Giving Not Getting

Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord 

To give a person a good gift, one has to know the person.  For example: last Monday my grandfather turned 90.  There are lots of thoughtful gifts that one can get a 90-year-old: maybe precious metals, mementos, etc.,.  My grandfather didn’t want any of it.  He simply wanted to eat together as a family and spend time with each other.  So all four of my uncles, even the two from Arizona, came together with my parents and we ate out at a restaurant.  However, disregarding my grandfather’s instructions that there were to be no gifts, I bought him something we joke about all the time, something I was sure he would use: bologna.  He loved the gift, and it caused a good amount of laughter.

My grandfather, seated next to my grandmother,
with their 5 children behind them

I also recently asked some of the kids at Powers that I know who are dating what they got for their significant others.  The students I spoke to talked about getting jewelry (especially for the girls), clothes, and other sentimental items.  Some of them took their boyfriend or girlfriend out to dinner, or gave them gift cards.  Talking with the students, it reminds me why I was glad I never had a girlfriend in high school for whom I had to buy things.   

We hear today about the gifts that the magi brought Jesus: gold (for a king); frankincense (for a god); and myrrh (for burial).  We of course know that these gifts were very fitting for Jesus (as well as very pricey), as Jesus is the King of Kings, True God, and the one who suffered death and was buried for our salvation.  The gifts of these three wise men were the perfect gifts.

The gift that Jesus wants is the gift of our lives.  He wants all of us, not just some of us, but all of who we are, and He wants that gift because in giving ourselves to Him, we end up finding true happiness.  This is one of the paradoxes of our faith: it is only in giving ourselves away to Jesus that we actually find who we are meant to be and how we can be happy.  In this new year, people do all sorts of things to try to better themselves and give themselves happier lives.  In reality, the only way we truly better ourselves is by giving our mind, heart, body, and soul to Jesus.  Loving God and loving our neighbor is a gift even better than gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

What is interesting is that, as we come to Mass each Sunday to adore the Christ, just as the magi did two millennia ago, some, maybe even many, of us come not wanting to give a gift, but wanting to receive one.  Mass has become to some, or maybe even many, “what do I get out of it?”  Perhaps the words that priests least want to hear on a Saturday evening or Sunday is: “I don’t get anything out of Mass, Father.”  

Of course, we do get something out of Mass.  We get to hear the Word of God; we get to receive the Body and Blood of Jesus; sometimes we get a good homily; we get the opportunity to unite or lives more closely with Jesus.  If we feel like we don’t get anything out of Mass, we have to ask ourselves: is the Word of God and the Body and Blood of Jesus not a good enough of a gift for us?  But the real problem is not what we get or don’t get out of Mass, but thinking that we go to Mass to get something in the first place.  Just as the beginning of cultural changes are hard to pinpoint, so the beginning of this phenomenon of going to Mass to get something is also hard to pinpoint.  When did we first start thinking: Mass is only as good as when I am moved emotionally, or like the music, or like the homily?  I don’t know, but that approach is a poison that is drawing people away from Jesus.

Don’t get me wrong: people do sometimes have great emotional experiences during the Mass, or the music helps them to pray and unite their lives to Jesus, and on rare occasions they even get good homilies.  And that is something for which we can give thanks.  But each time we come to Mass, we come to give, not to get.  Coming to Mass to get something out of it is like the wise men arriving at the home of Mary and Joseph and Jesus, and saying: “Thank God we found the newborn king!  What can you give us?”  No doubt, the magi did receive something for seeing Jesus, and recognizing in Him the newborn King.  But they did not travel from afar to get something, but rather to give something.

If we come to Mass because of what we like, or the experience we want to have, we are coming not so much for Jesus, but for ourselves, and we are missing the point of Mass.  We have the opportunity each week to come and adore the same Jesus the magi worshipped.  We have the opportunity each week to give Jesus the gift that He wants: not so much gold or frankincense or myrrh, but the gift of who we are, so that He can truly make us free and happy.  The wise men followed the star from afar to come to Jesus in Bethlehem; most of us don’t even have to use OnStar to get to St. Pius X.  But in the Eucharist God becomes flesh once more, and we can do Him homage.  If we put ourselves into the Mass, then we will likely get something out of it.  But even if we don’t “get anything out of it” (beyond hearing God’s Word and receiving the Body and Blood of Jesus), then we don’t need to get worried or leave.  At those times Jesus invites us to give more deeply of ourselves and unite even the things we don’t like to the cross of Jesus, so that He can transform us more powerfully into His disciples.  Jesus desires the gift of all of who we are.  Did we come to get or to give?  

"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.”