Pilgrim's Prologue

If you ask nicely, I will post pics of my minecraft convent

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From the Letter to St. James this weekend:

Where do the wars

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Why would Jesus warn people not to tell others that he’s the Christ? Isn’t that counter productive?

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Jesus dismantles the Pharisee’s argument in one sentence…a sentence which, as usual, makes no sense in English.

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Farewell Homily to Ss. Peter and Paul, Naperville

9 June 2024

—

What is the greatest tragedy in human history? Besides, of course, for the day that Steve Bartman caught that ball at Wrigley Field in 2003 and the comparably awful moment when the first person decided that coconut should be included in desserts.

Last night, I was in the mood for some hard-hitting research…you know, a real high-octane academic enterprise; so I asked ChatGPT the question: “What is the greatest tragedy in human history?”

Here’s what it said:

Determining the greatest tragedy in human history is inherently subjective and depends on various perspectives, including the scale of human suffering, historical impact, and the legacy left behind. Several events stand out due to their immense human toll and lasting effects:

(Then, it listed things that probably came to your mind)

World War I&II, The Holocaust, The Black Death, The Atlantic Slave Trade (and, really, slavery anywhere at anytime), the Great Chinese Famine, Genocides anywhere, etc.

What is the greatest tragedy in human history? Is there something that each of these have in common – perhaps a thread that runs through each of them?

Genesis describes it this way: “The woman saw that the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eyes, and the tree was desirable for gaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.” (Gen 3:6)

Sin. Sin is the greatest tragedy in human history. Not just in Eden, wherever that is, but here in Naperville – here in our hearts and minds, in our everyday living: when we give in to the urge of sin which has us prefer worldly wealth, pleasure, power, and honor over all that we know to be good and beautiful and true, we participate and re-engage the greatest tragedy in the history of the world. These desires for wealth, pleasure, power, and honor represent the core of all interpersonal and intrapersonal conflict; “I want what I want and I want it right now.” Even though everything we could have needed and wanted had already been given to us by the one who knew us better than we know ourselves, because he’d created us.

So that’s the tragedy. What is the greatest shock in the history of the world? Again, the first reading today: “When they heard the sound of the Lord God walking about in the garden in the cool of the day, the man and his wife hid themselves from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. The Lord then called to the man and asked him: where are you?” (Gen 3:8-9)

Where are you, O man? Adam, my son. My creation. Where are you?

The Lord – the creator, the giver of everything who’d just been betrayed in the most spectacular way – returns first and completely by his own will – and speaks the words that have the ability to pierce any heart that is truly awake: “where are you?”

Adam replies, “I heard you in the garden, but I was afraid, because I was naked, so I hid.”

In the person of his Son, Jesus, who is our model for life precisely because of his obedience to what the Father asked of him – for this reason we call Jesus the “new Adam” – God the Father continues to walk through the sin-soaked landscape of our dark world here below, and with the same composure and love as God in the garden he calls out, “where are you?” Adding encouragement, of course: “Come to me, all you who labor! All you who mourn! All you who are persecuted! All you meek and pure and sad and hungry. I want to give you rest.”

—

I’m not sure whether or not I’m allowed to tell you this, so let’s just keep it between us, okay? Three years ago, when I was still on the Priest Personnel Board, I was given a choice at the very last meeting of the year between two parishes: a parish named after an archangel in a town very close to here that starts with a W and rhymes with “heaton” and Ss. Peter and Paul in Naperville.

Peter and Paul, no question. For me, Peter and Paul has never been a question. It’s has always been a “yes” for me. Two years ago, when I was going to be full time at Chesterton, they wanted me to move. I told them no. When the bishop called me in April to tell me I’d be going to Visitation, I did my Fr. DeSalvo impression and tried to convince him he’d called the wrong number. Alas.

For as long as I can remember, at least in my adult life, Peter and Paul has been a refuge for me. The quiet place to pray after getting obliterated by Finite Math at North Central; the late night adoration chapel visits in 2011 when my roommate in Patterson Hall was blasting his music; altar serving as a college student at the Sunday evening Mass; being invited by Deacon Ron and Brendon Heffron to altar serve at Midnight Mass in 2010 even though this wasn’t technically my parish.

That Midnight Mass changed the course of my life. I was sitting over there where these young men are sitting now. As the Gospel of Christmas was being proclaimed, I was looking toward the back of the Church at the Christ the King window, and I heard someone calling my name. “Ryan! Ryan!” I was the incense guy, so I thought maybe I’d overdone it and was just hearing things. Mass continued, and at the moment of the epiclesis – when Fr. Milota put his hands over the bread and wine and said “Send you Spirit on these to make them Holy.” I heard it again: “Ryan. Ryan!” This time, I knew who it was.

Now, I get to say those words of consecration and look at that Christ the King window every single day

If you listen to or read any versions of my vocation story that I gave while I was still in seminary, you’ll hear me say that it was at that moment that I perceived Jesus was calling me to the priesthood. But I don’t believe that’s true anymore.

Vocations are planted in hearts at the moment of baptism, so the Lord had been calling me to priesthood for my entire life. But that moment on Christmas night was something else, something – believe it or not – much more personal and important.

“Where are you?” He was saying. “Make me King of your heart. Come, follow me.”

That night was like an Automated Internal Defibrillator – a true shock of grace, an invasion of God’s love and life into my heart and mind and it caused me to ask a very important question for the first time in my life: “where am I?”

And I realized that at that moment, I was an English major with an emphasis in writing and Secondary Education, but that I really hated everything I was reading and writing about. I knew I wanted to teach, but I could not see myself teaching high school English as I planned. I was 18, and only just barely beginning to wake up to the idea that the world is insane, and really scary, and will eat me alive if I go through it blind and numb.

The way of the world – the way of sin and death – is painfully boring. It’s so predictable; you all perceive this when you come into the confessional and lament that you are confessing the same things you always confess. There is nothing new or beautiful in a world captivated by sin and death. That is why Pope John Paul II was able to topple Communism by reminding the people of Eastern Europe that it is “Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are attracted; it is He who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise. It is He who urges you to shed the masks of of a false life.”

Later on in this Mass, we will hear one of my favorite songs, The Summons. Nick – I really don’t care which verses you sing but you must sing verse 4: “Will you love the ‘you’ you hide if I but call your name? Will you quell the fear inside and never be the same? Will you use the faith you’ve found to reshape the world around, through my sight and touch and sound in you and you in me?”

Because when Jesus calls out to you, “Where are you?” He really wants to know! Where are YOU? Not the version of you that everyone knows, or you wish you were, or you’re trying to be. But you, as you. Where are you? And sometimes life throws these curveballs that are so unpredictable, so disruptive, so dang hard that we really have no choice but to stop everything and dig very deeply to find out precisely where and who we are.

But what comes on the other side of that? The other side of the searching and suffering? The other side of that heart-piercing question?

What Paul told the Corinthians today he speaks also to us: “Everything indeed is for you, so that the grace bestowed in abundance on more and more people may cause the thanksgiving to overflow for the glory of God.”

Everything is for you. The length and width and height and breadth of the human experience are yours when you are hidden in Christ Jesus. “For this momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.”

What else does this mean except that in Jesus, because of Jesus, with Jesus…everything is different. That it is possible to live a life without fear, without condemnation, without judgment, without anxiety.

If 25 years from now, you’re out walking the dog or watering the plants or in the delivery room or presenting to the board or changing your oil or walking to Sparrow; or maybe you’re locked up in jail or just leaving divorce court or reeling from the news of the diagnosis; or maybe you just dropped her off at college or starting a new job or learning to paint with watercolors in art therapy or watching an elderly Taylor Swift take the stage…if in the midst of your life, wherever it takes you – up, or down, or in between and all around – if you happen to remember a certain 32 year old priest who reminds you of George Costanza and Woody Allen, I hope you remember his quirks and faults less than you remember what he told you: that with God all things are possible; that in Jesus, all things are bearable; and that in Christ, everything can be different, because everything is new. But you have to let yourself and your worldview be changed, which comes often through suffering.

When we get ordained, we all get very excited about bringing the Love of Christ to the whole world!!! I understand now that isn’t at all what Jesus is asking me to do. He never said anything to me about the whole world. As far as I know, he just asked me bring his love to Naperville as best as I could; and to receive his love from all of you as best as I could. It wasn’t perfect, but I think it turned out pretty good.

On July 1st, 2021 I took refuge once again at Ss. Peter and Paul, and on July 1st, 2024 I will say goodbye. For now, from the bottom of my heart, I just want to say “thank you.”

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St. Thomas Aquinas:

Since it was the will of God’s only-begotten Son that men should share in his divinity, he assumed our nature in order that by becoming man he might make men gods. Moreover, when he took our flesh he dedicated the whole of its substance to our salvation. He offered his body to God the Father on the altar of the cross as a sacrifice for our reconciliation. He shed his blood for our ransom and purification, so that we might be redeemed from our wretched state of bondage and cleansed from all sin. But to ensure that the memory of so great a gift would abide with us for ever, he left his body as food and his blood as drink for the faithful to consume in the form of bread and wine.

O precious and wonderful banquet that brings us salvation and contains all sweetness! Could anything be of more intrinsic value? Under the old law it was the flesh of calves and goats that was offered, but here Christ himself, the true God, is set before us as our food. What could be more wonderful than this? No other sacrament has greater healing power; through it sins are purged away, virtues are increased, and the soul is enriched with an abundance of every spiritual gift. It is offered in the Church for the living and the dead, so that what was instituted for the salvation of all may be for the benefit of all. Yet, in the end, no one can fully express the sweetness of this sacrament, in which spiritual delight is tasted at its very source, and in which we renew the memory of that surpassing love for us which Christ revealed in his passion.

—

O Sacred Banquet!

In which: Christ is received, the memory of his passion is renewed, the mind is filled with grace, and the pledge of future glory is given to us. Alleluia!

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A blessed Pentecost!!

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We continue to move through this Easter season, filled with gladness and fully aware of the magnitude of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. For weeks now, we’ve heard of the work and faith of the early Church through these readings from the Acts of the Apostles, and the second readings have filled us with practical wisdom and exhortations from Ss. Peter, Paul, and John the Beloved.

But if you’ve listened closely to the first readings from the Acts of the Apostles, you will notice that those early days of Easter joy were not without conflict. What did it mean to follow Christ? Was it only for Jews or for everyone? Did the Gentiles have to become Jews and then follow this new way within the context of Judaism or was the new covenant with Jesus something definitively new?

Today, we encounter one such difficulty: what do we do with Saul? “When Saul arrived in Jerusalem he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him, not believing he was a disciple.” Do you blame them? Not that long ago, he was persecuting Christians – pulling them from their homes in acts of public humiliation, even consenting to their murder – and now he’s here, supposedly as one of us?

Who is “us”, though? Who are we? Christianity goes horribly, horribly wrong, when we forget that we are a community of “Sauls” – all of us having strayed from God and from the message of the Gospel in little and big ways.

So forget about those worried about Saul, and let’s talk about Saul…and, thereby, let’s talk about you, and me.

“You are only as sick as your secrets. Jesus, on the cross, with arms outstretched and offering himself for you in love, says: let your secrets go.”

This is the difficult work of believing in Christ Jesus. So few of us really have access to the deepest places of our humanity, and generally this is because we are the ones who have locked those doors ourselves: out of fear of what might be there, or what we know is there, or, sometimes, out of fear of what we know is not there.

A person’s heart, his interiority, is meant to be his sanctuary and his sure refuge in a world consumed by the madness of war and sin. But so many of us – from the oldest to the youngest, from the holiest monk on the mountain to those just arriving at the age of reason – feel condemned by what we find or don’t find in there.

We find so much familiarity in that marvelous song from the band, The Oh Hellos:

I have made mistakes, and continue to make them

And oh my heat, how can I face you now?

Did you catch the second reading today? “We shall reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.” (1 John 3:19-20)

Everyone has hurts in their hearts, and most of the time the secrets that we carry around with us are the source of so much unresolved pain or grief that the very thought of revealing those secrets to our friends or parents, or even to God, is terrifying.

This is the difficult work of believing in Christ Jesus: to sit in silence before our secrets, before the very difficult realities of our human situation, especially before the hurts we have endured and those we have caused. Sitting before these things and believing the lie that because of them we are condemned and without hope is actually very easy.

The truly difficult work of believing in Christ Jesus is the work of looking at everything as it is, all the secrets, all the ways we are tempted to give up God, all the ways our pride or envy or greed or sloth or lust or anger or gluttony has kept us shackled and sad, and to not give in to the voices that say “you are condemned”, “everything is hopeless”, “abandon hope ye who enter here.”

The truly difficult work is to sit before these things and, in utter bewilderment and with seemingly exclusive evidence to the contrary, hear that whisper of Jesus who says: “Come to me all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.” “Let your secrets go.”

Maybe over the course of these 40 days of prayer, penance, and almsgiving you will experience a profound and life-altering encounter with Jesus who loves you, and calls you to himself. But I don’t think this is ultimately the goal of Lent.

Easter is a privileged time, and we have to enter into it with reverence and seriousness. These days are a gift to us because in some sense they requires us to unlock those little doors inside, and take the big step of peering around inside, so that we might finally be able to go into the most secret places, wherein we have locked away the most secret things, and – again in utter bewilderment – look with a non-distracted and purified vision, and instead of seeing those gnarly secrets, we might be shocked to find the gaze of the Father staring back at us as the darkest places become flooded with light, and he says something like, “Now, in the light of the Risen Jesus, who has conquered your heart, let me show you who are, and tell you at what price you have been purchased, and remind whose you are.”

“In every believer flows the spring of the new glory. If we take this word seriously, faith is not easy. Everything in and around us contradicts it, often with arguments difficult to refute…We might be asked the embarrassing question, “whether the redeemed shouldn’t look more redeemed?”…The Christian himself must struggle to sustain the promise against his own not-too-convincing personal experience. This is what John means when he says that our true selves are yet hidden – not only to others, but to ourselves. Nevertheless, the intrinsic splendor is there and grows in spite of all weaknesses.” (Romano Guardini)

The old things you decided to give up during Lent, and the new things you have decided to take up; all your acts of penance and prayer; all your charitable acts and almsgiving; all of your sufferings and difficulties of those 40 days won’t heal you in themselves, and they’re not meant to. What power do getting up on time, eating more broccoli, not drinking pop, giving up Instagram, or only allowing 10 minutes a day on Snapchat have to heal you? None. Zero.

The point of it all is quiet you, to settle you, to redirect you; that all the ways we choose ourselves over God might be called out and abandoned; that all the things we do when we’re hiding from God, from each other, and from ourselves might be obliterated absolutely.

And what purpose does this quieting, redirecting, settling, and obliterating serve?

Simply, to reintroduce you to yourself so that you might (and maybe this time once and for all) believe that you are known and that you are loved, and that you are not your mistakes and regrets, and that because of your baptism there is a river of glory already flowing within you, and that you might believe you do have the courage to be open with yourself, your friends, and God and that you might hear – for the first time, even very faintly – the voice of Jesus who says: “you are only as sick as your secrets; let your secrets go.”

“We have lived in fear, and our fear has betrayed us;

And all this so we can say in simplicity, again with that incredible band, the Oh Hellos:

Hello, my old heart

Hello, my old heart

Hello, my old heart

Nothing lasts forever,

So rend those hearts, open them to God! Be true with yourself, be true with others. For freedom! For freedom!!

Here is my honest advice for entering more fully into prayer, and it is what I’m trying harder than ever before to do:

Remember that in this moment you are as old as you’ve ever been, and you’re as young as you’ll ever be. “I want to ask you…as best I can, to have patience about everything that is still unresolved in your heart; try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms. … Don’t look for the answers now: they cannot be given to you yet because you cannot yet live them, and what matters is to live everything.

“[This] is difficult, yes. But difficult things are what we are asked to do. Almost everything that matters is difficult, and everything matters.” (Ranier Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, Letter 4)

Let us pray.

“O God, what will you do to conquer the fearful hardness of our hearts? Lord, you must give us new hearts, tender hearts, sensitive hearts, to replace hearts that are made of marble and bronze.

You must give us your own heart, Jesus. Come, lovable heart of Jesus. Place your heart deep in the center of our hearts and enkindle in each heart a flame of love.

O Holy Heart of Jesus, dwell hidden in my heart, so that I may live only in you and only for you, so that, in the end, I may live with you forever.

Amen.”

(Prayer of St. Claude la Colombiere)

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