HOMILY – Fifteen Sunday in Ordinary Time – Garden of My Soul

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I‘m a big fan of the best-selling book called The Shack.

Have you read it?

It’s an intriguing book, and one I recommend to people who have suffered a great loss in their lives. 

The story is a beautiful parable about faith, loss, great pain, and eventually healing and forgiveness through the guidance of the Holy Trinity.  In it, the author meets Creator, Son and Holy Spirit. And God is an elderly African American lady. What an important image for our times.

The story centers on a father whose young daughter is kidnapped and brutally murdered by a serial killer while on a family vacation in the Wallowa Lake area of eastern Oregon. 

“The last trace of his daughter, a blood-stained dress, is found on the floor of a dilapidated shack set deep in the woods.  

In the wake of the murder, a crushing depression settles on (the protagonist) and he (begins) to question his belief in God.  As the novel opens, (the man) receives a mysterious invitation to come to the shack.”  The man thinks the letter is penned by the killer, but it turns out the letter is sent by God.

For the purposes of this homily, I’d like to borrow The Shack author’s metaphor of the human soul as being like a beautiful garden when tended to properly. 

In our lifetimes, many thorns, weeds, and rocks can exist in the gardens of our souls, and need constant care and tending to create a thing of beauty in the eyes of God.

Some of us may think we are immune to these thorns or rocks or weeds cropping up in the gardens of our souls. But we are not.  None of us.  Not even this deacon.  

This is what Jesus is telling us about this weekend.  We need to keep the gardens of our souls tilled with rich, fertile soil for the word of God to continue to take root. 

When I was a teenager, I got in big trouble for sneaking out of the house one early summer night to hang out with my friends. We got detained by the police for being out after midnight (and up to no good). My father was none too happy to retrieve me from the Bellevue Police Department at 4 AM. My punishment (my penance) was to remove all the rocks from a patch of land my father wanted to turn into garden.

The project took the remainder of the summer to complete and generated a pile of rocks that would be the envy of any chain-gang prisoner.

Needless to say, a life’s lesson was learned by this naughty 13-year-old.

The garden of my soul has been quite rocky at times in my life – in desperate need of tilling and patient removal. Thank goodness for the blessing of having my rock garden experience in my youth to help bring things into perspective.

Here are a few questions for us today:

Is our soil rich and fertile creating the conditions required for the Word of God to be nurtured and come to fruition as a Disciple of Christ?

How about the soil of our children?  

As Catholic missionary disciples, are we helping our children, our teens, our young or older adults keep their soil rich and fertile so as to have their faith fully alive and thriving? 

I had the blessing to spend several school years as Campus Minister at Archbishop Murphy High School after ordination. 

I had gotten a call to meet with the President of AMHS who told me, “I think you’d make a great campus minister.” To which I replied, “Wait, I just raised two sons through the challenging teen years. And you’re asking me to spend my days hanging around teenagers?  Are you crazy?”

But after feeling God’s call in the request, I eventually said “Yes.”

It was an eye-opening experience to see faith through the eyes of our young people.

As the parent of any teen knows, teenagers pay close attention to everything we say and do, and are quick to point out any hypocrisy – especially hypocrisy to the teachings of Christ. What a wonderful mirror they can be to our growing in authenticity as disciples of Christ.

Many young Catholics today walk away from faith. They need our help at times to clean out their rocky gardens, allowing for their faith to flourish. 

As parents, we can talk about lessons of Jesus, but we can also sometimes fail to live up to Jesus’ example.  We can fail to tend to our own rocky gardens and don’t see that our own hypocrisy is one of the main reasons young people leave the faith.

Our judgments of others without showing mercy or understanding, our unkind and unloving words about our enemies, our intolerance of those we disagree with, our failure to help the least of our brothers and sisters in need, our focus on material wealth and all its trappings, all these things are enabling young people to question what this Jesus thing is all about -- what this Church is all about.

That’s why Pope Francis could not have come at a better time in our troubled world.  The Pope prefers to teach not only by his words, but more importantly by his actions. 

The lesson learned for us all can be found in a quote attributed by some to Francis’ namesake, St. Francis of Assisi: 

“Preach the Gospel always.  And if necessary, use words.”

This is how we make rich, fertile soil in our souls and the souls of our children. When there is harmony between our words and our actions, and when we let our actions speak louder than our words, we create soil rich, fertile for the Word of God to take root for all to see.

           So, I ask:  What rocks do we need to remove from the gardens of our souls?

This is a good thing for each of us to reflect on in the coming week.

HOMILY – Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time – Desmond Doss

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We’re back in Ordinary time. But this weekend’s message from Jesus is anything, but ordinary. In fact, it is quite extraordinary.

And in his message is a call for us to live extraordinary lives of faith in him. Not ordinary lives. Extraordinary lives where we pick up our crosses and follow him.

But first we must ask ourselves these questions:

What obstacles stand between me and Jesus?

What barriers are blocking me from living my life as a missionary disciple of Christ?

What blocks me from saying “yes” to Jesus’ way of love?

Today Jesus is talking to his disciples about what they will encounter on their mission to spread the Gospel. Especially what resistance will come their way.

Jesus knows family ties are the ties that bind. These ties are strong and can influence us not to follow Jesus, not to risk one’s life, not to carry one’s cross.

Jesus wants us to pay attention to these obstacles, these barriers, these blocks in our lives and work to not let them get in the way of our mission to serve him and the Kingdom.

 The reality is that many early Christians were rejected by their families for following Jesus. Not every mother, father, sister or brother thought it was a good idea for their loved one to risk life and limb to follow the way of Christ.

For us to be loyal disciples, we must put Jesus first in our lives and let everything else flow from that relationship.

This creates the peace that flows from Jesus. But this is not an easy peace. To commit one’s life to Christ can be threatening to some because it challenges personal values and presumptions, forcing us to make a choice that is not always easy.

I’m reminded of a story about someone who risked life and limb for the Kingdom. His name was Desmond Doss.

Desmond Doss faced that rejection and persecution.  The Lynchburg, Virginia native was motivated to serve his country after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.

Problem was, as a devout Seventh Day Adventist, he refused to touch a gun. Instead, he wanted to serve his country as a medic.

His father was a World War One veteran and pleaded with his son not to enlist. His mother also begged him to not sign up.

From the day he reported for duty, his life was a living hell.

“While Doss viewed himself not as a conscientious objector, but a ‘conscientious cooperator,’ his fellow infantrymen and superiors did not see it that way. When he arrived for basic training at Fort Jackson, S.C., he quickly became an outcast from the rest of the recruits. His slight stature and shyness did not improve the situation, and many soldiers believed he would be a major liability in battle.”   

His nickname was “the coward” and he faced regular beatings from his fellow enlisted men and verbal taunting from his commanding officers and drill sergeant.  The goal was to wash him out of boot camp.  And everyone was joining in.

As Private Doss said during his lifetime, “I wanted to be like Christ in saving life instead of taking life.” That was the reason he wanted to join the Army Medical Corp.

Private Doss endured the torturous bootcamp experience and eventually made it to the field of battle as a medic on Okinawa. It was the site of what was considered the second bloodiest conflict in World War Two.  The first being D-Day.

It was April 1945, and war with Japan was at a critical turning point.  Okinawa would be the final test to determine who would win the war.

The object of Private Doss and his 307^th Infantry, 77th Division was the hellish Maeda Escarpment, a battlefield located on top of a sheer 400-foot cliff. The site became known as Hacksaw Ridge.  

A treacherous rope ladder was the only way up the sheer cliff.

The Americans stormed the ridge and took the escarpment for less than a day. The next morning the Japanese emerged from the catacomb tunnels and drove the U.S. soldiers off the escarpment and back down the rope ladder.

Hundreds of wounded were left behind.  Private Doss was faced with a brutal decision, abandon the ridge or risk lose his life saving his fellow servicemen. He chose the latter and reentered the field of battle searching for the lost and wounded.

When he would find a soldier alive, he would take him back to edge of the cliff and hoist him down with using ropes.

Each time he would save a man’s life, he would pray out loud, “Lord, please help me get one more.  Help me get one more.”  This went on all day and all night.

In the end, Private Doss saved 75 men before saving himself.

The men who persecuted Private Doss were now in awe of him. Many had his heroics to thank for their lives.

His commanding officer said he had misjudged Doss and wondered if the private could ever forgive him.  For years after the war, the captain would blink back tears telling Doss’ story.

Eventually, the Americans tried to take the Ridge again.  As they waited to climb the wall on the Sabbath Day, a radio call broke the silence before the assault with a General asking, “Why haven’t you started climbing the ridge?”  The Captain’s answer was curt, “We’re waiting for Private Doss” who was finishing his prayers.

 Hacksaw Ridge was eventually taken, and as we know, the Japanese were defeated a few months later.

Doss was injured during the battle for Hacksaw Ridge and returned home a corporal and became the first conscientious objector in American history to be awarded the Medal of Honor.   

President Truman was so excited to meet Corporal Doss he walked right up to him to shake his hand instead of waiting for the soldier to come to him during the awarding ceremony.

Desmond Doss said during his lifetime, “I know who I owe my life to, as well as (that of) my men. That’s why I like to tell this story for the Glory of God because I know from a human standpoint I should not be here.”  

Corporal Doss walked into one of the bloodiest battles of World War II with nothing to protect him but his Bible and his trust in Jesus.  

May we all resist the temptation to choose the easy road of living ordinary lives, and live extraordinary lives for Jesus Christ.

HOMILY – Corpus Christi 2020 – Real Presence of Jesus

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This weekend we are celebrating the Feast of Corpus Christi ( also referred to as the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ). This feast began in the 13^th century and was created to reverence the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

As we know, the Catholic Church teaches “the Eucharist is the ‘source and summit of the Christian life’.”   

But how many Catholics today still believe in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist?  A Pew research study showed no more than 3 out of 10 actually believe. 7 out of 10 Catholics in America today do not believe in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.

“(These people) personally believe that during Catholic Mass, the bread and wine used in Communion ‘are (ONLY) symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.’ Just one-third of U.S. Catholics (31%) say they believe that ‘during Catholic Mass, the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus." (Read full Pew Study here)

Perhaps motivated by this finding, our Archbishop Paul Etienne is declaring the Year of the Eucharist beginning this weekend. He announced this news in a Pastoral Letter found in this month’s Northwest Catholic. (Read full Pastoral Letter here)

There’s a lot there to soak in. And, yes, he’s asking us to change some of the ways in which we worship.

The real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist is found in the documents of Vatican II, in “Sacrosanctum Concilium,” the Council’s Document on Divine Liturgy.

The document teaches the five ways of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist:

“To accomplish so great a work, Christ is always present in His Church, especially in her liturgical celebrations. He is present in the sacrifice of the Mass, not only in the person of His minister, ... but especially under the Eucharistic species. By His power He is present in the sacraments, so that when a (priest or deacon) baptizes it is really Christ Himself who baptizes. He is present in His word, since it is He Himself who speaks when the holy scriptures are read in the Church. He is present, lastly, when the Church prays and sings, for He promised: ‘Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them (Matt. 18:20)’.”

In today’s reading from John’s Gospel, Jesus is using specific words that have guided the Church’s teachings for nearly two-thousand years.

The word used to refer to Eucharist is soma or “body.” However, in this passage, Jesus is using the word sarx, which means “flesh.”  “Terms like ‘body’ can have symbolic meanings, but the term ‘flesh’ had no other meaning than the corporeal reality of one’s physical being.”

Bishop Daniel Mueggenborg in his reflection on this passage said this:   “Jesus wants us to make no mistake about it — He Himself is really and truly present (flesh and blood) in the food and drink He gives us in the Eucharist.”

The second word in this passage needing close inspection is “eat.” There were many different words in Greek to describe the action of eating.

The word Jesus intentionally chooses in this passage is used four times for emphasis: trogein.  Trogein means to munch or gnaw when eating. He could have chosen a dignified word like phragein.    

But he chose the word trogein. “This is important because it has no other meaning than the physical experience of ‘munching’ on a piece of food whereas phragein could have a more figurative meaning of digesting something intellectually or assimilating something culturally. Thus, in this passage, Jesus is going out of His way to make His point very clear: He is giving us a real gift of His physical body and blood, and to receive that gift we must actually eat it.”

In the prologue to John’s Gospel we hear,

“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”   

“And the Word was made flesh (sarx) and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.”

As we continue our Eucharistic fast, and navigate the challenging rules around staying healthy in a time of COVID-19, you may ask, why is the Archbishop doing this now? Aren’t their more important issues to talk about than the Eucharist?

We are sheltered in our homes due to a pandemic. We have an economy in ruins. We have riots in the streets and civil unrest not seen since the late 1960s.

It’s a fair question.

As we heard in today’s first reading from Deuteronomy, the Israelites were grumbling and testing Moses. And what did he remind them?

“(God) therefore let you be afflicted with hunger,
and then fed you with manna,
a food unknown to you and your fathers,
in order to show you that not by bread alone does one live,
but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the LORD.”

Jesus is our manna. Jesus is the Word that comes forth from the mouth of the LORD. Jesus is who we are all called to become by conforming our lives to his.  

Archbishop Etienne reminds us, “The Eucharist is an inexhaustible source of grace, the Paschal Mystery of Christ’s dying and rising daily renewed for our salvation and for the salvation of the whole world. The Eucharist is the living presence of Christ in our midst. That presence does not, must not leave us unchanged: Receiving the Body of Christ, we become the Body of Christ. The Eucharist unites us to Christ, and, in Christ, to each other. And the Eucharist commits us to the poor, sending us forth in service and love.”

I can't think of a more important topic for us all to reflect on in these tumultuous, challenging and difficult times.