God’s Wisdom seeks us out, reminding us that every moment is preparation for eternity.
Obnoxious, childlike prophets
The prophets were obnoxious to the people around them. Jesus Christ, the fulfillment of the just man, was ultimately obnoxious. As disciples of Christ, we must learn to become obnoxious to evil through our childlike humility and complete vulnerability to Jesus Christ.
Homily for Sunday, September 19, 2021. Recorded at the 9am Mass.
Lamps of Faith, Oil of Good Works
God gives us faith as a gift. Do we allow it to shine forth by supplying it with the oil of good works?
Homily for the 32nd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A.
Do You Understand?
We have spent three Sundays with Jesus’s parables about the Kingdom of Heaven. Do we understand all these things?
Homily for the 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A.
The Almighty Power of God
God’s absolute power allows him to judge us with leniency.
Homily for the 16th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A.
The Tower of Eternal Life
Scarce do we guess the things on earth, and what is within our grasp we find with difficulty; but when things are in heaven, who can search them out?
Homily for the 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C. Given September 8, 2019.
Full homily: https://mattsiegman.com/2019/09/the-tower-of-eternal-life/
The Tower of Eternal Life
Scarce do we guess the things on earth, and what is within our grasp we find with difficulty; but when things are in heaven, who can search them out? Where but the Book of Wisdom would we find things summarized so succinctly? This line explains what the Gospel has been like to me all week. I had to consult the “big guns”—the Church Fathers—to make any sense of it. Pope St. Gregory the Great came to my rescue.
Let’s start by looking at the middle of the Gospel. I find things are often more fun that way, anyway! Jesus reminds us that if we were to build a great tower, we would first plan the thing out, looking at how much material we need, how we’d put it together, etc. If we just “wing it,” so to speak, Jesus tells us that not only will we end up with a half-built tower, but all our friends will laugh at us too. This is a great story to begin an engineering or architecture class with, but what in the world does it have to do with my faith?
Pope St. Gregory unlocked this Gospel for me by explaining that building the tower is a metaphor for gaining eternal life. Thus, if we wish to attain eternal life, we would do well to take some time and calculate what will be required. We may be required to leave our family and friends behind, either physically or spiritually, if they do not wish to join us in following Jesus. In this way, we could be understood to be hating them, as Jesus said we will have to do. Think of it as an athlete training. They punish themselves in the pursuit of athletic skill and excellence, in a way hating themselves, but only because of this greater goal they have. In this same way, we have a greater good we must pursue, Jesus Christ, and this may entail some sacrifice on our part.
But as we sit and count the costs and sacrifices necessary for us to gain eternal life, we will struggle to grasp and understand everything. These are the things of Heaven, after all, how can we know what we will need? When we recognize that building the tower—gaining eternal life—is something well beyond our grasp, then we can take the most important step of them all: we can ask Jesus Christ, the master builder who created the whole universe, to help us. He can help us see what we need to do to build our tower, to gain eternal life.
In much the same way, the advancing army can be understood to represent that moment of divine judgment at the end of our lives. It would be better to surrender to an opposing army when they are far away from a military standpoint—at least from a 1st century military standpoint. This allowed the inferior army to avoid bloodshed and hopefully gave them better peace terms. This parable is meant to help us understand that it is much better to surrender to God’s will now then later. Luckily for us, he is a merciful God. He does not punish those who surrender to him, as a military commander in the 1st century might. Instead, our God assists us in following him. Instead of being two opposing armies of 10 thousand and 20 thousand, we become one united army of 30 thousand.
Brothers and sisters, today the Gospel calls us to take stock of what we must do to enter Heaven. Today, the Gospel calls us to recognize that the only way we can do this is by surrendering our wills to Jesus Christ and following him every day of our lives. Jesus is making a radical demand for each of us today, but it comes with God’s radical promise of eternal life.
Today’s Readings:
23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C
September 8, 2019
Wisdom 9:13-18b; Psalm 90; Philemon 9-10, 12-17; Luke 14:25-33
Faithful witnesses
Today, we hear the story of Abraham and Sarah recounted. They embarked on a journey together, moving away from home and not knowing where they were going. They became foreigners in every land, wandering around and living in tents. Though they had lost their ability to be fruitful, they believed that one day they would have descendants as numerous as the stars.
Why?
Yesterday was the Feast of St. Lawrence, a deacon of Rome who defied the emperor. In the year 258, after witnessing the martyrdom of Pope Sixtus II, the rulers of Rome, perhaps even Emperor Valerian himself, demanded that Lawrence surrender the riches of the church to the state. Lawrence showed up the next day with all the poor of Rome. He was sentenced to be grilled on the gridiron. He faced this terrible death with patience and courage, and even joked with his executioners, “I’m done on this side, turn me over.” His memory has stayed alive, and his story passed from generation to generation.
Why?
The disciples repeatedly did all the seemingly crazy things that Jesus demanded of them. Today he tells them not to fear, to sell all their things, to give alms, and to trust that their treasure is not on earth, but in Heaven. And they did it.
Why?
We can find the answer in one half of one sentence that we heard in the Letter to the Hebrews today: they “thought that the one who had made the promise was trustworthy.” Abraham and Sarah thought that God was trustworthy. St. Lawrence thought that God was trustworthy. The disciples thought that God was trustworthy. And what was the promise he had made them? To Abraham and Sarah, he promised to make their descendant as numerous as the stars of the sky. To Lawrence, he promised that whoever follows him and gives up their life will preserve it for eternity. To the disciples, he promised that the “Father is pleased to give [them] the kingdom.”
What do we call this trust that God will do as he promised? Faith.
These people found God trustworthy; they knew in their hearts that God keeps all of his promises. They knew that God is the Truth, the Way, and the Life. He is incapable of not keeping his promises. The idea of God breaking his promises was nonsensical to them, as silly as a square circle or a bad plate of spaghetti. These things just don’t exist. (Well, I’m kidding about the spaghetti thing. I guess that’s possible. Just really hard to do.)
God has made each one of us a promise too. He’s asked us to detach ourselves from the things of this world, to surrender our wills to him, and follow him wherever he goes. If we do that, he promises that no one will give up anything in this life without being repaid many times over, and he promises eternal life with him in Heaven.
How will we respond? Will we light our lamps and wait for him? Will we, like the good servants, execute his will with love and charity? Or will we become like the other servants: bitter and angry, resentful that God has given us this task?
A day is coming—we do not know when—that our lives will be demanded of us. We will have to answer to God for our lives. I hope that each of us here will be able to say, “Lord, I knew that you were trustworthy, so I put my faith in you and followed you as well as I could.” Brothers and sisters, never forget to pray for faith and for the courage to live your faith. I do nearly every day, because I know that my soul and my hope of eternal life in Heaven both depend on it.
Today’s Readings:
August 11, 2019
19th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Wisdom 18:6-9; Psalm 33; Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-19; Luke 12:32-48
The Faith Which Conquers Death
Death was not a part of God’s plan. God did not create us to die. He made us in his own image. He made us imperishable. He created us to live in His presence forever. Adam and Eve had this sort of life. They lived in the Garden of Eden in happiness, in the presence of God. Then, Satan got involved. The devil got involved and started whispering lies in the ears of Adam and Eve. He whispered to them that they would become powerful, like God himself. He whispered to them that they would learn all sorts of things, things that God was hiding from them. He whispered to them that they would only be happy if they disobeyed God and ate fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
For some reason, they listened. Adam and Eve failed to trust in God. Through Adam and Eve’s failure to trust in God, through their jealousy of God’s power and knowledge, through their pride and thinking that they knew better than God, through their first, original sin, death entered the world. God originally had “made man immortal,” free from pain and suffering, free from a tendency toward sin “and ignorance, sinless, and lord of the earth.” 1 Adam and Eve lost more than they could have ever imagined, and the shockwaves of this original sin shook the universe. God revealed to Adam and Eve the ramifications of what they had done: while they still bore the image of God, they had lost their original grace (the technical, fancy term is preternatural grace) and the ability to pass this on to their children. Humanity now had to suffer pain, sin, ignorance, and death. God, however, was not going to let this be humanity’s fate. Even though God was hurt enormously by this sin—His beloved children had turned away from Him!—He would not let this result stand. God had a plan to redeem us and to save us. In Genesis 3:15, God said:
“I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
They will strike at your head,
while you strike at their heel.” (NABRE)
This plan culminated in the life of Jesus Christ, the Divine Son of God who became one of us, a human being, for our sake. Jesus, the offspring of Mary, the New Eve, is the one who struck that mortal blow to Satan’s head. Sin and death entered the world because of Satan, but Jesus Christ conquered sin and death. Jesus Christ destroyed them through his Passion, Death and Resurrection, rendering Satan’s power over us ineffective. This was Jesus’s mission all along: to destroy death. By destroying death, He opened the pathway to Heaven.
In the Gospel today, we hear of Jairus, a synagogue official. His daughter is on her deathbed. I’m sure he tried every remedy of which he could think to save her. We also hear of a woman suffering from hemorrhages. She has spent all her wealth and tried everything, but nothing works. She is also, somewhat more slowly, dying. For her, the situation gets even worse, because her sickness makes her “unclean;” therefore, she is cut off from the worship community. She is alone and without support. Nothing has worked for her or for Jairus. They are in desperate situations. They have one last hope: a man called Jesus. They have heard that Jesus can heal them, and they seek him out. They believe that he can solve their problems. They have faith that he can do what they have heard.
Imagine: the woman reaches out to touch Jesus. There is a huge crowd of people mobbing Jesus. She somehow makes her way through the crowd to Jesus, and then is finally close enough to reach out and just brush the tassels on his clothes. Immediately, Mark says, she was healed. Her faith saved her. Jesus doesn’t stop there. He knows that she has been cast out of the community. He calls her “daughter” and tells her to “go in peace.” How much joy and peace must have been in her heart at that moment? She had encountered God’s love face to face, and was healed in body and soul.
Imagine: Jairus receives the news that his daughter has died. Jesus tells him not to fear. The mourners are already gathered at the home, and they ridicule Jesus. He casts the naysayers out, and tells Jairus’s daughter to stand up. Immediately, Mark says, she rose from bed and walked around. Jairus’s faith saved his daughter. Jesus doesn’t stop there. He told them to give her something to eat—she was most certainly hungry! God knows even our most basic physical needs. How much joy and peace must have been in Jairus’s heart? He had encountered God’s love face to face. His daughter—and he too—was healed in body and soul.
We must never be afraid to ask God for what we need: He loves us more than we can imagine. He wants us to bother him. He wants us to tell him everything. He wants us to have faith that he will answer us in the best way possible. God wants us to have a deep, personal relationship with him: a deep, personal relationship like the Father, Son and Holy Spirit have; a deep, personal relationship like a husband and wife have; a deep, personal relationship like the best of friends have. We develop this relationship through prayer and through striving to live God’s will. Over time, this relationship will grow. It will result in a living faith in our hearts, a living faith which help us to reject our fear and entrust everything to God. This living faith, when it grows, can conquer death itself, and lead us into Heaven, where we will once again live in perfect happiness, peace, and joy, and where we will gaze on the glorious presence of God.
Note: This homily was posted on July 4, 2018. It was delivered on July 1, 2018, so I have modified the posting date to match the delivery date.
Today’s Readings
July 1, 2018
13th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B
Wisdom 1:13-15, 2:23-24; Psalms 30:2, 4, 5-6, 11, 12, 13; 2 Corinthians 8:7, 9, 13-15; Mark 5:21-43
Reflection for the Seventh Monday of Ordinary Time / Year I
Today’s Readings: Sir 1:1-10; Ps 93:1ab, 1cd-2, 5; Mk 9:14-29
“O faithless generation, how long will I be with you? How long will I endure you?”
The disciples could not drive the demon out of the boy, because they did not have the faith. Jesus, Peter, James and John are just coming down the mountain from the Transfiguration—an intense experience of prayer for Jesus, and an intense confirmation of faith for Peter, James and John. The other disciples, though, weren’t there. They had faith, but not enough.
Jesus, after casting out the demon, explains to his disciples that prayer is required for this sort of demon to be driven out. But Jesus just said they did not have the faith necessary. Which one is it? Both. Prayer and faith work together. Prayer increases our faith, and faith improves our prayer.
This faith can allow us to do wondrous things, Jesus says it could move mountains, but it also can give us something even great: true understanding—the ability to see things as they are. Seeing things as they are—this is what wisdom is.
When has the story of the wise sage on the mountain ever ended with him telling us to do something in order to fix some problem? The wise sage helps his visitors to see clearly what they already know, what they already have seen in an obscured way.
Faith and prayer helps us to see God, who created all things and gave humanity wisdom. If we have a relationship with Him, properly established through prayer and faith, then we will be able to see other people and the material things of this world as they truly are.