God's Timing

Fourth Sunday of Lent–Second Scrutiny

    Why did it take so long?  A person might ask this question under any set of circumstances.  Maybe a person asks this question when he or she finally finds the right person to marry.  Maybe a person asks this question after discovering how to put behind harmful habits or patterns of behavior.  Maybe a person asks this after a particularly long train finally clears the railroad crossing.  Maybe it’s a seminarian after 8 or 10 years of seminary on the eve of his ordination to the priesthood.
    This question came to mind when reflecting on the healing of the man born blind, which we heard today in the Gospel.  We don’t know exactly how old the man was.  But he was old enough to give testimony to the Pharisees, which likely means that he was probably at least in adolescence.  But his parents were still alive, so he wasn’t exceedingly old.  For argument’s sake, let’s say he was around 20 or 25 years old.  So, why did it take 20 to 25 years for God to heal him?  Jesus said, “it is so that the works of God may be made visible through him.”  
    When we think about how things should go, we do so with our own vantage point and our own assumptions of how reality should be.  We can be like Samuel who presumes that God’s reasoning will be like ours.  But as the choice of King David showed, and as God Himself told Samuel, He does not see things the same ways we do.  Samuel thought that the best looking son should be king.  But God saw David’s heart, how devoted David was to God, and so chose the least-likely son of Jesse to be king.
    If you were to ask a seminarian, he would probably gladly eliminate a year, or two, or six from seminary formation, which can be academically rigorous and often pushes a man beyond what he thinks he can do.  But, of course, in the eight to ten long years of formation, the seminarian learns very important theology and how to best serve the people of God,  as well as how to celebrate the sacraments.  If you would have asked me in my second of eight years of seminary, I probably would have said I was ready enough to become a priest.  But I learned a lot about God, the Church, pastoral guidance, and how to be a good priest in the six years that followed.  Not every part of seminary was enjoyable, and sometimes not everything was even useful, but it helped form me into the priest I am today.
    It seems odd to think that it was not better for God to heal the man born blind earlier.  But who knows how receptive the man would have been to believe in Jesus later if God had healed the blind man earlier.  But because the healing happened at that point, not only did the blind man come to believe in Jesus, but it also helped the disciples to believe that Jesus is God.  
    Sometimes we might wonder about God’s timing.  We might think that something should have happened earlier, or that a different result should have happened.  And maybe in our mind our reasoning even makes sense.  But God sometimes sees things differently than we do.  And while it may seem cruel at times, God’s ways are always for our salvation and holiness and are made out of love.  God cannot do otherwise than act out of love, because God is love.  Anything else would be a contradiction of God’s nature.  
    Admittedly, this takes great trust and faith.  Because God is infinite and we are finite, we only get glimpses into His will, permissive or directive.  But when we trust in the love of God and His plan, we can accept timing that doesn’t make sense to us.  Sometimes the good is simply the growth in virtue that can only come through struggle.  A child often thinks that a parent is cruel when the child has to eat vegetables instead of ice cream.  But it’s not cruel, but rather helps the child eat food that will help it develop healthily.  We are God’s children, and our loving Father sometime wants us to develop differently than we want to develop.  Sometimes we would rather not grow in virtue, but God wants us to grow in virtue.  So we are allowed to go through crucibles which help us, by God’s grace, to grow in virtue and further our trust in God.
    My dear elect: as we celebrate the second scrutiny, you might have asked yourself on this or other occasions why God allowed you to wait until now to discover the truth and become a child of God and open your pathway to heaven.  I wish I could give you each a detailed answer, but what I can say is that, in Divine Providence, now was the perfect time so that the works of God might be made visible through you.  You see, when a person is baptized, especially adults, the faith of other Catholics is reinvigorated.  And perhaps other non-Catholics might decide to investigate becoming Catholic more because they see you becoming Catholic.  Who knows?  Maybe someone here needed your witness, your desire for baptism, to bolster his or her own faith.  If you would have come to faith earlier, perhaps that person would have lost out on what he or she needed.  But only God knows that.  We can only trust that, for you, now is the acceptable time; now is the day of salvation, as St. Paul says.

Bl. Solanus Casey

    There’s nothing wrong with wondering, ‘Why now?  Why not earlier?  Why not later?’  But, on this side of eternity, we will never know exactly why.  Still, today God invites us to trust in His loving will, His Divine Providence.  After we ask this question, our response should be, “God, I may never know why you chose to allow things to happen as you did.  But I praise you, God, for your will and how it moves me closer to the end you desire for me: eternal happiness in heaven.”  To quote Bl. Solanus Casey, “Blessed be God in all his designs.” 

Not Why, but What

Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
    Sometimes the way that God answers prayers doesn’t appear obvious.  Some people pray for a miraculous cure for their family member or friend and they get a miracle.  Other people say the same prayers and yet their loved one dies.  A natural disaster like a tornado or a hurricane demolishes one church, but another which is in the direct path has only minor damage.  Why?
    Some would like to attribute it to personal holiness.  And certainly being a friend of God, not only in name but also in deed, doesn’t hurt when asking God for a favor.  But that’s not what happened in the first reading.  The prophet Elijah went to Zarephath, which was a pagan town.  The widow he helped during the famine was not Jewish, but worshipped false gods.  Yet God answered her prayer for sustenance through Elijah, though many Jewish widows had to see their children die of starvation.  Jesus also speaks about how “there were many lepers in Israel during the time of Elisha the prophet; yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.”  

    So how does God answer prayers?  Why do the prayers of some get heard, while others seemed to be ignored?  God never ignores prayers, but He doesn’t always answer them as we want.  And, to be honest, we don’t often know why He answers some prayers as people want, but not others as they want.  Why God allows good things to happen to bad people, and bad things to happen to good people is a conundrum we won’t know on this side of eternity.  Sometimes we do see that an answered prayer helps a non-believe believe, or that even a seemingly-unanswered prayer doesn’t shake the faith of one who believes in God, who accepts even a negative outcome gracefully.  But often, we don’t have the answer to why.
    So what do we do?  We ask a different question.  And that question is not “why?”, but “what?”.  What do we know?  We know that God loves us, and that, as St. Paul says, “all things work for the good of those who love God.”  Whatever God wills for us, and even whatever He allows us to undergo, helps us to be the saints that He wants us to be.  Sometimes what God wills and what God allows seems beneficial to us, like an unexpected raise, or recovery from an illness.  Sometimes what God allows does not seem so beneficial.  But He desires that everything we might undergo, even the tragic death of a loved one, would increase or faith, hope, and love in Him.
    We also know, as we hear in the second reading, that Christ is forever interceding for us to our heavenly Father.  Though He is also God, Christ stands in the heavenly Jerusalem, the sanctuary not made with hands, bringing our prayers, made in the power of the Holy Spirit, to God the Father.  Christ offers Himself, not in a bloody way, but in an unbloody way, to the Father, bringing our humanity to God throughout all time.  He offers Himself always so that our sins might be taken away, just as He offered, once for all, the perfect sacrifice on the cross for the salvation of all the world.  And Christ, who shares our human nature, always asks the Father to give us what we need for our sanctification.  
    During this month of November, which we began with the celebration of All Saints, we also know that all the saints plead with God for us and our needs.  They do so, not to change the will of God, but to submit our desires and our prayers to the will of God which is always for our good.  I often ask St. Anthony to help me or others find things that they have lost.  Or maybe you pray to St. Monica to ask God to give your children who have left the faith the openness to the grace to return to His Holy Church.  Or maybe you ask St. Joseph to intercede for a loved one who is terminally ill for the grace of a happy death.  Or whatever other desire you might have.  The saints cannot do anything but that which is in accord with the will of God.  But they always ask God that our desires might be aligned with His so that our faith, hope, and love will find more strength and resiliency.  
    Lastly, we know that God desires that we trust Him.  The poor widow who gave all the money that she had trusted that God would provide.  God doesn’t always ask for money, though we should support the Church financially, but He does always ask for the gift of our entire selves.  He wants all of us, not just parts of us.  He even wants the sinful parts of us, so that He can transform them by the power of his grace and mercy.  Just as Christ offers all of who He is to the Father in the Holy Spirit, so the Father desires that we offer all of who we are, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to Him.  And when we offer all of who we are, God offers all of who He is, which is a treasure beyond imagining, not in the sense the world uses treasure, but in the sense of the deepest longing of our hearts.  
    We don’t always know God’s ways.  We may never fully understand why some prayers are answered the way we want, but others God does not answer the way we want.  But we know that God loves us, that He always acts for our good and salvation, and that the best gift we can give God is the gift of ourselves, trusting in His will and plan for our salvation.  

"Do Not Be Afraid!"

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  On 22 October 1978 in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City, 58-year-old Pope John Paul II, proclaimed to all those who attended his Inauguration Mass as Supreme Pontiff: “Do not be afraid.  Open wide the doors for Christ.”  The same message applies today as it did 46 years ago this October: “Do not be afraid.  Open wide the doors for Christ.”
    I do not say this flippantly, especially given the concerns that weigh on all of our hearts this week.  I say this, as I’m sure the saintly pontiff did, with St. Paul’s epistle the Romans in mind, as we heard today: “You did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption, through which we cry, ‘Abba, Father!’”  We don’t know what the future holds, but we do not need to be afraid, anymore than St. Paul was afraid; anymore than Pope St. John Paul II was afraid.  
    This does not mean that things would go easily.  St. Paul would eventually go to Rome and would be beheaded there simply for his faith in Jesus Christ.  Before that he had people betray him, abandon him, and he would get shipwrecked on his way to Rome.  Pope St. John Paul II would face head-on the communist government of the USSR.  He would be shot by an assassin on the feast of our Lady of Fatima in 1981.  While his mind remained sharp, his body would betray him until he couldn’t walk on his own and his speech was slightly less than a mumble.  Both St. Paul and the Successor of St. Peter would experience suffering.  But in any suffering they would cry out to their heavenly Father who would sustain them and help them to be a martyr, a witness, whether by the shedding of their blood or by the witness of patient suffering.
    Do we trust God to carry us through whatever may come next?  Are we children who belong in the Father’s house?  Or are we simply hired servants who come and go as it suits us?  Do we have confidence that any suffering, especially that which is unjust, will lead to our glorification?  Or are we afraid of the unknown and afraid of where the Father may lead us to go.
    Pope St. John Paul II reflected on being led somewhere strange in that same Mass.  He said:
 

The Lord addressed [Peter] with these words: “…when you were young you put on your own belt and walked where you liked; but when you grow old you will stretch out your hands and somebody else will put a belt around you and take you where you would rather not go’.  
Peter came to Rome!
…Perhaps the fisherman of Galilee did not want to come here.  Perhaps he would have preferred to stay there, on the shores of the Lake of Genesareth, with his boats and his nets.  But guided by the Lord, obedient to his inspiration, he came here!
According to an ancient tradition…, Peter wanted to leave Rome during Nero’s persecution.  But the Lord intervened: he went to meet him.  Peter spoke to him and asked, “Quo vadis, Domine?”–“Where are you going, Lord?”  And the Lord answered him at once: “I am going to Rome to be crucified again.”  Peter went back to Rome and stayed here until his crucifixion.

No doubt, Peter had reasons for wanting to flee Rome.  Think of the great work that Peter could have done if he escaped the persecution and hid in Italy, or maybe traveled to Spain like some have guessed St. Paul did for a time.  People were healed merely by the shadow of St. Peter, the Acts of the Apostles tells us.  And thousands converted by his preaching at Pentecost.  But that was not how Christ called Peter.  Christ did not call Peter to fear, but to trust in the will of the Father, even though that will included his crucifixion.
    God will never abandon us.  He has pledged Himself to us as our Father, our Abba, through holy Baptism.  No matter what we do, He will be there for us.  But will we stay loyal to Him?  When the going gets tough, will we go away?  Will we let Christ be crucified a second time because we give into fear and into our own wisdom?  Or will we be like Peter and stay in Rome, even when it means persecution and suffering?
    I often don’t understand God’s ways.  I don’t know why Christ allows this, but stops that.  There are moments where I think I can see His hand and the trajectory He has, but more often I simply have to make an act of faith that, as St. Paul said, all things will work for the good of those who love God.  But when tempted to run for the hills because things have gotten too tough, or because it would be easier to do something else, the words of St. Peter in John chapter six always pop up in my mind: “‘Master, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.’”  There is nowhere else to go for eternal life.  Do not be afraid.  Stay with Christ.  And, in the words of Julian of Norwich, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”  In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

Filling Up What is Lacking

Tenth Week in Ordinary Time-First Scrutiny Readings
    Mia, your preparation for baptism, which will happen at the end of this month, is so important that the Church has us take a break from the usual progression of readings and has us focus on thirsting for God, thirsting for Christ, especially as we heard about in the first reading and the Gospel.

    In the first reading, the people thirst for water because they have not yet arrived at the Promised Land.  And even though they complain and say that slavery seemed better, God gives the people water after Moses strikes a rock.  In the Gospel, the Samaritan woman thirsts for water because the town ostracizes her, and she has to draw water at the hottest time of the day, when no one else in their right mind would have drawn water.  But Jesus shows her that she truly wants something more than physical water.  She desires God.
    In both the first reading and the Gospel, the Chosen People and the Samaritan woman want someone to take care of them.  They want someone to provide them with water, but they don’t see how that can happen.  They don’t trust that God will care for them.
    In your life, you have come to acknowledge that your life lacks something.  Like so many times in life, it is an encounter with another who helps us to recognize what we are missing in our life.  And through your continued friendship with the Pietras family, you explored what might be lacking in your life.  You attended Mass with them, and eventually worked up the courage to acknowledge that you needed God, just like the Israelites did in the first reading; just like the Samaritan woman did in the Gospel.  
    But while you were thirsting for God like a deer that longs for streams of water, as Psalm 42 says, another thirst also existed.  When we have these readings we often focus on the person who will undergo the scrutiny, the time of prayer and acknowledgment of sin, and the thirst of that person.  But God also has been thirsting for you.  He has desired that you come to Him and discover the soul-saving relationship that He wants with you.  He wants you to become His child, not just because you are human and are made in His image and likeness, but by Holy Baptism, which configures you to Christ and makes you a child of God by grace, so that Christ can truly become your brother by adoption, and you can become a joint-heir to heaven and eternal life with Christ.
    That thirst of God comes from Jesus’ very lips as He was dying on the cross when He said, “‘I thirst.’”  St. Theresa of Calcutta, whom we often refer to as Mother Theresa, connected deeply with those words and wanted to satiate the thirst of Christ for souls by serving the poorest of the poor.  But it was also present in the first reading.  God wanted the Chosen People to trust in Him, to trust that He would provide for their every need.  God didn’t want the Israelites to doubt His love, or to think that their foreign masters cared for them more than He, their God and husband, did.  All they had to do was ask, and God would satisfy their every necessity.  
    It was also present in the Gospel, as Jesus drew out from the woman her desire for a savior, her desire for the Messiah.  The Samaritan woman had tried to plaster over that desire with physical desires, with liturgical arguments, and even with multiple marriages.  But none of them satisfied.  And Christ could cut through all of that to name her true desire, for God, and let her know that He could provide for what she needed.  
    Today, the Lord invites you to trust in Him, and allow Him to satisfy your every necessity.  Trusting is not always easy.  And the ancient enemy wants you to think that you have to take care of yourself.  He tempted our first parents, Adam and Eve, in the same way, and got them to doubt God’s care for them when He told them they could not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Adam and Eve doubted that God would give them what they needed, so they disobeyed Him, and they lost everything: they lost the innocence that was theirs so that they had to cover up their nakedness; they lost the ease of the garden providing for their every need so they had to toil for the food they would eat; they lost the painlessness of giving birth so that new children could only come through suffering; and they lost paradise, as God cast them out from the Garden of Eden.  That all happened because they did not trust God to provide for them.
    Today, over these next three weeks in particular, and for your entire life as a Catholic, God will invite you to trust Him.  Yes, we can cry out to God in our need, but He invites us to trust that He will provide for us.  Satan will try to get us to doubt God, but do not give in to those temptations.  Whatever ways you have doubted God before, trust in all the more now.  Thirst for His love; satiate His thirst for your love by trusting Him.  You are being led to the waters of new life, which when you drink from them you will never thirst again.  May your preparation for Holy Baptism strengthen your trust in God and in His will for the rest of your life!

Measuring Faith and Virtue

 Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  At the house of former parishioners in East Lansing who have become like an extended family to me, there are marks at one of the closet doors with names and dates.  Maybe your family has a similar tradition, where the grandchildren’s heights are measured from time to time, and noted on the frame of a door.  It’s been fun to see the grandkids come back and see their heights at different stages of their life.
    Of course, as a kid, you’re always making sure you’re standing up nice and strait, trying to get every extra centimeter that you can.  And, if you measure yourself too closely in time, you’re not going to see much, if any difference in your height. It may appear that you’re not growing at all!
    In our Gospel today we hear about a man who didn’t have to see to believe.  He first approaches the Lord for the healing of his son, and our Lord somewhat rebuffs his request: unless you see signs, you will not believe.  Already, the Savior is noting that the people won’t believe unless He does something spectacular.  Still, the man has faith, and begs our Lord to do something, otherwise his son will die.  Christ assures him that his son will live, though the man cannot see the proof of his faith until he returns home, and his son is fine.  In fact, the son is healed at the moment that our Lord had said to the man that his son would be healed.  That sign (the term the Evangelist John uses for miracles) then leads others to believe.
    Still, think about the man walking back to his home.  We don’t know how far it was, but the walk must have taken at least a day, as the man inquires when the healing happened, and at which hour it took place.  The answer was that it took place a day earlier.  From what we can tell in the Gospel, the man never doubted that what our Lord said would happen would, in fact, happen.  Walking home, perhaps we would wonder if our faith would really be rewarded, if this Jesus was truly able to do something, especially so far away.  Would we doubt?  Would we lower our expectations so that we wouldn’t be disappointed?  None of these things the man seems to do.
    When it comes to our faith and our trust in the Lord, are we like the man who has faith?  Or are we like the crowds that need to see signs before we believe?  Do we have confidence when God says something will happen, even if we do not immediately see the results?  
    In some ways, we can be like kids who want to measure faith every day like we measure our height.  And, like our height, we may not see very noticeable results.  We pray for trust in God, we pray to be open to His will, but each day we don’t seem to make much progress.  Or maybe it’s working on a particular virtue, or eliminating a particular vice.  We ask God to strengthen us to choose the good, or support us in times of temptation so that we don’t fall, but we see no real movement.  Are we willing to be patient, not only with God, but also with ourselves, in growth in holiness?
    I do not consider myself a millennial; nor do I see myself as part of generation X.  I’m the micro-, in-between generation that some call xenials (with an x).  I know life before everyone had a cell-phone; I’m comfortable with cassette tapes and VHS.  We couldn’t simply pause TV if we had to go the bathroom; you had to rush to the bathroom and hope you finished your business by the time the commercials were ending.  But I have, like many millennials and later generations, gotten used to getting what I want immediately, thanks to the Internet and having a phone with me almost all the time.  And so patience is not always my strong suit.  I do work at patience, and I ask God to help me, but day-by-day, I didn’t seem to make any progress.  
    One day, a few years ago, I flew to Australia, to visit a priest friend of mine in Sydney.  My flight left in early November.  The day my flight left was the day in 2019 when we got pounded with 8 or so inches of snow.  I arrived at Bishop airport in Flint, and my flight was delayed.  I waited all day in the airport, only to find out that the flight was cancelled, and I would lose a day of my vacation, as United tried to rebook a whole plane of customers who had to go to Chicago, and then continue their travels.  Normally I would have been upset and frustrated.  I would not have normally been calm and collected when talking to the gate agents.  But, for whatever reason, I was patient.  And that virtue that I had been working on, I noticed that I was better, after all those years of praying for more patience.  God had answered my prayers, but I had to trust in His timing, and the work that had to be done in my soul before I would be open to that virtue.  
    Can we trust God, even when we don’t see miracles, even when we don’t see the work that He is doing?  God’s work is so often invisible, and so our cooperation in that work is also an act of faith.  We do have to go out on a limb to have confidence that God will change us, He will perfect us, as and if we allow Him to do so.  We may not see much progress day-by-day, but after a year or more, I’m willing to bet that we will notice that we are different, that we have grown in virtue.  Be like the man in today’s Gospel: no matter how long the walk takes to see the fruit of your faith, do not doubt God, but have confidence that, if we but trust in God to transform our lives, He will not disappoint us.  He will, in fact, outdo our expectations: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

Giving God Your Nothing Left

 Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time
    People think priests have a hard life.  And, in some ways, we do.  We’re on call 24/6 (I do get one day off per week), it’s not uncommon to have evening meetings after a full day of work, because that’s when people are most often free to meet.  Because people have their own ideas (sometimes based in theology, sometimes not) about how long homilies should be, how warm (or cold) the church should be, what songs should be sung, etc., the priest often gets peppered with complaints from all sides.  So yeah, it is tough at times, but we are also taken care of and loved pretty well.
    I think parents have a hard life.  If it put myself in their shoes, I wouldn’t want to be working all day, probably putting up with many similar things as priests in terms of working conditions, complaints, expectations, etc., and then come home, only to have to prepare some dinner, often from scratch, clean-up after dinner, help the kids with homework, and then, hopefully, have some time to catch up with a few things around the house, maybe have a little alone time with the spouse, before going to bed to start all over on the next day.  That sounds like a tough vocation!!
    I know I have been, and I’m sure parents have been, at the point where I feel like I’ve got nothing left.  Maybe it’s been a long day, or there’s a long day coming on the following day, or an earlier start, and I’m exhausted, and then there’s a call to go to the hospital, or, because I work with MSP, to go out to a homicide or meet with a Trooper who can use some comforting words.  And I know parents are in a similar boat so frequently.  So you give, even though you think you’ve got nothing left to give, and somehow, it works out to be enough.
    The same was true for the widows we heard about in the first reading and the Gospel.  Can you imagine being in a famine, and all you have left is a handful of flour, just enough to make a couple of cakes for you and your son, and then this man of God comes and asks you to make some for him?  I think if I did that, I’d be run out of the house, maybe even the parish and county!  But the woman gives, and Elijah makes sure that the woman doesn’t run out during the famine.  She gave beyond what she thought she could, and God rewarded that generosity.

Examples of the widow's coins

    Or in the Gospel, the widow is giving two coins that she needs probably to feed herself to the temple, to offer to God something.  The value wasn’t large, but the sacrifice was her everything.  She gave, even after she had nothing left.  And yet, the Lord commends her gift, more than those who were putting in large amounts of money, because she was giving when she had nothing left, while the others were giving while making sure they had something left over.  
    God invites us to trust in Him as we give to Him.  And I’m not talking only about money (though, we’re always happy to receive that from you).  I’m talking about giving to God time and energy and whatever is going on in your life, even if you don’t think you’re giving God much, even if you feel like what you have to give to God isn’t worth giving.
    Maybe life is crushing you right now, and it takes all you can muster to come to Mass.  It would be so much easier to stay home and rest.  And yet, you came to give God that little bit.  And God will reward that.  Or maybe you’re just trying to make sure your kid doesn’t run away during Mass, or trying to make sure that he or she is not a major distraction (though, truth be told, I am rarely distracted by kids and love having them around at Mass).  You don’t think you’re getting much out of Mass, but you’re giving to God what little attention you can call up while you supervise your child at Mass.  And God accepts that and makes it a loving sacrifice, received with gratitude because it’s your gift.
    Parents often get gifts from their children that are made at school that are not that expensive, and maybe are not Michelangelo sculptures or Rembrandt paintings.  But those are still treasured gifts (how many moms have kept those little gifts throughout the years!?) because the child is giving what he or she can.  The same is true for God: when we give God what we can, He treasures it as the perfect gift.
    God even receives the fallen parts of us, our sins.  Through the Sacrament of Penance (aka confession or reconciliation), God deigns to take our brokenness and failings from us, so that we can be made whole.  I know that sometimes it seems like the sins may be small, or maybe the sins are awkward to acknowledge, or maybe it’s just that we confess the same sins over and over again.  In any case, God wants to receive that as our small gift, the last little bit we have left, so that it doesn’t stand in the way of our relationship with Him.  Obviously our sins are not good; they’re not our finest moments as human beings.  But God takes it upon Himself so that we might have life in place of death, grace in place of sin, light in place of darkness.
    I don’t know about you, but I feel like more and more people are at their wit’s end these days.  I meet people who feel like they have nothing left to give.  At that moment, offer to God that nothing, that fatigue, that exhaustion.  It may not seem like much, but neither did the two coins offered by the widow in the Gospel, or the handful of flour offered by the widow in the first reading.  But if it’s what you have, God will accept and bless it, and will make it enough.

"Do You Trust Me?"

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

It doesn’t seem like that long ago, but the Disney version of “Aladdin” came out 25 years ago!  Robin Williams is the voice of the Genie, and it has the famous song, “A Whole New World.”  That song takes place on Aladdin’s magic carpet, and it begins right after Aladdin, pretending to be Prince Ali Abawa, asks Princess Jasmine, whom he likes, “Do you trust me?”  Those are the exact same words that Aladdin asks Princess Jasmine when she is pretending to be a commoner and she is running away from trouble in the marketplace: “Do you trust me?”

“Trust,” we so often say, “is earned, not given.”  Or we might say, “Trust, but verify.”  But in our Gospel, St. Peter takes neither of those approaches.  Jesus has done some amazing things for Peter (helps him catch fish even though they had been fishing all night; changes water into wine), but it’s not clear that Peter knows exactly who Jesus is.  It’s not for another chapter in Matthew’s Gospel that we hear Peter confess that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God.  And it’s clear that most of the apostles think that the vision of Jesus is a ghost, not the real thing.  Peter had no way to verify if it truly was Jesus.  In fact, in Peter’s act of faith (which, admittedly, falters), Peter walking on water was the way he was going to verify it was Jesus.

But Peter must have trusted that it was truly Jesus, and that if Jesus told him to walk on water, then walk on water was what Peter would do.  Think of all the temptations that Peter had before he even got out of the boat: they were being tossed about by waves, it was the middle of the night, and the apostles were all terrified.  And yet Peter stepped out onto the water because Jesus, or something that Peter thinks might be Jesus, tells him to do so.  

But as soon as Peter stops trusting Jesus, as soon as the realities around Peter become the focus and not Jesus, Peter starts to sink.  But even then, Jesus verifies and earns Peter’s trust, by reaching out to save Peter when he cries out in fear.

Do we trust Jesus?  Or do we feel Jesus hasn’t earned our trust, or we need to verify before we can trust Jesus?  Would we be willing to step out on water (and not the frozen kind) to walk to Jesus, or would the fear of drowning keep us from even putting one foot over the side of the boat?

Trusting God can seem hard.  It doesn’t mean life always goes well.  Jesus had to entrust Himself to God the Father even on the cross.  Temptation eats at Jesus, as we hear Him say, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”  But even though tempted, Jesus doesn’t give in to His fears, and will also say, “Into your hands I commend [or entrust] my spirit.”  Even as He is dying, Jesus shows us how to trust God in horrible circumstances.  

What makes it especially difficult to trust is when we feel that we have been let down.  We all have that one person, maybe a former friend, who has let us down, betrayed us, and not been there when we needed him or her.  Maybe that friend was even a spouse.  And now we find it hard to trust again.  That fear of betrayal, of abandonment, can easily bleed into our relationship with God.  We show up, but it’s on our terms, not God’s.  We have expectations about how things should be, and if they’re not fulfilled, then we’ll cut bait and run.  

For many of us, we trust God with certain things: secrets, hopes, fears, etc.  But maybe there’s an area of our life where we don’t trust God.  Maybe we don’t trust God when it comes to money.  Maybe we don’t trust God to guide our relationship.  Maybe we don’t trust God when it comes to conceiving a child or how many kids we should have.  Maybe we don’t trust God to truly forgive us.  All of those are very common ways that we think we know better than God, or we don’t want to involve God in those parts of our lives.  But to that fear, Jesus invites us to trust in Him and walk on water.

Maybe we don’t trust that God will be enough for us, or we don’t trust that we can be alone with God.  In our first reading, Elijah heard God not in the dramatic aspects of life–the strong and heavy wind, the crushing of rocks, the earthquake, the fire–but in a tiny whispering sound.  The only way to hear that tiny whisper is to keep silence.  If we really want to know if we trust God, try being silent with Him.  Silence can be the scariest thing in the world, because we might actually hear God, and maybe we don’t trust that what He says to us will be for our good.  It’s so much easier to play with our phones, to listen to music, to distract ourselves, than to be silent with God.  

After the music stops and while I’m still purifying the sacred vessels (or as some say, cleaning the dishes), can you simply kneel or sit in silence and wait to hear God, whom you have just received in the Eucharist?  It would be comical if it weren’t so sad, how many times someone feels like they have to break the silence by a “cough” or another noise (and I’m talking about adults, not kids).  But it is in the silence where we can so often hear God speaking to us, inviting us to trust Him in every aspect of our lives, not just the ones we want.

Take time in your life for silent prayer with God, a time, maybe just 5 minutes, to entrust yourself to God.  For some of us it may be as scary as stepping out onto the water like St. Peter did.  But remember that God will not let us drown.

Today at the end of Mass, we will also, along with every other parish in the Diocese of Lansing, entrust our parish and all who belong to it, to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in an act of consecration.  In a formal way we give ourselves over to God for His glory, rather than our own plans.  We do so on the 100th Anniversary of the apparition of our Blessed Mother to the shepherd children at Fatima.  We entrust our lives to her and ask her to help us to say yes to God, just as she did at every moment of her life.  There is more information in the narthex if you are interested.  May we truly trust in the love of our Lord Jesus Christ, and His Immaculate Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Oregon Trail, Age of Empires, and Clash of Clans

Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

When I was in middle school, probably my favorite computer game was Oregon Trail.  We didn’t have the greatest graphics then, everything was still green and black, so it wasn’t too life-like, but it was fun trying to take settlers from St. Louis to Oregon, without them dying from dysentery or starving to death because there was no food to hunt.  When I was in college, graphics had improved a lot, and my new favorite game was Age of Empires, where you got to build civilizations and defend from bands of foreign armies.  There were many a Friday night where I was playing with or against fellow seminarians on our dorm network.  Now that I’m an adult, I’ve moved on to much more sophisticated things, like Clash of Clans.  In this game, you build a city with walls and attack and defend from other players.  You can also hold mock wars with other groups, and win gold, elixir, and dark elixir.

The common thread in all of these games is the ability to control persons or civilizations.  Perhaps I have a bit of a control-complex, but it’s fun to help civilizations grow and use them to attack other groups.  There’s something fun about being in control.

But Jesus reminds us today that control in life is limited to very few things.  In most aspects of our life, we don’t have any control.  But Jesus tells us not to worry or be anxious.  If you’re like me, that’s easier said than done.  In a more and more chaotic world, the temptation is to try to gain more and more control over our circumstances in life.  

Now certainly, Jesus is not telling us that we should ignore our responsibilities in life and just let things go in favor of seeing how God works.  Jesus is not telling us that we no longer need to go to work, no longer need to pay our bills, no longer need to do our homework, etc.  Those are our responsibilities as part of being a parent or student.  

But think about all the other things we worry about over which we have no control whatsoever.  Probably one of the biggest is what people think of us.  How much time do we spend wondering what someone would think if we do a certain good or neutral action?  We can spend so much time trying to imagine what other people are going to say or think about us that we miss the opportunity to do the good that God wants us to do.

Another area that people commonly worry about is the state of the world.  There are very few things that we are going to do that will have a direct impact on our nations or other nations.  But, if we stop worrying about it and “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” in our lives, then we will be doing what we can, however indirectly, to bring peace and truth and justice to the world.  We can’t control the actions of our nation or other nations, and so should not worry about it.  That’s not to say we shouldn’t do anything about it.  But we shouldn’t be anxious about things over which we cannot control.  We can control our own actions, how we treat others, and so should do our best to live a peaceful and holy life.

Another area of worry is children who do not practice their faith.  Even if they’re not our kids, so many of us at least know someone who has stopped practicing their Catholic faith, and people can spend no small amount of time wondering about where they went wrong, what more they could have done, etc.  We shouldn’t worry about that.  Again, this doesn’t mean we should do nothing.  What we can do is first and foremost, pray for that person.  Spend a good deal of time praying for that person.  Maybe even offer your Lenten penances for that person.  And then, as you feel moved by the Holy Spirit, invite them to come to confession with you, and then Mass.  If they decline, let them know the offer is always there.  

Trust in God is also important in the other areas of our life: marriage, how many kids to have, whether or not to send those kids to a Catholic school.  Certainly, in all those decisions, we should use the gift of reason that God gave us, as well as the teachings of the Church.  But all those decisions also rely on trust in God: trust that we will choose the right person to marry, the person with whom we want to be a saint; trust that, following the teachings of the Church and using Natural Family Planning, that if God surprises us with another child, we will have the ability to love and care for that child; trust that, even if we have to give up a few of our creature comforts, God will help us provide a quality, Catholic education to our children.  

Trust can be hard.  It’s easier to try to control things.  But if we really think about, there is very little that we actually control.  If we rely on the one who actually does have control, then we can find greater happiness from not worrying and wasting energy about things beyond us.  Simply follow the advice of Jesus: “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.”

Who is your Lover?

Third Sunday of Lent

            “Jesus said to her, ‘Go call your husband and come back.’  The woman answered and said to him, ‘I do not have a husband.’  Jesus answered her, ‘You are right in saying, “I do not have a husband.”  For you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband.’”  This whole situation of having five husbands and a lover probably strikes us as odd (I hope it strikes us as odd).  Now, to be fair, we don’t know what happened to the Samaritan woman’s previous five husbands.  Our first guess is probably that she was the Elizabeth Taylor of her day.  But perhaps they just died, and she was just trying to see if her current lover could survive.  I guess we’ll never know.

            But having five husbands shouldn’t seem odd to us, no matter how the situation unfolded.  It shouldn’t seem odd to us because all of us here have, maybe not five husbands, but five lovers.  Now, before you prepare to check your husband’s email account or browsing history of your wife on the internet, I don’t mean that kind of lover.  I mean someone or something that we give our love to, in place of God, just like the Samaritan woman.

           

The Prophet Ezekiel

God, throughout the Old Testament, used the metaphor of a marital relationship for the relationship between Himself and Israel.  The whole Book of Hosea follows that metaphor.  Perhaps my favorite use of this metaphor, though, is from the Book of Ezekiel, chapter 16.  It’s a long chapter, so I won’t quote it all, but just the first few verses will suffice:

on the day you were born your navel cord was not cut; you were not washed with water or anointed; you were not rubbed with salt or wrapped in swaddling clothes.  No eye looked on you with pity or compassion to do any of these things for you.  Rather, on the day you were born you were left out in the field, rejected.  Then I passed by and saw you struggling in your blood, and I said to you in your blood, “Live!”  I helped you grow up like a field plant, so that you grew, maturing into a woman…but still you were stark naked.  I passed by you again and saw that you were now old enough for love.  So I spread the corner of my cloak over you to cover your nakedness; I swore an oath to you and entered into covenant with you…and you became mine.  Then I bathed you with water, washed away your blood, and anointed you with oil.  I clothed you with an embroidered gown, put leather sandals on your feet; I gave you a fine linen sash and silk robes to wear.  I adorned you with jewelry, putting bracelets on your arms, a necklace about your neck…earrings in your ears, and a beautiful crown on your head.  Thus you were adorned with gold and silver; your garments made of fine linen, silk, and embroidered cloth.  Fine flour, honey, and olive oil were your food.  You were very, very beautiful, fit for royalty…But you trusted in your own beauty and used your renown to serve as a prostitute.  You poured out your prostitution on every passerby.

God says how he loved Israel and cared for her, then wooed her, and married her, but then, after all that care, she went after other lovers.  God uses this image of an unfaithful spouse to describe Israel in their unfaithfulness.

            We see that unfaithfulness in the first reading.  God had freed the People of Israel from slavery in Egypt.  He had demolished Pharaoh’s army in the Red Sea, as Israel passed through dry-shod.  And yet, Israel longed for life back in Egypt.  She longed for her foreign lover, in whom she put her trust, rather than on God, her spouse.  And so they complained that they were dying of thirst.  They didn’t trust in God to provide them with water, even though He had saved them from their enemies. 

            So we can read the Samaritan woman’s five former husbands and one lover in an analogical sense.  They are the things in which we put our trust.  But, eventually, our lovers abandon us, just as they abandoned the Samaritan woman.  You see, she was drawing water at the hottest time of the day.  Likely, she was doing this to avoid the dirty looks from the other villagers, who looked down on her for having five husbands and a lover.  She had to draw water at the worst time of the day because her five husbands and lover would not draw water for her.

            But, as she meets Jesus, she finds someone who says He will be able to giver her living water, so she does not have to draw water again.  He promises her more.  She is skeptical.  And she becomes quite dodgy as he presses her on her life, and invites her to abandon her other lovers for Him, the Divine Bridegroom, who truly loves her, because He created her in love.

            What are the lovers in our life?  What do we value more than God?  What has promised to quench our thirst, yet leaves us drawing water at the hottest time of the day?  Maybe it’s financial security that we feel will take care of us.  Maybe it’s health.  Maybe it’s a job.  Maybe it’s sports.  But if it’s not Jesus, then it won’t really be there for us.  In the end, everything else fades away.  All our other lovers will abandon us, and will not take care of us right when we feel like we need them the most.  But Jesus, our Divine Bridegroom, will always be there for us, giving us living water, the gift of the Holy Spirit, so that we are never thirsty again.  As we hear God speak from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, chapter 55, verses 1-2: “All you who are thirsty, come to the water!  You who have no money, come, buy grain and eat; Come, buy grain without money, wine and milk without cost!  Why spend your money for what is not bread; your wages for what does not satisfy?  Only listen to me, and you shall eat well, you shall delight in rich fare.”  Jesus is the living water.  Receive from Him, trust in Him alone, and thirst no more!!

"As for me and my household, we will serve the LORD"

Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time

I think that people generally like to be the best or the biggest.  We like the ability to quantify groups, teams, positions to see if we are the biggest or doing the best.  For example: we rejoice that MSU Men’s Basketball has made it to the NCAA tournament for 15 consecutive years under the leadership of Tom Izzo.  Politicians, especially in this election year, rely on polls to see how many people agree with their position, and if they need to tweak or change their position to become more popular.  I can even fall into this trap at times.  When others ask me how many parishioners we have, I am proud to announce to them that we are the largest parish in the Diocese of Lansing, with 3500 families plus the students who live on campus.  Numbers are great, and we can want to pin our futures and actions on those numbers.

But the truly successful in Scripture do not do that.  In fact, they tend to throw any quantifiable data out the door and just trust in God.  Take Joshua from our first reading: at the end of the campaigns of the Chosen People in the Holy Land, Joshua sets before the Chosen People the choice to be faithful to God or to the pagan gods whom they had just put behind them.  Joshua knows the fickle character of the people.  He had seen how they rejoiced when they fled the slavery of Egypt, but how they also wanted to go back when things got tough.  So Joshua gives them the choice of following the God who had brought them safely from the land of Egypt and had settled them in the Promised Land, or serving their pagan gods, who were no gods at all.  “As for me and my household,” Joshua says, “we will serve the LORD.”  Joshua decides that a future with God is where he will make his claim, no matter what the others choose to do.  He is not concerned about how many join with him.

Jesus also seems to be oblivious to numbers.  He had just told the Jews that unless they eat His flesh and drink His blood they will not have life in them.  And the Jews are pretty much all disgusted and walk away.  The teaching on the Eucharist is too much for them.  But Jesus does not run after them, shouting, “Wait!  Lemme explain this a little more!  I was talking sacramentally!!”  Even with his chosen band, the Twelve Apostles, He simply says, “‘Do you also want to leave?’”  He doesn’t change his teaching because of low polling results because His teaching is Truth, with a capital T.  Jesus has come to reveal the Father and the Father’s love and truth.  If people accept it, that would be great!  But if they don’t, Jesus still is faithful to the message God the Father gave Him to proclaim.

It is tough not to care about the results.  It is tough to be concerned primarily with the Truth.  But, if we are to be like Jesus, then that is our call.  Our hopes, our futures, cannot be attached to any numbers.  We cannot choose Jesus simply because a lot of other people have.  We must be personally convicted that Jesus is Lord, and that He founded only one Church that faithfully passes on His message in its entirety, or else the teachings of Jesus will be too hard for us and we, like the Jews, will leave.  

Even today, Jesus still teaches difficult things with which our current culture is very uncomfortable.  Many people today will say, “What do you mean I have to go to Church every Sunday and Holyday?!?  I can worship God wherever I want!”; “I have to get married in a church building if I’m Catholic?  But it’s so beautiful on the beach!”; “Marriage is only between one man and one woman for life?  How insensitive to those who have same-sex attractions!”; “A male-only priesthood?  Don’t you know Augusta just opened up to women members?  Get with the times!”; “the Church needs to stay out of my bedroom!”  Of course, there are so many more.  And yet, the teaching of Jesus through His Church remains firm, and is not based upon public perception.

It takes a lot of faith and trust to care not about public opinion but about truth.  It puts us under the order (subordinate) of another.  This is what St. Paul tells us in the second reading: “Brothers and sisters,” that is, men and women, “be subordinate to each other out of reverence for Christ.”  Not only are we to pin our hopes and futures on Jesus, but we are to live out His life of service towards each other.  We are voluntarily to be subordinate to each other, just as Christ was subordinate to God the Father, and the Church is subordinate to Jesus Christ.  

When we hear this reading, we may think that this was just a chauvinist writing.  But St. Paul calls both men and women to subordinate themselves to the other, especially in marriage, which witnesses the relationship of Jesus with the Church.  Of course, the husbands many smile when they hear the line, “Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord,” and the women may bristle.  But St. Paul also outlines how the husbands are to subordinate themselves to their wives, by telling them to love their wives as Christ does the Church.  There was nothing that Jesus would not give for His Bride, the Church.  He lowered Himself for her by taking on our human nature; He was constantly at her service; and, in the greatest act of subordination, He gave up His very life and descended to the depths of Hell so that she could live and not have to die.  That is certainly subordination on the part of the man.  

Every day we have the choice: do we follow the teaching that is most popular?  Do we join the ecclesial community that has the biggest following?  Or do we receive the Scriptures, “not [as] a human word, but, as it truly is, the word of God,” as St. Paul says?  Whether it’s the teaching on the Eucharist, or marriage, or sexual morality, or whatever, Jesus, even today through His Church, teaches us the Truth that the Father has given Him.  And Jesus asks us, “‘Do you also want to leave?’”  May our answer be the same as St. Peter: “‘Master, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.  We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.’”

Jumping In

Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Because February, while technically the shortest month of the year, is somehow, ironically, the longest month of the year, and because we seem to be getting pounded with snow again and again, it’s nice to remember what summer’s like, to give us hope that someday, hopefully soon, the snow will melt, warmer, sunnier days will return, and we’ll be able go outside and participate in our favorite summer activities.

One of those activities that can be a lot of fun is swimming, either at a lake, or at a pool.  At a pool, its interesting to see a young boy or young girl, usually with little floaties around their arms to help them float, waiting to jump in while mom or dad is ready to catch them.  You can almost see the thought process as the scenario unfolds: are these small orange things really going to keep me from drowning?  Is dad or mom going to catch me?  If they do catch me, can I be sure that they’re not going to let go?  But then how rewarding is it when they take the leap, splash into the water into mom or dad’s arms, and realize that jumping in can be great fun, and they don’t have to be afraid. 

In many ways, the leap of faith that Jesus asks us to take in today’s Gospel is even greater than that leap of faith a child takes when it decides to jump into its parent’s arms in the pool.  Jesus tells us, “do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear.”  ‘Sure Jesus,’ we might say to ourselves, ‘easy enough for you to say.  But you’re not living in this economy.  You don’t have to put food on the table for a spouse and kids.’  And yet, to many of the people Jesus was talking to, their financial lives were much more fragile than ours.  There was no St. Vincent de Paul society to help them out, no Meals on Wheels, no welfare.  In Jesus’ time, if you were somehow unable to work, much of which was simply to get by, then you had your family to back you up.  If you had no family, then you were really out of luck.  No one had your back.

And to those people Jesus says, “Don’ worry about food, drink, clothing, or life.”  The leap of faith that that decision takes is enormous, because we can be afraid.  We can be like scared, little children, sitting alongside the pool, wondering if our mom or dad is going to catch us.  But, of course, God the Father, the source of all fatherhood and motherhood, is never going to let us drown.  He is always there to catch us.  If He weren’t, we would cease to exist.  If His love were not sustaining us each and every millisecond of our lives, there would be no us.  And, besides, as our first reading tells us, even if our mothers forsook us, and what a horrific thing that would be, the Lord would never forsake us.  Even if our earthly parents let us go underneath the waves, even then the Lord would never forsake or forget us.  He loves you, an individual, with all of who He is.

And what is the proof of that love?  Jesus tells us that, as far as food goes, God makes sure that the birds of the air have food each day.  They don’t have freezers or microwaves; they don’t have cupboards where they can store canned goods.  And yet, God provides for them anyways.  And are we not more important than sparrows?  Certainly.  Jesus also uses the example of the flowers of the field.  They don’t worry if Abercrombie is in this year, or if this pant/shirt combo from Hollister is sheik.  And yet, even Solomon, the richest man in all Israel could not make clothes as beautiful as those flowers are.  And if the flowers, which are here today and withered tomorrow are clothed so, how much more will God make sure that we have proper clothing; maybe not Abercrombie or Hollister, but clothes to keep us warm in these winter months, clothes to help us do our jobs.

Does this mean that we can just put everything on Visa because it’s everywhere we want to be?  Does this mean that for everything else we use MasterCard?  Does this mean that we don’t leave home without our American Express?  No, buying on credit is not the answer.  God will not pay off our credit cards.  But if we, the Body of Christ, take Jesus’ teachings to heart, then no one will worry about food, clothing, or the basic necessities.  If we “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,” then we will make sure that, after we have provided for our families with the capital that comes from our work, no matter how exalted or base it may be, that what we have left will go to support St. Vincent de Paul, food banks, and other charitable organizations that provide for people in their need.  If we are first seeking the kingdom, then we are not just in it for ourselves.  The way that we treat others, the way that we love others, becomes paramount. 

But that only happens if God is our Master.  We cannot serve two masters.  You will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other.  Who is our master?  Is it God or MasterCard?  Is it God or our jobs?  Is it God or our money?  The answer to that question can be discerned by evaluating what we love most.  What comes first in our lives?

Today we are standing at the edge of the pool, and God our Father is standing in the water.  Do we stay on the concrete, on the security we think we have built with our hands?  Or do we take God at His word and jump in, trusting that our Father will not let us drown and that, in fact, the excitement at jumping in far outweighs the false security we think we have on the concrete edge?  The Father is waiting.  Jump into His arms.