A Plethora of Disciples

Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    In the 1986 comedy, “Three Amigos,” starring Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, and Martin Short, there is a scene where the the main villain, El Guapo asks his second in command, Jefe, “Would you say I have a plethora of piñatas?”  Jefe responds, “A what?”  El Guapo answers back, “A plethora.”  Jefe tells El Guapo, “Oh yes.  You have a plethora.”  El Guapo then questions Jefe, “Jefe, what is a plethora?…If you told me I have a plethora, and I just would like to know if you know what a plethora is.”  In case you were not prepared for a vocab quiz today, a plethora is defined as a large or excessive amount of something.

      So we now know what a plethora is.  But do we know what the word disciple means?  Because today’s first reading and Gospel focus in on being a disciple, whether of the prophet Elijah in the first reading, or of Jesus in the Gospel.  And we here probably consider ourselves disciples.  But do we know what it means?
    Our English word disciple comes from the Latin, discipulus, meaning a student, scholar, or follower.  But being a disciple was more than that in the ancient world.  Being a disciple meant that you sought to live like the master, and make his or her way of life your own.  We don’t often think of students becoming like every teacher or professor they have (indeed, sometimes students really dislike their teachers or professors).  But disciples were, in some way, self-selected.  You could choose which master or teacher you wanted to follow.  But when you did make that commitment, it wasn’t about 9 hours in a classroom each day, or a 18 weeks of meeting twice or thrice each week.  Choosing to live as a disciple meant a life-long commitment, even living like the master after he or she was gone.
    So when we talk about Jesus’ disciples, that is the mindset in which they sought to follow Him.  But, as we heard today, sometimes people didn’t want to make that entire commitment, or Jesus wanted to make sure that they knew with what they were getting involved.  Following Jesus, we hear today, is even more important than burying one’s own family, or saying farewell to one’s family.  And it means that one may have to give up external stability, like a set place to rest one’s head.  But does it still mean that today?
    Being a disciple today is slightly different, but the idea of commitment is no different.  Jesus has to be our number one priority, if we wish to be the disciples God wants us to be.  It doesn’t necessarily meant that we won’t have any home, or that we cannot have time with our family, or even bury family members.  But it does mean that we make our life not about ourselves and our desires, but about Jesus.
    Consecrated men and women, whom we often call “religious,” do take vows to live as a disciple in a more radical way.  They give up a family of their own, a bank account of their own, and even choosing how they want to serve, through the vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience.  Diocesan priests also make the promise of celibacy, and seek to live a simple life, detached from their possessions (even though they have their own bank account), and promise respect and obedience to their bishop and his successors. 
    But being a disciple is not just for consecrated men and women, and priests.  Being a disciple is the commitment our parents made for us, or we made for ourselves, at baptism.  Our parents promised for us, or we made promises, to live like Christ to the best of our ability, no matter what our vocation.  Christ became our Master so that it would no longer be I who live, but Christ who lives in me, as St. Paul said. 
    So who do we put first in our lives?  Whose rule do we follow?  We’re here today, at Mass, so we are at least giving Christ this time.  But do we do so every week, or only when we feel like it?  Is going to Mass our biggest priority, or is going to Mass at a certain time our biggest priority? 
    Whose voice do we hear first, and to whose voice do we respond?  The voice of Christ, or the voice of our preferred political party?  Let me let you in on a secret, even while certain political parties espouse ideas which are gravely antithetical to being Catholic, no political party can claim the obedience we owe to Christ.  Yes, we are sometimes called to choose the lesser of two evils (as long as we’re not choosing a political party because of evil policies they advocate or adopt), but our allegiance to this or that party should be way down the list, with our allegiance to Christ at the top, and then probably family, country, and friends. 
    With the decline in religious observance in this country, it is interesting that people have not jettisoned obedience that we would normally give to God; they have transferred it to something else.  There is a need to give someone our entire loyalty built into us.  So if we don’t give it to God, we will give it to someone or something else.  Recently, I think many people have transferred religious submission of will and intellect to political parties, such that disagreement with the latest political platform is akin to heresy. 
    Do we truly live as disciples, or are we only living in a shell of what that word means?  When it comes to major issues of our day–abortion, euthanasia, so-called homosexual marriage, racism, service of the poor, when to receive or not receive Holy Communion–are our positions formed by the Gospel, or by the politician we like the best?  We use this word “disciple” a lot, and often for ourselves.  But do we really know what it means?

No mo' FOMO

Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

A little over a month ago, on one of the very few nice days that we had in May, I decided that I was out of shape (that reality had been true for some time), and I should do something to get in shape.  So I decided to do a 30-minute run around the exterior of the parking lot here at St. Pius X.  And then I decided to try to keep it up around every other day.  And then someone suggested that I run the CRIM, which I foolishly agreed to do.  So I’ve been running about every day or two, usually doing 5 miles, but once a week trying to get in a 7.5-mile run.

A few months ago, I would have told you that I would only run if I were being chased, or chasing after somebody.  And I can confirm that I never have a smile on my face while I run.  Yes, you do get the endorphins (the good feelings) after you’re done, but the fact that you get them after you’re done running should say something about running in general.  I can tell you that there have been no few amount of times where, during a run, I wonder what in the world I’m doing, and I just want to give up.  But I keep on pressing forward, at least until I attain my goal of running the CRIM.

Jesus in our Gospel tells us to keep going.  He tells us not to look back to what was before, but to continue following Him.  There will be all kinds of excuses about why we can’t follow Him, but He tells us to ignore those, and press on forward.

One of the plagues of today’s culture, especially among the youth, is FOMO–Fear Of Missing Out.  I can’t tell you the number of young adults that I have spoken with over my nine years as a priest who convey to me their fear about experiences that they really want to have, but which may pull them away from a current education, job, or even significant other.  There is a general lack of perseverance, of sticking with something for the long-haul, simply because it gets tough, or challenges appear.

Following Christ is not for sissies.  It gets tough, and there are many temptations to veer off course to something else, maybe not even something bad, that catches our eye.  As a priest, in my three parish assignments, there have been times–during my four years in East Lansing, during my two years in Adrian, and yes, even during my three years here–where I take my eye off Jesus ahead of me, and want to look back and wonder if I made the right decision.  At first, as I entered college seminary, I was more like Elisha, telling my mom and dad goodbye, and then just going for it.  But whenever a trial would present itself, and each parish has its own trials, there would be a little voice (like the one in cartoons that comes from a little red guy with horns, a tail, and a pitchfork) asking me to think about what life would have been like if I wouldn’t have  gone through the seminary and been ordained.  But the voice of the little angel on the shoulder with the halo and wings would respond with what Jesus said today: “‘No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God.’”  And, by the grace of God, I have persevered and been filled with such joy by remaining faithful to how God has called me to be a saint.

But it’s not just for priests.  For married couples, too, there’s the temptation to cut bait and run.  To be clear, I’m not talking about physically or verbally abusive situations, where a person needs to leave the marriage for his or her own physical or mental health.  Marriage is tough; it takes perseverance.  For me as a priest, I had eight years for the seminary staff to prepare me to be a priest.  For married couples, it’s usually around 8 months, and it’s not daily preparations; it’s a day here, a weekend there, etc.  And yet it is no less demanding of a vocation, and the temptations to look back also present themselves.  But that’s why it’s so important, when discerning marriage while dating, to make sure that it’s a person with whom you feel God is calling you to spend the rest of your life.  

There will be challenges that married couples will need to face together.  Many of you here can speak to that better than I can.  Many of you here have celebrated 25, or 30, or 40 or even 50 years together as a married couple, and some of you are even working towards 55 or 60 years of marriage.  What I notice about successful marriages is that they both work at following Christ, and, more often than not, they don’t give in to that temptation to look behind them at what could have been.  That’s true if you marry when you’re 19 or 22 or 30, whether you have 3 children or 5 or 8.  Don’t look back at what could have been; face forward toward Christ and where He is calling you to be as a couple.

And for those not married or not considering a vocation to the priesthood, Jesus’ words are still applicable.  It is not helpful in our relationship with Christ to look back and think what could have been.  It’s not helpful to give in to FOMO, to the fear of missing out, and never make that commitment towards doing something great, no matter how hard it is.  That goes for the simple act of making it to Mass every Sunday and Holyday; that goes for choosing to avoid places where you know you’ll be tempted to wander away from God; that goes for choosing to serve others rather than serve yourself.  

In the life of a disciple, there will always be moments where we wonder what life would have been like if we would have chosen B instead of A, gone left instead of right, given in to temptation rather than following Christ and His plan for our life.  Don’t look back; don’t second-guess yourself.  Keep your determination to follow Christ and you’ll find the joy that comes from persevering and finishing the race that God has set before you.

Get Out of the Boat!!

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

            This is one of those Gospel passages we’ve heard a lot in our life if we’ve been going to church every Sunday.  We probably heard it as children as our parents read the Bible to us or told us Bible stories.  Perhaps it’s so familiar to us that we don’t even really think about it any more, or go deeper.  But the point of repetition is so that we don’t just stay at the surface level, especially when it comes to the Scriptures and the Liturgy.  When we’ve heard a story over and over again, we’re not supposed to think: that’s boring!  We’re supposed to think: I know what the main story is, now what more is there to this that I haven’t found?

            I’d like to propose that St. Peter, who is often the “bad guy” in this story for his lack of faith, be reconsidered.  Certainly, we cannot change Jesus’ words that do mourn Peter’s lack of faith as he is sinking amid the waves.  But, where, we can ask, were the other eleven apostles?  St. Peter was at least bold enough to start out on the waters at Jesus’ command.  The others, at least from the text, never even considered going to Jesus, but just stayed in the boat as the wind and waves crashed around them.

            If anything, we should applaud the fact that St. Peter was willing, at his own suggestion, to walk on water like Jesus.  It was Peter who said that if that specter on the horizon was Jesus, to command him to walk on water.  St. Peter showed a deep faith at first, trusting that Jesus, His Master, and His Lord, would not let him sink.  Instead, we tend to focus on that one line, “‘O you of little faith, why did you doubt?’”

            But where was the faith of the eleven other apostles?  Where were their bold acts of rushing towards Jesus?  But, lest self-righteous indignation start to creep in, whether at the lack of faith of St. Peter or the lack of faith of the other eleven, we then have to turn back to ourselves and consider: where are our bold acts?  When was the last time we rushed to the Lord?

            Besides maybe breaking local speed laws to get to church on time, when was the last time we rushed to see Jesus?  When was the last time we went out on the waters, though the wind was strong and the waves were around us, to be close to Jesus?  For the ancient people, especially the Jews, water was a sign of life, but it was also a sign of chaos and death and destruction.  At the beginning, God has to order the waters of chaos.  Water is what kills the evil generation in the days of Noah.  Water just as likely killed as give life.  And yet, Jesus is out there, with no fear of the chaos, and, in fact, standing over it, with the waters of chaos under the dominion of His feet.  And it is over those waters of chaos that Peter goes out to Jesus.

            We are sometimes afraid to go to meet Jesus because of the chaos that surrounds our life.  Our fear to run to Jesus is related to whether or not we know Jesus.  St. Peter loved Jesus, and was willing to do anything for Him, because Peter had spent months and years following Him.  How much time do we spend with Jesus?  Do we know how to recognize His presence?

            In our first reading, the ways that Elijah does not experience God are classical ways that God reveals Himself, what we call a theophany.  In the Old Testament, God frequently reveals Himself in a strong wind, in an earthquake, in a fire.  But this time, with Elijah, God only reveals Himself in the silence.  And this presence of God is so powerful that Elijah has to hide his face in his cloak. 

            God still reveals Himself in many ways: in the poor; in those who mourn; in a beautiful Mass; in a stunning sunset; and the list goes on and on.  But God often reveals Himself in silence.  And we are not a society that likes silence.  I certainly include myself in that last statement.  I love to have my iTunes playing on my phone, or the radio on in my car, or the TV on, even if just for background noise.  It takes effort for me to have silence, even though I try to get at least a good 45 minutes per day of silent prayer with God.  Silence is difficult sometimes.  Sometimes silence is scary, because in the silence, we can actually hear God speak.  And if we are afraid of what God will say, it’s easier to flood our world with noise.  I try to provide some silence here in Mass: purposeful silence, not just waiting for the next thing to start.  But we need more than what we can get in the Mass.  We need time to be alone with God.  We need time to encounter God in a real way.  One easy way is by spending time with Jesus in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament every Tuesday evening form 5:45-7 p.m.  Jesus is there.  All we have to do is come by and visit. 

Another great way to be alone with God is through a retreat.  In our diocese we are trying to reinvigorate the Cursillo retreat, a time where we get to know God and know ourselves better, and have a personal encounter with God.  We all need a personal encounter with God.  We all need to have a time in our life that we can say that we met Jesus.  If not, our faith will grow weaker, and we will not be convincing witnesses to Jesus.  You cannot give what you don’t have.  If we don’t have Jesus, we cannot give Him to others.  Whether it’s Cursillo, or any other Catholic retreat, we need to encounter Jesus.  Only then will we have the courage to get out of the boat like Peter and rush to Jesus.  I know we’re all busy.  But this is important.  In the coming years, it looks more and more like our faith will be tested in public.  If we don’t have a personal encounter with Jesus, we will deny Him by our words and deeds.  If you knew your eternal salvation depended on a time with Jesus, would you take it?  Because our eternal salvation does rely on personally knowing Jesus, not just knowing about Him.  Retreats are perfect times to encounter Jesus.  Our times of Adoration on Tuesday nights are perfect times to encounter Jesus.  May our faith be strong enough to jump out of the apparent safety of the boat of our lives and rush to Jesus, even walking on water to get to Him, knowing that He will not let us drown.

Do You Smell Good?

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

            A couple of weeks ago I went out to lunch with a guy named Joe.  Joe graduated from Lansing Catholic this past May, and was getting ready to move down to Ave Maria College in Florida, where he will play football, and he wanted to catch-up a little before he left.  While Joe and I were eating lunch, the waitress, a 45-50 year old women came over and said, “I just have to say, one of you smells really good.”  There we were, left with the option of a woman liking the smell of either a young priest (dressed in clerics, mind you), or an 18-year-old. 

            A few days later, playing volleyball with some friends on a Thursday evening, my teammate tells me as he’s about to serve, “Father, you smell really good!  What type of cologne do you wear?” 

            We each have our own smells.  Some are highlighted (or hidden) by deodorants and/or cologne or perfume.  But our “scent,” if you will, helps to communicate who we are.  St. Paul, in our second reading, tells us to “be imitators of God…as Christ loved us and handed himself over…as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma.”  So if we are to be like Jesus, we must smell like Jesus, not in the sense of our musk, but in the way we live.

            When a person is baptized and later confirmed, Sacred Chrism is put on his or her head.  The Chrism is a mixture of olive oil and a special perfume.  Parents of baptized babies notice the smell of the Chrism.  Those who are confirmed certainly notice the smell, especially since most of those who are confirmed around here are in adolescence and are very concerned with how they smell.  But Sacred Chrism smells for a reason.  It reminds us that we are to have a special smell, the aroma of Christ, the odor of holiness.

            How do we smell differently?  How do we have the odor of holiness?  There are a lot of ways, but based upon our first reading and our Gospel, I want to suggest one very practical way: the way we treat Sundays.

Sunday is a Christian’s day, because it is the day that Jesus rose from the dead.  That’s why we set it aside every week for worship.  It is the new Sabbath, fulfilling the rest that God commanded we take in the Ten Commandments.  It is a day to be given over to the worship of God, charitable works, family and friends, and relaxation.  And it used to set us Catholics apart, just as Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, set Jews apart.  But we have fallen away from the sacredness of the Lord’s Day.

Why do we need the Lord’s Day?  Frankly, we need the rest.  I’m sure I could ask any one of you how the past week went, and you would have myriad events that took place that, whether simply required or even recreational, drained your batteries.  We need rest, just like Elijah, working for God, needed rest.  In fact, he was running away from King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, who were going to kill him, because he had demonstrated the power of the true God, and put to death the false-prophets of Baal.  But, Sunday is not just about sleeping all day.  Even Elijah is told to take bread, because He will need it for the journey to the mountain of God.

Sunday is also about worship, and for us as Catholics, that worship means the Mass.  We are not fulfilling the Sabbath Commandment if we just sleep all day and vaguely think about God.  We need to come to Mass because it is only in the Mass that the Bread of Angels, the Eucharist, is given to us.  We come to Mass because it is there, in a special way, that we are taught by God through His Word, read to us to strengthen us to live out our baptismal call to holiness.  Jesus promises us that, if we are not conscious of grave sin, which makes us unworthy to receive His Body and Blood, than we will live forever, because the bread that He gives is his “flesh for the life of the world.”  The Eucharist is precisely what we need to have strength to do those million things that naturally arise in life between Monday and Saturday, from work, from family, from sports, etc. 

Now, there are lots of people, even Catholics, who do not go to Mass on Sunday, who do not receive the Eucharist, and we may think that they’re doing just fine.  But “just fine” is only a shadow of the “great” that God wants for them, if they would only come to Mass to worship and receive, in a state of grace, the Eucharist.  Without the Body and Blood of Christ that we receive at Mass, we are only a shadow of who we can truly be in Christ.

For the rest of the day, as a way of having the aroma of Christ, let’s say no to almost everything else.  That will be hard, without a doubt.  And some of us have to work, especially in emergency response jobs or the service industry like in restaurants or gas stations.  But, many of us can say no to anything which is not truly relaxing and God-focused.  Many of us can say no to sports practices and menial work which can be done on other days.  If we pledge to each other that we will say no to lesser things, which allows us to say yes to God, family & friends, assisting the poor, and relaxation for one day per week, then our families will be able to worship God and find strength in the Eucharist, and will be able to enjoy each other’s company and strengthen their familial bonds, and we’ll have the strength and energy we need to do the work that lies ahead of us from Monday through Saturday: at work, at school, on the field, in the gym, and around the house.  And in this one way, we will have the aroma of Christ, the odor of holiness, so that we will smell good, not for a waitress or a friend, but for God.

The Sound (and Power!) of Silence

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

            “How does God speak to you?”  It’s a question I get asked a lot, especially when talking about my discernment to become a priest.  “How did you know, Father, that God was calling you to be a priest?  Did you hear a voice?”  We want to know how God communicates to us, to see if He is communicating with us.

            We have three paradigms for divine communication in today’s readings.  I usually work towards the Gospel in preaching, but this time I’m going to go from the Gospel to the first reading.  And each reading contains ways that God communicates to us.

            In our Gospel, Jesus speaks to the disciples in the boat, as I am speaking to you.  But whereas many of us probably think that if God were to speak to us, we would clearly understand what He was saying and do whatever He asked, this isn’t true with the disciples.  They have been with Jesus for some time, hearing Him preach, watching Him heal the sick and possessed.  And yet, when Jesus appears, walking on the sea, they figure that it’s a ghost.  They do not recognize Jesus.  Peter, to ascertain Jesus’ identity, asks Jesus to command Peter to walk on water.  And when St. Peter does, but then falters, it is Jesus who picks him up and helps him back into the boat.  In this way, we see two ways that Jesus speaks to us: in the first way, He speaks to us in the same way that I am speaking with you now, so that we can hear His voice.  But what is surprising is that, just like the disciples, we don’t always recognize the voice of Jesus even when it’s a voice.  Secondly, Jesus speaks through His care for the disciples.  When Jesus rescues Peter from drowning, He is communicating through His actions that He will never allow Peter to sink amidst the crashing waves.  We see in this the foreshadowing of Jesus’ protection of His Church, sometimes referred to as the Barque or Boat of Peter, which is not allowed to sink in the storms of world events.

            The second paradigm is in St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans.  St. Paul says, “I speak the truth in Christ, I do not lie.”  God speaks to us through His apostles, those whom Jesus called and sent out to build up and oversee the Church.  The bishops, as successors to the apostles, when speaking on matters of faith or morals speak “the truth in Christ.”  To them is given the charism, when they are united to the Pope, to teach what belongs to the faith infallibly.  Just as St. Paul says elsewhere, “It is not longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me,” the bishops are given the grace to teach, not by their own authority, but with the authority of Christ on matters of faith and morals.  If we want to hear God speaking about what we must believe, and how we must live to as to be faithful to Christ, we can look to the bishops, the successors of the apostles, to hear the voice of God.

            The last paradigm from our readings comes from the first reading, and is a very powerful way that God communicates.  We hear the inspired author tell us that Elijah, the greatest prophet in all the Old Testament, did not hear God in the heavy winds, nor the earthquake, nor the fire.  No, Elijah heard the voice of God in the whisper heard in the silence.  This voice was so powerful, that Elijah, who had called down fire from the heavens to consume the oblation, offered to the true God to shame the prophets of Baal, had to hide his face because He heard God in the silence.

            Silence is a very powerful expression of God’s voice.  It is in silence that the great things of God happen.  When God created the universe, He did so in silence.  In the silence of meditation, according to most artistic renditions, Mary heard the Archangel Gabriel tell her that God had called her to be the Mother of the Son of God.  And in the silence of the night, the Word-Made-Flesh came to be known by us as He was born in Bethlehem.  In fact, in the extraordinary form of the Mass, what some call the Tridentine Mass, part of the Liturgy includes a prophecy from the Book of Wisdom about the Incarnation.  Romano Guardini quotes it in The Lord, his meditation on the life of Christ: “‘For while all things were in quiet silence and the night was in the midst of her course, thy almighty word leapt down from heaven from thy royal throne.’”  Likewise, the Resurrection happens in the silence of the early morning, when the guards are asleep and no one expects Christ to rise from the dead.

            In our days, however, we manage to cut out as much silence as possible.  Are we afraid of being alone with God?  Are we afraid of what God would say?  The answer is probably as diverse as the number of people here.  I bet that if I remained silent for a long period of time during the Mass, we would try to find ways to break the silence: thumbing through hymnal pages, reading the bulletin, looking around to others.  But we need silence.  My practice is to always give up the radio and music during Lent so as to allow more time for God to speak to me in His power.  But we don’t just need silence in Lent.  We need it all throughout the year. 

            We’re taught in seminary that every homily (at least the good ones) should have a practical way to apply the readings to life.  Today we’ll apply this teaching by taking some extended time of silence, first after my homily, and then after the reception of Holy Communion.  Listen to God during this time.  Don’t just make it a time of doing nothing, but make it a time of active listening to the whisper of God, heard only in the silence.