, given the community division that was, once again, laid open this past week between our two schools. I want to admit my own part in this division. Recently I made some remarks in a homily that were hurtful and divisive and I am sorry for them. I am sorry for the people directly affected by them and the people indirectly affected by them. They are my own fault and no explanation or excuses can undo the hurt or harm they have caused. It was foolish and all I can do is say I’m sorry. 

    As I was reading the readings for today, there were two interrelated messages that kept jumping out at me. The first has to do with what is traditionally acknowledged as the Pentecost event described in the first reading. As you may remember from last week, the disciples were locked in a room awaiting power from on high from the Holy Spirit. When it comes, there are tongues as of fire above them and they are filled with the Holy Spirit. What was the first thing that the Holy Spirit did? She gave them the power to communicate to people in their own language. If you have ever had an experience of being the only person who speaks English in a situation where you need help, you know how important a common language is. It’s easy to be suspicious of people if they are speaking a different language that you don’t understand. Had the Apostles gone running to the Parthians and started speaking in Aramaic, the Parthians probably wouldn’t have understood. But, because of the Holy Spirit, the apostles are given the ability to speak Parthian to them. You see, it had to be God in the third person of the Holy Trinity, the Holy Spirit, giving them a common language to speak to each other that caused a kind of reconciliation of evangelization. Had they tried five minutes before to evangelize the people, it wouldn’t have worked. God had to do the work, and when he does it’s so much better than anything they would have asked for or imagined. They didn’t come up with the SMART Goals to learn multiple languages. God gave the gift of communication that allowed them to bridge the divisions. 

    The other message that came through to me was when Jesus gave them the Holy Spirit on Easter. Now, you may ask why the Holy Spirit came to them on Pentecost when Jesus had breathed on them and said “Receive the Holy Spirit” on Easter. From the context of passages, it appears that the Holy Spirit was breathed out to the Apostles on Easter for the specific purpose to that specific group of people who can offer the forgiveness of sins. Whereas, at Pentecost, the Spirit is given to everyone to empower us all to evangelize. So, focusing on the gift of the Holy Spirit at Easter, for the forgiveness of sins, most people see this as the beginning and empowerment of priests and bishops for the sacramental forgiveness of sins in Reconciliation. However, something stuck out to me. Jesus contrasts forgiveness with retention. He says “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them and whose sins you retain are retained.” The opposite of forgiveness is retention. We have all probably said we have forgiven someone but retained a lot of hatred toward them. Sometimes this is more of a survival mechanism built into us to protect us from being hurt again. The survivors of clergy sexual abuse say they will probably never forget what happened to them. They want to forgive the person because they know that the hatred and anger they are holding onto is just hurting them and not the person who abused them. But, they were hurt and that is never easy to let go. In small towns, there are a lot of hurts. Between the schools, there are a lot of hurts. In our families, there are a lot of hurts. In our workplaces, there are a lot of hurts. Even in our church, there is a lot of hurt. On this Pentecost, please pray with me that the Holy Spirit empowers us to do what we can’t do on our own: to stop retaining the hurt so that we can be a people of reconciled diverse unity. 

Easter 2022 - C What it’s like not to be believed

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

A few years ago, the NBC morning show, the Today Show, premiered a shocking discovery around this time of year. They were interviewing a person who claimed to have found a lost burial box from the family tomb of Jesus. They started the show with one of the anchors in an undisclosed location standing among a bunch of clay rectangular boxes called ossuaries. An ossuary is what was used a year or two after a person had died at the time of Jesus to bury the bones of a deceased relative or friend. The particular ossuary has been the subject of much discussion in more recent years from people claiming it is a well done forgery and people claiming it is completely legitimate. On the side of the ossuary is written in Aramaic “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus”. There are many problems with knowing for sure whose bones were contained in this box at one time including the appearance of a change in handwriting for the “brother of Jesus” part of the inscription, the fact that the box was located on the antiquities market instead of in the ground, and the fact that all three of the names are incredibly common. But, it was almost comical the way the morning news people handled the story because they acted like, if they did find the burial box of James, the brother of Jesus, they needed to keep its location entirely secret because Christians could want to come and steal it out of fear that the truth would get out. I couldn’t help but wonder why these anchors would think Christians would be worried about knowing that St. James the Lesser, as he is often called in the scriptures, who is called the brother of the Lord in the Bible, died. However, the truth is that it fit into a larger narrative that these anchors felt would rock the Christian world: That they have found the family tomb of Jesus. And, of course, if they have found the family tomb of Jesus, they must be close to finding an ossuary that will contain the bones of Jesus Christ himself and, ultimately, disprove the resurrection. In 1980, so forty years ago, some archaeologists in Israel found what they believe may be the family tomb of Jesus which they call the Talpiot Tomb. It contains some ossuaries which mention the name Yeshua, which we translate into English both as Joshua and Jesus on their sides. The best archaeologists, even those who are not particularly kind to religion, are extremely skeptical of the conclusions these people have drawn. Still, the filmmaker who made Titanic, James Cameron, made a documentary claiming to have found the Lost Tomb of Jesus. The conclusion of the documentary seems to want to push people toward the belief that archaeology will one day find the burial box of Jesus Christ himself and his bones presuming, of course, those nasty Christians didn’t destroy or hide it away. 

Yet, I’m here to tell you that they will not find it, not because of some sinister thing like we, Christians, have them hidden deep in the bowels of the Vatican. They will never find the bones of Jesus because…they are not here. They are not on earth. Jesus truly died on Good Friday. It wasn’t simply a case of near death or the temporary stoppage of his heart. His heart was pierced by a soldier’s lance and blood and water poured forth from his side. He was taken down from the cross without brain waves being active. He was put into a tomb, not his family tomb by the way, but in a tomb owned by Joseph of Arimithea. He was put into the tomb quickly before a sabbath that commemorated the feast of Passover for the Jews. Everyone thought the story was over. The Gospel of Luke clearly explains what happens when “the women who had come from Galilee…took species they had prepared and went to the tomb.” They couldn’t have anointed his body after his death because of the controversy surrounding it and because they couldn’t violate the sabbath rest. So, early on Sunday morning, the first real time they can get to the tomb, they approach it to anoint his body expecting to find it lifeless on the same slab their friend Joseph had put it on Friday afternoon. However, as we heard, when they get to the tomb, it is empty, a fact that doesn’t say anything to them initially but speaks volumes when two men appear to them in gowns eerily similar to the ones Jesus, Moses, and Elijah wore at the Transfiguration. These men ask, “Why do you seek the living one among the dead? He is not here, but has been raised.” The men remind them that Jesus had told them what was to happen and then the women remember. So, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, go back to the upper room, the location of the Last Supper, and find the eleven, Judas is gone, to tell them what they saw. How do the disciples of Jesus, the ones who heard exactly how this was going to play out, react to the news that his body is not there? It says, “their story seemed like nonsense and they did not believe them.” Peter goes to the tomb and he notices something that Luke doesn’t say the women noticed, that the burial cloths were still there. This becomes an important detail for the early church, because had people stolen the body of Jesus, they  wouldn’t have taken time to unwrap the body first before removing it from the tomb. It would have been easier to leave it all wrapped up and hauled it somewhere else. It’s possible, though not mandatory as far as my faith is concerned, that we still have this burial shroud of Jesus in Turin, Italy. It makes sense to me that, if the early church saw it as important they would have prioritized keeping it safe and that could have included it ending up in Italy. But, again, I’m not basing my faith on the presence of a burial shroud but on the absence of what may have been contained in that shroud: the body of Jesus. That’s why people like James Cameron and the other journalists, who published books at the time the burial box was reported to the media, so badly want to find the tomb and, ultimately, the bones of Jesus of Nazareth: because it would completely disprove the validity of Christianity. Why is faith in Jesus’ resurrection so threatening to them?

I think it’s rather telling that belief in Jesus sometimes means people will not believe us. It’s a hard thing to believe. God sent his son into the world to die on a cross in order to free us from original sin and impart the life of grace on the creatures created in his own image and likeness. Yet, Jesus also rose from the dead to show us that, even that most evil act in all of creation, the destruction of human life, cannot terminate a person living the life of grace. In other words, we may die but, if we have faith and live lives of hope filled with God’s love, we may one day be raised with all the faithful in the resurrection of the dead. We may follow him whose resurrection we celebrate today and Jesus is just the first among us, therefore, to share in this resurrection. It makes sense that people don’t believe this, doesn’t it? To most of the world, it seems like nonsense and they don’t believe us, to paraphrase what St. Luke said. But, it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t believe it or share it with others. Jesus has been raised body and soul and we celebrate it today on this Easter Sunday. 

Living a life of faith can often seem unbelievable to other people. Just to give one example: As Christians we are called to look at marriage and family life differently than other people. A husband and wife are called to see their sacramental marriage as a different kind of bond than one that starts up at the State Park or in the court house. Christian marriage is not just based on two people who find pleasure in each other or find a soulmate with whom you always get along. Christian marriage is a union of a man and a woman in God’s love, a unique relationship in that it carries with it the possibility of creativity, of making new life. The goal of sacramental marriage, again unlike secular marriage, is to get your spouse and any children you may have, into heaven by leading lives of holiness on earth. That seems like nonsense to the rest of the world and most people won’t believe you but that is exactly what marriage is meant to be. 

It can be hard to not be believed by others, to base our life on what the rest of the world so often thinks it can disprove. We may have family and friends with whom we will share an Easter meal that we know don’t believe a single word of it. Yet, isn’t that at least part of the Easter message? They didn’t believe Jesus when he invited them to believe he was the messiah, the apostles didn’t believe the women when they said Jesus had been raised. It’s okay if they don’t believe us. They’ve been trying to disprove the truths of Christianity from its very foundation. Our challenge is to keep the faith, to keep believing despite their unbelief, and keep sharing the story in the hopes that even the deepest skeptic will stop believing this is all nonsense and run to the tomb to see the burial cloths of Jesus and believe. 

Alleluia! He is Risen! Alleluia! Amen.

3 L C Having God help us find forgiveness through suffering

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

With everything happening in Ukraine right now, I started thinking about this question: What’s the first experience of real life violence you experienced or saw? It happened for me when I was in Israel. In the Fall of the year 2000, fighting broke out between Israelis and Palestinians and that was the semester I lived in Israel. We were repeatedly told that we were safe but there was one day when there was a car bomb close to a coffee shop we would frequent and one day when a gunfire fight was happening in the Arab Quarter of Jerusalem, which was located a quarter mile at most away from where we lived. We could hear the gunshots and sheltered in place until the fighting moved outside the Old Walled City. Still, I think I was able to feel a little sheltered from the violence because it wasn’t my home, it was Israel, someone else’s home. That’s why I was relieved when we got back to a very cold St. Paul Winter in 2000. Little did I know that, just 8 months later, I would walk out of the Blessed Sacrament Chapel of our seminary and see the secretary at the front desk with a TV sitting in front of her watching the news because an airplane had flown into the World Trade Center and they weren’t sure what was going on. We would later, of course, find out all the details of September 11, 2001, in which terror struck in this country, violence that was much closer to home. Or, even in more recent years, when there were racial protests with rioting and looting happening in St. Louis and St. Paul, that’s getting really close to home. Still, I’m guessing with all of this, we feel kind of okay living in this small town that probably isn’t going to be the target of a terrorist attack or isn’t going to have such deep seated racial issues that it boils over into protests with rioting and looting. 

In the Gospel, it appears that people were developing theories for why bad things were happening to their neighbors. There were people living in the northern part of Israel, in Galilee, in the part that contains the towns of Nazareth and Capernaum and Caesarea Phillippi, who were killed by Herod and their blood was mingled with the sacrifice in the Temple. Now, this would be a horrible abomination for the Jews: to have the animal sacrifice they’re offering to God to pay back the most high for their sins be mingled with the blood of people. One way to make sense of it is to say that the people who were killed were terrible sinners and they deserved exactly what they got. Or, the Tower of Siloam, which was probably located right next to a pool the people would have gone to in order to bathe and be made ritually pure in order to be able to enter the Temple and other holy places, when it collapsed and killed people they said that it happened because the people killed were such terrible sinners they didn’t deserve to be cleansed. It’s like there are good people who deserve to be forgiven if they make a mistake and there are bad people who are evil and cannot ever be forgiven, which is proved by the terrible things that happen to them. 

I’m guessing we’ve all taken pleasure at seeing other people get punished. It’s March Madness, and, if you watch college basketball, you’re counting on at least one upset of a big ranked team. We love to see a Duke or Arizona or Kansas get beaten. When it happens, there’s something satisfying about it. I’ve mentioned in other homilies that there’s actually a German word for this called schadenfreude, meaning happiness at the misfortune of others. Mr. Recker reminded me this week at a meeting about this concept. I think many of us like to see powerful people or vengeful people or arrogant people get their comeuppance. 

Still, let’s listen carefully to Jesus’ parable today about the fig tree. There’s a fig tree that hasn’t produced fruit for three years. The owner of the farm wants to cut it down because it’s just taking up space. But the gardener wants to give it one more year, basically one more try, and then, if it doesn’t produce figs, cut it down. I think the message Jesus is telling us is that if we think bad things happen to bad people and we think the fact that bad things haven’t happened to us is proof that we are good, we’re being delusional. How are we going to handle it when bad things happen to us? Just because something bad had has happened to someone else hasn’t happened to us doesn’t mean in never will. 

The struggle with all of this is that the people make such a strong connection between other people’s personal sins and their suffering, people suffer because they are bad. The truth is that personal suffering can be redemptive. It can help us grow if looked at in the right perspective. At the men’s conference, one of the speakers talked about how there was tension between the people of Poland and the People of Ukraine because of a genocide that happened between 1942-1945. But, today, as refugees fleeing Ukraine have entered this place in which their ancestors once committed genocide, they are being welcomed into people’s homes and into public facilities such that they have not had to set up a refugee camp. God is using the suffering of the Ukrainian people to heal the wounds between some Polish people and some Ukrainian people. It doesn’t mean the war is good or the fact that the Ukrainian people are becoming refugees is good but, even from those evils, God can make something good happen. 

We must be a people of forgiveness and reconciliation. Admitting when we’ve made a mistake and owning up to it is crucial to the life of grace. Apologizing to the person against whom you have sinned is part of this but going to the Sacrament of Reconciliation and confessing your sins to receive forgiveness is also important. Hopefully it won’t take a tower collapsing on us or being killed by a political despot to help us see God working even if our suffering but we know that there’s always some kind of redemptive suffering in our lives. The challenge is if we can connect that suffering to Christ’s life by striving to be like him, meaning humble and forgiving, instead of striving to be vengeful and hateful as the world and the evil one always tempts us to be. 

8 OT C Making sure Christ is still teaching us and not this world

 Friends

    Peace be with you. 

    Who were your favorite teachers? It could be a high school or middle school or grade school teacher. It could be a college professor. Or it could be someone who trained you how to do your job. Think about two or three of the people who were good teachers. What did they have in common? I think of a guy I met at my Uncle Jim’s bowling alley when I was a kid. He was a 300 bowler who looked over and saw a kid struggling to bowl and came over to help give me some pointers. I remember him showing me how to twist my wrist and aim for a diamond on the lane. I’m still not a 300 bowler like he was but I’m better than a 40-50 pin bowler. I think of my high school German teacher, Herr Brinkmann. He was patient but challenging with us. We wanted to do our homework so we could talk to him in the next class in German when he asked us questions. I also think of my high school english teacher, Mrs. Maulin. I thought she hated me until she walked up to me in the lunchroom one day and asked me why I wasn’t in AP Speech. I kind of stammered that I didn’t know but the truth was that I wasn’t in AP speech because I didn’t view myself as being AP material. She knew when a student needed to be pushed a little and wasn’t afraid to do it. 

    Our readings today invite us to reflect upon the quality of the people who are our present teachers. Now, we may be tempted to say that, if we are not in school, we don’t have any teachers in our lives. But, let’s ponder that for a second because I think we have even more teachers, just doing it in subtler ways. Aren’t our coworkers and employers also teachers. I don’t just mean because we have to do our jobs to their specifications but because we also probably find ourselves acting like them. If they have a foul mouth, we probably also find ourselves using bad language. If they are passionate about a television show or a hobby or a sport or a political party, we probably either find ourselves becoming supportive of those things or rolling our eyes whenever she or he starts talking about it and struggling to work with that person. Think about our television shows or movies or whatever we watch on our computers, tablets or smartphones if you’re a streamer. They are extremely powerfully forming us. In the mid 90s, Americans were in agreement that the nature of marriage was that it happened between a man and a woman. Then, beginning with a show called Will and Grace, almost every television show to this day has a “good guy” gay character in it so that by the mid 2010’s, Americans were overwhelmingly in favor of gay marriage. We were formed in it. The same thing has been happening with the idea of fluidity in gender, that a man can choose to become a woman and vice versa. We are still very much being formed by the culture we allow ourselves to participate in with our various forms of media. So, it’s worth listening to these readings to hear some cautionary tales. 

The first reading from Sirach says that you can judge a teacher by the way they speak. I think this is a particularly important thing in my life. One of the things that makes me love the Benedictine movement in the church is because they prioritize listening. There have been many meetings, even a few in the last few days, where I’ve been tempted to speak and answer a question that’s hanging in the air only to find that it was important to listen and allow the person to reveal their true motives, which were far from the innocent ones they initially portrayed. We need to listen and discern first and foremost if the person is even someone we should allow to form us.  

    Jesus, in the gospel, challenges us to make sure the people forming us are clear sighted and bearing good fruit. I think the clear sighted part has to do with whether the person is reformed from sin or if they’re still mired in it trying to tell us how to get out. Someone who has conquered alcohol or conquered addiction to pornography can be helpful to people who are still mired in it but someone who hasn’t found the way out themselves are like the blind guides Jesus cautions us against in the gospel. They may know the principles that can get a person out but they can’t show a person how to do so by the way they’re living their lives. A person that uses the Lord’s name in vain or swears often may be great at showing us how to do a job but they're leading us down a poison path if we find ourselves following in their footsteps. 

    That’s why we should turn to the second reading, the last reading we’re going to hear from St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, to hear the challenge of being formed. St. Paul says that we need to take off corruptible things and put on incorruptible things, stop engaging in mortal pleasures and engage in immortal ones. But who is our teacher if what we should be seeking the incorruptible and immortal things? St. Paul makes it clear that we are to “be firm, steadfast, always fully devoted to the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” We are to be in the Lord. In other words, we aren’t just learning from a mentor but working inside the church, which is the body of Christ. That should be what is forming us. 

    Let’s think about our typical week. How much of it do we allow Jesus to be forming us? What’s the first thing we do in the morning? I’ve picked up this terrible habit of looking at my phone first thing in the morning. Eventually, I put on the Bible in a Year Podcast with Fr. Mike Schmitz on my phone but I’m probably going to look at the weather and make sure it hasn’t changed overnight. I’ll probably look at Facebook or YouTube to see if anything happened…and watch a couple of stupid videos. But, eventually, I will put on the Bible in a Year Podcast just not first like it used to be when I started it. Is there a way I could more easily get to what is forming me in God and spend less time in what is taking me away? Now, here’s the good news: We’re just a few days away from Lent, that time of spiritual transformation and correction. Tomorrow/today is a good day to ask ourselves: what can I do this Lent to make sure Jesus is forming me and not this world?

6 OT C To believe in God even if we don’t benefit from it.

Friends

Peace be with you.

Do you participate in an activity that you don’t really get anything out of? I Now before anyone answers me “Yeah, your homilies!”, I’m only asking because we are hard wired to do things because we get something out of them. I think about an episode of the TV sitcom The Office involving the two main antagonists, Jim and Dwight, and something called classical conditioning. In this particular episode, each time Jim turns on or reboots his computer and it makes the Microsoft tuning on sound, he offers Dwight a mint. We are led to believe he does this for several weeks or even months until, one day, Jim turns on his computer and Dwight instinctively holds out his hand to receive a mint and Jim looks at him confused. Dwight also seems oblivious to the fact that he’s been classically conditioned that, when he hears the sound, he assumes he is going to get something positive. One of the reasons I put effort into my homilies is because I appreciate people who thank me for them or tell me that something I said really helped them with the death of a loved one or helped them through a difficult time. So I can’t really use this as an example of something I don’t get anything out of even if some of you may say that. Some people may say being a parent can seem like something you don’t get anything out of. You work all kinds of hours to provide a nice house and nice clothes and the kids get mad because you’re never home. Or you spend hours preparing a nice meal for your kids and they snarf it down in 10 minutes and complain that you made corn instead of carrots. I’m sure all of that is true but I also hope there are other times when they do remember to get you something nice for Valentines Day (Remember kids. Valentine's Day is Monday. Get your parents something nice) or when you see them succeed and realize it was because you made them do their homework or made them practice hitting and catching a baseball rather than letting them goof around all Saturday staring at their phones. Or it may take until you finally get grandchildren to realize that having children was worth it. Regardless, I feel like most people find being a parent to be something where you do get something good out of it. I worry that police officers may feel that they don’t get a lot out of their job quite often. I’ve had a couple of homilies recently where I have used police officers as foils in my jokes. We’ve recently seen, even in our local media, pretty severe criticism of the police. I would guess it would be quite difficult, one minute, to arbitrate disagreements between arguing parties and, five minutes later, patiently be explaining to an angry person why they can’t squeal their tires going fifty miles per hour past the grade school, and, five minutes after you get the ticket written and are working on the associated paperwork, responding to an accident involving an injured individual’s family who can’t understand why no one stopped that idiot squealing his tires and going 50 miles an hour through town before he hit their father. It has to feel like a rather thankless job at points. I do hope they know how much we appreciate their hard work and dedication to fairness and justice.

I would guess, if we were honest, one of the reasons we stay in the church is because we find some part of it rewarding. It may be because we have the hope of eternal life in heaven if we are a part of it. Or it may be because we feel like it makes us better people by having a moral code. However, I know, for some people, they feel invested in keeping their parish open and the reward comes in knowing that, if they show up, there are parishioners still coming and still a reason for the big bad mean Archdiocese not to close their parish. Remember a few years ago when we counted the number of people in church during the month of October? I can remember seeing people who were spotty, at best, in their Mass attendance in the other eleven months, making sure that they came every Sunday during the month of October. One year, I decided to have the ushers count every week and just put the average in for the October count in the hopes that those people would come every week. Unfortunately, it didn’t work. And I was told I needed to put the numbers for the weekends in October and not just the yearly average. Well, I tried…

Each of our readings, in one way or another, asks us if we could still be faithful if there was no reward. It’s most obvious in the first reading from the Prophet Jeremiah where the good guys, the holy ones, are those who trust in God rather than in human beings. They are those who don’t live by today’s morality or the fashion of the moment but seek the truths that are deeper and more profound. This theme gets picked up by our Lord and deepend to explain that, to drink deeply from the stream of holiness means being poor, hungry, weeping, and being hated by the world versus the people who desire the esteem of men, who are rich, filled, laughing, and have people speak well of them. Jesus is juxtaposing those who are yearning to receive a reward with those who have already received it by saying we need to yearn for something better.

St. Paul, in the next part of his First Letter to the Corinthians, gives us a rather interesting illustration of this by continuing to deal with factions in his little community. Some give credit to their faith to him, while others do to someone named Apollos, and others to St. Peter. St. Paul has to constantly remind the Corinthians that it makes no difference who told them the Gospel first because their allegiance is to Jesus Christ not one of his apostles. In today’s second reading, we can more clearly hear the real challenges these factions pose to the unity of the community. Some within the community believe that you can call yourself a Christian but not believe in the resurrection. Last week, in the second reading, St. Paul began explaining why this was not compatible when he explained how the resurrection was revealed. He gave a list of all the people who saw Jesus was resurrected, including himself as the last and lowest of them all. Today, he builds on that list by asking if they think everyone, including himself and St. Peter, were liars. If so, he asks, what is the point of Christianity? The problem for the people who doubted the resurrection was that it was in contradiction with their philosophies. For some Greek converts, their philosophy separated out the terrible evil body from the good soul so that the resurrection could only be spiritual in nature. For some of the Jewish converts, the concept of the afterlife meant purely a sleeping in heavenly peace in what they called sheol. The reward these folks desire is to have a better, more nuanced, understanding of Christiantiy than those other people who were trained by other apostles. They want to think they are better because they have a better understanding from whoever trained them or whatever philosophy they were taught before they became Christian instead of having to change their hearts and minds to be a follower of Jesus. St. Paul says to them that the resurrection of Jesus changes everything because, as Jesus and Jeremiah alluded to in the first reading and gospel, it means we seek eternal rewards over temporal ones.

It leaves us to ponder a couple of questions. Do we think of faith as something that deserves immediate rewards, like an answered prayer or warm fuzzy feelings from a hug from God? Do we think of faith as something where people will look up to us because of a squeaky clean life or a strong moral compass? Or do we think of faith as opening us up to the deficiencies in our lives, as showing us why we are truly poor, what we hunger for, what we are mourning for and where we yearn too much for the esteem of people, in other words all the places in our lives that are really gaps that only God can fill?

Baptism of the Lord - C: Grace let’s us live temperately, justly, and devoutly

 Friends

Peace be with you 

There’s a funny scene in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation where the family is sitting at the table and all the food is cooked and the patriarch of the family, Clarke W. Griswald, suggests that 80 year old Aunt Bethany should lead them in the saying of grace. Aunt Bethany, who doesn’t have the best hearing, turns to her husband Uncle Lewis looking confused and asks “What dear?” to which her daughter yells “Grace!”. Aunt Bethany responds “Grace, she passed away 30 years ago.” Uncle Lewis then painstakingly gets it through to her that they want her to lead “The blesssing”, to which she leads them in the Pledge of Allegiance. From a Catholic perspective, I always find this especially humorous because of the number of times in the 20 years of I’ve been a priest, someone comes into the confessional, makes the sign of the cross and launches into “Bless us, O Lord, for these” instead of “Bless me Father, for I have sinned.” It happens more often than you’d think. But, the other thing that is more central to the point of the baptism of the Lord is more of a question than it is anything else: what is grace?

In the second reading for Mass today, St. Paul is writing to his friend, St. Titus, and talking about grace. When I was an Associate Pastor at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Ames, a parishioner one time asked me why we don’t talk about grace anymore. Of course, I wanted to quote Aunt Bethany and say, “Grace, she died 30 years ago” but I was afraid the person wouldn’t have a clue as to what I was referring. And, the person had a good point, despite the fact that it’s a pretty important theological principle and, arguably, the distinctive component to the life of the baptized, we generally don’t talk a lot about grace, even in homilies. So, what does Paul mean by grace? In the second reading, St. Paul says that the grace comes from Jesus' incarnation, the fact that God became a human being. But it still doesn’t really help us understand what it is. 

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, 

1997 Grace is a participation in the life of God. It introduces us into the intimacy of Trinitarian life: by Baptism the Christian participates in the grace of Christ, the Head of his Body. As an "adopted son" he can henceforth call God "Father," in union with the only Son. He receives the life of the Spirit who breathes charity into him and who forms the Church.

Grace brings us into the family of God. It makes us a part of God’s family. We are no longer visitors or mere acquaintances of God, we are now able to be his daughters and sons. And, we hear in this paragraph that baptism is the normal way we begin to participate in the life of God. Yet, as the Catechism will emphasize elsewhere, grace is a free gift of God not something we can merit but, instead, something that causes us to live differently than the rest of the world. St. Paul emphasized three words to describe the changes that grace causes in us: temperance, justice, and devotedness. Let’s look at each of these.

When we hear the word temperance, we may be tempted to think of the anti-alcohol temperance movement in this country most active in the 1920s and 1930s during the prohibition era. However, temperance actually has to do with being self-restrained or self controlled. Whether I choose to buy a book on Amazon that I’ll probably never get around to reading or give that money to the poor is a question of temperance. Whether I use the Lord’s name in vain or use non-vulgar language when I’m frustrated is a question of temperance. Whether I go home at 3:30 to go for a walk on my treadmill or go home and sit on my couch and eat Christmas sweets is a big question of temperance. Temperance is about self love, whether we love ourselves enough to make the personal choices of a person desiring to go to heaven. 

Justice is a different thing altogether. It’s about how we treat other people. In any given interaction, am I respecting their rights while also asking them to respect mine? That’s the heart of justice: I have rights and you have rights and figuring out whose rights are right in any given situation is what justice is all about. Sometimes, we prioritize our rights over pretty much everyone and ruin a sense of justice. If every time someone annoys us while we’re driving and we think it’s their fault, we may have to think about if we are being just or not. If we get angry at a server in a restaurant, ask yourself if you’re being just or just expecting that a person handling way too much is overwhelmed and can’t get your darn Coke right now. If your neighbor doesn’t clean her sidewalk and you are genuinely concerned about other people falling, it’s good to give her a call and ask her to clean off their sidewalk but even better to give her a call and ask if she’d mind if you did it. It’s a sidewalk, after all. It’ll take you an extra two minutes and it may mean the world to your neighbors AND it’s a million times better than calling the police. 

The last word St. Paul uses is devotedness, which has to do with our relationship to God. Are we taking time to pray each day or are we allowing screen time and other distractions to overwhelm it. When we wake up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep, do we ever just think of a favorite passage of scripture and talk to God about it or do we allow the day’s concerns to overwhelm us? Do we make Mass a priority or does pretty much every other thing take priority over it? 

In baptism, we entered into a life of grace making us members of the family of God. In so doing, it set us up to a life of holy relationships with ourselves in temperance, with others in justice, and with God in devotedness. Grace is the free gift of God but it can only work through us if we are open to it. What is one thing you want to ask God to increase the grace in your life so you can be more temperate, more just, or more devoted?