Shopping on an Empty Stomach

Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time

People say that is bad to go grocery shopping on an empty stomach.  The reason for this is that some types of food, which on a full stomach you might not have considered purchasing, suddenly seem more enticing.  I know grocery shopping when I’m hungry is definitely dangerous.  This past Thursday I went shopping on an empty stomach.  I originally had planned only to pick up a pumpkin to carve for Halloween, some carrots, potatoes, and celery for a pot roast I was cooking that day, and some apples.  But then I saw the caramel, and imagined how tasty that would be with apple slices.  And then I saw sour gummy worms, and could almost taste the sweet and sour candy in my mouth.  Needless to say, I ended up picking up a few more things than I originally had intended.

Our Gospel today begins by saying that Jesus intended to pass through the town of Jericho.  Jesus must have been hungry for souls, because a crowd quickly forms, and Jesus, through this crowd, sees a soul who is hungering for Jesus, even as Jesus hungers for his soul.  Zacchaeus had to climb up a tree (and there is a tree in Jericho today which alleges to be the sycamore tree Zacchaeus climbed) to see Jesus.  But Jesus notices Zacchaeus, and invites Himself over to dinner at Zacchaeus’ house.

The Zacchaeus Sycamore Tree in Jericho

 

Do we hunger for Jesus?  What would we do to see Jesus?  Recently a few new Chick-fil-As opened in Michigan.  The first one hundred people at the new stores received one free meal per week for a year from Chick-fil-A.  I know that people camp out, sometimes for days, just to have a chance to win some free, tasty chicken for a year.  It’s interesting, though, that some of us are content to show up for Mass 10-15 minutes late.  Or think about how early most people arrive at a stadium to either tailgate or watch a game.  Most people are quite upset if they miss kick-off.  And yet we can put off prayer, our time to be with Jesus and talk and listen to Him, quite easily.  

If we do show up to Mass on time, stay for all the Mass, and set aside time daily to pray, then we need to ask ourselves if we’re as hungry to bring others to Jesus as Jesus was.  Again, Jesus intended to pass through Jericho.  But, noticing Zacchaeus’ hunger for Him, Jesus spent time there, and even had dinner with Zacchaeus.  Do we want to bring others to Jesus?  Last week Deacon Dave preached about our Evangelization Plan, of how we can bring others, especially fallen-away Catholics back to the practice of their faith.  Have we filled it out?  Did we even take one home?  Or do just sit back and figure if people want to come to church again, they will?  

Imagine for a second that the Apostles, after Pentecost, waited for people to come to the upper room.  Would thousands of people have been baptized on that very day?  And would the faith have spread?  Would the world have been changed for the better by the Gospel?  The answer is obvious: of course not.  And yet, we can often have the mentality that we’ll just wait for people to come back to church, or join the church, without any work on our part.  By our baptism, we have each become a member of the Church, and by our confirmation, we have each been sent out to help people know the truth and love of Jesus, which will make them happy and will help them on the road to heaven, which God desires for every person.  At our confirmation we were given a mission to work to bring as many people into a relationship with Jesus, even as we continue to work on our own relationship with Jesus.  It is not only the work of priests, deacons, and religious.  In fact, the transformation of the world by preaching the Gospel is really the work of the laity; at least that’s what Vatican II emphasized.  

Vatican II says, in its Constitution on the Church that the laity are called to “make Christ known to others, especially by the testimony of a life resplendent in faith, hope and charity (n. 31).”  In the Vatican II decree on the apostolate, or work of spreading the Gospel, we read, “The apostolate of the laity derives from their Christian vocation and the Church can never be without it. […] The Church was founded for the purpose of spreading the kingdom of Christ throughout the earth for the glory of God the Father, to enable all men to share in His saving redemption, and that through them the whole world might enter into a relationship with Christ (nn. 1, 2).”

Christ is hungry for us and our love.  Are we hungry for others to know Jesus Christ?  Jesus, and so many fallen-away Catholics are waiting for us to be hungry to help others know Jesus and His Church.  Would we have them starve?

"What was Jesus' Problem?"

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

“What was Jesus’ problem?”  That was the way one homily I heard in seminary on this Gospel passage begin.  Sitting in Sacred Heart Major Seminary, the Tudor Gothic building, at a 7 a.m. Mass, this first phase certainly got my attention.  “What was Jesus’ problem?” Fr. Muller asked.  The 9 other lepers did exactly as Jesus told them: they went to show the priest that they were no longer lepers, which was exactly what lepers were supposed to do according to the Book of Leviticus.  And yet, Jesus seems quite perturbed that only 1 leper had returned to say, “Thank you.”  In fact, the one leper who did return was being directly disobedient to Jesus; he didn’t go and show the priest.  

In fact, Jesus was praising the faith of the one who realized who the Person was who healed Him.  And what was remarkable was that it was a Samaritan, someone who was not part of the Chosen People.  In fact, the Samaritans were the people who had mixed Judaism with the surrounding pagan religions.  It was this pagan who had recognized that it was Jesus Himself who had healed him.  This was different from our first reading because Elisha never cured the man, but God cured the man.  Elisha was just the one who told the foreigner how God would cure him.

Saying thank you is a basic part of how we are raised, or at least it should be.  When a gift is received, or when someone holds the door for us, or when someone simply does anything kind for us, we are trained, and should be, to say, “Thank you.”  But sometimes we need a reminder.  Just the other day I was sitting at the corner of Utley and Corunna, and there was no traffic in either direction as I was trying to turn left onto Corunna.  It dawned on me that I should say thank you to God, and I did, because that is often a wicked intersection at which to turn left.  Now, we probably don’t often think about thanking God for those little things, but everything we receive from God is a gift, for which we owe God thanks.

But, if we really think about it, when we say that everything we receive from God, we also have to include the trials and tribulations that God allows us to undergo.  God doesn’t send us evil, but sometimes he allows us to go through evil for some greater good.  It’s easy to thank God that we have a choir singing at Mass again; it’s much harder to thank God for the month that felt like an eternity without the choir.  I thank God that I’m able to be involved almost daily with our wonderful Catholic schools: St. Pius X and Powers.  It’s a little harder to thank God for a broken thumb one received while spending time with said students.  But I know that God is teaching me patience as I go through the six more weeks of not having full use of my thumb.  

It may seem like it’s weird to thank God even for horrible stuff that happened.  And yet, that’s what we do every Sunday and Holyday, and each time we assemble for Mass.  Each time the Mass is celebrated we give thanks.  The word Eucharist comes from two Greek words, 𝛆𝛖-, which means well, and 𝛘𝛂𝛒𝛊𝛓, which means to give thanks.  Each time we are here for Mass, we give thanks to God.  For what do we give thanks?  The crucifixion of Jesus.  Each Mass Calvary is re-presented for us, and we are able to share in the fruits of our redemption.  While the Mass draws us in to the entire Paschal Mystery, the Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus, the Eucharist connects us more specifically to the Death of Jesus on the cross, which is why the crucifix is so important for us as Catholics.  We give thanks for God’s death in a horribly brutal way.  

At the Easter Vigil, the Exultet, an old hymn about the very special night, says, “O happy fault that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!”  We even give thanks for the Fall of Adam and Eve, because that Fall made possible a life more glorious than the Garden of Eden when Jesus died on the cross.  

It’s easy to give thanks when something goes well, or when we get something we want.  Do we give thanks to God even for the things we don't want: an illness; a delay; a broken bone; a boring homily; a new priest who isn’t as good as the old one; a bad grade; a lost job.  Certainly those things are crosses in our life, and God never sends us evil.  But maybe there’s a reason God allowed the evil to enter our life, a way that we can become more of the saint He called us to be in baptism.

We’ve heard it a million times: say please and thank you.  But the Lord is inviting us to give Him everything we’ve experienced since the last time we received the Eucharist: the good, the bad, and the ugly.  Unite it with the bread and wine which will be offered to God.  In giving thanks to God for all of it, and uniting it with the perfect sacrifice of thanksgiving of Jesus on the cross, God promises to transform it, if we allow Him, and give it back to us transformed into something which draws us closer to Him.  As St. Paul says in his first letter to the Thessalonians: “In all circumstances give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.”

Signs of Fall

Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

There are some tell-tale signs that we are in the Fall: Friday night high school football, college football Saturdays, less daylight each day, cooler evenings and mornings, young ladies are starting to break out their uggs and ordering pumpkin spice everything.  Fall is upon us!  And it can be tough with less darker mornings and evenings.  Even during the days, it seems like there is more and more dreariness.

It can also feel darker and darker sometimes in terms of our city.  As you might have guessed, when I told people I was going to Flint, most people quickly responded with, “Don’t drink the water.”  Our water crisis, though we have started to address it, rages on.  As of April 2015, the unemployment rate in Flint was still 9.7%; city-data.com still lists Flint as a high crime area.  It seems like there is little good news for us!

In spite of this, the Word of God gives us some encouragement.  The Book of the Prophet Habakkuk, written likely in the 7th century BC, is written shortly before the Babylonians sack Jerusalem and exile the Chosen People to modern-day Iraq.  There was not very much good news for them, either.  In fact, the prophet says, “How long, O Lord?  I cry for help but you do not listen!  […] Why do you let me see ruin; why must I look at misery?”  Perhaps this is our prayer as well.  But the Lord does not remain silent.  He responds, “the vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint; if it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late.”  God promises not to abandon his people, even if things look very dark.  What are the people to do in the meantime?  “The just one,” Habakkuk writes, “because of his faith, shall live.”  

Faith is hard, because, as the Letter to the Hebrews states, it is the “evidence of things not seen.”  We see darkness around us.  The light is not visible to our eyes.  It takes faith to trust that the dawn will break forth and scatter the darkness.  When our experience is negative, it’s hard to know there is any positive at all.  And we can sometimes rationalize not having faith by saying that we’re realists.  

But if we wish to see better times, then faith is necessary.  And we don’t need a large amount of faith, but only the size of a mustard seed, one of the smallest seeds around.  If we have faith that small, then we can command trees to move to their death, and they will do it.  Now, I’m pretty sure the Lord is not telling us to have faith that so we can landscape differently.  But he is saying that if we have a little bit of faith, anything can happen.

Having faith has made a difference in my life.  When I was a parochial vicar in East Lansing, there was a young man I knew who was attending Michigan State.  I had taught him a little at Lansing Catholic High School.  One day he contacted me and asked for prayers because his bike, which was locked on a bike rack, was stolen, and the police had very little hope of getting it back.  He relied on the bike to make it to class and to football practice.  I prayed, through the intercession of St. Anthony and St. Dominic, and had faith that God would answer my prayers according to His will.  I pleaded with God that this young man needed his bike to be a good student, and that getting his bike back would strengthen his faith.  A day after I prayed, the bike was found and returned to its owner.   This definitely did help to increase that young man’s faith.  This young man had been sure that he would never see his bike again.  The police were sure he was right.  Faith made the impossible happen.  

If we have faith, what we see is not what will always be.  That’s true for our spiritual lives: the struggles we have, if united to Jesus, can one day lead to glory in heaven.  It’s true for our city: I see signs of hope that Flint is coming back, and if we follow God’s will we can once more have a thriving city.  And I am excited to be a part of that renewal right here in our parish.  If we have faith in God’s will, and trust in God, we can be major contributors to the flourishing of Flint.  Things may still look bleak, but the Lord invites us to follow Him and trust in Him.  “For the vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint; if it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late.”  Trust that being obedient to God’s will will give us things that we never thought could be.  Have faith!