5th Sunday in Ordinary Time (B) – February 4, 2024

St. Paul – Lyons, KS

Job 7:1-4, 6-7; Psalm 147:1-6; 1 Corinthians 9:16-19, 22-23; Mark 1:29-39

GET ALL MATERIALS FOR “RECONNECTING…” INCLUDING HOMILY HANDOUTS, DEEPER DIVE VIDEOS, AND DISCUSSION GUIDES HERE.

Reconnecting…

Welcome to week two of “Reconnecting…” If you weren’t here last week, or are visiting—last week we officially began our 10-week series called “Reconnecting…”—which is a dive into our life of prayer, a 10-week experience aimed at developing a life-changing practice of prayer. Like we starting reflecting on last week, we all come to Mass, we all believe God exists, we all know that “the church thing” is important—great! But, our experience, the lived experience of our connection with God—that can often leave something to be desired. When our connection with water or electricity or the internet is lost—we feel that, immediately! Our experience of that connection is real, and visceral. But is it that way with God, our connection with God? A real, vital and personal relationship with the living and true God, this life of prayer—this has the capacity to transform our lives! transform everything! But, like St. Augustine faced—there are often challenges to this.

So the question we want to answer today is simple. What keeps us on the outside? What is preventing us from truly opening the door of our heart to God? And I really think it boils down to just three things. Three simple, but real things.

Challenge 1: Sin

The first one (which it’s kind of a “duh”) is sin. Sports analogies are overrated, but just to keep it simple: if you go to a trainer and keep complaining about how you’re training really hard—you run, lift weights, get good sleep—you’re doing all of this but not getting results—what’s the first question he’s going to ask? Your diet, exactly. He’s going to ask you what you’re eating. And if you say, “Well, I eat at McDonalds for breakfast, and lunch…and dinner…and for a midnight snack…”—what’s the problem?

Ok. So it pretty much goes without saying, but I’ve discovered that I actually have to say it: if we want to develop this real, vital and personal relationship with God, this life of prayer, we have to address our sin. Not, “You have to be perfect, never sin ever again before God…,” no. But all the spiritual writers will tell you, the first part of the spiritual journey is this: turning from sin. It’s the story of the Prodigal Son. The Prodigal Son is out living a life of dissipation: booze, food, entertainment, loose women. He has to turn from this and return home before anything else.

So yeah, we all struggle with sin. And God doesn’t say, “Well, once you’re perfect we’ll talk,” no! But let’s not pretend. And specifically, we’re talking about grave matter, sins that destroy charity in the human heart, sins that cut us off from the life of God. So like Ten Commandment stuff, the Capital Sins or what some people call the Seven Deadly Sins. So briefly, some of the common ones we’re more likely to run into: idolatry (so placing people or things above God—we’ve talked about this); getting involved in the occult, like palm readers, horoscopes, new age weirdness; deliberately missing Mass on Sundays; sacrilege, especially by receiving Communion when we haven’t been to Confession and have these unconfessed sins on our soul; gravely dishonoring our parents; hopefully not murder, but there’s a lot that’s a subset of murder, like actively supporting abortion, or encouraging or paying for others to get an abortion, abusing our body through drugs or alcohol or food; a misuse of our sexuality, whether that’s adultery, or sex outside of marriage, pornography and masturbation, homosexual acts, or very common for married couples now, intentionally sterilizing yourself either through contraception or other medical procedures; of course things like stealing, or taking advantage of employees; lying or lying under oath; lusting after someone else’s spouse or their stuff. That’s just Ten Commandments stuff.

Now timeout: you all know me. You know I’m not some fire-and-brimstone preacher. I’m not one to stand up here and yell about this stuff. But we do need to be frank about it. And God’s mercy is boundless—like the Prodigal Son we simply have to return to the Father, and the Father is waiting for us with open arms! So if that’s you, get to Confession! I know it’s hard, I know it’s embarrassing. I go at least once a month, and I still feel that too. But don’t hold back any more. Come talk to me, I’ve heard it all, I have yet to yell at someone in Confession. And if you are having that thought right now that, “Nah, I don’t really need that. I’m good”—that’s the voice of the Enemy. That’s not you, or your highly sophisticated understanding of Scripture and Theology, no. That’s the Enemy, the one who hates you, who wants to do anything to keep you from returning to the Father. Don’t listen to him. The Father is waiting with open arms: go to Him.

Challenge 2: Distractions

Ok, so challenge number one is sin. Challenge two. Nationwide, about 10% of all car accidents that result in fatalities, a little over 3,000 people lose their lives and over 300,000 people are injured every year in the United States because of…what? Distracted driving, yeah. And percentage-wise, it’s much higher in Kansas. Kansas ranks number two in the nation for fatalities caused by distracted driving! Over 20% of car crashes that resulted in fatalities were due to distracted driving. And it’s not just driving—we’re obviously guilty of distracted driving. But I think we’re also very guilty of distracted living. We drive that way because we live that way. We know better, but we’ve trained ourselves because that’s the way we live.

And this distraction and inability to sit still and just be—this accepted modern norm here in the Western world, it didn’t start with the iPhone. a) In 1370, the first public clock was set up in Germany. And historians say that that was a turning point in history. People used to wake up with the sun rising and go to bed with its setting. There was a rhythm to life, with longer days in the summer and shorter days in the winter—but in 1370, time began to be managed artificially. Time shifted from a limit governing our lives to a resource used as we saw fit. “Time is money”—that became a thing. b) Second, historians point to the invention of the light bulb, 1879—which, among other things, cut way back on our sleep time. Prior to the light bulb, the average American slept ten hours a night—ten! But then everything else came along: A/C, microwaves, dishwashers, laundry machines. Everyone thought we were going to be the most leisurely people in history because of this stuff! In the 60’s, a Senate subcommittee predicted that by the 80’s, the average American would work 22 hours a week for only 27 weeks a year because of all the leisure time this new technology would free up. In reality? The average time people spend on leisure (true leisure) continues to decrease. Technology has continued to save us time—that’s true—but they misjudged how we’d use that time. c) How have we used that time? Well, ironically in 2007, we started carrying a device that gave us that very data: the iPhone. By 2016, the average person used their phone two and a half hours a day. In 2019, three years later, the number had already doubled to over five hours a day. Now, in 2024, that number sits at about 7 hours a day. That’s almost a full work day…each day.

And instead of slowing down and using technology to free up more time for leisure, we now suffer from what mental health professionals call “hurry sickness.” We are constantly rushing and filled with anxiety. 1 in 5 adults have clinical levels of anxiety. “Hurry,” “busy,” “anxiety”—it’s the new normal. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: the greatest enemy of our spiritual life, our relationships with God, is hurry, busyness—distracted living. Most people are just too busy to live emotionally healthy and spiritually vibrant lives. And again, I’m not just guessing! There was a study of 20,000 people done a few years ago—so a pretty good sample size. And the conclusion of this study? “Busyness is the major block in most people’s relationship to God”—and our relationship with God is called what? Prayer. So “busyness” is the major block to true prayer. “We pray as we live, because we live as we pray”—that’s the official Church teaching (CCC 2725). So if we live a life of distraction, we shouldn’t be surprised when our prayer is—distracted.

So what’s the antidote? What do we do? We need to recognize a simple fact: God is eternally present. God didn’t happen last Sunday, he’s not going to happen next Sunday. God simply is. It’s in the present moment that we’re going to find God. Our problem? We are typically not present to the present. (I’ll say that again.) Because we live such distracted lives, we are typically not present to the present. (Have you ever been talking to someone, and they’re there, but they’re a million miles away?) Ok. God only exists, and eternally exists, in the now.

Because of our distracted lives, we’re constantly worried about missing out on the next thing. That’s why it’s so hard for us to commit to things: we’re worried and anxious about what else might come up. But think of it this way: “What am I missing by missing the now?” If missing the now in driving can literally be fatal, should we be surprised that missing the now in life and in our relationship with God is any different? The shift is to reclaim the present moment, which will probably mean saying “no” to certain things so we can say “yes” to what is most important.

Challenge 3: Ego

So challenge one: sin. Challenge two: distraction, distracted living. Challenge three. Poland had a rough beginning to the 20th century. Historians say that Poland is the country that lost World War II twice: first to the Nazis, then to Communism. And as a boy, this is what Pope Saint John Paul II grew up in. But when he returned to Poland for the first time as pope, and the people were still being crushed under Communist rule—John Paul II showed up and said, “You are not who they say you are. Let me remind you of who you are.” In a culture where the people were being pushed toward sin, toward distraction, toward godlessness, John Paul II reminded them of who they truly are. And during his homily, the people responded and began to shout, “We want God. We want God.” Over and over and over.

And that’s true! We want God. We’re wired for God. We can’t turn that off. BUT—but we can easily spend our days focused on? On me. Life is about me. Because think: do you want God, or do you want what God can do for you? Do you want God, or do you want a genie in a bottle that can grant your wishes? Challenge three: the third challenge I am going to face is me, the challenge you will face is you; it’s our ego. Look at how you live your other relationships: Do you want your wife, or do you want your wife to make you a sandwich and take care of the kids? Do you want your wife, or what your wife can do for you? And so think: do I want God, or do I just want my own personal genie? I’ve watched parents tell their kids,“The world doesn’t revolve around you”—and I laugh, because I hear parents say this, and then I watch those same parents (by their actions) say, “The world doesn’t revolve around you…but it does revolve around me.” I’m guilty too!

Many, many people tell me that they stopped praying or stopped going to church because “God wasn’t listening to me.” (And I get it: we go through painful experiences, and there are situations where we cry out to God and it seems like He doesn’t listen or doesn’t care—and I’m not trying to deny or minimize that experience. And we can talk about that.) But—but at its foundation, listen: “God didn’t listen to me.” Sister Ruth Burrow (who actually just passed away recently)—Ruth Burrows was a Carmelite nun, an expert on the spiritual life. And she said that we often face difficulties in prayer, and frustration with our prayer for one reason. And she says that we should ask ourselves one question: “‘What do I really want?’ and [try] to listen honestly to the answer. We can be fairly certain,” she says, “that [the answer to what we really want] will be some kind of ego-satisfaction. The difficulty is that we do not want Him. We want our own version of Him… We may want a ‘spiritual life’, we may want ‘prayer’, but we do not want God.” Woof. Guilty! We want results from our prayer, progress; we want to “get something” out of it! But as Sister Ruth tells us, “True prayer means wanting GOD not ego…We have to be willing to let go of our own criterion of what prayer is…Real prayer lets go of the controls…Learning true prayer means…dying to egotism, self-determination and self-achieving, and letting God recreate us in love in a way that only God can do” (Burrows, Essence of Prayer).

“Jesus went off to a deserted place, where he prayed”

These are the challenges we face: sin, distraction, and me (my ego). The antidote: Confession, recommitting to the present moment, and humility. What we see modeled by Jesus in the Gospels is just this. He is sinless; like us in all things but sin. Jesus faces distractions too, and so, like the Gospels say today, “Rising very early before dawn, he left and went off to a deserted place, where he prayed.” Even Jesus had to practice saying “no.” And as Jesus’ entire life demonstrates, his life was lived in utter humility: his life wasn’t about him, but about the Father and about us.

If we want this real, vital and personal relationship with the living and true God, this life of prayer, this deep connection with God—great! Yes! But our response, our side of the equation—we have to face some very real challenges. And yet, when we begin to address them, even just become more aware of them and the fact that they’re the things holding us back, then we are well on our way to this life-changing, transformative connection with God.