What Makes You Follow Him?

Solemnity of St. Matthew
    Whenever I think about the apostles following Jesus, I wonder what it was about the Lord that made a group of men leave everything they knew behind and follow a rabbi who had, from a worldly perspective nothing.  Now, in some cases there were miracles that helped.  Think about Peter, who participated in a miraculous catch of fish when Jesus told him to go out into deep waters to fish.  Or Nathaniel, to whom Jesus said that He had seen Nathaniel sitting underneath a fig tree.  And maybe we might even suggest with Andrew, Philip, James, and John, who had been disciples of St. John the Baptist, that having your rabbi basically say, “Follow him,” would make it easier when the Lord invited you to follow Him.

    But with St. Matthew, our parish patron whose solemnity we celebrate today, as with other apostles, there doesn’t seem to be any miracle or direction given by another.  Jesus simply says, “‘Follow me,’” and St. Matthew follows Jesus.  What was it in the look or the tone of voice or maybe simply the way Christ carried Himself that made St. Matthew want to leave behind the lucrative, albeit despised, job of collecting taxes for Rome?
    No matter what it was that drew St. Matthew to Jesus, what made Matthew a great evangelist and a martyr was the witness to the Resurrection.  He knew that Christ had died, even if he didn’t see it with his own eyes.  St. John, his fellow Apostle and later fellow Gospel writer, did see it with his own eyes, and certainly reported it back to the group.  And then, three days later, they saw Jesus, all Eleven of the Apostles (because Judas had killed himself), risen from the dead, but with the marks of His crucifixion.  And then, fifty days later, the Apostles received the gift of the Holy Spirit so that they had power to spread the Good News that God, in Jesus, had conquered sin and death, and that no one needed fear anything, because God had shown His power over all things and would raise up those who followed Him and were baptized.  Matthew took seriously the last words that he recorded in his Gospel account, that the mission of the followers of Jesus was to go and make disciples of all nations and baptize them in the name of the Trinity.
    What makes us follow Jesus?  Many, if not all, of us were likely baptized as infants.  Our parents chose to configure us to Christ to give us the grace we needed to live a truly happy life.  Just like they chose, before we could choose, what foods to eat, what clothes to wear, what activities we could or could not do, as a sign of their love for us, so they chose to claim us for Christ.  But at some point, we have to also accept our call and follow the Lord.  Being a disciples is not something to which we default.  It has to be a choice, and a choice that we make after encountering the Lord.  Christ invites us, too, each day, to follow Him, but we have to actually get up and follow Him, or risk missing out because we would rather have the mediocrity of the known rather than the sometimes uncomfortable and dangerous adventure of leaving all behind to follow Jesus.
    So where have we encountered the Lord?  When did we hear His call?  It’s important to reflect back on a moment where we encountered the Lord, because it gives us strength for the often hum-drum ways we live our lives, the times where the Lord does not appear to us as powerfully as He sometimes does.  
    And if we’re afraid that we haven’t had a chance to encounter the Lord, do not fear!  Because each time you come to Mass, you encounter the same Lord who called St. Matthew; the same Lord who died on the cross; the same Lord who rose from the dead and sent the Holy Spirit to strengthen His disciples and give them what they needed to share the Good News.  Each time you come to Mass, Jesus proves His love for us in giving us a taste of His Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension, which gives us eternal life within us.  God knows we need Him and so He gives Himself to us to be closer to us than any other person could ever be, even a spouse. Even in these simply, 8 a.m. morning Masses, the God of all glory comes down on this altar to make Himself present to us and to invite us to follow Him.  And if, perchance, you doubt this, as can sometimes happen, then during the Eucharistic Prayer, ask the Lord in the silence of your hearts: “Reveal yourself to me, Lord, and call me to follow you.”  I promise that if you ask in sincerity of heart and make those few words your own, Christ will answer you.  He will reveal Himself to you and call you to follow Him.  Again, all you have to say in silence is: “Reveal yourself to me, Lord, and call me to follow you.”  Especially as you first see the Body and Blood of the Lord, as I turn to you and say, “Behold the Lamb of God,” God will be revealing Himself, and may even grant you a miraculous appreciation of this through a special gift, if that is what you need to deepen your faith and relationship with Him.
    God calls you today to follow Him, just like He called St. Matthew.  God has filled you with the Holy Spirit through the Sacrament of Confirmation, so that you have what it takes to share with others the good news of the Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of the Lord, and that He has freed us from sin and death.  What will you do?  Will you stay at your customs post?  Or will you get up and follow Him?

Faithful to the Covenant

Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  When it comes to family or friends, we probably have some sort of red line that, if crossed, would mean a break in that relationship.  For me, loyalty and honesty are two virtues that I insist on in order to maintain a friendship.  If I find out a person has lied to me, or has been disloyal, I find it very difficult to continue that friendship.  It may seem fine at the surface for a little while, but I tend to disengage that friendship until the friendship dies from lack of contact.
    Thanks be to God that our God does not operate in the same way!  God remains faithful to the covenant He entered upon, even when we don’t hold up our end of the bargain.  And, in fact, God outdoes Himself by not only upholding a covenant that we break time and time again, but even giving us a better covenant than we had at the beginning.
    St. Paul mentions in our epistle how God made a covenant with Abraham and to his seed.  What was that covenant?  In Genesis, chapter 15, God promised to be Abraham’s God and to give Abraham the land of Canaan, and to multiply Abraham’s descendants so that they would be as numerous as the stars in the sky.  God’s People were then to simply follow God and His will.  To enact this covenant, God asked Abraham to cut a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, and a three-year-old ram in two, and then to sacrifice a turtledove and a young pigeons as well.  This action, sociologists tell us, was to signify the penalty if either party broke their side of the bargain: what happened to the animals (death) would happen to the one who broke the covenant.  As another sign, God commanded Abraham to be circumcised and to circumcise all the male descendants as a sign that they belonged to God.
    The first few generations did ok: Isaac, Jacob, and his twelve sons (though the twelve sons did try to kill their brother, but instead sold him into slavery into Egypt, which ended up saving the day).  But then the people, now enslaved in Egypt themselves, forgot the Lord.

    So God gives a new covenant, the Law, to instruct the people on how to be God’s Chosen People.  The blood of animals is sprinkled on them to join them all to the covenant and to again reaffirm that whoever breaks the covenant deserves death, and the people agree because God has saved them from slavery and from Pharaoh’s army at the Red Sea..  Before Moses has time to communicate this new law, they build a false god, a golden calf, and begin to worship it.  Fail.
    But God remains faithful to His covenant, and leads them to the Promised Land, even though they complain regularly that the food isn’t good, or that Moses has too much power, or that they’re going to die of thirst.  Time and time again, the people do not live up to their side of the covenant.  Even at the door of the Promised Land, the people lose faith that God can grant them entry and push out foreign armies, even though they had just destroyed a couple armies of pagan kingdoms, and so they have to wander in the desert for 40 more years.  
    But God remains faithful to His covenant, and gives them the Promised Land, displacing kingdoms and entire peoples.  But even then, the Chosen People follow false gods, then get into trouble, then are oppressed, then cry out to God.  And God saves them time and time again.
    God sends prophets to remind them to follow the law, to care for the poor and the orphans, to live justly and walk humbly with God.  But they always end up rejecting God and not living according to the covenant.  And while God does allow the consequences of their disobedience and idolatry to fall on them (like the exile and dispersion of the ten northern tribes and the destruction of the temple and the exile into Babylon of the two southern tribes), He remains faithful to His covenant, and sends a Messiah.  While the people expect an earthly Messiah to free them from Roman oppression, God provides a true Messiah who frees them from slavery to sin and death and opens up heaven.  God even takes upon Himself the punishment for infidelity to the covenant, though He was the only one who had remained faithful to the covenant, and did not deserve death.
    All of this is to say that God remains faithful in the midst of our infidelity.  God fulfills His promise even when we don’t.  And He does so to draw us back to Himself.  He lets the rain fall on the good and the bad, and the sun to shine on the just and the unjust in order to woo us back to Him, our Lover, so that we can enjoy the close relationship that He desires for us.
    As we look at the Gospel: only one leper returns to give thanks, and He’s outside this covenant.  But God doesn’t give the other nine leprosy again.  They are healed, even though they do not give thanks to God for the miracle they received.

    In our lives, are we like the nine or are we like the one?  God has given us so much, and we don’t deserve any of it.  We cannot claim any merit on our own, because we could not do anything good without God.  Every time we sin we walk away from the covenant, not just that to Abraham or Moses, but to the covenant sealed by the Precious Blood of the true Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, who offered His life, taking upon Himself the punishment that should have been ours for our infidelity.  God gives us so many good things, but do we give thanks to God for His fidelity?  Do we worship God wholeheartedly for forgiving us every time we ask in the Sacrament of Penance?  Do we do our best to avoid sin and breaking the covenant?  Yes, sometimes God does allow the consequences of our actions to fall upon us, but more often than not He is patient with us and does not give us what we deserve so that we can return to Him.  
    At one point, though, our ability to turn back to God will end.  When we die, we no longer have a chance to return to the covenant that Christ made with us in Holy Baptism.  If we, in the end, reject that covenant, then we will face the punishment of breaking the covenant: eternal death in Hell.  But if we turn back to God, if after the disease of sin has affected us and we ask God to heal us and we return to Him to thank Him for that healing, then we will receive the rewards of the covenant that we did not deserve, strictly speaking, but that God will grant to us as a merciful and loving Father: residence not simply in an earthly Promised Land, but eternal life in the true Promised Land of heaven.  May God’s patience with us allow us time to convert and do our best to be faithful to the covenant sealed in the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit are God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

Having a Beer with Jesus–Sacrament Edition

Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time–Christian Initiation of Adults/Confirmation

    In his song, “Beer with Jesus,” Thomas Rhett sings about what many a person would like to do: sit down and share an adult beverage with the Lord.  And, as the country music singer muses, he would ask Him numerous questions including: “Do you hear the prayers I send?”; “What happens when life ends?”; “What’s on the other side?”; “Is mom and daddy alright?”  As rational human beings we seek knowledge, we seek to understand.  And yet, as we heard in our first reading, “Who can know God’s counsel, or who can conceive what the Lord intends?”
    In humility we must acknowledge that we do not always know why God does what He does, nor do we always find an answer on this side of eternity.  Even if we did sit down and drink a beer with Jesus, there would probably be some things that He didn’t tell us, or He’d tell us not to worry about certain things because we don’t need to know some things, even when we think we do.
    But God has a plan, and He calls us to trust Him that His plan will bring about the best result.  This is where faith comes in, where we go along with God and His ways, even when we can’t make out how it makes sense.  And while God sometimes asks us simply to trust, He proves Himself worthy of that trust by what He did for us.  
    It would be odd for God to tell us that we have to take up our cross and follow Him, unless He took up His cross and followed the will of God, even when it meant extreme suffering and death.  And He proved, by His Resurrection, that though following God and trusting in His plan can mean great anguish, that anguish passes and a joy and life beyond all imagining follows.

    Today, as Raegan and Skyler receive all three Sacraments of Initiation, and as I receive Andrew into Full Communion with the Catholic Church, and as Andrew and Nico receive the Sacrament of Confirmation, we see how God’s ways do not always seem clear to us.  Wouldn’t it have been better if Raegan and Skyler were baptized as infants and grew up in the faith?  Wouldn’t it have been better if Andrew were born into the Catholic faith?  Wouldn’t it have been better if Nico had been confirmed as a youth?  At this point, all we can say is that was not part of God’s plan.  Only God knows why, but this was the way, from all eternity, that God would grant different forms of sanctifying grace to all four of these young women and men.
    We see this in the second reading, as we hear about Onesimus, a slave, who befriended Paul and became a Christian through baptism, and his owner, Philemon.  Slavery is not good.  Philemon certainly thought that Onesimus running away was not good.  And yet, God used all of that as Onesimus met St. Paul and came to know Christ Jesus so that Onesimus could return to Philemon, himself a Christian, as a brother in Christ, rather than a slave.  The path didn’t make sense until you saw the ending, and then it made all the sense in the world.
    The same could be said for the crucifixion.  Jesus said today that His disciples would need to carry their cross.  We lose how startling that phrase would have been because we have accustomed ourselves to the cross.  But that phrase certainly scandalized the first hearers.  And it would have continued to scandalize them, if not for the fact that Christ Himself took up not just a metaphorical cross, but an actual cross, a literal cross (to use the word literal correctly), to prove His love for us.  And while Good Friday didn’t seem to make any sense at the time, on Easter Sunday we came to see that crucifixion in a new light: that God redeemed suffering and death and conquered it by Jesus’ Resurrection.
    Raegan, Skyler, Andrew, and Nico, to quote the character Saruman from “Lord of the Rings,” “So you have chosen death.”  You have each chosen to take up your cross, your means of suffering and pain, and follow Christ.  You have chosen to make His way your own, whether through a first choice of baptism, through your entrance into Full Communion with the Catholic Church, or through your reception of the Sacrament of Confirmation.  But in choosing to die with Christ, or deepening how you die with Christ, you have also chosen life.  Because when we take up our cross with Christ, He also grants us the resurrection.  
    And you each will taste the fruits of that Paschal Mystery–the Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of the Lord–in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist that you will receive for the first time today.  That will be your reminder of what God has done for you.  That will be your strength to help you carry your cross.  That will be your foretaste of victory as you eat Eternal Life.  
    And while we don’t know why God allowed you on the longer path that has brought you to today, we trust that it is the best plan, and that your witness of receiving these sacraments will continue to bring about great good in the Church.  May God strengthen each of you in your pilgrimage towards heaven, and may we all carry our daily crosses according to the sometimes mysterious plan of God, so that we may one day enter into Eternal Life.

Having a Beer with Jesus

Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

    In his song, “Beer with Jesus,” Thomas Rhett sings about what many a person would like to do: sit down and share an adult beverage with the Lord.  And, as the country music singer muses, he would ask Him numerous questions including: “Do you hear the prayers I send?”; “What happens when life ends?”; “What’s on the other side?”; “Is mom and daddy alright?”  As rational human beings we seek knowledge, we seek to understand.  And yet, as we heard in our first reading, “Who can know God’s counsel, or who can conceive what the Lord intends?”
    In humility we must acknowledge that we do not always know why God does what He does, nor do we always find an answer on this side of eternity.  Even if we did sit down and drink a beer with Jesus, there would probably be some things that He didn’t tell us, or He’d tell us not to worry about certain things because we don’t need to know some things, even when we think we do.
    But God has a plan, and He calls us to trust Him that His plan will bring about the best result.  This is where faith comes in, where we go along with God and His ways, even when we can’t make out how it makes sense.  And while God sometimes asks us simply to trust, He proves Himself worthy of that trust by what He did for us.  
    It would be odd for God to tell us that we have to take up our cross and follow Him, unless He took up His cross and followed the will of God, even when it meant extreme suffering and death.  And He proved, by His Resurrection, that though following God and trusting in His plan can mean great anguish, that anguish passes and a joy and life beyond all imagining follows.
    So many people will ask the question, “Why does a good God allow good people to suffer?”  Or, “How can there be evil in the world if God is good?”  The only answer we have is that free will, which allows us to love God, also allows us to disobey God and cause great pain and suffering to others.  Robots and pets cannot truly love because they cannot truly choose.  And a person feeling affection for us without having a choice doesn’t feel good at all or affirm that it is good that we exist.  To use a very recent and probably still raw example, the same free will which allows a very confused man to shoot at a school Mass in Minneapolis, also allows a student to lay on top of his younger schoolmate so that any bullets don’t hit the younger student.  “Greater love has no man than this, to lay down his life for his friend.”  But love can only exist where free will exists.
    But rather than asking why evil exists, for us as Catholics I would argue we gain more by asking what God does with suffering.  What does God do in the face of the cross?  He endures it with us.  He shows us that He will never abandon us when the going gets tough.  Where was God in Minneapolis?  He was with the students, giving some courage to put their own lives on the line, even though they can’t even drive a car or vote.  He was present with the teachers, helping them to use their training and give instructions and provide as much calm as they could so that their students could be as safe as possible.  He was there with the students who died, mourning that their lives had to be cut so short and that a person would misuse free will in such a way as to bring unbearable pain and sorrow to the families who now bury their children.  He was there with the parents, wondering if their child was alive or mourning the loss of their own flesh and blood.  Never did God say that the suffering was too much for Him to remain.  Never did God shy away from that pain and heartache.  He was there, on His cross, suffering in Minneapolis as He suffered on Calvary for the salvation of the world.

    And just as Christ brought the Resurrection from all the evil, hate, and sin that was thrown at Him on the cross, so He will bring a resurrection from Minneapolis and from every evil that happens at every moment in every place around the world.  Somehow, God will cause greater good, not at the expense of the innocent, but transforming a privation of good, that which we call evil, into an overflowing of good, so that even though evil thinks it wins, it ends up in defeat, no matter what evil does or how hard it strives to find victory.  As St. Paul says elsewhere, “Where, O death, is your victory?”  
    And the fact that God brings good out of evil should cause us consolation, because we, all too often, perpetrate evil.  We, all too often, misuse our free will in private or in public, but because all sin is communal, we weaken the entire Body of Christ by our rejection of God, no matter how big or how little a sin we commit.  But God can use our rejection of Him to bring about great goods, even if that good is simply our own conversion as we repent of our sinful deeds and turn back to the Lord to strive, by His grace, to choose good and build back up the Body of Christ.
    Certainly, it would be cool to have a beer, or bourbon, with Jesus.  We would likely have some questions which Jesus may or may not answer, not to hide stuff, but because we really don’t need to know.  But what we do know is God’s love for us, because He proved it on the cross, and makes present in an unbloody manner that same sacrifice as we celebrate this Mass.  May our worthy reception of Holy Communion strengthen us in choosing the good, and strengthen our trust in God’s plan, even when it seems so mysterious to us.

American Pie, the Letter, and the Spirit

Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Don McLean produced a hit 8 minutes and 42 seconds long called “American Pie.”  And while most red-blooded Americans know the song, and maybe have even sung it at a karaoke bar, I imagine that as generations get further and further from its release in 1971, fewer and fewer people know that the song, which is mostly upbeat, speaks about the loss of innocence in America, beginning with the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper in 1959.  
    As we heard the Gospel today, we heard about the Pharisee who stood as far removed from the Law of Moses as many young people do today from “American Pie.”  The Pharisee knew the words.  He knew the right answer that the two greatest laws to uphold included the love of God with all of one’s self and the love of neighbor as oneself.  But he didn’t know the deeper meaning.  

    And so Christ has to give him a parable to talk about love of neighbor and how love of neighbor is demonstrated.  The Samaritan, the one outside the law, actually demonstrated love of neighbor, rather that the priest or the Levite.  Those who should have known the law the best, and certainly its deeper meaning, practiced the law the least, and become the bad guys in the parable.  The one who had no direct access to the law, because his people had abandoned the law when they intermarried with the local pagans, lived the law of loving one’s neighbor as oneself, even sacrificing his own money to care for the robbery and assault and battery victim, though the neighbor in this case was a stranger.
    There can be a challenge for us as Catholics, and Catholics probably better educated that in any century before.  If you want to know what the Church teaches on any issue, simply Google it.  I understand there’s even a Catholic AI that can help synthesize the Church Fathers, Doctors of the Church, and Magisterial documents to answer questions.  But are we like the Pharisee, who knows the right answer, but lack the gift of understanding to know how to put that knowledge into practice?  
    Many will refer to the practice and the deeper reality of what God has revealed as the spirit.  We hear that dichotomy today from the epistle between the spirit and the letter.  The spirit gives life, while the letter kills.  Sometimes this dichotomy is used to advance things which are patently contrary to the letter by placing it under the spirit of the law.  Some will say, for example, that while St. Paul clearly teaches that those who obstinately practice homosexual actions cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven (and notice that the actions separate us from God, not necessarily the disordered affection), that because our Lord taught us to love people, we cannot say that homosexual activity is wrong, because St. Paul was referring to the letter of the law, while the desire to let people love whomever they want to love (to use their phrase, not our understanding of true love) is part of the spirit of the law.
    But, that’s like saying that we can’t say adultery is wrong simply because Christ loves the person who commits that sin against the sixth commandment, and would never want to condemn that person.  Christ doesn’t want to condemn that person, but that person does have to choose the good that God has revealed, which is part and parcel of how God made us.  
    The spirit of the law does not mean anything goes.  But it does mean we have to look more deeply than the surface.  There’s a difference between looking beyond and looking more deeply.  To look beyond means that we ignore what we have received.  To look more deeply means to investigate how what we have received can be more fully understood.  It is the difference between changing a teaching (looking beyond) and legitimate development of doctrine (looking more deeply).  
    I think one good example of this is the more nuanced teaching of the Church on suicide.  The Church has taught, and in some cases will always teach, that taking one’s own life means committing a grave sin.  God clearly states in the Scriptures that He is the author of life, and the only one who can legitimately end an innocent life (though sometimes people have to end lives in the interest of defense of self, family, friends, or country without sin).  However, we have come to understand the complexity of a human mind that thinks that the best way to ease the psychological pain that he or she undergoes is to take his or her own life.  In some cases, and really the full knowledge of what is going on only God knows, a person is not free to make a choice because of chemical imbalances in the brain.  And, as we know, if a person cannot freely choose an action, no matter how grave it is, it cannot be a mortal sin.  So when a person commits suicide, unless we know it was made with a clear mind, we have some doubt as to how culpable that person was for an objectively evil action.  
    This is also what makes assisted suicide, also known as euthanasia, so horrible.  If people of any age feel that their lives have no value (and often times society tells them they have no purpose if they can’t be fully active or somehow benefit society), they are vulnerable to depression and rejection, and a doctor or nurse who comes to them to help them kill themselves takes advantage of that depression in an action which does not admit, generally, of repentance because of its finality; once completed you don’t get a do-over.  On the one hand, the Church reminds us that if we undergo euthanasia or assisted suicide and we know what we’re doing, we don’t know how that person could go to heaven, and that person would be denied anointing of the sick beforehand, and a Catholic funeral afterwards.  However, only God knows fully the mind, and so we also need to not presume omniscience and have some understanding for a person who may have dealt with mental illness in some form while trying to make the decision, especially if it was more encouraged by those who swore an oath to do no harm.
    The face value of the law and the commandments is not always the final word.  We don’t go beyond what God has revealed for our moral life, as if there are no moral absolutes or as if God’s teaching always changes with cultural adaptations.  However, we do need to go deeper to better understand the full implications of what God has revealed of how we are to love our neighbor and how we are to love God: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

The Stink of Death

Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time–Third Scrutiny

    In my first four years as a priest, I worked very closely with our parish school in East Lansing.  I enjoyed interacting with the kids in the classroom, teaching them from time to time, playing on the playground with them, and rewarding them for paying attention during Mass with smarties, and hopefully they came to connect to Christ more closely through me.
    When the warmer temperatures started coming in May, the fifth grade class in particular became a little gamey, as some kids started to get more body odor, but hadn’t quite realized that they needed to start wearing deodorant yet.  God bless their teachers for having to firmly, yet gently, tell the kids that they needed to bathe or shower every day and needed to wear deodorant.  The effects were noticeable when put into practice.
    In the Gospel today for the third scrutiny, we hear about a stench.  The stench is from a man who had been dead in a tomb for four days, a smell even worse than 5th grade b.o.  While I’ve been around dead bodies in my work with the Michigan State Police, I haven’t had to go into a house that had a dead body discovered after a long time.  So I don’t have a personal experience with that particular odor.  But I know it’s not pleasant.
    When we think about what God wants to do with you, Skyler and Raegan, as your prepare for your baptism next week, some might think about it like throwing deodorant on.  Nothing changes, but you don’t smell it because you mask it with other scents.  In fact, Martin Luther, who separated himself and led to a great division from the Catholic Church, referred to humans and the process of justification as snow-covered dung.  We’re the dung; grace is the snow.  We’re still bad, but God covers us up so that you can only see the pure white of snow.

    But that’s not what God does with Lazarus, and that’s now what God says He will do through the prophet Ezekiel, and that’s not what St. Paul says that God has done for us thanks to the Resurrection of Christ.  Jesus does not spray perfume on Lazarus but leave him dead.  He gives Lazarus new life, calls him out of the tomb, and removes the stench of death from him.  God provides a new reality for Lazarus, not a slight upgrade on his current condition (which was dead).
    And that’s what God will do for you.  The call to follow Christ, especially as an adult, means a call to a new form of life, not just a modified way of your current life.  You stink (not physically)!!  You stink because you are dead in your sins!!  But Christ does not want you to be dead.  Christ wants you to be alive in Him through the working of the Holy Spirit, who, after you are baptized, will dwell within you as God dwelt in the Temple.  You cannot make yourself alive.  And no matter how much perfume you put on a dead body, it still remains dead and will stink.  But God will take away the stink and make you alive in Him so that your can flourish.  
    In this, God fulfills the word He spoke through the Prophet Ezekiel: “I will open our graves and have you rise from them…I will put my spirit within you that you may live…thus you shall know that I am the Lord.  I have promised, and I will do it, says the Lord.”  God will give you new life through Baptism, Confirmation, and the Eucharist so that you can live primarily for Him, even as you live your human life.  
    Yet, our temptation, and this is true for me and all those who are baptized here in the church, is to return to the tomb.  Even though God has freed us from the death that comes from sin, we foolishly seek to return to the tomb and return to the stench.  Sometimes we are like dogs who just had a bath, only to go outside and roll around in our own dung.  We forget just what a great gift we have received from God in our new life, and go back to stinking and death because it’s what we have known.  We’re so overwhelmed with death that we can be like Mary, who sits at home still mourning her brother’s passing, while Martha goes out to Jesus and makes her profession of faith that He is the Resurrection and the Life.  
    But only when we put our faith in Jesus can we see new life given to us.  Only when we realize that we cannot save ourselves can God raise us to new life so that we don’t stink.  In this scrutiny, we ask God one final time before your baptism to put away from you any works of death that will not allow you to receive His new life.  We one more time have these minor exorcisms where the Holy Spirit drives from you anything that does not help you prepare for the new life of Holy Baptism.  
    And in praying for you, we, the church assembled here, also remember that God does not call us to live in the tomb.  God does not want us to stink.  He wants to have us bathe so that we are truly clean, not snow covered dung, and rely on the graces that come from baptism, or receive the cleansing of the second baptism, the Sacrament of Penance (often called confession).
    God is about to do a great work in you, Skyler and Raegan.  He won’t just put deodorant or perfume on you.  He won’t even hit you with an Axe bomb like a middle schooler.  He will wash you clean, not only to smell with the odor of sanctity, but truly to give you new life, to transform you by the power of His grace.  May this last scrutiny help you prepare fully for the new life God will grant you next week, as He calls you out of the tomb, unbinds the bands of sin from your bodies, and makes you both a temple of the Holy Spirit.

You're So Vain

Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time
    When it comes to ironic songs, certainly one of the top ten is “You’re So Vain,” by Carly Simon.  She spends an entire song talking about a particular person, only to repeat in the refrain time and time again, “You’re so vain / You probably think this song is about you.”  While Carly has revealed to a select few whom the song was written about, there is still widespread speculation about the person who’s so vain.
    When it comes to the virtue of humility, if you think the readings are about you and how to grow in humility, they probably are.  In the end, we all need to grow in the virtue of humility.  Pride is the one sin that we probably will all need to work on until we die, though maybe we have others as well.  
    And, ironically, the virtue of humility helps us to realize that life is not, in the end, about us.  Pride seeks to replace God with our own ego, our own self.  St. Thomas Aquinas teaches us that the original sin consisted of pride: “man’s first sin consisted in coveting some spiritual good above his measure: and this pertains to pride.”  We know the story about the serpent testing Eve, and convincing her that if she ate of the fruit, she would be like God, which enticed her to disobey God’s command not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Adam followed suit, probably with Eve telling Adam exactly what the serpent told him.  
    Pride can be so insidious because we do have legitimate personal needs upon which we should focus.  It’s legitimate to focus on our need for food and drink; clothing; housing; friendship.  Yet we can twist all those things so that our desire for them becomes inordinate as we convince ourselves that, because of how important we are, we only eat and drink the best.  Or because of our status we cannot shop for clothing at regular stores, but have to only wear Banana Republic or Burberry.  Or if we don’t have a big enough house, the neighbors won’t recognize how well we’re doing.  Or that everyone should like me because, well, what’s not to like?  
    Humility consists, the Angelic Doctor says, in tempering and restraining the mind from focusing on high things immoderately against right reason.  It does not seek after honors or things beyond the greatness to which God calls us as His children.  It allows God to be God, rather than trying to take His place and control all things according to our desires.  

St. Benedict 

    St. Benedict, the great Patriarch of Western Monasticism and founded of the Benedictine Order, lists twelve degrees of humility.  Don’t worry, there’s not a test on memorizing them, but they will be available at my blog, which has all my homilies, and which you can access at the parish website.
    The twelve degrees are, in descending order: “that a man fear God and bear all his commandments in mind”; “by not following one’s own will”; regulating one’s will according to the judgement of a superior; not begin deterred from good actions because of difficulties and hardships; acknowledging one’s own shortcomings; “deeming oneself incapable of great things”; putting others before oneself; “that in one’s work one should not depart from the ordinary way”; not being in a hurry to speak; not overly laughing or being too cheerful; not being “immoderate in speech”; and “restraining haughty [or arrogant] looks.  Again, it might be good to go back to this homily, or simply do a Google search for St. Benedict and the Twelve Degrees of Humility to help us in examining our conscience.  Honestly, as I read through that list, I could probably check off mostly all of them as ways that I need to grow in humility.
    The great thing is that humility allows God to exalt us in a more perfect way.  If we really desire to be great, then we need to serve greatly and humble ourselves, because, as our Lord tells us, “every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”  And to be clear, Jesus is not telling us to act humble so that God can exalt us, but truly to be humble.

Bl. Solanus Casey

    We see this in the lives of the saints.  First and foremost, in the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who sought after no special privileges, but became the Mother of God.  Or St. André Bessette, who was a simple porter, or doorman, at a religious house in Quebec, but became knows as the Miracle Man of Montreal.  Or our own Bl. Solanus Casey, who was only ordained a priest simplex, meaning he could not preach or hear confessions, but whose fame because widespread across the US for the miracles worked through his intercession, even while alive.  None of these sought after fame or miraculous powers, but simply sought to be the person God wanted them to be, and because of that focus on God and doing His will, God elevated them.
    I can tell you that if you don’t think you need to grow in humility, then this homily is about you.  And if you know you need to grow in humility, then you at least recognize the insidious nature of pride.  Through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. André Bessette, and Bl. Solanus Casey, may be put God first in our lives and work for His exaltation, rather than our own.  In all things, may God be glorified!