Stewardship

Second Sunday after Epiphany
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  I either recently received a book on stewardship, or I recently rediscovered that I received a book on stewardship.  In any case, I’ve been reading a little each day (it’s a very thin book to begin with), but it struck me as I read the epistle today that a theme in this part of St. Paul’s epistle the Romans deals with stewardship.
    Now, I know that some use stewardship as a code word for giving money.  And, as we just finished our part of the Diocesan Capital Campaign, you might think that talking about stewardship is killing a dead horse.  But this is not such much about giving money, as you have all been very generous with the parish, as a reminder about important points that lead to fruitful stewardship of time, talent, and, yes, treasure.
    Because one of the first points this book makes is that stewardship comes naturally when we consider that everything that we have is a gift from God.  And that view does not come naturally to us because of our fallen reality.  We tend to grasp at most things like they’re ours, like we are responsible for them, and like we don’t want anyone else to have them.  We live with a scarcity mentality, as if when we don’t hold on to things, others may take them, and we might miss out on something we need.  Just think back to the beginning of COVID: we had plenty of toilet paper.  But someone got it in his head that we might run out, and no one wants to rely on leaves, so they started buying up all they could, such that there was a scarcity because people took what they didn’t need.  
    But when we recognize that everything is a gift from God, then we want to give back to God what He desires, which is everything.  Everything may not be much, but the Lord praises the widow, not for the amount of coins she gave (others gave more coins than she), but for the value of what she gave, which was her everything.  

    What does God do when we give Him everything?  Many times He gives it all back, or even makes it better.  Now, I’m not preaching the so-called “prosperity Gospel.”  I’m not preaching that if you just give 10% of your annual salary, God will give you 20% more money.  That’s not the Gospel.  But the Gospel from today does teach us the lesson that God is not outdone in His generosity, to paraphrase St. Paul.  The servants give our Lord water.  And they put them, not in the finest containers, but in the containers with which the guests would wash their hands.  But when the servants take the containers to the chief steward of the feast, he doesn’t taste water, but wine, which came about through the first miracle our Lord worked.  The Father does the same thing with what we offer Him in this Mass.  We offer the Father bread and wine, and not the best bread or wine, either.  It’s not like we’re getting the bread from crust or from Zingermans.  It’s not like the wine is a fine 2020 cab from Napa.  But we offer Him the bread and wine that He desires, and, by the power of the Holy Spirit and through the ministry of the priest, bread and wine offered to God become the Body and Blood of our Savior.  We can’t taste or see any different, but we know that it’s no longer bread and wine, but the Bread of Life and the antidote of immortality (as St. Ignatius of Antioch called the Eucharist).  We offer God what we have, even if it doesn’t seem like much, and God transforms it by His grace into something better.
    And when we receive that something better, and we recognize just how much God has given us, we want to share that gift with others.  And my gift is different than your gift.  But when we all make a return on our gifts, the whole Mystical Body of Christ works well and changes lives.  St. Paul write about that in our epistle, how some were given the gift of prophecy, or administration, or in ministry, or in teaching, or exhortation, or cheerfulness.  St. Paul doesn’t tell those who are good in cheerfulness that they need to start prophesying.  Or those who teach well need to start working on administration.  He asks everyone to use the gifts they have to the best of their ability so that the Gospel can be preached and the Church can be built up.  
    So, for example, I’m pretty bad a brainstorming.  This doesn’t mean that I’ve never had an original idea, but that’s not where I thrive.  I thrive in evaluating ideas and seeing what it would take to execute, or if execution is even a possibility or probability.  But I try to use that build up the Body of Christ.  Now, as a priest, I am called to do certain things, like preach.  I am not Venerable Fulton Sheen, but I offer God my meditation on the Scripture passage or the season, and the work that I put in, and the Holy Spirit does the rest.  Sometimes I think a homily is horrible, and then lots of people tell me how it touched them.  Sometimes I think a homily is great, but then no one says anything.  But no matter what, I am called to give my all to God, trusting that God will perfect my gift, and help it to multiply for the building up of His Church.
    So many of you are committed to this parish and to spreading the Gospel.  You give of your time, talent, and treasure to support the work, not just of St. Matthew, but of the Church in this Diocese, and the Church present throughout the world.  But the Lord reminds us today to continue to work at giving all of who we are to Him.  He never leaves us empty handed, even if we don’t necessarily increase in material wealth, but will always give us back better than received.  As the Blessed Mother encouraged the servants to do at the wedding at Cana, give what you have to Christ, who will never let you want for any good thing, and who, with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God for ever and ever.  Amen. 

An Ordinary Epiphany

Second Sunday after Epiphany
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  If you were to ponder or ask which Gospels are the most radical, would this passage come to our mind?  I’m guessing not.  We might think of the cleansing of the temple; or maybe the denunciation of the Pharisees and scribes as a brood of vipers; or maybe even the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand, or the raising of Lazarus from the dead; certainly the crucifixion.  But the miracle at the wedding at Cana? 
    There is something radical, or rooted, in this Gospel passage that we probably most often fail to see.  And it’s connected to Christmas and the Epiphany (the Epiphany, remember, historically celebrates the visit of the Magi, the Baptism of the Lord, and the wedding at Cana: the three manifestations of Christ).  At Christmas, the God of all creation, whom the heavens and the earth cannot contain, we saw in a tiny baby.  The God who created time allowed Himself to be subject to time.  God manifested Himself in a very ordinary way.

Church at Cana in Galilee

   And at the wedding at Cana, our Lord manifested Himself in a very ordinary way.  He helped out a couple who had run out of wine by changing water into wine.  You can imagine someone who didn’t know Christ sitting down to talk to Him, listening to the Gospel, and the circling back to say something like, “So you have the power to make blind people see?”  “Yes.”  “And you can heal leprosy?”  “Yes.”  “And you can multiple five loaves of bread and two fish so that it’s enough to feed five thousand people and have leftovers?”  “Yes.”  “And you can raise people from the dead?”  “Yes.”  “And you chose, as your first miracle, as the first thing you would do to show your divinity, that you would change water into wine?”  “Yes.” 
    That is pretty incredible.  With all that Christ could do, His first revealing action was to take care of a basic party foul.  He created light from nothing; He separated day from night; He separated land from the seas; He created vegetation, fish, and animals; He created man from the earth and woman from the side of man; He created the universe out of nothing.  And He changes water into wine.  That is incredible! 
    But our God so often works in the ordinary, in the mundane, in the unexceptional.  Look at Abraham.  Yes, he was fairly wealthy with all his flocks, but he and Sarah had no children (at least at first).  Yet God chose Abraham to become the father of many nations.  The Israelites were literal slaves, and yet God chose them as His People, peculiarly His own, as Deuteronomy says.  David was a shepherd, yet he was chosen to be king of God’s People.  The Blessed Virgin Mary, a young, unknown girl, but became the Mother of God.  Bethlehem, least of the cities of Judah, became the birth place of the Messiah.  The twelve apostles were generally uneducated or unappreciated men, yet became the foundation of the Church.  So if we really understood God, the miracle at Cana wouldn’t actually be that shocking.
    And it also shouldn’t shock us that God continues to operate this way.  God so often operates in the everyday realities.  He still so often chooses the least powerful to demonstrate His glory.  Yes, there are times, like Mount Tabor and the Resurrection, where His glory and His power shine forth.  But those were two times in His three-year public ministry.  The rest were among the poor, the outcast, and the simple.
    Do we have eyes to see how God is working in our life?  Or are we looking for the wrong thing?  Are we looking for a Mount Tabor when we should be looking for a blind man on whose eyes our Lord puts mud made from his saliva?  Are we looking for glory on a mountain when our Lord is walking next to us through a field?  If we only seek God in the grandiose moments, then we’re missing the ways that He manifests Himself in everyday life.  In the embrace of a loved one; in the smile of a baby; in the unexpected good news; in the delight of a good glass of wine. 
    When we notice God in the ordinary, we tend to live more grateful lives, conscious of how God is working, rather than wondering why God never does anything for us.  Even something as simple as living becomes a moment to give thanks, because without God willing each of us, individually, to be alive, we would cease to exist.  He who keeps our solar system aligned just so, also feels that it’s important that you exist.  So often we can think of God setting things in motion and then letting them go their way.  But perhaps a more accurate view is that, at each nanosecond, God is willing each and every thing, animate and inanimate, into existence out of the joy of having something that He created continue in being.  That certainly would help us live that gift of the spirit of wonder and awe in the presence of God.  I can barely chew gum and walk at the same time.  God at each moment wills every thing in existence and ensures the functioning of its properties according to His divine will.  And He does so out of love and with joy, not begrudgingly, as we so often do when we have a task at work to which we don’t look forward. 
    The miracle at the wedding of Cana manifests God.  We have an epiphany of the divinity of Christ.  And yet, we also have an epiphany of how God so often works: not only in the big moments of power and grandeur, but even the daily humdrum needs and desires of life.  Perhaps recognizing all that God does for us at each fraction of a moment can help us be obedient to the command of Mary, “Do whatever he tells you”: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Proving Who We Are

Second Sunday after Epiphany
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  For whatever reason, I regularly get confused for other priests.  I have been told that I am Fr. Gary or Fr. Todd Koenigsknecht, or Fr. Mathias Thelen, or Fr. Mark Rutherford.  Since they are all good and holy priests, I can’t really complain too much, though I don’t see any close resemblance.  I then have to tell people that I’m not who they think I am.
    These days to sign in to many banks or online websites, not only do you have to use the right username and password, but you also have to give some tertiary form of identification, whether it be a fingerprint, or facial recognition, or even a simple code sent to you your phone.  Because of the many hackers who try to steal identities, businesses want to make sure that they know who you are.

Church at Cana

   We heard in our Gospel today how our Lord revealed Himself by the miracle at Cana, and the disciples began to believe in Him.  Nine days ago we celebrated the Epiphany, or manifestation of our Lord.  The Apostle and Evangelist John takes great pains to demonstrate who our Lord is by the signs that He performs.  In chapter 4, our Lord again is asked to perform a sign in Cana, and he criticizes that they will not believe without signs.  In chapter six, after the feeding of the 5,000, the Jews ask for a sign (as if one beyond the feeding of so many was necessary) to make them believe in the Savior.  And in chapter 10, as our Lord is describing Himself as the Good Shepherd, and saying that the Father and He are one, Christ says, “‘If I do not perform my Father’s works, do not believe me; but if I perform them, even if you do not believe me, believe the works, so that you may realize [and understand] that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.’”
    So this first sign, this first miracle, as our Lord changes water into wine, is a demonstration that He is not simply another rabbi, another teacher, but someone greater.  And that demonstration calls for each person to make a decision: to believe or not to believe; to follow or to walk away.
    But the signs of Christ are not restricted to things that happened in the past in the Gospel accounts.  Christ continues to work through His Mystical Body, the Church, and through the Holy Spirit, which is the presence of Christ in our daily lives.  God is working in your life each day.  But it does take some reflection to recognize how Christ is working in your life.  It often doesn’t come to our minds right away, because God doesn’t always do big works, but works in small ways.  But they are no less powerful, and they show that He is who He says He is. 
    Examples of how God works, whether directly or indirectly, could be: getting that green light when you’re in a rush; a friend unexpectedly reaching out to you; a memory comes to mind about something good that happened; a dream about a loved one that you weren’t expecting.  Or it could be that something works out well that you have been praying for, or some personal trial or suffering is shortened with our without us asking God to be merciful and limit the trial or suffering.  Again, if we don’t take time at least weekly, or even daily, to think about it, those moments will pass us by, and we won’t recognize how God is operating in our daily lives.
    But in addition to Christ being manifest by His signs, He also desires that we make known that we are followers of Christ by the things we do, by the deeds that we carry out.  St. Paul lists different ways that this can happen in our epistle: prophecy, ministry, teaching, exhorting, donating, governing, and being merciful and cheerful.  Some of those words might sound a bit intimidating, or “churchy.”  But they are not all that complicated, when we break them down.  Prophecy is not so much about telling the future, as it is speaking for God.  We speak for God when we communicate His word in our daily lives.  Ministry is about serving in the Church, using our gifts and talents to help build up the Mystical Body of Christ.  Exhorting is encouraging others to do what is right and just.  Governing is about making sure that we are not ruled by our passions, but rather ruled by the spirit of God, and exercising whatever legitimate authority we have over others in a Godly way, rather than by lording it over others.
    St. Paul continues that, to show that we are followers of Christ, God wants us to be filled with hope, be patient in suffering, and constant in prayer, as well as being hospitable.  We are to bless those that persecute us, rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.  When we are witnesses to hope, when we are patient, even though we are suffering or being unjustly punished, we we accompany others in joy and sorrow we show that we are living a Christ-centered life.  And that witness draws others to Christ, especially when connected with the earlier gift of teaching and exhorting. 
    Of course, to do these things is not always easy.  It is much easier to be downcast and melancholic about the world; to complain when we suffer; to avoid walking with others, especially in times of sorrow.  As GK Chesterton once wrote, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting.  It has been found difficult and left untried.”  Perhaps that is why so many have walked away from faith in Christ, because we have not demonstrated in our own lives what it means to follow Christ daily, to take up our cross and follow Him.  Others do not see Christ in us, and so do not believe.

GK Chesterton

    The world is hungry for Christ, but the world, especially today, wants authenticity.  They want to see Christ manifest Himself.  God does that on His own, but He also utilizes us.  May our lives as followers of Christ help to manifest our belief in the Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

From the Natural to the Supernatural

 Second Sunday after Epiphany

Sanctuary of the Church in Cana

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  It is no accident that our Lord’s first miracle–or sign, as St. John calls it–is at a wedding.  When we talk about vocations, we often think of the call to priesthood or religious life, and those are certainly beautiful vocations that show forth for us the beauty of the heavenly life, even while here on earth.  But holy matrimony is also a beautiful vocation, and our Lord not only blessed a wedding with His presence, but also made sure that the bride and the groom were not embarrassed by running out of wine.  
    The idea of a marriage permeates the Old Testament.  We start salvation history with Adam and Eve, the first husband and wife.  The prophets use the image of a husband and wife to describe God and His relationship with Israel.  The prophet Ezekiel in particular talks about choosing Israel, though she was left to die on the side of the road, and making her His own.  But, Ezekiel points out, Israel was unfaithful, and sought other lovers who had not cared for her.  Hosea, too, is called to take a wife, but his wife is a harlot, which God uses to show Israel’s infidelity to Him.  But, God takes Israel back, despite her infidelity, and continues to love her.  The Song of Songs, Jewish romantic poetry, also talks about the love between a woman and a man, and the Church Fathers see in this book the love between God and His People.  
    I preached at Christmas of how, in Christ, divinity was wedded to humanity, never to be divorced, and eternity was wedded to time.  So as we continue to unpack the mystery of Christmas and Epiphany, it is fitting that we look to the wedding at Cana.
    And what we see is that Christ makes every wedding better.  Symbolically, we see this in the water that becomes wine.  Christ takes what is natural (water) and raises it to the level of the supernatural (wine).  This is certainly true of marriage.  Marriage is a natural institution.  Many people who are not Catholic, or not even baptized, get married, and as long as there are no impediments to marriage, the Church sees these marriages as valid.  But marriages between the baptized are raised to a supernatural level and become sacraments–efficacious signs of God’s grace, based in the Paschal Mystery, which call for and cause grace.  And because of the supernatural dignity of marriages between the baptized, they need to happen in a church building, as the place where God dwells in a particular way with us.  In fact, when a Catholic does not get married in a church, according to the rites of the Church (unless the bishop gives permission), that marriage does not take place, and a couple would be living in the state of fornication, until they remedied their situation in the Church.
    Most of you are married or will become married at some point.  Yours is not a second-rate vocation, but a beautiful, sacramental call to witness the love that Christ has for His Church.  You not only receive God’s grace to live in a marriage that is faithful, lifelong, for each other’s good, and open to children, but by living in such a way, actually become a conduit of God’s grace to the world, in a similar way as water that communicates God’s grace in the sacrament of baptism.  By living as husband and wife according to God’s plan, God’s grace can flow through you.  This is the beauty of marriage, the wine that was transformed from the water of natural marriage.
    Living the vocation of marriage is not always easy.  And that is why the presence of Christ, not only at the wedding but throughout the entire marriage, is so necessary.  It’s not enough to invite Jesus, his Blessed Mother, and disciples to the wedding.  They want to be a part of your entire married life.  So each day, invite them by prayer to be a part of your married life.  Whenever possible, pray together as a couple.      I know a priest who told a story about his mom and his dad.  This priest said that, when the door to mom and dad’s bedroom was closed at night, no one was to enter, and, as one of many children, he later could guess why this rule existed.  But when he was a young child, he broke the rule once, and peeked in to see mom and dad after he was supposed to be in bed.  When he looked in through the crack in the door, he saw his parents, kneeling together at the side of the bed, praying the rosary together.  What a beautiful witness of inviting our Lord and Lady to the marriage!  But whatever the prayer, whether a full rosary, or a decade, or maybe simply some brief prayers from memory or from the heart, it is a way to help you be the vehicle of God’s grace that marriage is meant to be.
    But both for married and non-married people, Christ wants to make life better for all, and does so through those who are united to Christ in baptism.  When we are living to the call of our baptism, we fulfill what St. Paul talked about in the epistle.  When we are living as Christians, we are called to hate that which is evil, and cling to that which is good.  We are called to love each other with mutual affection, and honor each other.  We serve the Lord through rejoicing in hope, being patient in trials, and persevering in prayer.  When we follow the Lord, we are able to increase the natural joys with the supernatural joy of Christ.  When we follow the Lord, we are able to weep with those who are sad, but help them to see that God’s plan, even if not clear, and even when it includes the allowance of suffering, leads to a glory that cannot be compared with any earthly happiness.  We, too, are called to continue that presence of Christ, and help change the natural into the supernatural.  Maybe we won’t change water into wine (a gift that many of us would like to have, I’m sure), but will do greater signs than changing the substance of a liquid, by convincing sinners to be saints, and storming heaven with those who want the salvation that Christ offers.
    Christ is not satisfied with the natural good that we experience.  He draws us through passing things to the things that endure forever.  He lifts up, perfects, and transforms what is naturally good to make it supernaturally good.  And that is no truer than in the Eucharist, the bread that becomes the Body of Christ and the wine that becomes the Blood of Christ.  Through our worthy reception, may we be drawn into that to which marriage points, the eternal union of the Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

It Would Have Been Enough

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Ok; be honest: how many of you asked God to win the $1.5 billion Powerball prize?  You don’t have to raise your hand.  There were probably some people who were bargaining with God: if you give me the $1.5 billion, I’ll give 10% to the church.  I told a number of people: I’m not greedy; I only need about $10 million; the rest I can give away.  Maybe you didn’t want it.  But I bet we could all imagine what we would do with that much money.

And all of us were disappointed who wanted to win the jackpot.  No one won the jackpot from the State of Michigan.  It’s as if God wasn’t listening to us!!  How could he leave us in such a lurch.  Think of the good we could’ve done with $1.5 billion!!

It might lead us to think that God is a bit stingy.  After all, here we are in church, trying to do God’s will, and He won’t even give us a little financial reward for worshipping Him.  But, our readings today give us a different story.  They give us a different perspective, which is the truth, not our petty idea of what God is thinking.  And what our readings reveal is that God is generous.  He is not stingy.  His gifts overflow in abundance!

Think about the first reading from the Prophet Isaiah.  This part of the Book of Isaiah was written after the Babylonian Exile, where the Jews had lost everything.  Their unfaithfulness to God had meant the loss of the Promised Land and the loss of the Temple.  But God does not rub their noses in their past failures.  Instead, He promises that their new status, after they have turned back to Him, will be even better than the beginning.  No longer will people mock the Chosen People for what they don’t have, calling them, “Forsaken,” but will honor them as the spouse of the Lord, and call them “My delight,” and their land, “Espoused.”  They will be like a crown that adorns God’s brow.  That’s not stingy.

And St. Paul has a long list of the gifts that God pours out through the Spirit: wisdom, knowledge, faith, gifts of healing, mighty deeds, prophecy, discernment of spirits, varieties of tongues.  All of these are gifts that God pours out upon His people.  And while there are a variety of gifts, it is the one God who gives them all, for some benefit for the church.  God is not holding back, but is pouring out gifts such that our cups overflow.

And the Gospel really talks about God’s generosity.  Jesus, through the intercession of His Mother, saves the poor couple of Cana from shame.  Imagine if you ran out of food at your wedding party, and some people didn’t get any.  That’s bad enough!  But if you ran out of wine, well that’s just downright degrading!!  But Jesus saves them from that degradation, and turns the water into wine.  And it’s not just any wine; it’s the best wine.  Jesus does not just save the day in a mediocre way; He saves the day and His generosity makes sure that His wedding gift of wine is the best wine there is.

Top of the façade of the church in Cana 

The temptation for us is to be stuck on water, and not want the wine.  Water is very basic, and we need it to survive.  Wine is not so basic, takes more work, and produces a better effect after drinking than water (once you’re old enough to legally drink it).  We are certainly called to assist each other with our gifts and talents and treasures so that everyone has the basic necessities.  We cannot ignore the poor.  But, at the same time, it can be an easy temptation to fall into to simply want more money, a bigger house, a better car, the newest phone.  Those are all water.  God wants to give us the best gifts, the gift of His love, the gift of His mercy, the gift of new life.  Money will run out; homes will eventually collapse; cars will stop running; phones will become obsolete.  But God’s love, mercy, and life are for eternity.  Those are the gifts we should be striving for.

God is never outdone in His generosity.  He does not simply give us water; He gives us wine.  During the Passover, the Jews have a song called Dayenu, and that word, Dayenu, literally means, “enough for us” or “it would have been enough.”  They recall God’s great deeds, and how that would have been enough: “If He had brought us out from Egypt, and had not carried out judgments against them–Dayenu!  If He had carried out judgments against them, and not against their idols–Dayenu!  If He had destroyed their idols and had not smitten their first-born–Dayenu!  If He had smitten their first-born, and had not given us their wealth–Dayenu!  If He had given us their wealth, and had not split the sea for us–Dayenu!  If He had taken us through the sea on dry land, and had not drowned our oppressors in it–Dayenu!  If He had drowned our oppressors in it, and had not supplied our needs in the desert for forty years–Dayenu!  If He had supplied our needs in the desert for forty years, and had not fed us the manna–Dayenu!  If He had fed us the manna, and had not given us the Shabbat [Sabbath]–Dayenu!  If He had given us the Shabbat, and had not brought us before Mount Sinai–Dayenu!  If He had brought us before Mount Sinia, and had not given us the Torah–Dayenu!  If He had given us the Torah, and had not brought us into the land of Israel–Dayenu!  If He had brought us into the land of Israel, and not built for us the Holy Temple–Dayenu!”  But that wasn’t enough for God.  He then sent His Only Begotten Son, to be one like us in all things but sin, and even to die for us so we could live.  

God didn’t give us the jackpot of the Powerball, but He did give us Jesus.  Is that enough for us?

Show Off

Epiphany of the Lord

Being a show-off is not a good thing.  Doing something just to grab attention to yourself for some talent that you have is not something for which people usually praise you.  But today is the exception to the rule.  Today, the Lord is a show-off, or rather, is shown off, as we celebrate the Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord.  In fact, the very word epiphany comes from two Greek words (epi and phanos) which is most commonly translated as to reveal or to manifest, but could also be translated as to show off.  

The Epiphany celebrates three times that God showed Himself off.  We’re all familiar with the first one: when Jesus revealed Himself to the Magi, the three Wise Men, who came from the East and presented Jesus with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  This is what we usually associate with this celebration.  But the Epiphany also celebrates when Jesus manifested Himself at the Wedding at Cana, where He turned water into wine, as well as the manifestation of Jesus in His Baptism in the Jordan River.  That last aspect our Western Church focuses on in a special way next Sunday on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, but in the Eastern Church, where this feast originated, all three were celebrated.

But notice that when Jesus shows off, it is not a matter of bragging, as is often the case when we show off.  When Jesus shows off, something else points to Him and makes His presence known.  When we talk about Jesus showing off to the Wise Men, it was really the star that pointed out the newborn King of the Jews.  Jesus, Mary, and Joseph didn’t go through the streets proclaiming Jesus as the new monarch of Israel.  The Magi had to follow the star, and when it finally came to rest, they recognized Jesus as the King of Kings, though He was in such a lowly circumstance.  When we talk about Jesus showing off at His Baptism, it is not Jesus who says, “I am the Beloved Son of God; listen to me!”  Instead, the Holy Spirit descends like a dove over Jesus, and the voice of God the Father is heard from the heavens declaring that Jesus is the Beloved Son of God and that we ought to listen to Him.  When we talk about Jesus showing off at the Wedding at Cana, it is not Jesus who says, “look what I can do!”  It is Mary, the Mother of God, who tells the servants, “Do whatever He tells you.”  When Jesus reveals who He is, He never does so on His own to draw attention to Himself.  Rather, He lets His heavenly Father and his Blessed Mother make Him known to others.  Jesus is not an attention junkie.

The question for us is whether or not we make Jesus known.  If Jesus doesn’t really bring attention to Himself, but lets others draw people into knowing who He is, then it is our responsibility to show off Jesus.  We are called to be like the star, or the voice of the Father, or the Blessed Mother, in helping others know who Jesus is.  We are called to be the evangelists, the ones who spread the Good News about who Jesus is.  We are called to help others to know that their mundane life, full of suffering and sorrow, is not all there is, but that God has so much more planned for them, even if none of their earthly circumstances change.  An unemployed person without Jesus can become bitter, despondent, and melancholic because nothing is going right for that person in helping him or her to provide for self or family.  An unemployed person with Jesus still may not have a job, but knows that God is in charge, and that, if the person continues to turn to God and offer those sufferings to Him, that something will happen for the betterment of that person.  A sick person without Jesus simply has a lack of good health that may or may not change based upon what medicine can offer.  A sick person with Jesus still does not have good health, but sees that sickness as a way to offer up suffering to God who can make it beneficial to eternal salvation.  Having Jesus makes all the difference in the world, and it is our call by our baptism to share Jesus with others so that they have hope in the midst of suffering.

One way that we show off Jesus is by talking about Him with other people.  That may seem odd for us Catholics.  It may seem very Protestant.  But the first disciples were not so driven to build a church building; they were driven to show off Jesus by talking about Him to others and sharing the wonderful things He had done in their lives.  When they showed Jesus off, others wanted that joy, that new outlook on life, and they joined the Church.  Whether it was Jews or Gentiles, slaves or free, when people heard about this Jesus who conquered sin and death and gave people freedom to live a truly happy life, they wanted it.

Pope Bl. Paul VI, Pope St. John Paul II, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis have all encouraged us to participate in the New Evangelization.  One way that we, as a parish, are going to participate in this together is by participating in faith-sharing small groups this Lent.   Next week we are going to have a sheet to fill out which will give our contact information and in which interest group we would prefer to share our faith.  The groups will be for 6-10 people, so they won’t be too large for you introverts, but will be large enough for extraverts to be able to share.  It will focus us on the love of God and the difference that love makes.  After Lent is over, there will be more opportunities for different kinds of faith-sharing groups to meet.  And the whole point is that we get in the practice of showing off Jesus to those we know, so that when God calls us to, we can share that faith with others whom we may not know as well.  

When Jesus shows off it is not about vainglory or bragging.  Jesus allows others to point Him out so that they can find happiness and joy.  May we show off Jesus by what we do and what we say.