29th Sunday in Ordinary Time

It’s a natural human tendency to make sense of things.  We ask the question “Why?” and we come up with an answer to appease our minds.  Our brains will even make up answers (even wrong ones, and totally believe them) just to satisfy this impulse to make sense of things.  When it comes to suffering, pain, difficulty, and even death, however, coming up with an answer for “Why?” often makes God into some kind of monster.  In the Scriptures God never gives an answer to “Why?” (I don’t think there is one), but what He does do is show us “where” He is when it comes to suffering, pain, difficulty, and even death: “I’m right there with you!  I walked that path already so that you would never have to walk it alone!  You’re never alone!”

28th Sunday in Ordinary Time

An enthusiastic young man comes to Jesus in our Gospel asking what he must do to inherit eternal life.  Having followed all the commandments from his youth, Jesus invites the young man to take a step in faith…but this young man is very wealthy.  At Jesus’ challenge to sell what he owns and follow Jesus alone, this good young man walks away – he isn’t willing to put something in his life down to take hold of Jesus.  We only have two hands, and this weekend Jesus is stretching out his hand asking us to take hold and be raised to another level of our relationship with him.  But we only have two hands, and keeping hold of Jesus often involves putting something else down in life – even good things.  We’ve only got two hands: what are you holding onto?

27th Sunday in Ordinary Time

I think the title speaks for itself…you’ll want to listen to this!

26th Sunday in Ordinary Time

How do we evaluate a day, a week, a month, a season in our life?  Is it by how little we’ve done wrong or sinned?  In the Gospel today Jesus comes down hard on sin: “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off!  If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out!”  While we may become complacent with our sins, Jesus never does.  And yet, if our goal is never to sin, that neither makes us holy nor prepares us for heaven! The Christian life isn’t about not sinning; heaven isn’t about not sinning.  Turning away from sin is only the first step of the Christian life.  Then we walk the path of the Gospel in a real and living relationship with Jesus!  So how do we evaluate a day, a week, a month, a season in our life?  A Christian would evaluate it based on how generously he or she lived, how many opportunities to help others were taken advantage of, how much more a man or woman of the Gospel they became during that time.

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

In our Gospel today a deaf man with a speech impediment is brought to Jesus.  Jesus takes him away from the crowd, touches his ears and tongue, prays, and cures both his deafness and speech impediment.  In our society it seems that many of us Catholics, like the man in our Gospel, have experienced what it feels like to be tongue-tied: we don’t always how to respond to people who are hostile to the Church (especially in light of the recent scandals) or how to answer difficult questions about what we believe clearly and concisely, and we’re not always comfortable telling other people what Jesus Christ has done in our lives.  Like He did the man in our Gospel today, Jesus wants to take us aside and cure our tongue-tied-ness…but like the man in the Gospel, the healing doesn’t begin with the tongue.

21st Sunday in Ordinary Time

Fr. Benedict Groeschel once told me, “The Church will get much smaller before it gets bigger.”  In our Gospel, Jesus’ teaching that his followers must eat his flesh and drink his blood (the Eucharist) to find eternal life turned many people away.  But the Church has to get smaller, and more genuine, before it can grow through authentic and powerful witness.  People get up in arms about Paul’s words in our second reading, “Wives, be subordinate to your husbands.”  They fail, however, to read the rest of that chapter, where Paul asks all Christians to be subordinate to one another, to put the wants and needs of others before your own, because that is true love, that is what Christ did for us.

Sadly, we see in the recent news from Pennsylvania and the numerous scandals in the Church that some, even the Church’s own ministers and leaders, have NOT chosen to follow this path that Paul (in following Jesus) laid out.  Rather, they have chosen their wants and needs at the expense of and to the harm of others.  Because of that bad example, many will leave the Church and even lose faith in God.  And for those who remain, there is now more ammunition to be hurled at us.  The Church will get smaller because of this, but it’s a time of purification. “The Church will get much smaller before it gets bigger.”  But it will get bigger…through GENUINE witness to Jesus Christ!

20th Sunday in Ordinary Time

In our Gospel this weekend, Jesus says that one must eat his flesh and drink his blood to have eternal life.  The people of his day and age are scandalized by that – “How can we possibly eat his flesh and drink his blood!  That’s preposterous!”  Does Jesus apologize?  Or soften his words?  Or say that he’s just speaking figuratively?  No.  In fact, he ups the ante.  We miss it in the English translation, but in the Greek, in response to their pushback, Jesus uses a different word for “eat”, a more vivid, primitive, and animalistic word, to make sure he clearly gets his point across.  Our belief in the Eucharist as the very Body and Blood of Jesus Christ is at the same time our belief that God wants to be intimately close to us: that He literally wants to just eat us up!

19th Sunday in Ordinary Time

In the spiritual life, it’s often the case that when you want to go up, you’ll first “feel” like you’re going down (emphasis on “feel”).  God grows us through struggle and perseverance, and it’s in those times when we “feel” like we’re going down that God is giving us the opportunity to grow in exactly that place where we feel weak.  So the next time you are struggling, don’t blame the situation, don’t blame yourself or think you’re doing something wrong.  Perhaps everything is at it’s supposed to be.  Perhaps you’re doing nothing wrong.  Perhaps God is giving you the opportunity to grow in this place where you “feel” weak and “feel” like a failure.  Maybe what feels like going down is actually going up!

17th Sunday in Ordinary Time

In the Gospel today Jesus goes up a mountain to preach.  This sixth chapter of John’s Gospel, surprisingly enough, is all about the Mass and the Eucharist.  People come and gather around Jesus, sitting at His feet and listening to His words – exactly what we do as we gather at Mass.  Jesus then miraculously feeds thousands – at Mass we are fed with bread and wine miraculously become the Body and Blood of Christ.  The more of ourselves we can put into the Mass, the more we will get out of it.  So this week I leave you with three practical tips of how to enter more deeply into every Mass and carry that experience with you throughout the rest of the week.

16th Sunday in Ordinary Time

In our first reading from Jeremiah, in the midst of very challenging times – the nation’s leaders were not following the Lord and Jerusalem was on the path to destruction – God promises that one day He will come and shepherd His people rightly.  That promise is fulfilled 500 years later in Jesus, Who comes to us, His people, as the true Shepherd in the line of King David, to lead us to our true home.  That sounds very nice and poetic…but if we actually believe it, then it means that certain demands have been placed upon us: to submit to and follow our true Shepherd and King.  How am I doing this week?

(I apologize for the delay in getting this out – still trying to settle in here at my new assignment.  I appreciate your patience!)