Letting God Drive

Homily, Ordinary Sunday 11B

Patience is a virtue. We’ve all probably heard this saying, and at some point, we’ve probably been annoyed at someone for saying it. We usually hear it in situations that make us feel impatient and angry. I’ve often wondered what it is about driving that is such a test of patience for me. Usually, I think it’s because of all the other drivers on the road, because obviously, I know how to drive, but I can’t control the actions of the people in the other cars. I’m in control of my own vehicle, but almost constantly, traffic lights and other drivers present themselves as obstacles between me and my destination. On the road, I’m constantly confronted with factors that are out of my own control. 

In our Gospel today, Jesus presents the farmer as the model of patience. After whatever preparations he is able to make for the seed and the soil, at some point he is left waiting, at the mercy of so many elements outside his control, waiting for signs of the imperceptible growth that only God can provide. In those parts of our state and areas of the world where irrigation is still limited, if it doesn’t rain, there’s not much the farmer can do to force the plants to grow. And even when they do grow, there’s the threat of hail and wind and disease and pestilence that can destroy crops fairly quickly. There’s a natural appreciation for providence and plenty of opportunities for exercising patience for those who live close to the land.  

As in the life of the farmer, the kingdom of God and growth in the spiritual life often comes through patient acceptance and cooperation with forces that are outside our control, growth that God provides invisibly, underneath the surface, through the many trials and crosses of this life. In our first reading today, the Prophet Ezekiel was writing during one of the most difficult times in Israel’s history, the Babylonian exile. The leaders of God’s people had been forcibly taken away from the promised land. The Temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed. They found themselves unable to live out their faith the way they wanted to, the way that God Himself had commanded them to by sacrifice in the Temple.  

Yet through this trial, God promises that He is preparing something even greater for them. Not only will He restore Israel, but all the nations of the world will be gathered to the Lord under the branches of the tree of life. In John’s Gospel, Jesus says that when He is lifted up, He will draw all people to Himself. First, Jesus was lifted, upon the wood of the Cross, the New Tree of Life, freely submitting Himself to suffering and death for our sake, to gather the nations under the branches and standard of His Cross. Still today, Jesus is lifted up at each and every Mass, to draw each one of us to His Eucharistic Heart, as He feeds us with His own Body and Blood.  

But who would have survived, to return from the Babylonian exile, if the Jews had not trusted in God’s mysterious and difficult plans? If instead they had constantly rebelled and started wars and insurrections, to try and free themselves from their captors, instead of waiting on God’s time and His deliverance, how many—do you suppose—would have ever made it back to Jerusalem? How often do we rebel against the trials and crosses of our lives and refuse to accept them with patience, even when God is trying to bring us new life and something greater through them? 

I often think of parents trying to teach their children to drive, and how stressful that can be. It often feels like that, when we finally allow God to sit in the driver’s seat of our lives. When we start to see where God is taking us, we want to slam on the breaks, grab the wheel, and say, “No, God, not that way!” We treat God as if He’s still too young and inexperienced to hand over the reins to Him completely. But no matter how many times we’ve refused Him in the past, God still wants to give us the grace and strength to really trust Him, to be able to relax and enjoy the ride, no matter how rough it gets.  

Today and during this week, I invite us to try and identify just one rough area of our life that God has been trying to get us to go through but that we’ve resisted. Maybe it’s an area of sin that we’ve grown comfortable with; maybe it’s a relationship that has become easier to avoid, a conversation with someone that we should have had a long time ago, an area of excess that God has been calling us to simplify. Jesus, draw us to Yourself in this Eucharist. Help us to fully trust in Your direction for our lives, to grow in real patience, to know—in a new way—that God’s will is our peace. 

Confirmed in the Fires of Pentecost

Homily, Pentecost Sunday B

There’s one question I would often ask the Confirmation students each year that gets to the heart of this Feast of Pentecost: What is the specific difference between the grace of Baptism and the sacramental grace of Confirmation with respect to the Holy Spirit? “Well,” the students would offer a guess, “in Confirmation we receive the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit,” maybe because they’d just been learning about these in their classes. But we receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit in Baptism as well, so that’s not a real difference. “Maybe it’s the fruits of the Holy Spirit, then.” No. The main difference between Baptism and Confirmation is like the difference between receptivity and then proclamation, the difference between discipleship and then mission and evangelization, between sitting at the Master’s feet and being able to learn from Jesus to then going out and sharing that faith with others.

In Baptism, the first sacrament we receive, the Holy Spirit sanctifies us, makes us a new creation in Christ, and places God’s seal upon us, especially to enable us to take part in divine worship, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Church’s liturgy. Baptism makes us receptive to the grace of the other sacraments, receptive to the Word of God proclaimed at Mass and handed on to us through religious instruction. In Baptism, the Holy Spirit prepares us to receive every grace we need towards salvation, to continue to grow and be formed by God into His own image and likeness. So the graces of Baptism largely involve making us receptive to the actions of God.

The sacramental grace of Confirmation, on the other hand, strengthens us not only to continue receiving the helps and guidance of the Holy Spirit for ourselves, but especially so that we can bear public witness to the Gospel of Christ to the people around us, even amidst trials and persecution. Not just to receive the graces of God, but to share that grace with others. The grace of Confirmation is the grace of this Feast of Pentecost. When the Fire of the Holy Spirit took these frightened Apostles, who—the Gospel tells us—even after they had witnessed Jesus Risen from the dead, they were often gathered together in the upper room behind locked doors for fear of the Jews, for fear of what they might have to suffer as followers of One so recently crucified. But at Pentecost the perfect love of the Holy Spirit casts out all fear from their hearts, and they go out beyond those doors to proclaim Jesus to the crowds gathered in Jerusalem. And thousands are baptized on that very day.

The Acts of the Apostles go on to tell us that after Pentecost they would even have the strength to rejoice in their sufferings, in their sharing of the Cross of Christ, being jailed and put on trial before the same Sanhedrin that condemned Jesus, being flogged and scourged as Jesus was when they refused to stop telling everyone about Him, ultimately bearing supreme witness by the shedding of their blood in martyrdom for the sake of His saving Gospel. This is the grace of Pentecost. This is the grace of Confirmation, not just to receive the grace of God, but to bear public witness to Christ, without or at least in spite of any fears we might have in doing so.

Do we believe that God still sends upon us the same Holy Spirit that He sent to His Apostles on the day of Pentecost? God has no other Spirit to give us, and He’s not stingy. He does not ration His Spirit. The Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit upon us whole and entire, in all the fullness of His power and divinity, “the Lord, the giver of life,” as we profess in the Creed each Sunday. The other conviction I have about Confirmation more and more in recent years is that we tend to wait far too long to request this sacrament for our children. If we’re really called to be Lifelong Catholic Missionary Disciples through God’s Love as our Bishop tells us, lifelong missionaries, and if the sacrament of Confirmation strengthens us specifically to bear public witness to Christ even in the midst of adversity—like the Apostles did at Pentecost—then it seems to me that even young kids could really benefit from the graces of Confirmation. If they’re old enough to talk, they’re old enough to tell others about Jesus. And they are often among His greatest witnesses. Not to mention all the filth, temptations and trials of faith that children are exposed to today at younger and younger ages. Could they not benefit from the grace of strengthening provided in Confirmation?

The world around us is in desperate need of the Light of Christ. Our homes, our schools, our workplaces, every relationship, and every human being need the Light of Christ. The Holy Spirit wants to help us as He helped the first Apostles to let the Light of the Gospel shine to everyone we meet. How well are we doing in our work and mission of spreading that Light through the spiritual and corporal works of mercy? God grant us the grace to be stirred into action, by the Fire of the Holy Spirit as those first Apostles were, to stop waiting around for someone else or for some other saint, but to become saints ourselves and fulfill our mission of bringing the Light of Christ to everyone we meet, not just to receive God’s love for ourselves, but to share it with others, bearing public witness to Christ in our daily lives with courage and zeal for the Gospel.

Pentecost and the Summer Ember Days

Bulletin Letter, Pentecost Sunday B

Pentecost or the Feast of Weeks was celebrated as a harvest festival and offering of the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, seven weeks of seven days after the Feast of Unleavened Bread or Passover (Cf. Leviticus 23:15-16). It also came to commemorate the giving of the Law to Moses on Mount Sinai. Very fitting then, that on the 50th day after Christ’s own definitive Passover from death, God gifted us with the New Law, which Saint Thomas Aquinas says “consists chiefly in the grace of the Holy Spirit,” and gathered to Himself the firstfruits of his harvest of the Church, as about 3000 were baptized on the Day of Pentecost in response to Saint Peter’s proclamation of the Gospel to the crowds gathered in Jerusalem for the Feast. 

This upcoming week also brings opportunity to pray in a more focused way for vocations to the priesthood, so that there will always be enough laborers to gather in the harvest of God’s vineyard. The Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday following Pentecost Sunday were traditionally observed as the Summer Ember Days. In general, Ember Days received their name from their occurrence four times each year, towards the beginning of each of the four seasons. Along with offering penance on every Friday throughout the year in memory of Christ’s Passion, the Ember Days were part of the regular expression of Christian asceticism (“discipline,” training, voluntary self-denial), even as Christ demands of his disciples in the Gospel to “deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow me.” 

These sets of three days are set aside especially to give thanks to God for all the blessings of the past year and season, and to beg His abundant favor upon us in the future, favorable weather and health for our families, livestock and crops. These days are also dedicated to prayer for vocations, that God would reap a harvest of souls for His kingdom by granting us “priests, holy priests, many holy priests and religious vocations.”  

The Ember Days are observed as days of prayer, fasting (maximum of one full meal and two smaller meals if necessary to maintain strength, and no eating between meals), and abstinence from meat (full abstinence on Friday, partial abstinence on Wednesday and Saturday with meat allowed at one meal on each of those days). Please join me in keeping these sacred days for blessings upon us this summer, when so many are experiencing slavery and destruction through an excess of self-indulgence and a lack of even the most basic discipline. Pray that many more will answer generously the call to be holy priests and shepherds for God’s holy flock.

Connected to the Vine

Homily, Easter Sunday 5B

Back towards the beginning of this year, I was out to bless someone’s house. Nothing too dramatic, just a few prayers and sprinkling holy water throughout, but it always brings to mind other house blessings that I’ve done. When I was at the Cathedral in Sioux Falls—being the most visible church in the area and the most widely recognized by Catholics and non-Catholics alike—and even during my time at Holy Spirit Parish in Sioux Falls, we’d get calls every once in a while from people reporting strange occurrences in their homes, spiritual attacks or what they thought could be demonic activity or house hauntings. Now I’ve never done any major exorcism, which requires specific delegation from the Bishop, but there are many minor exorcisms and blessings that any priest is authorized to use. So I’d incorporate some of those into a house blessing when that seemed beneficial. I have heard that in recent years there’s been a general rise throughout the country and throughout the world in the number of requests for exorcisms. I actually don’t find it all that surprising, when you consider that—more and more—people are not being baptized, or that even those Catholics and Christians who are baptized don’t really practice their faith in real ways, or they even live in ways that are contrary to God’s plan and His commandments. What I do find a bit surprising is the amount of ignorance among Catholics and Christians about the very basics of the spiritual life. What does it mean to be in the state of sanctifying grace, connected as a living branch to the Vine of Christ? To be free from unabsolved mortal sin, which cuts us off from the Vine and the life of grace? What does it mean to make an integral or complete Confession of our sins in order to be reestablished in sanctifying grace through absolution? St. John tells us in our second reading, “Those who keep his commandments remain in him, and he in them, and the way we know that he remains in us is from the Spirit he gave us.” The way that we stay attached as living branches to the Vine of Christ is to persevere in sanctifying grace—which is God’s own life dwelling within us—to keep the commandments and avoid mortal sin, which cuts us off from God’s grace. When people call about a house blessing or an exorcism where they suspect strange or demonic activity, there’s usually a standard list of basic questions we ask. Have they been baptized? Did they ever receive this foundation and gift of God’s grace that is the most important protection for us against the works of Satan? If they are baptized, do they practice their faith, do they pray and maintain that relationship with God? Do they keep holy the Lord’s day and gather every Sunday to worship God? We also ask about any regular sources of grave sin. Is there abuse of drugs or alcohol? Gambling or other addictions? Are you living with someone who is not your spouse as if they were? Now these might seem like rather personal questions to ask in a first conversation with someone, but to assess the spiritual situation, these are the basics. More and more common now are sins against chastity and addictions due to materials on the Internet. We would also ask as best we can about other psychological factors that can be mistaken for something spiritual. Now if we find out that the person is Catholic and hasn’t been practicing their faith, we would try and guide them towards repentance and making an integral Confession, in which they would confess all grave sins of which they are aware and which haven’t been absolved in previous Confessions, and the number of times or some estimate of how often they’ve committed those sins, so that they can get back into the state of grace and the spiritual life, raised up from the spiritual death of grave sin, dead branches reattached to the living Vine. One good Confession—which is one of the seven sacraments—is much more powerful than any number of exorcisms, which are sacramentals. These very ordinary ways of staying connected to Christ, of going to Confession, making sure that we’re in the state of grace to receive Holy Communion, giving God His due thanks and praise by praying every day and throughout the day and by gathering for Mass on every Sunday and holy day of obligation, following God’s commandments and avoiding mortal sin instead of insisting on our own ways, these are the very ordinary means that God has given us to remain in His grace and love, to enjoy the guidance and protection of His holy angels, to bear good fruit as living branches on the life-giving Vine of Christ. If we really choose to live the basics well, to live as ordinary, faithful Catholics in the midst of an unbelieving world, we will have nothing to fear from the evil one. Our homes will be dwelling places of God. More importantly, our families, even our own bodies will be temples of the Holy Spirit, bearing good fruit in abundance, to the praise and glory of God’s holy Name.

Live in the Light

Homily, Lenten Sunday 4B

Among groups that work toward recovery from addictions, you might hear the adage that we’re only as sick as the secrets we keep. But this is true for all of us with unhealthy behaviors and bad habits. We’re only as sick as the secrets we keep. Not much has changed in the 2000 years since the coming of Christ. “This is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil.” As we come to this Laetare Sunday, with more than half of the season of Lent behind us, how well are we doing? Are we living more in the light today, than when we first set out on Ash Wednesday? Or have we already begun to hide and cover over those ways in which we’ve fallen short or cut corners in our Lenten resolutions?

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never really liked telling other people about what I’m doing or giving up for Lent. In some ways, it seems too much like boasting. Or it infringes on the intimacy of our relationship with God, the hidden sacrifice that we offer, to “our Father who sees what is secret and hidden” (Cf. Matthew 6:4, 6, 18). Or we might be a bit superstitious, thinking that Lenten resolutions could be like birthday wishes: that if we tell someone, it won’t come true.

But we might have another reason for not wanting to share with others our Lenten resolutions. If the people around us don’t know what it is we’re doing or giving up for Lent, then they’re less likely to notice when we’re not quite following through. They’ll be less inclined to keep us accountable or to ask how it’s going with the extra prayers we wanted to say, or with keeping our room clean or limiting our screen time or whatever we’ve decided to do or not do. If the people around me don’t know what I’m giving up, then I still have a way out, when it becomes too difficult or tiresome. We’re only as sick as the secrets we keep.

Do we ever challenge ourselves not only to depend more on God rather than on our own strength, but also to depend on the people around us, to hold us accountable and really live in the light? Hopefully, this Lent has already been an opportunity for us to live more in the light of Christ. If we’ve actually challenged ourselves in what we’re trying to do or give up during Lent, then we’ve probably struggled at times, and failed, and been humbled, and found that we’re not as strong as we would like to be. How well do we handle our own limitations? Is our instinct only to try and hide our weaknesses? Don’t let anyone see. Only by willingly coming into the light, by being honest with ourselves in the sight of God about the corners we cut, our laziness, our selfishness, by being honest with others about how we’ve wronged them and failed to live up to our own word and our responsibilities, only by willingly living in the light when we’ve faltered and fallen—and not just when we’ve managed to do something right—when we’re finally willing to let the light show just how dark our darkness is, then we’ll start to have the strength to stand without shame in God’s pure light.

We’re only as sick as the secrets we keep. I used to be as ashamed and humbled as anybody to go to Confession. And it still can be a humbling experience for me today to go to Confession to another priest. But I used to think my sins were so unique. “The priest has never heard such awful things confessed by someone who’s supposed to be holy.” But in my experience, even the newest priest, after just a month or two of hearing Confessions has already heard most of what he’ll ever hear in the confessional throughout his life, and it’s not all that interesting. We tend to think our struggles and sins are so unique, but priests, we live in the same world. We know the temptations that surround us. And most people struggle with the most common sins and struggles. It’s not all that shocking, least of all to a priest in the Sacrament of Confession. And I don’t know anyone who’s ever thought less of another person for owning up to his mistakes. When someone actually has the courage to ask for help, we’re far more inclined to admire them and root them on.

So whatever shame keeps us from living more in the light, bring that to God. Ask Him to heal it. Whatever pride keeps us from humbling ourselves in the Sacrament of Confession and in being accountable to the people around us, ask God to take it away, to open us up to His light. “For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed. But whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God.” If we hope for perpetual light to shine upon us in the next life, then we’d better make sure our eyes and our manner of life start to grow accustomed to that light even now. No matter how much light God offers us, those who have blinded themselves and refused God’s healing will see only darkness. O Light of Christ, free us, save us, heal us, and make us whole.

Against the Current

Homily, Lenten Sunday 3B

For a long time now, I’ve had an interest in different temperaments, different personalities. My interest probably peaked when I went to college and entered seminary. It was such a controlled environment with a regular schedule, all of us guys interested in the priesthood, and yet we were all so different from one another. And I’m still amazed at how different so many of the priests of our diocese are when we get together for meetings or for the Chrism Mass or ordinations. But it’s definitely not just priests. All of us have different personalities, tendencies, strengths and weaknesses.  

Two people often have very different strategies even when they’re in the same situation. Many of us probably tend to prefer just going with the flow of things. We might find it uncomfortable to find ourselves at the center of attention in a group of people. We show up to a party and try to sort of sneak in so that only a few people might notice our arrival. Others have to make an entrance, maybe not going so far as to overturn tables and drive people with a whip like Jesus did in entering the Temple, but they make more of an impression, and they’re more comfortable doing so. But there are times when God calls each of us to do things that might be outside our own comfort zone. Now I definitely tend to fall much more into the former group of just going with the flow and avoiding attention, but I definitely have occasions as a priest—like right now as I’m preaching the homily to all of you—when I have to do things that don’t come as naturally to someone with my temperament and personality. But it gets easier with experience. 

A weakness for those of us who are more laid back and prefer to just go with the flow of things, is of course that the flow, the current of what’s going on around us isn’t always taking us in the right direction. In fact, it’s usually taking us in the opposite direction of where God would like us to be headed. A few years ago, there was a book the Bishop was recommending, and there were groups that read and discussed the book in many of our parishes. The book was titled From Christendom to Apostolic Mission, and its main point basically boils down to this: A lot of what people used to count on as part of a Catholic culture or even just a Christian culture in the wider society, whether that’s a shared way of seeing the world, common knowledge of basic Bible stories, a shared morality for things like the Ten Commandments we heard in our first reading, a lot of these things that maybe we used to just take for granted that people going to school and living in the United States are just picking up automatically, that’s not the reality anymore. What a lot of people refer to as Judeo-Christian values are today more of the exception rather than the prevailing current in society. If you grew up thinking you could just go with the flow to be a good Catholic, that’s just not the case anymore. 

Today, if you believe that the unborn deserve equal protection under the law, you’ll find yourself at odds with lots of people around the world and many people in our own country. If you believe marriage only occurs between one man and one woman, you’re going against the highest law court of our country. If you believe there even is such a thing as a man or a woman based on empirical, observable characteristics, DNA, or bodily constitution, you’re going against the prevailing ideologies of today. And these aren’t even matters of faith. These are things that every reasonable human being should be able to agree upon. And pretty much everyone did agree until very recently in human history. If you’re someone who prefers to just go with the flow, it’s not taking you where you want to end up. And if you don’t like being the center of attention, but you’ve decided to live your Catholic faith fully, you’re going to get some experience being in the spotlight. You won’t even need to put much effort into causing a scene or stirring up controversy. If you live your faith, controversy will come looking for you. 

G.K. Chesterton is quoted as saying, “A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.” And in our second reading today, we hear from the Apostle Paul about how the Gospel went against the currents of his own day: “Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” The Gospel of God’s unchanging truth and the teachings of the Catholic Church are viewed as the height of foolishness in the eyes of the world today, “but to those who are called […] Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.” Live your Catholic faith like you’re actually alive. Swim upstream if you hope to ever reach the kingdom of heaven. 

Those who are intent on destroying so much of what is good, true, and beautiful have been hard at work for a very long time, to reshape our schools, our courts, healthcare, and other institutions. There’s another saying that all it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to stand by and do nothing. Just go with the flow. That’s no longer an option—and it never really was—for faithful Catholics. Ask Jesus to give you the grace, the courage to do what He did, even to overturn some tables once in a while, to stand up for what’s right, rather than sitting down for the sake of comfort or convenience.  

Garden in the Wilderness

Homily, Lenten Sunday 1B

The First Sunday of Lent always involves the Gospel of Jesus spending 40 days in the desert after being baptized in the Jordan River. Of course, His own time in the desert—fasting and praying—is the model for our Lenten journey of 40 days, and to unite ourselves to the life and mysteries of Jesus should be the goal of every spiritual exercise we undertake. We may have been expecting to hear about three particular temptations that Jesus faced and overcame during His time in the desert, but the Gospel according to St. Mark does not include those details. And even the three temptations that Matthew and Luke mention can be understood as a summary of all the various temptations that human beings face. St. Mark just tells us that Jesus was “tempted by Satan,” that “he was among wild beasts, and the angels ministered to him.” Have you ever wondered why the “wild beasts” are mentioned?

Jesus in the wilderness, tempted by Satan, dwelling among wild beasts, and served by angels is actually an image of the First Creation in the Garden of Eden. The first man, Adam, lived in a garden among the beasts of the earth. He even named each of the animals. He and his wife Eve were tempted by Satan, fell into sin, and were driven out of the garden which would then be guarded by an Angel bearing a fiery sword. So when it comes time to establish the new creation, Jesus is driven by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness, into the desert. Now we probably think of deserts like the Sahara, as really dry and arid places where almost nothing can survive, but the wilderness of Judah has a fair amount of vegetation and would almost seem like a garden in places. And there were wild beasts, like in the Garden of Eden. Unlike Adam and Eve, Jesus—when put the test—did not sin, and so instead of seeing an Angel with a threatening sword, the Angels actually minister to Jesus, serving Him. Even our first reading about Noah involves some of the very same elements. With only the members of his family, Noah dwells on the boat harmoniously among wild beasts, and being saved through the water, he would provide the opportunity of a new beginning of the human race and of all creation.

When Adam sinned, it didn’t have consequences only for human beings, but to some extent the effects of sin have spread through all the world. Disorder and strife was introduced into human relationships among themselves but also between human beings and the rest of God’s creation. Thorns and thistles would the earth bring forth for man along with the crops we would try to grow. Many if not most of our sins involve misusing the good things that God has created, using them in ways contrary to God and His plan, or using good things to an excessive amount. It’s amazing the sorts of things that can become idols, false gods for people. Of course there are people addicted to drugs, to alcohol, gambling, pornography, video games, food, but there are also ways that we can put sports, academics, work and careers, even our phones and social media, ways that we put these things—even good things—in a place higher than God in our lives.

So when Jesus comes to conquer sin and death for us, He also comes to restore order and harmony—the proper priority and hierarchy of goods—to all of God’s creation, to teach us to use the good things of the earth according to God’s will, to draw us closer to God. Lent is an opportunity to purify our attachments, that if we’ve allowed anything in our lives to take priority over our relationship with God, to work against that, with the help of God’s grace to restore order in our souls and in our relationships.

Prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are the three main spiritual exercises that are recommended to us during Lent. And each one plays an important role in restoring order to our lives. Prayer helps to bring us back into right relationship with almighty God. Almsgiving helps us to grow in generosity and in right relationship with the people around us, with our neighbor. And fasting helps especially to restore order within ourselves, with our own appetites and desires, how we make use of the good things of the earth without becoming addicted to them or making them into idols. Three remedies for our three areas of relationship: prayer to God, almsgiving to our neighbor, and fasting to restore order within ourselves and with the rest of creation.

St. Ignatius of Loyola in his Spiritual Exercises starts with what he calls the First Principle and Foundation of human life. He says, “Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul.” This is the ultimate purpose of every human life. He continues, “The other things on the face of the earth are created for man to help him in attaining the end for which he was created. Hence, man is to make use of created things in as far as they help him in the attainment of his end, and he must rid himself of them in as far as they become a hindrance.” In everything we do, in every relationship, every word we speak, we can ask the question, Is this leading me closer to God? Is this leading me to heaven and eternal life with God, the one goal and purpose that’s going to be the only thing that matters in the end? “Unless you deny yourself, take up your cross daily and follow Me, you cannot be my disciple,” says the Lord. May the Lord Jesus give us strength during this Lenten season to restore order in our lives, in our relationships, in our desires, that we might hunger and thirst for God above all else.

With His Own Authority

Homily, Ordinary Sunday 4B

There’s not a whole lot on TV that I find much interest in watching anymore, but I have seen quite a few episodes of a series called A Haunting or other similar shows, where they use eyewitness interviews to dramatize experiences with haunted houses or evil spirits. It’s always been fascinating to me that so many of the families involved—whether they’re Catholic, non-Catholic, or not very religious at all—many of these witnesses to the paranormal end up contacting Catholic priests. The Catholic Church is fairly unique in continuing the work of Jesus to cast out unclean spirits, to perform exorcisms, to act with the same authority as Jesus Himself, and this authority is recognized, to some extent, even by those who are outside the Catholic Church.

Beyond the scribes mentioned in today’s Gospel, and beyond other Bible-believing Christian ministers, through the Sacrament of Holy Orders Catholic priests have this authority of Jesus handed on to them through apostolic succession—just as Jesus authorized His own Apostles and as they appointed bishops and priests as coworkers—to be able to speak and to act in His Name down through the centuries, especially in the celebration of the liturgy and the sacraments. It is Jesus Himself through the priest as His instrument who baptizes and washes away our sins, Jesus who bestows the Gift of the Holy Spirit upon us, Jesus who changes bread and wine into His own Body and Blood on this altar. And yes, through the ministry of priests, Jesus continues to drive out demons and destroy the works of the devil.
Major exorcisms are often the focus of movies and TV because they can look and be made to look like the most dramatic events, but really, more powerful than any exorcism and more truly dramatic is actually something that we can experience on a regular basis: the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Exorcisms are merely a sacramental of the Church, but Confession is one of the seven sacraments. Each priest, through his bishop or through the bishop of Rome, receives authority to absolve sins, to restore supernatural life to a soul that was dead in mortal sin. And in the Gospel, this is the other activity of Christ that the crowds find so astonishing, that Jesus, the Son of Man, claimed to have the authority to forgive sins, something that only God could do.

And beyond any exorcism, the forgiveness of sins destroys “the works of the devil” and the false dominion of Satan. Jesus tells us, “Whoever commits sin is a slave of sin,” and Saint John writes, “Whoever sins belongs to the devil, because the devil has sinned from the beginning,” (John 8:34; 1 John 3:8). When we sin—in some sense—we surrender our freedom to that disobedience, to whatever lie and falsehood that we’ve bought into. And through our sin, we surrender to the father of lies, the devil. But when we confess our sins and receive God’s forgiveness through His priests, we reclaim our freedom in Christ, the freedom of the children of God. We renounce the false freedom that the world offers us, the false freedom that promises, that if we do whatever we want, we’ll be happy and find peace. Now I’ve always found in my own life and experience, that when I do whatever I want, I usually end up pretty miserable; tired, irritable, anxious, not very pleasant to be around.

In God’s will is our peace. When we finally surrender and do what God wants, when we do what He created us to do, and allow Jesus to drive out the unclean spirits from our hearts, we find life, joy, peace, and security. When we just do whatever we want, we find death, emptiness, pain without meaning or purpose, pleasure that never lasts. When we’re really honest with ourselves and look at how our life is going, how many of us can say that we’re truly happy right now? And if we’re not happy, what do we identify as the real cause of our unhappiness? Are we merely victims of circumstance, of our environment, victims of the people around us, of our social and behavioral conditioning? Are we merely victims of our own heredity or genetic predispositions? Are we victims of an unjust society, of prejudice, sexism, racism?

Or can someone who belongs to Christ actually find happiness and true freedom in spite of any of these other factors? Are we still not convinced that it is our sin and our rebellion against God that lies at the root of all our sadness and misery? As we draw closer to the season of Lent, we should take some time to reflect: how is God calling me to root out sin in my life, to take concrete actions to actually break those habits of sin? On the Old Calendar, today was known as Septuagesima Sunday which would begin a Pre-Lent season. It was a season of carnival, a chance to get all your feasting and festivity in before Ash Wednesday, but it was also a reminder not just to ask yourself what you should give up for Lent, maybe to lose weight or other human considerations, but to be asking God especially what He wants you to do for Lent. In which areas of my life does the devil still have his strongholds? Where do I need Jesus to come in, to set me free from the lies, from the ignorance, from the weakness of my will and my lack of self-sacrifice? Come, Holy Spirit, cast out the darkness of our hearts. Help us to know our sins and to confess them, that we might receive the forgiveness, the healing, the true freedom that Jesus offers us.

Abandon Your Nets

Homily, Ordinary Sunday 3B

Many are familiar with my vocation story, how I ended up in the priesthood. It’s fairly simple and straightforward. I was the youngest of nine from a big Catholic family. I was aware of a call to the priesthood from a very young age. I often considered it and prayed about it. I entered college seminary right out of high school, went on to major seminary, was ordained a transitional deacon, then a priest. Many other priests have a more interesting story to tell. Our previous Bishop Paul Swain was a convert to the faith. He sensed a call to the priesthood before he was even Catholic but after decades of a career in the military and in state politics in Wisconsin. Now does that mean that God had not already been calling him before that, even from the beginning of his life?

When I was reading the Gospel for this Sunday, something occurred to me that I hadn’t often considered before. You see, most other times I’ve read or heard this Gospel, I always just assumed that Jesus was specifically calling Andrew, Peter, James and John to follow Him. And these are the four, out of everyone who was mentioned, who do end up following Jesus. But that’s not the only possibility. It could be that Jesus was actually saying, “Follow Me” to everyone who was mentioned: the four who would become Apostles, of course, but also to Zebedee, and to the hired men who were with them. But out of everyone there, Andrew, Peter, James and John were the ones who were ready to abandon their nets and follow Jesus, at that point in time.

There’s a lot of talk in different areas of the Church and areas of the world about a “vocations crisis.” You might even hear about a “priest shortage” as part of the reasoning behind our current Set Ablaze pastoral planning. But God certainly knows how many priests we need, how many religious sisters and friars and monks. God is still calling, but there are many who for various reasons are not able to hear, to recognize, let alone respond generously to a call from God. There are many perhaps who, unlike Samuel in last Sunday’s first reading, don’t have an Eli in their lives to help them recognize the Lord’s call and listen to His voice. Before Bishop Swain became Catholic, even though God was calling him to the priesthood, how much sense would he have been able to make out of that?

What kept Zebedee and the hired men from also following Jesus? What was keeping them from abandoning their nets, maybe not to become Apostles like the four, but at least to become disciples of Christ? You see, this doesn’t just pertain to those having a religious vocation, but there are many ways that all of us put off and avoid a more radical following of Jesus, no matter what our vocation in life. What are the nets that we still refuse to abandon? That’s an interesting verb: abandon. “They abandoned their nets.” To me, it seems to suggest that they didn’t bother making plans for their nets or boats as they left them. Peter and Andrew didn’t pause and say to Zebedee, “Well, since you’ll be sticking around, we want you to take our nets and boats and put them to good use.” Instead, they just dropped them on the shore, turned and followed Jesus without giving those nets a second thought.

Too often we look back. We look back with longing on what was, maybe in the history of our diocese or parishes—we look back with longing even when it comes to our sins—and we fail to keep our eyes fixed on Christ and to look forward to the possibilities and fullness that a life of radical dependence on Jesus is able to bring. On Monday, we will observe the Day of Prayer and Penance for the Legal Protection of the Unborn, the 51^st anniversary of the legalization of abortion in the United States. And the overturning of Rowe v. Wade is not the end of the battle, especially as we see new efforts in various states, even here in South Dakota, to pass laws or even amendments to our state constitution that would allow abortions through all nine months. Father Tom just sent out a video about an amendment that could end up on the ballot this fall that would do just that. And abortion is only part of the culture of death today.  Someone posted a history of the progression of court cases and decisions that led up to Rowe v. Wade. The first case, Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965, cited a right to privacy as justification to then allow the sale of contraception to married couples in the United States. Up until then, contraception had been illegal in many States. In 1972, again citing a right to privacy, another decision allowed the sale of contraception to the unmarried. And less than a year later, in 1973, Rowe v. Wade cited this “right to privacy” to legalize abortions.

Can we really claim to be Pro-Life in the way that Jesus wants us to be when so many Catholic couples continue to use contraception, to use their sexuality apart from God’s design for it? For many, that’s the net that we’re unwilling to abandon. Perhaps the sense of control, not self-control that’s able to abstain during certain periods of time to work within God’s design. Instead, it’s the control of my circumstances, control of the marital act, to experience its pleasure apart from its possibilities. What God has revealed about human sexuality has not changed in this area or in any other. Sins that could send people to hell in 1924 can do the same thing in 2024.

Now if anyone is unfamiliar with Natural Family Planning, the methods of spacing births that respect God’s designs, please let me know. There are many physicians in the area that are able to meet with couples and give training in these methods. If there’s any way that the parish can be of assistance, we want to make that available. We want you to have everything you need to be able to follow Christ in radical ways. To abandon the nets today and not look back. To proclaim the Gospel of Life fully in a world that so desperately needs to hear it.

Taught by Truth

Homily, Ordinary Sunday 2B

Probably all of us can remember—if we think hard enough—various teachers and coaches we had during our lives. And most of us remember a few of them in particular more vividly, those that made a big impact on us—for better or worse. Some may have even changed or shifted our perspective on something for the rest of our lives. One such teacher for me was one of my college professors. Up until that point in my life, all through grade school and high school, I had never really cared much for history as a subject of study. It just seemed so boring to me, one dumb thing after another, just memorization of a series of names, dates, and events. But my college professor for an introductory course took an approach to history that I hadn’t seen before.  

We would still look at people, events, and great works of literature from different points of history, but we were encouraged to focus on the various challenges faced in the areas of their physical environment (so the limited amount of natural resources, droughts, famine, or other adversities they had to contend with) or in their human environment (conflicts with other nations or even within their own society, the rights of the king versus the rights of parents and families) or challenges in their sacred environment (what they thought of God or their various religious practices). And from seeing how a society from a given point in history handled those challenges and attempted solutions would tell us a lot about what they considered to be most important, what they valued as true, good, and beautiful. Now with this approach to history, I could actually find meaning and purpose in the study of history that went beyond just memorization of names and dates. I could even find meaning and significance for my own life and what I consider to be true, good, and beautiful by comparison to the perspectives from people of societies of the past, even those who lived thousands of years ago. 

In our readings today we hear about two great teachers, or really, three teachers: Eli, John the Baptist, and the Lord Himself. Eli had served as the guide and guardian for the Prophet Samuel up to that point in his life, and St. John the Baptist had gathered a few disciples or students of his own—including St. Andrew—from the many who went out into the desert to receive his baptism of repentance. But the time had come for Eli and for John the Baptist to hand over the reins, to hand over their students to a far better Teacher. Eli recognizes that the Lord was calling Samuel, and so as his final lesson, teaches Samuel to respond and listen to the voice of the Lord. John the Baptist points out the Lamb of God, the Lord in human flesh, and immediately his disciples leave him and follow Jesus instead.  

As good teachers, Eli and John the Baptist rejoice for their students even as their time with them comes to an end. The best of teachers are servants of the truth, really, they are servants of God who is Truth. Good teachers are subordinate with their students to something greater than themselves. And so, it’s not with any resentment or jealousy that Eli and John the Baptist entrust their students to the greatest of Teachers, to God Himself. 

But we also know that the quality of the teacher is only one part of the equation. If students don’t show up for class, if they don’t do the reading and the homework, if they don’t pay attention and apply themselves, if they’re not really open to learning, even the best teacher is not going to have much effect. Jesus, the Lamb of God, still desires to be the Teacher and Guide for each one of us, but many of us—myself included—are not very good students of God. Through the Scriptures and through the teachings of His Church, which God guarantees by His own faithfulness, He wants to shift our perspective for the rest of our lives. Are we actually open to God’s perspective, to the teachings of the Church that don’t already line up with all our own opinions? Have we done any homework, any reading to try and actually understand the reasons behind the teachings of the Church instead of assuming that they’re just outdated? The truth doesn’t change. It doesn’t actually have an expiration date. The truth never becomes outdated. 

In our prayer, do we ever really listen for the voice of God? Do we ever say with the Prophet Samuel, “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening,” and then actually spend some time in silence, giving the Lord time and opportunity to speak to us, or are we always rushing on to the next thing? Do we even know how to recognize His voice, to distinguish God’s voice from our own desires or from worldly voices that compete for our attention? “We have found the Messiah,” the definitive Teacher who is Truth Himself in the flesh. If we are good students, faithful disciples, the Lord will show us what’s truly important, in this life and for the life to come. If we have “ears open to obedience,” He will pass on to us His own values of what is True, Good, and Beautiful. The Lord Himself is the Way, and in this Sacrament of His Body and Blood, He gives us His own strength to live the Truth, to walk the Way to everlasting life. “Behold the Lamb of God,” and become His students, His disciples.