Counting up the cost...

A joyful day for the Church as we celebrate the canonization of Mother Teresa!

Saint Teresa of Calcutta, pray for us!
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Homily: 23^rd Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle C

          Today, the accountants out there ought to be pretty happy, because in the Gospel Jesus is talking like an accountant.  Let me explain.  As boring as it may sound (sorry accountants), it seems like Jesus is advising his would-be disciples to complete a “cost-benefit” analysis before choosing to follow him.  In fact, it’s almost like he’s giving a seminar on discipleship to prospective disciples in which he is trying to communicate what it will cost them.

          As we heard in the first words of the Gospel reading, “great crowds were traveling with Jesus”.  At one point he must have thought to himself, “I don’t know if these folks are really want to be disciples or if they’re just interested in the novelty of my teaching.  Perhaps I should get clear about what being my disciple will demand of them.”  Jesus came to make disciples and not to sell out auditoriums and hock merchandise.  Thus he turns to address the crowds and lays out the conditions for being a disciple.  “I’m okay if you want to follow me around,” Jesus seems to say, “but if you are going to call yourself ‘my disciple’, then there are conditions; and here they are…”  He then proceeds to describe those conditions.  Let’s take a look at them.

          First, he says “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”  This, of course, seems harsh at first because for us “hate” is a strong word that means that we wish harm upon another person.  For Jesus’ hearers, though, this word wouldn’t have had that same harsh meaning.  For them, to “hate” someone was simply to put them lower down on your “loyalty list”.  In other words, “to hate” someone would mean “to turn away from” him or her when you have to make a choice between that person and the one to whom all your loyalty belongs.  With this understanding, we see how it is still possible to love the person that you hate, because even though you have to turn away from them, you can still will the good for them: that is, you can still will that they would have every good thing that they need to find happiness.

          This “hatred” of others can cause conflict, of course, if these others don’t understand your necessary loyalty to Jesus above all things: conflict that could result in these loved ones turning away from you.  This is why Jesus wants to make this clear, up front: If one is not ready to lose their relationship with father, mother, husband, wife, children, brothers and sisters, then this one is not ready to be his disciple.

          Second (and I’m going to jump to the third one in sequence), Jesus says that “anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.”  Here, Jesus is demanding that we be entirely detached from our worldly goods.  In other words, he’s saying that we must be ready to lose all of our worldly comforts and securities—our houses, our cars, our food, our clothing… everything!—if we wish to be his disciples.  Now, for some, this is a more difficult demand than the first one.  Perhaps they are “loners” and are okay being isolated from others, but they rely heavily on their worldly “securities” to insulate them.  To renounce these, then, too, would truly demand everything of them; and so Jesus declares that this, too, is one of the costs of discipleship.

          Finally, Jesus said “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.”  Now, if we’ve been living the Christian life for some time then we know that “carrying the cross” means “accepting suffering patiently”.  But I think that we have to make sure that we are hearing that line in the way that Jesus’ hearers would have heard it when he first said it.  For them, the cross was an awful instrument of torture and death.  Thus, when he says “you must carry your own cross”, what they hear is “You must willingly carry the instrument on which you will be horrifically tortured and willingly carry it to your place of torture, so that you can be tortured and killed on it”!  Notice that this is not a passive “accepting” of suffering, but rather an active choice that must be made, day after day.

          With this, Jesus really couldn’t be any clearer about the cost of being his disciple.  Not only will it cost you your relationships and your possessions, but it will cost you your very life.  And so, why would anyone want to be a disciple of Jesus?  This is where Jesus’ accounting hat comes back on.  We’ve looked at the cost, but to answer the question of “Why be a disciple of Jesus?” we need to look at the benefits.

          Jesus doesn’t detail the benefits in this Gospel reading, but we know what they are: heaven, the fullness of life, peace, everlasting bliss, etc.  Think about your dream life.  Think about what your life would look like if you didn’t have to work for anything and everything existed in perfect harmony.  This is the benefit of being Jesus’ disciple: realizing perfect contentment forever!  If that offer was put on the table, what would you be willing to give up?  Most people I know would give up everything, even their lives, if it meant that they could experience that dream life forever.

          The rub, however, is that we have to take Jesus’ word that, if we remain a faithful disciple, this life of perfect contentment will be ours.  Nobody’s ever come back from the dead to say “Yes, stick with it!  Everything that he promised is true!”  Rather, we just have Jesus, who himself carried his cross, literally, on which he was horrifically tortured and on which he died; but then who raised himself up again on the third day after his death and who continues to live at the right hand of God the Father in heaven.  That’s all.  My brothers and sisters, for me, this is enough!  Jesus has proven that he has power over life and death and so if he asks me to give up my life so that I might enjoy that life of perfect contentment (that is, perfect happiness… perfect joy), then I’m going to give it!

          And this is the example given to us of all the saints down the ages, including the Church’s newest saint, Saint Teresa of Calcutta (did you all know that she was canonized today?).  Her work, and the work of the religious order that she started, is a witness to the fact that, to be an authentic disciple of Jesus, we have to be ready to abandon everything: even our very lives.  Her canonization is an acknowledgement that she has received the benefit for what it cost her.  She trusted, even in her many years of spiritual darkness, that the Risen Jesus would never abandon her; and now she enjoys the life of perfect contentment that comes to those who remain faithful to him.

          And so, my brothers and sisters, our scriptures today challenge us to ask ourselves these questions: “Is Jesus our first loyalty or do we allow our desire for acceptance by others to compromise our commitment to him?”, “Are we ready to give up everything for him, if he asks it of us?”, and “Do we daily choose to take up the difficult thing that he asks from us: to challenge a friend or family member, to respond to the needs of the poor in our neighborhood and our community, or to speak out about an injustice that is being ignored?”  Perhaps during this Labor Day weekend, when we honor those who work by taking a day of rest from work, we can each take time to reflect on the answers to these questions measuring the level of our commitment to being disciples of Jesus.  If the answer to any of these questions is "no" or "well, kind of…" then let's not be afraid of recommitting ourselves to making the answer to all of these questions "yes"!  My brothers and sisters, Saint Teresa of Calcutta is just the latest proof that our "yeses" come with the promise of everlasting reward!

          If you are afraid that you won't be strong enough, believe me, you don’t have to worry.  Jesus is all the strength that we need; and we receive that strength when we encounter him in the Sacred Scriptures that we read and in the Sacrament that we receive from this altar.  And so, as we turn to him now here in this Mass, may the "Amen" that we proclaim at the “Great Amen” and just before we receive him be the first "yeses" of our total recommitment to him and of our confident hope in the everlasting life that he has promised us.

Given at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – September 3^rd & 4^th, 2016

You have to see it to believe it

          As Christians, we exalt the Holy Cross of Jesus because on it our sins - all that drags us down in this world - were destroyed; but we can't realize the dream of a life of true freedom (i.e. of freedom from sin) unless we are willing to look at the consequence of our sin.  When we see Christ crucified, we should see the consequence of our sin, for the consequence of our sin is always death.  Furthermore, we must look at it if we are to be truly moved to repentance.  Having been so moved, we can then receive the grace that flows from it.

P.S. My homily is kind of short this week because we showed the Fruitful Harvest video during Mass.

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Homily: The Exaltation of the Holy Cross – Cycle A

          It’s no secret that, for Christians, the cross is very important.  I mean, just look around you.  If you looked intently at your surroundings for about thirty seconds, you’d notice that the cross, in many different forms, appears throughout our church.  It’s even on the linens that we use at the altar.  Most prominent, of course, is this large cross, the crucifix (a cross with an image of Jesus’ body attached to it).  My guess is that if someone who didn’t know a thing about Christianity walked into this church, wondering about what was important to Christians, he or she might quickly discern that the cross is one of those things.

          Today, the cross is a pretty innocuous thing for us.  None of us would have first-hand knowledge of what a crucifixion looked like and so looking at a cross isn’t for us a thing of horror.  But for people living in the first century, for whom Roman crucifixions were a common thing, the cross was sign of horror.  If you’ve been following the news about the video tape of the football player striking his fiancée and knocking her unconscious you’ll understand what I mean: without having seen it, it was hard to imagine just how violent it was; but having seen it, the horror of it sparked a much greater emotional response.  Multiply that by a hundred and you’ll know what seeing a cross meant for someone living in the first century.

          Yet today, we come here and we celebrate the exaltation of the Holy Cross.  In other words, we, as Christians, gather today to exalt an instrument of torture and death: and none of us bats an eye.  Why?  Well, because we’re lunatics, of course, who think that horrific instruments of torture are good things.  No?  You don’t agree?  (I see that some of you are paying attention).  And so, why?  Why do we exalt the cross?  Well, in part, because we know the rest of the story: that Jesus’ death wasn’t the end and so his horrific murder was actually a triumphant act of salvation for the world.  And, at the least, this is why the cross is such a core symbol of our faith.  But why do we exalt the Cross with a special feast?  That’s a question that leads us to reflect on our readings today.

          In our first reading, we hear the story of how the Israelites, wandering in the desert on their way to the Promised Land, become tired and frustrated with the journey.  As a result, they sin by complaining against God and Moses.  Because of this sin, poisonous snakes were sent among them and many people were bitten and some were even dying from these bites.  The suffering people then repented of their sin and God relented of his punishment, instructing Moses to make an image of the serpent and place it on a pole so that all could look upon it and, thus, be cured.

          What we see in this story is a clear reminder that the consequence of sin is death and that when one repents of his or her sins, and begs God for mercy, God relents and saves him or her from death.  What is important for us to note today, however, is how God turned the death-dealing consequence of their sin (the snakes) into the instrument of their healing and salvation.

          And so, in the Gospel reading, we hear Jesus say “and just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”  Jesus, therefore, is connecting his impending crucifixion with the healing brought forth through the bronze serpent on the pole: so that the image of ultimate consequence of sin—the death of man in all of its gruesome reality—would become the instrument by which many would come to repent of their own sins and thus receive God’s healing and mercy.  It was no longer enough for man to see the serpent; rather he needed to see the full extent of the punishment due to his sin: the horrific death of an innocent man on the Cross.

          And so we exalt the cross: for through it the price of our redemption was paid; thus promising us that anyone who looks upon it and, seeing the price of his or her sins, repents from them, would be healed of the poison that sin had injected into him or her and so would live.

          My brothers and sisters, let us pray today for the grace to look upon the cross anew and to let the image of Christ’s death on it pierce our hearts once again so that we may feel true sorrow for our sins and thus receive God’s healing mercy. For when we do, we will once again know the joy of God’s promise: the eternal life that his Son Jesus has won for us.

Given at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – September 13^th & 14^th, 2014

The Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross