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  • Second Sunday of Ordinary Time: Speak Lord, Your Servant is Listening

    Second Sunday of Ordinary Time: Speak Lord, Your Servant is Listening

    http://www.usccb.org/nab/011506.shtml

    1/21/06: Once again, it’s been tooooo long since I’ve posted, so I’m posting this one a bit late, and it’s the homily I preached on Saturday and Sunday, Jan. 14-15. It reflects on the readings for the Second Sunday of Ordinary Time, but also reflects on vocations since it was the end of National Vocations Week. Warning: Reading this blog entry does expose you to my vocation story. Remember… you’ve been warned.

    I haven’t made any New Years resolutions yet, at least not formally. But after living with these readings for the last week, I think I know what mine will be. I’d like to start every day with Samuel’s prayer in today’s first reading: “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.” Then of course, I’ll have to listen; and I don’t know how it is for you, but I know that, for me, more listening in my prayer might be a good thing.

    Because it’s easy, isn’t it, to say all kinds of things to God in prayer. We have no problem telling him our needs, praising him, even giving thanks. And all those things are good, of course, but we’re supposed to listen too. And that can be the hard part in today’s noisy world. Our world has lots of ways to speak to us: television, radio, cell phones, text messaging, email and the list goes on. We’re a culture that likes to say a lot of stuff and make a lot of noise. But for prayer to really work, there has to be silence, we have to listen. So we might do well to pray the way Samuel did: “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.”

    To say that in our prayer shows a strong openness to God’s will. The implication of saying “Speak Lord, your servant is listening” is that, as God’s servants, we will do what he asks of us. Samuel did that, we know, because the end of the reading tells us that he grew up and the LORD was with him. Andrew, Peter, and the other disciple had that kind of openness in the Gospel reading, since they were willing to drop everything and respond to Jesus’ invitation: “Come, and you will see.”

    Jesus says that same thing to us today, and every day: “Come, and you will see.” Do we want to see what Jesus is doing in the world today? Do we want a world of justice and peace? Do we long for a prayer life that guides us through life and sees us through good times and bad? If so, “come, and you will see.” Having that openness to God’s will is a way of life that Jesus offers to all of us.

    This is Vocations Awareness Week, and today’s readings really speak to us about our vocation to follow Christ. As baptized People of God, we all have a vocation to follow Christ in whatever way God has led us. Some of us live our vocation in marriage and as parents, others live it as single people serving Christ in the world, and others live it as priests, deacons, and religious men and women. God has something specific for each of us to do, and we will see what it is if we open the door and say “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.”

    Five years ago on the occasion of Vocation Awareness Week, I was co-directing the contemporary choir at St. Petronille. At the homily time, I sat in a pew next to my mother, who happened to come to that Mass. During the homily, one of our parishioners who was a seminarian gave his talk about Vocations. And my mother, in her not-so-subtle fashion, elbowed me in the side and said “you should listen to this.” Well, I said something like “not gonna happen” … I had long since put the idea of a religious vocation aside, having looked at the possibility not once, but twice, and both times feeling that I was not in fact being called to a priestly or religious vocation.

    In fact, in college, I had received a degree in religious studies with a minor in philosophy, and the diocese was ready to send me to seminary as soon as I graduated. But at the time, I felt that I needed to do some work, and so I did that, working as a youth minister at St. Petronille. After that, I worked in the business world for about ten years. At one point, I spent some time with the Benedictines at St. Procopius Abbey, and eventually found I wasn’t being called to that either.

    So when I heard the seminarian’s talk that year, I was very happy with my life. I had a good job, and worked mostly with people that I liked. I had good friends and a wonderful family. I had some ministries in the Church, including the choir, that came out of my spiritual life. My prayer life was good. I felt like I was doing what I was supposed to be doing and I was happy about that.

    But sometime later, my prayer life became stale, as prayer lives will do on occasion. So I prayed about that, and realized that God was trying to move me in a new direction. Of course, I had no idea what that direction was, so just before Lent, I prayed that God would give me a big challenge. And I remember saying to God, “I don’t care what it is, just help me to know what it is and I’ll do it.” In some ways, this was my way of saying “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.”

    And here’s a little spiritual hint. If you pray a prayer like that, God will answer it, so make sure you’re prepared. I wasn’t, but don’t let that happen to you!

    I continued to pray about it during Lent, and eventually started to consider going back to school. That’s an idea I had toyed with a lot over the previous few years, but could never decide if I should go and get a computer-related degree, which interested me, or a church-related degree. As I looked into it, I became aware that God was calling me to go to seminary. I remember protesting in prayer that going to seminary wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but I also remember God saying “you said you’d do anything.” And so, several months later, I was at Mundelein Seminary for the first of five years of priestly formation there.

    During my time at Mundelein, I have grown in my vocation, and God has continued to encourage me to “Come and you will see.” In addition to receiving a wonderful education, I have also had the opportunity to minister in a nursing home, at a parish for a six month internship, as a hospital chaplain and as a fire chaplain. I’ve discovered that God calls me to do all sorts of things that I never thought I could do or would want to do, and those experiences have been great.

    That’s my story, and every one of us has a story about how God is calling us to live our vocation. You may not know what it is yet. Some people know what they are called to do right away. Others, like me, take some time to figure that out. There is no one, right, way to follow Christ. But it always starts out with “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.”

    If you feel like you have been called to a priestly or religious vocation, I’d be glad to talk with you about that. Our diocese has a good number of seminarians, but not enough to serve our Church well in the future. This year, in fact, I will be the only one ordained to the priesthood, and there’s a need for many more than one new priest in a diocese that is growing every day.

    I would like to ask all of you to do three things. First, if you know someone who you think would make a good priest or religious man or woman, tell them. I know that’s a risk and it’s hard to do, but they aren’t going to be offended by it. And I pray that all parents would encourage their children to consider priestly or religious vocations and support them if that’s what they choose to do. When we encourage people to consider that kind of vocation, they may or may not respond right away, but even if they don’t, you’ve planted a seed that God can water and care for.

    Second, open yourself up to live your own vocation – whatever it is – well. When we all live our vocations well, following Christ with open hearts, we create a community where jobs are not just jobs, and relationships are not just give and take, but where all of life is an opportunity to live fully and freely as followers of Christ. That kind of community will generate the people we need to serve the Church as priests and religious.

    And finally, pray for vocations. Pray for all vocations. Pray that married people would be models of Christian love for everyone. Pray that parents may have the strength they need to raise their children in a challenging world. Pray that men would be open to priestly vocations. Pray that men and women would follow Christ in the religious life. Pray that priests would be strong disciples that lead people to Christ. Pray that we would all be a community open to God’s will and to following Christ in the way we have been called. Pray because prayer is effective and transforming and prayer works.

    This new year, let us all resolve to begin every day and all of our prayer with the words of Samuel, “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.”

  • Third Sunday of Advent

    Third Sunday of Advent

    Yes, it’s been a while since I’ve blogged. End of the quarter, and a whole bunch of things got in the way. But here we are, in a new liturgical year, on the Third Sunday of Advent. Instead of just some reflections, I’m posting the text of the homily I preached today.

    There’s a little more light today.

    It might not seem like there’s more light, because the days are rapidly getting shorter, and will continue to do so until the winter solstice. The darkness and cold of the night seem so much more prevalent than the joyful light of day.

    But still, there’s a little more light today.

    It might not seem like there’s more light, when we look at the darkness of our world. It is a world still wrapped in sin and scandal and death. It is a world affected by sickness and disease. It is a world where tragedies and wars still hang heavy on our horizons. It is a world where the sadness of poverty and injustice and inequality and racism still mar the brightness of our days.

    But still, there’s a little more light today.

    It might not seem like there’s more light, when we look inward at the darkness of our own souls, grown cold in the scandal of sin in the world and grown bitter at the triumph of injustice and death. In our own lives, there is sin, sin that maybe has been defended by our own self-righteousness, or ignored in our jadedness. In our own lives, maybe we have prayed less than we should, or treated others with something quite less than love, or have been greedy, or have damaged our relationships by giving in to lust, or have taken possession of what does not belong to us. In our own lives, maybe our sin has gone unconfessed because of fear or indifference.

    But still, there’s a little more light today.

    John the Baptist came into the world to point to that light. He readily admitted that he himself was not the light, but drew the attention of the Pharisees and others who were questioning him to the one who was already in their midst – one they did not recognize. And that one was Jesus Christ, the true light of the world.

    Because of John the Baptist, we can see that there’s a little more light today.

    The Church tells us there is more light as we continue to light the candles on our Advent wreath. With each additional candle, there is more light shining on our celebration and drawing us into the great light of Christmas. We light the rose candle today, the color of which reminds us that this is “Gaudete Sunday.” Gaudete is Latin for “joy,” and reminds us that even in the darkness of winter, even in the darkness of our world and even in the darkness of our own lives and sin, that there is one among us – one that maybe we don’t recognize as often as we should. And that one light is Jesus Christ, the true light of the world.

    Because of the Church, we can see that there’s a little more light today.

    In today’s second reading, St. Paul tells the community at Thessolonica to do three things: rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and give thanks in every circumstance. These three actions are the heart of the Christian life, and keep us united to Christ. To do anything less would be to quench the Holy Spirit, and St. Paul insisted that living a life filled with rejoicing, prayer and thanksgiving was the way to become perfectly holy, which is the goal of all of our lives.

    Because of St. Paul, there’s a little more light today.

    All of this comes as a result of God’s gracious gift in our world and in our lives. By Christ coming into the world as a tiny child, and growing up to take our sins to the cross and rise triumphant over them, the darkness of sin and death are no longer the powers that rule the day. Instead, the great light of God’s love, against which nothing can prevail, becomes the great power of the day.

    Because of Jesus Christ, there’s a lot more light today.

    So it comes to us. Now we are called to be the light that brightens our darkened world. The spirit of the Lord God is upon us, and we have been anointed to bring good news to the poor and to heal the brokenhearted. We must be the light that releases those imprisoned in darkness and proclaims the vindication of God.

    And I would like to suggest that we can use St. Paul’s model to do that in three very specific ways. First, we can rejoice always. In this season, maybe we can all send a Christmas card to someone who wouldn’t otherwise receive one; to someone who probably won’t send one back to us. Maybe that’s to a relative who has grown distant, or a homebound neighbor. Even if you don’t send any other cards this Christmas, send that one card. Second, we can pray without ceasing. And in Advent, maybe that means going to Confession. The Sacrament of Penance can make the world very bright for you and for the community by letting go of the darkness of sin. There’s a penance service on December 21st, and many other opportunities for the sacrament before Christmas. Be not afraid, there is a lot of joy and much light that comes from celebrating the sacrament of our forgiveness. And third, give thanks in all circumstances. This Advent, maybe we can all take the time to thank one person for what he or she has done in our lives this year. God gives us the blessing of so many relationships, but how often do we thank God for them, or even thank them for being God’s presence in our lives? Or maybe we can make a list of people and blessings for which we are thankful, and pray through them as we sit by the light of our Christmas trees this season. Let us give thanks in all circumstances.

    Because, if we do even these small things, we will see that in us, there’s a little more light today.

  • Diaconate Ordination

    Diaconate Ordination

    I know, it’s long past time that I spent some time reflecting on my diaconate ordination, which happened a week ago today. Final exams have kept me from doing so until now, so here goes.

    The picture at left is after the ordination took place. The picture shows Bishop Roger Kaffer (who ordained me), me, Fr. John Regan (my vocation director), and Bishop Stanley Schlarman. This was clearly one of the happiest moments of my life so far. The ordination ceremony itself was really beautiful. The diocese did a great job planning the liturgy, with the music, decorating the pastoral center, and everything else. I was able to pray and enjoy the ceremony, and was so blessed to be able to do that. Bishop Kaffer did a great job, and his homily only had me turn red once or twice!

    I was very blessed by so many family and friends who came to the ordination. In fact, one of the moments where I was choked up the most was processing in, seeing everyone gathered, and then watching the pretty long procession fill the sanctuary. Many priests, and brother deacons from my class at Mundelein, were there to support and welcome me to the diocesan clergy.

    Fr. Regan, our vocation director, had a very nice dinner at the Fiat house for clergy and my classmates, as well as the seminarians from the diocese and their families. It was nice to be able to relax with everyone for a while before the ordination, although I will say I did not eat anything!

    The Deacon of the Word was my good friend Greg Labus, a deacon from the Diocese of Brownsville, Texas, who has lived across the hall from me ever since pre-theology. Greg really helped me through those last few nerve-wracking hours before the ordination. When we got to the pastoral center, he spent time praying with me before we both got vested.

    The reception was very nice, with lots of food provided by the diocese and my family. Again, I did not eat: this time not so much because I was nervous, but because there were so many people to talk to. My family and I finally got back around 10:30 or so and spent some time talking and I finally had a little snack!

    The joy really continued throughout the weekend. On Saturday, I was the deacon for Mass at my parish, and was able to preach. It was an awesome time and I really felt like my call to be a deacon, at least for seven months or so, was really confirmed. There was a great reception after Mass, and I was very blessed by the support and encouragement of my parish, and especially my Pastor, Fr. Jim Dougherty.

    On Sunday, I had the awesome privilege of baptizing my niece, Molly Elizabeth. She was a very good sport being her uncle’s first baptism! It was a great privilege to say to her: “Molly Elizabeth, the Church welcomes you with great joy. And in its name, I claim you for Christ.” Words cannot express how profound an experience that was for me. There was a great party after that great event, as well!

    So basically, I had to go back to school on Sunday night to get some rest! And even then, it was out of the frying pan and into the fire of final exams. But that’s all behind me now too. Still and all, though, I’m still floating a bit above ground from all the grace that was poured out last weekend. I’ll never forget it, to say the least, and will always be grateful for the many gifts of God.

    More pictures and stuff later (just starting to get all those collected now!).

    Catholic Explorer Article about the ordination.

  • Thirty-second Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Thirty-second Sunday of Ordinary Time

    http://www.usccb.org/nab/110605.htm

    I should begin with at least an acknowledgement that this reflection is late. That had something to do with getting ordained to the diaconate on Friday, preaching on Saturday, and baptizing my niece on Sunday. More on all of that later. But when I preached on Saturday, I preached on this very text. So without further ado…

    The kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins
    who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom.
    Five of them were foolish and five were wise.
    The foolish ones, when taking their lamps,
    brought no oil with them,
    but the wise brought flasks of oil with their lamps.

    First, we have to understand the parable. Wedding customs in first century Palestine were a little different than those we know today. The wedding was a drawn out affair, beginning with the betrothal. After that, the couple was married but would not live together until the complex negotiations regarding the dowry were complete. When that was done, the bridegroom would go to the bride’s house and bring her to his own house. Then there would be a splendid feast that would go on for several days.

    So the parable happens just as the negotiations are complete and they are expecting the bridegroom to go to the bride’s house. He is delayed a bit, and they all fall asleep. But that is not the problem. The problem is that half of them were unprepared.

    I think we bristle a bit at the wise virgins’ refusal to share their oil with the foolish. Jesus was always for sharing and charity, so what’s the deal here? Well, since we know Jesus regularly encourages such sharing, I think we can safely conclude that is not the point of the parable and move on. The point of the parable then, may well be the oil itself. Of what is this oil symbolic?

    The Church Fathers help us a bit there. They talk about the oil as the oil of salvation. This would be an oil that can only be had in relationship with Jesus. It’s an oil that can’t be begged, borrowed, stolen or bought at an all-night Walgreens. We fill the flasks of our lives with that oil through daily prayer, devotion, the sacraments, and a life-long relationship with Jesus Christ, our Savior. So the foolish virgins were looking for oil too late — too late not just because it is midnight, but too late because they should have been filling their flasks with this oil all along. It’s not the wise virgins’ fault they did not share: indeed this is an oil that cannot be shared, any more than one could live another’s life for that person.

    What gets me is that five of these virgins showed up unprepared. We may not be familiar with first-century Palestinian wedding customs, but they certainly were. So they would have known the wedding would go on for some days. How is it, then, that they forgot extra oil? Even if the bridegroom had not been delayed, they certainly would have needed it! What was so important to them that they forgot to attend to the most basic part of their job in preparation for the wedding banquet?

    Just so, we certainly have nothing more important to do than to show up at the wedding feast of heaven with our flasks filled with the oil of salvation. No other concern should distract us for our most basic job on earth, which is preparing for our life in heaven. We must not be deterred from prayer, devotion, good works of charity, fasting, and zealous reception of the sacraments lest we hear those awful words the bridegroom spoke to the foolish virgins: “Amen, I say to you, I do not know you.”

    When we get to the feast, if our flasks are not full, it is already too late. As we approach the immanent end of this Church year (there’s just less than three weeks left), let us look back and see how well we have filled our flasks in the last year. And let us steadfastly resolve to fill those flasks to overflowing in the year ahead. The only way we can do that is by zealously seeking our God, praying the prayer of the Psalmist:

    O God, you are my God whom I seek;
    for you my flesh pines and my soul thirsts
    like the earth, parched, lifeless and without water.

  • Thirty-first Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Thirty-first Sunday of Ordinary Time

    http://www.usccb.org/nab/103005.htm

    The greatest among you must be your servant.
    Whoever exalts himself will be humbled;
    but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

    The idea of servant leadership is a hot topic for me these days. As I and my friends prepare to be ordained as transitional deacons, the whole meaning of the word is encompassed in today’s Gospel reading. The Greek word, diakonos, means service. In Christ’s Kingdom, those who are to lead, are to serve, as He did.

    The model for our service, and our leadership, is Christ on the Cross. Love who and what He loved … all the way to death. It’s a hard act to follow, but then, we’re not expected to do it alone. All of us are called to this kind of service, but especially those of us who are called to lead. There is no leadership in the Kingdom that is not service — none.

    So we don’t get to widen our phylacteries (I’ve always wanted to use that word in my blog!) and we can forget about lengthening our tassels: the concept of Christian leadership isn’t just for show. And if our leadership is really authentic, then it won’t take wide phylacteries or long tassels to see it. This doesn’t mean we don’t wear clerical garb or anything like that; it simply means that the garb is the afterthought — service comes first.

    If we have learned anything in these past few years about leadership, it ought to be that we can’t just get by on our looks. That gets us into trouble every time. Forget what it looks like, serve the Lord, serve His people, serve His Church, serve the Kingdom. If that’s where our focus is, everyone will see that, and people will be moved.

    St. Paul says it well in today’s second reading from his first letter to the Church at Thessalonica:

    You recall, brothers and sisters, our toil and drudgery.
    Working night and day in order not to burden any of you,
    we proclaimed to you the gospel of God.
    And for this reason we too give thanks to God unceasingly,
    that, in receiving the word of God from hearing us,
    you received not a human word but, as it truly is, the word of God,
    which is now at work in you who believe.

    Servant leaders do not ask people to bow and scrape to them. Instead, they roll up their sleeves, and work for the sake of the Kingdom of God. It is then that the Gospel gets preached not just in words, but in our very living. St. Francis said well that we are to preach the Gospel at all times, using words “when necessary.”

    Our living is our preaching, and our preaching is our living.

  • It finally happened…

    It finally happened…

    World Series Champion White Sox

    I’m not the world’s greatest sports fan, especially of baseball, but… I’ve been a life-long Chicagoan and have had some very happy memories at Sox games (Cubs games too, because Mom’s a Cubs fan). My Dad is the life-long White Sox fan, and was even able to see the game in Chicago on Sunday. It’s great for his loyalty, and the loyalty of so many other fans, to be rewarded at long last. And yes, I even watched a lot of the World Series. Miracles do happen, y’know!

    So congratulations, White Sox and White Sox fans!

    ChiSox Win First World Series Since 1917

    White Sox Home Page

  • Coming Soon to a Church Near You

    Coming Soon to a Church Near You

    http://www.washingtonpost…5102002186.html

    “Left Behind: World at War,” the third movie based on the Left Behind series of novels about Armageddon and the Second Coming of Jesus, will open tonight on 3,200 screens across the country. But it will not be shown in a single commercial theater.

    Maybe it’s because the premise is fundamentally flawed?

  • Thirtieth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Thirtieth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    http://www.usccb.org/nab/102305.htm

    “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
    He said to him,
    “You shall love the Lord, your God,
    with all your heart,
    with all your soul,
    and with all your mind.
    This is the greatest and the first commandment.
    The second is like it:
    You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
    The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”

    First of all, I’m sorry this reflection is late. I know some of you check this blog out frequently for lectionary reflections, and I appreciate that … you’ve been keeping me honest! So with that in mind, and my sincere apologies, let’s look at last Sunday’s scriptures.

    Jesus quotes with all of the ease of being a good Jew the greatest commandments. He has been taught them from his youth, as all Jewish children would have been. (We’ll just let go for now the special knowledge he may have of these based on his divinity…) But the important part is his last sentence: The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments. With all the skill of a good rabbi, Jesus sums up the scriptures in one call to action: love of God and love of neighbor.

    It’s simple. As we dedicate ourselves to God and one another, we fulfill everything the law and prophets always tried to do. The Gospel, though, gives us the mechanism to really do it: freedom. God always meant for us to be truly free, and that freedom does not equal “license” or lawlessness. It does not equal doing whatever we want or expressing any thought that crosses our minds: our freedom cannot trample the rights and freedoms of others, or we have lost sight of the goal of the greatest commandments.

    True freedom is ridding ourselves of the attachments that keep us from loving God and neighbor fully. Everything that holds us back and drags us down must be cut away mercilessly or we cannot love God and neighbor freely. And ironically, when we do not love God and neighbor freely, we are never really free.

    The hard part is cutting away the attachments: the relationships that are not healthy; the entertainments that do not edify; the concern for self that does not let us reach out to others; the desire for success that manifests itself in greed. The list can get long, and it can be hard to identify those attachments in our lives. But the Psalmist today gives us the criteria:

    I love you, O LORD, my strength,
    O LORD, my rock, my fortress, my deliverer.

    Whatever takes our eyes off this truth, this praise, this love of God who is our Savior, that must be cut away. Mercilessly.

    This is painful, yes. But the payoff is great: true freedom.

  • It’s a small world, after all…

    It’s a small world, after all…

    This is kind of an inside joke from CPE. We had a running thing about which songs would set off the various staff chaplains because it would be impossible to get them out of their heads. For M, it was … well, I can’t remember what it was; for William it was “It’s a Small World.” You get the idea, we all have those kinds of songs.

    Well, I got to thinking about that again this week. On Monday, our Polish Schola sang for Mass. Of course, I couldn’t understand any of it, let alone pronounce any of it from the music given on the worship aid. So I just pretty much sat there and let the music happen.

    But later in the day, the melody of one of the songs wouldn’t get out of my head. I realized that it was because I couldn’t sing the song in its entirety (heck, I couldn’t sing a word of it). So I just had to “enjoy” it all day long. Grrr.

  • The Burglar who Painted Like Mondrian

    The Burglar who Painted Like Mondrian

    The Burglar who Painted Like Mondrian

    This one, obviously, I read for pleasure. Lawrence Block’s burglar series, featuring ex-Burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr, is always good for a laugh and some light but often complicated whodunit action. The Burglar who Painted Like Mondrian is no exception. Bernie, his pal Carolyn, cop Ray Kirschmann, and the whole host of others are all colorful and well, colorful pretty much sums it up!

    On the cultural side, this book also introduced me to the paintings of Mondrian, and his particular geometric style, which I had otherwise not heard of.

    But the best part of reading books like this is that I read them for my own enjoyment, when so much of my reading is really other-directed. Not that I want to be selfish, but we’re all entitled to some recreation, and reading a mystery novel now and then (or even more often than that) is food for the soul in that it keeps us joyful about what we do.

    Now I’m off to read a Blackie Ryan mystery. Don’t tell anyone at the seminary that!