God's plan for the kingdom

Homily: 11^th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle B

          One of the most prevalent ideologies of our day—one, in fact, that covers many other ideologies—is that we make can make ourselves.  This is the idea that there is no set plan for our lives and so our job is simply to decide what we want to make of it and then to go and do it.  Our scriptures today remind us, however, that there is a plan, much bigger than us, that God is working around us and with which he wants us to cooperate so as to bring about his kingdom; and that our fulfillment comes not when we make ourselves, but when we participate in God’s plan.  Let’s take a look at what I mean.

          Like all good ideologies, the ideology that we can make ourselves is founded in truth.  Having been created in the image and likeness of God, we have freedom to determine our lives.  This is important: because, without this freedom, we would be less than human.  But where the ideology goes wrong is when it assumes that our freedom begins with a blank slate.  In other words, the ideology that states that we can make ourselves assumes that we can be anything we desire—that is, that, if we are free, we are free from all restrictions—and so we must determine for ourselves what we are going to be and then go out and do it ourselves.

          This type of freedom can certainly take us far; and thinking beyond all restrictions has helped us to achieve amazing things (space exploration being one of the most amazing ones, in my opinion).  It has the potential to lead us to great satisfaction in our lives—like when we set out to achieve a dream and then achieve it—but it also can lead us to the depths of despair—like when we realize that the goals upon which we had set all our hopes become unachievable (or, even worse, when we achieve the goals and find the achievement disappointing).  In either case, however, much is lost because this idea of freedom doesn’t take into account the bigger picture: that there is a plan, much bigger than us, that God is working around us and with which he wants us to cooperate.  This is the message in our scriptures today.

          In the first reading and the reading from the Gospel, we hear about how God’s plans are working mysteriously around us in order to build his kingdom.  In the beautifully poetic passage from the prophet Ezekiel, we heard an allegory for how God will build his kingdom.  From the many branches of the cedar tree, which represent the many nations of the world, some big and strong, others less so, God will choose a tender, young branch from the top of the tree, that is, a nation that doesn’t seem significant, and he will remove it from the tree and plant it in a choice place where not only will it grow, but it will grow and stand tall above all of the other nations.  It will be fruitful, meaning prosperous, and the birds of the air, meaning the peoples of all nations, will flock towards it to nest among its branches.

          Notice in this allegory that the tender branch doesn’t choose on its own to be removed from the tree and planted on the place where it can grow to be greater than the tree from which it was taken.  Rather, it is God who chooses the branch and the place where it would be planted so that it can flourish and become the place to which all the birds of the air will flock.  In other words, the “tender branch” couldn’t make itself into God’s kingdom, nor did it prove itself worthy, but rather cooperated with God and his plan working through it in order to achieve the full flourishing for which God had made it.

          This is the message for us.  Certainly, we can make a lot of ourselves in this world by our own doing.  We will never achieve the greatness that God wants for us by working on our own, however.  Rather, we must recognize that, if we exist, we do not exist for ourselves alone, but for a greater purpose: which is to be part of a plan that is working around us, orchestrated by God, to bring about his kingdom: the kingdom in which everyone will discover the full flourishing of happiness (which is the image of the birds of the air that nest in the tree’s branches).  We become part of the plan when we use our freedom to choose to cooperate with it.

          As the Gospel reading shows us, this cooperation doesn’t need to be very complicated.  In it, Jesus gives us two parables about the Kingdom of God.  “What is the Kingdom of God like?”, he asks.  Well, it’s like seeds sown in a field.  The farmer sows them and they become part of the earth.  Then, through the mystery of nature, they begin to grow and eventually produce fruit.  The farmer, having watched all of this, then comes to reap the harvest. 

          For us, this simple image still applies.  Our baptismal call is a simple one of spreading the seeds of the Gospel in the hearts of those around us.  We do this when we speak about our faith, telling others how the love of Christ has made a positive difference in our lives, and by our good works, showing that the love we receive is an unconditional love that begs to spill out to others.  Then, after spreading these seeds of faith, and by watering them by our constant witness to it, we wait as God then works mysteriously in the hearts where these seeds have been sown.  Soon, we begin to see the fruits of our labors in the form of conversions to the faith or in the fulfillment of vocations to Holy Marriage, the priesthood and the religious life: all of which are the harvested fruits of the Kingdom of God.

          In the second parable, Jesus again describes the Kingdom in simple terms.  He says that the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed and notes that, though one of the smallest seeds, it nonetheless produces a large bush in which birds can make their nest.  What he is emphasizing is that something small and seemingly insignificant can—through God’s mysterious work—grow into something significant that can benefit many.  In doing so, he reminds us that even our smallest good works—a simple gesture, or a smile, or a kind word in a tense situation—things that don’t seem worth saying or doing—can and are used by God to produce great fruits in the lives of others.

          This is a great example for our fathers here today.  Though rarely easy, the task of being a father is simple.  There is no magic formula except to love your children and your spouse, to pray for and with your family, to teach your family the faith and to give example of living it in your own life, and to courageously stand up for the truth—both in your home and in the public square.  These are the seeds of faith that you as fathers are called to sow.  These are the seeds that God will use to produce a great harvest for his Kingdom.

          Friends, we are free to make of ourselves nearly anything that we desire.  But if an all-powerful, all-knowing, and infinitely loving God already has a plan for our eternal happiness, why would we want to follow our own plans?  Why not, instead, give ourselves over to cooperating with his plan, in which we are promised to find great fulfillment and peace?  Let us give ourselves, then, to this good work of planting the seeds of God’s kingdom: for when we do, we’ll find that the happiness that we were pursuing, has actually been pursuing us; and God’s kingdom, the tender shoot that has been planted here among us, will flourish so as to draw all of God’s children back to himself.

Given at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – June 17^th, 2018

Jesus the Divine Gardener

I gave this homily at Saint Bernard's parish in Crawfordsville this weekend.  I was there giving a "mini-mission" to the parish.  My mission talk was recorded (well, 90% of it was recorded), so if I get the audio/video from that, I'll make sure to post it as well.

I'm off this week back to Saint Meinrad to begin the Good Leaders, Good Shepherds program with a bunch of priests from my diocese.  Looking forward to being back on the Holy Hill!

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Homily: 3rd Sunday of Lent – Cycle C

A couple of weeks ago, I visited a woman named Mary in a nursing home.  This home was not her residence; rather, she still lived at home by herself for the most part, but about three months ago she had contracted pneumonia and so was sent to the hospital.  Mary’s no spring chicken and so it took her a couple of weeks of treatments in the hospital for her to overcome the pneumonia.  Her doctors, however, didn’t feel like she was strong enough to return home, so they transferred her to this nursing home for rehabilitation.

My visit to her wasn’t a random one.  Rather, Mary had requested to see a priest.  When I arrived I asked her how she was doing and began to inquire about why she felt that she needed to see me.  What I found was that Mary was depressed.  She hadn’t been home for a couple of months.  She missed her cat and, basically, she was homesick.  Add to that the rigors of daily therapy sessions, which for her didn’t seem to be helping her to get any closer to returning home and she, understandably, was beginning to feel frustrated and a little hopeless.  The thing that made her call for her priest, however, was that the administration had told her that she had one week left to show some effort and progress before they were going to cut off care completely.

Thus, when we talked, she would say things like, “I’m tired” and “I’m ready to give up.”  She also said, “I don’t see why God is keeping me here.  I don’t feel like there is any purpose left to my life.”  Then she turned to speculating about God, saying, “Why would God take my two daughters from me and leave me here?” and “I guess God must not be ready for me yet.”  All this time, I tried to listen and offer some supportive words.  Eventually, however, came the deep, fundamental question that she was grappling with: “Do you think that God is punishing me?”

Ever since ancient times, people have struggled with the idea of suffering.  For the most part, suffering seems to be illogical: meaning, the when and how of suffering is usually not connected to any discernible cause in our lives.  In ancient times, including the time of Christ, peoples made sense of suffering by connecting it to God and punishment for sin.  Thus, when the people in our Gospel reading today come to tell Jesus about the Galileans who were killed by Pilate’s henchmen on the very altars where they were offering sacrifices, the question on their minds was “for what sin were these men punished?”  Because Jesus could read the hearts of men, he also knew that some of them would be pondering the same thing about another tragedy, the eighteen people who were killed when a tower near the pool of Siloam in Jerusalem collapsed on top of them.  In their minds, such a random event could only have been the work of God; and since, for the Israelite people, God was good and just, such a work of God could not be the result of malice and, therefore, must be an act of justice, punishing those people for some sin of theirs that was unknown to others.
As I saw with Mary on that day in the nursing home, this notion that suffering is somehow a punishment inflicted on us by God is an idea that remains with us even today.  Even with all of our technological advances, we still have not been able to answer the question about suffering.  Thus, we inevitably turn to where we’ve always turned to answer the unanswerable: to God.  For some, that produces an image of God who is vengeful, cold and distant.  For others, it produces an image of God who is impotent and unable to save us.  Yet for others, it produces and image of a God who just doesn’t care about us.  For Christians, however, it should produce in us hope.  Divine Revelation has shown us that the God we worship is none of those things, but rather he is the God who is all good and just, slow to anger and rich in mercy.  Nevertheless, when the rubber hits the road and we find ourselves in a moment of suffering, it is often easier for us to begin to think of God in one of these other forms.

Jesus, however, turns this thinking around.  When these people come to him to tell him of the men that Pilate had killed, Jesus knew that they were expecting him to say, “Those men must have been great sinners!  Thank God that you are not sinful like them and so have been spared this suffering.”  Instead of saying this, however, he turned the focus back onto them: “Do you think that they were greater sinners than all of you?  By no means!  Repent now from your sins so that you do not suffer the same fate as them!”  Then to emphasize his point, he refers to the people killed by the tower of Siloam in order to show them that his admonition includes all of the Jews: “Whether you are a Galilean or are from Jerusalem, your sins are just as worthy of punishment as all of theirs.  Repent from them now before you die in your sin!”

On the surface, it can look like Jesus is reinforcing the idea that God directly punishes people for their sins.  And so, Jesus offers a parable to help dispel that myth.  He speaks of an orchard owner who plants a fig tree in his orchard.  Now no orchard owner would plant a tree in his or her orchard unless he or she expected that it would produce fruit.  Thus, after three years, when the owner finds that it has produced no fruit, he orders it to be cut down so that the nutrients of the soil could be preserved for a tree that will produce fruit.  It is not to punish the tree that he cuts it down, but rather to preserve the soil so that the other trees may continue to bear fruit.
Jesus’ point, therefore, is not to say that God is punishing people for their sins, but rather that these tragedies should be a wake-up call to remind you to look at your own lives and to root out sin without delay, for none of us know when our final day will come.  And this is Saint Paul’s message, too, in his letter to the Corinthians: For he says that, although the Israelites were close to God in the desert—they stood in the cloud of his presence, they ate the miraculous food from heaven and drank water from the rock—they grumbled against him and were struck down in the desert before they reached the promised land.  He says that these are signs for us to be vigilant against sin and to repent without delay.

The great Christian author, C. S. Lewis, said that “suffering is God’s megaphone.”  In other words, it’s God’s way of getting our attention.  Thus, when we see tragedy—or experience it ourselves—our task is not to question if God is punishing us, but rather to ask, “Am I ready to meet him?”

If your answer is “No” or at least “I’m not sure”, then don’t be afraid.  Remember that in Jesus’ parable there was a gardener who interceded on behalf of the tree that produced no fruit.  This gardener won for the tree another year and promised to cultivate the ground around it and to fertilize it for nourishment.  As we profess at the beginning of our liturgy in the Penitential Rite, we believe that Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father to intercede for us.  Therefore, if we have survived tragedy in our lives, it is likely due to Christ’s intercession for us before the Father.

Christ is our Gardener before God, the Father, in whose orchard we have been planted.  This Year of Faith is the year that he has won for us to produce fruit and this Lent is specifically a time for the ground to be cultivated around us—to root-out all that prevents us from producing fruit.  And the fertilizer?  Well, that’s the Eucharist.  The Body and Blood of Christ is all the nourishment we will ever need to produce fruit for our Heavenly Father.

After my meeting with Mary a couple of weeks ago I had a thought.  She had been wondered whether or not God was ready for her.  Perhaps, however, what she should have been thinking—which is something that we all should be thinking—is that maybe we aren’t quite ready yet for God.  May Jesus, Our Divine Gardener, cultivate his love in our hearts so that we may fill the world with its fruit and be ready on the day when he calls us home.

Given at Saint Bernard’s Parish: Crawfordsville, IN – March 2nd & 3rd, 2013