Homily 9-29-2013

Today I want to ask you a very important question: “Does your wardrobe testify to Jesus?” I am not speaking about your physical clothes, though a shirt with a religious message on it might be a nice way to spark a good discussion (but it might not, and I'll get to that in a minute). I am talking about the things that really speak to others even more than our clothing (or lack thereof), our hair style, tattoos/piercing, whatever.

Pope Paul VI, an under-appreciated pope says: People today listen more readily to witnesses than to teachers; and if they listen to teachers at all, it is because they are witnesses!

What kind of witnessing do we do? What does our wardrobe look like?

The rich man of Our Lord's parable today doesn't receive a very good description: not even getting his name, all we hear is that he wore the best, he ate the best, and he ignored the worst. My guess is he ignored pretty much everyone.

As much as we hate to believe it, our actions can say a lot about what we love: is it God? Family? Success? “Retirement”? Self-righteousness? What we live our life for might not be the same as what we want to live our life for, and today is a reminder that we need to keep that in check. We should ask ourselves: What do we wear on the outside? Our “clothing” is the first thing people see when they look at us. Well, the first thing people “see” about our inner person is our actions: our choices. What do we choose put on every day? Hopefully it is God, Honesty, Goodness, Charity, and Humility.

Saint John Chrysostom has this to say about today's rich man: Ashes, dust, and earth he covered with purple, and silk; or ashes, dust, and earth bore upon them purple and silk. As his garments were, so was also his food. Therefore with us also: as our food is, such let our clothing be.

This holy bishop is noticing a kind of cause and effect relationship between what we put in and what comes out. Looked at spiritually, the rich man put in self-absorption, pride, and an attachment to worldly things, and look what he puts out: living high on the hog and a lifestyle oblivious to those who have nothing but gaping wounds.
we have to be careful what we put into our souls, so that we can control what we show to others on the outside!  What we ought to welcome in our hearts is only God and the things of God, and this is done through prayer, good works and especially the Eucharist.

• Ite ad Evangelium Domini nuntiandum.
Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord.
• Ite in pace, glorificando vita vestra Dominum.
Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life.




This Eucharist, what we put in our bodies and souls, is God Himself. Do we let that “consume” us, “take over” our hearts, and transform us into what we receive? Today, let us consciously put on a wardrobe of choices and concrete actions that witness to Jesus, that put God at the center, and that brings others to this community where our deepest human needs are satisfied by the Living God.

Homily - Dealing with Grief and Confusion

 Today's Gospel presents us with Luke's version of the Beatitudes, which are almost identical to Matthew's, but add some condemnations as well for those who receive their rewards in this life. Jesus reminds us that in the life to come, things are going to switch.

A parishioner at Mass this past Sunday was reading the petitions. She is on the parish staff and serves as a lector or petition reader often. This time though, she broke down when she was reading the petition about those who died in the Sept. 11^th attacks. After she gathered herself, she carried on through. At the end of Mass, she told me that twelve years ago today her son was turning 10. The day had a really bad effect on him. He was flooded with horror and sadness on the faces of everyone he met throughout the entire day. But the worst thing for his mom was that after school that day her 10-yr old son said to her: “Mom, I wish I hadn't been born.” He was so confused and filled with sadness that he wasn't able to separate the pain that everyone was experiencing from the happiness he was supposed to feel. With the help of his parents and friends, he eventually got through this time and began to make sense of the situation.

I don't know if today causes that type of difficulty in your own life, but I can assure you that you will have something happen in life that brings the same kind of confusion. There will be times when we will have a joyful day turned inside out and upside down, and you will feel sick to your stomach and confused and your emotions will be all over the place. I guarantee its going to happen, and I am sure that any adults here could verify that they have had times like that.

The important thing is to know how to deal with them, how to make sense of it all so we don't allow ourselves to slide into a kind of despair.

I just read a couple days ago from a book by St. Escriva: Your life is happy, very happy, though on occasions you feel a pang of sadness, and even experience almost constantly a real sense of weariness. —Joy and affliction can go hand in hand like this, each in its own “man”: the former in the new man, the latter in the old.

Saint Paul tells us about these two men in his Letter to the Colossians (3:1-11)

If you were raised with Christ, seek what is above,
where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.
Think of what is above, not of what is on earth.
For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

...Put to death, then, the parts of you that are earthly:
immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire,
and the greed that is idolatry.
...anger, fury, malice, slander,
and obscene language out of your mouths.
Stop lying to one another,
since you have taken off the old self with its practices
and have put on the new self,
which is being renewed, for knowledge,
in the image of its creator.
Here there is not Greek and Jew,...
but Christ is all and in all.

For Saint Paul, we are all composed of two persons within in: Adam, the earthly man that we have to put to death but is always trying to rise up. And Christ, the new man whom we take upon ourselves in faith.

STORE UP TREASURES IN HEAVEN.

Homily (22nd Sunday of Ord. Time) God wants your heart, because He wants your whole person.

God wants your heart, because he wants your whole person.

Today's first reading from Philemon speaks to us about a slave, Onesimus, who is returning to his Christian master (Slavery in the ancient world was quite different from our country's past; in most cases a lot closer to the movie The Butler). Paul invites the master, Philemon, to receive his runaway slave as a brother. He wants him to change his heart about who he is, even if Onesimus will remain a servant of his household. Paul is interested in a change of heart, because it is there that everything changes.

The same for Jesus: he wants your heart, because he wants your whole person. Jesus was not a crowd-pleaser trying to keep everyone happy. He was not an entertainer or celebrity trying to remain popular and admired. He was not a sell-out rock star trying to stay on the headlines.

Jesus doesn't want only our happy feelings, or our friendship-of-convenience, nor our passive admiration. Jesus wants our hearts. So today, when crowds are following Him and getting a little too comfortable with who they think this guy is, He offers a kind of loving smack in the face that is meant to wake them up: “Unless you hate your father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters...

unless you hate even your own life... unless you carry your own cross and come after me... unless you renounce all your possessions, you cannot be my disciple.” These are not the words of someone seeking popularity or admiration. These are “fightin' words,” as we sometimes call them, but not in the same way we normally think of them.

We all know what to say or do to get under people's skin. With our friends, our family, and even people we barely know, we know exactly the things we should not say if we want relations to continue smoothly. When we are tired, feeling ill, or upset about something, we might be tempted to actually do exactly what we never should. If we do this, we say, “them are fightin' words.” This is kind of what Jesus does today.

Instead of demanding a conflict between persons, Jesus demands a conflict within ourselves. He forces us to examine where our hearts are: What are the most important things in my life? What do I care about the most? What do I spend my time thinking about, worrying about, hoping for? Is it God? Is it success? Is it wealth? Is it family? Is it the pleasures of an easy life?

Wake up! Jesus says. Examine your heart, and put it in its right place. God wants your heart, because he wants your whole person.

Last week we heard about humility and how it is the foundation of the spiritual life: remembering that we are not the center of the universe, that we didn't make ourselves nor did any of the blessings we have in life (even the ones we think we got on our own) are all in some way from God who works through the world, through others, and even behind the scenes of our own souls to help us become what we are.

Today, we see the next step to building a good spiritual life: love of God. Putting our heart in the right place. Jesus doesn't want us to literally “hate” the good things we have in life, except in this sense: in any way that these things become an obstacle between us and God. If my family, either directly or indirectly takes first place in my life, they are a wall between me and God. If money or popularity or earthly pleasures become all I think about or look for, then I cannot be loving Jesus as I should.

If we love God and always have Him as #1 in our life, then we can keep family, friends, possessions, popularity, whatever: as long as it is not an obstacle. As long as God has our heart and not these things; as long as we are master of all that stuff; as long as they do not hold us on a chain and prevent us from following Jesus, then we can be free to give God our heart, and give Him or entire selves.