On Being of Heroic Character

Deacon Bruce Maltzen's Homily for September 5, 2010 the 23rd SUNDAY in ORDINARY TIME, CYCLE C
(readings found here)
Reading I Wis 9:13-18b
Reading II Phmn 9-10, 12-17
Gospel Lk 14:25-33

(2)If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.

If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.
(3) Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, (love) is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
(4) Love never fails. If there are prophecies, they will be brought to nothing; if tongues, they will cease; if knowledge, it will be brought to nothing. For we know partially and we prophesy partially, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.
When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things.
At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known.
(5) So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
In speaking of love, Paul is led by spontaneous association to mention faith and hope as well. They are already a well-known triad, three interrelated features of Christian life, more fundamental than any particular charism. The greatest . . . is love: love is operative even within the other members of the triad, so that it has a certain primacy among them. Or, if the perspective is temporal, love will remain, that is "never fails," even when faith has yielded to sight and hope to possession.
We all have read books that have an heroic character. You know the one that does something spectacular and saves the world, or saves a group of people from tragedy or death. We finish reading the story and we sit back and sigh, what a good book. We really wish that we were like that person, or had that experience.


We, though, seem to be stuck in lives that are never going to be heroic. We are weighed down by the responsibilities of feeding our families, doing our jobs, providing the things expected of us to everyone around us. We have given up the hope of being someone who “means something” in this world. Even if we have ‘made it” in our profession and are respected by others in our profession or by our family and friends we still see ourselves as not having completed or achieved those dreams we had.
This is what the writer of the book of Wisdom was talking about.

"For the deliberations of mortals are timid,
and unsure are our plans.
For the corruptible body burdens the soul
and the earthen shelter weighs down the mind that has many concerns.
And scarce do we guess the things on earth,
and what is within our grasp we find with difficulty;
This is also why Christ says,
Which of you wishing to construct a tower
does not first sit down and calculate the cost
to see if there is enough for its completion?
Or what king marching into battle would not first sit down
and decide whether with ten thousand troops
he can successfully oppose another king
advancing upon him with twenty thousand troops?"

But Jesus’ intent her is not to stop us from attempting these things or reaching our dreams or being heroic but to look inward and determine what it is that we will be called on to do.
In other words, You cannot come here Sunday after Sunday and sit in the pew and just listen and then go home and not be changed and still expect to be welcomed at the pearly gates. Understand what Jesus is saying here – you MUST do something to rid yourself of the earthly ways, you must begin to take on the character and way of Jesus. You must put His way first over all others. Thus when he says

“If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother,
wife and children, brothers and sisters,
and even his own life,
he cannot be my disciple.”

He is saying that to single out only a few people to be reserved for your love is too narrow.
Once again, you cannot assume that by coming to Church on Sundays that you’ll gain heaven. In Mark’s Gospel, it says:

"Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!" The disciples were amazed at his words.
So Jesus again said to them in reply, "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to pass through (the) eye of (a) needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."
They were exceedingly astonished and said among themselves, "Then who can be saved?"
Jesus looked at them and said, "For human beings it is impossible, but not for God. All things are possible for God."
Peter began to say to him, "We have given up everything and followed you." Jesus said, "Amen, I say to you, there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the gospel who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age: houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come."

Remember that we believe in a God who is active and engaged in our lives. We believe in a God who loves us so much that he will NOT leave us in the position we currently are in.

God EXPECTS us to be heroic characters in HIS story. He expects us to continue to try to follow his son with all we have until we either succeed in doing his will to the fullest or we die in the attempt. He expects each and every one of us to be saints. If you look at your faith or your salvation with less than that, then you are not hearing what’s being said here Sunday after Sunday.

Yes – God is all loving and all merciful but he doesn’t want us to rely on his mercy for our laziness. He is not so loving as to leave us in the hands of the devil and temptation. He loves us so much that he wants each of us to be like His son Jesus.
I suppose the majority of us follow a lifestyle largely dictated by the surrounding culture and our goals are the goals of that culture and, somewhere on the side, we try to fit in some aspects of Christian living into our lives. In our modern society that lifestyle is for the most part competitive, consumerist and materialistic. We would not want our Christianity to get in the way of that. But it is precisely to people like us that Jesus is speaking.

The Gospel teaches us that the essential condition for true discipleship, demanded by Christ, was, and still is, total dedication, total commitment to Him. There can be no such person as a half-Christian. "He that is not with me is against me," He said on another occasion. We cannot be for Christ on Sunday and against Him for the remainder of the week. To be His true disciples, His true followers, we must live our Christian life every day and all day.

Following Christ means making our way to heaven. It is a life-journey. We have a limited time in which to complete this journey. Therefore, we must travel a certain distance each day. This does not mean that we must spend every day only in prayer and meditation. There are other tasks to be done, but we must Christianize these other tasks. Even the members of religious orders who "leave the world," that is, who are set free from family and financial cares of this world by their vows of chastity and poverty, have to busy themselves with other cares like teaching, nursing, tilling the soil perhaps, house-keeping, writing and many such activities. They cannot and do not spend all their day and every day in prayer and meditation. Nor does Christ demand this of them.

Therefore He demands less of this from the ninety-nine percent of His followers who have to take on financial and family cares. It is by fulfilling these worldly duties in a Christian way that we are dedicating ourselves to His service. This is our total commitment to Christ. The married man or woman who is loyal to his or her life-partner and to the family, if there is one, and who provides diligently and honestly for his own and the family's spiritual and temporal welfare, and who always does this with the intention of pleasing God, is following Christ and is moving steadily day by day towards heaven.

Obviously our Lord was just not at all interested in numbers, in keeping the crowds around Him by accommodating His views to theirs. But He is interested, desperately interested, in each human soul before Him, in seeing that person transformed into His genuine disciple, transformed, then, into His likeness by following Him. It was as if our Lord were saying to those there with Him in today’s Gospel,
“You are following me, but you do not know where I am going. Yes, I am on my way to Jerusalem, the Holy City, but not to sit in the seat of power. I go there not to climb the stairs of the palace but the hill of Calvary. I make my way to Jerusalem not to claim anything for myself, but to renounce myself, to renounce myself and give myself to God the Father, to renounce myself so utterly and fully that it can only be accomplished by offering up my life, by pouring out my own life. Do you go with me now? Have you counted the cost?”

In order to express loving someone over another, the Jews generally said they would “love” one and “hate” whoever was second or below. In St. Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus said the same truth in a perhaps clearer way, “Whoever loves Father and mother more than me is not worthy of me” (Mt. 10:37). Jesus was saying that there could only be one absolute in our life. Only one love could have primacy. Only one thing could have man’s ultimate obedience and affection. That is God.

This teaching of Jesus is therefore very concrete and leads to an examination of conscience. Do we love Jesus more than everyone else? Do we prefer Him to parents, to spouses, to children, to our own lives? Do we love Him with “all our mind, heart, soul, and strength,” or does something else get our mind, heart, soul, and strength? Jesus cannot be merely a part of our life. He cannot be just an important “ingredient” in our life, occupying an important “niche” in our personal portfolio. He must be God.

What Jesus keeps saying in His word is this: He is offering unimaginable riches and glory, a life that surpasses the highest desires of man, a freedom beyond compare, a joy that never ceases and immortality combined with all the perfections of His divinity. If you want to take up His offer, you must understand that everything has a price. A cheap reward is offered for a mediocre effort, but the reward that He offers can only be attained through a life in spent following His word. Those who reject His word will have continual disappointment.

The wise man is prepared to make sacrifices in order to obtain the good things of life; discipline is required in combination with perseverance. The fool is always complaining of his bad fortune but he does not make any efforts to succeed.

The greatest attachment of man is to his own self, his own opinion and his own image. He adorns his life with material possessions, and with all the evils of his self-love. Unless you are prepared to leave everything behind, you may not enter heaven. You see, He has opened the door but you can’t enter easily, you must die first, therefore you won’t be able to carry any material possessions in, as Fr. Carlson said a couple of weeks ago, he had a professor that told him that he had never seen a U-haul behind a hearse, you will have to get rid of all your personal attachments and loves and your love must be centered in God only.

Jesus has given us father and mother, brothers and sisters, and other people to be our friends, those who will love us and those that we will love. He has given us lots of material things to help us in our journey but nothing or no one of this world should receive more love than our creator. Therefore He asks us to be happy and enjoy the things of creation, to enjoy the love of our family and friends but He also asks us to remember His commandment to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul and with all your strength. We are not to adulterate this love by loving ourself, others or things more than Him; He must be our greatest love.

We are not to despise His cross because that was His throne on earth, where together with His crown of sufferings He endured incomparable pains as the price of OUR salvation. He gives everyone a share of suffering, a little splinter of His cross so that we may be purified through suffering of our pride and disobedience.

So now you know the price that must be paid for Heaven, its been told you time after time from up here, and now you know something about the great rewards that await you. Now you must be wise and persevere in the work he gives us, the adventure he lays before us to be that heroic figure in his story. He is showing us the way, we need to just follow him.


Your brother in Christ,Deacon Bruce

On Becoming Humble

Deacon Bruce Maltzen's
Homily for August 29th, 2004
22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle C

We've seen over and over where what Jesus says has a tendency to be pushy or "over the edge". I mean, when you decide to have a meal, its usually because you want to have your friends over, right? You want to invite them because your comfortable with them. You know that they won't embarrass you unless its meant to be just some kidding around, right! And you know that you can talk to them with out searching for things to talk about. You know what they're interested in and they know what you are interested in. Besides, didn't they just have you over a couple of weeks ago and its about time you repaid them? I mean you know they will root for the Vikings with you (put Packers in here if you aren't Vikings fans) and not get you angry. Besides, you'll feel comfortable in front of them and they won't make you feel self conscious.

But invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind? Why I'd be serving them rather than enjoying the meal. Right! RIGHT! Its funny, but Jesus (and therefore God) has this idea that we are here to serve the lowly and cater to the poor? Well I don't know about you but isn't that pushing it a little. I mean , I give to charity and can't they get a meal down at Sharing and Caring Hands? Isn't that what charity is for?

And what's this bit about "blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you"? I don't have that much money that I could feed a bunch of poor people all the time. I mean, I need time with my friends and family. Aren't I supposed to invite them over too?

When's the last time that you went to someone's house and sat at the "other table", you know the one that the kids are relegated to, or went and sat on one of those folding chairs, leaving the table and good chairs for the others that came later? When's the last time that you were asked to move from those chairs and come up next to the host and sit with his family and talk to him.

Maybe there's something here for both friend and host? Maybe as a host we need to review who we always sit with, maybe we've lost the art of hosting - that is the walking around and making sure everyone has been fed and has had their needs met BEFORE we tend to our own needs?

From the Merriam Webster Online Dictionary:
Humility - the quality or state of being humble

"Humble"
from the Latin humilis low, from humus earth; meaning
1 : not proud or haughty : not arrogant or assertive
2 : reflecting, expressing, or offered in a spirit of deference or submission

It seems that this word has a teaching all in its own. From the earth. Low, not haughty or arrogant. Well - No one wants to be arrogant, but do we want to seem to be humble? Do we? Maybe we need to understand what being humble is?

Lets look again at the definition: Not proud or haughty, that is not thinking that you are greater or more important than anyone else, for that leads to a downfall when you meet those who are really strong and wise. We should, if we want to be humble, listen to the truly wise, and make their thoughts our own. Not arrogant or assertive, that is not taking your own rights first but making sure others needs are met before attending to our own. Taking the position of serving versus receiving or being served.

Think of some truly humble people. Pope John Paul II, Mother Theresa, are a couple that come to mind. Their acts of kindness and concern for others both great and small are almost legendary. Their humility was self evident in the way they lived their life. Their lives were and are about others.

But I know that some of you know people close to you that example that type of humility. Perhaps it was your mother or father, serving the family at all times without thought to their own needs. Or maybe an uncle or aunt continually giving to others, perhaps even unseen in their acts of kindness by others except you. Perhaps a true friend who left what was important to them to take care of you or someone else when they needed help. Funny, you know it when you see it. It doesn't really even need teaching. It stands out so well because it is so "other" than the world. It is the viewing of everyone else as a gift from God, and in realizing this that then brings about an acting upon that realization. In that we become humble.

Jesus said, "Rather when you are invited, go and take the lowest place so that when the host comes to you he may say, "My friend, move up to a higher position". Then you will enjoy the esteem of your companions at the table. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted."

So when is it that we need to take the lowest place? It is when we recognize the presence of God in all that surrounds us and we tend to that presence.
Humility is not a faked humility, that is we are not humble to draw attention to ourselves. It is an understanding of our position before God and others. Humility is practiced out of joy and love for each other, being unselfish and giving of ourselves to those that we find needier than we are.

Saint Paul says it quite eloquently in his letter to the Phillipians:
1 So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any incentive of love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, 2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3 Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility [there's that word again] count others better than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, [now listen closely]6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, [listen to what Saint Paul indicates is the servant form] being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore [and here's the promise attached with humility] God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

When we finally come to that great banquet in heaven, let alone this banquet set here now before us, do we wish the host, the King of Kings to say to us, "come my friend, move up to a higher position"? If we claim to be Christian, one who professes belief in the teachings of Jesus Christ, one who is a follower of Christ, an imitator of Christ, then we who profess that, BETTER learn humility, for surely Christ has exampled it to us.

Your brother in Christ,
Deacon Bruce