Homily for Thursday, October 25 at Saint Kateri, Christ the King site - Gospel Luke 12:54-59

Have you ever bought live lobsters and cooked them at home?  If you have, and probably even if you haven’t, you know that you start with the lobster in cold water and slowly and steadily the water heats up and the poor lobster probably doesn’t even know he’s boiling until it’s too late and he’s turned all red.  Lobsters, you see, are not very good at reading the signs of the times. 

            But reading the signs of the times is exactly what Jesus is calling us to do in this morning’s Gospel from St. Luke.  Be alert to what is going on around you, He tells us.  Certainly be alert to what is happening in our culture, in our society.  It is kind of scary to think about, huh?  The culture, our society, our nation even,  often can seem to be slowly and steadily heading toward ruin.  I was reading a presidential poll the other day that asked the poll participants their religion – a full 21% said they have no religion at all!  And I imagine that percentage is growing, not retreating.  Not yet at least.

            Well, we must stay alert and be attentive to the signs of our times.  And we must do what we can to be the presence of Jesus Christ in the world – in the workplace, in our schools, in our political discourse.  We are called to a New Evangelization – to bring to a world desperately in need of salvation the presence of its Savior, Jesus Christ.  We must do what we can.  And trust that God is in charge.

            But there’s another way of looking at this Gospel.  And that involves our own spiritual lives.  Jesus is calling us, I think, to be alert to the signs of the times in our own lives.   How is our progress in our spiritual journey?  Where are we slipping and falling?  Are we letting sin take root in our lives and slowly and steadily turn up the heat?  How alert are we to the signs in our own souls.   Thankfully, with God’s grace we have more control over our spiritual progress than we do over our national culture.  We can be attentive to the movements of the Spirit in our life, be attentive to how God is calling us.  And we have prayer, spiritual reading and the gift of the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist and Reconciliation, to keep us on track.

            For our own spiritual lives are important not only for our own individual salvation, not only so that you and I may one day see the face of God as our psalm beautifully describes our eternal destiny.  No, how we live our lives is important for our Church, and for our society.   The New Evangelization starts right here, in our own hearts, in our own lives.  The first step in the New Evangelization is the evangelization of our very selves.  Only then can we go forth to effectively present to the world the presence of Our Blessed Lord, Jesus Christ.

Preached on October 18 at CTK 6:30 and 8am Masses:


            As the old saying goes, I’ve got some good news and I’ve got some bad news.

            First the bad news.  There were no young men ordained to the priesthood for the Diocese of Rochester this past year.  Now I’m only speaking of ordinations to the diocesan priesthood - Bishop Clark did ordain Brother Isaac to the priesthood at the Abbey of the Genesee.  But in our diocese – no priestly ordinations.  Further bad news – there was only one the year before, and I think none the year before that.  Maybe one the year before that.

            Now the good news – wonderful news, actually - there were four young men ordained as transitional deacons this past year, and, God willing, will be ordained to the priesthood next year.  And more good news – there are more than twenty men in the formation process, discerning a calling to the priesthood in our diocese.

            All of this came to mind as I was reading and praying on today’s Gospel from St. Luke, whose feast we celebrate today, especially where St. Luke quotes Jesus “the harvest is plenty but the laborers are few.”   As one of the early Church’s greatest laborers, Luke knew this all too well.  In our first reading from thes second letter to Timothy, Paul tells us that only Luke has loyally stayed by his side in his apostolic journey.  It was Luke who wrote down for all of us one of our four Gospels, and it was Luke who beautifully chronicled the history and growth of the early Church, including Pentecost and the travels of Paul, in the book we now know as the Acts of the Apostles.

            So Luke knew all too well what those words of Jesus meant – the harvest is plenty but the laborers are few.  I’m afraid, at least in our own part of the world, that he would not find our own time that much different – we have decreasing religiosity and increasing secularism.  Especially among our young people.  Never has the need been greater for Jesus Christ to transform peoples’ hearts and lives and transform our society.  The harvest is indeed great and who will be the workers Jesus calls?

            Indeed, we are ALL called to be workers in the field and are all called by our baptism to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ out of these four walls and into the world.  We are all called to be light to the nations and the leaven of Christ to those around us.  If we are truly to see a new dawning, a new Evangelization, then all of the Faithful must partake.

            But we’re fueled by the Sacraments  especially the Eucharist, and without our Sacramental life, our Church is deprived of its greatest power, its greatest grace.  And the Sacramental life of the Church relies on there being enough “special” harvesters – our beloved priests - to serve the Church so that we may be light in the world.

            So on this feast of St. Luke, let us answer the Lord’s command and ask the Harvest Master, our Father in Heaven, to send workers to the harvest.  If we are of an age where we ourselves may prayerfully consider a vocation to the priesthood, the permanent diaconate or the consecrated religious life, let us ask the Lord for the grace to do just that, to listen to His calling, and follow His will in our lives.  And if we are past that age, let us be mindful to ask in our every day prayer that the Lord send good and faithful laborers so that Christ may present a bountiful harvest to His Father who is Lord forever and ever.  Amen.

Preached October 13/14 at Blessed Kateri, St. Margaret Mary site  - Gospel Mark 10: 17-31 the Rich Man

                I’m the one who usually has to pack the car whenever we go away from home.  And that was the case a few weeks ago when we were packing up to return home from the Adirondacks.  You see, friends had generously offered my wife and me the use of their Fourth Lake cabin for our anniversary weekend, and it was now Sunday afternoon and time to come home.  I was making trips out to our minivan to pack up our belongings, and thought I was just about done when I went back into the cabin and my wife pointed to the full-size futon mattress we were taking with us.  Six feet by five feet and a foot thick.

                 You see, a couple days earlier our dog had climbed up onto this beautiful rustic cabin futon while my wife and I were away climbing a mountain, and there she had an accident, soaking the cover and the mattress.  We figured we could get the cover dry-cleaned, but we knew that we had to buy them a new mattress and so we decided that we’d take the old one home with us.

                So flash forward to Sunday afternoon.  I thought the van was all packed and now seeing the massive mattress, my shoulders slumped because I immediately knew I was gonna have to empty out the minivan of everything I had packed into it, and start over, this time with the mattress in first.  I really had no choice – it was the only way I could fit everything into the van.  So I did, I took everything out and started over.  As anyone experienced at packing up cars knows, the biggest things have to go in first.

                This story came to mind as I was reading and praying on today’s Gospel.  For it seems to me that   Jesus is calling us to something very similar in our lives.   The message of this Gospel, I think, is a call for us to re-order our lives, to re-pack our lives, assuming they are in need of re-ordering, and I think for most of us, for me at least, we’re in need of some re-ordering, re-prioritizing. 

                The Lord is calling us to empty out our lives of all the attachments that get in the way of our following as a true disciple of Jesus, in the way of Jesus being first in our lives.  If we are really to be disciples of the Lord, it won’t work to treat Him as an add-on, or shoehorn Him in someplace, maybe between cutting the grass and watching the game. 

                No, rather we have to place Him first.  Before all else in our lives.  This is the radical discipleship that Our Lord is lovingly calling us to.  And it’s radical particularly in our materialistic culture, in our crazy, busy lives.

                The rich man in the Gospel, we learn, has figuratively filled the van of his life by carefully following all the commandments, but to his credit, he recognizes that he’s missing something, something big, that something more is necessary - necessary to gain eternal life, and necessary to gain fulfillment in this life. 

                And what is that?  Jesus tells him that it’s Jesus he’s missing - the Lord Himself.  Sell all you have and give it to the poor and come follow me, He says.  Jesus is the biggest thing, Jesus is what must come first in the man’s life, it won’t work if He’s just an add-on.  To really be a disciple of the Lord, Jesus tells the man, and He tells us, he must empty out the van and put Jesus in first.  Now Jesus did not require every disciple, nor us, to sell all they had.  But He saw the man’s heart, how attached he was to his possessions.  It’s this attachment that crowded out everything else – it’s this attachment to things that had to be severed.

                Now you and I may or may not have many possessions – we may not be the richest person in town, but I suspect that each of us has our own attachments that get in the way of our fully following the Lord.  Maybe attachments that we’re simply unwilling to turn over to the Lord. 

                This week’s reflection on the parish web site puts it this way – each of us, even if we don’t have many possessions, has our own “camels” – our own barriers to the fullness of the spiritual life Christ promises us.  The camels that get in the way of our giving time to the Lord in prayer perhaps, or maybe that cause us to ignore the needs of the poor, the homeless, those whom we should be serving, or even that cause us to turn away from the Lord in sin. 

                What is your camel?  What are your attachments?  What is it that you and I need to clear out of the minivans of our lives in order for the Lord to climb in to be the center of each of our lives? 

                The TV perhaps?  Or the internet?  Maybe it’s the refrigerator.  Maybe it’s your job, keeping you at work for more hours than are necessary.  Or relationships that you know you need to give over to the Lord.  There are all kinds of things to which we can become attached.  Not bad things in and of themselves, but those things that crowd out Jesus.  That don’t give Him space in our lives.

                With me it’s Notre Dame football, and spending too much time on the internet, and obsessing about this upcoming election.  And as an aside, I’ve found that even if I’ve emptied out my life and put Jesus first, I’ll often pile other things into my life that tend to crowd out the Lord, so I must periodically re-evaluate and start all over again.

                But back to the Gospel, make no mistake, this is your choice, this is my choice.   Like with the rich man in today’s Gospel, Jesus doesn’t force the man to sell all he has and give to the poor – He leaves that up to the man.   And He leaves it up to me and to you, too.  We see the man’s response - he can’t do it – he can’t bear to give up his many possessions to which he’s attached, and he walks away.

                But this I can assure you – Jesus gives us the grace to make that choice.  That grace comes especially in our gathering around this altar and partaking of His Body and Blood.  Here we are strengthened and here we invite Jesus into our hearts, into our bodies, into our very lives.

                So nourished with the Sacred Body and Blood of Our Lord, let us take time this week to examine ourselves.  And invite the Lord to show us what it is that we need to empty out of our lives so that we can welcome Jesus in.  So that Jesus Christ can truly be the Lord of our lives.