Christ the King sheds the light of truth on reality

          Last week I did not preach, so I did not have a homily to post.  This week, we enter the last week of Ordinary Time as we prepare to begin a new liturgical year with Advent.  Let us pray for each other as we "begin again" and so that we will never fail to proclaim Jesus Christ as our King!

Homily: 34^th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle B

The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe

For those of us of a certain generation, “reality TV” has shaped much of our television experience.  In spite of what it looks like today, reality TV began as a simple project: stick seven strangers in a house together for a certain period of time and record their lives.  To see their “real, unscripted reactions” to each other, it was thought, would be just as entertaining as any scripted story-line.  And, for the most part, they were right.  “The Real World”, which was the name of this first “reality show”, was a big hit and the concept of “reality TV” quickly blossomed and saturated our televisions with variations on the same theme.

Just as quickly, though, it moved away from the basic concept of real people in real-life situations into sensationalism.  In other words, each new show had to do more to “manufacture” drama, and its participants, it seems, had to be all the more willing to respond to it.  Instead of being an opportunity to look into the lives of other human persons, and perhaps glean an insight into the mystery of human relationships, reality TV has morphed into a voyeuristic fantasy land where the only thing connected to reality, it seems, is that these people still have to eat and sleep once in a while.  As a result, “reality TV” no more resembles real human life than do any of the Harry Potter films. ///

It shouldn’t be too hard for us to see that this notion of “manufactured reality” reflects our culture today.  The dominant culture that we experience in the media, and which is put forth in certain politics and academia, wants us to believe that truth is relative to the person and the reality that he/she experiences in which it is interpreted.  In this model, we equate experiences with truth.  One example of this is “transgenderism”.  In this a person experiences “gender dysphoria”: that is, that the gender with which one identifies him/herself does not align with his/her biological gender and thus experiences an internal conflict (or “dysphoria”).  This experience is real.  The interpretation of the experience, however—that this person must now live as if he/she is the gender opposite to his/her biological gender (possibly going to the extremes of bodily modifications in pursuit of it)—is a reality manufactured on the false notion that what this person has experienced is not just reality, but is the truth: in spite of the obvious physical data that exists to the contrary.

All of this is to highlight that to live in reality—that is, to experience the world as it really is and to flourish within it—one must interpret reality (that is, our experiences) based on what is true.  In order to do this, one must begin with the most fundamental truths.  The first and most true thing that we can say is that God is being itself.  When God appeared to Moses in the burning bush and Moses asked him, “What should I tell them is your name?” God replied, “Tell them ‘I AM who AM’ sent you”: in other words, “I am existence itself”.  If, therefore, God is existence itself, then he must also be the source of all that exists.  And because he has shown us that he is not a distant, aloof creator, but rather a creator that cares for his creation, we know that all things that exist (which come from him) are, therefore, ordered to him.  This is reality.  This is true.  When we get this idea backwards, however—that is, when we believe that things and experiences in existence are ordered towards me (or to some other reality that isn’t God)—is when we fall into trouble.

Given this, the dialogue that we heard in today’s Gospel is poignant.  This exchange between Pilate and Jesus is the stuff of which great reality TV is made: tension, drama, suspense… and real consequences for decisions that are made.  Although we didn’t hear it in today’s reading, Pilate’s next words in the Gospel—the ones that follow Christ telling him that he came to bear witness to the truth—are some of his most famous: he says “What is truth?”  As a governing officer in the Roman Army, Pilate had spent years of his life following orders without question—even if it contradicted what he thought was true—and now, in the face of Truth incarnate, this “manufactured reality” distorted his view of what was really real.  In other words, he could no longer see reality for what it was.  Thus, he was trapped in a conflict between Truth (capital “T”) that stood before him and the truth (small “t”) under which he had been living for most of his life.  He had ordered his reality to the false truth that all things are ordered to Caesar and the empire and so, in the conflict between his truth and Truth itself, he ignored what was really real and chose to live in his falsehood.

The abuse crisis that we have been suffering through in the Church has this disordering of reality as part of its cause.  The actions of individual priests were reprehensible and the result of a criminal indulgence of the temptations to sin.  The responses of some in authority over those priests was also reprehensible and betrayed, it seems, that those men had ordered their reality to the truth that the institution of the Church was the ultimate good, instead of God (and, specifically, his commands to protect the most vulnerable).  It is a sad reality from which we must now recover.

And we will recover, if we re-order our reality to the truth that we celebrate today: that Jesus Christ is King of the Universe: that is, that he is Lord—Dominus, in Latin, he who dominates—over all that exists.  If we see that all that exists comes from him who existed before all things and is, therefore, ordered to him, then we have a solid truth on which to interpret our reality (that is, all that we experience); and, thus, we can live in confidence that our reality is not a manufactured reality, but a true reality that will lead us to true happiness and peace.

Friends, it is no mere coincidence that this feast also closes our liturgical year.  Celebrating the kingship of Christ at the end of our liturgical year invites us to rejoice: in the truth that all things in the universe are created from and subject to a king who has suffered and died for us—and who now lives again forever—so that we, too, can live forever in him; and to lament and repent from the ways in which our lives have not conformed to that truth and thus strive (making a “new year’s resolution” even) to order our lives completely to this truth and to work so that the world around us might also be ordered to this truth.  This Eucharist is the foremost way in which we do this: ordering our praise, worship, and thanksgiving to God, who is its source.  Our 40 hours devotion, which begins tonight, is a privileged time to reflect on this truth, as well, and so I hope that you all will find an hour to spend with our Lord in adoration during these 40 hours.

My brothers and sisters, in a few moments we will have the opportunity to look directly at Truth Incarnate: the King who reigns over all existence.  If we have any doubt about what is true, let us not fail to ask him—not like Pilate, who asked in frustration, but in humility—“Lord, what is truth?” and then listen with open hearts for what he will reveal to us.  Friends, if we can do this, we will then be prepared for the greatest reality show of all time: the triumphant return of Christ our King.

Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – November 25^th, 2018

Sin still matters

Homily: 26^th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle B

Friends, as we continue our journey through Ordinary Time—the time in the Liturgical Year in which we focus on growing as missionary disciples—we are reminded of important truths that help keep us on track.  A full six months removed from Lent and Easter—in which we focused on acknowledging our sin and worked towards repentance—this Sunday the Church gives us a reminder that sin still matters, even when it isn’t Lent.

In the second reading today, Saint James issues a stern warning to the rich who have taken unjust advantage of those less fortunate than them.  He lays their sins before them and prophesies that the comforts and excesses that they are enjoying now God has permitted so as to “fatten their hearts” for the coming slaughter.  He is warning them because they have become complacent in their sin and because God will not overlook their injustices on the Day of Judgment.

In the Gospel reading, Jesus is just as deliberate and graphic.  He instructs his disciples to be vigilant against sin.  In fact, another way to describe Jesus’ teaching using some of our more modern parlance would be to say that Jesus instructs his disciples to be intolerant of sin.  God has laid down a law that must be obeyed and to choose against that law is to choose against God himself and will result in eternal separation from God, which will be the cause of eternal suffering; and so Jesus tells his disciples: “Be intolerant of sin!  If your hand causes you to sin, CUT. IT. OFF!  If your eye causes you to sin, PLUCK. IT. OUT!  Failure to do so will condemn you to a place of eternal suffering: much like being in the middle of the unquenchable fire of Gehenna.”

Gehenna, for those of you who may not know, is not just another name for Hell.  Gehenna was an actual place outside the walls of Jerusalem.  It was a valley on the outskirts of the city that had been used for human sacrifice in Old Testament times by the evil rulers of the Israelites who worshiped pagan Gods.  By the time of Christ, the valley had become a huge, outdoor public incinerator, of sorts, in which trash and refuse, including the dead bodies of animals and criminals, were thrown and eventually consumed by a smoldering fire that was constantly kept burning.  Obviously, this was not a pleasant place to be around; and, having seen it, Jesus’ disciples knew that this was not a place that you could imagine yourself living for all eternity.

Thus, the extreme images that Jesus uses to describe how intolerant one should be of sin in his or her life.  Sin is a deadly thing, in spite of the lies that Satan will tell you about it.  (Remember Genesis?  “You certainly won’t die...” the serpent said to Eve.)  Thus, Jesus, and Saint James after him, are adamant that sin be rooted out of our lives down to the very source.  Are they trying to scare us into conforming?  Well, yes.  Elsewhere Jesus will say, “Do not fear the one who can kill the body, but rather the one who has the power to send you into the everlasting fires” (Mt. 10:28).  If our goal in life is to make it to eternal life with God (and it is, by the way), then we should fear ever committing any sin that would keep us from achieving that goal; and, therefore, remove anything from our lives that leads us into sin.

In these past couple of months, some serious wounds have been reopened and we are facing once again the hurt and suffering that tolerated sin causes.  The sins of sexual abuse by anyone, but especially by the clergy of the Church, produce lasting effects that, for the victim of abuse, can make him/her feel as if he/she is already living in Gehenna: a horrible wasteland in which a never-ending fire consumes him/her.  With hindsight we can see that even one instance of this being tolerated is horrible (though we shouldn’t have needed hindsight to see that).  Nonetheless, these bigger sins were tolerated because many, much smaller sins of unchastity (and, in the case of the clergy, unfaithfulness to one’s promise of chastity) were tolerated for many years.  Like a cancer, the toleration of even one of these sins puts the whole body at risk for destruction.

Sad, though, how we wouldn’t hesitate to submit ourselves to treatment to eliminate cancer—treatment that often entails significant suffering and sacrifice—yet we look at sin and tell ourselves “Meh, it’s not that bad... I’ll be fine.”  Friends, just as the Church is in real need of chemotherapy to cleanse Christ’s Body of these cancerous tumors that have threatened to destroy it, so too each of us.  Millions of women have gone through mastectomies in the hope that, by removing this important part of their bodies, the cancer that threatens their lives will be removed completely.  How quickly we respond to doctors who urge us to act so as to prevent pain and suffering in this world (let alone, death), yet we refuse to respond to Jesus, the Divine Physician, who urges us to act so as to prevent eternal pain and suffering (that is, eternal death) in the world to come.

My brothers and sisters, sin still matters.  When we tolerate sin—even small sin—in our lives, we allow a cancer to grow within us—silent and sinister: a cancer that destroys us from the inside.  To root sin out, we must subject ourselves to intense therapy: fasting, prayer, and frequent treatments through the sacraments of Penance and Holy Eucharist; and we must be honest with ourselves about whether relationships and circumstances in our lives are leading us into occasions of sin—that is, occasions for us to act against God and his Divine Law and against our neighbor—and thus we must eliminate them.  Anything short of this leaves us in danger of being cast into the eternal fires of Hell.

I myself have voluntarily taken on a regimen of mortification over these last few months meant to help me root out the sources of sin in my own life and to make reparation for my sins and the sins of my fellow priests and bishops.  I will not prescribe one for all of you, but I do invite each of you to consider what you might voluntarily fast from so as to conquer the root of a pernicious sin in your own life.  By each of us taking responsibility for our own sins and by supporting each other in our efforts (accountability partners are great things!), we’ll begin to see that the larger, systemic sins in our Church and in our society are being rooted out as well.

Let us take courage, then, my brothers and sisters, to take up (or continue) this good work; so that we might discover what our Responsorial Psalm tells us today: that “the precepts of the Lord give joy to the heart”: the eternal joy made possible for us by Jesus’ sacrifice.  The sacrifice that is made present to us here on this altar.

Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – September 29^th & 30^th, 2018