Shawn The Baptist - Sunday Scriptures

In the Old Testament story of the Exodus from Egypt referred to in our First Reading today, God's chosen people are safe from the Angel of Death. They were warned ahead of time of this approaching 10th plague. Having followed God's instruction, they watched the Angel of Death "pass over" their houses while the first-born of the Egyptians all died.

In a similar manner, Jesus gives us a warning in today's Gospel so that we too might be prepared and safe. In this case, it's not the Angel of Death who is coming but, rather, Jesus himself who will return in glory. On the one hand, Jesus tells us that we shouldn't have to be afraid of this day, "Fear not, little flock." Yet, he also warns us that we need to be prepared. If we put off turning away from our sins and taking seriously our relationship with God, then we will have much to fear when Jesus returns "at an hour you do not expect" and finds us unprepared.

"Teach us to pray!" This is the request Jesus gets in today's Gospel. When we think of learning to pray, we might call to mind learning our basic prayers when we were young: the Our Father, the Hail Mary, or and the Glory Be. Yet, it seems like Jesus is being asked something deeper than this. The apostles often saw Jesus in prayer, wrapped in intimate conversation with his Heavenly Father. This is what they wanted, to have that kind of relationship. More than just memorizing the words of set prayers, the essence of our prayer is a relationship with God.

One of the most important prayers, the one in which we are most in union with God, is the prayer of the Mass. I'm not referring to one specific prayer, but rather understanding the entire Mass as prayer. The Second Vatican Council called for the faithful to have "full, conscious, and active participation" in the Mass. Today's homily shows how this participation is primarily internal rather than external and gives some practical ideas of how to be more active in our prayer at Mass.

The famous motto of the Boy Scouts is "Be Prepared." This admonition is deliberately vague, meaning that a scout should be prepared appropriately for anything. New scouts (and leaders) often get the practical details of the this wrong by bringing way too much stuff on a campout. Experienced scouts know how to be prepared by bringing just the right gear and knowing what they should leave behind.

In today's Gospel, Martha seems incredibly prepared to welcome Jesus. She has thought of all the details of hospitality. Yet, Jesus reminds her that she is "anxious and worried about many things" and that "there is need of only one thing." She is so busy with preparations that she misses the most important thing, Jesus himself. Like a good scout, Mary knows the secret. She is prepared for exactly what she needs most at the moment. She knows to "keep the main thing the main thing" and leave other details aside for now.

So maybe today you need to do a little "shakedown" as we call it in the scouts and see how much extra stuff you're lugging around in your backpack. Put Jesus first and you'll be prepared for anything.

Normally, when a "Scholar of the Law" is mentioned in the Scripture, he's not held in a very favorable light, at least not by Jesus. Yet, in today's gospel, one such lawyer has a very interesting encounter with Jesus. Perhaps it's party because I just spent three years studying very hard to become a "scholar of the law," but I think this guy in the gospel today is actually one of the good guys. I think there are a few things we can learn from him. Today's homily focuses on three things this lawyer does that we all would do well to imitate.

Last week at the beginning of camp at the H. Roe Bartle Scout Reservation in Osceola, Missouri, I talked about the importance of loyalty, the ability to stick by our commitments. This week's homily at the end of camp focuses on the 10th point of the Scout Law, "A Scout is brave."

Loyalty and fortitude are great virtues for keeping us on track. However, it is possible to be loyal a committed to goals that are in fact pretty small. In order for loyalty to have it's greatest effect, we have to make big goals. We have to dare to do more than we thought we could. We have to be willing to take risks. For this, we need bravery.

On this Independence Day weekend, we especially note the bravery of those men and women who have fought in our armed forces defending our freedom. We look to the next generation and ask who might be willing to be brave enough to serve. Looking at our readings today, we most especially ask, "Who is brave enough to risk every, to leave it all, for Jesus?"

Many people today are afraid of making commitments. There seems to be a fear that if I commit to something then I'll be missing out on something else. Many express a desire to "keep all my options open." Yet, the secret to real happiness in life is not keeping our options open, but finding something worthy of a commitment and then giving it our all.

The ability to stick by our commitments is the essence of the second point of the Scout Law, "A Scout is Loyal." In this homily, given at the H. Roe Bartle Scout Reservation in Osceola, Missouri, I explore the importance of loyalty and the Christian virtue of fortitude.

One day as I was visiting the Library of Congress in Washington, I noticed an exhibit on "Thomas Jefferson's Bible." I was very intrigued to see this relic, looking forward to what margin notes the founding father might have written. Instead, I found that what Jefferson had done was to take the Bible from different languages and then literally cut it all to pieces so as to save only those parts that he thought "actually happened." Not making the "cut" were all of the miracle stories, including today's gospel. The result was a book he called "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth." Disappointed, I realized that this "bible" was really no Bible at all. It wasn't even "good news."

You see, Jesus wasn't just some moral teacher who's life we could imitate on some intellectual level of appreciation. You just can't take the "teaching" of Jesus and then ignore all those parts about being God and doing things only God can do. Perhaps even more than anything he taught, it was doing the miraculous that most attracted people to Jesus. Miracles revealed not ideas, but a person; they revealed who Jesus really was.

Given the important role that miracles played in attracting the first Christians, how strange would it be to think that we could come to know and follow Jesus without miracles. A lot of people today tend to think of the miracles of Jesus as something of the past, or just unnecessary, or even fake like Jefferson. Maybe this is why we don't experience them as much. We don't expect miracles, so we often don't see them and, worse, we don't even ask.

In today's homily, I look at the first reading and the Gospel, both just your average "raising from the dead stories" (ho hum) and then even consider a time that I prayed for a miracle and God sent me an angel.

It's the end of the world. And we can find some wisdom from an unexpected place, the recently deceased pop singer, Prince.

Do we minimize sin saying, "it's not really that bad?" Not only are we lying to ourselves, but we can't really experience the mercy of Jesus.

As Jesus goes into the desert to be tempted he encounters the same enemies that we face every day: the world, the flesh, and the devil.