Planting seeds of faith with St. Henry (Sunday homily)

This weekend we celebrate the patron of this church, Saint Henry. 

Saint Henry’s feast day falls on July 13 each year; 

for a parish or church named for a saint, that day is a solemnity 

and the bishops allow the feast to be celebrated 

on the nearest Sunday – so that’s what we’re doing this weekend.

The point is that a parish should know its patron saint.

We were entrusted to his care; Saint Henry prays for us in heaven!

Before I go any further, let me share some news.

1) You might enjoy knowing that Joseph Allaire, 

one of our seminarians 

and a son of Our Lady of Good Hope parish, 

made a trip to Germany this summer, 

and visited the grave of St. Henry and his wife, St. Cunegunda. 

2) You can see some improvements on our campus, 

and I hope you like having some repaired curbs and fresh asphalt. 

3) Meanwhile, we are installing a new floor in the PAC 

and added some fresh paint. 

With a renewed Parish Activity Center, 

you and I can fill it with activity again, for all ages, 

from prayer and meetings to social activities and sports.

There are generous people who are helping make these improvements possible 

this summer and if you want to help, let me know. 

Now let me share a bit about Henry. 

He was born in AD 973 and died in 1024, a thousand years ago.

He was part of an important family. 

His father had been Duke of Bavaria.

But then his father fell into disfavor with the King, 

and dad was deposed from his office.

Later, the political winds changed again, and Henry and his family 

were back in their position of power and prestige.

One of the wise decisions his father made 

was to entrust Henry to be educated by the bishop Wolfgang, 

who was later recognized as a saint. 

Perhaps St. Wolfgang helped Henry learn from his family’s trials 

to focus on Christ’s kingdom, instead of his own, uncertain one?

Some people have great conversion moments; perhaps Henry did too.

Others are set on a path of prayer early on – this was Henry’s story. 

He was taught the importance of giving Jesus time every day.

Sometimes the most life-changing decisions are the simplest.

And we might notice that not many politicians become saints!

Why did Henry? Maybe because of the seeds of faith planted early.

This is what we do in our parish family in so many ways.

With Bishop Leibold School, with religious education and preparation for sacraments, 

with retreats and other activities for adults,

With our many opportunities to feed the hungry and help the troubled, All this plants seeds. 

If you did the math, Henry lived only 51 years on earth – 

fewer years than this parish has been here in South Dayton –

And yet the light of heaven that shined through his life 

reaches forward a thousand years to us and beyond.

Think about that whenever you say, what difference can I make?

So many kings valued their wives solely for giving them heirs.

He and his wife Saint Cunegunda did not conceive any children. 

Other kings would abandon their wives; Henry remained true.

Henry’s family complained to him that he was squandering his fortune; 

not on palaces and politics, but on the poor.

As king, Henry commanded armies and faced wars; 

but he was notable for seeking paths of peace and reconciliation.

Where did Henry learn these things? 

Was it when he got together with other kings and dukes?

Or was it when he attended Mass, 

or in the habit of prayer that he learned as a youth?

Perhaps as he and his beloved wife contemplated 

how to make a difference for eternity?

Again, it’s all about what you and I make a priority.

We always find time for what matters most. 

As St. Henry Parish comes together with Our Lady of Good Hope 

and St. Mary, as we work together, as we build together,

you and I can be just like Henry, as we:

- Share our gifts with our community, not hesitantly, but confidently;

- Make our churches and all our facilities welcoming, 

which is some of what you’re seeing happen this summer;

- Don’t be discouraged as we plant seeds of faith; 

they will sprout, even if takes a thousand years!

Ho-humming Jesus (Sunday homily)

So, this is a pretty striking reaction to Jesus.

He is healing people, casting out demons, 

and teaching people about God, offering forgiveness and offering hope.

“And they took offense at him.”

We know this kid, they said; he grew up here. 

We know his family. Who does he think he is? 

Ho-hum, they said.

Their hardness of heart “prevented” Jesus from performing miracles; 

not because he was literally incapable of doing so – 

he is God, he can do what he likes – 

but rather, because there was no point.

The point of his healings and his teaching are the same: 

to open people up to the supernatural life God offers them.

But they were closed off; his miracles would do them no good.

It is shocking to think of people reacting this way.

But let me ask you: if you could have just 5 or ten minutes with Jesus, 

in which he would do for you what he offered those people,

Would you rearrange your schedule to meet with him?

I think a lot of us are saying, of course I would!

So then I ask you: what do you think happens in the confessional?

I know: a lot of people get discouraged because they go to confession, and they don’t get better.

But maybe the sacrament is keeping you from getting worse – 

did you ever consider that?

Saint Therese the Little Flower made a point on this somewhere:

That the reason we don’t quickly overcome our sins 

is because that would lead us to massive spiritual pride, 

which can send us to hell just as easily.

So it is God’s mercy that we spend our lives wrestling with sin, 

rather than one confession and done.

It really is this simple: what do you think happens in confession?

Do you believe Jesus is there, with all his power and his mercy?

Do you believe that? 

For that matter, do you believe the Holy Mass is a miracle?

Because that is what it is.

Actually, two miracles; two miracles happen in every Mass; 

and we all witness them.

The first miracle is that God brings us to Calvary, 

to the Sacrifice that Jesus offered on the Cross.

The Mass is the Cross; the Mass brings us to the Cross.

When you and I are at Mass, we are right there with Jesus.

The second miracle is the change of bread and wine 

into the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity – 

the true, real Presence of Jesus our Lord.

And, now that I think about it, there are three miracles.

The third one is that you and I, 

in receiving the Eucharist in a state of grace – 

meaning, we are not conscious of a mortal sin 

that we have not yet brought to confession…

I say again, when we receive the Eucharist in a state of grace,

we are united with Jesus. We have union with God.

When I say it aloud, it is astounding; it’s shattering.

I can’t help wondering, 

how in the world do we ho-hum these wonders? 

How does it happen? And yet, we do.

I don’t mean you; I mean me.

I stand at this altar, day by day. 

I give out God’s mercy in the confessional, and I’m glad to do it; 

but I confess to you, I am not overwhelmed enough. 

Not nearly enough.

It wasn’t just the hometown neighbors of Jesus who ho-hummed him; 

And by their “yeah, so what?” attitude, closed the door to miracles.

No; it wasn’t just them.

I don’t want to be those people. Do you? Do you?

“Jesus, I dare to ask: break down the barriers, break my heart open!

Please keep me, please keep these your flock, 

from being numbered among those 

about whom you are ‘amazed at their lack of faith.’

Please, Lord, in your mercy, may these words not be said of us. Amen.”

A homily about pornography (without using the word)

 This homily is going to focus on something delicate and not pleasant.

But I’ll use careful wording for the sake of younger ears.

There’s a chronic problem faced by a lot of people around us – 

but very few are ever going to talk about it openly.

And it isn’t just grown-ups; 

it includes a shocking number of our kids, starting in their early teens.

I’m talking about the dark corners of the Internet; 

mainly ugly images and videos, but also, increasingly, online gambling. 

For a lot of people, this isn’t just an occasional thing; it is an addiction.

If this isn’t you, it can be really hard to understand.

How can someone wreck his or her life over alcohol 

or gambling or over dark stuff on the Internet?

What you must understand 

is that this isn’t merely a question of will power.

It isn’t about not praying enough, or some easy trick. It goes deeper.

Partly it’s brain chemistry. 

Something makes me feel good, and for some of us, 

we want it too much.

There’s also an issue of connection – intimacy –

which is a hidden crisis in our times.

If you or I do not have the healthy kind of human connections, 

we are prone to seek out the wrong kind. 

False kinds. Empty connections.

Which means, if we are hooked on the wrong kind,

a big part of the remedy involves seeking more of the healthy kind.

When a lot of us were children, 

we had one phone the whole house shared.

When you talked on the phone, you did in the hall or living room.

And all you could do with your phone was talk.

Most people had one TV, with 3, 4 or wow! Five channels!

So, TV was much more a thing you did with others.

Today, everyone has his or her own telephone;

You can watch TV on it. Alone. You do lots of things. Alone.

A few years ago, 

I talked about the good practice of a “thank you” phone call.

It turns out, some teenagers found calling grandma terrifying.

They knew how to text, not talk.

See how disconnected we have become?

No wonder more of us seek connection in fake and twisted ways online.

Now let’s talk about what happened in the Gospel.

A man comes to Jesus; his daughter is very ill.

What does Jesus say? I will come to her. 

Along the way.

A woman in the crowd reaches out and touches Jesus.

And then, surprisingly, Jesus decides to call her out.

Why not just let her go on her way: she was healed after all.

If you were her, would you want the spotlight to be put on you?

It’s kind of harsh. Why would he do that?

There was something more that woman needed 

than just to have her bleeding problem stopped.

This condition had been humiliating, 

and for 12 years, it separated her from others.

Perhaps this woman felt shame, ugly, unwanted and unloved.

She didn’t just need the medical issue fixed; 

She needed even more for her connection with others to be restored.

To be loved and to know it. That’s the healing the woman needed.

Jesus wasn’t embarrassing her; he was pulling her from the shadows.

Then she told Jesus the whole truth.

One of the most healing things you and I can do, 

when we have something we feel shame about, is to tell someone.

Being alone with that shame gives it so much power.

Remember: what we need is to connect in a healthy, real way.

Jesus wanted that woman to know she wasn’t just a stranger; 

she was family. He called her “daughter.” 

That’s the connection. You are a beloved child of God. And so am I.

Dealing with these habits online: I don’t have all the answers, 

but if you want to talk, and get it out,

we priests are here to listen and not repeat things.

We have a group called “Catholics in Recovery” 

as a place for anyone facing addictive behaviors to start healing.

And no matter what separates you, 

what you think makes you totally outside and unworthy,

is just not big enough that God won’t say to you, 

you are beloved son, you are my beloved daughter.

God created this world to be a place of life.

He made you and me to be “imperishable.”

And he came into the world – becoming one of us –

To raise us back to life.

You are the one to whom Christ is speaking in the Gospel.

You are the child, he says, “is not dead but asleep.”

And to you, his most loved child, he says, “Arise!”

What do Job and the Apostles both discover? (Sunday homily)

Image from: Just a Catholic Blog

Since the Book of Job rarely gets read on Sunday,

This is a chance to fill in some details behind today’s reading.

At the beginning, Job has a good life, 

and he offers prayers and sacrifices to keep it that way.

What do you think? Do you and I ever operate that way?

“I’ve got a good life, so I’ll go to church and God will keep blessing me.”

The risk – for Job and for us – is this:

what happens when Job, or we, lose our good life?

When our health fails or everything goes south, like Job we ask: 

what did I do wrong? Why did this happen to me?

And here we come to something many don’t notice about Job:

He says to God, I want you to come here and tell me what I did wrong.

And God does come and speak to Job!

God agrees, Job did not commit any sin. 

Now we arrive at today’s reading, where God reveals his glory,

And after this, Job falls silent; he no longer has any complaint, 

even though he is still weighed down with pain and grief. 

Why does Job fall silent? What has changed for him?

Job has reached a new relationship with God:

He doesn’t worship from a distance, God is right there.

It isn’t about the good things of life. 

Now Job realizes, knowing God is the treasure.

So, now we jump ahead to Paul’s letter and to the Gospel.

Both Paul, speaking to the Corinthians, 

and the Apostles, speaking to each other,

are grappling with the same question: Who is this Jesus?

And the answer is, he’s the exact same treasure Job discovered.

I almost said what maybe you are thinking right now:

We can’t imagine what it is like to realize, as the Apostles did, 

that the Lord your God is sitting with you in your fishing boat.

But that’s not true! You and I do know what that is like!

Every time you and I come into this church, 

or drive by a Catholic church, we know: Jesus is right here.

So I can walk over here to the tabernacle, 

and I suppose this is about how close he was 

to the Apostles in that storm.

And while the Eucharist is the fullest reality of God present to us, there is more! 

All seven sacraments serve to make God present to us, as in that boat.

And each one of us, by virtue of our baptism, 

our confirmation, and of our maintaining communion with Jesus 

by prayer and seeking holiness, we too make God present to others.

Not the unique full, real presence of the Eucharist, 

but still, something real and powerful in our world.

Saint Paul tells the Corinthians: don’t miss the reality of what we have!

And today, I’m repeating that to you.

And let me say this to our young men:

When I talk to you about being a priest, you may wonder, 

why would I even think about that? Here’s the answer:

Everyone can share Jesus with the world.

Everyone can be as close to Jesus as the Apostles in the boat.

But someone has to take up the unique mission 

of offering the sacrifice of the Mass, 

Of lending your voice to speak absolution, 

freeing us from sins in the sacrament of confession, 

And letting Jesus use your hands to anoint and comfort us in sickness.

Jesus invited the Apostles to that special surrender and he invites you. 

When many of our fellow Christians gather on the Lord’s Day, 

the preacher will give an altar call, 

challenging everyone to wake up to God’s invitation, not later; now! 

That’s kind of what God is doing for Job and again, for the Apostles.

And, let’s face it, we often need the storm to focus their minds.

If you have no storms in your life, thank God!

But that might tempt you to think the invitation isn’t just as urgent.

Meet the One who commands the storms and supplies all we need.

Jesus himself is the treasure.

What to do with terrible sermons

Here are some thoughts that came to me today as I considered the various observations about homilies (or sermons, the terminology isn't all that important):

1. Most bishops, deacons and priests seriously try to offer homilies that are for your benefit.

2. Preparing a homily message, and delivering it, are two distinct challenges that come easier to some; and it isn't merely a matter of training.

3. Many priests and perhaps bishops, face a particular challenge in finding time to do even minimal work in that preparation. Some priests who give homilies without much preparation may be lazy, but I suspect many more find all their time taken up with other things.

4. Preparing a homily that addresses delicate or controversial topics is especially challenging, because it involves, metaphorically, navigating a minefield. Many or most weeks, time or other circumstances may lead a homilist to say, I just can't manage that this week. Rinse and repeat, week after week.

5. Many priests have been encouraged by feedback to be funny, to be entertaining, to be light, as opposed to be substantive and controversial. This comes both from positive and negative feedback.

6. Recognize these last two aspects, combined with the force of habit, for the peril they create: we preachers can get comfortable with, and rationalize, not giving you all that much in our homilies.

7. It may be desirable that the homilist be funny or lively or eloquent or dramatic or animated and profound, and to manage to avoid giving offense, and to avoid any rhetorical sharp elbows or awkward expression; and to do all that in 3 minutes or 90 seconds or with a single sentence. 

But sometimes the job that needs to be done, and the worker doing the job, can't work out that way. Indeed, what you get may, in your judgment, be too...whatever. It might even be what some treat as the worst possible thing: "boring."

8. Before you complain (and I'm not saying you can never complain, but I will ask how you justify complaining to everyone else, but never bothering to address your comments to the one who offered the homily), maybe consider the prior points and perhaps ask: what do I think the homilist hoped to do for any of us, for me in particular, with his message? 

In short, apply charity. Do you actually think the homilist's purpose was to harm you? Even in offending, perhaps deliberately, was it to *harm* -- or to save? 

9. Somewhere along the way, before you say or do anything at all, you might ask: "How can I help?"

10. And along the way, ask: how much merit does my grievance really have? 

Actually misrepresenting the Faith, or the facts, in a serious way, is seriously bad, as is a serious and deliberate lack of charity toward anyone. My guess is, most of the complaints people offer don't rise to this level. No, the usual complaints are, "too long," "too boring" or "not that again!" 

If you really cannot find anything else of merit in the homily (and I've listened to homilies that were a struggle for me to find much treasure!) there remains this: your suffering, such as it is, can be purgatory for you and how precious is that!

What do you think of these quick observations?

God doesn't care... (Sunday homily)

God doesn’t care about big and little.

Being the biggest kid at school or the strongest country in the world.

This doesn’t impress him.

And saying, “I’m too old,” or “I’m too young,” or “I don’t know enough,” 

aren’t excuses that cut any ice with God.

This business of saying that human life doesn’t matter 

when it’s too early or too small: 

Well, we humans who determine value by money or power or size, 

find it easy to devalue early human life. But what does God say?

God doesn’t care about big or little.

An awful lot of change has happened in this world — 

both for bad and for good – 

through people who didn’t listen when others said, “who are you?”

Marx - who are you?

Saint Paul – who are you?

Martin Luther King - who are you?

Mother Theresa – who are you?

God doesn’t care about little or big…except when it comes to virtue.

No matter what age you are, or how limited your abilities, 

you can be rich in courage and justice, chastity and generosity.

Consider Father Maximilian Kolbe. He was a Polish priest, 

his country conquered in six weeks in World War II, 

and he was thrown into the notorious death camp Auschwitz.

Every day he saw proof that he and everyone else imprisoned

were nothing to their captors;

and he had to know he would die,

and that he was powerless to prevent it.

Father Maximilian had serious health problems even beforehand.

He was a brilliant scholar, but what did that count for now?

How insignificant, how nothing, he might have felt!

Yet he planted a tiny seed of generosity: 

he stepped forward to take the place of another prisoner 

marked for death.

That man – Franciszek Gajowniczek – 

survived Auschwitz, and was in St. Peter’s Square in Rome 

when Pope John Paul II declared Maximilian Kolbe a saint!

But understand – and right here is the practical takeaway 

for each of us – that the courage and ability to deny oneself 

that Maximilian had in that hour didn’t just show up.

It began when he was a boy learning the habit of virtue: 

of choosing prayer, kindness, chastity and generosity.

And while on this subject: a lot of people don’t get 

why chastity or self-denial matter all that much. 

Here’s the answer: the capacity to say no to what my body says 

is super-duper urgent, right now, is directly proportional 

to being able to say YES to putting others first.

I never witnessed my father making any heroic sacrifices 

like St. Maximilian – at least, I didn’t think so; 

until, as a man, I reflected on how my dad 

almost never seemed to be sick. But of course he was!

What he did, however, was still get out of bed and go to work.

Chastity and temperance form that virtue of self-gift in us.

No matter who you are, how small or young you are, 

or if you think, I’m too old, it’s too late for me:

While you have breath, 

it is not too late to become greater in virtue,

Which is the only thing that really matters 

both in this life and in eternity. 

Today is not too late to say to Jesus:

Please plant that seed of courage, of faith, in me;

As small as I am, I will give all I can to make it grow, 

even if all I have is just today.