Trust in God in times of distress

Homily: 3^rd Sunday in Lent – Cycle A

It’s news to no one here that the “novel coronavirus” has upended our lives and is causing great deals of distress.  Distress about individual health, anxiety about the uncertainty of how this virus will spread and if we’ll be able to contain it.  Distress about how to deal with the “novel” situations of having kids home from school for an extended period of time, of providing care for them, of providing food for them, and of facing any financial insecurity because we either must take time off of work or spend unbudgeted money on caregivers.  Distress, finally, (and possibly especially) about whether or not our healthcare system is equipped to respond to widespread exposure.  The number of you who are NOT here today is a sign that this distress is affecting all of us.

This distress is not unlike the distress that the Israelites were experiencing as they began their journey in the desert after being liberated from Egypt.  After having emerged triumphantly from the Red Sea, they set out towards the land that God had promised to give them (the Promised Land, in which they would live free from slavery).  A couple of days into that journey, however, (led, as they were by the cloud in the day and fire by night), having seen no water and with no signs of any ahead, they all begin to experience distress.  Insecurity always gives birth to anxiety and being without something as necessary as water for more than a day is certain to heighten one’s sense of insecurity.  It’s no surprise, then, that these folks begin to cry out to Moses, God’s point man leading them on this journey.

This journey was not only practical, however, but rather catechetical also.  The practical was to get them out of Egypt and into a land in which they could live as a free society.  In the absence of trains, buses, or planes, a journey on foot was necessary.  The catechetical, however, was to teach them complete reliance on God and his providential care for them.  In other words, the catechetical journey was to increase and solidify their trust in God alone.  Thus, the way that they followed from the Red Sea was a way on which there was no water.  God, through Moses, then provided them water in a miraculous way, just as he had already provided them with food in the form of manna and quail.  Through this, God shows himself worthy of their faith.  They were in distress, the called out to God, and God responded.

The Samaritan woman whom Jesus encounters at the well is also someone who learns to put her faith in God, but in a different manner.  She was not necessarily looking for help, but the details of this story indicate that she was certainly in distress.  She came to the well at midday: the time when, because of the midday heat, no one else went to the well.  In other words, she was avoiding others.  She encounters Jesus there and he reveals his knowledge of her and her life.  She has had five husbands and is living with someone to whom she isn’t married.  Women couldn’t live on their own at that time and if a woman was married and divorced, she couldn’t return to her father’s house and so would either have to marry again or would end up destitute.  We can’t know for sure, but it seems like this woman may have struggled to be in a stable marriage, but continued to seek it out so that she wouldn’t become destitute.  She certainly would have been looked down upon in that society and so she worked to avoid contact with others.

This day, however, she encounters Jesus, who peers into her soul and speaks to her in a way that opens her eyes and lets her see that relief from this distress is possible.  In other words, he helps her to see that there is hope for her on this journey, that the promises of the God of the Israelites could be fulfilled, and that even the Samaritans—even she, herself—could receive their benefits.  Her life was out of order, but her encounter with Jesus gave her supernatural hope that God was leading even her to freedom from this distress.  Her response was to go off and tell of what she learned to all of the people in the village.  Let that sink in for a moment: before her encounter with Jesus, she wanted to avoid all contact with the people of her village.  Now, she goes to them to share what she learned.  This is a person who has found hope and who has placed her trust in God and in his promises.

Our newly Elect, who will now intensely prepare for baptism at the Easter Vigil, are on this same journey.  Over these next three weekends, they will be called to encounter Jesus through what is called the rite of scrutiny, in which they will be challenged to see their lives, disordered as they have been by sin, and encounter the hope that, through Jesus, they can be set free from this disorder and receive all of the blessings that God has promised to those who are united to him.  Having encountered this hope, they will be exhorted to put their faith in God and to follow the path to holiness that has been laid out by Jesus.

This, of course, is not only their Lenten journey, but each of ours as well.  Every year, each of us is challenged to recognize the distress under which the world places us (this year, it is particularly apparent) and to allow ourselves to encounter our Lord, who names our distress and provides an answer to it.  This, for sure, is not always relief.  Rather, it is often a challenge to trust and to order our lives to more closely follow him.  In other words, it is the challenge to respond in faith to the distress of our lives.  One of the ways that we do that is through our intentional engagement of our increased giving program.

Last weekend, we heard from parishioners who have all had this experience of distress and have responded to it with faith and so have grown in trust of God.  Part of their experience was finding support and resources through the many ministries and programs that we at Saint Mary’s provide: ministries and programs made possible by your generous financial support.  Today, I am asking you to continue to put your faith in the fact that God is responding to the needs and distresses of peoples’ lives through the ministries and programs of Saint Mary’s by continuing and even increasing your financial support for our parish.

You know, all of us are on a journey through the desert and at different times and for different reasons we may each find ourselves in distress.  Your ongoing financial support of the ministries and programs at Saint Mary’s means that we’ll be able to respond and to help assure you in your trust in God who, like he did with Moses for the Israelites, works through us to relieve our distresses.

I hope that you brought your commitment cards with you today.  As I mentioned before Mass began, we WON’T be passing around the collection basket as a precaution against spreading germs.  If you’ve already dropped your commitment card in the box by the entrance, great.  Thank you for doing that.  Please hold in your heart your commitment as your offering to be united to the sacrifice of Jesus here at the altar.  If you still have your commitment card with you, I encourage you to keep it close to you during the Eucharistic Prayer as a reminder to unite your commitment to the sacrifice of Christ on the altar.  You may drop the card in the box near the entrance on your way out today.  If you did not bring your card, but would like to complete one today, please feel free to use one of the blank cards in your pew and do the same.  In other words, however you brought your commitment with you today, please make an intentional effort to unite it to the sacrifice of Christ that we will offer here at the altar.

As I said earlier, this “novel coronavirus” has upended our lives and caused a great deal of distress.  Very quickly, however, I saw signs that God is working among us to relieve it.  On Friday afternoon, I received an e-mail from our “Saint Mary’s Cares” ministry coordinator asking if it was okay for them to contact other parishes to formulate a plan to assist anyone, like our homebound parishioners, get groceries, prepare meals, etc. so that no one feels alone or abandoned during this time.  I’m grateful for their dedication and for the support of all of you that helps make their ministry possible.  Thank you, again, for your courageous commitments.  May they lead us to trust God even more as he leads us to our reward in heaven: the reward foreshadowed by the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – March 14^th & 15^th, 2020

Come, be filled with the joy of the resurrection!

Homily: Easter Sunday – Cycle C

Halleluiah, we made it!  After forty days of prayer, fasting and almsgiving, here we are on Easter Sunday.  What a joy it is to be here with all of you: my still new family in Christ.  Like any good engineer, however, I’m never content just to arrive at my destination.  Rather, there’s always a little part of me that wants to look back at where I’ve been and how I arrived here in order to see if I accomplished all that I had set out to accomplish.  I think that it is a valuable thing for us to do on Easter Sunday: kind of like looking over photos from a trip as soon as you get home so that you don’t quickly forget the experiences you had.

To begin, let’s go back to Ash Wednesday, all the way back on March 6^th.  There we heard Christ call us to repent from our sins and to believe in the Gospel and I encouraged you to look hard at what your Lenten fasts would be to ensure that they produced more than just forty days of punishment, but that they would also produce in you a sense of detachment.

Then, on the first Sunday of Lent, we recounted how Christ modeled for us what our forty days of fasting should produce in us.  He spent forty days in the desert, fasting and praying; and the Scriptures tell us that when he emerged from the desert, he was hungry (Duh!).  What Jesus realized during that time of fasting and prayer was that it wasn’t food or other worldly things that he wanted, but rather it was communion with God towards which all of his desires were pointing.  Therefore, when the devil tempted him to change rocks into bread, to worship him so he could have dominion over the kingdoms of the world, and to put God to the test by throwing himself off of the parapet, Jesus could resist him.  His fasting had led him to detachment from any desire for these worldly things.

A couple of weeks later, if you were with us for the celebration of the scrutinies, we heard about the Samaritan woman whom Jesus meets at the well.  Poor woman was just trying to get to the well and get home without running into anybody, but there was Jesus ready to flip her world upside down.  Jesus innocently asks for a cup of water, but when the woman questions him about asking a Samaritan for something, Jesus reveals to her the real reason why he is there: he tells her that if she knew who she was talking to that she would be asking him for water, because the water he would give would never leave her thirsty again.  What Jesus was revealing to her was that what she was really looking for couldn’t be found in husbands or in a well, but that it was sitting there right in front of her: that what she really thirsted for was to know God and that this knowledge alone would satisfy her thirst.

While I could go on picking out other examples from our Scripture readings from these past seven weeks, I won’t.  Hopefully, however, for these last forty days, this has been the work that we have been doing: removing the “old yeast” of malice and wickedness, as Saint Paul describes it today, so that we can celebrate this feast with the “unleavened bread” of sincerity and truth.  Hopefully, by our fasting and almsgiving we’ve been detaching ourselves from the things of this world: things that only provide a temporary satisfaction.  And hopefully through our prayer—which is where we meet God like that woman did at the well—Jesus has been showing us what it is that we are truly thirsting for.  And so, hopefully, you find yourself today like Jesus did when he emerged from the desert and like the woman did when she encountered him at the well: hungry and thirsty for what truly satisfies.

If you’ve done your work well, then you probably feel a sense of freedom from whatever it is that you gave up.  Thus, you won’t be easily tempted to go back to it now that Lent is finished.  If, however, you haven’t done this work so well, then you’re probably looking forward to getting out of this Mass as quickly as you can so that you can indulge again in whatever it was that you sacrificed for the last forty days.  Either way, I can tell you that the hunger that all of us are feeling today—the hunger that we are left with after forty days of fasting—is not a hunger for worldly things (although it may feel that way); rather, it is a hunger for God.

Saint Augustine famously wrote: “Our hearts are restless, O Lord, until they rest in you.”  I think that he could have just as easily said the same thing if he would have said: “We are always hungry, O Lord, until our hungers are satisfied in you.”  And so, whether you have used this time of Lent well or poorly (or not at all), I can tell you that whatever hunger you feel inside of you today is truly a hunger for God and only communion with him will truly satisfy it.

Now, I’m enough of a realist to realize that some of us here see this and some of us don’t.  Those who see it are here today rejoicing with full hearts and full voice that God has not left us alone to die in our sin, but rather that through the resurrection of his Son he has redeemed us so that our hungers can be satisfied.  Maybe, however, that’s only a few of us.  Perhaps, though, many of us have gotten a glimpse of this during Lent and so come here today with great hope that something new is happening in our lives that can move us towards finding meaning and purpose in all that we do.  Yet I am sure that there are still some of us here who just don’t see it at all.  And you know what?  That’s ok.  Because we are all here today, just like Jesus’ disciples were all together on the first Easter.  And we are all hearing the same news—the joyful, compelling, and confounding news: He is risen!

And so regardless of where you find yourself today, the Good News is that He is risen and for the next fifty days we will be feasting on the joy of this day, and everyone is welcome to join in this feast from wherever it is that you are at.  This feast is truly the foretaste of heaven: for it is the joy that on this day nearly two-thousand years ago Jesus the Christ of God rose from the dead and conquered sin and death forever, restoring our communion with God and making it so that we can all truly live in harmony and peace.

My brothers and sisters, if you have been waiting for your invitation to join into this feast, then here it is.  Whatever it is that compelled you to be here today, know that God wanted you to be here and that he invites you to experience the richness of this banquet that he has prepared for you—for all of us—from before time began.  He knows that each and every one of us is hungry and he longs to satisfy that hunger.   Therefore, lift up your hearts to experience the satisfaction that only he can give: the union of love that he offers us here in this Eucharist.

Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – April 21^st, 2019

A Spiritual Winter

Homily: 1^st Sunday of Lent – Cycle B

          Here in Indiana, we witness the yearly winter renewal of plants.  Trees, in particular, demonstrate this renewal most dramatically.  As winter approaches, they celebrate a “carnival” of sorts as their leaves change into flashy colors just before turning brown and falling off.  Then, the trees seemingly lay dormant until spring arrives when they will bloom in bright colored flowers before sprouting new leaves in order to absorb the nutritious rays of the sun.  This is no mere “putting back on of the old”, however.  Rather the spring blooming of the trees is truly a renewal.  Now, I’ve not done any research to know whether or not this is true, but I believe that this yearly renewal actually makes them stronger and able to bear more fruit.

          As bodily creatures living in time, we too need a yearly time of renewal.  As time progresses day after day and month after month, our bodies and spirits get weighed down by the daily living of our lives.  Perhaps there are sinful habits we’ve developed over the past year or maybe our prayer lives have become stagnant and fruitless.  And so the Church gives us this season of Lent as a “spiritual winter” to help us slough off those things that are weighing us down—like the trees slough off their “seasoned” leaves—and to be renewed in our baptismal promises to live the Christian life.

          In this first Sunday of Lent, the readings help us to understand how we can approach this time of renewal.  Today we were given a glimpse both of where this journey of Lent will take us and also of how we will get there.  In the first reading, Noah emerged after forty days in the ark.  He represented humanity cleansed from sin and we see that God made a covenant with this renewed humanity never to destroy it again.  In this we see the goal of our Lenten renewal.  Our goal is to emerge from this forty day fast cleansed from sin so as to receive again the promise of God that we received in our baptism.  (Notice the “passive” tense of the verb—the cleansing being something to which we submit ourselves.)

          Then, in the Gospel reading, we heard how Jesus spent forty days in the desert, tempted by Satan, before he begins his ministry to call people to repentance.  In this we see the way we are to take to reach our goal.  As Jesus spent forty days in the desert, in which he turned away from the comforts of his daily life so as to be prepared to begin to fulfill the mission for which he came, so we, too, are called to spend forty days in which we turn away from some of the comforts of our daily lives (for example, our favorite food or drink or snacks in general, or TV or Facebook or YouTube or Netflix or the internet in general) in order that we also might turn away from those things that separate us from God and from each other (for example, from jealousy, anger, resentment, gossip, etc.).

          Now, when we turn away from something, we necessarily turn towards something else and so it is important that, as we turn away from some of the comforts of our daily lives, we pay careful attention to that to which we have turned.  The renewal of God’s covenant with humanity that happened after Noah emerged from the ark invites us to look towards the end of this forty days and to ask ourselves, “Who do I want to be at the end of this time?”  In other words, “How do I want to be renewed this Lent?”  Or, better yet, “How does God want to renew me this Lent?”  This is a really important question to answer.  Because we can take up all sorts of penitential practices this Lent (some of them heroic, even!)—and, if we do them well in a spirit of humility, we will, in some way, be renewed—but if we don’t have a goal in mind (an end toward which the renewal is aimed at achieving) then the chances that our renewal will bear fruit for God and his kingdom is slim.

          Thus, Saint Peter reminds us in our second reading that our baptism was not just a washing that removed dirt from our bodies, but rather that it was “an appeal to God for a clear conscience…”  With these words we can then expand our “important question” as we begin Lent and see that we not only have to ask ourselves “How does God want to renew me this Lent?” but also, “and for what am I being renewed?”  If you can come up with an answer to these questions, and set yourself towards realizing them, then you will be well on your way to having your best Lent ever.

          At this point, it’s important to remember that, whenever we attempt to do something good, we will inevitably encounter difficulty.  Just as Jesus was tempted in the desert, so we too can expect to encounter temptations that will tempt us to give up before we reach our goal.  This is where the tools of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving come into play.  These tools help us to overcome these temptations and to be open to God’s grace, so that we can achieve our goal.  And so we see that prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are not just ends in themselves—that is, something that we do just because it’s Lent (in other words, to use Saint Peter’s example, baptism, solely for the sake of washing away dirt)—but rather, that they are helps towards achieving our Lenten goal, the renewal of our spirits.  Thus we must select well how we will pray, fast, and give alms always with an eye towards the renewal that God wants for us.

          Nevertheless, although there are many ways that we can approach our time in Lent, one thing that is not an option is not to go through it.  The readings today show us this much.  Noah had to spend the forty days in the ark in order to receive God’s promise.  Jesus had to spend forty days in the desert before he could begin his ministry of announcing the coming of the Kingdom of God.  And so we too must go through these forty days of Lent if we truly desire the renewal in God’s promises that he himself desires to give us.

          My brothers and sisters, God truly desires that we be renewed this Lent.  Let us then commit ourselves to this goal and let us pray for God to show us how to achieve it.  Let us listen to him in prayer, discipline our bodies and our spirits by fasting, and respond more readily to our neighbors in need by giving alms, so as to make real the interior renewal of spirit that we each need.  When we do so, we will truly be ready to “bloom like the trees” this spring and to celebrate with great joy the resurrection of our Lord.

Given at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – February 18^th, 2018

Be cold and weary and hungry...

          Lent invites us to share the experience of Jesus in the desert.  Be brave.  Go into the desert of this Lenten season and you'll know the true joy of celebrating Easter.

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Homily: 1^st Sunday of Lent – Cycle B

          Two weeks ago I was off making my canonical retreat (that is, my retreat that is required by canon law) down at Saint Meinrad, where I went to seminary.  It was good to be back down there as I was able to connect with a lot of the seminary staff and the monks whom I knew when I was a seminarian.  It was also good because I was able to spend time doing some hiking around the area, which was one of my favorite activities during my time there.

          Saint Meinrad is located in a very rural setting in southern Indiana, which is actually much more wooded and hilly than here in the “northern plains”.  Thus, a hike down any of the back roads around the seminary will provide you with a lot of solitude along with a challenging hike.  Long Johnnytown Road was one of my favorite roads to take and so I made it a point to hike that road once again.  The day that I went out the weather was less than favorable.  It had turned quite cold and the wind was blowing hard from the northwest.  Thankfully, the road is surrounded by woods, for the most part, and so, except for a few stretches of road, I didn’t have to face the wind.  It is a tough road to hike under any conditions, but that day’s conditions made it a degree or two more difficult (perhaps even more so because I’ve been living here in the flatlands for so long now).   It was so tough, in fact, that at times I wondered whether or not I was going to make it back.  I did of course and, although I was tired, I felt refreshed for having made it.  As I read and reflected on today’s Gospel reading, Jesus’ experience of being in the desert reminded me of this.

          In the Gospel we heard how Jesus was driven into the desert and that he remained there for forty days where he was tempted by Satan and dwelt among the wild beasts while angels, nonetheless, ministered to him.  As it is for us today, the desert is a harsh place: a place of solitude in which you are exposed to extreme conditions.  Jesus was driven into the harsh physical conditions of the desert and had to face harsh spiritual and emotional conditions as well: the temptations of Satan and the fear of being attacked by a wild animal.  Nonetheless, he went willingly, driven by the Spirit who had just anointed him after his baptism in the Jordan River.  He emerged from that time of testing more deeply conscious of the truth about himself and his mission.  We see this because the next thing that the Gospel tells us is that Jesus began his mission of preaching; literally taking up where John the Baptist left off by proclaiming “The kingdom of God is at hand.  Repent and believe in the gospel.”

          Lent, for us, is meant to mimic this desert experience of Jesus.  It calls us to leave off what we are comfortable with and to be “driven into the desert”, so to speak—the solitude inside of ourselves—in order to confront the demons and wild beasts within us—which are our sinful inclinations and untamed passions—so as to emerge more deeply conscious of the truth about ourselves and our mission.  And what is this, but a call to prayer: a call to confront the truth about ourselves before God and to allow him to show us the deeper truth of who we are in Him.

          Because we are bodily creatures, however, this “desert experience” must also include a physical aspect.  Thus, we create a physical “desert” for ourselves by fasting: by giving up certain comforts and pleasures so as to create the conditions in which we might confront our sinful inclinations and untamed passions more readily.  Ironically, all of this introspection is meant to lead us outside of ourselves: to encounter the real suffering of our brothers and sisters around us—our neighbors—and to work to relieve their suffering through the means that have been given to us.  Through almsgiving we enact our mission to proclaim that the kingdom of God is at hand, the kingdom in which the poor have the good news proclaimed to them.  Thus almsgiving, in a way, becomes the fruit of our Lenten desert experience.

          The American poet, Henry David Thoreau once advised “Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snow in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up.  Deal with brute nature.  Be cold and hungry and weary.”  I believe that this quote speaks to something very true: life is difficult and if we try to mask that fact by filling our lives with comforts and distractions then we’ll never truly live.  After that hike I took while on retreat I was “cold and hungry and weary”, but refreshed for having done it.  I dealt with “brute nature”, which caused me to confront some of the demons within myself, and I emerged with a spirit more deeply aware of the truth about myself and of the mission that I have been given.

          My brothers and sisters, Lent invites us to face the reality of ourselves—with all of its demons and wild beasts—as well as the truth of who we are—children of God and coheirs with Christ to His Kingdom—so as to renew us in baptismal faith that we might go forth to proclaim the greatest of all truths with renewed vigor: that Jesus Christ is risen and that the kingdom of God is truly at hand!  Therefore, let us not be afraid to go into the deserts within ourselves to confront the demons of our sinful inclinations and the wild beasts of our untamed passions; and there to call on the angels to minister to us; and let us not be afraid to then go out into the deserts in our community to encounter the marginalized: those who we are afraid to meet because of what they might demand of us.  For there, in these encounters, the truth about ourselves will become known and our mission will become clear.  Then, having done this, we will emerge to experience once again (or perhaps for the first time) the true joy that Easter brings: the joy that even now we are invited to experience here, in this Eucharist.

Given at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – February 21^st & 2^nd, 2015