Jesus “was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days,
to be tempted by the devil.”
Each year on the first Sunday of Lent
we enter into this significant moment at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.
He has just emerged from his baptism in the Jordan river
only to be sent into the testing ground of the desert.
As we accompany him into the wilderness,
Jesus shows us how to live a life of Gospel conversion,
how to begin anew.
Today, as we begin the first full week of the Lenten season,
let us begin by asking ourselves
whether we are willing to embrace the grace-filled opportunity before us.
Are we prepared to be led into the desert with Jesus,
ready to wrestle with our temptations?
Or are we fearful of change,
preferring to let this season pass us by
while remaining comfortably stuck where we are?
Entering fully into Lent means leaving our comfort zone
and accepting the struggle of the wilderness.
Let us look at Jesus.
First, he was led by the Spirit;
then he enters into the desert;
and finally he faces temptation.
The Spirit, the desert, and temptation.
These three words characterize the Lenten experience.
It all begins with the Spirit.
The Gospel passage begins by saying Jesus is filled with the Holy Spirit,
that he returns from the Jordan
and is led by that same Spirit that had descended upon him
in the form of a dove.
After his baptism, Jesus places himself under the direction of the Spirit.
The Father has just told him,
“You are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased.”
Why is he pleased with him?
Because, among other things,
Jesus is a son who listens to his Father’s voice.
Jesus does not go his own way.
He is a faithful son who trusts in the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Lent is the season for us to place ourselves
under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit cares for us, knows what’s best for us;
the Spirit loves us.
But how often do we neglect the voice of the Spirit,
or follow the voice of our own ego instead,
or let the Spirit’s voice be drowned out
by the competing voices of all the distractions in our lives?
Jesus set his own interests aside,
put his faith in the Father,
and listened to the voice of the Spirit.
What do we need to do today to allow the Spirit of the Lord to guide us?
This Lenten season is the time to examine the voices we listen to—
the lyrics of our music, the visuals of our TV shows and movies,
the biases of the news sources and websites we frequent—
and to turn our attention to the Spirit that always seeks our own good,
that leads us to fullness of life.
What do those other voices seek?
“Buy this; buy that.”
“Condemn this group or that group, this person or that person.”
Obeying the voices of our consumer culture
leads us into envy, self-centeredness, and isolation,
resulting in a perpetual state of fear, unease, and anxiety.
The voice of the world leads to the tomb.
But the voice of the Holy Spirit
leads us into generosity, fellowship, and community,
resulting in peace, in shalom, in harmony.
The voice of the Spirit leads to the empty tomb, to resurrection.
But to get there, the Spirit first leads us into the desert.
And what is the desert?
It is a place apart,
a barren wilderness away from the false world we have created
to hide from ourselves.
The desert is the place of truth,
where all illusions are stripped away
and where we are confronted with our ego,
with our own sins and failings;
where false desires are revealed.
The desert is a place of potential chaos and danger,

About five or six years ago there was a poll
to discover the world’s greatest love letter.
After all the votes were tallied,
the overwhelming favorite
among all the love letters ever written,
was a letter from country music singer Johnny Cash
to his wife June Carter Cash for her 65th birthday.
The letter was published in a book by their son about ten years ago,
and it’s just a beautiful letter, brief, simple, and heartfelt,
and it goes like this:
Happy Birthday Princess,
We get old and get used to each other.
We think alike.
We read each others [sic] minds.
We know what the other wants without asking.
Sometimes we irritate each other a little bit.
Maybe sometimes take each other for granted.
But once in awhile, like today,
I meditate on it and realize how lucky I am
to share my life with the greatest woman I ever met.
You still fascinate and inspire me.
You influence me for the better.
You’re the object of my desire,
the #1 Earthly reason for my existence.
I love you very much.
Happy Birthday Princess. – John
Now there are many things to love about that letter.
First of all, I love it because it was written by Johnny Cash,
and I happen to be a fan.
But aside from that, there’s a real honesty to the letter,
a simplicity that gets right to the point,
a heartfelt sincerity.
Johnny Cash doesn’t try to gloss anything over,
he’s not trying to hide anything.
They sometimes get on each other’s nerves,
and take each other for granted.
But he ends with a beautiful tribute to how important she is to him,
“the #1 Earthly reason for his existence.”
You can tell that this is a letter
from someone who’s been in a relationship for a long time,
with its ups and downs, its tragedies and glories.
It’s just beautiful, and it’s no wonder that it was voted
the greatest love letter of all time.
Now I bring this up today
because this weekend is Word of God Sunday.
Every year on the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time
we celebrate the Word of God, God’s love letter to us.
The Word of God is God’s love letter to us.
Love seeks expression.
Love, true love, almost demands to be communicated,
to be expressed to the beloved.
And so God, in his infinite love for us,
gives us his Word as a love letter to us.
And what is the Word of God?
If we look at the very beginning of the Gospel of John,
we can see exactly what the Word of God is:
“In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.”
“And the Word became flesh and lived among us.”
The Word of God is not a what, but a Who,
the person of Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ is the Word of God.
Jesus is God’s love letter to us.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.”
Out of love, the Father gives the Son as gift to the world.
Jesus, the Word of God, is God’s love letter to us.
And it is up to us to read that letter,
to receive Jesus into our lives, into our hearts.
Like all married couples,
Brenda and I have exchanged love letters over the years.
And I don’t think it would ever have occurred to us not to read
any of the love letters that we had written to each other.
To receive a Valentine from Brenda and say,
“Oh, thanks, honey, I’ll read this later,” and set it aside?
Or, “Let’s put this anniversary card on the stack
with the bills and junk mail,
and all the rest of the stuff that we need to go through this week.”
No, when we get love letters from our beloved,
we set everything aside to read them,
whether they’re from a fiancé, a spouse, a parent or grandparent.

Today is the feast of the Holy Family,
and as we look at the gospel reading today
we might be reminded of a similar story,
a more modern story.
A story of a family taking a long trip during the holiday season
who suddenly realize that they’ve left their young son home alone.
I’m speaking of course of that 1990 movie Home Alone,
where young Kevin McAllister believes he is being bullied
by his older brothers and sisters,
and ignored by his parents,
so he wishes his family would just disappear.
His wish gets granted when,
on the morning they’re supposed to be getting on an airplane
to go to Paris for Christmas,
they oversleep and have to rush to get to the airport.
And just as Mary and Joseph don’t realize
that Jesus has remained behind in Jerusalem,
the McAllisters don’t realize
that young Kevin has been left behind at home.
It takes Mary and Joseph several days to find Jesus
after they return to Jerusalem,
and it takes Mrs. McAllister several days to get back home from Paris.
In the end, Jesus is reunited with his family,
goes back to Nazareth with them and is obedient.
And Kevin is reunited with his family,
comes to realize how much he loves them,
and goes back to his normal life.
At least until Home Alone 2.
It’s good to look at these two stories together
because today the Church sets Jesus, Mary and Joseph before us
as a model of what our families should be.
But we might identify more easily with the McAllister family,
with their arguing, noisiness, and chaos.
Here in front of us we have the beautiful manger scene
with the Holy Family portrayed in sacred art.
It’s a beautiful, peaceful image of the sacredness of family life,
so calm, so holy.
Now imagine, if you will, Kevin McAllister and his family standing
down the aisle in the back of the church just inside the doorway.
A very different image of family life.
And now picture an imaginary line running the length of the floor
from the Holy Family to the McAllister family.
And suppose I asked everyone here to get up,
move to the center aisle, and stand somewhere on that line,
somewhere on that spectrum,
closest to the family that most resembles your own.
Think back over the holidays now
and recall the scene in your house just yesterday on Christmas,
or on Christmas Eve,
or the last time you gathered together,
or your last phone call or text exchange
with your children, grandchildren, brothers and sisters.
Where would you place your family on that line?
The Church sets the Holy Family before us today as our model,
but how could we ever measure up to that kind of holiness?
And yet that is our call.
To be a holy family.
How could our families ever be that perfect?
What could we do that would ever be good enough
for us to be called a holy family?
But holiness doesn’t come from our being good enough,
holiness is not the result of our own efforts.
There is only one who is holy, and that’s God.
Holiness comes from God being good enough,
and more than good enough, overflowing with goodness!
And wherever God is, is holy.
Our holiness comes from our connection to God,
from our relationship with God.
And so what we learn about family from the Holy Family
is that a holy family is one in which God is present.
The Holy Family was holy because Jesus was there,
and Jesus is God,
and wherever God is, is holy.
Mary is holy because she carried Jesus, cared for him,
treasured him in her heart all her days.
Joseph is holy because he protected Jesus, taught Jesus,
and devoted his life to providing for him.

There is no text for my homily this past weekend, just the audio. But here is the video for “If You Eat Each Day” by Bryan Sirchio, from which I quoted:

 

A terrible storm came into a town
and local officials sent out an emergency warning
that the riverbanks would soon overflow and flood the nearby homes.
They ordered everyone in the town to evacuate immediately.
There was a certain man in the town who heard the warning,
so he looked out his window at the gathering storm
and saw his next-door neighbors parked outside in front of his yard.
They were concerned about him
and so they had come by his house and said to him,
“We’re leaving and there’s room for you in our car, please come with us!”
But the man declined, saying, “God will save me.”
So they drove on.
As the man stood on his porch watching the water rise up the steps,
a man in a canoe paddled by and called to him,
“Hurry and come into my canoe, the waters are rising quickly!”
But the man again said, “No thanks, God will save me.”
The floodwaters rose higher pouring water into his living room
and the man had to retreat to the second floor.
A police motorboat came by and saw him at the window.
“We will come up and rescue you!” they shouted.
But the man waved them off saying,
“Use your time to save someone else!
I have faith that God will save me!”
The flood waters rose higher and higher
and the man had to climb up to his rooftop.
A helicopter spotted him and dropped a rope ladder.
A rescue officer came down the ladder and pleaded with the man,
“Grab my hand and I will pull you up!”
But still the man refused, saying, “No thank you! God will save me!”
Shortly after, the house broke up
and the floodwaters swept the man away and he drowned.
After he died, the man stood before God and asked,
“I put all of my faith in You. Why didn’t You come and save me?”
And God said, “Son, I sent you a warning. I sent you a car.
I sent you a canoe. I sent you a motorboat.
I sent you a helicopter. What more were you looking for?”
The man had his own expectations of how God was going to act.
He had put God into a box,
and had missed his chance to recognize God’s saving grace.
The same thing has happened in today’s Gospel.
After traveling around Galilee healing the sick,
driving out demons, and teaching,
Jesus has returned to his home town of Nazareth,
a small, fairly insignificant village
of not more than a few hundred people.
This is Jesus’ home town,
the place where he was raised.
Everybody knows him and his family.
And when he returns and begins teaching in the synagogue,
his neighbors don’t know what to make of him.
At first they’re astonished at what he says,
but then they’re offended by who he is.
To their minds, Jesus is just “one of the guys,”
someone they’ve known all their lives.
When he was younger
they never recognized anything significant about him.
He was the carpenter, the craftsman of the village.
“We know this guy, he fixed my roof, built a gate for my animals,
he’s the local handy-man.
Who does he think he is,
trying to teach us about the Kingdom of God?”
We can imagine one of these neighbors at the end of his life,
meeting God in heaven,
like the man who drowned in the flood.
and asking, “Where was the Messiah?
I put my faith in your promise of a Messiah.”
And God would reply, “I put him right next door to you!
It was the kid next door, your carpenter.
He cured the sick, drove out demons, taught about the Kingdom of God.
What more were you looking for?”
But they didn’t recognize him.
Just as the man in the flooded house didn’t recognize God
in the ordinary people in his life,
so the people of Nazareth didn’t recognize their handy-man Jesus
as the Son of God.

I wonder if anyone here
has ever felt under-appreciated, overlooked, or even forgotten.
If so, then this homily is for you.
Today we’re going to sing the praises
of one of the most under-appreciated
and over-looked parts of the Mass.
Everyone always talks about how the scripture readings spoke to them,
or how great the music is,
or even sometimes how the homily touched them.
But no one ever walks out of Mass saying,
“Wow, that dismissal, it really hit me today.”
The dismissal is often forgotten or just overlooked.
But today we’re going to honor the dismissal.
We’re going to sing its praises
and see that it is as essential as all the other parts,
and maybe our entire outlook on the Mass will change.
We gather here today at Mass as we always do:
to hear the words of Scripture;
to receive Christ in the Eucharist.
But also to be sent by Christ.
Jesus is very clear in today’s Gospel:
“Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations.”
To be a Christian is to be sent.
This is clear even at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry,
where in the early part of Mark’s Gospel we’re told,
He appointed twelve [whom he also named apostles]
that they might be with him
and he might send them forth to preach
and to have authority to drive out demons… (Mark 3:14-15)
He appoints them for two reasons:
To be with him, and to be sent out.
Those same two reasons show up today,
at the very end of Matthew’s Gospel:
“Go…and make disciples of all nations,…
And behold, I am with you always…”
This is the the twofold call of discipleship,
and it’s our call as well:
to be with Jesus, and to be sent out:
“Go,” and “I am with you always.”
In John’s Gospel, Jesus puts it another way,
“As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
So much is contained in those little words “as” and “so.”
The “as” and “so” express a deep mystery,
the mystery of the Trinity, which we celebrate today.
The Son comes forth from the Father in the unity of the Spirit,
and in that same way, from those same mysterious depths,
we come forth now from the risen Lord
and are sent into the world accompanied by the Holy Spirit.
What a privilege and what a responsibility!
It’s so important, so crucial,
I wonder what part of Mass brings that to life.
Oh, right, the dismissal!
As the Son was sent from heaven,
so we are sent from this heavenly banquet.
After the Liturgy of the Word,
after the Liturgy of the Eucharist,
after the final blessing,
the deacon dismisses the people.
It happens so fast
that we might overlook it.
It’s not simply a good-bye: “We’re done, you can go home now.”
The dismissal is a formal sending forth
and one of the most important elements of the Mass.
How important?
Well, the very name “Mass” comes from the dismissal.
In Latin, the words for the dismissal are Ite missa est,
That’s where the word Mass comes from.
It’s as if we’re summing up the entire celebration
by calling it “The Sending Forth.”
Once we understand this,
Mass takes on a whole new dimension.
Think about all the ways we use the word “Mass.”
“Get dressed for Mass.”
“Which Mass are you going to this weekend?”
“Come on, we don’t want to be late for Mass.”
And now, with a little mental adjustment:
“Get dressed for The Sending Forth.”
“Which Sending Forth are you going to this weekend?”
“Come on, we don’t want to be late for The Sending Forth.”
When we come here to Mass
we are coming here to respond to that twofold call of discipleship:
to be with Jesus and to be Sent Forth.
We are with Jesus in the Eucharist,

Today we see the beautiful roses and the rose vestments,
and the rose colored candle that represent the third Sunday of Advent.
These are visible reminders that no matter what we are going through,
no matter what is happening around us,
as Christians we are always people of Good News.
And when we receive good news, how do we react?
We rejoice.
And that’s why this Sunday is dedicated to rejoicing. Why?
Because we now know that the one we long for,
the one our soul longs to encounter,
the one who can make us whole,
who can give meaning to our life,
has come, is coming, and will come again.
And in the face of this incredible news
that God is getting so close to us,
that he is intimately connected to us,
what do we do?
We rejoice.
And we’re going to rejoice from now
until Jesus comes back again.
That is what we are supposed to be doing.
That is what scripture commands.
“Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice.”
Why?
Because we are people of the good news.
And what a great witness to give to people
as things are so difficult right now,
that we are still able to rejoice,
in spite of what is happening in the world now,
and in spite of whatever happens in the future.
One of the difficulties we have in understanding this Sunday
and the whole topic of rejoicing and joy
is the fact that we confuse pleasure and happiness with joy.
Pleasure gives us feelings and emotions of happiness
but emotions come and go.
Joy is a state of being,
something that remains inside of us
despite what goes on around us in life.
So if we’re having a good time we rejoice,
and even if we’re not having a good time we still rejoice.
We might not be happy,
but the state of being, like peace, stays there
and that’s what we’re going to focus on.
That’s what we must reclaim.
This is something that Ebenezer Scrooge didn’t understand.
We’re all familiar with the character Ebenezer Scrooge
from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.
Scrooge is so famous that his name is in the dictionary.
At school we’re doing a family read-along of A Christmas Carol,
reading one chapter a week and then talking about it.
And there’s this scene in the first chapter
between Scrooge and his nephew Fred,
when Fred comes to visit his Uncle Scrooge at his office,
and he’s just so full of Christmas joy.
Fred is the embodiment of rejoicing.
He doesn’t have much money, he lives a modest life,
but every year he invites his Uncle Scrooge over for Christmas diner.
So he enters Scrooge’s office and says,
“Merry Christmas Uncle!”
And of course his uncle responds with that famous line,
“Bah! Humbug!”
And Scrooge goes on to say,
“What right have you to be merry?
What reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.”
You see, Scrooge is confusing joy with happiness.
And we have to be careful we don’t make the same mistake.
You see, Scrooge might just as well say to us,
“What reason have you to be merry? You’re in the middle of a pandemic.”
But Fred answers with a true understanding of joy.
He says, “What right have you to be dismal?
What reason have you to be morose?
You’re rich enough.”
Scrooge has all this money and he still has no joy.
Fred understands, and his trying to get his uncle to understand,
that joy isn’t about external circumstances
like wealth or comfort or good health,
but it’s a state of being
caused by the incredibly Good News
that Jesus has come, is coming, and will come again.
And Scrooge doesn’t get it.
But as we know,

An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
On the surface that seems so barbaric.
And yet that law, known as the Law of Retaliation,
was one of the most civilizing acts in human history.
In the ancient world,
before there were any laws,
if a person was hurt or offended,
then they would round up their clan
and go after the person who caused the injury
and their revenge would often be worse than the original crime,
perhaps even leading to death.
The Law of Retaliation was intended to put on a limit on the retribution:
You could only take an eye for an eye.
In other words, your retribution couldn’t be worse than the crime.
If someone stole your livestock,
you got an equivalent amount of livestock back,
you didn’t get to burn their farm to the ground.
This “eye for an eye” Law of Retribution
is found throughout the Old Testament,
and Jesus’ disciples would have been very familiar with it.
We even see the remnants of the Law of Retribution today
in our own justice system.
Judges and juries attempt to give sentences that are just,
without being cruel or unusual punishment.
It doesn’t always happen the way it’s supposed to,
but at least that’s the intent of the law.
But today Jesus is moving his disciples—and us—beyond the law.
“An eye for an eye” might have been sufficient at one time,
but to be a follower of Jesus we must go beyond that.
“Offer no resistance to one who is evil.”
“Turn the other cheek.”
Jesus is always seeking to lead his disciples
further along the road to salvation.
And he does this by moving them beyond the law, beyond logic.
We see this again
when he talks about loving our neighbors and hating our enemies.
It’s understandable to hate an enemy, it’s logical.
But again, Jesus is trying to move his disciples beyond logic.
Or rather, he is giving his disciples a different kind of logic,
the logic of love.
“Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.”
These are very hard teachings to obey.
But Jesus has high expectations for us:
“Be perfect, just as your heavenly father is perfect.”
Jesus always seeks to lead us further and further toward perfection.
Beyond the law, beyond logic, to love.
It is in fact the law of love, the logic of love.
This is what it means to be Christian.
This is the perfection that Jesus asks of us.
But he doesn’t just ask it of us.
As our Messiah, our savior, he goes before us in living it out.
He shows us the way.
He gives us the cross as is his concrete demonstration
of what it looks to refuse to take an eye for an eye,
of what it looks like to love our enemies.
We see it every time we gaze upon the crucifix.
The crucifix is both our example and our destiny.
This past week we had an open house at school,
and there was a young family that came
with their son to look at our kindergarten.
They mentioned early on that they weren’t Catholic,
but they were very interested in our school.
As we took them on a tour of all the classrooms they had lots of questions.
Questions about Mass, questions about religion class,
even questions about what science class is like in a Catholic school.
It’s very interesting, the perceptions people have about Catholic schools,
and we tried to answer all their questions as we walked.
And when we got to the last classroom on the tour,
the mother took me aside and pointed at the crucifix on the wall
and asked in a low voice,
“Is there one of those—”
she didn’t know what to call it—
“A crucifix?” I asked.
“—yes, is there one of those in every room?”
And I thought to myself,

Today we celebrate
the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe,
the last Sunday of our Church year.
Today all of the themes of Jesus’ life and ministry
come together in this one culminating feast
here at the end of the year.
Each liturgical year has its own particular character
because of the fact that we read from one particular gospel.
This year it’s been the Gospel according to Luke,
and it’s good for us to look back over the year
and try to see the entirety of what Luke has shared with us about Jesus.
After all the events of Advent and Christmas last year,
as January was coming to an end,
the weeks of Ordinary Time were beginning,
and the Gospel of Luke turned to the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry.
Jesus returned to Nazareth where he grew up,
and Luke tells us that his first public act
was to enter the synagogue on the Sabbath,
unroll the scroll and read these lines from the prophet Isaiah:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.
And when he had rolled up the scroll he said these key words:
“Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”
These are Jesus’ first words in his public ministry in the Gospel of Luke.
And the entire rest of this past year
has been Luke’s gospel unpacking that scripture passage
and demonstrating how it is fulfilled in Jesus’ life.
Glad tidings to the poor.
Liberty to captives.
Sight to the blind.
We came here Sunday after Sunday this year
hearing Luke’s gospel inviting us
into the life of Christ,
inviting us to see Christ freeing captives
giving sight to the blind,
proclaiming good tidings to the poor.
As we came here weekend after weekend,
we saw opposition to Jesus early in his ministry;
we saw people who wanted to throw him off a cliff.
We saw Jesus approach fishermen who couldn’t fill their nets,
and how he called them to be fishers of men.
We heard Jesus teach,
“Blessed are the poor, blessed are the hungry,
blessed are they who weep.”
Glad tidings to the poor.
We heard Jesus say “Love your enemies,
bless those who curse you, stop judging, forgive others.
Remove the log from your own eye
before removing the splinter from your brother’s eye.”
Recovery of sight to the blind.
We saw Jesus appoint the seventy-two and send them
to cure diseases and expel demons.
And in the beautiful parable of the Good Samaritan,
we heard his answer to the question,
“Who is my neighbor?”
Letting the oppressed go free.
As the year continued,
spring turned to summer,
and we made our way further into Luke’s gospel.
We saw crowds begin to gather around Jesus
in order to learn from him,
how they asked him to teach them to pray,
and how he told them,
“ask and you will receive,
seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened.”
We heard Jesus remind his followers to store up heavenly riches,
rather than earthly riches,
and to be prepared for the coming of the Son of Man.
We heard his challenging words
when he said he had come to set the earth on fire,
and how some who are first would be last,
and some who are last would be first.
Summer became fall,
And we heard Jesus say
“Don’t take the place of honor at a table;
and when you have a banquet,
invite the poor, the crippled, the blind, the lame,
who cannot pay you back.”
More glad tidings to the poor.

Back around 1995 or 1996,
I was teaching my 8th grade class about vocations
and the different religious orders.
Their assignment was to research a particular religious order
and write a report to share with the class.
Now this was around 1996 B.G.
Before Google.
There was no Internet, no search engines, no Wikipedia, no email,
and so I had given them a magazine that listed addresses
for all the different religious orders in the United States.
They got into groups, chose a religious community,
did some encyclopedia research,
and then they wrote letters to these different communities
asking them for information.
We got all kinds of wonderful letters back.
Religious communities were excited
to share their stories with the students.
They sent brochures and even wrote letters by hand
to tell them about their daily lives.
We probably received a dozen or so letters from the different communities.
But one was different from the others.
Rather than a regular envelope,
this one was a big manila envelope and it was really thick,
like a package.
And it contained a wonderful surprise
that had a huge impact on my life,
and hopefully the lives of the students.
We’ll come back to this story,
and talk more about that package
in a moment.
But first, there’s a question at the heart of today’s gospel.
“Lord, will only a few people be saved?”
That’s the question that someone in the crowd asks Jesus,
But what they’re really asking is,
Will I be saved?
In other words, they’re asking
“Lord, is salvation for only a few select people,
or does someone like me have a chance?”
We worry about that, too, don’t we,
deep down inside?
Because no matter how faithful we try to be,
we just don’t know.
After all, we’re pretty good at fooling ourselves,
at rationalizing our decisions.
And the older we get,
the more we come to realize just how little we really do know.
I have a Family Circus cartoon
that I used to hang outside my 8th grade classroom door.
It shows little Billy talking to his Mom saying,
“I can’t wait ’til I’m in 8th grade and know everything there is to know.”
At that stage of life we do think we know everything.
And then life becomes more complex,
things don’t go as we thought they would,
and we begin to wonder and doubt.
One of the things we Christians wonder most about is
Am I doing what God wants me to do?
How can I tell?
Am I on the right path?
How many times have we started down one path,
thinking that this is what God wants me to do with my life,
only to realize God has something else in mind?
Our Catholic history is filled with the stories of saints
who started down one road,
only to realize God was calling them to something else.
We’re probably all familiar with that old Russian proverb,
“God writes straight with crooked lines.”
But even when we think we’ve figured out
what we’re supposed to do here on earth,
we still have our doubts.
It’s a condition of the Christian life
to wrestle with uncertainty and the unknown,
to try and make peace with the mystery.
Speaking of mystery,
we need to get back to that mysterious package
my students received.
I suppose if I really wanted to drive home the idea
that the Christian life involves uncertainty and the unknown,
I wouldn’t tell you what was in that package,
and you would just have to try and make peace with the mystery.
But I won’t do that.
The postmark on the manila envelope
told us it came all the way from Kentucky,
from a Trappist monastery called the Abbey of Gethsemane.

Being a parent or grandparent can be really strange.
And one of the strangest things about it
is when the kids start to imitate you.
At first its kind of funny and cute,
the way you make faces at them
and they try to make faces back.
They dress up as mommy or daddy,
pretending to do grown up things.
But it’s not so funny when they start imitating your bad habits
or repeating certain words.
As they get older they begin to admire other people
and try to imitate them.
And it continues even into adulthood.
We read biographies from business and political leaders
trying to discover the habits and practices that make them so successful,
and we try to imitate them.
Well that’s what’s happening in today’s gospel reading.
Jesus has gathered around him a group of disciples.
We recall that the word disciple means “learner.”
These are all learners.
These people who are following Jesus
are trying to learn what he has to teach,
trying to learn how to live life the way he does.
They must have been watching him all the time,
the way a child watches a parent:
watching him heal people,
watching him speak to the crowds,
watching him spending time with outcasts,
and, today, watching him pray.
And of all the things they see Jesus do,
the one thing they ask about is prayer.
We don’t hear the disciples say,
“Lord, teach us to heal,”
or “Lord, teach us to speak to the crowds.”
Now, maybe they did ask Jesus those things,
but Luke only records this one key request:
“Lord, teach us to pray.”
Jesus was praying in a certain place,
and when he had finished, one of his disciples said to him,
“Lord, teach us to pray…”
Luke records more instances of Jesus praying
than any other gospel writer.
Jesus prays before his baptism,
he prays before the Transfiguration,
he prays after the seventy disciples return from their mission;
Jesus prays all the time.
And the disciples see this.
They notice that prayer is an essential part of Jesus’ life,
and that if they want to follow Jesus,
if they want to be like Jesus,
if they want to imitate Jesus,
then they must pray.
Prayer is essential
to being a disciple of Christ.
It’s non-negotiable.
To be a Christian means to be one who prays,
because that’s what Jesus did.
The first disciples recognize this,
and so do we.
We understand that prayer is non-negotiable
in living the Christian life.
And so in today’s gospel,
the disciples see Jesus at prayer
and they ask him to teach them to pray.
Because prayer isn’t something you can learn by observing.
You can watch the way a person looks at prayer,
the way they hold their hands,
or the way they stand, sit or kneel,
but you can’t really know what’s going on inside a person’s mind or soul
when they’re at prayer.
That’s why they ask Jesus.
They know how to pray as Jews,
they know how John the Baptist taught his disciples,
but they want to know from Jesus.
So Jesus tells the parable of the man who needs three loaves,
and ends by saying,
“I tell you, if he does not get up to give the visitor the loaves
because of their friendship,
he will get up to give him whatever he needs
because of his persistence.”
Jesus is clear that we have to persistent with our prayer,
and keep asking until our prayer is answered.
It’s a little like Ralphie in the movie A Christmas Story.
All Ralphie wants for Christmas is an “official Red Ryder,
carbine action, 200-shot, range model air rifle,
with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time.”
In other words,

I read recently that filming is going to begin next year
on the fifth Indiana Jones movie.
I guess everybody knows who Indiana Jones is,
the swashbuckling archaeologist,
who goes in search of artifacts
like the Ark of the Covenant.
Well there’s a scene in the third Indiana Jones movie, The Last Crusade,
that can speak to us today
as we celebrate Corpus Christi, the Body and Blood of Christ.
In The Last Crusade, Indiana Jones has spent the entire movie
searching for the Holy Grail,
the chalice that Jesus is supposed to have used at the Last Supper.
The Nazis are also searching for it,
because it’s rumored to grant immortality to whoever drinks from it,
and they want this powerful artifact for the war.
At the end of the movie,
Indiana Jones is the first one to reach the secret location
where the Grail has been protected throughout the centuries
by a guardian knight.
But when Indiana Jones gets there,
he discovers that the Grail is hiding
among dozens of chalices of various shapes and sizes.
Which one is the true Grail?
Before he has a chance to choose one,
his rival appears, a guy named Walter Donovan.
Donovan is wealthy and influential, and working with the Nazis,
but he doesn’t know much about archaeology.
So while he holds Indy at gunpoint
his assistant Elsa chooses the most beautiful and ornate
of all the chalices
for him to drink from.
“Oh yes,” Donovan says,
“it’s more beautiful than I’d ever imagined.
This is certainly the cup of the King of Kings.”
Eager to gain the gift of immortality,
he fills it with water and drinks from it.
Bad idea.
Instead of gaining immortality,
Donovan begins to age rapidly, older and older and older,
until he finally collapses into a heap of dust and is blown away in the wind.
The Guardian of the Grail says,
“He chose…poorly.”
And now it’s Indiana Jones’ turn,
and he begins to examine the chalices one by one.
From among all the gold and jewel-encrusted chalices that remain,
he selects a simple, dusty, earthenware cup.
“That’s the cup of a carpenter,” he says,
and then Indiana Jones drinks from it.
The Guardian says, “He…has chosen wisely.”
Indiana Jones has found the true Holy Grail.
The meaning is pretty clear.
God works through humble, ordinary things.
When Jesus chose the Twelve,
he did not go to the temple
and choose the most famous rabbis
or the most accomplished scholars.
He went to the workplace
and chose ordinary fishermen.
In today’s gospel,
when the Twelve approach Jesus about the large crowd being hungry,
he says “give them some food yourselves.”
Their simple, ordinary food of bread and fish are sufficient
when blessed by God:
“They all ate and were satisfied.”
Ordinary bread and fish.
Jesus himself comes not as a mighty warrior messiah or wealthy king,
but as a humble carpenter’s son.
God works through humble, ordinary things and people.
Fishermen, not pharisees.
Bread, not caviar.
The cup of a carpenter, not of a king.
On this Solemnity of Corpus Christi,
we are reminded
that in every Eucharist,
it is the simple gifts of the earth,
that the Spirit changes into the Body and Blood of Christ.
And not only ordinary things like bread, wine, and fish,
but also ordinary people like you and me.
God wants to take the ordinary, simple moments of our lives
and turn them into Eucharist for the world.
At every Eucharist,
we take what we have been given by God—
bread, wine, our life situations, our very selves.
We bring them all to this altar
and we do what Jesus did.
We bless God,

One of the most useful apps on a smart phone
is the Maps app.
You type in an address of the place you want to go
and you’re instantly given not only written directions for how to get there,
but you also get a map that shows
a path for how to get to your destination.
You don’t even have to know the name or even the address
of a place you’re trying to get to.
You can simply type in “food near me” or “shopping near me.”
and you’ll get a list of places you’re looking for
along with directions for how to get there.
If you’re walking,
you can tap the little icon of the person
and you’ll get walking directions.
If you’re driving,
you can tap on the car icon and you’ll get driving directions.
If you want to take public transportation,
the apps will even tell you which bus routes to take.
You can also label places that you visit frequently
to make it easier to get directions.
For instance, you can type in your home address
and give it a label, “Home,”
so that no matter where are you are,
you can always type the word “Home” in the search bar
and you will get directions for how to get home.
These apps even tell you which direction you’re facing,
so that if you have walking directions,
you just turn yourself around and watch the little arrow on your phone
until it points you at the little blue dots on the map
and you can tell which way to start walking.
I’ve been thinking about these kinds of apps lately
because I think they can help us understand the work of Lent.
As we heard in the gospel again today, Lent is a time of repentance.
Jesus says twice,
“If you do not repent you will all perish.”
We heard that word on Ash Wednesday, too:
“Repent and believe in the gospel.”
Repentance is a word we hear over and over during Lent,
but is often only partially understood.
Often when we hear the word “repent”
the first thing that comes to mind
is how we ought to recall all the sinful things that we’ve done
and feel remorse or regret for having done them.
We might repent over the way we gossip,
or, we might repent over losing our temper and yelling at our children,
or we might ignore someone who is in need.
We often think of repentance as an effort to feel more and more guilty
over what we have done or failed to do.
Remorse and regret are certainly a part of what it means to repent,
but there is much more to this important word.
The word “repent” is a translation of the word metanoia,
the Greek word that means “change your heart.”
At its root, repentance is a change of heart,
a change of direction,
a turning of one’s life from rebellion
to obedience towards God.
That’s the message of Jesus, his very first message in fact:
“Repent and be faithful to the Gospel.”
“Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel.”
Repentance is not a state of being
but is an active movement of the will and of the heart away from sin.
We remember that sin is a turning away from God.
Every time we lie, or cheat, or gossip,
we turn a little further away from God.
Sometimes our sins turn us completely away from God,
and we put our backs to God and walk in the opposite direction.
It’s as if we are looking at the Maps app on our phone,
and God is in one direction,
and we can see that we are pointed in another direction.
And if we keep walking in the direction we’re pointed,
we’re going to walk further and further away from God.
Repentance means re-orienting ourselves towards God.
Now, we might stop and consider our sins and feel remorse,
but at some point we need to turn ourselves around
and start walking back to God.

All three readings today speak of the rhythm of the spiritual life. We see it at work in the lives of Isaiah, Paul, and Peter, each in a different context, but it’s the same rhythm. It’s a rhythm of dialogue, of back and forth, like a conversation. And it begins as all things spiritual begin, with God’s initiative.
God is always seeking us out, God is always trying to engage us in his divine life, and God always meets us where we are. God comes to Isaiah as a member of the royal family who has a vision. Jesus comes to Paul when he is on his way to Damascus to persecute more Christians. Jesus comes to Peter while he is on his fishing boat working. The rhythm of the spiritual life begins with God taking the initiative to seek us out in our particular walk of life. We can call this movement an encounter with the divine. The spiritual life begins with Encounter.
Encounters with God have a profound effect on us. Isaiah has a deep encounter with God in a vision of the Lord on a throne and angels crying “Holy, Holy, Holy.” What is the effect on him? He says, “I am doomed! I am a man of unclean lips.”
Paul has a profound encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus. What is the effect on Paul? He says, “I am the least of the apostles, not fit to be called an apostle because I persecuted the Church of God.”
And Peter has an encounter with Jesus who shows him how to catch so many fish that his nets nearly broke. What effect does this have on Peter? He says, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”
In each of their encounters with God, Isaiah, Paul, and Peter recognize something profound about themselves: “I am a man of unclean lips.” “I am the least of the apostles.” “I am a sinful man.” They recognize where they stand in relationship to God. An encounter with the divine strips away all the masks, the pride, the false faces we try to wear, the things we try to hide from ourselves, and brings us face to face with who we really are. The rhythm of the spiritual life moves from Encounter to Truth.
But thankfully the dynamic of the Christian spiritual life doesn’t end there. It’s healthy and essential for us to confront the truth about ourselves, but there’s more to the spiritual life than having a sense of how sinful we are. If the spiritual life ended there then we might risk sinking into despair.
But God doesn’t leave us there, and he doesn’t leave Isaiah, Paul, and Peter there. In the midst of realizing their own sinfulness, God offers his mercy and grace. The angels touch Isaiah’s lips and his wickedness is removed, his sin is purged. Paul, though the grace of God, is able to preach God’s word. And Jesus tells Peter not to be afraid, that from now on he will be catching men and women for the Kingdom. From Encounter to Truth to Grace and Mercy, we see in the scripture readings the rhythm of the Christian spiritual life. It moves back and forth from God’s initiative to our response. God seeks us out in an encounter; in that encounter we recognize our inadequacies and sinfulness; and God showers his grace and mercy upon us.
But there is one final movement to this spiritual rhythm, a movement that we can once again see in lives of Isaiah, Paul, and Peter. Through God’s grace and mercy, we are called to participate in his divine mission to encounter others. After his encounter with the purifying angles, Isaiah is able to respond “Here I am, send me!” After Paul encounters Jesus on the road to Damascus, he receives the grace to toil harder than all the other apostles in handing on the faith. And after Jesus tells Peter not to be afraid, Peter brings his boat to shore, leaves everything, and follows Jesus. The rhythm of the Christian spiritual life moves from Encounter, to Truth, to Grace and Mercy, to Service. These are the four movements of that rhythm: Encounter, Truth, Grace and Mercy, and Service.
This same rhythm operates in our own lives,