Opening Mass for the Second Formation Term

We opened our second formation term with a celebration of the Eucharist presided over by Bishop Leonard Blair of the Diocese of Toledo. The rector preached. Bishop Blair also spoke at the annual Bishops' Dinner that evening.

This is the homily from Mass

They may look and see but not perceive,
and hear and listen but not understand

About whom does the Lord address these words?
About the senseless crowds?
About the occasionally equally senseless apostles?
About us, dazed as we are over our experiences of J-term and travel?

They may look and see but not perceive,
and hear and listen but not understand

And what are we to understand?
Precisely what are we to understand in this parable?
That we are the ground?
We are the earth, the soil that receives the living word and thus we must open our lives, our minds, our hearts, our spirits, our very bodies to the fruitfulness of God’s offer?

That we must have a receptive spirit to receive what God has in store for us?
Indeed, as we know, we are the ground and yet this open, this receptive spirit can so easily become entangled with the debris of worldly engagement.
We choke the Word so generously bestowed on us with thickets and brambles of our own fashioning
The brambles of personality, I am not fit for this vocation, I am not suited for that
The thickets of our past, my life has been so .. it doesn’t matter, any excuse will do
The thorns of our present sinfulness, becoming self-fulfilling prophets of our own downfalls
The nets of technology and the trappings of progress
I can hardly expect to gaze unreservedly at the face of the expectant Christ when my neck is forever bent beneath the yoke of screens, pads, pods, phones. Heaven isn’t to be found in cyberspace but in the ever decreasing space between me and my brother in need, me and my sister in crisis.

Jesus reminds us that our lives must open up to receive this precious invitation. Our lives must themselves be inviting, forming that essential bridge between ourselves and our neighbors. The soil of our existence must be fertilized by the careful cultivation of what is true, good and beautiful and resist the temptation to become the mere dirt of a transient cultural wasteland and false understandings of the human person.
Are we open?
Are we willing?
Are we anxious to receive the fullness of His grace?
Or do we hesitate, holding back, forever giving in to the lie that all of this can happen without loss, without sacrifice, without the pinch of the negation of false selves?
Sometimes this receptiveness becomes impossible and thus …

We may look and see but not perceive,
and hear and listen but not understand

And what are we to understand?
Are we to understand that we are the seed?
That we are called brothers and sisters to be instruments of the Word. Do our lives reflect that reality?

We are called to make real the proclamation of Emmanuel, God among us by breaking open our lives in his service and in the service of our brothers and sisters.

We are called to be seed in the sacrifice of the cross that rends asunder the assurances of well-controlled lives and propels us headlong into the chaos and confusion of real living.

We are called to that orthodoxy that boldly announces the Truth of brokenness, the veracity of passion.

We are called to spend ourselves in the service of that One Reality that cannot be gainsaid, that one Thing worth living for, worth dying for that we glimpse before our heads are turned by the violent contradiction of this-worldliness

But how often do we find that our lives cannot accept this unique, yet ubiquitous vocation?

And so …

we may look and see but not perceive,
and hear and listen but not understand

And what are we understand?
Are we to understand that we are the sower?

That our lives are to be lived out in perpetual abandonment of our own projects for the sake of proclaiming the Kingdom, that same Kingdom of which we are both representative and recipient?

That Kingdom which proclaims peace in a world in which the din of war seems insatiable
That Kingdom which announces Truth in a time in which lies and half-lies permeate our collective consciousness
That Kingdom that teaches Love in a culture of Hate, life in a culture of death, liberty in a culture of false ideas of freedom and choice
That Kingdom that is bound up in the person of the savior, the man of Galilee who was the eternal God, that kenotic King whose Kingdom was our slavery to sin, whose ransom was not his own, whose saving action was always on behalf of the unworthy others.

That Kingdom that reaches out to us in the appearance of Bread and Wine, even as we stretch out hands to unworthy pursuits and idolatries

And yet it is that Kingdom that the King of Times and Universes has placed in our hands, within our care, in our sphere of influence

But our lives brothers and sisters can become so entangled. How ill we regard that gift.

So that …
we may look and see but not perceive,
and hear and listen but not understand

Except hopefully to see that we are the ground, the seed and the sower and understand that there is no simple grasping of the parable, just as there is no simple grasping of the Object of all Parabolic discourse, but there is a kind of simplicity to the message of the Gospel and thus the message of our lives, for our lives signify nothing if they are not caught up in the Good News

For when the parable of this life is finally interpreted there is only one meaning to be found:

Each of us is called to one thing:
The salvation of souls
Brothers and sisters we are placed in this world for one purpose, to assure that the ground, the seed, the sowing is not in vain and that the message is proclaimed, fully, totally, unreservedly in our lives.
In this riot of cultivation, of sowers sowing and seed sown and soil receiving, what can we offer back to the Lord but bodies willing and able, spirits saturated with the sagacity of that which is most simple and minds fired by the grace of our creator and savior

We have but one vocation, saving souls for God and everything else is nothing but straw and dross.

Nothing can separate us from this zeal for souls if we are to be authentic to who we are and why we are here:

So that it may never be said of us:

they may look and see but not perceive,
and hear and listen but not understand

Look and see now the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world
Listen to his voice crying out to us today from the sacrifice of this altar
We are called
We caught up forever, irrevocably in the harvest of his Grace