Putting God Off

Second Sunday after Pentecost

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  I struggle with a bad habit.  And it manifests itself in two primary ways.  In one situation, I see some dirty dishes on my counter that can’t be washed in the dishwasher.  I know it will only take me about 5 minutes to clean them, but I don’t feel like it, so they sit on my kitchen counter until I get disgusted enough to actually clean them.  In the other situation, I have folded my clothes and they are in my room, ready to be put in my dresser drawers or hung up in the closet.  It will take me all of 5-10 minutes to do this.  But I’m tired and just want to go to bed, so I put it off as long as I can.  
    When it comes to these bad habits, the weight of inaction doesn’t seem to make much of a difference.  But the Gospel alludes to another way that we can procrastinate, and that is with our faith.  All the invitees to the banquet have reasons to delay attending.  And the reasons make sense as to why one would not go.  But the point of the parable is that the banquet is so important, that even those legitimate reasons make skipping out the wrong choice, because they may be left out for good.
    I can’t find an original source, but there’s a quote floating around the internet about procrastination that bears hearing: “Procrastination is the arrogant assumption that God owes you another chance to do tomorrow what He gave you a chance to do today.”  When it comes to doing the dishes or putting away laundry, maybe it’s not that bad.  But how many times do we think about or talk about truly growing in our faith with God, only to put it off until tomorrow, which God never promises we will have.
    Obviously, there are some ways in which one has to delay certain good spiritual desires.  For example, a stay at home mom may want to go to daily Mass, but with six kids that may not be practical.  She may have to wait at least until the kids can get in and out of the car and their appropriate car seats themselves.  But what is stopping her from taking a little time to look up the readings for the day and thinking about those readings as she cares for her kids and her house.  A dad may want to pray the Rosary each day with his family, but he works nights and the kids are all in bed after he leaves for work and then are up mostly when he is sleeping.  But what is stopping him from saying a decade or two on his way to and from work, and asking the rest of the family to pray while he catches up on his sleep?
    We have to make realistic goals that conform to our vocation.  God does not call married couples to follow all the monastic hours.  But He does want couples to pray together every day in some way.  God does not give every person the ability to go to Mass each day, or even to make a holy hour in front of the Blessed Sacrament each day.  But He does want us to offer up our daily sacrifices in union with the cross of Christ, whose perfect sacrifice is made present in an unbloody way in the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar.  Simply a quick, “God, I offer this to you” is a great way to accept your invitation to the banquet, and not make an excuse, however plausible you think it is, for not attending.  Or maybe, right after you wake up, you pray your morning offering, so that you have the intention of uniting everything you experience with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  

St. Paul

    Making little changes, and capitalizing on little opportunities may not seem like much, but daily little practices add up and can change the entire trajectory of one’s life.  By doing what we can, no matter how great or how small, we open ourselves up to more and more of God’s grace, until the areas of our life that we have not given over to God slowly transform into the actions God would take were He in our shoes.  When St. Paul wrote in his epistle to the Galatians, “It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me,” that didn’t happen all at once.  In fact, even after the Lord appeared to him, and Ananias healed Paul’s blindness, Paul went into Arabia for three years.  I would guess that the Apostle to the Gentiles had to slowly change his mind to more conform with Christ and work out how he could accept the Gospel and then share it with others.  But because he did those daily spiritual practices over three years, he could so identify with Christ that he became an icon of the one whose Gospel he proclaimed.  
    True transformation rarely happens quickly, and never happens if we put it off for tomorrow.  What if, as Garth Brooks sings, tomorrow never comes?  Based upon how we lived today and all the yesterdays that came before, would we be welcomed into the banquet?  Or would God say that we had other priorities, and that we will never taste of His banquet?  “Procrastination is the arrogant assumption that God owes you another chance to do tomorrow what He gave you a chance to do today.”  Don’t put off living your faith more deeply, according to your vocation.  Accept the invitation to the banquet, and prepare for the heavenly life now, with God the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

The Extended Plan

Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  In college seminary on an occasional Friday night my brother seminarians and I would pull out the game of Risk, especially if we knew we had a lot of time and didn’t have to get up early the next morning.  I was never particularly good at Risk.  I would hold my own for a little while, but usually tried stretching my armies too much, which made them vulnerable to attack, and then other armies would come and wipe them out.  I usually liked starting with Australia, but then when I tried to attack different parts of Asia, it wouldn’t work our well for me.  

St. Paul

    St. Paul in the epistle today outlines in a very general sense the plan of God for his re-conquest of humanity.  In our first parents, Adam and Eve, humanity had been taken captive by the devil and his lies.  But God, not wanting us to stay prisoners to sin and death, developed a plan to win us back.  St. Paul highlights Abraham and Moses (whom he references by mentioning the law), culminating in the Incarnation of the Lord.  
    The Apostle writes that God called Abraham and promised prosperity for his seed, which, if only reading the Old Testament, one would think applies to Isaac, but in fact, St. Paul argues, applies to Christ, at least in the fullness of God’s revelation.  Now, he acknowledges another covenant, that of the Law, made through the mediator, Moses.  But St. Paul writes that the second covenant does not annul the first, the law does not cancel out the promise, because the promise is greater than the law.  But all of it is fulfilled in Christ, who fulfills God’s promise and fulfills even the law, so that we might no longer be under the reign of sin, but be heirs of the promise made to Abraham through our union with Christ, the son of Abraham in Christ’s human nature.  
    We see, then, that God sometimes takes a very long view of things, at least from our finite, temporal reality.  Since God is present in all times at once, it’s not a long view, but an eternal present.  We know this in salvation: Abraham is commonly thought to have lived around the year 2,000 BC.  The law came some four hundred and so years after that.  And Christ came around 2,000 years after Abraham.  But God, not infringing upon our free will, yet guiding history towards its climax in the Incarnation, sought to bring salvation to the creatures He had made in His image and likeness.  
    But God doesn’t only work that way with salvation history on the macro scale.  He also at times works that way in our lives.  Now, we don’t have 2,000 years to wait, but we can be patient with the time that God does allow things to work out in our lives, adjusting and compensating for our free will.  For most married couples, we ask them to have a period of nine or so months between their engagement and their wedding date.  I know that for couples, this seems like a never-ending time.  But this allows them to continue to deepen their relationship, and continue to learn how to sacrifice their own wills for the good of the other.  
    Or think about the nine months that a mother carries an infant in her womb.  Especially in that last trimester, I’ve known many moms who feel like the child is never going to leave her body.  But that period of waiting allows the child to develop, little by little, so that, at the appropriate time, the child can experience its life outside of the womb.
    For me, as a seminarian, I thought I was never going to make it to ordination.  I have 8 years of seminary, and that was the short way (if I would have gone to a secular college, then into seminary, I would have had four years of college, at least, and then two years of philosophy, and then four years of theology, so at least 10 years, if not more).  But my time in seminary proved invaluable in teaching me more about prayer, about how the Lord works, about growing in virtue, about what the Church teaches, about how to celebrate the sacraments, about the promise of celibacy made at diaconate ordination, etc.  I didn’t always enjoy seminary, but I believe the length helped me to grow in love with the Lord, to get to know Him and His Church better, and to discern if I could live a celibate life.
    But the “extended plan,” if you will, is not just about vocation.  It also applies in our hopes for our professional or social lives, travel plans, etc.  God works with us through our daily lives, even the small choices we make, to try to bring about our salvation with our cooperation.  He puts us in some situations that we think we will never make it through, and He saves us from some situations that we think we might want, but which would draw us farther away from Him.  We’re not always grateful for those times, but they do give us the opportunity to be the people God wants us to be for our own happiness and salvation.
    As country songs are three chords and the truth, there’s a good country song that references this reality: “Unanswered Prayers” by Garth Brooks.  In the song, the artist references a girl with whom he was smitten in high school, that he begged God would allow them to get married and spend a lifetime together.  But God didn’t answer his prayers the way he wanted.  And years later, at a football game with the woman he did marry, as he sees that high school crush again, he realizes that he wouldn’t have been happy marrying his originally-desired woman.  And so he thanks God for unanswered prayers, and sings that “just because He may not answer, doesn’t mean He don’t care,” because “some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.”  
    We can find it difficult to be patient with God’s plans, especially when we don’t think they’re for our good.  But God always works for our salvation, and sometimes works out that plan over weeks, months, years, centuries, and even millennia.  His strategy is always the best, and I pray that we can all trust in the loving, merciful, and providential will of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

Prayer's Jackpot

Fifth Sunday after Easter

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  I hate to admit it, but I have, from time to time, asked God to win the lottery.  It wasn’t simply to get rich for myself, but because I would give money to the Church, probably help out some friends, and maybe set up trusts to support different charities even after I’m dead and gone.  In my ask, I always reminded God of how generous I would be, especially to the Church, as a way of helping Him to know that He could trust me with the responsibility of winning tens of millions of dollars.
    As our Lord talks about prayer and having confidence in what we ask of God, we may find it strange that I haven’t won the lottery yet (or maybe you have prayed the same thing and have not won the lottery, either).  “‘If you ask the Father anything in my name, He will give it to you,’” the Savior said in today’s Gospel.  And yet I can tell you that my request to God to win MegaMillions has not been answered.  So what gives?
    Of course, deep down we know that God will only give us what is good for us.  Elsewhere, Christ says, “‘What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish?  Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg?’”  God does not give us something that will bite us or hurt us, even if we think the thing for which we’re asking is good.
    Further, our Lord presumes that, as disciples, we are following the pattern He set for us, and being obedient to the will of the Father.  If we truly want to be obedient to God the Father, as Christ showed us, then when we ask the Father, we do so knowing that sometimes our wills are not fully conformed to His, and we might not need to receive that which He is giving us.  Sometimes that will mean we don’t receive something that we want.  Sometimes that will mean that we receive something that we don’t really want.  Remember that Christ asked in the Garden of Gethsemane that the cup of suffering might pass by Him if there was another way to save the world.  But, He ended that prayer with, “‘But not my will, but yours be done.’”  The Father had answered the prayer of our Lord over and over again, working miracles among the people.  This was made evident especially at the resurrection of Lazarus.  But God the Father’s will was also that His Son would die on the Cross to save us from sin, a will which God the Son fully embraced, with all its pain and suffering.
    Or think of St. Paul.  He talks about a thorn in his flesh, which he asked God to remove three times.  But God told the Apostle that this weakness was a way to manifest that the power came from God, not from Paul.  And that thorn was not taken away.  St. Paul had to endure it, as far as we know, for the rest of his life.  Somehow, that weakness was part of Paul’s salvation and the proclamation of the Gospel.
    Part of receiving also connects to our confidence and trust in God.  When we pray for something good, and we do our best to conform our wills to that of the Father, we still need to trust that God can do what we ask Him to do.  Christ in His hometown did not work many miracles because of their lack of faith.  Do we trust the words of our Savior that we heard today, that God will give us what we ask if we ask in the name of Christ His Son?  Or is our faith fickle that like of our Lord’s hometown neighbors?
    I can testify to times when I prayed in the name of the Lord, and what I sought in prayer was given to me.  I’m not saying this to say that I’m a saint or have special powers.  I am a sinner, trying to be holy, but not always succeeding, and any power comes from God, not from me.  I am simply an earthen vessel, trying not to get in the way of the Holy Spirit.  Sometimes these, what I consider, miracles, have been about serious issues, like a person’s health.  Other times they have been for the finding of more trivial things, like stolen golf clubs or a stolen moped.  In one case, I can remember praying for a couple I know, and my prayers seemed to have no effect.  I prayed with them again, and the effect they were seeking came to be.  Again, this is not to attribute anything to me as if I’m special; I’m not.  God wants to answer our prayers, according to His will, whether the request be for something we feel is very worthy, or even for things that don’t mean as much.

    And sometimes the answer is no.  It wouldn’t be a Fr. Anthony homily without some reference to country music, and what comes to my mind is the Garth Brooks song, “Unanswered Prayers,” in which he sings about a girl he knew in high school whom he prayed he would marry, but his prayers went unanswered.  Years later he met his wife, and they met this old flame, and he was glad that God didn’t answer those prayers.  Or Brad Paisley has a song called, “No,” where he talks about different prayers he said, but “sometimes the answer is no.”  Sometimes we think our will is aligned with God’s, but it’s not, and it’s not for our good, so God can answer our prayers with the opposite answer we desire.  It’s not that God doesn’t care or doesn’t love us, but that He answers our prayer with a response that is better for us.
    It is easy to hear how God answers prayers and think, “yeah, but that’s for other people.”  Don’t just hear, but live the word, be a doer of the word, and trust in God’s answers to your prayers.  Go to God with any need or desire you have.  Submit it to the will of God, and then trust that the answer you receive, either yes or no, will be good for your own salvation and the salvation of those you know and love.  God’s answers are a jackpot worth even more that a MegaMillions prize, because they bring us closer into the life of the Blessed Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.