Distractions

 Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    To be honest, on a weekly basis or so, my dishwasher is full of clean dishes, having just been washed.  I know that I should put them in their proper cupboards and drawers, but it’s not something I really want to do.  So I find some distraction–maybe the reruns of “Law and Order” that I’ve seen a million times before; maybe checking on my Clash of Clans game on the phone, or scrolling through Facebook; or a particularly ironic choice, eating something, which often involves pulling one dish out to use, while leaving the others still sitting in the dishwasher.
    It’s funny the amount of energy we spend on distractions and not attending to what is important.  I say funny because it takes me all of about 5 minutes to empty the dishwasher.  It’s not hard work, it’s not even that time-consuming.  But the distractions seem more enjoyable, or less work, or just something else other than what we should be doing.
    When it comes to our faith life, we can go after distractions, rather than attending to Jesus, the one who is truly necessary.  We find all sorts of other distractions so that we don’t have to go deeper in our relationship with God.  That’s not to say that we are all called to be monks or nuns, praying different prayers at every moment when we’re not working, cooking, or cleaning.  But how often do we find ways to keep from concentrating on our faith life, on our relationship with God, because we put up distractions as obstacles to dealing with deeper issues?
    We see that even in the Gospel today.  Someone is listening to Jesus, but decides that now is the good time to get Jesus to arbitrate an inheritance issue.  Now, before being too rough on the person, rabbis often intervened to help people understand what was just and the right course of action according to the law of Moses and rabbinical interpretations.  But Jesus doesn’t get bogged down in that.  He calls out the distraction, and asserts that there are more important things to be focused on than who gets the money from the parents’ estate.
    Money can sometimes be a distraction to our relationship with God.  We get so caught up in money issues that we forget to focus on God.  This distraction is particularly tough, because money allows one to fulfill one’s responsibilities to self or to family.  So yes, by all means find a job that helps pay the bills.  But don’t let the quest for money tear you away from God, as it so often does.  Money frequently becomes a god, where if we just had a little more, then we would be fine.  But that little more never seems to be enough, and the bar always seems to move farther and farther away when it comes to how much money we need.  One of the beautiful things about the Catholic Church is that our Church is for rich and poor alike.  We are all called to be fed by the Word of God and the Eucharist, and to share those graces with those we meet, whether we have a lot or a little.  Jesus wants us to make God our priority, in times of plenty and in times of need, even as we share our resources to care for the members of this parish and the wider community.
    I would say that politics has become another distraction to our relationship with God.  In many ways we, as Americans, have made politics our new religion.  We spend hours, not in front of a gold box that holds the Incarnate Word of God, but in front of a thin, black box that shows political party events.  We tire of a ten-minute homily on strengthening our faith, but we’ll spend hours listening to this or that politician pontificate on why the opponent is wrong on whatever the new issue is.  We put up with those who claim to be Catholic but who say things or do things which are contrary to the faith, but if a Democratic senator doesn’t support the Green New Deal, or if a Republican senator votes to approve a controversial appointee, we go crazy and seek to ostracize them from the party and from our life.  We belittle and demonize them and treat them worse that the Pharisees treated sinners and tax collectors.  Again, this is not to say that we shouldn’t participate in politics (you should participate in the primary election this Tuesday, and vote with a conscience informed by your Catholic faith), but what priority do we give to Uncle Sam versus God our Father?
    And we focus on these things and more so that we don’t have to focus on how we’re doing with God.  We have a sense that we’re not as strong in our faith or as close to God as we want to be, but when it comes to cutting out the distractions, we find that we prefer distractions to our religion.  The distractions are, as our first reading says, vanities.  Money will come and go, as will politicians.  But Jesus remains for ever.  Whatever distractions we prefer, they don’t save us, and they don’t continue after death.  And we never know how much time we have before God will call us to account for how we used our time, how much we spent on Him or how much we spent on distractions.  
    Jesus invites us today to be rich in the things that matter to God.  Don’t let distractions keep you from eternal life and the joy that comes from the Gospel!

Year of St. Joseph

 Feast of the Holy Family

     On Tuesday, 8 December, to the surprise of many (there wasn’t any Catholic gossip that this was going to happen of which I was aware), Pope Francis proclaimed a special Year of St. Joseph, on the 150th Anniversary of Pope Bl. Pius IX naming St. Joseph as Patron of the Universal Church.  As St. Joseph is part of the Holy Family, I thought it would be good to preach about him today, as we begin this special year dedicated to the Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Foster-Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  While the entire homily won’t be directed only at men, ladies, I would ask your forbearance for those parts that address only the males.
    I had seen a post on Facebook that jokingly challenged everyone to memorize every word that St. Joseph said in the Gospels by the time the holy year ends on 8 December 2021.  The joke is that St. Joseph, while mentioned numerous times in the Gospel, never has a recorded word spoken in the gospel accounts.  This lack of talking may make him, in the view of many wives, the perfect example of a husband: always silent.
    What can we learn from a man who never had a word that he said recorded?  There is much we can learn from this saint, and I’ll highlight one in particular.
    St. Joseph was a man who had a deep relationship with God.  Before even Jesus was born, Joseph was attune to God speaking to him in dreams.  Joseph took Jesus and Mary to the temple 40 days after the birth of Jesus in accord with the Law of Moses.  And the Holy Family traveled to the temple for the pilgrim festivals of the Jewish faith, like Passover and the Feast of Booths.  While we have no direct evidence, Jesus seemed very familiar with the synagogue and how the services were conducted, so Joseph must have taken Jesus to synagogue throughout Jesus’ life.  
    Fathers: in many ways, we fathers have lived up to our call to help our families have a relationship with God.  This is certainly true of certain spiritual fathers, priests who preyed on the vulnerable and led them away from God.  But it’s also true of biological fathers.  How many children consider religion to be a things that mostly girls do?  How many times is it the mother who is making sure that the kids go to Mass, while the father makes excuses about golf, watching sports or sleeping in?  
    I encourage you, fathers, to make sure that your families (including you!) are going to Mass every Sunday and Holyday, except in case of illness (or a pandemic).  Why don’t kids practice the faith after they leave the house?  Because, in so many cases, the faith clearly wasn’t that important when they were living at home.  It certainly isn’t the only part of being Catholic and developing a relationship with Jesus, but it’s an important part.  Most people who attend Mass will tell me that they never had a choice when they were growing up about attending Mass; it was non-negotiable, even on vacation.  I dare say that most people, at some point in their lives, do not want to go to church.  But that habit of going is so important.  Because when life gets rough, as it always does, without faith, it’s so much harder to get through and to know where to turn, than it is with a practice of going to Mass.  
    Another part of our faith is daily prayer.  The Mass is necessary for our relationship with God, but so is daily prayer.  Sometimes that prayer can be formal prayers that we learned, like the Our Father, Hail Mary, and/or Glory Be.  Maybe during this year of St. Joseph we can learn the Memorare of St. Joseph.  But prayer isn’t always formal.  Yes, in the Mass, we use special, elevated language to communicate with God.  But in our daily prayer we are encouraged to use everyday language to share with the Lord our hopes and fears, our desires, our struggles, our needs, and everything that is a part of our life.  If you can talk with a friend, you can talk with God.  And, like with our friends, we also need to learn how to listen, so that we can hear God’s voice.  Fathers: teach your children (or grandchildren) to pray.  Teach them to be able to speak to Jesus and to listen to Jesus.  
    There are so many other ways that St. Joseph is a great model for all Catholics, especially, but not only, for men.  He is a great intercessor for chastity, for work, for the importance of fathers in a family, as well as the patron of a happy death, which is not something to be neurotic about, but something for which we should always be prepared by living the best life that we can, centered around God.  I’ll close today with a prayer to St. Joseph, which closed the Apostolic Letter, Patris corde, with which Pope Francis inaugurated the Holy Year of St. Joseph:


Hail, Guardian of the Redeemer,
Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
To you God entrusted his only Son;
in you Mary placed her trust;
with you Christ became man.

Blessed Joseph, to us too,
show yourself a father
and guide us in the path of life.
Obtain for us grace, mercy and courage,
and defend us from every evil.  Amen.

Knowing and Loving Jesus

Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time

Anthony John Strouse; brown hair, hazel eyes; approximately 6 feet tall, 154 pounds; resides at 3139 Hogarth Avenue, Flint, MI 48532; Catholic priest and Michigan State Police chaplain; enjoys traveling, reading, and watching high school and college sports; oldest of three children.  Those are a lot of facts about me.  Most of those could be found online.  But just because a person knows those facts, does that mean that they know me?  I think we could all agree that knowing about a person is not the same as knowing the person him or herself.

Today Jesus asks the apostles who He is.  The apostles themselves have seen a lot of things, and have spent a lot of time with Jesus.  At the time of Jesus, and especially in Judaism, to be a disciple of a rabbi meant that you went everywhere he did.  Being a disciple wasn’t a hobby or even a part-time job; it was a way of life that changed all your circumstances.  So the apostles knew a lot about Jesus.  They had seen him change water into wine, heal a lame man lowered down from the roof, teach people a new way of life in the Beatitudes, walk on water, and even multiply 5 loaves and 2 fish so that over 5,000 people could be fed.  

And as Jesus asks who others say He is, they give Him the facts, and some of the inferences others are making about Jesus: “‘Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’”  But then Jesus makes the question very personal and requires an answer that takes some soul-searching: “‘But who do you way that I am?’”  The basic facts are not enough when faced with this question.  You can’t simply rattle off stats when a person asks you who they are, because a person is more than just the aspects of his or her life.

Of course, we are familiar with St. Peter’s response; this is one of the clear passages that Catholics rely on to support our belief that Jesus instituted the papacy, not merely as a first among equals (as Jesus gave the power to forgive first to St. Peter, but then to all), but in a unique role, because to none of the other apostles did Jesus ever say, “‘…upon this rock I will build my church…’” and “‘I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.’”  St. Peter, our first pope, does not merely describe facts about Jesus, but identifies who Jesus is: the Christ, the 𝛸𝜌𝜄𝜎𝜏𝜊𝜍 (the Greek word for Messiah), the Son of the one, true, and living God.

We are probably good about reciting facts about Jesus.  We probably remember things that we learned about Jesus in Catholic Schools or religious education classes.  But do we know Jesus?  Not, do we know about Jesus, but do we know Jesus?  Whom do we know better: Jesus or our spouse?  Jesus or our best friend?  Jesus or our children?

Of course, to know someone, we have to know something about that person.  The complaint from many people who grew up with the Baltimore Catechism, and there is certainly some truth to this, is that they knew all the facts, but never realized that being a Catholic entailed a relationship with Jesus, and therefore a relationship with His Mystical Body, the Church.  They could tell you why God made us (God made us to know, love, and serve Him in this life, so to be happy with Him in the next) and recite all the necessary memorized prayers, but Jesus was, more or less, a stranger.  If we fast forward to the next generation, the general observation is that they were very good at knowing that Jesus loves them, and how to make crafts about Bible stories (the joke is that CCD really stands for cut, color, and draw), but they don't know anything about what the Church actually teaches, and often times do not know prayers beyond the Our Father, Hail Mary, and Grace Before Meals.

In reality, both approaches are needed.  We need to know the facts about a person, but we need to build on those facts to a deeper relationship.  If we put it in terms of a marital relationship, this makes perfect sense.  Can you imagine going up to a person and saying, “I know your height, weight, hair color, hobbies, credit score, eating habits, etc., so let’s get married!”?  That would be crazy!!  On the other hand, can you imagine going up to a person and saying, “I don’t know anything about you, but I know that I love you, so let’s get married!”?  Equally crazy!!  

In order to love a person, we first have to know that person.  So many of the annulments that I deal with are from people who admit that they thought they knew the person they were marrying, but it turns out they were wrong.  Learning about Jesus and about the Church is important, especially as a younger child.  We need to learn the facts, the rules, and the prayers that so many generations memorized.  And that doesn’t end in childhood; I’m not done learning about Jesus and the Church, and I have 4 degrees in those subjects!  So we all need to continue to form our mind with the intellectual treasures of the faith.  

But, especially as we are in middle school and older, we also need to develop and emphasize that relational aspect with Jesus.  If all we know are facts about Jesus, then it’s hard to say that we’re a disciple of Jesus, because a disciple is someone who knows the Master intimately, not just at a surface level.  St. James says it this way in his letter: “You believe that God is one.  You do well.  Even the demons believe that and tremble.”  Demons know about God, but they don’t have a relationship with God.  

Today the Lord invites us to know Him better.  Maybe we need to grow in the facts that we know about Jesus.  Maybe we need to grow in our relational part of our friendship with Jesus.  In whatever way we need to continue to grow (and we’re never done, not even after Confirmation!), God promises to assist us by the Holy Spirit, so that we can truly be the friends of God, not only in name, but, more importantly, in deed.

Drawing Closer to Jesus

Third Sunday of Lent

We are a month away from Easter Sunday.  Those words might sound exciting and comforting to you, as your Lenten penances only have 4 more weeks, but as a priest, four weeks to Easter is the busiest time of the year.  In addition to the usual busyness, I am one of the assistant Masters of Ceremonies for the Chrism Mass on Holy Thursday morning, so I’m assisting with a lot of the behind the scenes work.  And, this is my first Easter here, so I’m learning how things have been done here before, and feeling my way through the liturgical celebrations as we enter into them.  This is my favorite time of year in the Church calendar, but it’s also the most intense, and, if we let it be, the most powerful.

Today we hear our first long Gospel, prepping us for Holy Week.  That’s not really why we have these long Gospels over the next three weeks, but it seems to work out that we have three long Gospels to prepare us for the Passion Narrative (a super long Gospel) that we will hear on Palm Sunday and Good Friday.  Today’s Gospel and the next two weeks’ Gospels are passages which deal with conversion, our major theme during Lent.  

Today’s conversion story is about a woman of Samaria.  And in her conversion, she comes to know Jesus more and more as the story continues.  She starts out by referring to Jesus simply as “a Jew.”  There’s no personal interaction, only referencing his religion.  But Jesus draws her in more closely, as he offers her living water.

That encounter with Jesus leads to a change in tone.  No longer is Jesus simply “you, a Jew,” but is now “Sir.”  Jesus offers her something, and she’s interested in this “living water” she is speaking about.  She likes the idea of never having to draw water again, because she is drawing water, alone, at the hottest part of the day.  We’ll learn why later in this story.

Then Jesus changes the subject.  And it is probably not the subject that modern, polite people would talk about.  Jesus says, “‘Go call your husband,’” knowing full well what her situation is.  This woman at the well is an adulteress, which is why she’s drawing water alone at the hottest part of the day.  She has been married five times before, and the man she is living with currently is not her husband.  She, of course, doesn’t want to admit this (who would?), and coyly says, “‘I do not have a husband.’”  But Jesus reveals to her a part of her life that is not in order.  This leads her to acknowledge Jesus in a different way; she comes to know Him more.  He is not, “you, a Jew,” and he is no longer just “Sir.”  He is, she says, a prophet.  

But feeling a little uneasy about the trajectory of this conversation about her love life, she changes it to something she knows will divert attention away from her personal life: how to worship.  Not much has changed today: if you want to get someone in a heated conversation, talk about how you think Mass should be celebrated.  But Jesus doesn’t rebuff her question.  He answers by stating that true worshippers will worship God the Father in Spirit and truth. 

After talking to her about worshipping well, she is drawn to talk about the Messiah.  And Jesus says to her, “‘I am he, the one speaking with you.’”  Jesus reveals Himself and His mission.  When she first started, she did not recognize Him as anything but a foreigner.  Now she is led to think of Him as the Messiah, which in Greek, is translated 𝛸𝜌𝜄𝜎𝜏𝜊𝜍, which we translate as Christ.  From there she tells everybody about Jesus, and they come to believe as well.

This process of conversion is present in our own lives, as well.  It is present in the life of our Elect, Alexis, who is preparing for the Sacraments of Initiation.  It is present in Chris, our Candidate, preparing to be received into the Church and receive the Sacraments of Confirmation and the Eucharist.  But it is, or should be, present in each one of us.  All of us have opportunities to grow closer to Jesus.

Some of us, honestly, don’t know Jesus that well.  He is, we might say, only “you, a Jew.”  He is a stranger to us.  Some of us know about Jesus.  Maybe we come to Mass every week, we do our duty, or we come because that’s what we’ve always done on Sundays.  But Jesus still isn’t known well to us.  He is simply a respected person.  But we keep him at arm’s length, because we like the way we live, and we don’t want to have to change.

Some of us recognize Jesus as a good guy, a religious leader, someone who speaks for God (in other words, a prophet).  We feel that tug at our soul for God, and maybe we’ve even had some religious experiences in our lives when we felt really close to God.  But we still don’t recognize who Jesus fully is.  Some of us recognize Jesus as the Messiah.  We’re very active in our faith, but there are still some areas of our life that we don’t want Jesus to see, and we’re not sure we want to tell others about Jesus.  That seems a bit pushy to tell others about Jesus.  

No matter where we are in our faith, Jesus calls us to a deeper relationship with Him.  Sometimes, as we grow closer to Him, He reveals our need for Him, a need that only He can satisfy, no matter how much we try to fill that need with other, passing things.  Sometimes Jesus even points out our sins to us, in order to reject our sins and choose Him.  But Jesus always wants us to grow close to Him, especially through our worship of the Trinity in Mass.  And then He wants us to tell others about Him.  Where are we in our conversion?  We are never done; we can always grow closer to God.  Are we open to letting God change our lives?