4th Sunday in Ordinary Time (B) – January 28, 2024

St. Paul – Lyons, KS

Deuteronomy 18:15-20; Psalm 95:1-2, 6-9; 1 Corinthians 7:32-35; Mark 1:21-28

Get all materials for “Reconnecting…” including homily handouts, deeper dive videos, and discussion guides HERE.

THE WHY: Our Disconnectedness

Do we all remember the “Great Water Main Break of 2021”? I had only been here a few months and all of a sudden…no water. And it happens on a Friday (of course!) So my mind immediately goes where all of yours went—toilets! “How in the world am I going to flush toilets when everyone shows up this weekend?” Seriously. First thought that came to my mind. We had a quinceañera, a baptism, and then of course all the normal weekend Masses. Close to four hundred people walking through the doors—no toilets. So we got some porta-pottys out here real quick. But then there was also just all of the other difficulties: showering, drinking water, brushing your teeth. Something we don’t even notice every day: water magically flowing from out faucets—until it’s not. But we survived it.

Or there was the great power outage back in August. Just a normal Friday night, until all of a sudden the power went out. You never really notice how dark the city is until all of the lights go out. I was at a family’s house when the power went out, and as I was driving home I noticed how difficult it was to navigate town without all of the street lights, porch light, lights in houses. It’s hard! Very disorienting. But again, we survived it.

But of course, the one that takes the cake: when MTC dropped coverage. December 20, 2023. No internet. Oh my goodness. The world almost ended. Everything in the world is ok, life is ok, we’re all going to make it—until the internet goes out. And people lost their marbles. But we survived it—barely.

But it’s these experiences of disconnection, these experiences we have of taking something absolutely for granted, not even hardly noticing it—until it’s not there. And when we realize it, we realize how absolutely essential it is. We realize how our lives don’t function without these “connections.” We recognize that nothing else in life is important until these “connections” are restored. Until… until we start talking about God.

Do me a favor: if you haven’t already, I want you to take out the sheet of paper that you got as you walked into the church today. On one side you’ll see an outline, more or less, of this homily. On the back side you’ll see page for “Notes.” And if you have a pen or pencil you’re free to write on this; yours to keep. This week it has a question that I would like you to answer. And don’t worry, we’re not going to collect these; this is for you. So be honest with yourself. Answer this question: How connected do I feel to God? Take a second, dial in on your body, on you. Maybe close your eyes. And there’s no shame here! No shame. Just ask: “How connected do I feel to God?”

No shame. Ok. Maybe the honest answer is: “I have no idea.” Or, “Really connected to God.” Or, “This is weird. What are we doing, Father?” If you asked me when I was growing up, I would have said, “Well we pray every day as a family, and we go to Mass every Sunday…” But no, not what do you do each day. How connected do you feel?

Again, think of our examples: the moment we are not connected to water, electricity, or internet—we feel that immediately. Literally. But this is the question: Do we feel that in our connection with God? Are we as aware, are we as attentive and perceptive about our connection with God? (And this is the big one) when I lose my connection with God, am I as frantic to recover it as my water, as my electricity, or my internet. Those things we can’t live without—is it the same with God?

THE WHAT: “Reconnecting…”

It’s because of these questions, because of these experiences that we all have, in our day-to-day lives—these are the reasons why we’ve put together this experience we’re calling, “Reconnecting…” It begins today and continues for the next ten weeks. And during these weeks, we want to take a look at these questions.

Why? Because these questions are driving at something essential to us: our relationship with God. I feel like I say it all the time, but: the goal here is not just to get you to believe the right things, or to make sure we go to Mass, or follow all of the rules. As the Church herself teaches us, the requirement for any of this to mean anything is that we are “in a vital and personal relationship with the living and true God” (CCC 2558). And this relationship is what we call prayer. These questions—these questions about being connected to God, being in relationship with him—are the root of what we call prayer.

Often, the objection I get is: “Well Father, God’s not listening to me! I don’t feel His presence. He doesn’t seem to care.” You know who said that too? My boy, St. Augustine. Augustine went through a long period of searching for God in his life. Decades! And finally, it hit him like a ton of bricks. This is what he realized, “Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you.” Beautiful. What is Augustine saying? “Late have I loved you”: not, “Late have I obeyed you,” or, “believed you exist,” or whatever, no. “Late have I loved you.” It’s a relationship he’s talking about. And then notice, where was God? In all these decades of searching—Augustine says, “outside…it was there that I searched for you.” Outside himself, in all of the pleasures and enticements of the world: in work, in sports, in sex, in food, in his career, in money. You name it, Augustine had it! “outside…it was there that I searched for you.” But what was the realization of Augustine? “You were within me.”

Anyone ever watch The Silence of the Lambs? Fantastic movie. Not one for kids. But there is this scene where Hannibal Lecter is helping the young F.B.I. agent to solve a murder. And in the course of this he’s helping her to understand why he kills, what it is the need that moves him to kill? And she lists off things: anger, acceptance, frustration. But no! As Lecter points out, “No, he covets. That is his nature. And how do we begin to covet? Do we seek out things to covet? No, we begin by coveting what we see every day.” Ok, a simple, but brilliant insight. What do we covet? How do we begin to covet, to desire? The stuff we see every day. That’s why ads exist, that’s why your phone is designed to attract your vision. Listen: we give our attention to these things. And what gets our attention, gets our attention. We start focusing on all of these other things. They consume us! Or better, they scatter our attention. And we miss the basic, most fundamental point: “You were within me.” God, the God of the Universe, the Creator of the stars—you don’t have to attract his attention, figure out a magical way to get him to notice you, pay attention, whatever. He is within you. As Augustine also says, “interior intimo meo”—closer to me than I am to myself. As the Church says, “[The heart] is the place of encounter.”

“Reconnecting…” isn’t going to be ten weeks of teaching you magical incantations to contact the Divine. “Reconnecting…” is ten weeks of discovering, attending to, encountering, “reconnecting” with this One who is already within, already closer to me than I am to myself. Why? Because this connection is more essential than water.

THE HOW: Engage and Just Do It

So in order to do this (as I’ve mentioned before), in order to help us do this vitally important work—we’re going to do this not only on Sundays at Mass, but also during the week as well, especially in the context of small groups. Each Sunday we will have the homily to help us do this. But then on Wednesday afternoon another video will be released, a “Deeper Dive”—it will be the Sunday homily, but then some extra comments (so then I also don’t need to preach for 30 minutes on Sunday—hooray!) And with that “Deeper Dive” video, and the small group discussion guide with it, you can gather with some of your friends, or your spouse and family, and begin to personally dive into all of this. Why? Because real transformation happens when you not only listen to something, but do the work, work through it, connect it to you experience.

THE DEEPER WHY: Theosis

Why, though? Why? What’s the goal? Again, there are a lot of things I could say. But my favorite way to say it is with a story, a story about two monks who lived a long time ago in the desert. One day the young monk goes to the old monk and says, “I say my prayers, I fast, I pray and meditate, I live in peace, I purify my thoughts. But I feel like I’m missing it. What else can I do?” [And that’s us. We have all of our external things we do.] Then the old monk stand up, and hold this hands like this, and fire starts to pour out of his hands. And he says, “Why not be utterly changed into fire?” (c.f., The Sayings of the Desert Fathers). What is he saying? You can have fire-powers? No. He’s saying you could be transformed! A true transformation could come about in you! We get caught up on the externals:“So we’re supposed to fast on Fridays? So we don’t fast on Fridays? How many rosaries a day do I have to pray?” We’re missing it!

Every Mass—and this prayer is said quietly so you don’t hear it—but during the Mass, when I pour the wine and water into the chalice, I say: “By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity.” Sharing in the divinity of Christ! That’s a true transformation. We could be caught up into this flame. Not by magical incantations, no. But by tapping into something already within.

So if I were to sum up the goal of “Reconnecting…” I would say it like this. The goal is to help those of us who have not yet responded to God’s invitation to enter into a life-changing relationship with Him—that is to say, for those of us who have not yet committed to a daily, authentic, sincere practice of the prayer of the heart to do so. And for those that have already made that decision, to experience a great renewal and encouragement in their practice of prayer. Simply put, the goal is that every single person here at St. Paul would deepen their relationship with Him through a commitment to daily prayer of the heart—and that in this prayer, our lives would be utterly transformed by God.

MY HOPE FOR YOU (AND ME): Utterly Changed

We are all in search of God. But you know what? You know the good news? God is first in search of you. He’s already on the move. And He’s already found you. “Behold,” Jesus says in the book of Revelation, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me” (Revelation 3:20). Mother Teresa wrote a reflection, putting these words on the lips of Jesus. It goes: “It is true. I stand at the door of your heart, day and night. Even when you are not listening, even when you doubt it could be Me, I am there: waiting for even the smallest signal of your response, even the smallest suggestion of an invitation that will permit Me to enter. And I want you to know that whenever you invite me, I do come.”

My hope—for myself, for you, for us in these next ten weeks—my hope is that we discover a renewed connection with God—true prayer. My hope is that we hear the knock of the Lord on the door of our heart, and open. My hope is that then every time we come to the Eucharist and say those words, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof”—it won’t just be words, but a real response, a true invitation of the Lord into our real heart. And our lives will utterly be transformed, utterly changed.

If only we give him our attention, we will hear: *knock knock knock*