FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT
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HOMILY BY FR. JIM DEITERS
Our United States military does so many great things for our country and our world. And it is a blessing to have so many military families in our parish. One of the missions that our military is doing right now is trying to get food supplies to the people living in the tragic situation of the Gaza area of Israel. With over 30,000 Palestinians dead, mostly children and women, and thousands on the brink of starvation, it is truly a humanitarian crisis.
What is powerful to think about is that the location of where we are delivering help to the Palestinians is only about fifty miles away from where this miracle in Gospel took place. As I have been reflecting on this miraculous image of Lazarus coming out of the tomb, I kept thinking about the people living near that region today…and the ‘tombs’ of fear they are living in each day. Imagine the young girls and boys of Gaza…stuck in a ‘version of a tomb’ called shelter tents, trying to help their mom get the food being delivered but risking their lives if they go out.
Tombs can cause fear and sadness…but they can also invite people to have faith and hope that there is something beyond what seems like an end. Jesus’ miracle of bringing Lazarus back to life is a foreshadowing of Jesus’ own Resurrection that will forever change the human experience of dying into a transition toward Eternal Life with God in heaven. This Gospel is chosen for this Fifth Sunday of Lent, both for our Elect preparing for baptism at Easter, as well as for us…to ask Jesus to help us with any version of a ‘tomb’ going on in our life… that has us feeling stuck, afraid, or overwhelmed…and allow Jesus to call us “out” to a new life IN Him.
The story centers around this one statement and question that Jesus poses: “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live; Do you believe this?” It asks us to get clear on what it is we really believe in. In other words, when Jesus says that He is the Resurrection…it means that physical death has no power over believers; their future is determined by their faith in Jesus, not by their death. And for Jesus to be “the life,” means that a believer’s PRESENT life is also determined by Jesus’ Power in this life and the next. “Do you believe this?” Do I really believe that my present and my future are already IN Jesus?
But suddenly in the middle of the dramatic story, there is this strange interruption of Jesus pausing to offer a prayer to his heavenly Father. By doing so, Jesus wants us to know that the power he has is from God his Father. As he said at the beginning of the story, this whole event is about giving glory to God the Father.
Now, I want to connect this to something in Mass. Jesus’ prayer at the tomb starts with, “Father, I thank you.” It is what we call a doxology prayer that gives praise to God, like the “Glory Be” prayer in the Rosary or at the end of other prayers. In this sense, Jesus’ doxology prayer of praise at the tomb… parallels the doxology prayer at Mass when, at the end of the Eucharistic Prayer, the priest chants, “through him, with him, in him…all glory and honor is yours Almighty Father…” And just as it says that Jesus raised his eyes to heaven when he makes his prayer, so in the Mass, the Body and Blood of Jesus are raised up to God…directing our whole life to God’s Glory…Through Jesus, With Jesus, and IN Jesus. This is powerful because, at every Mass, Jesus is at our side…at whatever ‘tomb’ we either feel stuck in… or the ending of something we are grieving…Jesus is praying to God the Father FOR us…to be raised up to new life…IN his Body and Blood.
Like the hungry of the world waiting to be fed, God ‘delivers’ Eucharistic Food to our hungry souls at every Mass. In our hunger for something beyond what this world can give, we ask St. Martha to help us always have faith and be able to profess, “Yes, Lord, I do believe.”
FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT
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HOMILY BY FR. JIM DEITERS
The Catacombs in Rome are the ancient underground burial places, especially popular for the Early Christians in those first centuries who no longer practiced cremation for the dead. With most of the bones removed, the real treasures of the Catacombs are the ancient frescoes that the Christians painted on the walls and ceilings that depict their favorite images of Jesus, Mary, and stories from the bible. One of those frescoes depicts this Gospel miracle of Jesus healing the blind man, which proves that it was one the favorites of the first disciples. Interestingly, two other famous Catacomb frescos are of the Samaritan Woman at the Well, which we heard about last Sunday, and the Raising of Lazarus, which we will hear next week. My point is, that from the earliest days of Christianity, these three stories which we listen to each Lent were the central themes for those preparing to be baptized already back in the beginnings of our Catholic religion. Why, out of all the miracle stories, these three were so central? Because, if you notice, all three of them revolve around people in the story coming to recognize that Jesus is the Son of God. Thus, these three stories are used in Lent as we journey with those who are about to join the Christian faith at the Easter Vigil…as we who are already baptized must also reconfirm our unique belief that Jesus IS God. Jesus is NOT just another prophet, not just a miracle worker, but as the healed man in the story said, “I do believe…” you are God.
While the story highlights the miracle of the man healed of his blindness, the deeper meaning is about the symbolic contrast between the blindness that represents ignorance of who Jesus IS…with new SIGHT that recognizes Jesus as the Son of God. The man’s journey had three stages of conversion that we must all go through. At first he felt like a ‘nobody,’ a person with a disability; after Jesus healed him, he called Jesus a “prophet” and “healer;” Then, with a deeper conversation and relationship with Jesus, he finally came to “see” Jesus as God.
While our Elect/Catechumens are coming to officially name Jesus as the Son of God for the first time in their life in the Easter Sacraments, we are challenged to also ‘see’ Jesus in a renewed way in these weeks of Lent. While most of us were simply ‘born into’ the Christian faith, we each have to come to a point of truly acknowledging Jesus as God in our own heart, mind, and soul. As C.S. Lewis wrote in his book “Mere Christianity,” either Jesus is simply a “madman” claiming to be God…OR we have to go all in and fully acknowledge that he IS God…and spend our life following his ways and commandments. If we truly believe that Jesus is God, as the healed many came to recognize, you can no longer hear these Gospels as simply “good ideas” or “moral suggestions.” Jesus IS…THE Way, the Truth, and the Life…and we must be transformed from keeping Jesus and his Ways on the sideline…and make Jesus the center of our life and our priorities.
It seems that a lot of Christians still keep Jesus in the background…occasionally holding up one of our favorite quotes of his and showing up to Mass once a week. The next step of conversion is letting Jesus correct our vision…and ‘seeing’ our relationship with Jesus in a much deeper way…as God himself wanting a close, loving relationship with you. And that relationship is enriched by spending prayer time every day with the Lover of your soul.
Simply put, I think this story challenges us to do a review of how we ‘see’ our life…its purpose…its meaning…life’s goal? By grace, the blind man changed…from thinking his life was unworthy and constrained by his life’s circumstances…to publicly proclaiming that Jesus is the God of his life. It is powerful to think that God chose someone with a disability and cast aside by society to become a strong voice for Jesus’ Divinity. What is your weakness, limitation, or disability that God wants to use for his glory?
For us, 2000 years later, Jesus comes inside of us in the Eucharist with his same healing power to touch our eyes, heart, and soul…to ‘see’ in a new way that Jesus IS the love of God we are seeking. In the power of the Eucharist, Jesus wants to realign the retina of our thinking, the pupil of our soul, and the cornea of our heart…to see Jesus as our intimate way into God… and our path to heaven.
FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT
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HOMILY BY FR. JIM DEITERS
One of the most beautiful rainbows I have ever experienced appeared in 2019, a few days after having the funeral Mass for the second sister whom I lost to cancer, one at 51 years old, the other at 60. For more reasons than just the weather, I was living in a kind of fog and gloom. I had just finished some prayer time here in church that afternoon and I came out to a sky of dark clouds in the east, but sunlight in the west…and this double rainbow was hovering above…like a funnel from heaven…pouring hope into the world. Rainbows are always inspiring, but this one was sent from God at just the right time…for me and for so many others that day who were seeking some hint that things were going to be okay.
Humans have been fascinated with rainbows from our beginnings, with drawings found in caves thousands of years old. And the bible records its first rainbow in our reading from Genesis, when in about 2300 BC, God sent one to show Noah and his family that the flood was over and things are going to “be okay.” While most people remember Noah as the one with the big boat and lots of animals, the real point of the story is the COVENANT that God makes with Noah. The rainbow is the ‘symbol’ God uses when he says, “I am establishing a covenant between you and me.”
God takes it even further and says this beautiful promise to Noah, “I set my rainbow in the clouds as a sign of the covenant between me and the whole earth.” It was the first big step God took in a long process of restoring earth as a Garden of Eden, when he made his first covenant of love with the human race. Time and again in our long history, we humans keep turning our back on God’s Covenant…forgetting that we are connected to and involved in this “rainbow project” of God’s desire to restore his creation…back into “right relationship” with God and all other humans.
In Catholic Church language, our official teachings use this phrase “right relationship” when describing Justice as one of the four Cardinal Virtues. Justice, in simple terms is having good, holy relationships with God and his whole creation. In other words, God’s Covenant of love… and Jesus’ teachings on justice go hand-in-hand.
While I could go into a deep dive on the Church’s teachings on justice, more simply, I want to apply this biblical image of the rainbow and God’s Covenant with our personal experiences. First, we have to get over an over-romanticized idea about rainbows, as if there really is a pot of gold at the basin. Here is the key thing…since the Noah-rainbow story is really about God’s ‘covenant,’ we have to study and know the life of Jesus, who is God’s NEW Covenant with the world.
Remember, that rainbows only happen when there is a perfect combination of clouds, rain, and sun. Jesus’ Covenant of Salvation only happened with the perfect ‘combination’ of suffering, death, and Resurrection. We call that combination the “Paschal Mystery,” which is what we participate in in the Mass…where we enter INTO Jesus’ suffering, Death, and Resurrection. In this sense, the Mass is not something we ‘watch,’ but it is an encounter with and entry INTO the Death and Resurrection of Christ. We go INTO the ‘rainbow’ of salvation during the Mass…where God renews his Covenant of Love with us IN the very Body and Blood of Jesus. This is powerful stuff! Which is why we Catholics do not take the Eucharist lightly.
And this is the point of why Jesus told us to “do this in memory” of him –so that we would have the Eucharist (Jesus himself) to bring our own suffering, dying, and rising experiences…and unite them to Jesus’ own Dying and Rising. Jesus teaches us that we have to retrain our thinking that ‘real life’ includes suffering and dying…in order to get to Resurrection. That means I have to stop thinking that my life should simply be one long Easter morning…with no “Stations of the Cross” along the way.
The Good News is that because of Jesus’ Rising from the dead, we already live IN God’s ‘Resurrection rainbow’ - God’s sphere of new life. This is how we are able to re-interpret life’s sufferings, NOT as some punishment, but redemptively, as the pathway TO some new life, a new way of living that God has in mind for us. God never stops bringing about something new…out of that which seems hopeless…even death on a Cross.
Let us ask the Holy Spirit to help us…reinterpret our trials and sufferings…as part of the ‘clouds’…that God uses to create a rainbow of a deeper, love relationship with Him...a Covenant that we renew when consume Jesus’ Body and Blood.
I invite you to pray this week about this Covenant of Love that God has with you.
SIXTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
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HOMILY BY FR. JIM DEITERS
It is always inspiring when a famous music or sports star gives a testimony of their faith in public. It’s pretty amazing how often the football or basketball player being interviewed after the game makes a reference to “thanking God” or specifically mentions “Jesus as my Savior.” When there are millions of people listening to this, one hopes it will impact those who feel distant from God or their religion. While most of us will never have a global platform to speak about our faith, when the cultural stars confidently proclaim their own faith, it challenges us to be a bit bolder ourselves…speaking about our faith in our daily conversations. As I always remind parents and grandparents, the children and youth NEED to hear you talk about how Jesus and the Eucharist help you…as your witness is way more effective than what I say.
I know there are a lot of faith-filled people in our world, and I am privileged to hear that faith spoken about by many of you in my daily ministry. But often times, living in a very secular culture and sometimes being overly cautious about other people’s beliefs, can be a real hindrance that causes many Christians to be silent about their faith when in public.
The leper in the Gospel story certainly casts aside any fear of what others might think… when he breaks religious standards of the time and boldly comes up to Jesus asking to be healed. We learned in our first reading from Leviticus that is was a known rule that anyone with leprosy was to stay outside of the city and remain far away from other people. With great humiliation, anyone with the skin disease was required to shout out “I’m unclean” whenever someone came near, and they were banned from any human contact or even being in proximity to others. Given those societal taboos, it took immense boldness and courage for this man to approach Jesus to ask for healing. Surely those around him would have been yelling to stay back and calling him the derogatory name of ‘unclean.’ In public, in front of everyone, the man knelt before Jesus and spoke of his faith in Christ’s healing power.
My reflections this week, kept bring me back to the courage this man in the story mustered up to come to Jesus. It reminds me of the men who have inspired me when celebrating Mass in our local prison. While being incarcerated for crimes, they boldly come forward to practice their Catholic faith and speak boldly about it in the midst of the difficult prison environment. No wonder Jesus calls us to take care of the poor, the stranger, the imprisoned, and each human life…since he knows that these ‘least ones’ in God’s Kingdom…can actually teach US about proclaiming our beliefs, even when many around us might want us to be silent.
What we learn from the leper, is that the first step in being bolder about our faith is recognizing our need for Jesus to help us. In our ongoing conversion, we must name our own ‘leprosy of sorts’ in our sinful habits. We have to get to that place of vulnerability and almost ‘desperation’ for help in order to be bold enough to say out loud to our self, “I NEED a Savior!” THAT is the moment when being afraid of what others might think… no longer ‘imprisons’ us from declaring that Jesus Christ alone can forgive my sinful habits and heal me.
The real climax of this healing story is when Jesus actually TOUCHES this person who is defined as ‘unclean’ or untouchable. Jesus’ simple, powerful gesture symbolizes how God reaches out and wants to touch those parts of our life that are ‘unclean’ or sinful that we sometimes hide OR are not even aware of! Like leprosy, sinful habits can ‘eat away’ at a person’s goodness, and can become all-consuming, taking over a person's life AND affecting the lives of others. Similar to how leprosy kept a person away from the community, our sins also alienate us from healthy relationships in family and community. Think of the sins of greed, materialism, violence, racism, and injustice; don't they make us all "unclean?" And we can easily see how these sins infect our society. Sadly, whole communities and nations "catch" these diseases…as walls of division start to break apart the Body of Christ, which is the whole human race.
Faith is about recognizing that we cannot heal ourselves from the leprosy of our selfish sins. We need the hand of our gracious God to stretch out, touch, and heal us. The Good News is…this is what God does each time we come here to kneel before Jesus in the Eucharist. We are here to publicly acknowledge our NEED for Christ to heal us. Coming forward to receive the Eucharist must never be taken for granted, because here, you and I are boldly declaring our human frailty and our need for Jesus to be our Savior.
Let us take a quiet moment…and ask the Holy Spirit to help us recognize those areas of our heart and mind that need Jesus to touch…and heal.
FIFTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
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HOMILY BY FR. JIM DEITERS
I often tell the young men that the joy and fulfillment that comes in the priesthood vocation is beyond words. One of the many blessings I experience as a priest is the power of ministering the sacraments. In addition to me speaking often about the healing mystery of the Mass and the Sacrament of Confession, another holy moment happens during the Sacrament of Anointing, celebrated when someone is going through an illness or preparing for surgery. Some of the most powerful healing moments of Anointing are for those dealing with depression or forms of mental illness. As a society we have made some progress toward understanding mental illness, and yet many who suffer with it still feel ostracized or ashamed. I remember one woman describing the burden of her depression by saying, “I’m so tired of only thinking about myself and the illness; I want to get back to helping others.”
It was such a powerful testimony of her desire to be freed from her mental anguish…as she represented so many who know how much an illness consumes our thoughts and how heavy the chains of any suffering can be. When she said, “I’m tired of thinking about my suffering and want to help others,” it struck me at how God’s grace is trying to pull her up and out by giving her that desire to be ‘other-centered’. But there is also an interesting parallel between consumed with an illness… and burdened with a sinful habit – as they both get us stuck in thinking about ourselves. Which brings us to our friend Job in the first reading today, who teaches us a lot about living with suffering while keeping a relationship with God.
This Job passage raises the timeless question about suffering. From the beginning of time, humans have wrestled with the problem of suffering and tried to either blame God for it or use drugs or alcohol to numb the pains of life. Job represents any of us who have ever felt overwhelmed with life, either from a tragic event or from a series of sufferings. Pious platitudes like, "God never gives us more than we can bear," are wrong since that assumes it is God who is ‘giving’ us the suffering. Such bad theology leads a person to wonder what they did wrong to deserve it. The story of Job reminds us that no one is exempt from the sufferings of life, not even someone like Job who is a close friend of God...or the Son of God!
Like Job, many want answers to why the innocent suffer. But the bible was not written to solve this question. We are left with the mystery of how God can be loving and powerful and yet allow suffering to exist. In a sense, the question of suffering forces us to address the predicament we create when we give God the title of being “all powerful.” Our definition of God’s power thinks he should remove all suffering. But God never said, “My love for you will end all your suffering.” Rather, we learn from Jesus that God’s Love carries us through the suffering.
It is important to read the last section of the book of Job, when God takes him on a tour of the universe… and shows Job God’s real power and love. The story challenge us to re-define God’s ‘power’ in a new way - as a creative, life-giving force that creates new things out of chaos. In his love for us, God always creates something new FROM suffering and dying experiences. In the spiritual journey, the Holy Spirit always calls us to re-shape our ‘image’ and expectations of God.
We see this same thing in the Gospels…as Jesus’ healing power was constantly misunderstood, even by his own disciples. Many only wanted Jesus to be a miracle worker, someone to take away their problems. Jesus does heal some people in his journey through Galilee, but we learn that he came to earth for something much greater than that. Deep down, we might need to re-define the kind of Messiah we wish Jesus had been. Instead of a miracle worker to ‘fix’ our problems, we have a Messiah who shows us how to accept suffering as a path to something new! When we come to know Jesus as One who suffered, died, and rose from the dead, then he is a Messiah who walks us THROUGH suffering and death…to a Resurrection BEYOND the present moment…and ultimately to Eternal Life with God!
This connects us to Jesus' healing miracle in the Gospel. It tells us that after she was healed, she was able to get up and serve others. This is a deeper kind of healing Jesus desires - one that pulls us out of our self to better serve others. From the story, we learn that Jesus is the concrete sign that God always seeks to take our hand and raising us up! Through Jesus we come to know of God’s SOLIDARITY with our suffering...epitomized by His Crucifixion. Does God ever cause suffering? NO. But we learn that his desire to heal us goes beyond the changing of our physical problems...to become whole enough…where our thoughts turn from our self…to concern for others. While the devil wants us to use suffering to blame God, be isolated, and disabled from serving others, Jesus comes to us in the Eucharist with his healing power, holds our hand, and gives us new strength to once again be living our life for others.
FOURTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
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HOMILY BY FR. JIM DEITERS
Some of the junior high students in our school asked me about why priests can’t get married. I always enjoy the student’s questions as they are learning about their Catholic faith. When one of the girls said, “Don’t you think your life would be a lot easier if you had a wife?” I smiled and said, “Well, how about if we take a poll at Mass on Sunday to see if the married men think their life is ‘easier’ with a wife?” Trust me…I’m not going there!
Since St. Paul brings up the ‘marriage issue’ in today’s second reading, it is difficult to avoid the subject, as much as preaching on today’s Gospel appealed to me. Saint Paul’s letter starts out with him expressing his main desire for his community in Corinth by saying, “I want you to be free of all anxieties.” Interestingly, Paul goes on to name marriage as one of the things that causes anxiety. St. Paul is speaking from the perspective of a single man, but it is very important to remember that Paul is mainly speaking from his assumption that the end of the world was coming very soon. Since Paul believed that Christ’s Second Coming was happening soon, he is basically asking why would you spend your final days getting married when one needs to be focusing on being prepared to meet Jesus face to face?
In that First Century among the Early Christians, it was a commonly held belief that Christ’s Second Coming would happen within their own lifetime. When you believe that you are living in your final days and weeks, it changes one’s priorities and what really matters. This is part of why the Early Christians were so committed to living the Gospel and willing to die for their faith as martyrs. They truly lived their life each and every day as if it were their last opportunity to do what Jesus told them to do.
However, some started to think that Jesus’ return …and the end was not coming as soon as they thought; So, St. Paul’s letters often address those people who started becoming lax in their morals and lifestyles. This continues to be our challenge to this day since we can become complacent in our faith practices…as we assume that we have lots of years to get ourselves ready for our judgment day before Christ.
And thus we are caught up in our anxieties about money, our health, and other worldly things... while needing to stay focused on being spiritually ready to meet Jesus at the moment of our death...which could be in the next day or two! So Paul is challenging us to think about what ARE the things that cause anxiety in our life...and how do those fit into what should be our ultimate concern about being prepared for our ‘accountability report’ to Jesus.
Since our Catholic approach to scripture is to look at the historical context of the passage, we do not read this passage as a dissuasion from the value of a marriage vocation. Rather, we listen for the deeper question about what things in our life are causing anxiety that are not helping our path to heaven? Basically, this scripture challenges us to think about how short our life is, what are we doing with the blessed time we have…, and which relationships in our life are helping us be our best self for God? Sometimes, a challenging relationship actually helps us grow in holiness and humility.
We can interpret Paul’s take on the anxieties that relationships can cause… as a reminder to choose well the people with whom we share our life and time. For young people discerning their vocation as married, single, or religious, each person they date or choose as friends…need to align with our core Christian values and Catholic beliefs.
Although it seems as though we have lots of time to get our priorities in order, and many people think they will take care of their spiritual life at ‘some later day,’ St. Paul advises us to remember that any day could be our last. So he leaves us with an encouraging message when he writes at the end of this passage, “have adherence to the Lord without distraction.” Simply put, we need to examine our lives and sort out what things would fall into the category of ‘distractions’ on our spiritual path. And are the things we are anxious about as important as we make them if this was indeed our last month? We do not need to wait until Lent to ‘give up’ something and turn away from the things that distracts us from having total “adherence to the Lord.” Life is too short…and our salvation too significant …to be anxious about things of this world.
Let us place before God at the Altar…every single thing and person over which we have anxiety. And in prayer each day, place every anxiety in the Palm of God’s Hand. As we approach Holy Communion, let us ask the Holy Spirit to come to us in the Eucharist to help us have the wisdom to keep our ‘adherence on the Lord.”
THIRD SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
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HOMILY BY FR. JIM DEITERS
The human person is the epitome of God’s creative genius. And the way that God created the human brain is something at which we will forever marvel. Neuroscientists and others who study the workings of the human brain teach us a great deal about the different parts of the brain and how they help us function. From our thoughts to our body movements, to our emotions and desires, each part of the brain relates to the other in determining the choices we make. There are also consequences of what we let into this ‘sacred space’. It is critical to filter the images, data, and ideas that we take in through our senses…since they make their way through various parts of the brain and become part of how we think and live.
While Jesus had no educational background in neurology, he DID know that if he was going to save and reunite the human race back to God, it must start in changing the way we think. And he makes clear this mission to change our thinking in his very first public preaching we hear today.
We are at the beginning of Mark’s Gospel in this new year. In Mark, there is no nativity scene or baby Jesus; he begins his gospel with the adult Jesus getting baptized and moving to Galilee, where he commences his preaching and healing ministry. And in this section today, we are privileged to hear the very first words that Jesus proclaims, “The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.” In those two short sentences that Jesus carefully chose, I want to focus on the word, “repent,” which basically means, “change the way you think and live.”
In Hebrew, the word “repent” means a turning away FROM something…TO something new. Jesus’ very first invitation is for us to think about what we need to turn away FROM…in order to redirect our lives more clearly TOWARD Jesus and his gospel. In that phrase, “believe in the gospel,” Jesus is saying, “I want you to have a new belief system, a new way of thinking…about God, yourself, and others.” But this difficult since we have trained and wired our brains to think ‘one way’ and we get stuck…while we need to establish new synapses and a new ‘narrative’ in the way we THINK…to then cause an effect in our actions.
We see this being played out in the lives of the first four followers of Jesus in this gospel today, who heard his call AND changed their life course as his disciples. Most people in Jesus’ audience had one way of ‘thinking’ that if they kept the Commandments and had a connection to Abraham and Moses, they could enter the kingdom of God. That ‘connection’ was no longer enough; and now to be ‘saved’ meant reorienting one’s thoughts and life priorities around Jesus and his GOSPEL of forgiving love.
Those first Apostles took a pretty radical approach to Jesus’ call to “repent,” as well as millions of disciples since then whom we call saints, as they gave up so much to go “all in” to a new life in Christ. Since most people cannot just quit their job, like Peter, Andrew, James and John did to follow Jesus wholeheartedly, we have to reflect and pray about what kind of ‘reorienting/repentance’ WE need to make to be more engaged as Jesus disciples.
In this sense, we cannot simply assume that since we are baptized and go to church…that we get a free pass into Heaven, the kingdom of God. Yes, we are saved by Jesus, but his calling to “repent and come follow me” challenges us to think about what things, persons, or misplaced priorities need to be turned AWAY FROM…in order to make Jesus and his teaching the center of my life plans.
This is why we need to study the lives of the saints, married and single holy women and men…to look for examples of how to keep Jesus, the sacraments, and Church teachings at our core…in the midst of life’s challenges of work, family, and the sufferings of the world. It brings us back to that beautiful line from St. Paul who said, “have the same mind as Christ Jesus.”
To have the “same mind as Christ” definitely requires a daily “repenting from” things that are not leading me to God and heaven…and choosing new, pure images and ideas from these very words of Jesus to infiltrate into every part of our brain. Part of this cognitive and physical reorientation that Jesus calls us to embrace…happens each time we absorb the very Person of Christ into the cells of our body through the holy Eucharist. In a few minutes, this is the refrain we will sing at Communion: “Take, O take me as I am…summon out what I shall be…,” As we pray this mantra together, let’s ask the Holy Spirit to help us know which specific things we need to repent FROM…to reorient TOWARD having Jesus Christ as the center of our thinking…and all we say and do.
SECOND SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME
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HOMILY BY FR. JIM DEITERS
I remember a few years ago when this first reading came up at Mass about Samuel sleeping in the Temple, and one of our teenagers approached me after the Liturgy and said, “Definitely my favorite bible story…someone who keeps trying to sleep more.” I said, “sure, but also remember that God finally got Samuel’s attention and told him to do some very challenging work for him.”
Scripture scholars remind us that when “sleep” is used in the story, it usually represents someone who is not spiritually aware of God’s presence in their life. Samuel was still quite young at this point, and even though he was raised in solid religious practices, he still didn’t have a personal relationship with God. He assumed that any ‘voice’ he heard was from his teacher, Eli, and was just learning how to LISTEN and pay attention to God’s voice and Presence within himself.
As we begin Ordinary Time in our Church calendar, I want to compare Samuel’s story of sleeping and being awakened in the temple… and our own sometimes ‘sleepwalking’ through the Mass… to full, active participation in this awesome Mystery of worshipping God with our whole heart and soul…in THIS temple. Since it’s the start of a new year, let’s cover some basic ideas for being more attentive at Mass…with Samuel’s example of being “awakened” and listening.
First, let’s name the main challenge: Distractions – our lives are often so busy that our minds are elsewhere with lists of worries or things that need done, or thinking about what we’re going to eat after Mass or which sports game to watch. With our minds elsewhere, like Samuel, it’s difficult to listen and pay attention to what we are really doing here…while keeping our focus on GOD and not ourselves.
Two Solutions for distractions: First, on the drive to church, use that time to talk to God about your lists; in other words, get the “ME” out of the way so that God can be the center of attention when you walk in these doors. Second option: come 15-30 minutes early and present your ‘lists’ to God before Mass begins, either on your own or while praying the Rosary with the parish. Samuel, learned to put himself aside and finally say, “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.”
Putting our self at bay, we are more ready to really praise and worship God in the Mass. But like Eli’s advice to Samuel, I want to get more specific about being engaged during Mass. Let me use the worship aid as a tool to help our praying. It is called a “worship aid” BECAUSE it aids our worship of God. What I mean, is pay closer attention to the WORDS we are either praying together or the priest is praying for us as Christ’s representative.
There are many, but here are six ways to practice Samuel’s awakened state at Mass:
Samuel, who lived about 3,000 years ago, is among us in the Communion of Saints encouraging us to make ourselves fully present to God in this “temple” …quieting our minds and saying, “Speak Lord, your servant is listening. Here I am.”
EPIPHANY
WATCH THIS HOMILY
HOMILY BY FR. JIM DEITERS
People often ask where I get my inspiration for homilies, and I always say, “totally from the Holy Spirit…and the fruit of your prayers for me.” Well, for some reason the Holy Spirit kept nudging me this week to approach this feast of Epiphany in a very different way…written from the perspective of the Star that shown over Bethlehem. So, consider this a personal ‘letter’ from that Star that guided the Magi.
Dear friends of Jesus,
First of all, you must know that I was amazed to learn that God would choose me to point people to the Savior. I was just one star in a billion that existed since God first brought Creation into existence. I don't know why God would choose ME to have some ‘role’ in the history of salvation. But when I accepted the job, in a strange way, I became a ‘disciple’ of Jesus myself… both following God's request, and leading other people to Jesus…as disciples do.
I wish you could have seen the look on the faces of the Magi when they approached King Herod, and he did not know about the birth of some “new king.” As astronomer-scientists of the First Century, they thought that this mysterious event in the sky (that I was producing), was caused by the many gods they imagined lived up here by us stars. So the Magi went to Herod, because they interpreted my light as a sign that he must have had a new baby son as a ‘new king’ sent down by the gods in the heavens. However, the one and only God shocked the scientific world and all of humanity (by the use of my light), that no longer do you need to study the stars or seek out gurus for the answers about God and our human purpose. Even though my star attracted human eyes to look upward…God came ‘downward’…and used my simple light to teach you humans to now redirect all your ‘looking’ and inner searching and questions to the Person Jesus, who was there as God even before I came into existence.
Here is the main point I want to say to you – I was given a one-time opportunity to ‘reflect’ light and point the way for others. YOU get to actually RECEIVE God’s light into your body through Jesus in the Eucharist. I was chosen to get indirectly involved in Jesus’ Life; YOU are actually a PART OF Jesus’ Life and His Body. I got to ‘see’ Jesus from afar and hear angels sing; YOU get to look at Jesus face to face in the Eucharist and hear His own Voice in the Gospels. I was a passive disciple a million light years away; YOU are a chosen disciple, on the same earth Jesus lived, to be engaged in his Mission of Love.
I was a fleeting flash of chemical light that served a small role in God’s ‘surprise plan’… to reach forth from the invisible divine sphere… and enter the material universe as a baby; through Jesus, your human nature is now intermeshed with God’s very Self…and your mortal nature now becomes immortal with God. Do you see then how sacred your life is? And the sacredness of EVERY human person…once God did this for all of you?
My light served a one-time purpose out in the sky…but the Light of God that came into you at your Baptism…is now YOUR guiding star within you. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have the Holy Spirit within you as your divine compass…directing you to the Truth…about who you are…and what God wants with your life.
Yes, you can still look up at us stars and marvel at God’s Creation…but all your searching for life’s answers must be redirected to Jesus. He has placed HIS Light of guidance inside of you. From what I saw, I’m telling you…follow Jesus’ Light…and let His Light within you…be a beacon of God’s Love for others.
One last thought about that experience I had at the first Epiphany. As I watched the Magi depart from their visit with Jesus, I noticed that they returned home by a “different way.” You see, once you encounter Jesus, you can never go back to how used to live or think. I hope you realize that at every Mass, you are drawn into a miraculous epiphany-encounter with Jesus. Follow the Magi’s example…and go back into the world…by another way…as a new person filled with the Light of Jesus.
Blessings on your journey,
The Star