Lord, on the day I called for help, you answered me!

+ J. M. J. +

Homily Outline for the 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C

“Lord, on the day I called for help, you answered me!” These were the words we repeated multiple times in our psalm, and they frame the strong theme of our readings this Sunday… we are to call out to the Lord for what we need and what we desire. Jesus tells us in the Gospel:

And I tell you, ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

Have you every worried that asking God for what you want or need is selfish? Have you ever thought, well, maybe I had better just pray for other people? Here you have the Lord’s clear command: ASK, SEEK, KNOCK! And a promise: RECEIVE, FIND, the door will be OPENED.

In our first reading from the Book of Genesis, we see Abraham apparently bargaining God into sparing Sodom and Gomorrah. At first God offers to spare the cities if 50 righteous men can be found, and eventually Abraham gets Him down to ten! We see here both the mystery of our intercession, but also the fact that even the People of Israel took a while to understand how mysterious God really is! In the following chapter God’s angels manage to get Abraham’s brother Lot safely out of the city, despite the intense wickedness, sexual perversion, and violence of the people there, and then God’s judgment falls on the city. Our prayers have an impact, but God’s will is mysterious, and we never comprehend it fully.

On the simplest level, then, we claim that God answers prayers, and perhaps we have all had the experience of our prayers being answered. At the same time, though, we have probably had the experience of having our prayers apparently fall on deaf ears! Did you every pray for a blue bicycle when you were little, and it didn’t arrive? Or did you pray for the girl you had a crush on to sit next to you, and she didn’t? Or have you ever thought, to quote Garth Brooks, that some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers?

So, it’s clearly more complicated that it seems at first. One might conclude that prayers just make us feel good, but that’s not what we believe. On the other hand, we could avert our eyes when we see prayers not being answered, rather than face the difficulty head on. We are called, though, to the encounter between faith and reason, between revelation and experience.

This mystery of intercessory prayer involves the mystery of God’s infinite goodness, our limited vision, and our freedom. God is beyond our full grasp, beyond our full understanding. He has chosen to reveal Himself to us, most perfectly in Jesus Christ, and so He wants us to know Him. We are creatures, though, and so we cannot fully grasp our Creator, even as He reveals Himself to us. Part of the rich mystery of our creation is our real but imperfect freedom. We are truly free, even as we so often allow our freedom to be hemmed in by bad habits, sin, and even addiction. We often abuse our freedom by choosing away from God, and so we are enslaved to falsehood and sin. But where there is breath, there is hope, and where there is breath, there is some faint glimmer of freedom. As we see so much in the world around us that is counter to God’s will, we can easily ask whether God’s will is done at all! God has chosen to make us free, capable of love, capable of heroism, capable of holiness, and this then is necessarily a world where the opposite is possible: indifference, selfishness, and vice. The people of Sodom and Gomorrah rejected God, and we see our neighbors and friends reject God, and each one of us has also rejected God at some time and in some way. The world is broken not because God’s will is imperfect, but because we are, not because God wills evil, but because we do.

Even in the midst of this, though, God is always drawing us, calling to our hearts, offering us forgiveness and mercy, and offering grace and conversion even in the midst of disaster. On Thursday evening I received news of a terrible car wreck affecting some of my best friends down in El Salvador where I served in the Peace Corps, and where I visited just a couple months ago in May. My friend Antonio was taking most of his family to the airport to pick up his sister who was coming to visit, and they were in a wreck. Antonio died, along with both of his parents, and three of his five children. Two of his nieces and two of his daughters were injured, but survived. This sad news has been heavy on my heart and mind. This morning, before the funeral which took place with six caskets present, I was able to speak with the two daughters who survived, Nereyda, the eldest child, and Maria Jose, the youngest, who lost her twin sister Emely. I spoke with Antonio’s wife, Edith. She had not gone with them on Thursday. I was truly inspired by her courage and hope, even just talking to her on the phone. I assured her of the prayers of many people, and she spoke of the power of prayer, of her strong sense of being lifted up and sustained by prayer in these very dark days.

A picture taken this May when I visited my friends. From the left: Nereyda, who survived; I can't tell the two little twins apart, but one died, Emely, and one survived, Maria Jose; Edith, the mother, was not in the wreck; Lupita, standing in the pink shirt, died; Antonio, the father, died; myself; Cristian, on the right, died.  Not pictured are Antonio's parents, Antonio and Juana, who also died.  May they all rest in the peace of Christ.

Why would God allow such a thing to happen? My friends, we are truly free. God does not play games with us, as if we were marionettes. He does not tug on our strings, jerking us away from one disaster or another. It appears that Antonio may have fallen asleep at the wheel, but we will never know for sure. I am certain that God did not cause the wreck, and I am certain that our choices really do have consequences, some of them beautiful, some of them terrible. On Friday evening I prayed the Rosary for my friends, the living and the dead, in the dark church, and I gazed upon the crucifix, and I gazed at the tabernacle lit only by the vigil lamp, and I know that God was listening. My friend Edith now faces the task of nursing her two remaining children back to health, and of making a new life without her husband. In the midst of this she can feel the power of being lifted up by the prayers and love of many people, among them many she will never meet.

In this light, listen again to St. Paul speaking to the Colossians:

You were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. And even when you were dead in transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he brought you to life along with him, having forgiven us all our transgressions; obliterating the bond against us, with its legal claims, which was opposed to us, he also removed it from our midst, nailing it to the cross.

Jesus is God’s answer to our prayers. Jesus is God Himself come into our midst, shouldering our burdens, nailing them to the Cross. In Jesus our freedom is redeemed, and the path to eternal life is opened before us. In Jesus our prayers are answered, even when we can’t see when or how. We come to this altar now, with all of our needs, some of them buried deep in our hearts. We come with our hope, with our sorrow, with our fears, with our dreams. We receive from this altar the Lord Himself. We call out to Him for help, and He answers us by offering us His own flesh and blood.



I dedicate this homily to the memory of my six friends who died on Thursday: Antonio hijo, Antonio padre, Juana, Cristian, Lupita, and Emely. May they rest in the peace of Christ. Que en paz descansen.

+ A. M. D. G. +

Unum est necessarium… is the one thing first in your life?

+ J. M. J. +

Homily Outline for the 16th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C

Recently I spoke to someone who had a very large number of family members visiting over the 4th of July, and she described how tired she was after the visit! Sometimes it is said that the only thing better than seeing your guests arrive is seeing them depart! Where does this weariness come from? It is precisely from the offering of authentic hospitality: when a guest enters our domain, however humble, we become in a certain measure responsible for them, for their welfare, for their comfort. There is a certain pride in this, in offering what we have, however small. One of the hallmarks of Middle-Eastern culture all the way back to the Old Testament is a very strong sense of the care and respect to be shown to a guest.

And so these three strangers arrive in the heat of the day at Abraham’s tent. Notice how the place is named because of the presence of a single tree, the terebinth of Mamre! This is a desert land where vegetation is scarce, and where a traveler is very much at the mercy of his host. Perhaps this very vulnerability is what sets up such lavish hospitality. Abraham runs to them, greets them with great deference, and prepares a feast to them. Notice his haste, notice the lavishness of the feast. It is one thing to take something out of the freezer, quite another to immediately butcher an animal. When the food is ready, Abraham doesn’t preside at the banquet, rather he serves the guests while they eat. In light of Abraham’s hospitality, a blessing is bestowed upon them, that Sarah will conceive a son!

In the Gospel we see this generous reception offered to Jesus. Martha and Mary both welcome him, Mary listening at His feet, and Martha preparing the meal. As faithful Jewish women, they offer their guest hospitality, a warm and generous reception. Jesus embraces all the goodness of the Jewish culture and the Old Testament, but then purifies and fulfills it. If Martha and Mary were both to imitate what is best about Abraham and Sarah’s hospitality, it seems that they both should have hurried about preparing and serving. Yet Mary, rather than rushing about, is absorbed and attentive at the Lord’s feet, listening. I think most of us can very much understand Martha’s frustration. She approaches the Lord with a certain boldness to complain! Jesus doesn’t rebuke Martha, He doesn’t get angry with her or denigrate her anxious hospitality; rather, He calls her deeper, not only to what is good, but to what is best. “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.”

Let those words sink in, “There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part…” As I gaze upon you and as I look within my own heart, I know God sees the many different holy things which occupy us: our parents, spouses, and children, our work, the upkeep of our homes and cars, our legitimate hobbies and recreation. As I picture my inbox, my office, my calendar, they are full to the bursting with many things. As we pause to pray, our hearts and minds are often full of many things. Jesus does not condemn all these legitimate duties as evil. God has created all things, and no thing is in and of itself evil. But, what about the one needful thing? What about not only good or better but best? What about priorities? Jesus doesn’t harshly rebuke Martha, or level withering criticism, but He does gently correct and invite her to something deeper, something more. God calls us to Himself, He desires to give us Himself. As He has created all things, as He constantly sustains us in existence by love at every moment, God desires us to offer ourselves to Him: not just our work, our efforts, our results. He is not a pagan idol that must be fed lest it become fractious and discontented. First and foremost God wants us to give Him ourselves: our minds, hearts, souls, attention, and our deepest desires. He wants us to gaze into His Face, to sit at His feet listening to Him speak.


Mysteriously, we are not only to give hospitality to God Himself, but even to welcome all that comes in His name. St. Paul speaks of rejoicing in his sufferings, confident that they are united with the afflictions of Christ, confident that God is at work even in the midst of his own failure, weakness, and pain. By our baptism we are united with Christ in all things, even the Cross and our crosses. When we receive as from God’s hands all that comes, and when we offer it back to Him in the intimacy of our daily prayer, then Christ is in us, and as St. Paul says, here we find hope for glory… hope for the final victory and joy and peace of heaven. God longs for us to entrust into His hands all that is in us, good, bad, ugly... to unite all things to the Cross.

This Gospel passage is special to us in the Diocese of Marquette: Venerable Frederic Baraga chose it as his Episcopal motto, using the first part of the last verse. In Latin, “Unum est necessarium,” in English, “There is need of only one thing.” Bishop Baraga was par excellence a man of action! He pushed himself and all those he worked with to the very edge of their physical and spiritual limits. He had an intense sense of the urgency of the mission, the great need for the Gospel. In 1841, then Fr. Baraga was in LaPointe, on Madeline Island in the Apostle Islands, and he made a renewed and deeper commitment to give the Lord two or even three hours in meditation each morning. He was 44 years old, and had been in the mission fields of Michigan for about 10 years. The true immensity of the daunting task before him was clear. Bishop Baraga didn’t doubt the need for vigorous and sustained action and zeal, but he realized that his own resources were radically inadequate. He realized that unless he sat at the Master’s feet, he would not be able to sustain the Master’s work. He acted on the insight that unless he was in intimate friendship with the Lord, he could not propose to invite others to that friendship. Until the very last days of his life, some 27 years later, he remained faithful to this commitment to daily morning meditation.

Certainly none of us here face the same physical hardships that Bishop Baraga did, nor are we entrusted with quite the same vast spiritual responsibility: to serve the people from the Northern Lower Peninsula all the way to Northern Minnesota! Nonetheless, the same basic challenge lies before us: as we recognize God’s call to love our families, to perform our daily work with integrity and zeal, to be salt, light, and leaven in our broken world, do we attempt to answer that call and to do that work out of our own resources? How often do we feel harried and stressed out and angry? There is need of only one thing… and how easily we avoid or ignore or postpone it! God calls us first to intimacy with Himself, first to give Him some jealously guarded and defended time of prayer and attention, and then out of that we are empowered and equipped to fulfill our many obligations. Indeed the person who seeks God first will do more and do it better! The person who loves and listens to God first will love and listen to those around them more and better.

We come today not only to sit at Christ’s feet, but to receive Him. May we open our hearts now, may we choose the one needful thing, and receive abundant grace from God.

+ A. M. D. G. +

Called to be good samaritans, saved by THE GOOD SAMARITAN

+ J. M. J. +

Homily Outline for the 15th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C

We begin today with a very striking and important question, a question put to Jesus in our Gospel, a question that we should allow to penetrate our hearts, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” God is love, and eternal life is to be rooted and grounded in that love, to be fully in God’s presence for ever. What must each of us do to find lasting peace and happiness, in this life and the next? How do we survive? How are we to flourish? Apply this question to the concrete details of your life… What must I do to love my wife and children? What must I do to love my husband? What must I do to love my parents and my grandparents? What must I do to love my co-worker and my neighbor?

Jesus directs the man’s attention to the Law, and he gives Jesus a common summary: to follow God’s Law means to love Him completely, and our neighbor as ourselves. These are the scholar of the law’s words, and so we discover that this summary was already known, already circulating. Thus far we do not have anything uniquely or distinctly Christian, but rather our common and shared Judeo-Christian heritage. Jesus affirms the man’s answer: “Do this and you will live.” Love God, love your neighbor, and you will have eternal life. Our psalm extols the beauty of God’s law, which brings not only survival, but also sweetness: God’s law is “more precious than gold, than a heap of purest gold; sweeter also than syrup or honey from the comb.”

Our conscience shows us this path to sweet peace and precious joy; our conscience is a thorn in our side when we walk another path, when we choose what is evil or reject what is good. If we shape and form our conscience in God’s law, we become more and more capable of discerning the path of peace and joy, the path that leads us to eternal life.

God’s law leads us to peace and authentic joy even and perhaps especially when it runs counter to the current and to the crowd. God’s law warns us away from killing the unborn and the elderly when they are inconvenient to us. God’s law points us toward the difficult love of being faithful in marriage or in celibacy. God’s law honors the goodness of our sexual desires when they are channeled towards faithfulness in marriage, and away from pornography or fornication or adultery. God’s law affirms the natural truth that marriage is between one man and one woman for life. God’s law indicates that we must defend the poor and the downtrodden, and offer hospitality to the stranger and the immigrant.

We share these convictions with the Jewish people who are faithful to the Old Testament. All this is present in our Gospel, but here is also something unique, something that goes beyond God’s revelation to the People of Israel. The scholar wants to have the last word, and he wants to turn the table on Jesus, so he asks, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus responds with the beautiful parable of the Good Samaritan. There is a sting here that is not immediately evident to us. For Jesus’ Jewish listeners, to speak of the Samaritans was to refer to a group to whom they were related by blood, but also a group to whom they were related by violence and bloodshed. The Jews and Samaritans had tried to destroy each other’s Temples several times, sometimes with success. They hated each other and considered the other side as having abandoned God’s law. For us, it would be something like referring a Ku Klux Klan member, or a child pornographer, or an abortionist, a person whose way of life is abhorrent. Imagine the internal turmoil caused for the listeners when this man is the one who does what is right, who offers care and healing to the man left for dead by the robbers! I hope that each of you here has heard this parable before, and I hope that you have examined your heart in light of it… do you extend love and concern to those around you, even at personal cost to yourself? Are first things first in your life? Whoever is at hand and in need is our neighbor, and the path to eternal life passes through our charity to them.

There is, however, another angle from which to approach this parable, a way to allow Jesus’ words to shed light in another direction! The man was going from God’s city down to the plain of Jericho, which had often been associated with sin and destruction, and he was beset by robbers, by forces beyond his power to vanquish. He was left beaten, stripped, and abandoned. The Church Fathers saw in this man an image of the human race: by original sin, and by our own personal sins, we turn our back on God’s Law, God’s City, God’s life, and we end up stripped of our dignity, beaten by the enemy, and lured into decisions and choices that bring about our ruin. In the midst of our sin, our brokenness, our defeat, we are often in a spiritual state approaching death, down in the ditch, bleeding.

Who comes to save us, who risks His own life for us? It is Jesus-He took upon Himself our flesh, and the burden of our sins, He lifted us up out of the ditch. Jesus disregards the cost to Himself, His Passion on the Cross. He disregards shame and opprobrium and slaps in the face, the cross on His back and the nails through His hands and feet. Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior not only disregards the lance that pierced His side, but from His wounded side there flowed out blood and water, the Eucharist and Baptism, and all the sacramental graces we are offered.

By all means let us examine our consciences as we hear the Parable of the Good Samaritan, let us ask the necessary and important question, “Am I loving as I should?” It is, however, essential that we also remember and deepen our awareness that it is Jesus who rescues us out of the wreckage of our brokenness, Jesus pours out the oil of gladness onto our wounds caused by our own sin and the sin of others. Jesus carries us to the place of healing, the inn, God’s house, the Church. Gazing upon our own lukewarm love, our tepid hearts, we might well have every reason to despair. Gazing upon our Savior, Jesus Christ, gazing upon the sacrifice He made for us, gazing upon this altar where He once again comes to us now, then we have every reason to hope!

St. Paul tells us in our second reading that Jesus is everything!

He is before all things, and in him all things hold together… For in him all the fullness was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things for him, making peace by the blood of his cross [through him], whether those on earth or those in heaven.

May Jesus, who holds all things together, hold us together, and by the power of His Cross & Resurrection, bring us to eternal life!

+ J. M. J. +

God seeking you... will you help seek others?

+ J. M. J. +

Homily Outline for the 14th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C

Where do we encounter truth? Where and how does God speak to us? There are many competing claims in our world, many voices offering to lead us to peace and happiness. Some are clamoring, advertising, selling. Some are beguiling, luring, whispering. Our hearts are often bewildered, seeking, discontented. If we are attentive to our hearts, if we desire to penetrate beyond the surface, on some level every one of us must be a seeker, seeking to understand, to find that which we desire.

The summer I was 21, I was traveling in Europe with my best buddy Steve. Midway through the summer, we were in Rome, and I was disappointed because I’d heard that Pope John Paul II was at the papal summer residence, Castel Gandolfo, outside Rome. One day we went to St. Peter’s Square to visit the basilica, and they were setting up thousands of seats. We asked what they were for, and we were told there was going to be a papal audience! We got great seats, since we were quite early, and for the first time I saw the pope in person. He passed by just a few feet away, and to my intense surprise and embarrassment, I found myself weeping for joy, deeply impacted by his presence, and the knowledge that he was the living successor of St. Peter, the Vicar of Christ! My own reconversion to a deeper faith had taken place some 4 years earlier, and I had for some time enthusiastically believed that God works through His Church, but that close firsthand encounter made it real and concrete in a far deeper and breathtaking fashion.

Some have characterized religion as man’s search for God… and it is true that we see this search in people of every time and place, of every culture and century. On some level, then, it might be accurate to lump all religions together and call them man’s search for God. However, if we attempt to understand our Christian faith in this light, we are going to miss something essential and foundational: God has revealed Himself to us, first to the people of Israel, and then in the fullness of time through Jesus Christ to all nations. God has sought us, tracked us down, and invited us to be His adopted sons and daughters. The saints of our Church are not so much men and women who through great exertion or ingenuity or luck managed to find God, but rather they are people who allowed God to find them, who allowed God to speak and move in their lives. Hearing His voice, they responded generously.

In God’s search for us, He has mysteriously chosen to rely upon us! God has repeatedly entrusted His identity, His truth, His teaching to human beings. Infinite in power, He has allowed His powerful love to be spread about by our very finite efforts. In the fullness of time, Jesus came; Jesus who is fully human and fully divine, the God-man. Jesus was finite in His humanity, but perfect, free of sin. And, yet, Jesus Himself didn’t simply display the raw power of God, overwhelming the hearts and minds of those He met. He slowly and gently revealed His power, His identity, and His mission. And, then, as God had done amongst the people of Israel for thousands of years before Christ, Jesus entrusted that truth and power to His apostles, and to His disciples. In our Gospel we hear of 72 disciples, chosen and sent. This number is symbolic of the totality of all the nations, and signified that God was now seeking every one of them, regardless of race or tongue. The Church is beginning to be called into existence at this moment, and Christ is beginning to work through His Body.

In our first reading we hear of Jerusalem, personified for us as a generous and abundant mother who cares for her children, nourishes them, comforts them, and protects them. Isaiah spoke these words to a Jewish nation torn asunder by division and exile, very much in need of encouragement and comfort. Jerusalem is a place, the city of David. Jerusalem for the Jewish people was also an image… God’s city, the place and state of being gathered together and ordered by God. For us as Christians we receive this image and place, and it is fulfilled and further developed in the life of the Church. As Catholics we no longer go up to one temple mount each year in pilgrimage, rather we prepare and wait for and seek the heavenly Jerusalem, described in the Book of Revelation in symbolic terms, the heavenly city, where every tear will be wiped away. By our baptisms we have become a new creation, and citizens of this heavenly city. The Church is the visible presence on earth of God’s heavenly kingdom. God continues to be present and at work in our midst through us, with all of our faltering cooperation and weakness. God continues to offer us through the Church nourishment and comfort and protection… truth, goodness, and beauty. And, just as in Jesus’ time, that offer is accepted by some, and rejected by others. Indeed each one of us at times has accepted God’s grace, offered to us through the Church, and at other times each of us has rejected it to some degree.

We find ourselves in recent decades in particularly turbulent waters, for reasons beyond the scope of this homily. The storms of history and the world have often appeared to nearly engulf the ship of Christ, the Bark of Peter, the Church. Very many of our family members and friends have been pulled away by these currents, some have jumped ship. The heavenly city, imperfectly present and visible in our midst often seems on the verge of being abandoned, bankrupt, or deserted. Each one of us must once again make a choice. God has sought us… God has taught us… God offers to heal and nourish us. Will our hearts and lives and families be like the towns that accepted Christ’s emissaries? Or will we be like the towns that turned them away? The Church offers us the truth that sets us free to live lives of authentic peace, the Church offers us moral teaching that guides us away from sin and brokenness. Do we accept those gifts? The Church offers us Christ’s words, “Take up your cross and follow me.” The Church offers us St. Paul’s words, “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ through which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.” Do we follow, respond, receive? Or do we turn away, following the siren song to buy, to acquire, to take pleasure, to follow impulse and the crowd?

From the time of Christ down to us, this Good News has been handed from person to person.  In unbroken succession, we stand in the line of those 72 disciples who were sent out. By my ordination and the power of the Holy Spirit, I will offer you today the Lord’s own Body and Blood. Receive Him now, and then bring Him to the whole world.

 + A. M. D. G. +