Homily for Ordinary Time 25 - September 23, 2018

Homily for Ordinary Time 25

September 23, 2018

Humility

            The great American Catholic laywoman of the twentieth century, Dorothy Day, was well-known for her love for the poor. She opened up her home to homeless people and often served them from morning until night. Her activism on behalf of the poor gained her significant fame, and she was interviewed by several newspapers and published several books and numerous articles.

            One day, a newspaper reporter wanted to do an article on her, so he traveled to the local soup kitchen where Dorothy could often be found serving the poor. He found the famous woman engaged in a loving conversation with a dirty, smelly, drunk homeless woman in ragged clothes. When the reporter approached, Dorothy looked up at him and asked simply, “Did you want to speak with one of us?”

            This is a pretty good definition of humility. This famous, holy activist thought herself no different from the dirty and drunk homeless woman. To Dorothy Day, all had the same dignity; all deserved the same respect.

            There are certain virtues that are very well-accepted by secular society. Kindness, generosity, compassion – all of these virtues could just as easily be found in a public school classroom or a company’s brochure as they would be found in church. But certain virtues seem very strange to the world. For example, few in the secular world would find “chastity” to be a virtue – it’s just too countercultural! Likewise, very few people would see “humility” as a worthwhile virtue – you don’t see that proclaimed as a value very often!

            This is, in part, because we don’t understand what humility is. Humility is the virtue of knowing yourself well, not thinking too highly of yourself, and recognizing that any talent or gift that you have is a gift from God. The humble man does not deny that he is good at a certain thing, or that he possess certain gifts, but rather recognizes that he has them only because God has given them to him.

            St. Thomas Aquinas teaches us that virtue is the midpoint between two extremes – and this is certainly true of humility! On one extreme, we have pride – precisely what the Apostles were arguing about in the Gospel. They want to be first! They are puffed up in their own minds, thinking that they’re “all that and a bag of chips” (as the saying goes).

            Jesus’ response is not just a spiritual truth – it makes sense on a natural level, too. He replies that “if anyone wishes to be first, he should be the last of all and the servant of all.” Consider this – does anyone enjoy being around someone who is prideful, who brags and boasts? Of course not. They are obnoxious and a boor. There’s an old story about a man who was just named Vice President of his company, which puffed him up with pride. He went around boasting for several weeks about his promotion, until his wife finally said in frustration, “You think you’re so great, being Vice President? Everyone becomes a Vice President these days. Heck, down at the grocery store, there’s a Vice President of peas.” The man wanted to call his wife’s bluff, so he called the local grocery story and asked, “May I speak with the Vice President of peas?” To which the receptionist responded, “Fresh or frozen?”

            The opposite of pride, though, is a type of false humility. This is when people refuse to believe that they have any gifts whatsoever. We’ve all met people like that – we say to them, “That was an amazing piano recital! You have such a gift!” And they respond, “Oh, no, I’m not really very good.” Or they overly focus on their negative aspects instead of recognizing how God has blessed them. Think of Eeyore – he’s a perfect example of false humility!

            So, real humility is in-between pride and false humility. A truly humble person knows who they are, recognizes their gifts, and gives glory to God for any accomplishments. A humble person is not puffed up by success; nor are they crushed by failure.

            So how do we grow in this virtue? Three suggestions:

            First, imitate the lives of humble people, especially Jesus and Mary. Mary is a beautiful example of humility – here she is, the most privileged human being to walk the face of the earth, but she gives all glory to God. When her cousin Elizabeth says, “You are truly blessed among women!”, she doesn’t deny it. Rather, she responds by saying, “My soul glorifies the Lord” – she points to Him Who gave her the gift of being the Mother of the Savior.

            Jesus, too, is a shining example of humility. The King of the Universe didn’t think it was beneath His dignity to become a shivering baby in a stable. The Lord of all creation allowed others to beat Him and crown Him with thorns and hang Him on a cross. His humility was the vehicle through which His love shone through.

            A second way to grow in humility is to do humbling things. Clean the bathroom; take out your own garbage. Vacuum your own house; purchase the simpler car. It’s awfully hard to be puffed-up in pride when you’re scrubbing a dirty dish or driving a Mazda! Many ad campaigns tell you, “You deserve it – you deserve the vacation, the fancy dinner, the expensive purse.” Instead, purposely choose to do things that will make you realize that you’re not the center of the universe.

            A final way to grow in humility is to stop thinking and talking about yourself! There was once a man at a party who blathered on and on about himself: his accomplishments, his bank accounts, his job, his kids. People were getting bored listening to him talk about himself. Finally, he concluded by saying, “Well, I’ve talked too long about myself. So let me ask you about yourself – what do you think of me?” But humble people don’t often talk about themselves. As Pastor Rick Warren once said, “Humility doesn’t mean thinking less of yourself…it means thinking of yourself less!” To grow in humility, don’t overly think of your gifts, your problems, your accomplishments.

            My friends, the greatest of all sins is pride. This is the sin that caused the Devil to rebel against God – he wanted to be greater than the Lord! The antidote to pride is humility – knowing ourselves, our strengths and weaknesses, and knowing that all that we have and are is a gift from God. I will leave you with a powerful quite from St. Padre Pio: “Humility and purity are the wings which carry us to God and make us almost divine.”

Homily for Ordinary Time 24 - September 16, 2018

Homily for Ordinary Time 24

September 16, 2018

The Case for Christ

            In the late 1970s, a journalist named Lee Strobel was at a crossroads. He was born and raised an atheist, and his wife was one as well. But one night as they were dining out, their daughter began choking. Panicked, they looked around the room for help, and a nurse happened to be there. She quickly performed the Heimlich maneuver and the girl was saved.

            That nurse began a friendship with Lee’s wife, and through that influence, his wife became a Christian. Lee, however, was staunch in his atheism. He thought that Christianity was a thing of legends and myths. He was challenged, however, by a friend who told him to examine the evidence. As a journalist at the Chicago Tribune, he knew all about examining evidence – cold, hard facts. So he began a years-long journey examining the facts about the claims of Christianity.

            First, he had to examine who Jesus said He was. As CS Lewis put it, Jesus is either “Lord, Liar, or Lunatic”. He clearly claimed to be God, as we sort-of see in today’s Gospel. We read Mark’s version of this event, but Matthew takes the same event and spells it out more clearly – Peter says, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God” in Matthew’s account. So, when pressed about the identity of Jesus, His disciples acknowledge Him as God. And Jesus does not deny it! He accepts it and calls Peter “blessed” for understanding this about Him.

            If a person claims to be something outrageous – like a man claiming to be a ham sandwich (or in today’s society, a man claiming to be a woman…) – we have every right to challenge that claim. If you say you are a ham sandwich, prove it! If you claim to be God, prove it!

            Did Jesus do the sorts of things that God does? He was able to do some remarkable miracles – healing the sick, multiplying bread and fish, walking on water, casting out demons. But many prophets and patriarchs did similar miracles. These miracles alone do not prove Christ’s divinity.

            But there was one miracle par excellence which proves His divinity – the Resurrection. Never before, and never since, has a man raised himself from the dead. We can believe in the Resurrection for several reasons.

            First, there is the empty tomb – no one has ever claimed to have found Christ’s Body. Second, all four Gospels testify to it – and the Gospels were historical documents written by eyewitnesses! In fact, the Gospels tell us that after Christ’s Resurrection, Jesus ate and drank, and was seen by over 500 people.

            It is highly unlikely that these witnesses could all have mass hallucination. These were hard-headed fishermen, farmers, and laborers, not dreamers and hippies.

Besides, the twelve main men who saw the Resurrection – the Apostles – paid for it dearly. All of the Apostles except for John were martyred, killed for proclaiming that Jesus is Risen. Who would die for a lie? No one. Consider, too, that all of the Apostles except for John, upon Jesus’ death, ran away in terror. How could these fearful men, hiding to save their own skins, only fifty days later be transformed into bold and courageous preachers? Peter went from denying he even knew Jesus to being the first one on Pentecost Sunday to declare that He is risen. Something must have happened that changed him – and that something is that he met the Risen Lord!

Now, all of this is evidence, not proof. No one can prove a historical event in the same way we can prove a math equation or a science experiment. But the historical record shows a lot of evidence pointing to the fact that Jesus is truly God.

What did that mean for Lee Strobel? After two years of searching, seeking out facts and truth, he came to the conclusion that Jesus truly is God, and he became a baptized Christian. What does this mean for us? Two things.

First, consider how absolutely unique and phenomenal it is that God – the very same God who created the universe, the all-holy One whom angels worship on bended knee – this God became a human. He ate, drank, slept, got hurt…He is one of us. We should be in awe of this mystery! God is intimate, close, fully human in Jesus Christ.

Second, since Jesus is God, we have an obligation to follow Him. CS Lewis said that when confronted with Jesus, there were only three reactions in Scripture: hatred, terror, or adoration. No one just gives Him mild approval; no one says “meh” when confronted with the radical possibility that this Man, Jesus Christ, is God among us. If we really knew Jesus, who He is and who He claimed to be, we would be forced to either love Him wholeheartedly or reject Him completely. There is no middle ground. Let us love Him wholeheartedly, then!

Homily for Ordinary Time 23 - September 9, 2018

Ordinary Time 23

September 9, 2018

Silence

            Here are four statistics to boggle your mind:

-          The average teenage girl sends and receives an average of 4,000 texts per month. That averages out to 133 per day, or 8 texts every waking hour.

-          There are over 13 billion web pages existing on the internet.

-          If you were to try to watch every single video on Youtube, it would take over 1400 years of non-stop watching. Even then, it wouldn’t work, because every minute, another 35 hours of video are uploaded.

-          The amount of “content” (music, videos, pictures, words written) that was produced from the beginning of the world until 2008 is now produced every two days, thanks to social media and the internet.

This should stun us. We live in a very noisy world. I’d be curious how many of us have social media; how many of us browse the Internet for an hour or more each day. A recent 2018 study shows that teenagers spend an average of six hours and forty minutes each day in front of a screen. That is a huge amount of time!

In all this noise – visual noise, audio noise, stimulation – are we going deaf to the things that really matter?

My mom used to joke around that we, her kids, had “selective hearing”. Oh, we could hear the TV just fine, but when she would ask us to mow the lawn, somehow we went deaf! I wonder if we as a culture, and we as individuals, have developed “selective hearing” where we are deaf to God?

All of this noise, distraction, technology addiction has brought about three negative consequences.

First, it has deafened us to God. God only speaks in silence. A lot of times people ask me, “How does God speak to me? I don’t hear Him?” He has made it clear how He speaks to us – through nature, through other people, through the Scriptures and the writings of the saints, through Christian music, through the Liturgy. But all of these require that we unplug from the other noise that surrounds us. He wants to speak to us, but He will not shout over the noise we surround ourselves with.

The Evil One is very cunning, and he knows that his #1 best tactic is to get us to stop praying. As long as we seek God daily, Satan has no power over us. So the Evil One doesn’t try to get us to give up our faith altogether, but bit by bit, little by little, he tries to distract us and block out the quiet voice of God. We must be aware that Satan has used technology and media to separate many souls from a regular life of prayer!

Second, we have to ask what messages are coming through all of this noise. Every Youtube video starts with an ad – am I being subtly told that my happiness will come if I buy this product? So many of our talking heads are shrill and divisive – am I being subtly told that the solution to our problems is to vote for this candidate or endorse this issue? Many articles and news sources come from the perspective that the Church’s teachings are wrong, that there is no God, or that we get to define right from wrong – do I subtly start to agree with them? Media forms us, forms our opinions, forms our culture. How is the media forming us, maybe without us even knowing?

Finally, has our technological noise brought about division among us and within us? There was a girl in one of my confirmation classes who had her earbuds in constantly. She was the type to put them in at the beginning of the day and not take them out until she went to sleep (and maybe not even then!). One day, I challenged the class to spend ten minutes in silence each day. She gasped and exclaimed, “I could never do that!” I asked her, “Why not?” I’ll never forget her response – “I am afraid of what I might hear.”

She was alienated from herself. She wasn’t at peace within herself. How much of our technological noise is due to the fact that we aren’t at peace with ourselves or with one another? We’ve all seen those families who go out to eat, and instead of talking with each other, they just stare at their phones for the whole meal. If we aren’t careful, technology can make us lose our ability to connect.

I do not mean to criticize all technology or all social media. Surely, technology has been a blessing in many ways. But it’s a tool that we must master, or it will master us. People often ask why I don’t have a smart phone. It’s simple: I don’t think I have the ability to master it – more than likely, I will be a slave to it.

So I challenge you: has your technology, has the noise of the media, made you deaf? The man in today’s Gospel was deaf from birth; we are often deaf by choice. Deaf to God, deaf to the Truth, deaf to our family and friends. If technology and media has made you deaf, consider giving it up, limiting it, using it less. Only then will we be able to hear God.

Homily for Ordinary Time 21 - August 26, 2018

Homily for Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time

August 16, 2018

Why Be Catholic

            There are about seventy million Catholics in the United States, making it the single largest denomination in the country. But of those seventy million Catholics, 52% of them – more than half – will leave the Church at some point. It’s often said that the largest denomination is Catholics, the second-largest is ex-Catholics. Why do people walk away?

            A large reason is because they do not know why they are Catholic in the first place. They may not know what they believe or why they believe it.

            The Gospel also features people walking away. They are faced with a difficult teaching – Jesus had just told them that they would have to “eat His flesh and drink His blood” in order to be close to Him. For this difficult teaching, people walk away. But some stay, and Peter speaks for them all when He says, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of everlasting life.”

            Let’s be honest – it’s not always easy to be Catholic. Just recently there have been scandals in the news; reports of bishops and cardinals abusing their power and acting inappropriately. There are times that we might disagree with a priest or dislike the music or our fellow parishioners. Why should we stay Catholic when it seems like Stanwich Evangelical Church is doing so much better, with better music and better preaching and the people are far more welcoming and faithful to the Lord?

            I wrestled with that same question as a teen. I loved the Lord, but found my parish to be less-than-inspiring. The music was mediocre, the priests were uninspiring (and one of them got involved in a scandal of his own), and the people were cold. So for a couple Sundays, I explored other Protestant churches. I was amazed at the difference! They were friendly, welcoming, with a real sense of family and a deep love for the Lord.

            But…they lacked so much of the Truth. They did not have the Eucharist, or devotion to Mary, or the Pope, or saints, or even the full Scriptures (Protestants took out seven books of the Old Testament). I realized that the only reason to stay Catholic is because Catholicism is the truth.

            Recently I was having a conversation with four wonderful, faith-filled Catholics. I asked them what they loved about the Catholic Church. They said, “Oh, you know, the feeling you get when you go to church.” Or, “It’s just that sense of community.” That’s all well and good, and I’m glad they felt good and loved when they came to Mass, but what if the feeling disappears? What if a pastor comes in who you can’t stand? What if you have a fight with members of the parish and all that “good community” dries up? Will you, like the people in the Gospel, simply walk away from the Catholic Church?

            We remain Catholic because it is the Church that Jesus Christ founded. We remain Catholic because it is the Church where we receive His true Body and Blood. We remain Catholic because it has faithfully and without error handed down all of the teachings of Jesus.

            We do NOT remain Catholic because we like Fr. So-and-so, or because we have an attachment to a building or a community or a feeling we get when we’re here. Fr. So-and-so might disappoint us, our building might crumble, the community might not be there when we need them, our feelings may disappear. But we can trust that the Church will lead us to Jesus Christ, and He promised that the gates of Hell will not prevail against this Catholic Church – and that’s reason enough to stay.

            We should take the words of Peter as our own: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You – speaking in and through Your divinely-inspired Church – have the words of everlasting life.”

Twentieth Sunday of Ordinary Time - August 19, 2018

Homily for Ordinary Time 20

August 19, 2018

Why the Eucharist?

            In 1345 in Wawel, Poland, thieves broke into a church and began to steal the vessels. They even broke into the tabernacle and stole the ciborium (vessel that holds the Eucharistic hosts). Later that day as they were examining their cache of stolen goods, they realized that the ciborium was not gold but only gold-plated, and not as valuable as they thought. In frustration, they threw the ciborium, with the Eucharist still inside, into a nearby swamp.

            That evening, the priests of the church saw that their church had been broken into. They began to search the town for clues, but could find none. Completely dispirited and saddened, they returned home, praying that God would return the vessels – and the Eucharist – to the church.

            That night, when darkness had fallen, several townspeople noticed something strange coming from the swamp. Bright lights seemed to radiate from the moist ground. They immediately reported this to the Bishop, who ordered three days of fasting and prayer. On the third day, the Bishop led a procession out to the swamp, where he discovered the source of the light: the Eucharist was radiating bright beams of light into the air. The Bishop was able to return the ciborium with the unharmed Eucharistic Lord to the Church. When the King of Poland, King Casimir III, heard of this miracle, he was so amazed that he ordered a huge basilica to be built on the spot – a church which still stands today.

            Clearly the Eucharist is the greatest thing in the Universe – the very Flesh and Blood of God. Not a symbol, not a sign, but His true Body, hidden beneath the species of bread and wine. But why did He give it to us? It seemed bizarre to the Jews, who murmured and complained about this teaching. Why did He give us His flesh to eat?

            Two reasons. First, what was the first sin, the sin of Adam and Eve? It was eating. Our disobedience came through consuming – taking into our flesh – the sinful fruit. Thus, we can only be saved by obedience to Christ’s words, “Take and eat” – consuming His Body. The Eucharist is the medicine that undoes the disease of sin.

            Second, what closer way is there to be united to something than to eat it? When I eat an apple, it becomes digested and metabolized so that all the nutrients – calories, vitamins, minerals – literally become a part of my muscles and skin and hair (what little I have left!). Likewise, Christ wants to unite Himself to us. But this union can’t be merely spiritual, because we are not just spiritual beings. We have a body, and it’s in and through our body that we practice virtue or vice, that we sin or do good deeds. Our body is a critical part of us, so Jesus knew that He had to save our bodies along with our souls. Thus, for Him to dwell deep within our entire selves – body and soul – He needed to give Himself in a way that He can literally dwell in every cell of our body and every recess of our soul. Hence, the Eucharist.

            It takes faith to see Him. He comes to us veiled in something very common and ordinary – bread and wine – so that we are not afraid to receive Him. After all, who would want to approach the Communion line if you received a jiggling, bleeding piece of flesh! But because God knows our frailty, He hides Himself in a way we can understand and receive.

            We need not ask, “God, where are You?” He has not abandoned us so long as the Eucharist is with us. Let us approach Him with greater fervor and love, for He has humbled Himself so that He could dwell in our body and soul.

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time - August 12, 2018

Homily for August 12, 2018

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

The Eucharist, Part 1

            Recently a priest was telling me that a man in his parish was criticizing him for elevating the Host too long during Mass. The man said to the priest, “You hold that up like it’s the most important thing in the world!”

            Let that sink in for a moment…the Eucharist literally is the most important thing in the world. But a 2010 study found that only 63% of Catholics actually believe that Jesus Christ is truly present in the Eucharist. Let’s look at why we believe that the Eucharist is truly Christ’s Body and Blood.

            First, Jesus Himself said that the Eucharist is His Body and Blood. We just heard the powerful words of Jesus in John’s Gospel, Chapter 6: “The bread that I will give is My Flesh for the life of the world.” Let’s put that statement in context. Jesus is talking about Himself as the Bread of Life – could that possibly be symbolic? Yes, of course. Jesus says He is the Vine, He is the Light, He is the Gate…and He is not literally a vine, a light bulb, or a gate. But then Jesus goes on and makes it more explicit – He is not just the Bread, but His Flesh is the Bread that we must consume.

            In Greek, there are two words for eating. Ephago simply means to eat. This could be used symbolically, like when sometimes in English we say that we are “chewing” on an idea. We are not literally putting the idea in our mouth and chomping on it. But the other word is Trogon which means to chew, gnaw, grind with our teeth. It’s a very graphic verb that cannot be used symbolically – it’s a literal word. And this is the word that Jesus uses in John 6 to describe the Eucharist. He says, “You must trogon (chew, gnaw) My Flesh and drink My Blood.”

            Look, too, at the reaction of the Jewish people. They get more and more disgusted until they finally walk away. In two weeks, we will see them turning from the Lord because of the difficulty of this teaching. Jesus does not follow after them – rather, He turns to His Apostles and asks if they will also be leaving. This shows that Jesus is serious about His teaching that the Eucharist is truly His Body and Blood!

            But there are other reasons why we believe that the Eucharist is truly Him and not just a symbol. For example, the Church has always believed it, even from the beginning. I once wondered aloud to one of my professors in seminary, “Why is there nothing about the Eucharist in the Creed?” He replied, “Because no one doubted it in the early Church.” One of the early Church fathers, St. Justin Martyr, wrote around the year 150: “For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word is the flesh and blood of that Jesus." No one doubted Christ’s Real Presence, really, until Martin Luther in 1517. So since it was always and everywhere believed, we can be confident that it is true.

            Finally, there have been Eucharistic miracles throughout the centuries that help us to believe more strongly. I have seen one in a small town called O’Cebriero in Spain. Around the year 1300, during an intense blizzard, an unbelieving priest didn’t want to celebrate Mass out of laziness and a lack of faith. No one was coming to church in such horrible weather, so he prepared to lock up the church when he spotted one single peasant trudging through the deep snow to Mass. Reluctantly he welcomed the peasant into church, muttering, “You came all this way for a piece of bread?”

            He began to say Mass for this one peasant, and when he reached the consecration, the Eucharist turned into visible flesh and blood, and all of the statues in the church turned and bowed down to the Host on the altar. The priest was completely stunned and resolved to reform his life. The Eucharist-turned-flesh has been preserved, as have the statues which now face the altar and are inclined in a bow. There have been over 120 Eucharistic miracles that science cannot explain, some as recent as 2009.

            So what does all this mean to us? Since the Eucharist is truly the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ, it literally is the most valuable thing in the universe. We ought to come to approach Him in this Holy Sacrament every Sunday without fail. What could possibly be more important for your time than the Eucharist? Can a sports game or a vacation compete with receiving the God of the Universe?

            A Protestant was once speaking with a Catholic priest, and the Protestant said, “If I believed what you believe about the Eucharist, I would come into the church on my knees!” He recognized the truth – that the Creator, Redeemer, Savior is present in the Eucharist. To prepare for reception of Holy Communion, then, we must make sure that our bodies are prepared – that we are dressed appropriately, and we receive Him with clean hands. The Church asks us to fast for one hour before receiving Him – not eating or drinking anything but water (and that includes no gum or coffee either!). This is to help us realize that this is not just a snack but is truly a unique and life-giving type of Divine Food.

            But in addition to being physically prepared, we must be spiritually prepared. That means that we must not be conscious of any mortal sin on our soul in order to receive Him worthily. Get to confession frequently to make the Eucharist fruitful. If you plant seeds on rocky ground, it doesn’t grow. If you receive the Eucharist without first removing sin, it bears no fruit and does not help you grow in holiness.

            My friends, I would not give up my life to give people merely bread on Sunday mornings. I would give up my life to change bread into the Body of Christ. Prepare your hearts – we are preparing to receive the True Flesh and Blood of Jesus in a few moments.

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time - August 5, 2018

Homily for August 5, 2018

Eighteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

The Highest Good

            Over the centuries, God has given certain spiritual gifts to saints that we might find unpleasant. For example, many saints have had the stigmata, which is the wounds of Christ. St. Padre Pio is one of the most recent examples, from the early 1900s – when he was praying in the chapel one day, he saw light shoot out from the Crucifix and enter his hands, feet, and side. He was overcome with pain and fainted. Upon awakening, he was shocked to discover that he had the five wounds of Christ. For the next forty years, he bore these wounds. Scientists and doctors tested him, and found that these wounds were not caused by human beings. He bled about a pint of blood each day – if an ordinary person lost as much, he would soon be dead, which shows that it was truly miraculous! One time a woman asked Padre Pio if the wounds hurt, and he replied with a twinkle, “Do you think God gave them to me for good looks?”

            Another spiritual gift that God has given was the gift of surviving on nothing but the Eucharist. For example, St. Nicholas of Flue (a 15^th Century Swiss saint) was given permission by his spiritual director to eat nothing but the Eucharist for over twenty years. When he tried to eat other things, he would get violently ill. His own fellow townspeople were so skeptical about this that they once hired ten soldiers to guard his house continuously for a month, to see if he was sneaking food at night, but they soon found that St. Nicholas of Flue had truly eaten nothing that month except the Holy Eucharist, and survived as strong as any other man.

            Now, I don’t know about you, but I think I would struggle to see these as “gifts”. If Jesus appeared to you or I and said, “I’d like to give you a gift – please accept My Five Wounds, which will cause you agonizing pain until the day you die,” we might say, “Thanks, but no thanks!” Or if God asked me to refrain from food for twenty years, I’d probably respond, “But Lord, I’m really gonna miss pizza and ice cream!” We wouldn’t want these gifts because of the difficulty and the cost, even though they would make us profoundly holy and make us more like Christ!

            All the time, both in Scripture and in our lives, God offers us a higher good, but we choose a lesser one. Our first reading features the Israelites who had just been freed from slavery in Egypt. God did remarkable signs – the 10 Plagues, the parting of the Red Sea – and now they are headed into the Promised Land, a place filled with milk and honey, but on the road the people begin to complain. “Man, slavery wasn’t that bad because at least we had good food!” God wanted to offer them freedom; they preferred beef stew. Talk about choosing a lower good over a higher good!

            But the same thing happens in the Gospel. Jesus had just performed a miracle that we read last week – the multiplication of Loaves & Fishes to feed five thousand people. The people are so excited that they try to make Him king, but as He is not supposed to be an earthly political king, He flees to the mountain. The next day they find Him, but Jesus goes right to the heart of things: “You are not seeking Me because you saw the signs (in other words, because you believe in Me as the Savior) but because you ate the loaves (because you want free food).” Jesus wanted to offer them forgiveness for their sins, a relationship with the Living God, and eternal life…and all they wanted was more free food.

            Free food isn’t bad; it’s just a lesser good than the good that God wants to give us. And how often do we choose the lesser good over the greater? God wants us to be holy; we want to be comfortable. God wants to invite us into a living relationship with Him through prayer; we’d rather watch TV. God wants to make us rich in virtue; we’d prefer to be rich in our bank account. We so often choose the lesser good over the greater good.

            This is a result of original sin called concupiscence. Concupiscence means “dis-ordered desires.” In other words, we desire things we know are not the highest goods! Because of original sin, chocolate seems more appealing than broccoli, sleeping is more desirable than working out, wasting time on the internet seems better than reading Scripture. Because of concupiscence and original sin, our desires are disordered (in the philosophical sense) because they are not “ordered” (directed) towards the highest good.

            So what must we do? We must practice discipline if we are to gain mastery over these unruly desires. The word “discipline” and “disciple” are from the same root in Latin – if we wish to be good disciples, we must discipline our desires. Our Church gives us several tools to grow in self-disciplines – namely, prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. We pray so that we can give Christ the firstfruits of our time and energy. We fast so that physical pleasure does not take the place of higher goods. We give generously of our time and money to others so that money does not become our god.

            These three practices are often recommended during Lent, but they are vital any time of year, since the spiritual battle over concupiscence is never-ending. We are daily tempted to choose a lesser good over a higher good. We are always tempted to play video games instead of reading a saint book; to seek the comfort of the couch over the discipline of doing the dishes; to seek the quick pleasure of spreading a piece of gossip instead of the deeper joy of growing in Christian charity.

            Next time we are faced with the choice to choose a lesser good over a higher good, seek the higher, even if it costs. It takes discipline; it takes struggle. But just like a determined athlete can enjoy a winning season only through countless hours of practice, so a Christian can only enjoy the fruits of a deeper relationship with the Lord through constantly denying oneself the lesser good so as to possess the greatest good there is: life in Christ.