Welcome to Sunday Homilies with me, Father Mikechments.
I hope today's homily inspires and motivates you, and I also hope that it leaves you hungry
for the one who gave everything to feed you.
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up at ascensionpress.com/sunday, or by texting Sunday 2-3-3-7-7-7-7-7. You can also follow or subscribe on your podcast app for weekly notifications. God bless. So we have Jesus, Jesus carrying his cross, Jesus carrying the cross. But we say it's his cross, right?
The question is who's it? Who's cross was it? And I think it's funny, when there's something we like, when there's something we want, we are just, as human beings, we're quick to claim it. We say that's all that's mine, that's my spot in line, that's my place in line, or
that's my parking stall, that's my parking spot. But when it's something we don't want, right, when something we don't want this, what do we do? I think a lot of times, there was a comic strip back in the day that my mom really liked.
She liked it for an unreasonable amount of family, and in the family, the mom would always
say, well, my mom would say, which is, there's these three characters, three people on our family, and the characters, the people in our family are, I don't know, nobody and not me. Because when my mom would ask a question, in the comic strip as well, they'd say, who did this?
I don't know, or what did you do? I don't know. Who did that? Nobody? Who's faulted this?
Not me. That was always the thing, right? That sense of, it's not me, that's so often, so often in our lives, that can become our refrain. That's not me.
It's not my fault. And that can be something that we just look at life and look at problems, it's not my fault. You know, all this went, we've been in the series called autobiography. We were following the, the, not only the path of Jesus leading up to this moment right now, but also been following the story of the part of a son, and we've called this series
autobiography because we know this truth, right?
“These truth that every life is a story, and because every life is a story, every person”
is an author, and the question, the big question of one's life is who will you be at the end of your story? This is your autobiography. The question is who will you be at the end of your story? So we have, right, the, the parable of the prodigal son, and you have these two brothers, right?
The younger son who races off, doesn't want to have anything to do with this father. The younger son who stays, and he's resentful, the older son who stays for example of his father. And, and both, both of them, realize are rescued. The younger son is rescued from rebellion.
The older son is restored after resentment. So we know that the goal of the story is not just to be a rescued son or a restored daughter. The goal of the story is to become like the father. They need to visit us, the goal of the Christian life, the goal of the Christian life is
to become like Jesus. The goal of the Christian life, the whole purpose of the story is to have the heart of the father, to grow into a, to grow into a heart like his, we'll get our story right now and say, okay, what do I need to do? To grow into a heart like his, how do I need to grow up and that's this, how do I need
to grow up? Where I can't, I don't want to just want to stay the younger son who rebelled in his rescue. I don't want to say the older son who resented and restored, I, all of us, we're called to be the father, how am I called to grow up?
“I know the way they ask us, it's like, what, how do I know?”
How do you know? I'm actually a bigger question. How do you know when you've grown up? Like, how do you know when you're an adult? We talked to our students about this all the time, that sense of like, because there are no
markers, right? There's no clear indicators and other cultures, right? They have to write to a passage where it's like, we're now you're an adult and look around our culture and say, what, what could that be like your driver's license and answer is no 16 year old?
We would not consider it as 16 year old to be an adult. Maybe you've graduated high school or college and we, maybe, but not necessarily considered an adult. Maybe it's now, you're 18. You can buy a lottery ticket, it's sort of like a, you know, no, 21.
Not really.
Like, maybe it's when you have your first big kid job, but then you hear someone say big
kid job and you realize you're not an adult, you just use the phrase, big kid job. So what is the marker of an adult, and I, I've been looking at this, because I, I think about this, how, for years I've been thinking about how often I look at, say, the young men on our campus and they're from 18 years old to, you know, 24 years old. Looking at them, I, I think of what would it be like in the 1940s, when men, they're
age, 17 years old, up upwards, we're willing to sign up and either be headed to Europe or headed to the Pacific and just would fight, because here, middle-aged man from America,
I'm very much interested in World War II, what, what is, what's the difference?
And I would say this, this, if there's any marker for adulthood in our culture, it's a marker that crosses every culture. And so, as I would say, this, the marker of adulthood is the willingness to take responsibility. So, you can do that, you could do that as a 16 year old. You could do that as a 17 year, 18 year old signing up to go fight the access powers.
You could do that as a 21 year old, saying, okay, my job now, I gotta take care of myself. I would say this, once again, the marker of adulthood is willingness to take responsibility.
First, I, in first, we, for, we've, for responsibilities, we take responsibility for oneself,
right, that, that sense of personal responsibility, where a couple things, you don't fall into that trap or don't stay in that trap of blaming other people's.
“That's so often, that's one of our temptations, right?”
The temptation is that that my problems, or my struggles, or my wounds, they're all someone else's fault. First, your marker of adulthood is now taking responsibility. I'm not just gonna blame people for my struggles, I'm just gonna blame people for my wounds, I'm not just gonna blame people for my troubles, that's the first dig, take responsibility.
Also, how about this, your marker of adulthood, taking responsibility, I'm gonna treat myself as someone who's worth taking care of, like, to think about this, like, years ago, wait a sec, I trust, come to visit the, the precondicans of our diocese.
And at one point, in his first presentation, he said, he's talked about this, talked
about being an adult, he said, one of the things that we find so difficult to do as adults when we're on our own is what someone else told us to do when we were growing up as kids. The two things, two things we find most difficult to do as adults on our own, is what someone told us to do when we were kids and those two things are how to feed yourself and put yourself to bed, how to not, not just that, how to feed yourself well and put yourself
to bed on time. And you know, he said that all the precondicans are like, well, okay, that's us. But then I talked to Merried Men too, right? So how many Merried Guys, maybe you're watching this, if you're listening to this, if I'm Merried Men, and I have to so many Merried Men, whether they've been married for two years, married for 30 years. And the wife is leaving. And so like, okay, and they even, we'll do this sometimes, the wives are great,
and they'll say, listen, I've cooked all of the meals you need for the next weekend or for the whole week. It's in the fridge, nutritious, good food. And then at the end of the week, the guys will be like, yeah, I had McDonald's and I had pizza and I slept on the couch the entire week because why? Because one of the things we find is difficult, a marker of adulthood
is actually treating yourself as someone who's worth taking care of, basically taking care of
yourself. Another way to say it is marker of adulthood. Take your responsibility, realizing that you're writing your story. You're writing your autobiography with God. Not, not as a
“passive observer, but as an active participant. Again, this is, that's what it is. That's the”
first step of adulthood. But so many of us, we face this temptation, right? We, many men face this temptation, particularly the temptation that helps, that makes us resist becoming like the father, the temptation that makes us reluctant to grow up so we can say Peter Pan. And what is that? That temptation is the temptation towards passivity. That if someone else is going to do it great, if someone else is taking care of it, awesome. We can look at life and say,
I'm not my fault. We look at our circumstances and say, no, but no, it's not my fault. We can look at our wounds and say, I didn't do this to myself. Look at the battles we're facing. And we get our obstacle. The thing that we'll object to is say, it's not my fault. And yet, what does a father do? What is an adult do? Not only an adult, but the father in the gospel. When he looks at his son, the son who's resentful or the son who's rebellious. And the father
declares this, it's not my fault. But it is my responsibility. And this is the first step, the first step in becoming like the father, first up in becoming an adult, is this, is rejecting passivity and embracing responsibility. Basically saying like the father, give this might not be my fault. But it is my responsibility. My wounds might not be my fault. My battles, my circumstances, they might not be my fault. But they are my responsibility.
The way I'm at in my story right now might not be my fault. But it is my responsibility.
“Yes, the first step. But there's more. There's further steps. Remember, because the goal is”
to become like the father, not just to become a slightly more grown adult. But to become like the father. Because the father, of course, has responsibility for himself. But there's more. He takes responsibility for others. Now just any others, he takes responsibility for those entrusted to him. Those closest to him. And this is every one of us. If we want to be like the father, means we don't just take responsibility for ourselves. And means we take responsibility for those
who are entrusted to us. Take responsibility for those who are closest to us. I think there's
One of the issues in our culture right now is we're so over-connected that we...
emotional energy pretending to be shocked or crushed by the experiences of people that will never meet.
And we missed the people. The God has put directly in our paths. Not as in college, I had a college chaplain. Father Kevin, if Father Kevin once said this, I thought it was brilliant. He said the person who's nice to you, but not nice to the waiter, is not a nice person. And he was just highlighting the fact that sometimes you're just nice to your friends, but you're not nice to people that you might see as lesser than or outside your circle.
And remember thinking that that's really wise. That's powerful. The person is nice to you, but not nice to the waiter. It's not a nice person. That's true. But I came across another teaching
“that I think balances this out. This man was reflecting on this and he highlighted the fact that”
sometimes it's easier to be kind of strangers. It's easier to take responsibility. He said this. He said you can be kind to animals, kind of the paper boy, kind of every stranger who crosses your path. But kindness to strangers is not the measure of our character. He was on to say. He says kindness at home is the real test. Because strangers don't carry our history, strangers don't activate our wounds, strangers don't mirror back the parts of us that we've avoided
for years. But our spouse does, our children do, and our home does. And this is the uncomfortable thing he says, the uncomfortable truth that most people dodge. If all of your graciousness is saved for strangers, that's not kindness. That's image management. The real measure of who we are isn't the polite smile you give to the grocery clerk. It's the tone you use with the spouse who loves
“you. It's the patience we offer when our children are overwhelmed. It's the softness we choose”
on the days our ego's want to snap. And then he concludes it. He says this. He says kindness to strangers might make people like you. kindness to your spouse makes you trustworthy. kindness to strangers creates an image. kindness at home creates a person of character. And if we're kind everywhere except our own houses, that's not kindness, that's performance. That's image management dressed up as virtue. The reality, of course, is that we are called to love those closest to us because
the ones who are closest to us are almost always the hardest to love. But that's almost always
where true love is found because when you know, here's the temptation here. The temptation here when it comes to loving those closest to us is to make it all about us. Take responsibility for them. The temptation is I have to be the one to fix them. They're in that's not responsibility. That's control. If I take need to take responsibility, what I'm going to do is I'm going to take control of their lives. I'm going to fix them. I'm going to do I'm going to make all the
tweaks. If I can just shape them, I can just control this situation, then they won't be driving off the cliff and I'll be doing what I need to do. But we have to do this. We have to resist. When that's our temptation, we have to resist control and embrace trust. Look at the father and the parable. The father and the parable does not control the exterior lives or the interior lives of his children in the gospel today. But we see Jesus, the Lord of everything. He doesn't control
the people around him. Isn't controlled Judas? He takes responsibility. But it doesn't try to control. Of course, the parable in the parable, the father does move when it's time when the sun comes back. He races out to him and the other sun doesn't come in. He goes out to him. He does move when it's time. But it doesn't try to control. Here's the invitation. To be like the father, we have to reject
passivity and embrace responsibility. We also have to reject control and embrace trust because the question still stands. The question of palm Sunday still exists and the question is, who's
“fault is it? Today, who's fault is it? Look at the cross. Who's fault is it?”
I think it's fascinating that God, the father, doesn't bother with that question. Because he doesn't say it's not no one's. The answer to the question, whose cross is Jesus
carrying? I'm going to be honest, the answer is mine. The answer to the question, whose fault is it?
The answer to that question is it's mine. If you've ever seen the movie, the passion of the Christ, you know, not only is it powerful and it's hard to watch. Directed by Mel Gibson, written and directed by Mel Gibson. This actor, Mel Gibson, who is a director in this movie, but he's not in the movie. He's actually in the movie in one scene. It's just his hands.
It's the scene where Jesus is being nailed to the cross.
hands of the Roman guard are Mel Gibson's hands. Because what he is saying in that implicitly and
explicitly is, this is my fault. Whose cross is it? It's mine. Whose fault is it? It's mine.
“And I think about the Lord here, what Jesus is doing on the cross. Here's the sin of the world.”
God could easily look at the sin of the world. God could easily look at this world and say,
"Wait, I made this world all good." To his kids, I gave you everything you possibly could want everything you possibly could need and what did you do? You ran away from me. So God could quickly,
“God could easily. God would be right if he said, "It's not my fault." But what God do?”
He looked at your need and he looked at my need. And he said, "Okay, that's my responsibility." So that's the heart of the father and that's the heart that every one of us needs to develop. This is the last thing. We know this. That our story must not end
“merely with us being a restored son or a rescued daughter. But we need to be what St. Paul wrote”
to the Galatians. Paul, to the Galatians, chapter 6, he said, "Bear when another's burdens and sof of filled the law of Christ. Bear when another's burdens." Basically, who you and I be
coming at the end of the story is critical. We have to become like the father, a heart that sees
the wounds of others, heart that sees the brokenness of others, heart that sees the needs of others, and responds like the father, and responds like Jesus, not with passivity, not with control. But the heart that can say, "Maybe this is not my fault." But this is my responsibility. And imagine, to end your story like that, that would be a great autobiography.
