Pentecost - Inspirations and Discernment

 

The story of the gift of the Holy Spirit on Easter Sunday from the Gospel of John echoes the book of Genesis, just as both books of the bible begin with the words: “in the beginning.” John on purpose emphasizes a new creation when he reprises the story of the creation of man. When God forms adam out of the clay (the eh-duh-mah), he “breathes” into the man’s nostrils and gives him the nephesh high-yah, the “life giving spirit,” that creates the human being who is both body and soul. So now we hear in the Gospel that Jesus breathes life into us – not the biological life that has been given to us when we were conceived in our mothers’ womb, which is always with us until death. Rather Jesus breathes into us the fullness of life that is God Himself – His Holy Spirit. “He breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Spirit.”

The Spirit is given to us through baptism and Confirmation.

And in Confession and Eucharist, it is renewed in us. In these sacraments, Jesus breathes life into us.

And all that we heard of the Spirit over the past fifty days of Easter, and all that we witness of the Holy Spirit in the life of the saints, all of this is still present in the Church today. Not to say that the Holy Spirit will manifest itself in the same ways at all times – quite the contrary, we know that the Holy Spirit in fact is the unifying source of a great diversity of gifts. But I want to stress that the same Holy Spirit that has done wonders since the beginning of time in creation, and throughout salvation history in the Old Testament and New and in these last days between the two comings of Christ, that same Holy Spirit is the one that is alive and at work today.

I am sure that for all of us, the Holy Spirit has greater dreams and desires for ourselves than we can imagine or would dare to expect.

But in order to bring the Holy Spirit’s plans to fruition, we must let ourselves be led by the Holy Spirit.

How to Foster Inspirations:

1. Practice Praise and Thanksgiving

2. Desire and Ask for Them (“Holy Spirit, lead me.”)

3. Resolve to Refuse God Nothing

4. Practice Filial and Trusting Obedience

5. Practice Abandonment (letting go of your own strategies)

6. Practice Detachment (stopping clinging to things, people, or plans)

7. Practice Silence and Peace

8. Persevere Faithfully in Prayer

9. Examine the Movements of Our Hearts (explore why you react the way you do)

10. Seek spiritual counsel (Let yourself be led by trustworthy advice)

DISCERNMENT:      DOES THIS CONFORM TO GOD’S LAW?              DOES THIS FIT WITH MY VOCATION?

**These only guarantee a “NO” when we are discerning. **They are not a “yes”. We can deceive ourselves into thinking that our own ideas are God’s ideas. That’s why obedience (#4), counsel (#10) and self-denial (#5, 6, 9) are so important. That is half of the ten tips I gave are focused on this challenge of discerning between God and not-God.

Look for Good fruit: peace, joy, charity, communion (true unity), humility, light, clarity, simplicity.  **Not just in me, but in the whole body of Christ**

 

The eternal, life-giving Holy Spirit that is God Himself, that worked in the Church and constantly gives life to the every living thing in this world, that guides and directs every saint and the work of the church, this Holy Spirit is present in YOU, and He wants to be the architect of your life and your future. Let Him guide you so that you may bear abundant fruit.

Testimony - How God has worked in your life - my vocation

 

Last week we heard God’s calling of Jeremiah. This week we hear God calling Isaiah, as well as Jesus’ calling of Peter. They both admit their own sinfulness and their unworthiness to the call at hand, but the Lord,  who knows them better than they do, is not swayed from His choice. They are to be His messengers.

I thought it could be helpful to share some of my own story of how God called me to be a priest. But for me, it is hard to locate one singular event that shifted the direction of my life. My story was more gradual. Unlike Saint Paul or Peter, or St. Francis of Assisi or Ignatius of Loyola, the Lord didn’t have to hit me with a tidal wave of grace. He rather used a slower method of drawing me closer one bit at a time. I will try to look at some of the highlights in my life.

Before I tell that story, I want you to think about the importance of testimony in sharing the faith. The reality is that we are fostered in the faith by the witness of others. The life of Christians is meant to attract and build up new members of the faith. A joyful witness, sincerely given, can’t be easily dismissed, and when coupled with a life that bears the fruits of the Holy Spirit, it is irrefutable. So we must learn how to give testimony or witness – this is ultimately a story of how your life of faith in God allowed Him to transform your life in some way, and it can be thought of in three simple parts: before an event or process, what was different after an event or process, and what happened in the middle.

So you can simply ask yourself: where, when, how was my life transformed? It might be good to think about what instruments the Lord used for that transformation, because that can help you describe the event/process itself.

I will give four examples in my own life of important steps of transformation that led to priesthood.

1.   The event was a summer retreat for youth group leaders at Notre Dame.

Before: sincere but not super deep life of faith.

After: deeper life of prayer. Daily Mass 3x/wk.

2.   Starting to do Holy Hours in college.

A different way of praying.

Before: More of a distant or shallow friendship

After: Very intimate friendship. Feeling close, heard, loved, and summoned.

 

3.   Deciding to apply for seminary with our diocese.

Before: Questions, concerns about future.

After: Peace, and slowly growing joy even as I had to do something difficult – saying goodbye to college friends and potential of more years together.

 

4.   Deciding to stay in seminary and be a priest forever.

Before: Questions about whether this was from God or not.

After: Peace after placing faith in how God was working through the Church (and me).

 

At some point it comes down to this: Jesus proposes, we respond. God calls, we answer.

“Because Jesus asked me to.” In a long, slow way, the Lord drew me to give my life in this way, which is a vocation that fits how He enabled me to love. I could have loved in the vocation of marriage as well, as Bishop D’Arcy used to say, “all priests should be chosen from men who could be good husbands and good fathers.” But God also gave me the grace to love in this way, as a spiritual husband, a spiritual father.

And he asked me to do so. Much like a man gets down on one knee with a ring before a lady who in her freedom is invited into something, but never forced. So too, I had to say yes to the offer to give myself to the Lord and to His bride the Church, to be a fisher of men like Peter. And I said, with Isaiah, “here I am, send me.”

"Say not you are too young"

The mission of the prophet Jeremiah is not a popular one. At one point, he is put in the docks, at another he is thrown into a dried out well that holds him in mud up to his waist. All for doing God's will, which may at times mean parting with worldly esteem. People weren't happy with him, and they showed it. Jeremiah needed courage.

Jesus' mission which he announced last week ends up with others wanting to destroy him as well.

Comfort is not the calling of a Christian. Jesus promises the cross: if you will be his disciple, you must take up your cross and go where he is going - namely unto death, and through it to eternal life, that the world cannot offer us, cannot rob from us, and cannot destroy.

Many times in life this will mean choosing between your faith and comfort. Like a dad who chooses his family over a hobby or even over a potential promotion at work, we will often need to choose between your faith and some other short-term good, so that the long-term good of eternal life is preserved.

The philosopher Boethius, and St. Thomas Aquinas centuries later, summarize the four great vanities of this world that human beings pursue to their own demise and destruction. They are: wealth (lots of stuff), power (control of one's destiny and of as much of others as you can), pleasure (delights of the senses, aka Hedonism), and fame (aka glory, honor, or "popularity" as we say today). All four of these things are okay in themselves - none are evil. Rich people can be saints, such as Catherine Drexel. Power does not destroy holiness, such as kings and queens. Pleasures are not necessarily sins, when enjoyed within God's law. And fame or popularity is seen clearly in the life of St. Francis and St. Teresa of Avila to be used to carry out God's will. So none of these things are bad in themselves, but all four of them, and anything else that is not God alone, will destroy us if they are #1 in our lives. When we worship something that is not God (even on one of the side-altars of our hearts) it sabotages us, destroys our lives. When things are out of order, we end up with disorder and dismay.

Don’t go with the crowd.

“A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.” – Chesterton

Choose life, that you may live.

Baptismal Identity

 

How important is our baptism! In fact, for us as Christians, the most important, rivaled only by the day of our death.

Our birthday is the day we all have memorized. And for good reason. It is a way of honoring our earthly life, even though we exist 9mos before that.

But even more important is our eternal, which begins in our hearts and souls at the moment of our baptism. So learn it and celebrate it. It gives you another reason to party and have cake or something else you like.

I learned my own day during seminary years. 2 wks after birth. A pagan for only a fortnight before my parents gave the blessing of baptism.

Baptismal Identity – fundamental to understanding ourselves.

So many false claims to our identity:“I am (a)  ___________ (person).” That can have many different categories:  Political. Religious. Race. Social Class. Occupation. Hobbies. Past mistakes. Viewpoints of reality. Etc. etc.      

We need to be careful about how we say that kind of stuff. We can allow these worksd to have power over us, and it isn’t a good thing to wrap up our identity in smaller less important things; and even worse in half-truths, which of course means they are half-lies or half-errors. If we let those things form our identity, it affects how we paint the picture of our past, how we live in the present, and where we are headed in the future.

Before all of these false claims to our identity, we have a fundamental identity from our creator, and one that is destined toward the new life of Baptism.

CCC 364 The human body shares in the dignity of "the image of God": it is a human body precisely because it is animated by a spiritual soul, and it is the whole human person that is intended to become, in the body of Christ, a temple of the Spirit:²³²

366 The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God - it is not "produced" by the parents - and also that it is immortal: it does not perish when it separates from the body at death, and it will be reunited with the body at the final Resurrection.²³⁵

          This identity we have from creation. All of us, baptized or not, have this. But for us as Christians our identity goes even deeper.

“I am …an adopted son or daughter of the living God.”

This statement ties our identity up with our relationship to the Father. And so it entails an important question for us:

HOW DOES GOD LOOK AT YOU? (What do you think God thinks when He looks at you???) So many times we get our religion wrong because we get this fundamental question wrong.

One of the things that ends up affecting us Christians more than anything else is how we would answer this simple question: “What does God think when He looks at you?” This really ends up being a strong driving force in our life.

I was blessed by God to have a mother and father who loved me even when I was not perfect, who would love me enough to not let me sit in my imperfection, affirming my sins or character flaws, but still loving me in spite of them and helping me to grow from them.

Perhaps you didn’t get that same experience. Perhaps adults or even peers in your life seriously damaged that self-image in one way or another. And so instead of seeing the truth of how God thinks of us, we live in a mistaken sense of How we think God looks of us and thinks of us.

That can often end up being very different and very problematic.  Think of the story of the prodigal son: he had a very different picture in his head of what his father was thinking, of what he would do if/when he returned. This was so much less than what was actually in that father’s heart. A child may be ashamed of their mistakes when their parents punish them, but the parents still gaze upon them with a deep love. HOW DO YOU THINK OF GOD? WHAT BAD IMAGES OF AUTHORITY HAVE CORRUPTED YOUR IDEA OF GOD’S LOVE FOR YOU?

If you imagine God like a harsh sports coach or a mean teacher or a demanding parent or any other traumatic experiences you have had in your life… then you’re gonna live in fear of upsetting Him, of failing Him, of drawing close and being vulnerable with Him, of trusting Him with your entire self.

The truth is this brothers and sisters: God doesn’t think we are bad or evil; He doesn’t think we are damaged goods; He doesn’t define us by our mistakes, our failures, or our sins. Our baptismal identity should help us to remember that. When God looks at us, he sees a beloved son or daughter, configured to  Christ Jesus, the one over whom He spoke those works: “You are my beloved son, with you I am well pleased.”

God loves you. And loves you too much to let you stay a mess, inasmuch as you are a mess (in honesty we must all admit we are not able to save ourselves – we sabotage our happiness in so many ways again and again).

God loves you too much to let you stay there. That is why in this Christmas season, ending today, we celebrate the Incarnation of the Lord Jesus, who comes to identify Himself with our sinfulness, receiving the baptism of repentance given by John the Baptist – so that He can redeem our fallen nature.

“What does God think when He looks at you?” If you don’t see Him gazing upon you with love, speaking over you these words “You are my beloved,” then you have the wrong image. Ask the Lord to help heal that and transform it, so you can know the freedom of the sons of God, who sings over you at every moment.

homily Oct 10th

 CCC 2544
Jesus enjoins his disciples to prefer him to everything and everyone, and bids them "renounce all that [they have]" for his sake and that of the Gospel.335 Shortly before his passion he gave them the example of the poor widow of Jerusalem who, out of her poverty, gave all that she had to live on.336 The precept of detachment from riches is obligatory for entrance into the Kingdom of heaven.
2545 All Christ's faithful are to "direct their affections rightly, lest they be hindered in their pursuit of perfect charity by the use of worldly things and by an adherence to riches which is contrary to the spirit of evangelical poverty."337
2546 "Blessed are the poor in spirit."338 The Beatitudes reveal an order of happiness and grace, of beauty and peace. Jesus celebrates the joy of the poor, to whom the Kingdom already belongs:339

The Word speaks of voluntary humility as "poverty in spirit"; the Apostle gives an example of God's poverty when he says: "For your sakes he became poor."340
2547 The Lord grieves over the rich, because they find their consolation in the abundance of goods.341 "Let the proud seek and love earthly kingdoms, but blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven."342 Abandonment to the providence of the Father in heaven frees us from anxiety about tomorrow.343 Trust in God is a preparation for the blessedness of the poor. They shall see God.

2557 "I want to see God" expresses the true desire of man. Thirst for God is quenched by the water of eternal life (cf. Jn 4:14).


Jesus looked on him with love, but his face fell. Our attention to stuff takes away our ability to see God’s love for us.
Self-justification vs reception of Christ’s redemption.

God loved us first. Then we respond back in love.

Idolatry with new names today.

homily - Oct. 31 - Priorities

Priorities.
The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.
Aka first things first. Second things second. Don’t confuse the two, and don’t lose any of it.

I am speaking to myself as much as to anyone else. We all of us have the tendency to get off track, and there is also an enemy who is trying to do the same for us.

Screwtape Letters - the devil’s goal is to conquer your heart. But he never starts there. One of his first strategies is to get us to lose our priorities.
If we have a good sense of then, he tries to distract us, to make us lose sense of what the main thing is. “I need to focus on this for just a few weeks, then I can get back to my priorities”
…Even if a particular train of thought can be twisted so as to end in our favour, you will find that you have been strengthening in your patient the fatal habit of attending to universal issues and withdrawing his attention from the stream of immediate sense experiences. Your business is to fix his attention on the stream. Teach him to call it “real life” and don't let him ask what he means by “real”.
Remember, he is not, like you, a pure spirit. Never having been a human (Oh that abominable advantage of the Enemy's!) you don't realise how enslaved they are to the pressure of the ordinary. I once had a patient, a sound atheist, who used to read in the British Museum. One day, as he sat reading, I saw a train of thought in his mind beginning to go the wrong way. The Enemy, of course, was at his elbow in a moment. Before I knew where I was I saw my twenty years' work beginning to totter. If I had lost my head and begun to attempt a defence by argument I should have been undone. But I was not such a fool. I struck instantly at the part of the man which I had best under my control and suggested that it was just about time he had some lunch. The Enemy presumably made the counter-suggestion (you know how one can never quite overhear What He says to them?) that this was more important than lunch. At least I think that must have been His line for when I said “Quite. In fact much too important to tackle it the end of a morning”, the patient brightened up considerably; and by the time I had added “Much better come back after lunch and go into it with a fresh mind”, he was already half way to the door. Once he was in the street the battle was won. I showed him a newsboy shouting the midday paper, and a No. 73 bus going past, and before he reached the bottom of the steps I had got into him an unalterable conviction that, whatever odd ideas might come into a man's head when he was shut up alone with his books, a healthy dose of “real life” (by which he meant the bus and the newsboy) was enough to show him that all “that sort of thing” just couldn't be true. … He is now safe in Our Father's house. (Hell)
You begin to see the point? Thanks to processes which we set at work in them centuries ago, they find it all but impossible to believe in the unfamiliar while the familiar is before their eyes. Keep pressing home on him the ordinariness of things…. don't let him get away from that invaluable “real life”. … Do remember you are there to fuddle him. From the way some of you young fiends talk, anyone would suppose it was our job to teach!

So we must keep God first. But how? Well, how about our time. If our daily / weekly routine shows our priorities, then what is the main thing for me? How about our calendar? Does our planner put God first?

How about our checkbook or budget? Does that show that God is first?

Here's an interesting one: how about our home? Does our house speak of God first and foremost? Do we have any space dedicated to God? or are we worshipers of "the screen" in all its various sizes.

Finally, what is going on in our heart? What are we worried about all the time? What is filling our head constantly? That is also a good indicator of what is our "main thing."

The monastic life is a great witness to the priority of God in our life. Their existence makes no sense to those who think in the ways of the world, because God is at the center of their life in every possible way, unless they are letting sin creep in.

If we were to compare their way of life with ours, it might seem like we don't care about God at all. but that isn't quite true, our vocation is different. However, the heart of our life should be the same as the heart of theirs. Or else we can be pretty confident that sin is creeping into us as well.

Their example of silence, of getting away from all the "noise" that the enemy throws at us, is perhaps a great starting point. You may try sitting in silent prayer for twenty minutes or so and paying attention to what comes out through that quiet. In that silence you will begin not only hear what is broiling in your own heart, but also what God is trying to say to you beyond that.

Let the Holy Spirit reveal to you one way that you can put God first more clearly in your life.

The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. And nothing could be more important than getting that right in our hearts.

homily Oct 3

The Catholic church has something to say about every aspect of human living and human freedom, because it has the whole truth about the human person. And today’s topic of marriage is hugely important. Marriage is the foundation of family. Family is the foundation of society. So marriage is the core of society, and as goes marriage, so goes society.

If you misunderstand what the human person is about, you are going to come to the wrong conclusions. Karl Marx thought it was all about class struggle and one group keeping another group down and out, ultimately leading to misunderstandings about many things, even directly attacking the institutions of marriage and family because they overvalue the importance of the collective. DesCartes popularized the perennial lie about the person being the soul trapped in a body and not associated with it, leading to many mistakes about what we can or should be doing with or to our bodies.

If you get the human person wrong, you will get his destiny wrong. If you have the destiny or goal wrong, you will spend your life headed in the wrong direction. This leads to misery, chaos, and dysfunction both now and in the future. If you are on the right road with the truth of the human person guiding you, you will find joy and peace and harmony. The human person, from Adam and Eve until now, is created out of love and for love by God who is love, yet also fallen, prone to selfishness, and fragile. The story of the Gospel and the truths God reveals in Christ allow us to know ourselves and our destiny truly and completely.

So the Church teaches many things about the person, our sexuality, and marriage, that are so essential because they flow from the truth of the human person, and thus when they are put into practice they lead to human flourishing. Some of these truths may not be popular, but truth has never been a matter of majority opinion. Truth is about what conforms to reality. The eye, working properly, receives the light from outside itself and makes a true image of what is beyond it. So too does the mind conform to the truth.

This is precisely what happens in the Gospel today when the Lord Jesus, against the culture of his time, teaches about the truth of the indissolubility of marriage. This teaching, continued in the Church to this day, is once again a point of discord with society.  G.K. Chesterton said “We do not really want a religion that is right where we are right. What we want is a religion that is right where we are wrong.” Our blind spots are the most dangerous things for us when we are driving, and going through life with all it’s danger and constant choices is a lot like driving, so it would be good to know where those blind spots are. The pains of divorce which our society tries both to deny and to mitigate, are evident especially in those who are younger, and this tragic reality only makes clearer the truth of Christ’s words.

What is great about Church teaching is it knows where to be firm and where to allow for personal choice or preference. It is clear and precise when it should be, such as when Jesus makes it clear what God’s plan for marriage is; and has leeway and openness at other times, not over-reaching those divine rules, such as the Church supporting the separation of couples that cannot live in healthy ways for their good (or that of their children), and also the annulment process which can establish whether a marriage presumed valid was in fact not so due to missing an essential element at the outset in the ceremony and exchange of vows.

But Jesus does not want his disciples to focus purely on this negation of divorce. He wishes to turn their hearts to the truth that is much deeper: the kingdom of God. “Amen, I say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it." Sometimes Jesus’ teachings do not fit with our moods, our way of thinking, or our culture. Chesterton says further: One word that tells us what we do not know outweighs a thousand words that tell us what we do know. And the thing is all the more striking if we not only did not know it but could not believe it. It may seem a paradox to say that the truth teaches us more by the words we reject than by the words we receive. So when we naturally want to reject what the Lord is teaching us, it behooves us all the more to receive it like a child. A child trusts their parents even when they don’t understand, when they don’t see the point, when it appears purely arbitrary or domineering. At those moments they must not fear the lie that their parents want to dominate them and make them suffer; they must trust that their parents love them and want what’s best for them. This is indeed what it means for us to accept the kingdom of God like a child. And as often with children, so too with us: in time, after we do it, the things begin to make sense as they lead to our flourishing.

Whether you are married or not, don’t be afraid of following God’s ways when His will is clear, even and especially when it is hard.