Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent

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In the passage from the Letter to the Hebrews that we just heard, we are presented with one of the great ironies of Christianity. The letter states that “when [Our Lord] was made perfect, He because the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him.” (Heb. 5:9) So when did Our Lord become perfect? He became perfect when He gave up His life on the Cross. He was glorified when He hung on the Cross, the most painful and humiliating form of punishment the Roman Empire ever used. He became perfect when he glorified the Father’s name through His sacrifice.

This is the great irony of Christianity. Those who are greatest in the Church are not those with the most money, the wealthiest in the Church. It’s not those with the most power in the Church. It’s not even those with the most authority in the Church. The greatest people in the Church, the ones we hold up as the examples to be followed, are the Saints, those men and women who humbled themselves and were willing to give of themselves for Christ. Those who are given as the highest examples for us to emulate, the martyrs, were willing to give up their lives for their faith in Christ. People who would use the Church as a vehicle for gaining power and authority are often quickly forgotten, brushed away as another unpleasant aspect in the Church’s history.

This reversal of importance within the Church causes no end of confusion to those who are firmly entrenched in the world. They can’t understand how Catholics can celebrate someone like Mother Teresa, who was very poor and humble. Someone might say, “Why is she so important? All she did was take care of a bunch of poor people. She didn’t do anything that mattered.” They can’t understand how we can respect and want to emulate someone like her, while refusing to listen to celebrities and politicians who have the power and prestige that the media grants them.

Those who are entrenched in the world can’t see why we would shun wealth, power, and authority to live a humble life. They can’t see that when we cling to this life to the exclusion of anything and anyone else, we lose in the long run. In fact, Our Lord tells us in our Gospel passage today who will have eternal life. “Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life.” (Jn 12:25)

As Christians, we are not to use this life it’s own sake. We are not to hang on to our life in this world merely to get the most out of it, but we are to live the most out of this life for Christ’s sake, for the sake of the Kingdom. We are to live for ourselves to grow closer to Him and to bring others with us through our living out the Gospel.

Jesus tells us that “whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there also will my servant be. The Father will honor whoever serves me.” (Jn 12:26) As Christians, we are called to follow Our Lord’s example. Our Lord went around preaching the Gospel, lifting up those who were lowly, those who sick; who were poor and downtrodden; who were looked down upon by the culture. He lifted them up, and brought them to the Kingdom.

That’s what we’re called to do as Christians. We’re all called to follow that example, to humble ourselves and give of ourselves for the service of the Kingdom, to help spread the Good News of Christ throughout the world and to bring others to know and love Him. This Good News was given to us by Our Lord, and is why He died on the Cross. He tells us, “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself.” (Jn 12:32)

Jesus suffered and died so that we might gain eternal life. May we live that message, and bring others into His Kingdom.

Homily for the Fourth Sunday in Lent

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Throughout the history of the Old Testament, the Israelite nation kept falling into a regular pattern caused by sin. First, they fall into sin and ignore the warnings of the prophets sent by God to turn away from those sins. In the case we heard this morning, the people of Judah were falling away from the worship of God the Father and were instead turning towards the false gods of those tribes that surrounded them, including offering sacrifices to those false gods within the temple in Jerusalem. God regularly sent prophets to warn the people against worship of false gods, but the prophets were mocked or ignored, and the people continued their false worship.

Because the people were continuing their worship of false gods, punishment, the second stage of the cycle of sin, comes upon them. Judah is conquered by the Babylonians, who take many Jews into captivity and disperse them throughout the Babylonian Empire. Now, God’s promised people are no longer within the Promised Land, but are forced to live within a foreign nation.

Finally, after many years, this exile from the Promised Land leads the Jews to repent of their sins, the third stage in this cycle. They express sorrow for their sins and God forgives them, allowing them to return to the Promised Land once again and rebuild the temple which was destroyed by the Babylonians. They’re back in right relationship with God until the next cycle of sin starts up again.

While God permitted this cycle of sin to work within the people of Israel, it wasn’t His plan for His people. Instead, He wants all of humanity to be in union with Him throughout all eternity, and doesn’t want sin to get between us and Him, so He sent His Son to die for our sins. Sin leads to condemnation, but Our Lord’s death on the Cross put an end to the condemnation and opened the gates of Heaven to us. Just as the Israelites were healed from the poisonous bite of snakes by looking at the bronze serpent that Moses raised up in the desert, Our Lord’s death on the Cross heals us from the poisonous bite of sin in our lives. He broke the cycle that sin holds on our lives, and now we can receive the eternal life that has been promised to us.

St. Paul makes it clear that we do not receive this salvation because we’re “good people”, because we are sinful people in need of redemption. Salvation is not something that we can work towards as if it was a promotion or pay raise that we might receive at a job for working hard. Instead, St. Paul tells us “by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you; it is the gift of God”. (Eph. 2:8) In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, faith is defined as, “[belief] in God and [belief in] all that He has said and revealed to us, and that Holy Church proposes for our belief, because He is truth itself.” (CCC 1814) This faith is a gift from God, and we need to be open to that gift.

The Catechism continues by reminding us that faith apart from the other theological virtues, hope and charity, “does not fully unite the believer to Christ.” (CCC 1815) The salvation that God offers to us, the eternal life that we hope for, is not something that we’re entitled to, not something that is automatic. In order to receive this salvation, we must allow our faith in God to be an active faith and to allow it to show through in our lives. When we allow our faith to be united with the virtue of hope, desiring the kingdom of heaven and eternal life for happiness (CCC 1817), and the virtue of charity, loving God above all things for his sake and loving our neighbor as ourselves (CCC 1822), we will be united with Christ and be open to the gift of salvation.

We need to be careful, as St. Paul also reminds us that this salvation “is not from works, so no one may boast.” (Eph. 2:9) A common mistake made by both Catholics and non-Catholics alike is assuming that the Church teaches “working your way to Heaven.” This is not a part of Church teaching, and never has been. Instead, as I said earlier, the faith we have must be an active faith, that is a faith which shows itself through the good works that we perform, but those works must lead from our faith in God. We cannot do work to achieve salvation, as salvation comes through faith, but our faith must lead us to do good for others.

As we journey through life, we need to allow the three theological virtues, faith, hope, and charity to work in and through us. May we live these virtues and be drawn into the salvation Our Lord promises us.

Homily for the Third Sunday in Lent

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In our second reading, St. Paul lays out for us one of the great mysteries of the faith. How can Our Lord’s death on the Cross be both a sign of faith in God and part of His wisdom? When we understand this mystery, we can see how our suffering on Earth can share in Our Lord’s suffering on the Cross.

When we read through the Gospels, we see many who come to Our Lord looking for signs and miracles. In fact, today’s passage tells us that “many began to believe in his name when they saw the signs he was doing.” They believed that if He could perform these great signs of healing, He had to be a prophet from God.

Even those Jews who were in the Temple agreed with this view. When Our Lord chased out the moneychangers and those who were selling the animals for the Temple sacrifices, the Temple authorities demanded a sign from Jesus to show that He was doing this on God’s authority and not His own. Our Lord gave them a sign, but not one they expected: his death and resurrection. If Jesus was the Messiah – the anointed one of God – as some claimed, he would become a great earthly king who chased out the oppressing Romans and was ruling over a renewed Kingdom of Israel, instead of suffering and dying on a Cross.

For the Greeks, Our Lord’s death on the Cross presented a difficulty as well. Greek culture at the time treasured logic and philosophy. It would not have been uncommon to hear the latest philosophic thought being discussed in the marketplace, much as we might discuss the results of the basketball game or stock market.

For those who loved philosophy, to preach a great king who performed miracles, but was not recognized by His people and killed in the most brutal manner possible would have been ridiculous. Dying for your beliefs was considered an act of heroism, as Socrates was held up as a hero for boldly defending his philosophy to his death. In contrast, Our Lord did not die boldly proclaiming His teachings, but suffered and died humbly without even defending Himself to Pontius Pilate when the opportunity arose. As St. Paul mentions, following this philosophy would have been foolishness.

Just as the Greeks viewed Our Lord’s suffering and death on the Cross as foolishness, we live in a culture that views any kind of suffering as foolish. There are many around us who want to live life without any pain and suffering. Obviously, developing tools and inventions that make our lives simpler is not a bad thing. Likewise, developing medications that control pain is a good and worthy goal.

The problem arises when we want to eliminate all pain and suffering. A phrase that is becoming more and more common in medical circles is “quality of life”. Exactly what it looks like to have a high quality of life is up for debate, but there are many who think we need to measure our lives by this standard. For those whose quality of life is impaired, some want to offer “death with dignity”, also known as euthanasia, but more commonly known as physician assisted suicide. If you have too much pain, or if you have a terminal illness that will cause extreme amounts of pain, you can ask for a physician to provide a prescription that will end your life on your schedule. There is concern that euthanasia will become legal here in Montana due to a judicial decision a few months ago. This decision is currently on appeal, but is something that could be upheld.

The willingness to promote euthanasia is a sign that our culture denies any redemptive aspect to suffering. When we suffer from pain or illness, or for any other reason, we can offer that pain to be joined with the suffering that Our Lord experienced on the Cross. This suffering, even as small as the pain from stubbing your toe on a table leg, can be used to atone for our sins and the sins of others. If you’ve ever heard or used the very Catholic phrase “Offer it up”, it comes from our belief in redemptive suffering. Our culture doesn’t recognize any value to suffering, and can only see suffering as an impediment to our quality of life.

As Christians, we do believe that there is a redemptive aspect to our suffering, and that we are to offer up our suffering to be united with Our Lord’s suffering on the Cross. We are also called to defend life, even if that life may not be viewed as “quality”.

Homily for the First Scrutiny (Third Sunday in Lent)

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Those who follow along with the readings may have noticed that we didn’t hear the normal readings for Year B, which we might have expected, but rather went to the readings for Year A. We’re doing this as part of the Rite of Christian Initiation, as today we begin the Scrutinies. This year, we have the great privilege of welcoming 8(?) new members into the Church.

As part of this RCIA process, the elect are asked to undergo the Scrutinies. While the term “scrutiny” is frequently used as something done to a person, like being watched by a supervisor, we understand that the Scrutinies are rites of self-searching and repentance on a spiritual level. Through these Scrutinies, the elect are to learn a process that we’re all challenged to undergo on a daily basis. First, the elect are challenged to find and uncover all that is week, defective, and sinful within their souls. Secondly, they are tasked to discover and strengthen all that is upright, strong and good within themselves. These tasks are not something that should be done once, but are something all of us should do on a daily basis throughout our entire lives. We’re all called to find the bad and strengthen the good that is within us.

This week, we are beginning the process of the three Scrutinies, which will continue for two more Saturday evenings. We do these Scrutinies so that the elect and those of us who are already members of the Church may realize the power sin has on us and increase our desire for salvation. These Scrutinies are not only for the elect, but to remind us as well.

Tonight, with the first Scrutiny, we are given the Gospel passage about the Samaritan woman at the well. This woman came to look for physical water, but found the spiritual water that she was thirsting for. This woman, who was living in a sinful relationship, found the cure for her thirst through Our Lord.

All of us have a thirst, a desire for something greater than us. We know that there is something more than what we can experience with our senses, and we desire it. Sin promises us that it will fulfill that thirst, and often will quench it initially, but later makes us all the more thirsty. Much like a sugary drink that seems to fill our earthly thirst but actually drys us out, sin worsens our thirst instead of reducing it.

When speaking to the Samaritan woman, Our Lord promises her that He is the living water that will quench her thirst. This thirst is not the physical thirst that water fulfills, but is the desire to be united with God. When we turn away from sin and place our trust in Jesus, we will receive this living water which will quench our spiritual thirst.

When we try to fulfill our spiritual thirst through sin, we find that it fails to satisfy that thirst, but following Our Lord satisfies it more than we can imagine.

Homily for the Second Sunday in Lent

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Within Christianity, there are a great many mysteries about God that we cannot explain, but have to accept through our faith. Our Gospel today contains one of those mysteries, how Our Lord can be both fully human and fully divine.

We see a scene in the Gospel which should be very familiar to each of us. After explaining to His Apostles that He is to suffer and die on the Cross, Jesus takes three of them, Peter, James, and John, up Mount Tabor in the region of Galilee. There, he is changed, and becomes as bright as the sun. At the same time, two of the greatest figures in Jewish history appear and begin to converse with him. Elijah, considered one of the greatest of the prophets, and Moses, who gave the law which dictated Jewish practices both in their daily lives and in their religious observances.

Through this transfiguration, this change in Our Lord’s appearance, Jesus showed His Apostles that He was more than just a wise human teacher. His man, whom the Apostles spent most of their time following, was also the Son of God! He was not only a Son by adoption, but fully the Son of God by nature. Jesus, this rabbi from Galilee is both fully human and fully divine.

As far as mysteries go with in Christianity, this is one of the most difficult to understand. How can one person, Jesus, be both fully human and fully divine? Many heresies have surrounded what has been revealed to us by God about the relationship of the divinity and humanity of Jesus. Was he two persons, one human and one divine? How about half-human, half-divine? The short answer is no to both questions. No, he wasn’t two persons and he wasn’t half-human, half-divine.

In a way of explaining how this works, there is a ritual which priests perform at every Mass, without exception. After pouring the wine into the chalice, the priest takes water and pours just a little drop into one of the chalices saying, “By the mystery of this water and wine, may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity.” From that point, the water can no longer be removed from the chalice, as it has completely mixed in with the wine. Even boiling will not separate just that drop from the rest of the wine, as it would boil off with the water that is naturally within the wine. You still will not be able to remove just that drop of water.

In the same way, the human nature of Jesus is completely inseparable from His divine nature. Within the Creed that we profess at Mass, we say that He is “one in being with the Father”, and that He “came down from Heaven and became man”. He was not an apparition that appeared to be human but was fully divine, as one classic heresy put it. He also was not a created being that was adopted by God from the beginning. The Council of Chalcedon declared in 451 that Jesus was fully human and fully divine “without confusion and without change, without division and without separation”. To put this in simpler language, Jesus wasn’t schizophrenic. He wasn’t a human who was adopted and made fully divine by God. He wasn’t made up of two persons, one human, the other divine. He also wasn’t a half-human, half-divine hybrid.

This might seem like making extremely fine distinctions, but it has grave consequences when considering Our Lord’s Sacrifice on the Cross. Abraham was willing to sacrifice Isaac in obedience to God’s promise, but this sacrifice would only affect Abraham and no one else. By Jesus being fully divine and fully human, He was able to take on the sins and nature of all humanity. A classic formulation in theology is, “That which is not assumed is not redeemed.” If Our Lord would not have taken on the fullness of humanity, He would not be able to redeem all of humanity and its sins.

This was just the tip of the iceberg of what theologians have come up with surrounding Jesus being fully human and fully divine. Even with all that these theologians have learned about Our Lord, we still are no closer to understanding what this truly means than the Apostles were when standing on Mount Tabor watching the transfigured Jesus speaking to Elijah and Moses. We just have to take this mystery which has been revealed to us as a matter of faith.

Homily for the First Sunday in Lent

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Just as Jesus spent forty days in the desert fasting in preparation for the beginning of His earthly ministry, we prepare for the celebration of His passion, death, and resurrection through these forty days of Lent. It seems ironic that the readings given to us during this “desert time” of Lent talk about water and floods, two things you usually won’t find in a desert, but these readings bring home the importance of baptism in our lives, making us sharers in Christ’s Paschal Mystery which we celebrate at Easter.

The first reading today is one that I think is very familiar for most of us. God has just cleansed the face of the Earth with a massive flood, wiping out every living thing except those which were saved through the Ark of Noah. God sets up a covenant with Noah, promising that he will never again devastate the Earth through a great flood.

For the Israelite people, water was something that was both respected and feared. Water was a necessary element, as it has been throughout all of human history, and was used much as we use it today. It was also greatly feared, especially large bodies of water, like the Mediterranean Sea. They knew the destructive force that water could contain, especially in the flash floods that occurs in many desert climates, and had a healthy fear of large amounts of water.

While they feared the water, they also realized the cleansing power that water contains. They knew how quickly water could remove the dust and grime that came with travel or work in the fields. Ritual baths and washings were important aspects of their worship, nearly as important as the sacrifices themselves. Just as it would clean the dirt off the skin, water was also thought to spiritually cleanse, thus the development of baptism.

St. Peter keys on this cleansing aspect of water in our second reading today. He says that the Great Flood “prefigured baptism, which saves you now.” Through our baptism, we share in saving effects of the Paschal Mystery, the passion, death, and resurrection of Our Lord. No longer is water a force used by God towards destruction of humanity, but is used by Him to save us and renew us. God uses the waters of baptism to destroy the effects of Original Sin, which is passed down from Adam and Eve, and bring us the Sanctifying Grace which we need to enter into the Kingdom of God.

Before Our Lord suffered on the Cross, humanity was closed off from the Kingdom of God. We were suffering from the effects of Original Sin and could not enter into that Kingdom. Those who came before were not automatically condemned, however, as St. Peter tells us that they were waiting “in prison”, also commonly known as the Abode of the Fathers, for the coming of Christ. We say as such when we profess during the Apostles’ Creed, “He descended to the dead”. This Abode of the Fathers is not the fiery pit where condemned souls go, but rather a place where those righteous souls resided until Our Lord opened the gates of Heaven through His death and resurrection. These souls have been judged and are now enjoying the rewards of God’s presence.

Unlike the time of the Patriarchs and Prophets of Israel, we believe that the Kingdom of God is at hand now, as Our Lord preached. We can enter into that Kingdom now, and do so through our baptism. By the waters of baptism, we die to our sinful nature, and rise again as an adopted child of God. The water cleanses us of our sins, and brings us the Holy Spirit. By the power of the Holy Spirit, we can repent from those sins which we commit and believe in the teachings of Jesus, as we are commanded in the Gospel reading today.

St. Peter reminds us that Jesus “suffered for [our] sins once […] that He might lead you to God.” Through our baptism, we have become followers of Christ. By repenting of our sins and believing in the Gospel, we prepare ourselves for that day when we will see Our Lord face to face in our Heavenly home.

Request for Info: Catholic Sites in Central Canada

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I’m planning to take a week and do a road trip through parts of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Does anyone have any recommendations for Catholic-related sites (shrines, cathedrals, etc.) that are worth visiting within those provinces? On the same vein, are there any sites that I should avoid?

Vocation Story part 3 – Civilian Life

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As I left Scott AFB for what I thought was my last time, I had a lot of uncertainty in my life. I didn’t know when I’d get a job. I didn’t know where I would be living. Everything that I owned was under a tarp in the box of my truck. This truly was the closest I’ve ever come to being homeless, and in fact was technically homeless for a couple of weeks.

Through a series of connections and the grace of God, my time as a homeless person didn’t last long. One friend offered to let me stay at his house until the job situation was sorted out. Another friend had a connection to a landlord who had recently remodeled a couple of duplexes that were available to rent. My resume which I had posted on an Internet job search site had finally gotten a strong prospect. In short order, after only a couple of weeks, I had a job and a place to live, so I thought things were going well.

During this time, I was making Sunday Mass attendance a priority. Unlike previous moves, I wasn’t going to wait a couple of weeks, or even months, to get to Mass. Instead, I went back to St. Clare Parish in O’Fallon, which happened to be only about 5 miles from my new apartment, and formally registered as a member of the parish. I also introduced myself to Fr. Jim, the pastor. We had met briefly when I was “church shopping” before the end of my enlistment, but it was pretty brief, just a quick handshake at the end of Mass.

My new job was on the other side of St. Louis, in the western suburbs, so I began to experience the joys of commuting that so many other Americans trudge through every day. For two hours each day, one hour each way, I had nothing better to do than sit in my truck, drive, and listen to the radio. At first, I would listen to the typical music on the radio, but shortly after I began working, a friend introduced me to WRYT 1080 AM, a Catholic radio station. Catholic radio? There’s such a thing? I knew about EWTN, even though I never had the opportunity to watch it, but had not heard of Catholic radio. I started listening and was hooked. More good information, and I could learn as I drove to and from work. This was great!

I had learned a lot from the Catholic Answers website, so I was excited to hear that they also had a radio program, Catholic Answers Live. Oh, boy, more good stuff! There was no end to the amount of material that I could learn about the faith, whether apologetics, Church teachings, history, you name it.
Of course, Catholic Answers Live wasn’t the end of the great programs that I was able to listen to. Because WRYT used EWTN for much of its source material, I also got to hear Mother Angelica, the Journey Home, Life on the Rock, and much more. This was an information fire hose, and I just had to turn on the radio!

The more I learned about the faith through the radio and Internet, the more involved I wanted to be. I started to get more active in the parish, volunteering to be a Lector and Eucharistic Minister – now more accurately called an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion. I was also getting involved in communal prayer, such as the Rosary, and was starting to meet new people through my involvement.

It was about this time that I met a couple who has been a strong supporter of my vocation, even throughout our respective moves. I don’t remember if I first met Mike and Denise at Mass or as part of a communal prayer, but we quickly became friends. Having met and worked with a lot of people my age who were barely Catholic at best, it was exciting to meet a young couple, a little older than me, who were as excited about the Faith as I was.

One day, Mike invited me to an evening of reflection at the Opus Dei center in St. Louis. He explained that it involved a couple of spiritual conferences, exposition and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, and reception of the Sacrament of Confession. I had heard of Opus Dei through my research, and was interested in what this evening of reflection was all about, so I agreed to go. It was incredible! Two powerful conferences with lots of silent time for adoration. Following the conferences, there was time for socializing, and it was amazing to meet more Catholic men who were on fire for the Catholic Faith. They loved the Church, they loved her teachings, and they weren’t afraid to say so. It was a powerful experience for me, and one I had the privilege to repeat many times over. I even began to look forward to these evenings of reflection, especially as the job and commute became more intolerable.

By the end of the first year out of the Air Force, I’d felt like I’d had enough of the job I was doing. It wasn’t a bad job, just wasn’t what I expected when I was first hired. My experience from the Air Force was that of a computer administrator, keeping servers and networks up and running so that users can get to them 24 hours a day. The job I was doing was more data manipulation, working with a database to set up reports for customers. Not my interest, so my performance at that job suffered. A weakness that I am still working on is my extreme procrastination towards tasks I find unpleasant, and much of this job fell into that category.

My Knights of Columbus connection came through about this time. One of the members of the Scott AFB council was working for a military contractor which specialized in computer programming. They were looking for a computer administrator who knew UNIX, which I happened to know. It was 6 months on base at the main server facility, with the potential to continue with the company for further contracts. This was the job I was looking for. I really thought God was looking out for me.

Well, it turns out He was, just not the way I expected. The main server facility was next to one of the headquarters buildings on base, and had a small restaurant where I would go for lunch. It was also where my friend Mike worked as part of his job, as he was an officer in the Air Force. One day, around noon, I was walking over to the restaurant and ran into Mike. He was heading to daily Mass, and invited me to join him. He had been encouraging me to consider trying to get to daily Mass, and I had plenty of excuses why I couldn’t. On this day, the excuses ran out, and I walked with him to the base chapel. From that day on, I would regularly go to daily Mass before grabbing a quick lunch.

It was at daily Mass at the chapel that I first performed the role of altar server, having not done it as a child. I think that this was the turning point in my discernment process, as I started to get a better appreciation for the Mass and how important it needed to be in my life. Instead of just going to Mass once a week to get it “done with”, I was daily present at the Sacrifice on Calvary and receiving Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.

About this time, I found out that my friend Matt, who had given me a place to stay when I was between the Air Force and my first job, was not baptized. I had seen him at Mass, and never seen him receive communion. One day I asked him why, and after hearing that he wasn’t baptized, asked him if he had ever considered going through baptism. He said that he had, and was considering going through RCIA at the parish.

A couple of weeks later, Matt asked me if I would be willing to be his sponsor through RCIA. I agreed, and for the next year, Matt and I caused trouble during the RCIA classes (in a good way, of course). I was learning a lot about the Faith, but Matt was a voracious reader. He even read the Catechism of the Catholic Church all the way through! (Something I’ve never done, admittedly.) We never directly contradicted the instructors, but we did ask some questions that they had no idea how to answer. After he completed the RCIA process, and received the Sacraments at the Easter Vigil, I turned to ask him how he felt following the reception of three Sacraments at once. I didn’t have to. The tears of joy said it all.

With all this going on, the defenses were starting to go down. I found that I was actually willing to consider a vocation to the priesthood, although I wasn’t going to make any commitments at that time. It would still take another year and a half before I finally submitted my will to God’s divine will.

Continue to Part 4 – God’s 2×4

Homily for the Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

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Recently, I’ve been writing up my vocation story, the story of how I discerned my calling to the priesthood. As I’m writing it down, I hit a point in my life that I really felt was my moment of conversion, that moment when I took the Catholic faith that I had been raised in and made it a part of my life. All of us need to go through this conversion process at some point in our lives.

For many Catholics, the idea of conversion is someone converting from another Christian denomination or non-Christian religion to Catholicism, such as those we’ll see in a few moments who are going through the RCIA process here in the parish. While that’s true as far as it goes, there is another sense of conversion, that of converting our lives away from ourselves and turning it towards Christ.

Unfortunately, many Catholics haven’t consciously made that step, but continue to follow the practices of their parents because “that’s what we’ve always done.” I think if we’re honest, we would realize that there are some in this church today who feel this way. We come to Mass on Saturday night or Sunday morning “because we’ve always done that on the weekends.” We might have a Rosary or crucifix in our houses “because we’ve always had one.”

While “that’s what we’ve always done” is a good start on the way to conversion, it’s not the final goal of a Christian. The purpose of Christianity and being a follower of Christ is to convert our lives away from the things of the world and towards the things of God, and to live with Him in the next life. Jesus came to preach the Gospel of salvation and lead us away from the temptations and condemnation of the world. We are called to follow Him, even to the Cross if necessary.

As followers, we must be open to His word. In the Gospel today, we see that a large crowd had surrounded Him when he arrived at home. Why were they there? The quick answer might be the miracles that He performed, and there is some truth to that. However, the Gospel passage makes it clear that they gathered to hear Him “preach the word”. They had gathered together to hear the Good News, the Gospel, of salvation. Their hearts were open to hear what He had to say and to accept the Truth that He preached.

To determine our openness to the Truth of Christ, there are some questions we have to ask ourselves. How open are our hearts when we come to Our Lord here at Mass? Do we consciously ask the Holy Spirit to open our hearts to the Truths contained in the Scriptures? How many are listening to me now, trying to find the Truth scattered amongst my homiletic ramblings? Do we receive Our Lord with gratitude and joy when we come forward to receive the Eucharist? We can’t have a conversion of heart without an openness to Christ.

Being open to Christ’s Truth isn’t the only thing we need to have a true conversion. We also need to act on that Truth which we believe. In the case of the paralytic in today’s Gospel, it wasn’t enough for the four men and the paralytic to just have faith that Jesus would heal him, but they had to act on that faith. They had to climb up to the roof, remove the tile or thatch which made up the roof, and lower the paralytic into the room where Jesus was preaching. Through the act of faith displayed by the actions of the four men, the paralytic was able to be healed.

In our lives as well, it is not enough to have faith in Our Lord, but we also need to act on it. In a true conversion, we will be drawn to spread our faith through living it out in our daily lives. Too often Christians are called hypocrites because they say one thing, but live a life totally separated from it. We must truly be willing to both show our faith in Jesus through both our actions and our words. If anything, it is better to live a Christian life and allow our lives to be examples without saying a word than to talk long and hard about Christian virtue without living it.

When we are open to hearing the Truth that Our Lord proclaimed and live out that Truth in our lives, then we will have a conversion of heart. Isaiah promised the Israelites that God would do something new for them in their exile. We can also take that promise as something new will happen in our lives when we enter into the conversion that we’re all called to undertake.

Vocation Story part 2 – Air Force

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As I was undergoing the preparation for Confirmation, I said that my plan included going to college and getting a degree right after high school. That plan changed fairly quickly as I started getting the recruiting packages from colleges and universities throughout the country. I became overwhelmed with the different schools that I could choose from and the different majors that were available to me.

While that was bad enough, I also started looking at the costs associated with these schools and became even more overwhelmed. You see, I wasn’t what one would call the most dedicated student in the world. I pulled fairly decent grades, but I was not applying myself for anything. A few subjects I enjoyed, like Math, Science, Band and Choir, and was rewarded with good grades in those classes. Other classes, such as English, weren’t my favorites and the grades suffered accordingly.

As I started to look at the costs of colleges and universities, I realized that full-ride scholarships probably weren’t in my future. I just didn’t have the grades, and it was all but impossible to be in the top ten percent of your class when you were one of only 31 members. I started to look for other options, and found it at a college fair in a neighboring town.

I think most people are familiar with the concept of a college fair. All the colleges that are trying to recruit high school seniors gather in a school gymnasium and give out free pens, brochures and other goodies to try sign up as many potential students on their mailing lists as possible. My school was too small to hold its own college fair, and instead joined several other small towns in Sidney, MT, for a larger fair.

I was walking around this fair, talking with representatives from both major Montana universities and looking at the smaller colleges that were there, when I came to a booth that had been placed underneath the basketball hoop at one end of the gym. It was the United States Air Force, an option I hadn’t considered, and a well-dressed military recruiter was visiting with a couple of other high schoolers. I went over and started looking at the all the information he had available. The other students left, and he started talking with me for a few minutes. My interest was peaked, especially over the college money available through the Air Force, and gave him my contact information.

Over the next couple of months, I met with him a couple of times when he would make his rounds through the northeast corner of Montana. The more we talked, the more interested I became in the Air Force. My parents were concerned, as I think most parents are when their children start talking about joining the military, but were supportive. I eventually decided that this was what I needed to do after high school, and began the paperwork and physicals. Little did I know the effect this would have on how I would grow in my faith.

The rest of my Senior year continued as expected. People around town were surprised that I would consider the Air Force, as I wasn’t the most athletic person in the world (I’m still not). The recruiter kept in touch throughout the time of waiting for graduation and my date to ship out for Basic Training. It was a time of anticipation both for the end of high school and start of a new life, and the Faith still wasn’t an important aspect in my life. It was there, just not very important.

After what seemed like an eternity of waiting, graduation came and went, and my date for Basic Training arrived. I went off to Basic Training, with the expected tears from Mom, and the world changed. Anyone who has ever been through one of the training programs when entering the military can tell horror stories about their time at Boot, Basic, or whatever the military branch calls it.

They say there are no atheists in foxholes, and it may be true, but there are also no atheists at Basic Training. On Sunday morning, we were given the option to go to services or clean the barracks. What do you think most of us chose? My Mass attendance at Basic was exemplary, didn’t miss once in the six weeks of training. All the Catholics were given a cheap Rosary during Chapel orientation, and I actually carried it with me throughout the entire training. I don’t remember praying it once, but I did carry it.

Following Basic, I went to Keesler AFB in Biloxi, MS, for the technical training for my Air Force job, computer programmer. While I was there, learning a bunch of great stuff about programming computers, I started to wane slightly on Mass attendance. It wasn’t as crucial that I be out of the barracks on Sunday morning, and could even start to sleep in on weekends after a couple of weeks. I’ve always liked my sleep-in time, and I could get away with it a couple of days a week, so Mass suffered. Besides, the base chapel was a pretty good walk from the training dorms, a walk I really didn’t want to make too badly on some Sundays, so sometimes I didn’t go to Mass.

I completed my technical training more or less without incident on Thanksgiving Day, and flew home to visit my parents before heading off to my first duty station, Scott AFB in southern Illinois. I’d like to say I wanted to go to Mass when I was home visiting because of my desire to receive the Eucharist in my home parish, but mostly I wanted to go in order to show off the uniform. There’s not much that’ll get more respect in most small towns in America than coming back dressed in a military uniform. Yep, I had earned the uniform, and Mass was the perfect reason to show it off. The priest even welcomed me back at the beginning. Definitely not the most pious and spiritual reason to go, I admit.

Following my short leave, I reported to my unit at Scott, and began to settle into my dorm room. After a couple of weeks, I decided that I should walk over to the chapel and check it out, especially since it was only two or three blocks away. Looking around the vestibule, I found the Catholic section of the pamphlet rack. Much to my surprise, I found out that they have a Knights of Columbus council on base. Taking some of the information in the rack, I thought, “Hey, I know the Knights. My Dad joined them when we moved to Culbertson, and seems to enjoy doing things with them. I’ll join the Knights here, and that’ll give me something to do on my time off.”

As I continued to look around, I noticed a copy of the Catholic community bulletin sitting on a table. In the back of my mind I figured that if I was going to join a Catholic group, I should at least act like a Catholic by going to Mass once in a while, so I grabbed a bulletin to find out the time for Mass and returned to my dorm.

The next Sunday, I actually got up early, at least for what I had become accustomed to on Sundays, and went to Mass at the Chapel. Mind you, I hadn’t been to Confession in at least nine months and missed several Masses just in the few months that I was in the Air Force, but still received Communion at Mass. This is a good example of the spiritual state that I was in at that time, something which embarrasses me to this day. I met the celebrant, Fr. Hilaron, as well as one of the members of the Knight of Columbus council.

In the months following, I actually started to develop a fairly good attendance record at Mass. Fr. Hil, the junior Catholic chaplain who I had met, encouraged me to get involved in the Catholic community, and I helped out at Mass by monitoring and running the sound system from the back of the chapel. I was an electronics geek, and it sounded right up my alley.

The Knights of Columbus on base were no slouches for recruiting, and they quickly made contact with me and invited me to join. Within a year of arriving on base, I had joined the Knights and become active within the council, helping out with many of the activities the Knights were involved with both on and off base. I made it a point not to miss a meeting or activity unless official duties conflicted, which they rarely did.

For about my first couple of years, I maintained a certain status quo. I was somewhat active with the Knights, helping out with most of the activities and attending most meetings. I became a “more Sundays than not” Catholic, meaning I attended Mass more Sundays than I missed. I felt I was doing well, but didn’t have a prayer life, and hadn’t received the Sacrament of Confession in several years. In short, I was like many Catholics, even those we consider active, throughout the United States.

One day, after a couple of years in the Air Force, I was surfing the Internet, playing with the pre-Google killer search engine Altavista. On a lark, I entered “Catholic” into the search bar, just to see what would turn up. To my surprise, a great number of sites popped up, each containing a lot of information. Now that I know the amount of garbage that is on the Internet today and likely was on it back then, I feel that the Holy Spirit was really guiding me in what happened as part of my search.

One site in particular caught my interest, the Catholic Information Network. I started to first skim, then read, then devour voraciously, the information that was contained in this site. I couldn’t believe it, all this is Catholicism? You mean it’s more than just Mass once a week? Suddenly, things that I had learned years before in Religious Education came back. The Hail Mary and the Rosary. What the Mass meant. I had pushed all this to the back of my mind, never to be remembered, until I stumbled across this site.

Over the next few months, I had read almost everything on the CIN site, so I found other sites. There was this organization called Catholic Answers that did apologetics work. Lots of great information there. More reading ensued. I became interested in doing apologetics, but was too scared to try attempting to defend the Faith. I didn’t know much and realized it.

At some point, I found a link to EWTN’s website and began to read through their library as well. I knew who Pope John Paul II was, but I didn’t anything about him except that he lived in Rome and I’d seen his picture a bunch of times. Of course, EWTN had a lot of great information on the Pope, so I learned about JP2 and his predecessors. I also learned about Church history, and the Second Vatican Council, and so much more. I felt like the proverbial kid in a candy store. Unfortunately, we didn’t have EWTN on our cable, so I had to settle for the documents in the library.

I just couldn’t get enough information on Catholicism, and at some point along the way, something clicked in my mind. I realized that I needed to either commit myself fully to the Catholic Faith that I had been spending months reading about or just give it up altogether. Half-heartedly attending Mass and not being active in the Faith wasn’t going to cut it. This really is the moment of conversion in my life, the point where I took this Catholic faith, which had been passed on to me, and made it my own. For the first time in my life, I took responsibility for living the Faith and continuing to grow in it.

Because of my new-found excitement for the Faith, I became more active in the Catholic chapel. I once again began to Lector at Mass, and recommitted myself to Knight of Columbus activities. I was elected one of the trustees of the council, one of the officer positions within each Knights of Columbus council. I even began to pray on an irregular basis, beginning with devotions like the Rosary, and started to understand that Jesus wasn’t just some abstract historical figure. I became aware that He was present and active in my life from the beginning.

At this point, I started to feel a little nudge. You see, I came across a vocations website. I don’t even remember what diocese it was with, but it was a site dedicated to discernment of vocations. At the time, I looked at the site, laughed, and moved on. “Yeah, like that’s going to happen,” I thought.

Later on, I felt a little tickle in the back of my mind, almost a nagging. I remembered the Confirmation instructor telling me that I was going to be a priest. No, that’s not going to happen. Go away. I’m not called to be a priest, others are. I’m going to finish up my enlistment, get a computer job that pays lots of money, find a wife, have a family, live happily ever after.

By this time, I haven’t had too much luck with the dating scene. One girlfriend turned out to be trouble. Another girl that I was very interested in turned out to be a devout Mormon who expected to marry another Mormon. That’s not happening either. I’ve read enough Catholic apologetics to know that the Mormon church is bad news. All this is going through my mind, as I’m pushing the thoughts about the priesthood away. After all, I told myself, there’s still plenty of time to find the future Mrs. Sticha.

Shortly after my third anniversary in the Air Force, I received some bad news from my supervisor: I’d been chosen to spend five months in sunny Saudi Arabia. The unit needed to find someone to send on a deployment that had UNIX server experience. I had the experience and was getting close to the end of my enlistment, so I was perfect for the assignment. I tried to fight it, coming up with every excuse in the book, but ending up having to go. As I saw it, the only saving grace about this assignment was going during the winter months, when it would be a more comfortable temperature in Saudi in contrast to the cold temperatures in southern Illinois. It was also at a time when there were no active hostilities with Iraq, although we were watching Saddam Hussein very closely.

As part of my preparation for deployment, I had to undertake some training that I never thought I’d face. Because we thought that Saddam Hussein had biological and chemical weapons (and yes, every major country in the world thought that at the time!), I had to go though Nuclear, Biological and Chemical training, also known as the “Chem gear”. I also had to renew my certification on the M-16 rifle, much to my great amusement. The base was well away from any theoretical front lines that might develop, so there wouldn’t be a lot of the US military forces left if I had to pick up a rifle and fight.

Training complete, I take a short period of leave and fly off to the sunny deserts of Saudi Arabia. Before I left, I was advised that all religious articles were not allowed to enter the country for any reason. Although I had been praying the Rosary on occasion, my Knights of Columbus Rosary stayed Stateside for fear of things going ill with Saudi customs over it.

I arrived at the deployment base and discovered that the base chapel, a temporary hard tent set up in an empty block, was right across the street from my quarters. The base was a permanent facility built for Bedouin tribes, but later turned over to the Air Force when the Bedouins refused the houses. Each house had five bedrooms and three bathrooms, and everyone had their own rooms. I found it quite interesting that I could look out the window of my room and see the chapel, especially since I had become so interested in the practice of my faith.

Being active in my faith didn’t prevent me from missing Christmas Mass. I was still of the mindset that missing Mass once in a while was fine, so I didn’t hurry over to the chapel to find the schedule for Masses. I arrived shortly before Christmas, and it wasn’t until after New Years’ Day that I actually began going to Mass again. I obviously still had a lot to learn about the Faith.

When I did start going, however, I met Fr. Raymond (a.k.a. Fr. Red because of his red hair), the Catholic chaplain who was there on deployment. He had arrived shortly after Christmas, and was deployed there for six months. After a couple of Masses, he asked me to do something that I had never considered: cantor at Mass. Me? Sing in front of people on my own? Are you serious? There was one other person, a Navy Lieutenant who had been cantoring on his own and was willing to train me so that I could sing with him. I agreed, and joined him in leading the music.

As my deployment went on, I began to enjoy the assignment. It was pretty easy work, the weather was nice, at least at the beginning, and I was getting active in the chapel. By the time Easter rolled around, the Navy LT had returned to his permanent assignment and I was cantoring on my own. I also helped Fr. Red set up the chapel for the different celebrations of the Triduum, not to mention attending Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil for the first time in my life.

As I became more active in the chapel, I began to know Fr. Red better. As I began to know Fr. Red, I began to realize that priests are just normal men (well some priests are, anyways). Guess what came back? Yep, that little tickle in the back of my mind. Those memories of the Confirmation instructor came back as well. Once again, I pushed them away and recited my litany of plans for my life. This wouldn’t be the last time that I felt that little tickle by any stretch of the imagination.

I finally finished my deployment, and not a moment too soon. It was 102° F when I left Saudi Arabia at the beginning of May. I was eager to get back to the United States and begin the process of finding a job so I could start raking in the big bucks that I knew were out there for me. I was ready to go, ready to put an end to my Air Force career and start my civilian life.

When I got back to the United States, I plugged back in with the Knights of Columbus council on base. Many of them were military retirees who had retired from Scott and decided to stay in the area, so I knew that they would have an idea of which parishes near the base were good. One of them invited me to St. Clare Parish in O’Fallon, about 5 miles away from the base. One Sunday, I decided to attend Mass there instead of at the base chapel. I was blown away. Here was a relatively young community, mostly active military and families or military retirees, with a pastor who didn’t look like he was even 40 years old. I knew this was the parish I wanted to belong to. Once again, the Holy Spirit guided me in ways that were far beyond my understanding, as this decision would affect my discernment greatly.

As I was job hunting, and getting the usual uncertainty and flat out rejection that comes with the territory, I started to become unsure of myself. Was I going to find a job. The end of my enlistment was approaching rapidly, and there were no firm commitments coming forward. Once again, God tried to speak to me through that little tickle in the back of my mind, and once again I ignored it. I continued my job hunt, and ended up leaving the Air Force without finding a job, but didn’t have to wait too long before one came around.

Continue to Part 3 – Civilian Life