Anchored In The Lord

Diocesan Youth Rally When I was little I loved playing basketball.  As I grew I moved from a little foam basketball to a little heavy basketball to a women's basketball to a men's basketball, from granny shots to real shots; then, one day, I finally realized what it felt like to make the perfect shot - you may as well turn around and start heading down the court because as soon as it leaves your hand you know it's going to be a swoosh!  That swoosh experience, that feeling of everything working exactly how it's supposed to (no matter what the sport or activity)...you know what that feels like!  "That's exactly how it's supposed to be!" we say to ourselves.  Now what if you could say that about life?  What if you could get to the end of a day and say, "That's exactly how life's supposed to be!"  With the Lord...you can!

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?

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 t

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!

18th Sunday in Ordinary Time It seems to be a natural human tendency to begin something new with energy and enthusiasm...then the path begins to get long and difficult...our energy and excitement seem to dry up...we begin to doubt our initial commitment and wonder whether or not the change is really worth it...then we slowly fall back into the way things used to be - not because the old way was better, but simply because we were familiar with it, which makes it easier.  That's the experience of the Israelites in the first reading, and in response God gives them manna, bread from heaven, food for the journey, so that they have the strength to continue down this new and better (but not easier) path.  Jesus is the new Bread from heaven, the Food for our journey toward heaven here on earth.  Every Mass, if we have eyes to see, we receive this Food and are given just enough strength to walk another week on our journey: away from our old (but easy and familiar) bad habits, and toward our God and our better selves. 

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?

15th Sunday in Ordinary Time In the Gospel today, Jesus' apostles "anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them."  This is one of the roots of our practice of the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick.  When should someone get anointed?  When do you call in the priest?  Is it supposed to be during one's final hours on this earth?  Or could it be sooner?  Listen to find out more.

14th Sunday in Ordinary Time This week I moved from Medford to Superior, Wisconsin to begin my new assignment at the 5 parish cluster in and around Superior.  This homily is "some" of my story of re-conversion to our amazing Catholic faith and how I began hearing God's call to the priesthood (I say "some" because there is so much more to the story, just not enough time in one homily to cover it all!).

13th Sunday in Ordinary Time Our God is a God of life: He creates life and He upholds life.  "God did not make death," our first reading says...and yet death is all around us.  The reading continues, "but by the envy of the devil, death entered the world."  We believe in the supernatural - we believe in angels.  Angels are amazing immaterial creations of God!  They are smarter, stronger and more powerful than humans, and they aren't limited by bodies like we are.  Yet, God chose to make us in His image and likeness, not them.  Out of pride and jealousy, some angels chose to turn away from God, becoming envious of the destiny that God has laid out for humanity.  Through their envy and temptation of our first parents, death entered the world.  Yet, God still calls us to an amazing destiny: made in His image and likeness, becoming a member of His family in baptism, God's plan is to raise humanity above all the choirs of angels and all other creation, to be seated at the right hand of the Father!  We have an amaz

Nativity of John the Baptist This weekend we celebrate the birth of John the Baptist.  John was a crucial figure, bridging the gap between the Old and New Testaments and preparing people for the coming of the Lord.  He spent most of his life in quiet preparation in the desert, and even though his role was crucial when he stepped out of the desert and into the spotlight, his time "on stage" was very short.  Maybe in your life you don't feel like you're on the front lines; maybe parts of your life seem un-amazing and un-eventful; maybe you don't feel like God is using you often for a special purpose.  Perhaps, like John, this is your time in the desert, when God is preparing you for the time when He wants you to step on stage and play a crucial role in the life of someone else.

11th Sunday in Ordinary Time God has a way of taking something small and making it big.  We see it in the parable of the shoot from a great cedar in our first reading, in the parable of the mustard seed from our Gospel, in the Church that Jesus established which has grown across the world over 2,000 years, and even in our own growth: from a one-celled organism in your Mama's belly to the 49 trillion-celled person you are today. God has a way of taking something small and making it big.  He wants to do this with your faith as well!  No matter how small you think your faith might be, give it to the Lord this day/this summer, place it on that altar at Mass, and He will make it bigger - it's just what He does!

10th Sunday in Ordinary Time The first book in our Bible, the book of Genesis, begins with two different creation stories...two DIFFERENT creation stories!  What does it mean?  What do they mean? Could they have something to say about who we are, what our relationship to God is, and why there is evil, pain and suffering in the world as we know it?  Listen to hear more!

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity Somethings we experience in life are beyond description - words can't reach as deep or as high as the reality.  Love is a good example.  We can use all different kinds of images and words and phrases to try and describe it, but in the end it's something indescribable with words - the experience and reality of love is deeper and truer than any words can express.  In the Trinity, we bump up against another reality (or is it actually the same reality?) that words will always fail to describe.  Words might fail, but we can live in and experience the reality of the Trinity in our lives if we are willing.

Pentecost The coming of the Holy Spirit CHANGED the first followers of Jesus.  We received the Holy Spirit in baptism, we were sealed by the Holy Spirit in Confirmation, we receive the Body and Blood of Jesus at every Mass...but how much are we CHANGED by these experiences?  Do you ever feel like you're in a spiritual rut?  Do you ever long for more in your faith but just not know why you aren't getting it?  If that's ever been you, listen to this homily, and most importantly - remember to breathe (spiritually)!