7 OT C: Love who? Pray for who?

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

There are three instinctual reactions to violence: fight, flight, and freeze. If someone jumps out from a dark room, what is your reaction? I remember, a few years ago, watching a video of a person hiding in a trash can who popped out and scared people as they were being interviewed by an accomplice. Most people screamed and ran away. Some people put their hands up and screamed frozen in place. The experiment ended, however, when one person punched the guy as he popped out and knocked the guy out cold. I’m guessing most people watching the video cheered internally with the last guy because the man in the trash can got his comeuppance. However, as Christians, we believe there is actually a fourth option we are called to cultivate. If fight, flight, and freeze are animalistic, instinctual responses, natural responses as St. Paul might call them, there’s a spiritual, or supernatural response that is a charism that we need to ask for from the Holy Spirit if we are to live out our Christians lives. 

We can see an example of this in the first reading and an explanation of it in the gospel. In the First reading, there are essentially two kings of Judah, one currently on the throne and one that has already been chosen as his successor by God. The king that’s already on the throne is named Saul. King Saul has consistently disobeyed God and has allowed the power to go to his head. Even when things go right, if they don’t go right in a way that makes King Saul look good, he gets upset and seeks revenge on the person who does look good. And it’s always King David who looks good so Kind Saul keeps trying to kill him. There are three instances in the First Book of Samuel where, while trying to kill David, Saul actually ends up putting his own life in danger. In this passage, King Saul and his men have been walking all day and are sleeping. The Hebrew word for sleep that they use is also used when God puts Adam to sleep to create Eve, so there’s a sense of divine anesthesia going on here. King David and his second in command, whose name is Abishai, walk among the three hundred soldiers of King Saul’s men. They see King Saul’s ceremonial spear stuck next to his head and it’s Abishai who has the reaction most of us would probably want to have had. This guy has been trying to kill us so, if we get rid of him, we get rid of the problem. They’ve tried flight and freeze to no avail. Maybe it’s time to fight. But David refuses because he will not hurt God’s anointed. Saul may be a terrible king but he’s still God’s choice to be a king so, by killing King Saul, he would really be killing God’s choice for king. For King David, he had to show mercy. 

This same notion of mercy is littered throughout the Gospel. It’s founded on something that the Lord has made very clear to me that I must emphasize today: Love your enemies and pray for those who mistreat you. Remember love is willing what is best for the other person, not just a feeling or some kind of bland tolerance. Love is the basis of mercy; you show love to the person by not reacting in our animal instinctive way but by showing mercy instead. But it’s a distinctive kind of mercy, one that marks Christians as being different than the rest of the world. There’s a defiance to it. When someone smacks you on one cheek, turn and offer the left. That’s not a fight or flight or freeze response. It says that a person will not be embarrassed or hurt by someone smacking their cheek. The same is true when someone takes your cloak so you offer them your tunic as well. Think about the tunic like a sweatshirt or hoodie under a winter coat on a cold day. Giving a tunic on top of a cloak is a response of mercy and kindness to an act that doesn’t deserve it. Both of these show a willingness to suffer for someone else. Why suffer for someone else? Think of the scene from Les Miserables involving Jean Vajean and the Bishop. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, early into this play or movie, a man recently released from prison is given a place to stay at the local bishop’s house and the man responds by stealing the bishop’s plates and silverware. When the police take the man back to the bishop to return what he has stolen, the bishop thanks them and then hands the man two silver candlesticks, claiming he not only gave the man the plates and silverware but those as well. Instead of putting the man in jail, he tells the thief he has saved his soul for God. 

This is the kind of mercy Jesus wants us to have in our interactions with one another. It’s one that lives constantly in hope that an entitled person will recognize his or her need for God. It’s the kind of thing that made a pagan author named Aristides of Athens comment in the second century that Chrstians are amazing because we love one another. But we don’t just love those closest to us, those easiest to love, we love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. We want them to be converted and we’ll do whatever it takes, even to the point of embarrassing, inconveniencing, and even possibly hurting ourselves to make that happen. We want them to be saved.

Who do we find it difficult to be patient with or merciful toward? How is God calling us to be merciful in a way that saves their soul for Him?

3 OT C: We need a Jubilee

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

On May 9, 2024, Pope Francis declared this year, 2025, a jubilee year. In his address, entitled “Spes Non Confundit” or “Hope does not disappoint” the Pope highlighted a few acts that we should do as a church, which are all connected to the theological virtue of hope. Lest we believe, however, that Pope Francis invented the idea of a Jubilee year, we should heed the origin he defines in the document itself. The Pope says it goes back to 1300 with the proclamation of the Jubilee done by Pope Boniface VIII. With all due respect to Pope Francis, even though this is the first expression of a Christian Jubilee year, the tradition actually goes back much farther. 

The first reading for today’s Mass describes an earlier jubilee year from the Book of Nehemiah, though at one point it was united with another Old Testament Book called Ezra. Both books describe a time when the Jewish people had just returned from being exiled, some people for as long as seventy years. They were allowed to return to Israel by a pagan Persian king named Cyrus. King Cyrus not only allowed them to return but he gave them money to rebuild the temple and allowed them to appoint a Jewish leader named Nehemiah. So Ezra is a priest and Nehemiah is sort of a politician. Ezra calls all the people who have not been allowed to practice their religion for seventy years to gather at the Temple and he reads the first five Books of the Old Testament to them and their reaction is to start crying. They cry so much that Nehemiah and Ezra have to remind them that this is meant to be a good time, that they are supposed to be rejoicing. There’s a feast going on. Why are they crying, you might ask. Partly because the people are being reminded of some of the things in the Torah that they were supposed to be doing to be in right relationship with God that they haven’t been doing. One of these would have been living out a jubilee year every 50 years. A Jubilee year demanded the release of debts, allowing your farmland to sit farrow, and observing a year-long sabbath rest. The people are mourning, therefore, because they can see that one of the reasons they went into exile in the first place was because they had neglected being in right relationship with God whenever it became inconvenient for them, especially when it was time to live out a jubilee year. They neglected their relationship with God until they didn’t know him anymore. And, even though Nehemiah is encouraging them to celebrate because now that they know this they can do something about it, this will be the last book written in the Old Testament that describes God working with and in his people. Other books will be written after Ezra and Nehemiah, like Maccabees and Tobit, but these books are almost entirely about the faithful actions of holy people and not about God working in the lives of those people. One idea as to why that is true is because the people, after being reminded to keep the jubilee year, promptly forget and allowed excuses to get in the way of living it out. 

That is until a certain carpenter decided to walk into a synagogue in Nazareth around the year 33AD and opened a scroll containing the Book of Isaiah that declared that it was going to be a jubilee year. The problem is that carpenters can’t declare jubilee years, only priests like Ezra can do that. But they have someone better than Ezra here. Jesus knew that that year, in which his death and resurrection would take place, is truly a year of forgiveness for the debt of sin and a year worthy of ridding ourselves of anything that distracts from being in right relationship with God. 

I think we need a jubilee year now more than ever because, in this time of immediate gratification, we need to work on our patience. In Paragraph Four from Pope Francis' document, he says…

“…In our fast-paced world, we are used to wanting everything now. We no longer have time simply to be with others; even families find it hard to get together and enjoy one another’s company. Patience has been put to flight by frenetic haste, and this has proved detrimental, since it leads to impatience, anxiety and even gratuitous violence, resulting in more unhappiness and self-centeredness. Nor is there much place for patience in this age of the Internet, as space and time yield to an ever-present “now”. Were we still able to contemplate creation with a sense of awe, we might better understand the importance of patience. We could appreciate the changes of the seasons and their harvests, observe the life of animals and their cycles of growth, and enjoy the clarity of vision of Saint Francis.”

Do you find yourself constantly worrying about what comes next? Do you find that you spend all day Sunday getting prepared for Monday, that every moment that isn’t occupied is spent staring at your phone or tablet? How can we use the jubilee year to refocus our lives to be more focused on God and God’s people and less focused on things and tasks?

2 OT C: Charity begins in serving others

 Friends

Peace be with you

The British playwright John Marston wrote in 1610

True charity beginneth first at home,

Heere in your bosomes dwell your deere-lov’d hearts,

Feed them with joy; first crowne their appetites,

And then cast water on the care-scroch’d face,

Let your own longings first be satisfied,

All other pitty is but foolish pryde.

This appears to be the origin of the phrase “Charity begins at home. This phrase is meant to say that we need to be sure that we are looking after the people around us as much as we’re caring for those far away. We can’t ignore the poor, homeless and jobless people in Cedar Rapids and, instead, only care for the people of Ukraine. We shouldn’t ignore the annoying neighbor who is struggling to rebuild a house after a house fire while sending money to the poor people in California to help them rebuild their homes. In some ways, helping the neighbor is the bigger priority both because it’s easier to ignore them and because it would be rather selfish to not help an annoying neighbor because maybe someone not so annoying would move in if they moved out. 

While hearing the story of the wedding feast of Cana, I’m struck by the strength of Mary. When she, Jesus, and some of his disciples were invited to a wedding, she went out of her way, when the wine ran out, to convince Jesus to perform his first miracle. How did Mary know that her son could do this? I suppose the easy answer is that a mother always knows. Parents know the hidden talents and potential of their children before anyone else. There are many men and women who have accomplished great things because their mothers and fathers believed in them even when the children didn’t believe in themselves.

Yet, this puts forth a second, related question for me: Do you think Mary always knew that Jesus was a miracle worker and yet never asked him to, say, multiply her loaves or turn her water into wine at the dinner table, or double her money to make ends meet? There’s no scriptural evidence to support that idea and the reluctance that Jesus shows at the wedding at Cana would seem to indicate that he didn’t. Yet, after the death of St. Joseph, how could a powerless widow have never asked her son to use his miraculous power to help her out when she was so quick to ask him to help others? Instead of believing that charity begins at home, for Jesus and Mary, charity begins at someone else’s wedding.

Think about Mary’s reaction to hearing that her cousin, Elizabeth, was pregnant. Despite being pregnant herself, Mary’s first thought is to travel in haste to the hill country to see her cousin. And we can see this in the example of Jesus in the desert too. After forty days of fasting, anyone would be hungry. Yet, when the devil suggested he turn some stones into bread for himself, Jesus declines. We know that later in the gospel Jesus will multiply five loaves and two fish for five thousand people, why not a half loaf for himself after such a long fast? What are Mary and Jesus telling us through these selfless charitable choices? That God’s gifts to individuals are not primarily for their or their families’ benefit but for the service of others.

For many people, the phrase charity begins at home means we take care of ourselves before we take care of others, that the money we give to the poor is what is above and beyond what we use to purchase what we want and need. First make sure you have the latest iphone and that really nice sweater and a visit to that really nice restaurant before making sure your neighbor has food and clothes and lodging. I think that’s why charity begins and ends in serving others in the mind and heart of Jesus and Mary. 

How is the Holy Family encouraging you to forsake something you want or need in order to help someone in need?

Epiphany 2025: are we attentive to the little daily epiphanies?

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

This past Wednesday night, I was looking for a video to describe the history of Medjugorje. In case you don’t know, it’s the sight of an alleged ongoing appearance of the Blessed Virgin Mary since 1981. There’s some controversy surrounding the truth of the appearances, though. In general, the Vatican says that it is a good place for pilgrimage but it takes no official opinion on the truth or falsity of the visions. It cannot deny that there appear to have been miraculous healings for visitors going to the shrine but it is more cautious of the visions from the people who started having visions when they were children but who are now in their fifties. 

I would guess most of the people going there, including a local group who recently went, have no interest in entering into the controversy surrounding the visions. In that way, they are like the Magi from today’s Gospel. These astrologers, probably from modern day Iraq, could have had no idea that they were fulfilling Old Testament prophecy when they walked into Jerusalem in search of the newborn King of the Jews. They were just interpreting the movements of a star and it led them there. They couldn’t have known that the star was simply light being drawn to the child who would one day identify himself as the light of the world. They didn’t have the Old Testament, after all, so they couldn’t include it among what they considered their holy writings. Instead, they had to rely completely on the instinct built into human beings to search for things larger than themselves and the Holy Spirit guiding and directing them along the way. Thankfully, their instincts told them something wasn’t right with Herod, though, and they trusted the Holy Spirit when he told them not to go back and tell the false king where the true king had been born. They went home, like the shepherds on the day of Jesus’ birth, a little wiser and a little more faithful. 

I want to admit something that I’m not proud of at this point. It’s only been recently that I’ve prioritized spending a Holy Hour each day. You’d think, as a priest, I would have done it every day from the time of my ordination. Unfortunately, when I was ordained, it wasn’t stressed how important that was. I did spend time in prayer each day reading and reflecting on what’s called the Liturgy of the Hours. But, spending time reading Sacred Scripture and then being quiet and listening is really something I’ve only been doing since last June, when I decided to start classes to officially be a spiritual director. I struggled for a good six months not to fill the time reading something or looking up prayers on my phone. In fact, I’ve only recently got to a point where I put a moratorium on my phone in the chapel because it is only a distraction for me. That hour is singularly my time with my friend, just being with Jesus and expecting nothing. One question that I keep bringing to Jesus is what He wants from St. Patrick’s. As I shared in this week’s bulletin, Jesus shares with me that something great is going to happen here. However, when I ask for greater clarity what that means, I hear “wait and see”. I ask if it will be a celebration or an opportunity for growth and he tells me that I should wait and see. Now, I’ll admit, I’m not claiming to be the recipient of special revelations, anything more than what anyone else would hear. And, even though I use the example of the flood in the gospel, I’m not saying that it’s going to have the same emotional impact that the flood did. I’m just saying that, regardless of what happens, some will think it is a positive and some will think it’s a negative. God could make us the premiere ice cream dealer in the world and some would think that’s great while others would be depressed because they’re lactose intolerant or because the ice cream is just too cold. 

In the meantime, I’ve appreciated waiting and seeing because it has opened my eyes to all the small revelations Jesus puts into my daily life. I noticed the white purity of the snow on Thursday. I gave thanks for the questions of a person struggling with their faith. God’s making epiphanies dailys in our lives. Do we notice them?

Mary, Mother of God: Making sure we ponder the authentic words Mary pondered.

Friends

Peace be with you.

I hate the phrase toxic masculinity. It’s become very popular among academics to demonize anything that’s stereotypically masculine. However, having said that, I was listening to a podcast yesterday morning called The Counsel of Trent by a Catholic Answers presenter named Trent Horn. He was talking about how there is this toxic group of apologists who are male and claim they can be crass or crude. They even claim a permission in scripture to be able to do this. They’ll take a passage from St. Paul where harsh words seem to be said to justify this, even though Trent Horn was quick to point out that what they’re interpreting as a harsh word is better translated as refuse or manure or fertilizer rather than a harsher equivalent, if you catch my drift. He says these men will say that this passage gives them the right to speak bluntly as men ought to do. For instance, when talking to a former “adult” movie star who has reformed her life and is trying to work within that community to get others out of the slavery they’re stuck in, one of these men, in a debate, referred to her using a toxic word to describe her current, post confession, post conversion life as though it were stuck in her past life. Trent took exception to these men asking, saying that they’ve doubled the scandal they caused by not only refusing to accept the veracity of her repentance but by using harshly offensive language in doing so.

That type of toxic masculinity is rooted in an inability to fully grasp the Gospel. I set that in stark contrast to what happened in the Gospel today. If you haven’t heard the full explanation of the Birth of the Lord from the Gospel of Luke this year, I’d suggest watching A Charlie Brown Christmas in which the character Linus finally drops his blanket to relate the story of how the shepherds have this tremendous encounter with angelic forces in a field. Contrary to some depictions you may get from some Christian art, shepherds are not a group of philosophical guys sitting around a field hoping angels would come to enlighten them about the workings of the world. They were the toughest, dirtiest, most hardscrabble guys alive at the time. They had to defend their sheep from wolves and thieves. They had to know where the best fields were to get their sheep food and water and how to deal with other shepherds who knew where those fields were to get there ahead of them. The last thing they were going to do was take a break to go see someone else’s baby. These guys aren’t like me. When I see a baby coming into church, I say “Oh a baby, I want to hold her”. These guys see sheep born all the time, what do they care about a baby? The fact that these guys go running to Bethlehem goes to show how untoxic their masculinity is. They have had an encounter that just has to be explored. This fact alone should tell those who believe Jesus was just a great man and not fully God and fully human that they got it wrong. The fact that shepherds were the ones who ran off to see this baby points to the fact that something special has happened here and that’s the fact that God himself has come among us as a baby. As they arrive in Bethlehem to where the Holy Family is staying, they tell the story of what happened in the field and, as they go back to their flocks, the Bible says that these hardscrabble guys continue glorifying and praising God. It goes to show the quality of the encounter these men had. They had to have an encounter with the one true God. 

       There’s a movie out there, which I’m not going to say where you can find it because I don’t want to give it any undue publicity, but it purports to be about the life of Mary. I think that, because of the success of a series like The Chosen, mainstream Hollywood thought there may be money in trying to get into telling the story of Mary. However, as they tend to do, this movie really misses the mark. One of the most glaring examples happens when Mary is asked by the Angel Gabriel to be the mother of God and her response is “Let it be me”. NO! Mary’s response was “May it be done to me according to your word” It’s the difference between someone saying “I trust you God so I will do it the way your way” versus “I’ll do it my way”. Over and over again in this movie, they get Mary wrong because it is not rooted in Sacred Scripture interpreted through the lens of Sacred Tradition but rooted in false notions of ecumenism and female empowerment. 

We are called to be like Mary, meditating in our hearts on the experiences she had with Jesus and having the joy of the shepherds, praising and glorifying God. One of our challenges is to make sure we are following the right message when we do so. We have to make sure we are, like Mary, meditating on what the Bible actually says and what our faith professes and not simply what someone with a toxic agenda wants us to believe. If, in the end, in our prayer we must echo Mary’s fiat, “May it be done to be according to your word.”

Holy Family - C: We keep Mary’s memories in our hearts

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

Did you get a glimpse into other people’s family life that made you feel a little uncomfortable at Christmas? It often happens that, when we get together with people outside our nuclear family, we see parents struggling to discipline children and children testing their parents' patience. Maybe your parents or aunts or uncles are getting to an age where they are struggling to hear or are having memory issues and they aren’t quite the person you remember from your childhood which can cause some uncomfortable family dynamics and frustrations. Maybe it was your own family that had a mini explosion while family members were around. 

Regardless, doesn’t it feel good to know you’re not alone? Even the Holy Family struggled to understand family dynamics when they went up to the Temple for the Feast of Passover. Now, it’s important to point out a few details. First, Luke is using this experience of going to the Temple, which would have been a common one for the Holy Family, as a framing device. Joseph, Mary, and Jesus would have gone to Jerusalem at least three times a year for the Feasts of Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. Luke highlights this visit on the feast of Passover because that will also be the celebration taking place at the end of his gospel when Jesus is crucified. Notice, also, that it was a total of three days of separation from Jesus that Mary and Joseph endured. Three days without Jesus parallels with three days Mary will endure without Jesus at the crucifixion. Some people suggest that the source of the tension has to do with the fact that Jesus is Bar Mitzvah, he is now responsible for his own choices. Bar Mitzvah, however, is a status bestowed on a boy at his 13th birthday, not his 12th, and it tends to be sometime more modern than something that happened at the time of Jesus. The idea of children not having adult responsibilities is a very modern one, after all. 

       The tension definitely has to do with whom Jesus is going to consider his Father. Mary asks “Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.” Jesus responds “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” The tension is obvious, who Jesus considers his real Father. It should be pointed out that, by all accounts, Joseph was a good Dad. He worked hard as a laborer and provided a meager home for his wife and child. Jesus isn’t rebelling from an abusive relationship here. It’s just that he’s in his heavenly father’s house and that is a place he wants to stay in order to be close to one he loves.

      It may feel like there’s a lack of resolution to this tension because all it says in the Gospel of St. Luke is that Jesus went home with Mary and Joseph and was obedient to them. That may sound like he just put up with the situation until he could go off to college but remember the root of the word obedient is to listen, just as he listened to his heavenly Father in the temple so he listens to his Mother and Foster Father in Nazareth. Further, it says that Mary kept these things in her heart. This is one of those passages that makes people wonder if St. Luke knew Mary personally and heard it from her. But, more importantly, there will come a time when Jesus is back in this same temple, as I alluded to, and his fidelity to the will of his heavenly Father will be tested. We’ll hear about that in a few weeks at the end of our Lenten journey. But, for now, we are invited to be like Mary and ponder the experiences she had of Jesus in our hearts. That’s something we can do as a family. We can find a time in the week and start with prayer, then read the gospel for the upcoming week, and spend time together talking about it, asking questions and sharing similar experiences. In the process, we may find we are developing a Holy Family of our own. 

Christmas 2025: Come You Unfaithful

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

A couple of weeks ago, a friend who was visiting from out of town told me about a new song by a singer named Michael Boggs called Come You Unfaithful. I was immediately turned off by the title but I trust this friend so I decided to give it a chance. It starts to the tune of O Come All Ye Faithful but goes in a very different direction than the original. Actually, it pointed out what I would consider to be some flaws with the original song. In this version, the unfaithful, the unworthy, those with nothing to offer him, the unrighteous, and the undeserving are invited to Christ the Lord because He came for them. I started to tear up a little thinking about all the people who have left the church because they felt that they simply weren’t holy enough, weren’t worthy, to come here. I thought of my relatives who feel unrighteous and undeserving of God’s love. I thought of my friends who struggle to know and be loved by God, who feel unfaithful and, thus, unwelcome in God’s house. And I prayed for them and wished I could invite them here right then and there.  

But it was the second verse that really got me emotionally. In that verse, he invites the anxious, the waiting and wanting, those whose burdens are all they can bring, those weary from silence and questions without answers to rejoice because Christ came for them. I started thinking about people who really needed to hear this message and never will because they’re not here with us any longer. I started thinking about the people struggling with brain health in our streets walking past the church at all hours of the night in search of some safe place they may not find or some drug that will numb it all. I thought about families missing a child who died in a school shooting or from some disease struggling to celebrate the birth of the Christ child without a child of their own.

There’s simply too much suffering happening around here this Christmas, maybe not for you or your family but for a lot of people there is. For some people who came to this country illegally, they’re worried about being deported and being separated from a spouse and children or, worse, having a legal spouse and children be forced to be deported with them. For some people, they’re worried they won’t be able to afford their house or their car because their salary dropped when they lost their job and had to take one with less pay. For some people, they’re wondering how they’re going to keep their business open when everyone is buying everything online. And, for a lot of people they’ve come to church hoping God would send an angel like the movie It’s a Wonderful Life only to go back home and have nothing get better. 

For our Christmas Masses, there are four separate sets of readings with four different gospels. There’s Jesus’ genealogy from the gospel of Matthew, the traditional story of no room at the inn from the Gospel of Luke, there’s the visit of the shepherds from the Gospel of Luke, and there’s what’s referred to as the prologue of the St. John. What’s striking about these sets of readings, however, is the promise of the messiah in the first reading versus what actually happens in the gospel. If you read the first readings, you may get a sense that, when Jesus came, it should have been like a superhero movie or like a scene from the Lord of the Rings. The bad guys should be just about ready to destroy all the faithful followers of the Lord when, out of the East, Jesus appears riding a white horse with a sword wiping out all the bad guys and saving the day. But, instead, we hear about a baby lying in an animal’s food trough being visited by a bunch of dirty shepherds who should be looking after their flocks. We hear all about his relatives, some of whom are not particularly great by the way. And St. John, in all his philosophical nuance, puts Jesus as the incarnation of the words used to create the universe at the beginning of time. That’s hardly going to drive off a warring army, let alone deal with all the problems we have. 

The hardest part of today is that Jesus didn’t come to make our life prosperous or even to make it easy. If, for the most part, your life is going okay, that’s great. Even Michael Boggs, in the third verse of Come You Unfaithful, says Jesus came for the prideful, the self-sufficient, and you with all the answers, which is true. He loves you too and walks with you. But for those of us who are maybe struggling to find the Christmas spirit, It’s okay. Jesus may not have come to take away our suffering, but he came to walk with us in our misery. It may not always feel like he’s there, but he’s closest to us in our suffering, not just in an impassive voyeuristic way, but in a way in which He suffers with us. He doesn’t take away our pain but he shares it with us. He took on our sins and redeemed us all on his own on the cross but he doesn’t leave us here to suffer on our own. Do you feel lonely, abandoned, or isolated? Do you feel like no one can help or no one cares? I hope not. But, if so, please know that you’re not alone. Christmas reminds us that Jesus came in a real human way to walk with us in our suffering and he sends us, the members of his church, to walk with each other. You’re welcome here to experience Him, and us, walking with you. 

3 A 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?