The Friar Podcasts - preaching prayer and spiritual reflections

We need to see the world also through the eyes of faith. You can't see the covenant with Abraham using the senses alone. And it had to be quite difficult for Abraham to believe hearing about all these descendants he was going to have, when especially at this point in his life, he had no children. It required him to see with the eyes of faith.

Full transcript: https://thefriar.org/2024/03/21/see-the-world-through-faith-thursmar21/

Probably the least favorite word, the first least favorite word that we learned in our lives was the word "no." But nonetheless, tell a toddler "no" and that often results in a great difficulty. There can be a meltdown, there can be anger, they can say things like "I hate you" because they don't like the word "no."

Today's readings remind us to keep God close. Moses is delayed and the people are discouraged. They take matters into their own hands, which ends badly. Do we sometimes do the same?

The temple, which we hear about in both readings, was critically important for this coming together of the law of God and the lived example of people.The true temple is the Lord Jesus himself. It is in the Lord Jesus that humanity and divinity come together. And it is in Jesus himself that this man now is healed.

We could go on and on with the struggles and the challenges that people face. But the solution to them all is the same. Call. Call upon Jesus.

Moses lifting up the serpent so people can be saved. The lifting of Jesus on the cross. We have very powerful parallels that teach us something fundamental to the core of our faith. And the fundamental core is that we need a Savior.

In Confession, we come with the Church. The entire people of God comes before us, represented in the priest who celebrates the sacrament. But even more important, when we come to the sacrament of confession, our loving God holds us for we are beloved daughters and sons of his.

Full transcript at:

https://thefriar.org/2024/03/05/god-holds-you-in-confession-tues-mar5/

The river was too puny. The country was too small. The king was being set up. Only Elisha was able to see as God sees.

The mid-term exam. Well, as I said at the beginning, we are about halfway through the season of Lent. And the purpose of Lent is change. It's repentance. We should be qualitatively different at the end of the season of Lent than we were at the start. How's it going?

Full transcript at https://thefriar.org/2024/03/03/mid-term-time-for-lent-homily-sunday-mar3/

"You're not the boss of me." Maybe that is something you said to a brother or a sister. Or maybe to a friend when you are a kid. But do we say this to God?

Trust is at the heart of a life of faith. It's not at the expense of reason, it's not at the expense of pragmatism, but faith always has pride of place. And so let us ask the Lord today that we might be inspired by one who is risen from the dead.

Full transcript at https://thefriar.org/2024/02/29/trust-in-god-or-trust-in-humanity-feb29/

Believe what you read. Teach what you believe. Practice what you teach. These words are the words of leadership in the Church. We would all be served to use them.

Are we merciful more? Or do we judge more? Do we forgive more? Or do we condemn more?

For the full transcript go to https://thefriar.org/2024/02/26/what-do-you-do-more-homily-for-mon-feb26/

It is not just Abraham who has faith, so too does Isaac. It is not the case that Isaac was the unwilling victim here, but just as Abraham trusted fully in God at this point in his life, so too does Isaac.

For the full transcript go to https://thefriar.org/2024/02/26/faith-of-isaac-and-abraham-sun-feb25/

Today's readings bring to mind a very important word for us to kind of know the meaning of and understand. The word is virtue. It's a philosophical word, actually, that comes to us primarily through the philosopher Aristotle.

For the full transcript go to https://thefriar.org/2024/02/26/virtue-is-more-than-value-homily-feb23/

I learned years ago words matter. I don't know if you know the word for French fry, in Spanish, but French fries in Spanish is "las papas fritas." It's a feminine word, "papa," "potato." The Pope, however, is not a feminine word. The Pope is "el papa."

Full transcript at https://thefriar.org/2024/02/22/potato-pope-the-power-of-words-feb22/

Where is God? This first reading from Isaiah is, I think, so, so beautiful, and says so much about what it means to be a person of prayer. "Just as from the heavens the rain and snow come down and do not return there till they have watered the earth, making it fertile and fruitful, giving seed to the one who sows and bread to the one who eats, so shall my word be."

For the full transcript, go to https://thefriar.org/2024/02/20/where-is-god-homily-for-tuesday-feb20/

In the Old Testament, there are 4 specific covenants. The first one, the covenant of Noah. Then there's the covenant with Abraham, then Moses, then David. Of course Jesus is the ultimate covenant, as he is both the promise and the fulfillment.

Either or? So, Thursday I talked about the notion of freedom as license that a lot of people think that, or at least there are people that think, that freedom is really about being able to do whatever we want to do. And that's really license. Because we could be free to do, as I mentioned in yesterday's example, the sad and tragic shooting in Kansas City.

Full Transcript at https://thefriar.org/2024/02/17/its-not-either-or-homily-for-friday-feb16/

When we think of the word "freedom," we often define it as doing whatever I want. That's not freedom. That's license. True freedom is about becoming. Becoming the person God has made us to be.

For complete transcript, go to https://thefriar.org/2024/02/15/what-is-freedom-homily-for-thurs-feb15/

I want to really get us thinking about the season of Lent, but particularly through the eyes of Lent being a time of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.

Full transcript at https://thefriar.org/2024/02/11/prayer-fasting-almsgiving-homily-sun-feb11/

Life is suffering, but God is comfort. These readings help us to see that even though life is tough, Jesus remains the source of our peace and support. Job finds support in God, and Jesus, even after influencing the whole town reminds us of the power and importance of prayer.

Full transcript at https://thefriar.org/2024/02/04/life-is-suffering-christ-is-victory-feb4/

I mentioned the importance of context, which is part of what we're going to learn as we explore the Vatican II document of divine revelation, is that we can't read the Scriptures only in one way. I can say that my experience in high school when kids encounter something from another culture or another time, I'm thinking Shakespeare for example, they don't think it has much value because they don't understand the culture. It's written differently, the language is differently.

Full transcript at https://thefriar.org/2024/01/28/importance-of-context-homily-for-sun-jan28/

There was a period of time, I think, where we cast aside any mention of sin. It made us feel bad, maybe. I don't know. It led to books, Whatever became of sin?. Because it seemed like we weren't sinning anymore. Confession went by the wayside. There was not an acknowledgement that we're broken human beings.

Full transcript at https://thefriar.org/2024/02/14/whatever-happened-to-sin-ash-wed-feb14/

Consider it all joy, brothers and sisters, when you encounter various trials. Now, I don't know about you. I don't like trials. I don't like when things don't go my way. I certainly don't consider it all joy that I have difficulty in suffering.

Full transcript at https://thefriar.org/2024/02/12/pure-joy-homily-for-mon-february-4/

This encounter that we see today was a critical part of our own baptism. There was a period of time in the right, or not a period of time, but a moment in the celebration of our baptism where the priest who baptized us, or a deacon I suppose, or maybe even a layperson in a hospital if we had some kind of emergency, touched our ears and our mouth and said the same thing, "Be opened."

Full transcript at https://thefriar.org/2024/02/09/be-opened-homily-for-friday-february-9-24/

Today, I would suggest that the gospel is the gospel of contemplation. We encounter two people in their lives who are at a stage and time in their life where activity takes the back seat, where they, in fact, are in the temple day and night praying.

https://thefriar.org/2024/02/02/a-gospel-of-contemplation-homily-fri-feb2/

It's very common when someone gets to the end of their life to do what is known as a life review. In other words, you begin to reflect on the various moments of your life, and you begin to seek gratitude for those things which were blessings in your life.

Full transcript at https://thefriar.org/2024/02/01/the-life-review-homily-thurs-feb1/

Seeking God. David is a good example in another way, because even though he was not a good father, even though he was difficult in certain moral decisions that were sinful, he never lost sight of his relationship with God.

See full transcript at https://thefriar.org/2024/01/29/seeking-god-homily-for-monday-january-29/

The kingdom of God is a mysterious thing. How God acts and how God chooses to act is not always clear to us. In fact, there may be instances we look at certain situations in the world and we say, "Why doesn't God inspire somebody to do something about this or that?"

Full transcript at https://thefriar.org/2024/01/26/the-mystery-of-the-kingdom-of-god-jan26/

We need to understand the world of Saint Paul. Or probably more specifically, the world of Paul, just in terms of what his faith life was like before he encountered Jesus, and then how he interpreted that call in terms of what he was supposed to do.

Full transcript at https://thefriar.org/2024/01/25/understanding-saint-paul-thurs-jan25/

David is recognizing the reason this whole thing is important to him. He's recognizing the reason this whole thing is important to him is that one of the things that David never loses sight of, even when he sins, is his relationship with God.

Full transcript at https://thefriar.org/2024/01/23/david-and-elizabeth-homily-tuesday-jan23/

But do both political parties get right or get wrong rather when it comes to abortion? Failing to recognize that God gives dignity to all human beings.

Full transcript at https://thefriar.org/2024/01/22/getting-it-wrong-on-abortion-mon-jan22/

We might not always like being sent. "I don't like them. I don't want to talk to them. I'm not going to listen to them." Like Jonah,. we too might run away.

Full transcript available at https://thefriar.org/2024/01/21/being-sent-by-god-to-people-we-do-not-like/

People are imperfect. I think a destructive thing is this whole idea of "cancel culture." We can't have this person here because they weren't perfect.

Full transcript at https://thefriar.org/2024/01/19/dealing-with-imperfect-heroes-fri-jan19/

We don't want people to know we're jealous, but we really are. But the problem is, when we try to force jealousy and keep it hidden, oftentimes it only makes the decisions that arise from jealousy all that much worse.

(For full transcript, go to https://thefriar.org/2024/01/18/jealousy-is-an-ugly-thing-thurs-jan18/.)

This is an interesting reading and we begin with something we probably don't think about very often. God rejected Saul. God rejected Saul. That's not a pleasant thing to hear that God could reject anyone, but he rejects Saul as king.

There is something though that I think we should hang on to before we dismiss this idea too readily that God can reject. There is a belief about salvation that it doesn't matter what we do because ultimately God will save everyone. It's called universalism.

So in other words it doesn't matter really how I live my life because in the end God will save me anyway. Or it doesn't really matter that I help the poor because in the end God will forgive all of my sins and save me. Whether I ask for it, desire it, or want it. But it's not true and it's not true because of the love of God. Now I'm not saying it's not true that God could ultimately save everyone. That's not my point. That's not the issue.

The issue is that salvation is not automatic. We don't get a go to eternal life free card that we can just carry around that enables us to live however it is we choose to live without any consideration for goodness, truth, other people. Isn't that one of the first things we learned when we were growing up in our family?

We couldn't do whatever we wanted. We wanted to. We really wanted to. We wanted to be able to do whatever we wanted. But at the end of the day sometimes our parents, if you had lots of siblings, probably your siblings more so than your parents, said you can't live however you want to live. Saul gets rejected. And it's interesting as I mentioned yesterday, Saul's big problem was that he cared too much what other people thought about him.

But there's also this point and he cared too little what God wanted of him. That's really the challenge in the first reading at first is that God has chosen each one of us because we have been baptized. God has chosen each one of us and made us a beloved son or daughter of God. And with that comes an obligation that we have to become the person that God has made us to be.

We have to exercise always our choice to say I'm gonna live in the love of God. I'm gonna treat others the way they should be treated because that's the way God tells me I should treat them. And so that's the first lesson of this story. It matters. The second is that who God chooses and what God chooses them for is an absolute mystery. God does not always seem to choose the people that we would choose.

Let's take a look at the Apostles for example. They hardly seem like the individuals that one would count on or rely on to build a good organization. The leader, the one that Jesus himself chooses, Peter, is impulsive. He lets his emotions oftentimes dictate what he says and what he does and he's not always consistent. He's not always the kind of person who can in fact recognize that maybe it's okay to put your emotions in check for a little bit. He's got two insanely ambitious individuals in James and John. They don't just want to be followers of Jesus, they want to be at the right and the left hand of God the Father Almighty. That is really a desire for greatness. There is really something in them.

I remember reading once a little joke about the person that seemed to have the most acumen when it came to running an organization because he was pragmatic and he was practical and he knew what needed to be done, Judas Iscariot. He could not understand why Jesus was doing the things he did and I've always thought that the reason he betrayed Jesus was because he thought that would get Jesus to do what seemed so obviously needed to be done to Judas. . .

It seems that God has a tendency to speak when people are asleep. God speaks to Samuel when he's asleep. Joseph, twice, hears the voice of God in his dreams. But what's really important is when God speaks, do we know that it is God who is speaking?

As we begin this church year with a focus ahead in terms of our own life, we have to ask ourselves, do we really recognize the voice of God? Because that's what's really going on here in both of the readings that we have.

Samuel is a person of very interesting story. His mother Hannah and his father were barren, which was a point of tremendous shame in the culture of the day. And Hannah goes desperate to the temple to pray and is crying and is speaking out to God.

And this very Eli that we see in the first reading, he thinks she's drunk because he can't really hear what she's saying. And she must have been making quite a scene. But it's in that brokenness that God speaks to her and in turn to her husband.

And Samuel is born. It's a very interesting thing though, because despite the fact they had gone their whole lives without children, when Samuel is born, his mother takes him back to the temple and gives him to Eli. The very gift she received from God, the gift of her son Samuel, she then in turn gives back to God.

And Samuel is raised by Eli, which is why he's here in the middle of the night. And God speaks and Samuel is very logical. Well, I heard a voice in the middle of the night. It must be Eli, so he goes to Eli and says, here I am.

You called me not once, not twice, but three times before Eli finally figures out that the lad is being called by God. And we know that Samuel has a privileged position. Because it's Samuel who helps God to make clear to the people that even when they reject him, he will continue to love them. Even though they rejected God as their king, he will still be with them through his anointed Saul and ultimately through his anointed David, from whom comes the Messiah, Jesus.

The question for us as we start the beginning of this year is, how do we recognize the voice of God in our lives? See, I think the church in the United States needs to face some hard realities. And here's one example of what I mean. We had a Dominican friar who sent out to our listserv, which is where we communicate with all the other friars of the province, an article about how Nigeria is the most dangerous place to be a Catholic in the world. Unbelievable martyrdom is occurring in Nigeria.

And it's interesting that there's that backdrop. People willing to die for their faith because Jesus has made such a difference in their life. Now to be sure, that's always the case with martyrs. That's why we call martyrs on the seed of Christians, the beginning of churches.

Martyr means to witness, and they are witnessing to their faith in a very powerful way. And then there's the statement the bishops needed to make in this country that said, heaven forbid we have to go to Mass twice in two days. We have to go to Mass for the fourth Sunday of Advent, the 24th, and for Christmas, the 25th. People willing to die for their faith because it's so precious to them, it's so valuable to them. And we who are saying, do I really have to go twice?

I think it's a damning thing in our country. Now I realize there's a lot of things that go on that cause people to make decisions. That's not my point. But my point is that the whole purpose of the liturgical year, the whole purpose of what we do when we worship is to deepen our relationship with Jesus . . .

In last weekend’s homily I highlighted the need for us to learn how to pray. I suggested subscribing to the “Bible in a Year” podcast. If you listen to podcasts, you can subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Typing “Bible in a Year” in the search bar will enable you to subscribe to the podcast. As I said, I highly encourage it. (I saw many nods when I gave the homily so I know I am not alone in finding it helpful.)

I would like to offer another way to pray with the bible, the Lectio Divina. This is a tried and true (centuries tried and true) way of praying with the Word of God. It has become fashionable in education to talk about “deep reading” or “close reading.” Truth is, Lectio Divina believed in “close or deep” reading more than 15 centuries ago. And in our modern age we think we are so smart!

The goal of the Lectio Divina (Sacred or Divine Reading) is not about quantity. It is about depth, quality and understanding. Even if we are using a passage of scripture, such as the daily gospel at Mass, the goal is usually more to focus on a small sentence, phrase, or even a single word to help us to grab our attention.

Traditionally, there are four parts of the process, usually identified in Latin, but when I taught my high school students this process I also used an English title for each part of the process. I like to think of the process like a funnel. In other words, at the beginning we focus on the whole thing, but gradually find ourselves going deeper and deeper into where the Holy Spirit moves us on a particular moment.

One other note is that the use of the Lectio Divina is not limited to the words of the bible, but I will say I think learning to pray with the bible is a good way to start. The steps of the Lectio Divina are as follows:

It remains important to prepare to pray. Just as we take time when a guest comes to visit us, so too we need to take time to prepare for the Holy Spirit, the guest we are seeking to invite into our heart.  I suggest taking time first to become calm. Often focusing on slowing down our breathing is helpful, particularly if we are not familiar with silent prayer. Some people find it helpful to use an object, like a candle. If your house allows you, it can be helpful to create a special personal sacred space to help. Whatever the preparation, it is always helpful I think, to say a phrase like, “Come, Holy Spirit,” or “God speak to my heart.”

Then a particular passage is selected to read. I like using the daily readings from Mass because it keeps me from only focusing on those passages I might like. (I find that if I choose I tend to choose those readings I like and avoid readings I find upsetting or challenging.)

Read the passage slowly and reflectively. See what grabs your attention. But don’t force it. Be patient. But pay attention to what “leaps” out.

After reading the passage the first time, read it again. Pay attention this second time to what was striking about the reading. Remember this is not academic study, but prayer. Simply meditate on the passage being read a second time. Reflect upon what it is God says personally today.

In reading the passage the third time, it is the chance (now and only now) to speak to God about what God has said. Even if I do not think much has struck me, I choose to thank God for this time of prayer. But often there is something specific that has struck me, and this is the time to respond. Sometimes it is asking God for something (a prayer of petition), or perhaps I am reminded of other people who asked me to pray for them (prayers of intercession). I take this time to bring these prayers to Jesus . . .

King Saul had one fundamental flaw. He cared too much what others people thought. We see that over and over and over again in his life. He cared too much what other people thought. And that flaw really ultimately cost him just about everything. We see it in today's reading.

I suspect that Saul decided, well, you know what, if they take the best and they sacrifice it to God and they like me for being successful, then what does it matter what God said? We're going to see this later on when King David defeats Goliath, the Philistine. And the women sing this silly song that doesn't make much sense to me, but it really got under Saul's skin because Saul was given credit for slaying thousands and David was given credit for slaying tens of thousands.

And Saul was just beside himself. And rather than admitting that he cares too much what other people think, he goes out to kill David. He goes out and does horrible, evil things. He chases David all over the place to kill him. But even worse than that, he's rejected by God as king.

Now, deep inside of us, I suspect, if it's not the same problem as Saul, we probably have something in us that we're always struggling against in order to do the right thing. It might be the problem of Saul, caring too much what other people think about us, and seeking to please people, even in doing the wrong thing. But if it makes them happy, well, okay.

It may be other things. It may be that we don't want to look, let's say, at our selfishness. I think of that in myself right now. I have barely left the house these days. It's so cold. Now, I grew up in this. This is not the first rodeo, shall we speak. I remember leaving my mother's house and going back to St. Louis a few years ago, and the air temperature was 23 below. Okay, so I know cold.

But does my knowledge of cold and my unwillingness to leave the house spur me on to action for those that don't have my blessings? I can't imagine what it's like to have uncertainty in the housing in this weather. I can't. It should spur me to do something. But does it really? I think there's a deeper fundamental flaw, though, that we need to kind of grapple with in our own lives in terms of the gospel.

Do we really believe that God is God, or one very smart person among many, with whom we could disagree if it didn't suit us? See, because that's really what's going on here. God was very clear to Saul what he was supposed to do, and what he allowed his men to do was not allowed. It was not allowed.

We do that, at least I know I do. I shouldn't speak for you. I don't know. But I know that one of the challenges I can have is, this doesn't make much sense. What was God thinking? As if somehow I know better than God.

I think this is a uniquely American problem. I think it is a first-world problem, that somehow we know better than God. Such is a challenge in our lives. But we see what happens when we don't really place ourselves in the presence of God and identify God for who he is. We can be rejected. Or at the very least, our actions can be rejected. We're not God's anointed.

By the way, I'll give you, even though his life was far from perfect, as we know, when King David, before he was King David, had the chance to kill Saul, he didn't. Because Saul was the Lord's anointed. That's what God told him. And he said, who could harm the Lord's anointed without being harmed? Now David's going to have his other problems. Don't misunderstand me.

But it does challenge me, at least today, to think, do I really believe that God is God? When God tells me to love him and to love my neighbor, do I really take that seriously? Or am I like King Saul, thinking that, well, it's reasonable that I would allow this. What's the problem, even though God told me not to? Let us ask the Lord for the grace to follow him as his disciples, wherever he leads.

When we encounter a problem, the hardest part of it as a person of faith can be trusting in God. We really want to kind of come up with the solution ourselves, decide this is the right thing to do, do it, and then hope that everything works out well because of our decision.

If there is a challenge, I think, in the faith, in the Western world, it is that we think that everything really depends on us, even though we know better. If there's a problem with poverty, well, we've got to do something about it. We've got to do something. We've got to come up with the solution.

But the stance of a person of faith is the other way around. What is it that God wants us to do? How is it that God wants to solve this problem? And in what ways can we be attentive to what God longs to do among us?

Such is the dilemma of the first reading. They want to be like everyone else. Now, it's interesting because before they got into the Promised Land, before they crossed over the Jordan and into the Promised Land, that is exactly what God warned them against. You're going to want to be like everybody else.

And it was for that reason that God said to them things like, don't marry foreigners because you're going to want to be like everybody else. That's not going to help you in your living out the covenant that I am making with you.

How often is it that we kind of want to just fit in? You know, there was a period of time where that was probably not such a bad thing. There was the time of the immigrants and we wanted to be Americans. And the sisters worked very hard to give us the opportunities that we needed to have that part in our life.

Catholic schools, orphanages, hospitals, those were tremendous success stories because of the generous work largely of religious women, although also of religious men. And it was good. Until it wasn't. See, we have become good.

If you look at the demographics for Catholics, we're among the wealthiest in the country. We're among the most educated in the country. There's all kinds of good news about Catholics. We have arrived. But what of our faith? What of the practice of our faith?

Have we become like the people in the first reading who said, if we could only have a king and be like everyone else, everything would be fine. And Samuel is trying to say, look, you don't understand what you're asking for. The king is going to take your sons. He's going to take your daughters. He's going to take your property. He's going to do all kinds of things because he's the king.

And yes, he's going to lead you into battle, and he's going to guide and so forth. But that doesn't mean that everything is going to be wonderful. I think if there is an invitation that God wants us to exercise in this new year, it is recognizing where it is do we wish to find the presence of God. And then to say to ourselves, where actually is God? What is it that God wants me to do? How is it that God wants me to live? Can I trust in the Lord to figure out what it means to be a disciple of Jesus?

There are the best of times and the worst of times. And today's readings really give us that picture. The first reading, it's a disaster. This is really a bad, bad place for Israel to be. But for the leper in the Gospel, it is a good place. It is the best of times.

In the first reading, there is this horrible, terrible thing that has befallen Israel. And in the Gospel, there was this horrible, terrible thing that had befallen the leper that was removed. There was healing. There was reintegration into society. We have the worst and the best.

But the irony is this, at one and the same time, the question in both instances is the same. Where is God? Where is God in the midst of this terrible tragedy that we have experienced? We thought God would save us. We brought the Ark of the Covenant. And the leper, where is God in the midst of all of this?

Notice in the first reading that what we don't get is some of the back story here about the ways in which things have kind of deteriorated long before the battle with the Philistines. We know that they've not always been faithful. We know that they've not always concerned themselves with their personal relationship with God. We know that they've lost sight of who they were, who they are, who they should be. Their relationship is not really a priority in their lives, really.

Faith can be like that. Or shall I say the practice of religion can be like that. We may seem like we're doing things in the name of religion that are good and wonderful. They bring the Ark, but their hearts weren't converted. Their lives weren't changed. They weren't first disciples.

In the Gospel reading, we get a similar type of circumstance and situation. We do not know what really was the circumstance of the leper before the encounter with Jesus. And except for the excitement of the leper, we don't know what really happened to the leper afterwards. What's interesting, though, is what Jesus doesn't say the leper should be or do.

He doesn't say, toss aside all of the ritual in your life. I've healed you. Don't worry about the Jewish law. Don't worry about the practice of your faith. I've done these things. You don't need to worry about that. What does Jesus do? He says, go show yourself to the priest and for your cleansing, offer what Moses has prescribed. That should be proof for them. In other words, practice your faith.

It doesn't necessarily mean that one is contingent on the other. In other words, perhaps the man did have great faith. Maybe he was a practicing Jew before his ostracizing because of his leprosy. We don't know. But Jesus wants to make clear that in our own lives, our faith is not always only about our own effort. Nor is it about magic.

On some level, it strikes me that in the first reading, there's at least some element of magic. And as long as we have the Ark of the Covenant, everything will be perfect and it won't matter what we do. Well, if that was the attitude, it didn't work out so well. The question then is one for us today.

Do we allow God to really change our hearts? Do we allow God to really make us see everything in the world through the lens of our relationship with Jesus? Do we make time in our lives for personal and silent prayer? Or do we busy ourselves with lots and lots of activity, even good activity? Realizing or perhaps believing that we can separate the good that we do from the source of goodness. Let us ask the Lord this day to help us to open our hearts to God, to allow God to change us and to convert us and to make us into the persons that God has desired us to become.

Today we begin ordinary time. And I think it's always important to remind ourselves that the name ordinary time does not mean ordinary in the sense that we use it. If something is ordinary, it's well, it's common, it's not terribly special, it's not dramatic, it's just ordinary.

It really comes from the Latin ordo, which is really about order. It's about numbers. You may remember when you had math, however many years ago, that there were ordinal numbers. And that's really all the ordinary time signifies is that it is a sequence of gospels. So we have the first Sunday and the second Sunday and so forth throughout the year.

The reality is that it is anything but ordinary. If we think of the purpose of the church year, it really is to sanctify time. The purpose of the liturgy is to sanctify space. So everything is about holiness in what we do. But I think like many things, we have to be intentional about what it means as we enter a new year.

We're going to hear gospels that undoubtedly we've heard many times before. But can we hear them in a new way? We're going to have many of the same things that we've done in previous years, but can we see them in a new way? There are going to be instances in our life where we do the same old things, but can we find God in them?

For that really is the purpose of the Christian life, to seek God. And to recognize that God says to us, see, I am doing something new. Now something new does not always mean something that we will really love and look forward to, because maybe the something new is a challenge that we're being asked to take on.

Maybe the something new that God wants us to do is to learn how to deal with life when it doesn't go our way. Maybe the something new is learning how to deal with the loss of a loved one, or someone who is sick with some kind of terminal illness, maybe even us. Whatever it is, we're called to seek God. That's what Jesus proclaims in the gospel.

He starts off the way he'll spend much of his time on earth teaching. He tells people about God, and there's something quite qualitatively different about what he says and how he speaks. People notice it right away. He speaks with authority, not like the scribes, not people who are just reciting from rote what they may have learned without really allowing it to touch their hearts and to come into their hearts.

That is really what we're called to do too. As we seek out the presence of the Lord in this new year to find those ways in which we can allow what God wants us to know and who God wants us to be to go right to the depths of our hearts so that we will recognize a teaching with authority, a new teaching, something that is amazing, the Lord Jesus himself.

During the time when Jesus is on earth, the Father only speaks twice. Once in the baptism of Jesus that we hear about today, and the other at the transfiguration. And both times God says the same thing. "This is my beloved Son, listen to Him."

And what we celebrate today is not only the baptism of the Lord, which is certainly a tremendous event, but our own baptism as well. It was the baptism of Jesus that made the waters of baptism holy. John baptized too, but it was a different kind of baptism. It was in fact the baptism that came when someone by their own will power said, I'm going to turn my life around.

When Jesus was baptized, He made holy the waters of baptism. And when baptism occurred after that by Jesus and ultimately through the Church, it was God who did the work. It wasn't simply someone's desire, but rather the Spirit of God who made a fundamental change in who someone was.

It's for this reason that the Church in fact teaches you can only be baptized once. We're not a church that baptizes more than once. And we have a very high acceptance of baptism. As long as water is used and the right formula is used, we accept it as a valid baptism, even if it didn't occur in a Catholic Church.

Why? Because this fundamentally changes who we are. But we do need to do one thing, and that is to be aware that when we were baptized, we were made into beloved sons and daughters of God. That our identity is different, and it means that we are challenged to live in a different way. It means that we are called by God to do something wonderful and dramatic in our own lives.

Pope Francis challenged people yesterday about whether or not they remembered the day they were baptized, the date. Because most of us wouldn't remember that. I do happen to know the date of my baptism.

But then he gave a little bit of homework. He said, if you don't know it, look it up and celebrate it. Because in many ways, this was the day that made all the difference in life. It is that important. It opened the door to the life of grace. All the other sacraments occur after one is baptized. It's the gateway to the sacraments.

Most importantly, our baptism opens the door to us for eternal life. And that's pretty dramatic indeed. And that's pretty wonderful indeed. And so, let us take the words of the Father seriously, and because we have been baptized, listen to his son Jesus.

These readings are reinforcing something that I have talked about a lot. The faith is not something to be kept to yourself. It's obvious that Andrew and Peter had talked to Philip because they're in the same area and Philip becomes a believer.

And Philip encounters Nathaniel and says, look, we found this guy, the Messiah, we have found him. And lo and behold, ultimately Nathaniel finds him. Now, it would have been an interesting thing that Jesus comes from Nazareth and not Bethlehem because that's where the Messiah was going to come from. That's why the birth of Jesus needed to occur in Bethlehem because that was the city of David. That was David's home and it was the place in which the Messiah was to return.

But Nazareth, on the other hand, is a completely different place. Think Las Vegas. Okay, Nazareth was not a, first of all, it wasn't a Jewish city. It was located in a place where all kinds of people would come and go in terms of their travels. And much like a place where there are people who don't stay there a long time but tend to travel through it a lot, we could say in the ancient world what happens in Nazareth stays in Nazareth.

It was not necessarily a place of good moral living. And so it's not surprising that Nathaniel says, well, what good could come from Nazareth? It didn't have that reputation of being a place where someone would come who, in fact, was the Messiah. It's a reminder to us that sometimes in our own life we develop, I should say, just kind of prejudices or biases against people simply from where they live or from other external factors that make no difference whatsoever.

Today we celebrate St. John Newman, who, or Neumann really, probably more accurately, was a bishop. The bishop of Philadelphia found himself kind of unworthy for the task but went about it anyway. But if you're in western New York and Pennsylvania, there are many, many Catholic schools that were started by Bishop Neumann.

And it's a reminder to us that he too saw his arrival into this country, he saw an important part of that arrival to share the faith, to create the culture. In many ways we could ask the question today about many aspects of American life.

Can anything good come from the United States? We could ask that question today. That's not to bash our country, it's not to say that our country does not do many great things, but we've got a lot of interesting problems in our country. We still haven't figured out how to feed everyone or to house everyone or to clothe everyone.

It seems that it feels anyway, I know it's not perhaps literally true that we have a mass shooting in this country every single day, it just doesn't seem to come to an end. And yet in the midst of this, in many ways we are like the church in this country at the time of St. John Neumann, namely a place that is in need of evangelization, that is deeply in need of the presence of Jesus, a recognition of what it is that Jesus wants us to do and how it is that Jesus wants us to live.

Let us pray that we might be willing to share our faith with others so that people might know the good things that come from wherever we find ourselves this day.