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

Notice:

            In September of 2009 I was diagnosed with Stage 4, Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma.  In the spring of 2010, I completed the full cycles of chemotherapy and the cancer was officially declared to be in remission.  Many experts say that after five years without a recurrence one is considered to be “cured”.  In January of this year I was scanned once again and the cancer remains in remission.  Praised be God!  Anticipating this last fall, I decided that I would make a pilgrimage to offer thanks to God for his mercy.  On April 8^th, I left for the Holy Land to make this pilgrimage.  How appropriate that I will be there on Divine Mercy Sunday, when we celebrate God’s saving mercy that has come to us through the death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ Our Lord.  There I will walk in the land where Our Savior walked and pray in the holy places, offering thanksgiving to God, especially through the Eucharist.  I will remember all of you there.  Please pray with me during this time as I invoke the maternal protection of Mary, Our Lady of Perpetual Help, for my journey.

O Mother of Perpetual Help,

I invoke your powerful name

which is the safeguard of the living

and the salvation of the dying.

O purest and sweetest Mary,

hear me when I call upon you

for help in all my physical

and spiritual needs.

I offer myself into your hands.

Hold me close to your heart

as you held your Son Jesus,

and ask the angels, Michael and Gabriel

to keep watch over me always

in times of trouble and temptation.

Amen.

I look forward to being with you all again after my return on April 18^th.  Pax.

Becoming small so as to be heard

          How often do we pray and feel like we do not hear a response?  The woman in today's Gospel knows this feeling, but she did not let it discourage her.  Desperate for her daughter, she acknowledges her own lowliness before Jesus - becoming small - and so is heard and receives the answer to her prayers.  We, too, must acknowledge our lowliness before Jesus, because it is the lowly that he is most attentive to.

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

Homily: 20^th Sunday of Ordinary Time – Cycle A

          Cancer has to be one of the more sinister illnesses known to man.  This is because cancer often grows and spreads within a person’s body—overtaking otherwise healthy organs—without manifesting itself in any discernible symptoms.  When symptoms do begin to show—for example, a persistent pain or discomfort or a sign of an abnormal growth—the cancer’s progression is often so far advanced that there is little that doctors can do to stop it. Once a person discovers the affliction, however, and acknowledges just how sick he or she is, he or she often wastes no time seeking out the most highly-reputed physician around, hoping to find a cure.

          This was my own experience with cancer.  Five years ago, I noticed an abnormal growth in the lymph nodes in my left armpit.  Having no other symptoms indicating that I was sick, I largely ignored it.  I thought “if it truly was cancer, I’d already feel sick; but I feel fine, so it is probably something else.”  When I finally did have it biopsied, however, I was told that it was cancer.  And after a full body scan, I was told that the cancer had spread to other areas of my body: that I was, in fact, “stage 4”.  This, I could not ignore.  I had to acknowledge that I was sick and, thus, my immediate need to seek out the best doctor I could find in the hope of getting treatment that would lead to a cure.

          Throughout the Gospels, we see both sides of this story being played out in relation to Jesus, the divine physician.  In many stories recounted by the Gospels we see how the sick begged to be carried out to Jesus just so that they might have a chance see him and to beg for his help, or even just to touch the tassel of his cloak, in the hopes of being healed.  These, of course, were those who sicknesses had manifested themselves outwardly, thus driving these men and women to recognize their need for Christ and his healing.  On the other hand, we also see how the religious elite—the Scribes and the Pharisees—failed to recognize any need for Christ and his healing; relying instead on blind adherence to the letter of the Law even though a spiritual cancer was silently destroying them on the inside.

          In our Gospel today, we hear how a Canaanite woman approached Jesus to plead for the healing of her daughter, who had been afflicted by an evil spirit; and we see many extraordinary things in this encounter.  First, Jesus has crossed the border into the region of Tyre and Sidon—into the land of the Gentiles: that is, those who were not Jewish—and he is then approached by a woman—a Canaanite, whom the Jews despised—who begged him for help.  These details are extraordinary because Jews, generally, had no reason to go outside of their land and they had even less reason to interact with the people of these other lands; for they were pagan and thus ritually impure.  And so, contact with them would have made the Jew ritually impure as well.  Add to it that public interactions between men and women were culturally taboo and you can see that this public encounter between Jesus and this Canaanite woman in her own land was rather extraordinary.

          Now, there has been much ink spilled trying to understand Jesus’ response to this woman.  But if we take it somewhat as it is, I think that we can find some spiritual insight for ourselves.  Jesus, for all he did and taught, was a faithful Jew and when appropriate he followed Jewish customs.  Thus, when this pagan woman approached him, he at first ignored her.  When she persisted, he declared the truth: that he had come for “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” and so continued to ignore her.  When she persisted even further, he explained yet again that it was not right to give to her—who was not of the “house of Israel”—that which was destined for those who were of the house of Israel.  Jesus, we see, was fulfilling the role of what most thought the Messiah would be: a faithful Jew of the house of David who had come to restore the kingdom for the sons of Israel.

          The woman’s response, however, moves Jesus to more.  The woman acknowledged her own spiritual depravity: “Yes, Lord, I acknowledge that I do not deserve your mercy; for I do not belong to the house of Israel.  But don’t also the dogs eat from that which falls from their masters’ tables?”  In other words, she acknowledged her own exclusion from the chosen people and, thus, her lack of any claim to Jesus’ help, but also that Jesus’ mercy was big enough to spill over even to one who did not deserve it; and it seems like it is this that causes Jesus to respond.  It’s as if her humility was so unexpected that it moved Jesus to pity and made him bend to her request.

          Saint Terese of Lisieux has said that if it seems as if God is ignoring us it’s not because we’re too small for him to take notice, but rather that we haven’t become small enough to move him to respond.  So often we come before Him seeking help for others who seemingly are more afflicted than we are.  Yet, we fail to acknowledge our own depravity—that is, our own need for Christ’s healing and our unworthiness to receive it—when we approach him.  We need only to approach him from a place of truth, however, a place in which we acknowledge our brokenness and constant need for his mercy, in order to find him “defeated” also by our humility and thus moved to act on our behalf.

          When I was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, I had to submit myself fully to the doctor and to whatever course of treatment he would recommend for me.  I had to acknowledge completely how sick I was and how powerless I was to do anything about it.  I did and, thanks be to God and to the grace of modern medicine, I can stand before you today more than four years in remission.  All of us, however, have great needs in our lives, both physical and spiritual: either for ourselves or, very often, for those who are dear to us.  Collectively, we also carry the burdens of those who suffer greatly, but who are far removed from us: like our brothers and sisters in Iraq who are suffering a severe persecution at this time.  Therefore, as we approach this altar of grace today, may the acknowledgement of our “smallness” before God lead us to find his healing mercy, both in our lives and in the lives of all those for whom we pray.

Given at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – August 16^th & 17^th, 2014

The God that disappoints (sometimes)

5th Sunday of Lent... Holy Week is right around the corner!  And a new Pope to boot!  It's going to be another incredible new experience, I suppose :)  Please pray for me that I'll be able to weather all of the stress and truly pray through this great feast of our faith!

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

Homily: 5th Sunday of Lent – Cycle C (Scrutinies)

I would guess that most of us here have had one of those “where was God” moments already in our lives.  It seems like it is one of those inevitable experiences in life.  Mom’s sudden diagnosis with stage four breast cancer or grandpa’s sudden stroke.  The best friend who was killed in a car accident or the child lost to miscarriage.  Or perhaps even the loss of a beloved pet.  All of which often leave us wanting to say, like Martha and Mary in our Gospel today, “Jesus, if only you had been here…”

My own family had a moment like that.  Almost twenty years ago now, my brother Douglas was killed during an armed robbery at the place where he worked.  He was 20 years old at the time and my sisters and I were all in our teens.  Needless to say, in the middle of what is already a tumultuous time in the life of a family—the time when all of the children are in that teen age range—this event greatly unsettled our world.

Now my mom is a pretty strong woman.  Like any good Catholic mother, she made sure that all of her children grew up practicing the Catholic faith.  The sudden, seemingly meaningless death of one of her children, however, deeply shook her faith.  (You know when Jesus says in the Gospel “Tonight all of you will have your faith shaken…” and Peter says “Lord, maybe all the rest of them, but me never…” well, my mom is kind of like Peter in that way and the death of my brother was that “faith-shaking” event.)

For a long time my mother was unable to forgive God for what happened.  She, like Martha, blamed God for my brother’s death.  In the process, she had to confront (we all had to confront it, really) the fact that the reality that she was facing brought into question everything that she had believed to be true about God: namely that God was loving, caring, and protecting to those who remain true to his laws and commands.  “I’ve done my part,” I could hear her say, “but where were you!?!?”

Martha and Mary, even though they had the distinct advantage of being able to vent their emotions directly to Jesus, face to face, nonetheless experienced a very similar moment.  A sudden illness had come upon their brother Lazarus and, although they had sent word to Jesus, he didn’t come quickly enough and their brother died.  Jesus, of course, knew what he was going to do and so, as Martha expressed her frustration that Jesus seemingly didn’t try hard enough to come and save her brother, Jesus calmly and warmly invites her to a new understanding of death.  After Martha expresses her faith that her brother will rise again in the final judgment, Jesus, in turn, invites her to see who it is that is standing before her: “I am the resurrection and the life,” he tells her.  What he seems to be saying is, “You don’t have to wait for the resurrection at the end of time, because the one who is the resurrection is standing right here before you.

What Christ was doing was calling Martha to a radical hope in the face of despair: which was a hope that she already hinted at having when she said, “But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.”  And why do we have to be reminded of this?  Well, it’s because sometimes we need a reminder that God didn’t promise that he would shield us from all that could hurt us.  Rather, he promised us that he would never abandon us in our woundedness.  Thus, we hear in the prophecy of Ezekiel that God doesn’t say “Don’t worry, I’ll never let you die,” but rather, “I will open your graves and have you rise from them.”  In other words, “Although you may feel like you’ve died, not even death will stop me from restoring you to the life that I have promised to you.”  It is this promise, then, that calls us to a radical kind of hope: radical, because hope that comes in the face of despair is the most pure kind of hope that one can have.

I would guess that just about all of us, however, have never experienced the second half of Martha and Mary’s experience: that is, we’ve probably never experienced God actually intervening to bring our loved one back to life, regardless of how much we’ve actually pleaded him for it.  Thus, the challenge for us is to find a way to take hold of this radical kind of hope in the midst of our unresolved despair.  This is a very personal challenge, for it is something that we have to resolve within ourselves.  First, we have to acknowledge our disappointment with God that he did not live up to our expectations (regardless of whether or not they were realistic expectations to have of God, because the fact of the matter is that they were our expectations and, thus, they were real).  Then, we have to find a way to open ourselves back up to him to allow him the chance to show us that he has not abandoned us.  This takes a lot of humility and vulnerability on our part, which, quite frankly, can be scary.

As I mentioned, my mom is a strong woman.  And so, let’s just say that she doesn’t do “vulnerable” very well.  Her faith, however, had been so strong—and so deeply imbedded in her understanding of who she was—that she knew that she had to find a way to get a hold of that hope in the face of this unresolved despair.  So she turned back to prayer.  Through it, and by staying close to the sacraments, she has been able to find a way to open herself back up to God so as to give him the chance to show her the hope that still exists even though the hurt from the loss still remains.  I suspect that she is still finding it, just as all of us in the family are still finding it, each in our own way, even now, nearly 20 years after his death.

My brothers and sisters, Lent isn’t just about “getting right with the laws of the Church.”  Rather, Lent is really about reconciling ourselves with God and with one another.  Unfortunately, just maintaining our Lenten fasts isn’t going to be enough to make that reconciliation happen.  At best, it can make us open to it, but that’s as far as it can take us.  The hard work of Lent is, rather, is this opening of ourselves to God: first acknowledging our disappointment with him and then being open to discovering a new, more meaningful way to be in relationship with him.

With the help of his grace, however, which is found in prayer and in the sacraments, we, too can come to believe, as Martha and Mary did, in the promise God has made to us—that he would open our graves and raise us from them—and, thus, we can find the peace that will allow us to move forward, trusting in the promise of joy that awaits us on Easter morning.

Given at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – March 17th, 2013

God rocks my socks off...

One experience from the Destination: Jesus retreat has stayed very close to my heart in the past week (and by "very close" I mean "sitting on it like ten-ton elephant"). When Fr. Brian gave us seminarians the chance to introduce ourselves, I decided to take the opportunity to point out that it was at this same time last year that I had just received my final chemotherapy treatment for cancer and that now, in part because of the prayers from those who attended DJ last year, I was standing before them nine-months cancer free. The response to this was another standing ovation and, with tears in my eyes, I thanked them all and assured them that God indeed does hear and answer prayers.

After the closing mass with Bishop Doherty, I was standing outside of the worship space (i.e. the gym) just hanging out and greeting folks as they were leaving. A triad of young ladies came by me and one of them asked if I was "the seminarian who has cancer." I said yes and she proceeded to tell me that she had prayed for me during mass. Humbled, I thanked her deeply. Then she leaned in and in a quivering voice said, "My mother passed away from cancer this past Monday." Somewhat shocked, my first reaction was to express my sympathy and, given that she had just prayed for me, to offer prayers for her and her mother. With tears in her eyes she thanked me. What followed was a few awkward moments as I thought she was going to walk away, but then her and her friends stood near me for a while. I tried to figure out if I should say something else, but I was literally frozen and couldn't think of anything that wouldn't seem trite. Soon, though, they did walk away and it wasn't long after that I had the thought that would haunt me for the next week: Not two hours previous I was proclaiming that my healing is proof that God hears and answers our prayers. Without doubt, this young girl had prayed, and prayed hard that her mother would be healed, yet she wasn't. Did I let her walk away thinking that God hears everyone's prayers but hers? I had the opportunity to say something more to her and I didn't. Did that just make it worse? And if that isn't enough, I had asked her what her mother's name was so that I could pray for her by name, but I hadn't gotten her name, nor did I know what parish she was from. "Excellent pastoral ministry, Petan..." I cynically thought to myself.

As a result, all week I've been praying for her hoping I could find some way to get in touch with her so I can at least acknowledge that I know how hard she must have prayed for her mother and that I, too, am baffled by the mystery of why God chose me to live and her mother to die, but that I am nonetheless confident that God heard every one of her prayers. I was brought to tears at what I felt was the real possibility that she would begin to doubt if God really cared for her and her mother and that my fear of engaging her in the moments of awkwardness might have let her come to that conclusion. This really came to a head today as I approached to receive Holy Communion. As I did, I begged for God to be merciful on me for being so weak-willed.

I picked up my mail after lunch (as I usually do) and in my mailbox was a letter whose return address was in a city in Michigan that I did not recognize. As I walked back to my room I racked my brain trying to figure out who it could be from. I finally made it to my room and opened the letter and that was when God rocked my socks off. It was a letter from this young girl! Not only was she not upset about what I had said or baffled by the mystery of God's providence to the point of real doubt, but she expressed how happy she was to hear that I was in remission from cancer. But wait, there's more... She also expressed how she has come to see cancer as a gift from God (and this girl just lost her mother!) and that she feels called to consecrated religious life! Finally (could there be more?), she said that one of her friends had described to her that I "looked like Jesus" as I expressed my care and concern for her... Good Night! I am glad I made it back to my room before reading it because as soon I did, I dropped down into my chair and wept. All of the pent-up feelings of anxiety, sadness, helplessness, and fear all came pouring out as I thanked Jesus for his merciful answer to my prayer.

In the Archabbey Gift Shop here on the Hill, they have a lot of real "kitch-y" stuff. There is one thing, though, that I saw with a saying that I thought was nice and which stuck in my brain. It was a small placard (probably a refrigerator magnet) and it reads: "God answers prayers in three ways: 'Ok,' 'Not yet,' or 'I've got a better idea.'" Watch out for #3, you might get your socks rocked off :)

P.S. I'm not the only one... check out this incredible story (she must have seen the same magnet!).

The difference a year makes...

A friend of mine who is approaching her first wedding anniversary wrote that in an e-mail to me the other day and I realized that today, October 30th, is the one-year anniversary of my first chemotherapy treatment. At the time, I had no idea how it was going to turn out. And now, only one year later, I know how it turned out. I took the treatments well, I completed them without a hitch, and I achieved remission (...all through God's grace, of course!). One year ago today, I was wondering when or if I would get really sick, and when I'd lose my hair. Today, I ran a 5K and have a full head of hair (and then some!). What a difference a year makes, indeed.

So, am I better for it? Unqualifiably, yes. Would I have ever asked to do it that way? Heck no! But that's the best part. Something I would have never chosen or planned for helped me to grow in ways I couldn't have imagined when it all began. Some of the happiest people I know learned this secret a long time ago, but I share it with you here and will leave you with a challenge: Instead of trying to force everything to be the way you plan it to be, how about letting go and seeing where those challenges to your plans lead you? Try it for a year. You never know what a difference a year can make.

Keeping tabs...

I don't know why I just thought of this today, but in order to keep people better updated about my progress through cancer treatments, I started a journal on CaringBridge.org. I'll continue to update this blog with my reflections and information about other things going on in my life, but I'll keep the cancer specific stuff over on CaringBridge. You can find the site at: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/dominicpetan

As always, thanks for your prayers!