PETERSBOAT

I propose, in this homily, a way of understanding the kind of help that Jesus is trying to offer us. It seems to me that he dwells in us in order to help us make sense of our thoughts and feelings, which are often wrong - thank God.

We do not like waiting. Well, in any case, we're not good at it, which is obvious; in this age of invention we've all but eliminated the need to wait for anything. There was a time when we waited for the seeds, the rains, the sun. Some still do, but most of us go to the supermarket and still complain about the checkout line. We get frustrated with shipping delays, abhor traffic, and have all but abandoned television for the immediacy of binge-streaming. No wonder the suffering of purgatory is so much on our conscience these days, like a punishment the child sees coming while returning home from school. We are full of guilt for allowing ourselves to have become so alienated from the thing happening everywhere else in the natural world, which is essential for growth, namely, waiting. But I wouldn’t want us to think that the waiting we hear so often associated with purgatory is arbitrary or merely punitive. If that antechamber to heaven really is, as the Church teaches, the place where God’s mercy tempers His justice, then there must be something to be gained by the experience of waiting offered to us in this life. Maybe we shouldn’t be so afraid of it or resent it. Maybe we should welcome it, and grow in it.   

The title of this episode is a reference to the film, The Crossing Guard, which I mention toward the end of the reflection in the hope of illustrating the way that Christ can be of the greatest help to us, if we would open our heart to Him. Of course, it is a scary thing even to acknowledge our desire for God - as terrifying as the seemingly infinite space of the cosmos.

The title of this episode is a reference to a Seinfeld joke that I find similar to the proposition that "conception always beats deception," which is the real the point of this reflection. Looking forward to the end of time with hope requires conceiving of our lives by the Holy Spirit in light of the promises God makes to us in the Scriptures, which are themselves inspired by the Holy Spirit. The hope we find in them enables us to overcome the deception of the evil spirit.

If being together at Mass on Sundays is called "practicing the Faith" that means the world is our playing field, which means that Christ is training us to give thanks to God always and everywhere.

The root system of the mulberry tree is deep and complicated, not unlike the human heart, the ground beneath our feelings and emotions. It's a great thing to believe in God. But it's altogether heroic to trust in Him when our emotions are revolting against His will. When that happens, the mulberry tree of our lives has truly been unrooted and planted in the sea of His mercy.

Sometimes we walk too far behind Christ, weighed down by regret. And sometimes we walk too far ahead, worried about the future. But the person in front of us, in the present, is offering us an encounter with God. The victory of Christ moves us beyond our fear, enabling us to love that person.

So much of this world is man-made that it's a lot like The Truman Show. But Christ comes into our lives, like Sylvia into Truman's, emboldening us, by the way that He looks at us, to escape into the truth about reality, and to find Him by always seeking His face.  

Treatments like chemotherapy, for example, are in some ways similar to Christ's death on the cross; they are necessary evils; one heals cancer, the other sin. In this episode, I argue that political debate is also a necessary evil, because we need laws now to intervene where once (before the fall of man) there was the bond of love. I also propose that the necessary evil of the handing over of Tyler Robinson by his parents may prove to be the most unlikely source of healing for those wounded by the loss of Charlie Kirk. I end with a word of hope that young people (especially those on college campuses) will find places to argue that best facilitator an encounter with love, which alone fulfills the Law.

Dealing with God will always mean dying to that part of us that resists seeing things from his perspective.

This is the first episode of a new segment called, "The Monday After," offering a series of reflections following the Sunday Mass. 

The conclusion of a 6-part Lenten conversation about the self-phone culture that makes it hard for us to live according to our nature, particularly by separating us from our relationship with our body.

A conversation about the self-phone culture that makes it hard for us to live according to our nature, particularly by stealing us away from the otherwise wonderful experience of time. 

A conversation about the self-phone culture that makes it hard for us to live according to our nature, with its call to live in communion with one another as man and woman.

A conversation about the self-phone culture that makes it hard for us to live according to our nature, attentive to what is happening in the all-important meantime.

 A conversation about the self-phone culture, which disintegrates my life, making it difficult for me even to know where my heart is, let alone how to meet God there.

A conversation about the self-phone culture, which tends to reduce our desire for more, that is, for eternal life.

To Remain | Easter 7

The Spirit breathes us into the Church, and then breathes us out into the world. This is the eternal life that God wants for us.

Young people are being sold a lie about where they come from, who they are, and where they're going. But some are being restored to the truth by the Sacred Scriptures.