homily - Lent 1

 You may have heard something similar to this: “The Gospel is comfort for the afflicted, and affliction for the comforted”

God doesn’t want you to be comfortable all the time.

LENT IS A TIME OF “DISCOMFORT” – FOR THE SAKE OF SOMETHING BETTER.

Spe Salvi - Man was created for greatness—for God himself; he was created to be filled by God. But his heart is too small for the greatness to which it is destined. It must be stretched…

Christianity is not focused on comfort. In fact, sometimes comfort really gets in the way of Christianity.

It is uncomfortable for me to treat that other person as equal or even more important than myself.

Culture of comfort.

Athletes understand this. If I was only comfortable, I could never succeed or improve.

THE COMFORT IS ULTIMATELY NOT BEING ALONE.

The people who followed Him, the disciples who followed Him, were poor wretches like you and me. All the newness of hope. The absolutely new certainty and the new reality that they were, was that Presence. The contemporaneousness of that Presence with me, with my children, with those who will come after us in a hundred million years: this is the  victory that conquers the world. This is the absolute newness. This is the divine in history. I remain the same poor beggar, but with Christ, I am certain, I am rich. The attractiveness of my person, that is, what makes it possible to love my person, is the existence of this Presence. Indeed it is only in a companionship with Him that a person loves himself. Only a person who carries this message can claim an affection for himself, can love himself and therefore love others.

Don’t hide from your faith but fleeing to the comfortable all the time. Stay in the desert and know the presence of the one who frees you to love.

homily - 6th Sun of Ord. Time

 I’m captivated by this novel I’m reading right now, titled Theophilus. The story is about the person to whom the Luke addressed his Gospel (see verse one of the Gospel) and Theophilus’ journey through the land of Israel meeting people who were eye-witnesses of Jesus and his Resurrection. In Nazareth he meets one old former-leper who represents the man we hear so little about in today’s Gospel. It’s beautiful to consider how much of a story is contained in these few verses that we almost pass over. This was a real person, who had a full life, a story of layers of pain and suffering, and we barely know anything about him nowadays. But back then people could walk up to him and ask him, and he would tell them what Jesus did that day (and maybe other days since they perhaps knew each other more closely either before his leprosy or after the healing). Books like this are worth reading because they make us remember how relatable the Gospels are, and what it really means that God became flesh and restored us right in the midst of our mess, healed us right where we were hurting.

Leprosy stinks -  literally and figuratively. Besides smelling rotting flesh, it’s like having COVID for the rest of your life. – painful, yes, but above all the isolation! Separation from everyone, before internet, telephones, and even before books. This is a heavy cross. We were made to be with each other. It is hard to love when you can never get within a stone’s throw of people.

So this leper breaks the rules.

Why? He knew Jesus’ heart.

LENT - I THIRST

 

One last thing: In fact, his leprosy could have been the reason he was drawn to Jesus. We don’t know if they knew each other.

Perhaps God allows you to have wounds and suffer so that you can draw near to Jesus too, and find more than just healing, but love, and a fountain of life that quenches your deepest thirst.

 

Homily - 5th week in Ord. Time (last Sunday)

Doctors need honesty. If I don’t tell my doctor what’s going on, he can’t help me out.

If I lie, it could be even worse.

 

Jesus, the spiritual doctor, needs honesty. Don’t hide your pains, wounds, and needs from God. Even though He already knows them, He does not force you to tell Him, and He will only heal you when you invite Him.

 

JOB is brutally honest. (Does anyone else think it’s a weird spot to end the 1^st reading? – not because it doesn’t make sense, but because right after he says “…” we say “thanks be to God!”)

But in some way what Job shows us today is a type of “good news.” It reminds us that Christians don’t have to pretend that life isn’t hard, painful, and downright bleak at times… at least when we look at it from the perspective of wordly happiness. Just this past week we celebrated various martyrs from different times and places, and for none of them did following Jesus mean “easy street” and luxurious living, especially at their ending.

 

And so we as Christians do not need to sugar-coat the suffering we endure on this earth. But we also know that there is something deeper, much deeper and fuller, than earthly delights. God wants to give us those true things, those spiritual rewards, more than we can ever desire them ourselves.

 

Homily (notes) - 3rd Sunday of O.T.

 

TWO OF OUR CORE VALUES - Joyful Receptivity: God’s dreams are bigger than my own dreams.

Sacrificial generosity: Letting God interrupt my plans.

Two movie scenes where someone is hanging off a ledge being held by another: INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE – LORD OF THE RINGS: RETURN OF THE KING.

In both scenes, a person has to let go of something in order to be saved.

This is Jesus’ command for repentance. In order for us to be saved, we must let God change our plans and realize that we are not meant to be in control of our life.

JONAH, after resisting the hard call to go and help his enemies and then seeing how futile it was to resist God, had to let his plans change. He had to give over control.

SIMON (PETER) & ANDREW, JAMES & JOHN had to let their plans change. They had to let go.

IF OUR HANDS ARE FULL, WE MUST EMPTY THEM. If our hearts are attached to a dream, a plan, a goal, we must constantly put that goal into God’s hands. Surrendering is so difficult.

“give me the remote.” “give me the phone.” “Get off the computer.”

But surrendering is so rewarding. You don’t have to be in charge! You get to receive instead of feeling like life is only your own creation.

And God might drop a present into your hands. He might give you exactly what you gave Him. He might not.

Prayer of Thomas Merton – My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going….

Prayer of Abandonment, Charles de Foucauld – emphasizes our identity as adopted sons and daughters.

Father, 
I abandon myself into your hands; 
do with me what you will. 
Whatever you may do, I thank you: 
I am ready for all, I accept all.

Let only your will be done in me, 
and in all your creatures -
I wish no more than this, O Lord.

Into your hands I commend my soul: 
I offer it to you with all the love of my heart, 
for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself, 
to surrender myself into your hands without reserve, 
and with boundless confidence, 
for you are my Father.

 

God's questions, our desires.

 

In the beginning of the book of Genesis, after creating man and woman, God walks each afternoon with them in the garden of eden. He spends time with them, and they stay close to him. After the tragedy of sin, we hear God ask them a question: "Where are you?" This is a good question for all of us when we are found to have wandered away from God by dabbling in sin.

Our Gospel, which begins, on purpose, with the same words of Genesis ("In the beginning"), also has an echo of that union with God that Adam and Eve enjoyed in the garden, as these disciples also are walking with God (though they do not exactly understand it). Then Jesus, God-in-the-flesh, turns to them with another question "What do you seek? What do you want?"

When God asks questions, it isn't because He doesn't know the answer. It's because we don't know the answer, or we ignore it, or we are lying to ourselves. One way or another, God wants us to look into this truth for a reason, ultimately for our salvation.

THE SEARCH - the book (and accompanying video series) invites us to look at those desires. This question of Jesus is the focus for video one (or ch. 1 of the book) and it is a great starting point for beginning conversations of faith with others you know - family or friends. If you have a good relationship with someone you want to share the faith with, this is a way to get the conversation started.

Examining our desires is a good way to examine our conscience.

It is also a good preparation for prayer.

But if you do it with God, it is prayer.

A simple process for this is to "pray like a pirate" ("Arrr...")

ACKNOWLEDGE  - examine your heart and face what you find there. Honesty. Courage.

RELATE  - tell God exactly what is going on and perhaps why you think it is there. Trust. 

RECEIVE  - let Him tell you what He wants you to hear, which might seem unrelated. Openness.

RESPOND  - share with God any response: thanks; request; cry for help; petition for others. End with love.

homily - Baptism of the Lord

Christian Identity.

Whenever you believe a lie, you give power the liar. This is hugely detrimental when it affects your self-image, your dignity, your person.

I'm not good enough. Or I'm not good. Or I'm not enough. I'm damaged goods beyond repair.

Letting these lies sit in your soul is like locking yourself up in handcuffs.

-------------------------

NOT FOUNDED ON GOOD FEELINGS EITHER

When we are having good feelings in the spiritual life (consolations), C.S. Lewis says that we should …Accept these sensations with thankfulness as birthday cards from God, but remember that they are only greetings, not the real gift. I mean that it is not the sensations that are the real thing. The real thing is the gift of the Holy Spirit which can’t usually be—perhaps not ever—experienced as a sensation or emotion. The sensations are merely the response of your nervous system. Don’t depend on them. Otherwise when they go and you are once more emotionally flat (as you certainly will be quite soon), you might think that the real thing had gone too. But it won’t. It will be there when you can’t feel it. May even be most operative when you can feel it least.

…(Mere Christianity) Unless you teach your moods “where they get off”, you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion.

OUR IDENTITY HAS A FIRM FOUNDATION ONLY IN GOD.

Transformation of your mind, seeing the world in a whole new way, is not easy. It does mean a type of dying of the old self, but it also means the exhilaration of a new life being born in you.

It’s hard to describe this well, but sometimes we see this in movies, where people get some new piece of information that helps them to realize every assumption they had made about that person or that situation was all wrong.

The best one I can think of right now is Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. But it also happens in smaller ways in other movies. Ask me afterwards if you want me to tell you but it may spoil any films you haven’t seen yet. Citizen Kane, Sixth Sense, The Village, The Wedding Singer, Clueless, Clue, I Am David.

When this happens, these people experience a type of death of old self and come back to new life anew.

The Christian nowadays must do the same. The only way to survive as a Christian in our world is to die, mentally – to have your world view transformed – so that your identity is founded IN GOD and not in yourself or what others say about you.

The reading today ends with the words of the Father over the Lord Jesus. These words are huge and should be prayed about in depth for every one of us. Have you ever let these words, spoken over you in your Baptism, to sink into the core of your being? If not, then I’d say right now is a great time to do so.

Holy Family

 GKC “Christmas is built upon a beautiful and intentional paradox; that the birth of the homeless should be celebrated in every home.”
– Brave New Family

Even though it was written 25 years ago, many Catholics in family life ministries believe that the Church is only beginning to see the fruits of John Paul II’s message to families.
Although he was a celibate priest like me, Wojtyla became very close to a circle of young people whom he pastored while serving as chaplain to university students in Krakow. As they married and had children, Fr. Wojtyla offered spiritual and pastoral guidance to their families that would inform his work well into his years as Pope John Paul II.
“He was able to support these young families, to help them live the faith at a time when Communist society was really trying to undermine the family, ordering work and school schedules in a way that systematically minimized their time with each other. The state, and not the family, was, according to the government, the ultimate good and end of society.
JPII was working in his own small way to fight this head on as a priest, then in a bigger way as a bishop, and finally, after being elected Pope, much of his wisdom about the sanctity and importance of marriage and family life can be found in his 1994 “Letter to Families.”
In his letter, John Paul II wrote that men and women, particularly in their roles as fathers and mothers in the family, are key to building up a “civilization of love,” in which families are able to give and receive love at individual and societal levels.
The history of mankind, the history of salvation, passes by way of the family.
we're not investing for the future of society or for the Church. We're just living for the present moment, and for our own selfish desires.
Who can deny that our age is one marked by a great crisis, which appears above all as a profound ‘crisis of truth?’” John Paul II wrote. “A crisis of truth means, in the first place, a crisis of concepts. Do the words ‘love’, ‘freedom’, ‘sincere gift’, and even ‘person’ and ‘rights of the person’, really convey their essential meaning?

It is in our hearts and in our homes that the Lord ultimately desires to reside as well - not just in this church. This is why Pope St. John Paul II called the home “the domestic church” – for children it is the first community of faith, and for all of us it is the first step in bringing God’s kingdom into the world.
The family needs the parish for support, and the parish needs the family for support. So our community is trying to build up the parish family by building up the domestic church. Prayer must become the dominant element of the Year of the Family in the Church: prayer by the family, prayer for the family, and prayer with the family,” John Paul II wrote. “Prayer increases the strength and spiritual unity of the family, helping the family to partake of God's own ‘strength.’    
Resources, workshops, and other avenues will be utilized throughout the year. Please refer to other parts of this bulletin for more information.
Goals: 1 - invest into our parish families of all types.  2 - We are in God’s family, adopted sons and daughters in Christ Jesus 3 - Christ must be at the center of our families 4 - support network for families in smaller communities within the parish called “households," starting officially in the fall.
If you are… this is for you.   recently married. married for years. empty nesters. widowed. divorced or in other difficult situations. unmarried, you still have a family! (I know I do!)
We can say that the family is the unit of the state; that it is the cell that makes up the formation. [...] If we are not of those who begin by invoking a divine Trinity, we must none the less invoke a human Trinity; and see that triangle repeated everywhere in the pattern of the world. GKC