Giving Leads Unexpectedly
Dec 1, 2021 • Fr. Matt
In No Man Is an Island, Thomas Merton wrote:
We do not exist for ourselves alone, and it is only when we are fully convinced of this fact that we begin to love ourselves properly and thus also love others. What do I mean by loving ourselves properly? I mean, first of all, desiring to live, accepting life as a very great gift and a great good, not because of what it gives us, but because of what it enables us to give to others.
That last sentence has been sticking with me and worked its way into my homily last weekend. This idea, that life is a gift and is good because of what it enables me to give to others is beautiful and at the heart of what it means to be a Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ. Our Lord called us to follow him and to make disciples—followers—of all nations. To follow Christ, we must imitate the way he lived. Christ gave himself to us as a gift. Good and loving in his very nature, He did not live to receive but to give.
When we seek to become closer to Christ and to follow him, we begin our journey by imitating him, by seeking to give ourselves back to God by giving ourselves to those around us. At the core of our human nature, we recognize that we need other people to complete us. I don’t think it’s too far of a stretch to say that we human beings are hard wired to give ourselves to those around us. When this giving is guided by our God who loves us, this gift of self allows us to become the beautiful saintly people God created us to be, the holy ones who will spend eternity in blissful love united with the only One in existence who can satisfy our desires.
When I reflect on my own life in the context of these ideas, I recognize that those moments where I give most completely of myself are the moments when I am most at peace with myself. Every time I have given something up, God has supplied what I need. When I was first starting to take my faith in God personally and seriously, I was not able to make many time or talent commitments due to work and, well, the fact that I didn’t really want to, but I talked myself into tithing 10% right off the bat. It stung a bit, honestly, but I never wanted for anything. I began to understand that God is never outdone in generosity, and over time became more willing to show up for things at Church, to give my time to events, to get to know my fellow parishioners. I was always busy doing something for the people around me; somehow, I always had enough time to recharge and to spend time with my friends and family too. Eventually, I realize that just giving in these ways wasn’t enough. God was asking me to dedicate my entire life to giving myself away to Him and to His people.
Reading this, you may be thinking, “Wait. Is Fr. Matt really saying that practicing stewardship led him to the priesthood?” The answer? Yes. If I hadn’t learned through the practice of stewardship that giving unselfishly of everything I could, even when it stings a little, brings about peace and contentment, then I would never have ended up where I am today. I would never have had my heart broken by the pain of a penitent I’ve never met, but who is suffering terribly from sin. I would never have experienced the absolute joy of welcoming a new child into the Church. I would never have dragged myself out of bed at 5 a.m. to go to comfort a heartbroken family who can’t bear to let the coroner take their son away. I would never have learned to love God and his children like I do now.
When I started giving back to God, I never would have expected where He would lead me.
Fathers as The Spiritual Leader
Fathers & the Seed of Faith
Jun 17, 2018 • Fr. Matt
Father recently planted a garden at the rectory. It looked like a lot of work! First, he picked a good spot. It had to get lots of sunlight, and be far enough from the tree to discourage birds and squirrels from stopping by for lunch. Next, he prepared the ground. He cleared the grass and weeds. He tilled the soil, making it loose and fresh for new plants. Then came the planting. That part is pretty straightforward — you put the plants in the ground. Now, though, it’s up to the plants to grow. No human can tell a plant to grow, or even explain how a plant “knows” to grow. They just do. Father can help those plants. He can fertilize them, make sure they’re watered, put in trellises for the tomatoes, but he can’t make them to grow. He just watches them grow, like the man in Jesus’s parable today. Slowly but surely, the plants grow. Now, Father could also hurt the plants’ chances of growing by not watering them, by letting weeds overtake them, or by planting too many plants in the space, but he also can’t make them stop growing. Such a plant could overcome the odds against it and survive.
Paul says to the Corinthians today that “we walk by faith.” This faith is a gift from God. Faith is one of those seeds God plants inside us. It will do its best to grow in us whether we want it to or not, but like a plant in a garden we can nurture it or hinder it throughout our lives. Paul tells us that when we die each of us will “appear before the judgment seat of Christ.” Christ will ask us for the harvest, for the fruits of the faith that he planted inside of us. Our answer decides whether we go to an eternal reward or punishment. Our actions in this earthly life have such an important effect on our eternal life, the stakes are so very high; so, we must do our best to nurture the gifts God gave us. We must let our seed of faith grow into the big mustard plant Jesus talks about, that Ezekiel’s majestic cedars, or into the big ‘ole tomatoes that I hope show up in Father’s garden! To do this, to nurture the seeds of faith in ourselves and let them grow, we must live virtuously and morally; we must pray; and, we must make use the sacraments God gave us. All these things, especially the sacraments, give us grace. Grace is kind of like Miracle-Gro® for the seed of faith that God has planted inside of us.
Nurturing these seeds of faith is a good thing, but nurture is not the only part of gardening. The ground must be made ready. Jesus left these steps out, but he assumes that we will know these things. This leads to some questions. Who prepares us for receiving the first seed of faith? Who clears out the weeds and junk that’s in the way of God planting these seeds in our soul? Who tills the ground in our souls to prepare us for the gifts God wants to give us? Who nurtures our faith when we are too young to do it ourselves, and then teaches us how to nurture it? God certainly plays a part, but these critical activities are entrusted to a couple of very important people in everyone’s life: our parents.
On Fire With Faith
Pentecost: Responding to the Holy Spirit
May 20, 2018 * Fr. Matt * His first homily
Two thousand eighteen years ago, maybe give or take a few, something incredible happened. All the conditions were just right for God to do something incredible. God became man. He became one of us. He was no longer content to remain on the sidelines and watch us fall into sin, so he entered into history and showed us not only his love but also what each of us is capable of being. We celebrate this event every Christmas, bringing it back into our minds and hearts, and truly entering into the event of God becoming one of us.
We humans, though, we are a “stiff-necked people” in the words of Moses. We don’t like someone coming to tell us that we’re wrong. So we rejected God’s incredible attempt to show us his love, and we demanded for Jesus to be crucified, because we didn’t understand who he was. We relived this event 53 days ago, on Good Friday.
God was not content to let that be the end of things. Even though we demanded his death, he still loved us. He showed us that death was not the end for us, and that we are called to so much more. 50 days ago we relived this Resurrection, when Jesus rose from the dead. After Easter, Jesus spent 40 additional days with his apostles and his disciples, teaching them and living with them. (40 is a really important Bible number, but I won’t get into that right now.) At the end of that time, 10 days ago… ish…, Jesus ascended into Heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father. Jesus left his mission to his apostles and his disciples: he left it to us. At his Ascension, Jesus sent us all out to spread the Good News and to baptize all the nations, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
But he didn’t leave us empty-handed.
The Breaking of the Bread
Reflection for Easter Wednesday
• Fr. Matt
The disciples walking to Emmaus didn’t recognize Jesus, even when he was telling them about all of salvation history and how he had fulfilled it. It was only in the Eucharist when they recognized Jesus, through the actions of taking, blessing, breaking, and giving the bread. What is most interesting to me is that these are the same four actions we see in every account where Jesus feeds a multitude. These are also the same words that the priest uses in the Mass during the Eucharistic Prayer, where we recognize Christ in his Eucharistic Presence.
With Easter, everything has changed.
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Happy Easter!
Sometimes I am asked whether Christmas or Easter is the most important holiday for the Church. People are often surprised by how quickly I answer: Easter. Everything in our Church is oriented toward Easter. It was the first and the most important feast celebrated by the Apostles after our Lord ascended into Heaven. St. Paul writes of the Easter mystery, “If Christ has not risen, then our preaching is groundless, and your faith, too, is groundless. Worse still, we are convicted of giving false testimony about God; we bore God witness that he had raised Christ up from the dead, and he has not raised him up, if it is true that the dead do not rise again. If the dead, I say, do not rise, then Christ has not risen either; and if Christ has not risen, all your faith is a delusion; you are back in your sins. It follows, too, that those who have gone to their rest in Christ have been lost. If the hope we have learned to repose in Christ belongs to this world only, then we are unhappy beyond all other men.” (1 Cor 15:14-19, Knox translation)
Without Easter, our faith is a delusion. Without Easter, we have no hope.
With Easter, everything has changed.
With Easter, all is made new. With Easter, our faith no longer ends in death but opens into eternal life. Why?
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