Preached this morning, Thanksgiving day, at St. Kateri parish, St. Margaret Mary site:

(Gospel Luke 17:11-19) -

            One of the few hopeful things that came out of the 9/11 attack eleven years ago was the fact that standing in the rubble of the fallen World Trade Center towers was a cross – a cross of steel girders, all that was left of two I-beams.  That cross was symbolic to millions that we as a nation would recover from that awful         day, a symbol that even in the midst of death and pain and destruction, God was present.  Fast forward eleven years to this past July.  A group calling themselves American Atheists filed a lawsuit to prevent this I-beam cross from being displayed in the 9/11 museum.  Never mind that this cross was found in the Ground Zero wreckage, they say.  No, they believe they are being injured by having a religious tradition not their own imposed upon them.

            And if you follow the news, you probably know that the City of Santa Monica, California decided this week to end a tradition that dates back to 1953 and will no longer allow a Nativity scene to be erected in the City’s Palisades Park there.  It seems that atheist groups applied for a large number of permits to put up their atheist displays in the same park, so the City Council decided not to allow any displays for the “holidays” this year.  Never mind that there is a needle exchange for drug users only one park over – they’ve averted real danger and gotten rid of the Christmas display!

            So Shhh!  Let’s nobody tell them about the real meaning of today’s celebration.  For truth be told, “Thanksgiving” is meaningless unless we acknowledge that there is someone to thank!  I’m not sure how atheists spend Thanksgiving, for I’m not sure to whom they’re thankful.  You see, inherent in the whole concept of giving thanks is that there’s a relationship – the person who is giving thanks and the One to whom thanks are given.  And of course, that person is God Almighty!  Creator of all that is good and giver of all good gifts.  Now this is not news to you – after all each of you has chosen to begin your celebration today in Church.  But I think this is largely lost in our increasingly secular society – that  we are in a relationship with the God who created the universe and each of our very lives!

            But Thanksgiving is more than just any relationship – it has to be a properly ordered relationship.  One in which I recognize how indebted I am to God, how unbalanced the relationship is, if you will.  Recognition that I neither deserve nor can adequately repay God for all that He has given me.  This relationship is different than a contract or a transaction, where I get something in exchange for something I give up.  The other night my wife sent me to Wegmans to buy some fruit and milk.  At the checkout counter I gave the cashier my money, I picked up my groceries and went on my way.  I politely told her “thanks” but really – what for?  It was an even-up exchange – milk and fruit for money.  In our relationship with God, where everything we have and everything we are comes from God, what do we have to offer?  There’s nothing really that we can offer to “compensate” God for what He’s done for us.

            And so the attitude that prevails in the properly ordered relationship with God is an attitude of humility.  Where I humbly recognize that God is God and I am not.  Recognize that God is the creator and I am but a creature.  I realize that God didn’t have to, but freely chose, to create me.  My parents may have wanted a baby, but they didn’t choose me, God did.  From all eternity.  And not only did God create me, but God loves me.  More than I can possibly fathom.  When that really hits us, often like a ton of bricks, how much God really loves us, we feel nothing but humility.  And thankfulness.  True gratitude.   This feeling of indebtedness, of utter gratitude.

            This is so different from the attitude of the secular world – an attitude of “I deserve this” or “I am entitled to that.”  It’s a realization that I didn’t deserve to be created and I don’t deserve to be loved by God (especially when I think of the ways I’ve failed to love Him).  And yet He did create me.  And He does love me!   That so humbles me.  And I feel profoundly thankful.

            In today’s Gospel, it must be that nine out of ten lepers somehow must have thought they deserved to be healed.  I mean, they had gotten a bum deal, an incurable disease, and were separated from society.  I guess I can understand how they might have thought “I didn’t deserve to get this disease and now I deserve to be healed.”  And I can relate to the nine lepers, I suppose.  In our own difficulties, in our own illnesses, in our grief and our losses, it’s easy to be resentful and think we deserve better.  Only one of the lepers recognized the free gift Jesus had given them, the undeserved gift, and came back to give Our Lord thanks and homage.   Only one recognized his profound indebtedness to the Lord and returned. 

            But here’s the funny thing about today’s celebration.  It occurs to me that if we have this proper relationship, and if we have an attitude of humility and gratitude, it’s sort of ludicrous to celebrate Thanksgiving for one day!  It’s almost like – let’s pick one day to give thanks so we can go about our lives the other 364!  No.  If our relationship with God is all about thankfulness, it is or should be, of course, a 365-day, 24/7 kind of thing.  To be thankful for one day only simply doesn’t make any sense.  We will soon pray “it is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks, Father most holy.”

            But if you’re like me, you know you’re not always thankful, not always mindful of the gifts you have.  If you’re like me, you tend to take things, and people and relationships for granted.  So it does help to have this one day to remind us of all we have to be thankful for, all God has given to us, and of how much God loves us.  G.K. Chesterton wrote “When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.”  Isn’t that the truth.

            So as we now proceed to celebrate our Sacrament of Thankfulness, the Holy Eucharist, which means Thanksgiving, let us ask God for truly humble and thankful hearts.  That we may be mindful of God’s love for us and mindful of all that God has done for us, on this day, and every day.  Through His Son, Christ Our Lord. Amen.

 

Preached Sunday, November 11 at SKT at Christ the King  (Mark 12:38-44, 1st reading 1 Kings 17:10-16, 2nd reading Heb 9:24-28):

                I will sometimes lie down on the couch, or the floor, to watch TV at night, and often when I do, I will fall asleep.  Well not too long ago I had fallen asleep on the couch and woke up in the middle of the night and the TV was still on, and there was one of these late-night infomercials on.  They weren’t selling some gadget or exercise machine, no, their pitch went something like this – if you’re down on your luck and at the end of your rope financially, all you have to do is make a contribution to our TV ministry so we can spread the word of God.  I watched with interest for awhile, wondering what sort of contribution they were requesting.  And then they gave the number – if you want to gain God’s good favor and finally have some success financially, all you have to do is send us $1000.  If you don’t have that kind of cash, we gladly accept VISA, MasterCard and American Express.  I heard that and my jaw just dropped – I couldn’t believe it.  And I got mad.  I got incensed.  These people, going on television and taking advantage of people in their financial stress, all in the name of God and Jesus Christ.

                It’s that sort of thing, I think, that Jesus is talking about in the first part of this Gospel.  Beware of the scribes who wear long robes and say long prayers and then “devour the houses of widows” Beware of those who are taking advantage of those who are most vulnerable, the most destitute.  And make no mistake, a widow was the most vulnerable and destitute person in society in Jesus’ time.

                To fully understand these readings, we need to explore what it meant to be a widow in Jesus’ time.  It was a time in which women basically had no rights, including inheritance rights, and a time in which women did not, could not, work outside the home.  A woman depended completely on her husband for her sustenance.  And if a woman lost her husband, with no inheritance rights, she’d have to rely completely on the generosity of her family or community.  It’s a picture of complete dependence.  Complete reliance.  Of complete trust.

                So Jesus is teaching that if the scribes, or you or I for that matter, are to take advantage of someone in such a dependent, vulnerable state, a severe judgment will come upon us.  Indeed, we are called to the opposite – we are called to protect and defend the rights of the vulnerable – the poor, the elderly, the unborn, the underprivileged in our society.  We are called, in fact, to give them preferential treatment.  It’s known as the preferential option for the poor.  Pope Benedict has said “love for widows and orphans, prisoners, and the sick and needy of every kind, is as essential as the ministry of the sacraments and preaching of the Gospel.”

                But at the same time as He gives a warning to the scribes, Jesus shines a spotlight on the attitude, the faith, of this poor widow.  See this widow?  This woman who has almost nothing?  She just dropped her last two cents into the collection.  She gave all she had.  She’s gonna have to rely on God, on others’ generosity, for her next meal!  So not only does this woman live a life of complete dependence, of complete reliance, she has an attitude of complete reliance.  And that’s the attitude that Jesus is inviting you and me to take on in this Gospel.   An attitude of complete reliance.  Of complete trust.  Of complete surrender.

                Contrast that, if you will, with the attitudes that I think many of us have, certainly that I often have.  One is sort of an attitude of my rights, of entitlement if you will.  And that can show up in multiple ways.  One way is this:  I worked hard for that money so I’m entitled to do with it as I please.  I’m often guilty of this one.  I work long hours and sometimes have to sacrifice seeing my wife and kids, so whatever success I’ve achieved I’ve earned, I get to keep.

                There’s another attitude of entitlement and it goes like this.  The government has made all these promises to me about benefits I’m gonna get, and darn it, I’m gonna get what I’ve got coming to me!

                BOTH attitudes, it seems to me, if I really ponder Jesus’ words in my heart, are contrary to the message Our Lord has for us today. 

                For by putting the spotlight on this poor widow, Jesus is calling us, I think, to transcend these attitudes and take on an attitude of dependence, complete reliance, on God.  An attitude where we realize that everything we have, everything we are, is a complete gift from God.  Everything is God’s gift.  Including the work ethic and the smarts and the luck that helped me to succeed.  An attitude that says that there is nothing I have, or am, that didn’t come to me from God.

                When we realize that everything is gift, we start to trust God and completely rely on Him, and trust that He will continue to provide.  Provide maybe not necessarily what we want, but trust that God will always provide what we need.   And when we place our trust completely in God’s providence, we can’t help but to be thankful.  A humble, trusting heart simply has to be a grateful, thankful heart.   

                Third, like the woman in today’s Gospel, we become more and more generous.   We realize that we are stewards o f that which we’ve been given, and we freely give away, trusting that God will provide.  The widow in the Gospel had a few small coins.  She could have held one or two back, but she gave them all away.  The widow in our first reading had just a handful of flour and a little oil left, yet she freely gave it away.  You see, a trusting and thankful heart leads us to be completely generous with those gifts God has given us.  God has generously given to us so, trusting in Him, we give away, we give back.

                So as we prepare for our Sacrament of thankfulness, the Holy Eucharist, the Sacrament of Christ’s goodness and generosity, let us pray that God will give us new hearts.  New hearts that are trusting hearts.  Thankful hearts.  Generous hearts.

                In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

* * * * * * *

                As a reminder, as we heard in the announcements, we have an opportunity next week to demonstrate our gratefulness and our generosity.  Our neighbors just 350 miles to the Southeast are suffering greatly in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.  Thankful for our relatively mild weather here in Irondequoit, and hearing Christ’s commandment from last week’s Gospel that we love our neighbor, I urge you to be generous when the second collection is taken next week to assist with the Hurricane Sandy relief efforts.  Thank you.

 

Homily preached this morning at Christ the King, 7:30 Mass (Deut 6:2-6, Heb 7:23-28, Mark 12:28b-34):

I don’t think there’s ever been a time when I’ve gone through the checkout line at Wegmans and I’ve glanced at the tabloids that I didn’t see in bold print some headline about this or that celebrity whose love is on the rocks or who are filing for divorce.  Indeed, when you hear about Hollywood marriages that last a long time, like Charleston Heston and Lydia Clarke who were married for 65 years, you open your eyes and are quite surprised, even astonished, because it’s so out of the ordinary.  When these Hollywood marriages split, you usually hear explanations like

“We just fell out of love”

“The Romance was gone”

Or

“I just didn’t feel in love anymore”

            I remember growing up thinking of love in terms of feeling.  I felt love for my dad and my mom. And sometimes for my brothers and sister.  I felt a feeling I thought was love at my first crush.  I met my wife and we became good friends, and eventually I “felt” in love with her, and can still remember the car ride in the mountains of North Carolina when I told her that for the first time.

            But I’m not sure I can tell you when I’ve ever felt love for God in the same way.  Or “felt” love for neighbor like that either.  Sure, I’ve always felt a measure of devotion to the Lord, and I’ve always felt a sense of responsibility for my neighbor, but did I feel love?  I’m not so sure.  Certainly not the same way I feel love for my wife and kids.

            This is important because today’s Gospel speaks of the two greatest commandments.  Not suggestions, mind you, but commandments!  Jesus quotes the Hebrew scriptures, indeed He quotes from Deuteronomy, our first reading, saying “Hear O Israel!  The Lord is our God, the Lord alone! Therefore you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.”  He commands us to love God!  That always troubled me a bit, for what if I didn’t feel love for God?  And for most of my life, I can honestly confess I haven’t really felt love for God?

            Well it comes down, I think, to how you define love.  Our culture, our society, and even our upbringing, tend to define love in terms of a feeling.  But I think that misses the mark.  As we know, feelings come and feelings go.  The love we’re speaking of in the Gospel, and in Deuteronomy, is more than a feeling – it’s a decision.  The love Christ commands of us is not a feeling, its’ a decision.  An act of the will.  It’s done as much with the brain as with the heart.   It’s deciding to order our lives such that God comes first.  It means persisting in our daily prayer, even when we might not feel like it.  Even when God may feel far away.  Even when life has caused us pain and we might be angry with God.

            This love calls us to obey His commandments and those of His Church, even when we might not want to, even when it may be difficult, even when nobody else does.   And it means that when we’ve sinned, when we’ve betrayed our love of God, this love Jesus commands of us means that we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and beg the Lord for mercy, and the best place for that Is the confessional!

            There’s another word for this kind of love – and the word is faith.  For the faith that is asked of us is more than words.  It’s more than our making a profession weekly about what we believe.  It’s about how we prioritize our lives, about how we live our lives, about the place of Our Blessed Lord in our lives.

            But love of God is not the only love Jesus commands of us today.  He quotes the Hebrew scripture Leviticus when he says that we must love our neighbor as ourselves.  And this is the same sort of love – an act of will, a decision.  In fact, it logically follows from our decision to love God that we will want to make decisions to love our neighbor.  When our faith is alive and on fire, when we realize just how much God loves us, we cannot help but to love our neighbor.  Whether or not we feel any love for them, we cannot help but to love them, cannot help but to serve them.

            Theresa is a great example of what I’m talking about here.  This wonderful book, Come Be My Light, reveals over 30 years of Theresa’s private writings and it offers a keen insight into this amazing woman’s mind and soul.  She reveals that for much of her adult life, she experienced feelings of darkness, of dryness, of distance from God.  She would pray, participate in liturgy and receive the Eucharist every day, yet for most of those days she felt nothing at all.  She even wondered if God was dead, she felt so far away.  Yet she persevered.  She got up every day and continued on her mission to serve the poorest of the poor, opening missions in over 100 countries.  Despite feeling nothing at all, she continued to love God and neighbor, and her Missionaries of Charity are now active in 133 countries.

            We can do the same.  Indeed we are called to do the same, commanded to do the same.  Oh maybe not do the heroic works that Mother Theresa did, but to get up every day, pray, participate in Eucharist if we are able, and persevere in an active love of God and neighbor.   Not so that we may receive any reward, not so that we may receive any glory, but only so that by our lives and by our love we may glorify the Father of Jesus Christ who is Our Lord forever and ever.  Amen.

Preached November 1, Feast of All Saints:

“The goal of life is to be a Saint,” I told Christopher.  “Yes, the goal of life is to be a Saint.”

            Christopher and I were meeting last year at our kitchen table, talking about our Catholic Faith.  Chris is the Godson of Pam and me, and he had honored me a few months before by asking me to be his confirmation sponsor.  Here we were talking about our faith and the topic of sainthood, and saintliness, came up.

            “So what do you think it means to be a saint?” I asked him.

            “Um…To be good?” he replied.  “To be holy?”

            “Very good,” I said.  “To be good.  And to be holy.  What do you think it means to be holy,” I asked.

            “I dunno.”  Chris scratched his head.  “Maybe to be perfect.  To not sin?”

            Well when I was 13 years old that’s probably what I would have said too.  A saint is holy, and perfect, and without sin, or so I thought.

            “I don’t think so.  Mary is the only saint we believe was without sin.” I continued.

            “Here’s what I think,” I went on.  “I think holy means this – holy means to be different.”

            Chris looked puzzled.  “Whaddya mean?” he asked.

            “If you read the lives of the saints,” I told him, “one thing that stands out is that virtually every one was a sinner, some great sinners, but that each one repented of their sins to follow Jesus Christ.  Yes, every one, without exception, was very close to Jesus Christ, had great FAITH in Jesus Christ.   But the other thing that stands out is that every one was not afraid to be different.  To go against the crowd.  To not conform to the ways of the world around them.  To be a light in the darkness.”

            And I went on to talk about a couple saints’ lives – St. Peter and Blessed Mother Teresa, I think.  I explained how their faith gave them courage to step out of the lives they were leading and live lives that were radically different from the lives they were living before, and radically different from the world around them.  And how their faith and courage led them to perform heroic good works.

            It was a good discussion, especially for a 13-year-old in Junior High, a young man struggling with issues of conformity, “fitting it” with the crowd, being accepted by his peers.  I hoped to give him the idea that it was OK, in fact that our Faith demands, that we be a little bit different.

            This conversation came to mind as I was thinking about today’s Feast and preparing for today’s homily.  And it was a good reminder to me - I personally needed to be reminded of those words I told Chris – first of all that our life’s goal should be to be a Saint, and nothing else.  It’s so easy to let all the false gods and the enticements of the world lead us to forget that.  “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?”  Jesus said.

             And also to be reminded that to be a Saint we must be holy, and ever striving to be more holy, which means we must stay ever so close to Our Lord, always growing in our faith, and by His grace to have the courage to be different.  To stand up and stand apart from the world, from the world’s evil, even when to do so may cause times of great distress, even when to do so means that the world may reject us, as it rejected Him. The difficult life of our patroness, St. Kateri Tekakwitha, is a perfect example of this.

            And finally, to be reminded that with God’s grace we may have the strength to do God’s will, to follow the example of the Saints to perform our own heroic good works.  Not by any merits of our own, and certainly not to bring glory to ourselves, but by the Grace and strength of the Holy Spirit living in us and acting through us, to bring glory and praise to His Father, who is Lord forever and ever.  Amen.

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.