The consequences of saying, "Jesus is Lord".

Homily: Pentecost Sunday – Cycle A

Friends, it is truly good to be with you here today as we celebrate this great feast of Pentecost.  After so much time apart, I am so grateful that you can once again join me in-person to worship God and offer him thanks in the Mass.

Many have called this feast of Pentecost the “Birthday of the Church”.  This is a bit of a contradiction, however, as many others have said that when the soldier pierced our Lord’s side on the cross, and blood and water flowed out from his side, that this was the birth of the Church.  Perhaps, then, it is better to say that Pentecost is more of the “rite of passage” day, when the “child” is acknowledged to have matured and thus is ready to accept the responsibility of being among the “adults”.  I like this because this means that Pentecost isn’t just an amazing “sign” (the rush of wind, the tongues of fire, and the speaking in different languages), but rather a commissioning: a “sending forth from the nest” for the Church to go out and to do something of its own in the world.

This, of course, is what we celebrate today: that the Good News that human kind has been redeemed from suffering and death through Jesus Christ has been sent out into the world so that all men and women might be saved.  We celebrate because we are beneficiaries of this good news, and because we, too, have been given the gift of being able to share this good news with others.

Lest we get too caught up in ourselves, however, we also remember that what we celebrate today is the revelation of the Holy Spirit—the Spirit of God the Father and God the Son—who dwells among us as God’s abiding presence with us.  Jesus is Emmanuel—God with us—not just in his human nature (which now no longer dwells with us, but dwells in glorified form for eternity in heaven and in sacramental form in the Eucharist), but Jesus is Emmanuel now in the Person of the Holy Spirit.  It is this Person whom we worship today and whom we invoke to bring forth a new springtime of evangelization—that is, of proclaiming this Good News—to the world.

This proclamation is not something remote from us—as if it is something the Holy Spirit does in disembodied form—but rather it is something very close to us.  In fact, it is a task that has been given to each of us as a consequence of our baptism and confirmation.  As Saint Paul indicated in the second reading today, any of us who proclaim that “Jesus is Lord”, do so only by the Holy Spirit dwelling in us.  This proclamation is a gift—the gift that we all need—but it carries with it a responsibility: a responsibility about which each of us should examine ourselves to see if we are fulfilling.

I am a fan of Dr. Jordan Peterson, who is a clinical psychologist and professor at the University of Toronto.  Dr. Peterson has gained a lot of notoriety over the past few years as someone who contradicts a lot of the “mainstream” cultural ideas about how to be happy and fulfilled in your life.  He’s a bit of a curmudgeon, but also an absolute realist and a scientist, and someone who has a great desire to see people set free from suffering, much of which has its roots in a person’s psychology.

Dr. Peterson has a great respect for the Bible and plumbs the depths of the text to extract from it profound truths about human psychology.  Because of this, many people have concluded that he must believe in God and, perhaps, even be a Christian.  He’s been asked many times whether or not he believes in God and he always hedges: meaning that he won’t say that he does, but he also won’t say that he doesn’t.  On a few more recent occasions, he has ventured to say why and I’ll try to share briefly how I understand his response.

As a clinical psychologist, he knows how crucial it is to psychological health that what we ascent to as true, psychologically, and what we then do in practice must align.  In other words, because of what he knows about how the human mind works, he knows that hypocrisy is psychological disaster for people.  Thus, for him, to say “I believe this to be true” means that he better be conforming his life absolutely to whatever consequences that declaration demands.  For him, the demands associated with saying “I believe in God” are nearly impossible for most people to fulfill (himself included); and so, instead of answering the question “Do you believe in God?”, he’d rather retort, “How dare you say ‘I believe in God’ if your life isn’t absolutely conformed to the demands that such a statement makes on you?”  Therefore, in response to the question, “Do you believe in God?”, he will often say, “I strive to live as if I believe.”  An honest answer, even if to some it could seem like a “cop out”.

I myself have been challenged by his response and have thought about it a lot.  I’ve often thought that I'd like to hear his thoughts about the statement in the Gospels made by the man whose son was possessed by a demon and who came to Jesus asking him to heal his son.  When Jesus asked the man “Do you believe?” the man said, "Yes, Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief!"  Dr. Peterson asks, "How dare I say I believe if I’m not actually putting all of myself into living in accord with that believe?"  That’s a darn good question.  His question begs the question, though: "Can I be striving imperfectly to do that and still say that I believe?"  I think so; and I think that this phrase helps me to say that: "Yes, Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief!"

The problem for us, I think, is that almost every one of us skips over the challenge of the first question (“How dare I say...”) and jumps right to the second and its response (“It’s okay to say ‘I believe’ without living it perfectly”).  Thus, we can excuse our lack of commitment—that is, our lack of willing absolutely everything in our lives to be in conformance with the demands of that statement—solely because we've made an intellectual ascent: "I believe".  Belief, Dr. Peterson is saying, and to say "I believe", is to "wrestle with God", because to will that absolutely everything in our lives would be in conformance with the demands of discipleship—that is, the demands of what it means to say, “I believe”—is a life-long wrestling match.

Francis Chan is an evangelical preacher and he recorded a little video in which he was asked what it meant to surrender completely to God.  In it he brought up that there had been discussion in recent years among evangelicals about whether one could separate accepting Jesus as “Savior” from accepting him as “Lord”.  He declared that that was impossible: that we cannot receive the salvation that Jesus won for us without placing ourselves under his Lordship.  I think, however, that this is exactly what Dr. Peterson is getting at.  I think that, in practice, many of us who say “I believe” live this way: “Thank you, Jesus, for saving me. I look forward to ‘cashing that in’ at the end of my life. I’ll see you then.”  Nevertheless, there has to be some room for our imperfection, right?

Therefore, on this great feast of Pentecost, I might have this to say to Dr. Peterson: "How dare we say 'I believe'? Because the Holy Spirit urges us to do so. How dare we then neglect the consequences—the demands—of that statement? This might be the better question.”  Because, my friends, to neglect the responsibility that comes with that statement, and then still to say "I believe", makes that statement completely devoid of meaning.  Do you want to know why so many people are turning away from religion all together?  Because they look at people who say “I believe” and they see (at least outwardly) that it doesn’t seem to mean anything about how they live, and so they think, “Why bother?”  And so, NO, perhaps we shouldn't dare say "I believe" until we are (to use Jordan Peterson's style of speaking) DARN SURE that we are ready to accept all of the responsibility that comes with saying it.  Better, perhaps, to say, instead, “I believe, but I ask the Lord daily to help my unbelief” (that is, to help me daily to contend with and overcome the ways that I fail to live in accord with that belief).  My friends, the ones who have done this best, we call "saints".  The ones who have refused to do this are in hell.

Today, as we worship the Holy Spirit, whose revelation we celebrate, and as we commemorate (and celebrate) the manifestation of the Church, let’s challenge ourselves to face the full reality of what it means to say “Jesus is Lord” (that is, “I believe”); and thus turn to that same Holy Spirit, asking him to fill us with the fire of his seven-fold gift so that we might boldly manifest the Church once again, proclaiming “the mighty works of God”, and bringing forth a new Pentecost: a fruitful harvest of believers to give glory to God for all ages to come.

Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – May 31^st, 2020

Bodily Communion with God

The Ascension of Our Lord: Cycle A

          Over the years, the feast of the Ascension has always been a “tough nut to crack” for me.  Not necessarily in the facts, of course.  Those are pretty straight forward.  Jesus finished instructing his disciples after his resurrection and then was taken up, body and spirit, into heaven where he is now seated at the right hand of God the Father.  The challenge for me, rather, is in what the Ascension means for us.  Compared to some of the other great mysteries of our salvation—the Incarnation, the teachings and miracles of Jesus, the Passion, and the Resurrection, to name a few—the Ascension leaves me with something somewhat difficult to get in touch with.

          Take the incarnation for instance.  The Son of God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, for us and for our salvation, humbled himself to become one of us, in our human nature.  This is something I can get in touch with.  Every time I celebrate the beauty of a newborn life, every time I am delighted by the coo of a little baby or a toddler’s joyful outburst of laughter, I get in touch with the awesome mystery of God’s humility: that the all-powerful God of the universe would lower himself to become vulnerable like us and place himself at the mercy of his creatures.  Yet, he never lost anything of his power.  In spite of his apparent weakness, coming among us in a weak human nature, he remained the all-powerful God.  Thus, for us, this is a reminder that we need not be afraid of our weakness if the power of God dwells in us.

          Or how about the mystery of Christ’s ministry on earth?  That one’s easy to get in touch with.  Jesus Christ, the Son of God, shows us what it means to be human, to be created in the image of God as male and female, to be created to be in communion with each other and with God.  The narratives in the Gospel give us ample material to help us see how Christ demonstrated for us how we are to live as brothers and sisters.  There is a lifetime of fruitful meditation that can be made on this mystery alone as we strive to conform our lives after the pattern of Jesus’ life.

          Then, there’s Christ’s Passion.  No doubt that since the release of Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ few of us would have difficulty getting in touch this great mystery.  I personally have never escaped a viewing of this film without feeling the tinge of guilt knowing that our Lord was willing to suffer so greatly and to die so that I, even in my sinfulness, might be made clean.  For us this is a reminder that we can never take our sins for granted.  Christ suffered for each one of them and so, out of love for him, we must strive daily to eliminate even the smallest sins from our lives.

          And if you’ve ever heard the sound of a clump of dirt hitting the top of a casket of a loved one, then you, too, will be in touch with what Mary and the others felt when the stone closed over Jesus’ grave on Good Friday.  Their experience of hopelessness at this apparent loss is a witness to each of us in the losses that we experience in our lives.

          Always linked to Christ’s Passion, of course, is the mystery of the Resurrection, where the sorrow of death was converted into the joy of new life, literally overnight.  We have touched the joy of the resurrection whenever we’ve tasted the bitterness of despair but then were surprised by a miracle that turned that situation around.  Imagine someone you know who needs an organ transplant.  No doubt, this friend or relative’s hopes of finding a donor are daily tempered by doctors and others who remind him/her about how difficult it is to find a donor.  Now imagine him/her getting the news that a donor had been found.  I imagine that must feel like God is giving him/her a new life: as if he/she had literally been raised from the dead.  The resurrection, for us, is the enduring hope that suffering and weakness do not have the final word in this world, but rather that God, the all-powerful, can and will destroy these limitations for those who put their trust in him.

          Yes, these are all great mysteries of the faith in which I can immerse myself, plumbing the depths of them and letting them soak into my bones.

          Today, however, the Church presents us with the feast of the Ascension, when Jesus, in his glorified human body, is taken up into heaven.  Now, let’s think about that for a second.  What we are saying—which is what Scripture reveals to us—is that Jesus, in bodily form, exists somewhere… out there… To me, that has always been hard to wrap my mind around.

          Over the years, however, I’ve started to realize that the Ascension in fact reveals something remarkable.  In order to see it, though, we have to look beyond the Ascension itself.  We have to look at how it fits into the bigger picture.  Here’s what I mean: In two weeks, we will celebrate the feast of the Holy Trinity; and I think that if we start there, we can see just how awesome the mystery of the Ascension is for us.

          The great mystery of the Holy Trinity is that God is perfect love within himself.  He does not need to go outside of himself for anything.  He is complete: the Lover, the Loved, and the Love they share: three persons perfectly united in one divine nature.  Because God is perfect love in himself, he needs nothing outside of himself: not us, not the universe, nothing.  Yet, out of his goodness and his desire that others should share in this perfect communion of love, he created the universe and gave us the privileged place in it for the sole purpose of freely choosing to enter into his perfect communion of love.

          In our freedom we chose against him and separated ourselves from him forever.  He never forgot us, though, and in the fullness of time, he sent his Son to become one of us in order to make possible again our communion with God.  As Saint Athanasius said: “God became man so that man could be made God.”  After his death and burial, Jesus rose in a glorified human body.  His resurrection was not just spiritual, but corporal, that is, bodily.  And when he returned to the Father in heaven, he did so in that same glorified human body.  Do you realize what that means?  It means that Jesus now dwells forever in the pure act of love that is the Holy Trinity in a glorified human body.  Said another way: The Son of God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, has always and forever dwelt in the Trinity in spiritual form (even while he was incarnate on earth), but now, since the Ascension, he dwells also—somehow, mysteriously—in bodily form: and not just any body, but a glorified human body.

          My brothers and sisters, this is a reason for great rejoicing!  As humans here on earth, we know how difficult it is to experience true communion with another person.  This is because all of our expressions of unity must be mediated through our bodies.  A handshake, a hug, a kiss, giving gifts and saying things like, “I love you.”  These are all ways that our communion with others is expressed, but also limited because we have bodies.  And we know this, even more acutely now, since this pandemic has further limited our already limited means for experiencing communion with others.  Christ’s ascension, however, promises us that our bodies, once glorified, will no longer be a barrier to communion, but rather a conduit: a means for entering into perfect communion with God.  What it’s like to be a spirit only?  I can’t imagine it.  Knowing that my hoped-for communion with God will somehow be bodily?  Now that’s something that I can get in touch with. /// Yet the Ascension is even more than that.

          You see, the Ascension is not just about Jesus returning to heaven to mount his throne where he lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit forever—which is an awesome mystery in itself.  But it is also about how much more God desires to give us.  If Jesus remained with us here on earth, let’s be honest, it would be pretty amazing.  We know how wonderful it is to have Christ-like people in our lives and in our world.  Just look at how large of an impact that someone like Pope Saint John Paul II had on our lives: someone who, for many, so embodied Christ’s way of life that it was like Christ was still walking with us.  I could only imagine, therefore, how much more wonderful it would be to have Christ himself, in his glorified human body, here with us today.  Yet that would only be a fraction of what God truly longs to give us.  Remember those words of Saint Athanasius: “God became man so that man could be made God.”  Although it was not necessary for him to do so, Christ returned to the Father in bodily form so that we—who can only come to him in bodily form—could also enter into his perfect communion of love. ///

          My brothers and sisters, the lesson of the Ascension for us is a lesson in letting go.  On the day of his resurrection, Jesus told Mary Magdalene, “Stop holding onto me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.”  Forty days later, his disciples would need to let go of his bodily presence among them so that they could be open to being filled with “the promise of the Father,” the sending of the Holy Spirit that was spoken of in the first reading.  This Spirit would guide and strengthen them to work for the coming of God’s kingdom, knowing that bodily fulfillment in this life is not the end for which they were striving, but that, following the path of the Savior, its fulfillment would be in the glorified life still to come.

          This is the same Spirit promised to us.  Thus, we, too, must heed the words of Christ and let go of our desire for fulfillment in this life.  In doing so, we will make ourselves able to endure bodily limitations and privations in this life precisely because they point to the glorified bodily life that awaits us who remain faithful to Christ: the one who made this glorified bodily life possible.

          Friends, as we enter this last week of the Easter Season in which we are returning—slowly and cautiously—to our communal life, we find ourselves in a “mini-Advent” of sorts.  Before he ascended into heaven, Christ instructed the Apostles to wait for the advent—that is, the coming—of the Holy Spirit, who would equip them for their mission to proclaim the Good News of salvation throughout the world.  Perhaps we can spend some time this week “watching and waiting,” examining our lives and identifying some things of which we still need to let go so that we can make space for the Gift of the Holy Spirit.  In doing so, we will not only make ourselves ready to fulfill Christ’s commission to “go and make disciples of all nations”—a commission that the world desperately needs us to fulfill—but we will also prepare ourselves for that great day when we will be welcomed, body and spirit, into the communion of love that is God: the glory of eternal life in heaven.

Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – May 24^th, 2020

What's really essential

Homily: 6^th Sunday in Easter – Cycle A

Friends, at the beginning of today’s Gospel reading, Jesus says to his disciples, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”  If we look back to earlier in this discourse (which, we recall is happening at the end of the Last Supper), we remember that Jesus said to them, “I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.”  Putting the two together, we can perhaps, then, hear Jesus say to his disciples “If you love me, you will love one another as I have loved you.”  And how did Jesus love his disciples (all mankind, really)?  He sacrificed his own life so that others may live.  Thus, the instruction, right at the beginning of this Gospel passage, is full of weight: “If you love me, you will make a sacrifice of your own life so that others may live.”

Now, in communities throughout our country, have we not seen this commandment lived out over these weeks of lockdown?  Of course we have!  From those charging in on the front lines to confront this virus directly, to those working extra hours to make sure there’s milk on the shelves of the grocery; from those who have shifted classrooms to living rooms, to those who keep the bus running on time; from those who have become the sole companions and protectors of the most vulnerable among us, to those manning cameras to keep us connected to our faith... In big and small ways, we have all been called to make sacrifices in our own lives so that others may live.  Assuredly, we’ve not been perfect in making these sacrifices, and not all of our sacrifices have been of equal weight, but we have all been called to make a sacrifice of our lives so that others may live and we have decided to try to do so.

What also has come into sharp relief from this “forced” living of Jesus’ command is a clearer sense of what is “essential”, right?  The lockdown left only those public services and businesses open that were deemed “essential”.  In the first weeks of the lockdown, perhaps we were clamoring that hair salons and barber shops were “essential”.  Even though our opinion of that may not have changed, my guess is that now we’re more inclined to clamor about how things like relationships, communion with other persons, physical presence, and the sense that you can become greater than you are today are actually the true essentials.  The loss of much of the activities of our normal lives has led to a loss of these “experiences” that we value on a deeper level and we have come to realize that while the activities may be deemed “non-essential", the human experiences that they provide certainly aren’t.

That said, our readings today take us even a step deeper into this understanding of what is “essential”.  As I’ve already described from our Gospel reading today, we heard Jesus’ words to his disciples at the Last Supper: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments...”  He goes on to say that, when they keep his commandments, he will send them an Advocate “to be with them always … the Spirit of truth...”  We remember that, last week, we read Jesus’ words: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”  If Jesus is the truth, and if he has promised to send the Spirit of truth to be with them always, then that Spirit is his Spirit; and since he is in the Father and the Father is in him (as he has said multiple times in this discourse), then this Spirit must also be the Spirit of the Father.  Not only is this a slightly veiled revelation of the Trinity, but it is also a promise: that the world will no longer see him (because it only sees fleshy things), but they will see him because his Spirit will be in them, helping them to recognize him in all things.

What, therefore, is “essential” in this?  The indwelling of the Spirit in us.  How can we continue to live in a world with so much suffering, when life, once predictable, no longer seems predictable, but rather out to get us?  By maintaining contact with the Spirit dwelling within us.  And why?  So that we can see Jesus in all things.  And when we see Jesus in all things, we see hope: just like when we look at the crucifix we see the absolute darkest part of humanity, but we see Jesus there—he who died on the cross but now lives—and so we see the hope that good can come from that suffering—that good can conquer evil—and thus that we, if we stay faithful to him, can enjoy life without suffering one day.

Let’s look also to the second reading and the words of Saint Peter in his first letter.  The first line of that reading says: “Beloved: Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.”  “Sanctify Christ...”  Peter is instructing us that Christ must be “set apart” in our hearts.  This is the meaning of “to sanctify”: that is, “to make holy”, or, in other words, “to set apart as consecrated to a sacred purpose”.  If we are “setting Christ apart for a sacred purpose” in our hearts, what, then, is that purpose?  Peter tells us.  “Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.”  Ohhhhh.  Well that sounds all pious and lovely, doesn’t it?  It is.  But it is also a weighty statement.  What we translate as “Lord” in English is the Greek Kyrios or the Latin Dominus.  From the Latin translation, we also get the verb “to dominate”, meaning that to be Dominus means to be the one who has authority over a thing.  Thus, we see now that when Peter instructs us to “set Christ apart for a sacred purpose in our hearts”, that purpose is to be Dominus, that is, the one with ultimate authority over our hearts.

But wait, our hearts are what tell us what we really want and what will make us happy.  If I let Christ be Lord over that, I’ll be sad at least some of the time, won’t I?  Before I answer, let me ask you this: when lockdown was first implemented, what were you sad about?  A lot of people that I talked to were sad that they couldn’t go to their favorite restaurant or bar or take their spring break vacation like they had planned.  After about a month, most of those same people had started to say, “I don’t miss the restaurant or bar as much as I miss being with other people.”  If our hearts could be wrong about what we really want when it comes to things like this, couldn’t they also be wrong about the weightier things of life?  Certainly, they could (and they often are).

Just before lockdown sent our school children home for the year, I had started to spend my sessions with them going through an old booklet titled “A Little Catechism in the Language of a Child”.  It was a question-answer format book and the kids loved it because a) they always want to show what they know and b) it spurred a lot of great questions.  One of the questions was “Why must we believe everything God reveals to us?”  And the answer is beautifully simple: First, God knows everything, therefore he cannot be wrong; and second, God is good—perfectly good—and therefore he will never lie.  And wasn’t this the very first temptation?  The serpent tempted Eve by saying, “Look, God is wrong; surely you won’t die! And so, he is lying to you, because he doesn’t want you to be like him.”  And she fell for it.  But God knows everything so he cannot be wrong.  And he is goodness itself, which means that he will never lie.

Does it make sense now why it is essential that Christ is sanctified as Dominus in our hearts?  If our hearts can be fickle with what is truly good for us, and, therefore, sometimes wrong about what is good for us, and if we have a resource to which we can turn who cannot be wrong and who will never lie to us, then why would we be afraid to allow him to have authority over our hearts?  Well, the reasons are many—as much psychological as they are spiritual—and so, the important thing is that we recognize that this task—sanctifying Christ as Lord in our hearts—is essential for us and thus that we give ourselves to it constantly.

Friends, after all of that, I think that we can pull something together to walk away with today on this 6^th Sunday in Easter.  In a way, Jesus has said to us today: “If you love me, you will sanctify me as Lord in your hearts and, thus, you will keep my commandments.”  This, without doubt, is essential.  If you have not included this in your “essential activities” during this time of lockdown, I urge you to pray intensely and intentionally to allow Jesus (through his teachings and example, and the Spirit that he has given to us) to be “sanctified as Lord” in your hearts.

In this time in which we have been separated from him sacramentally, I know that we all deeply feel the truth that these sacramental encounters with his grace are truly essential.  But if we do the hard, but good work of sanctifying Christ as Lord in our hearts during this time, well then the sacramental grace that we receive in the coming weeks will be like rocket fuel in our hearts and make us ready “to give an explanation to anyone who asks us a reason for our hope”, to suffer for doing good, in solidarity with Christ, and to acknowledge his good works among us and, thus, to cry out to God with joy.  May the Spirit of truth, who remains with each of us in this time of separation, help us to persevere in this good work and, thus, to usher in a new springtime of life in the Church, our community, and our world.

Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – May 17^th, 2020

The way of mercy

Homily: 5^th Sunday in Easter – Cycle A

“Do not let your hearts be troubled...” I kind of wish we had this message back on March 18^th, when we first entered into this situation!  It feels, perhaps, a little late now, because our hearts have been long troubled by this extended lockdown.  But let’s step out of the context of our own situation, and back into the context in which Jesus originally made this statement.  Perhaps, then, we’ll be able to make more sense of how Our Lord’s words can speak to us.

This passage comes at the close of the Last Supper.  Just prior to it, Judas Iscariot has left to betray Jesus to the Jews, after which Jesus announces to the remaining eleven that he’s “going away” and that where he is going, they cannot follow him.  Peter finds this awfully strange and makes a bold statement (as he’s wont to do): “No way! I’m going wherever it is that you are going. I’ll even lay down my life for you!”  Jesus corrects him and says, “LOL, not only will you NOT do that, you’ll do the opposite! In fact, you are going to DENY me... three times... TONIGHT.  You can imagine the “stunned silence” that followed.  Imagine with me back to the beginning of February.  Now imagine if I said to you, then, “Hey, things are going to shut down completely in a month and you won’t even be able to come to Mass.”  You would have all been like Peter and said, “Ha! Yeah right! We will never let that happen!”  Fast forward to March 18^th and... stunned silence.  Friends, this is where Jesus starts this passage with his first and closest disciples; and this is where he starts this passage with us... Do not let your hearts be troubled...

Now, let’s look at the disciples in the ensuing hours: The disciples would watch Jesus be arrested, tortured and murdered... Do not let your hearts be troubled...  They discovered that his body had been buried and the tomb closed... Do not let your hearts be troubled...  They would hear that “murderous threats” were being spoken about them... Do not let your hearts be troubled...  I imagine that they all felt pretty helpless to do anything and that they were despairing that what they had hoped for would ever be possible again.  But has this not been our experience?  Some of you have lost loved ones during this time (whether to the coronavirus or for other reasons).  Perhaps you didn’t even get to attend the funeral.  Many more of you are desperately separated from loved ones because of a need (yours or theirs) to be protected from infection.  Some of you have lost jobs and more in terms of material security.  Some of you have lost milestone experiences (like prom and graduation).  In all of this, we’ve experienced our own helplessness and, perhaps, despair that we’ll ever get back that for which we had hoped and into that Jesus says, Do not let your hearts be troubled...

In Matthew’s gospel, we hear Jesus say, “Blessed are those who mourn...”  Perhaps, in the midst of all of this, this “Beatitude” seems much more like a “pious platitude”, unhelpful in the face of real suffering.  Trappist Monk and spiritual writer Thomas Merton has something to say about that, however, and I’d like to share a bit of an extensive quote from him that might help put this into perspective.  In his book, No Man is an Island, Merton wrote:

“’Blessed are they that mourn.’ Can this be true? Is there any greater wretchedness than to taste the dregs of our own insufficiency and misery and hopelessness, and to know that we are certainly worth nothing at all? Yet it is blessed to be reduced to these depths if, in them, we can find God. Until we have reached the bottom of the abyss, there is still something for us to choose between all and nothing. There is still something in between. We can still evade the decision. When we are reduced to our last extreme, there is no further evasion. The choice is a terrible one. It is made in the heart of darkness, but with an intuition that is unbearable by its angelic clarity: when we who have been destroyed and seem to be in hell miraculously choose God!”

He continues:

“Only the lost are saved. Only the sinner is justified. Only the dead can rise from the dead, and Jesus said, ‘I came to seek and to save that which was lost.’”

Finally, he adds:

“Some men are only virtuous enough to forget that they are sinners without being wretched enough to remember how much they need the mercy of God.”

Friends, could it be that God is allowing this to remind us of our desperate need for his mercy, to remind us that we are lost and in need of saving, to remind us that we are sinners who need a redeemer?  My friends, let us be in agony because of this pandemic and the sacrifices it has demanded of us (most especially separation from the Eucharist).  Yes, let us be in agony, but let us not despair!  Remember the crucifixion: Jesus went to the depths of the darkest place of humanity and cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!?!?”  Yet he had already told us what it was all for: “Do not let your hearts be troubled... I am going to prepare a place for you.”

My friends, this time is not a time for despair, but a time for mercy.  Do not let your hearts be troubled by this time of chaos, confusion, and sorrow.  Rather, have faith in God; have faith also in the one whom God has sent, Jesus.  Where he is going in this time, you know the way.  Wait, we know the way?  Yes, Thomases, we know the way: “I am the way...” Jesus said.  The Way, is the way of mercy.

Jesus has entered the depths of humanity in order to redeem it in its depths: in your depths and in my depths.  Our way, therefore, is the same.  We must enter into the depths of our own humanity to find the wretchedness that still exists there so that God’s mercy might penetrate to it.  And we must enter into the depths of others in their sins against us so as to bring God’s mercy there when we forgive their offenses.  Merton says that, “We must forgive them in the flames of their own hell, for Christ, by means of our forgiveness, once again descends to extinguish the avenging flame. He cannot do this if we do not forgive others with his own compassion.”

Friends, soon enough Jesus will return to “take us to himself”.  Perhaps even sooner, we will be returning to him, here in our churches.  When we do, will we truly be seeking him?  Or will we be seeking the comfort of the familiar?  Our challenge is to be sure that we are seeking him.  We can do this by embarking (or re-embarking) on the Way of mercy, in Truth, who is the Life: the way of deep forgiveness that comes from a place of true humility and compassion—that is, the way that brings deep and lasting healing—the way that leads into the life, who is Christ.  To do so will not only make our return to him joyful in the depths of our souls, but will also be the cause of a great renewal in our Church and in our world.

Friends, Jesus promised his disciples that “whoever believes in me will do the works that I do and will do greater ones than these.”  This is the crux of why we need to set ourselves on the Way that is mercy.  For what are the greatest works that Jesus did?  Without doubt, the conversion of souls; and he brought souls to conversion by forgiveness, by mercy.  Thomas Merton wrote, “God has left sin in the world in order that there may be forgiveness: not only the secret forgiveness by which He Himself cleanses our souls, but the manifest forgiveness by which we have mercy on one another and so give expression to the fact that He is living, by His mercy, in our own hearts.”  What is the point of evangelization except to give witness to the fact that God is living and among us and that he wants to give us life, through mercy?  The conversion of even greater numbers of souls through mercy are the greater works that Jesus has promised that we will accomplish.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled... I am the way, the truth, and the life... whoever believes in me will do greater works than these...”  Friends, may we today, even in the midst of our ongoing sufferings, find the grace to echo the words of Our Lady and say, “Father, let it be done unto me according to your word.”

Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – May 10^th, 2020

Letting Christ shepherd us

Homily: 4^th Sunday in Easter – Cycle A

Friends, it's not axiomatic to remind us that we are celebrating the 4^th Sunday of Easter.  As I scroll through friends’ Instagram posts, many of them are marked “Quarantine: Day Whatever”.  Many of us are having a hard time keeping up with what day it is as we continue to “hunker down” in order to limit the spread of COVID-19.  So yes, for those who need help catching up with their counting, it is the 4^th Sunday of Easter (or, perhaps, better stated in these circumstances, the 4^th Sunday of 2^nd Lent).  This Sunday is also commonly known as “Good Shepherd Sunday” because the Gospel reading for each of the three years of the cycle of readings is from the “Good Shepherd” discourse in John’s Gospel, in which Jesus presents himself in the image of a shepherd who leads his flock to fertile pastures and flowing waters where they can satisfy their hunger and quench their thirst and who protects them from every danger so that they may experience a life of complete joy.

This Sunday, therefore, has also been celebrated as the World Day of Prayer for Vocations to the priesthood because priests, who by their ordination stand in persona Christi, that is, “in the person of Christ”, are called to shepherd Jesus’ flock in his name here on earth.  Thus, as we celebrate Jesus the Good Shepherd this Sunday, we also pray for the men who have already responded to God’s call to the priesthood and also that many more men will respond to that same call so that Christ’s shepherding will continue and grow in the years to come.  With this in mind, I thought I’d take some time today to share about my own call to the priesthood in light of the scriptures we have heard proclaimed.  I particularly want our young people to pay attention, because God is calling each of you to some service in his Church and you may find in my example a sign of your own calling and a way to further discern what it is that God is calling you to in your lives.

I begin with the reading from the Acts of the Apostles, in which we hear the end of Saint Peter’s speech on Pentecost.  After proclaiming to them the truth of who Jesus is—both “Lord and Christ … whom you crucified”—we read that those who heard it were “cut to the heart”: meaning, they were enlightened to their error and felt great guilt for what they had done.  In great simplicity they ask, “What are we to do?”  Peter gives them an equally simple answer: “Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.”

As a young man I had graduated from college with an engineering degree and began working.  A “cradle” Catholic, I nonetheless was living a very materialistic and somewhat hedonistic lifestyle: meaning that I was mostly worried about making money, buying nice things, and enjoying a life of leisure as much as possible while doing some kind of work that satisfied my passions.  After a few years, I became disillusioned in this pursuit as it was proving not to be very fulfilling and even detrimental to some of my relationships.  This is when I started to take a hard look at the choices I had made and to ask whether the choices I made were really leading me to authentic happiness.  That’s when God broke into the scene.

In the midst of all of this, I was questioning the faith in which I had been raised.  During this, the parish to which I belonged hosted a parish mission in which the priest giving the mission, Fr. Larry Richards, promised that I both wouldn’t be bored and that it would change my life forever.  “That’s a bold promise”, I thought, and so I decided to go.  On the first night, Fr. Larry gave his famous talk on “The Truth”.  In it, he challenged us to ask whether we have ever really asked God what he wants us to do with our lives.  Because, he said, one day we will have to stand before him and answer for what we did with our lives: the lives that he had given us.  By his words and his impassioned presentation, I was cut to the heart.  In other words, I recognized how selfishly I had been living my life and felt great guilt for it.  Before I could even ask “What am I to do?”, Fr. Larry told us that there would be the opportunity for Confessions the following night and I knew that I had to confess all the sins of my selfish life to God and to ask for his forgiveness.

It was not enough, though, that I ask for and receive forgiveness.  Rather, I also had to begin to seek God’s will for my life.  Thankfully, Fr. Larry also provided guidance for this: the life of prayer and study, frequent reception of the sacraments of Holy Communion and Confession, and dedicating myself to living for others through the works of mercy.  This I started to do, all the while making it my constant prayer that God would reveal his vocation to me.  After about 3 months, I heard him speak to me!  As God is wont to do, however, it wasn’t a voice from the clouds or a burning bush.  No angels appeared to me in dreams and told me what God wanted me to do.  Rather, it was the voice of my mother, spoken in a moment of frustration, in which God made known to me the vocation he was asking me to accept.

For months, I was praying in secret for my vocation, all the while thinking of different things that I might do which could better serve others.  Most of these ideas surrounded my engineering degree.  I was still working in the same job, however, which I didn’t feel was really helping me to serve others in any great way.  So, one night I was speaking with my mom and just catching up.  I was expressing my frustration with my current job and with not really knowing what to do next; and my mom, being my mom, was offering all sorts of suggestions for what I should do.  I wasn’t happy with any of those suggestions and, in a moment of frustration, blurted out “I don’t know what I’m going to do, but what I do know is that I want to do whatever it is that God wants me to do.”  Right then, my mom blurted out, “Well maybe now you’ll consider being a priest!”  At first, I was speechless at the suggestion, but then said “Sure, if that’s what God wants me to do.”  And when a friend of mine at work the next day confirmed that I should consider it, I felt like God had spoken to me and began to pray about whether God truly did want me to be a priest.

In the following months I became more and more convinced that I was, indeed, being called to the priesthood, though I discovered that I wasn’t ready yet to pursue it.  I was too convinced that I had to pursue it in order to “make up to God” for all of the years that I had lived selfishly.  Atonement for past sins is a good thing of course, but it’s not a great reason to choose your vocation.  So, I put it aside for a while and continued to give myself to the good work I had begun after the parish mission: the work of prayer and study, frequent reception of the sacraments, and the works of mercy.

A couple of years later, I met a young woman and we started dating.  I quickly became convinced that this was from God and prayed (hoped, really) that this was God’s final answer to my vocation question: I was called to be married and start a family.  A few months into the relationship, however, her mother, responding to a prompting from the Holy Spirit, warned her daughter that I wasn’t doing something that God was calling me to do and so she shouldn’t go much further in that relationship until I figured that out and began to do it.  When she shared this with me, I was cut to the heart once again.  I recognized how I had let myself become complacent in my religiosity and thus dulled to hearing God’s voice.  I went to confession and threw myself into discernment once again; and, eventually, God used the voice of another person (a friend from my parish) to reveal to me that he was calling me to be a priest.  This time, however, I was ready to respond since I had as my motivation nothing more than to do God’s will for the sake of his will.

My friends, whether you are discerning God’s vocation for your life or just what God wants from you during this time of crisis, it often begins with an experience of being “cut to the heart”: that is, a realization that you have not been attuned to God’s will, but rather have been living more for yourself and so experience guilt and the desire to set yourself on God’s will once again.  This experience, though often unpleasant, is not a punishment from God, but rather a grace: a grace that can move you to seek God’s voice once again.  This is important because of what we heard in our Gospel reading today.

In this “Good Shepherd” discourse, Jesus says, “When the [shepherd] has driven out all his own, he walks ahead of them, and the sheep follow him, because they recognize his voice.”  Because God has made Jesus “both Lord and Christ”, he is our shepherd.  He has called us and he walks ahead of us to lead us.  We will follow him only if we first have come to know his voice and to trust him.  When I first began to discern my vocation, I had to spend a lot of time in prayer, listening for his voice both in silence and through the Scriptures.  Having learned to hear his voice, I could then follow it when I heard it.  In spite of all of my good intentions, I would never had discovered this vocation had I relied on my own reasoning.  Instead, I had to listen for the voice of my shepherd, Jesus, and then respond.  A peaceful heart that makes frequent acts of trust (such as St. Faustina’s “Jesus, I trust in you!”) is ready to hear and to respond to Jesus’ voice.

Dear young people, on this World Day of Prayer for Vocations, I implore you, as Peter implored those who heard him speak on Pentecost, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation”!  Jesus, the Good Shepherd, wants to give you life and life in abundance!  Do not seek comfort in this world, for you were not made for comfort, you were made for greatness!  Only Jesus, the Good Shepherd, can lead you to the greatness that he has planned for you: a share in his cross that will make you a shining beacon of light drawing more and more people into his sheepfold: the abundant life that is communion with him.  Young men, especially, ask Jesus if he wants you to be his priest and be ready to say “yes” if he does.  I promise you that Jesus will not abandon you if you abandon yourself to him.  Mary, our Mother, is ready to help you if you turn to her and ask for it.

To all of us, if you have not yet asked yourself what it is that God wants from you during this time and in the time ahead, beware.  This “2^nd Lent” is not a time to be endured and nothing more.  Rather it is a time for an even deeper renewal and cleansing of our hearts so that we might follow our Shepherd more closely again.  If you remember, way back at the beginning of this lockdown, I encouraged us to use this time to think of what we want our “new normal” to be once it is lifted.  If you haven’t discussed this with Jesus, yet, then you’re not yet ready for it to come.  Make good use of this time, then, to clean up your spiritual lives, even as, perhaps, you clean up your houses.  Make resolutions to embrace the spiritual life more fully now and once this lockdown ends.  Make time now for prayer and study, and for exercising the spiritual and (where possible) corporal works of mercy.  Make yourself ready to return to the sacraments.  Make time now to ask God what it is that he wants from you now and into the future.  This is our chance to make our “new normal” a “better normal”: a normal of God’s kingdom manifest among us.  Let us not waste this chance.

Friends, Jesus, our shepherd, is leading us.  Let us follow him, for he is our only hope.

Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – May 3^rd, 2020