Homily

I was reading an article in National Geographic magazine interviewing Dr. Vivek Murthy who was the last Surgeon General of the USA. He was praising the power of emotions and believes we need to cultivate emotional well-being by using the proper tools. Those tools are “sleep, physical activity, contemplative practices like gratitude and meditation and social connection as well.” In the same magazine, in an article about addiction, one doctor who specializes in therapy for addicts believes the best hope for treating addicts is by joining science with Buddhist meditation techniques. Two articles in the same magazine praising the effectiveness of meditation. And I thought, “what about prayer, the power of prayer?” Meditation is good; but prayer is almost never mentioned as a human activity and a force for good.

So why is that? Meditation is something you do, something that you control. But prayer has a different target. It acknowledges God. It’s not all about me. Prayer is about Him. I think of how little prayer is even mentioned in our modern society. Think about all the movies and TV programs you have watched these past few years. How often do you see people praying? You will sometimes see people in church for a wedding or a funeral, but they are not praying. They’re just attending a ritual. They’re observers not participants.

There are still a lot of believing Christians in the USA but as we look around we don’t see much evidence of their faith in our society. We’re supposed to be about the here and now, this world, this life, under my control as much as is possible. What are Sunday mornings for? Sleeping in late, walking the dog, taking it easy. The last time you saw anyone in a film or on TV going to church on a Sunday morning—when was that? So I suggest to you that because we live in a world where God is not acknowledged we need to do our part to be sure we are living a life that is very mindful of Him.

I was listening for a few minutes to local Catholic radio and the host was interviewing the parish council president of St. Mary’s Cathedral in Portland. The man said he wants the cathedral to become an important place in the life of Portlanders. He said, “When people are getting together to go to a movie I’d like them to meet in the cathedral courtyard, things like that. Pope Francis said that when people come to church we shouldn’t hit them over the head with doctrine, but instead we should be welcoming. We need to use the cathedral to make our voice heard in Portland society.” I was struck by how horizontal his thinking was. Couldn’t people, and shouldn’t people, come to the cathedral to pray instead of just as a meeting place? How are people being hit over the head with doctrine when they come to church? Here is a piece of doctrine—God loves you more than anything else in the universe. Is that a horrible message? And we need to make our voices heard in the community? I think the cathedral should be proclaiming the word of God to the community not some political or social agenda that we think should be endorsed. It seemed to me that this man sees little difference between coming to the cathedral for Mass or attending a meeting of the local Kiwanis Club.

Dear friends, we live in a very secular and secularizing world. That’s the way it is. But how sad for us if we let that mentality become our own way of thinking, our own way of living our lives. Do we neglect praying every day because we say we have no time, or because we are lazy, or because it is not pleasurable or entertaining? How often during the day do we turn our minds to Christ, or to the words of Scripture, or think about what our faith might be prompting us to say or do? Of all the celebrations we observe during a year, how many are rooted in faith? When was the last time we made a genuine prayer of thanks to God? How easy do we find it to skip Sunday Liturgy? Of all the people you interact with on a regular basis outside the home, what percentage of them do you think know that you’re Catholic? And what do you think about that?

The world has never and is never going to tell us that the Lord is God, Who loves us and wants us to live in His life. And these days, more and more, the world is telling us that normal people don’t really live lives of faith. We must make our own way in faith. We must pray every day. We must love God, and that does not require emotion, but rather faithfulness and devotion. We must love our neighbor for the sake of Christ and sometimes our neighbor is rather unlovable, but still we try, for the sake of Christ. We must find ways to remind ourselves that this is not our lasting home, and Christ is among us if we only look around to see Him. For example, what would happen if you got into the habit that every time you got into a car you said an “Our Father”? If you said a tiny prayer for the person in front of you at the checkout line, instead of checking out what they bought, mentally commenting on it as good or bad? What if you prayed for the other passengers when traveling on an airplane or a train? We need to find ways to remind ourselves that we are the sons and daughters of the Living God, not simply people passing through this world. Christ is among us, but He may not be seen if we are not looking for Him.