Praise the Lord! Sorta embarrassed to use this example because it is from the all-time most tacky Christian movie ever...Facing the Giants! Father Tom and I watched it way back when and I have to admit that I actually enjoyed it. Anyway, there is a devout Christian man that had been praying for a struggling Christian school for years. Their football team is equally struggling to get a win. God gave him a word for the Coach. It was a good word. “There are two farmers who desperately needed rain. And both of them prayed for rain but only one of them went out and prepared his fields to receive it. Which one do you think trusted God to send the rain?” Coach replies, “Well the one who prepared his fields for it.” The Christian man then asks, “Which one are you? God will send the rain when He is ready. It’s your job to prepare your field to receive it.”
This is the difficult part in life. Usually we are in such anticipation of what we think should come down the pipe that we forget that what God has put in front of us in the immediate circumstance is His way of preparing us. The readings this weekend are loaded with this concept of waiting on the Lord. The psalmist says, “Our soul waits for the Lord who is our help and our shield.” Hebrews says, “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.” The Book of Wisdom says, “Your people awaited the salvation of the just...” Jesus says, “Gird your loins, light up your lamps...and be ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds vigilant upon his arrival.”
That is all fine and good, but what gets me is even though I intellectually ascent to the idea that Jesus is preparing me for something, I still fail miserably in the preparation process. We can easily begin to, “beat the menservants and the maidservants, to eat and drink and get drunk.” We find ourselves constantly falling over our own feet desperately wanting to be the prudent steward, but blowing it all the time. Perhaps this is why Peter asks Jesus, “Lord is this parable meant for us or for everyone?” I’m with Saint Peter on this...I think it is for everyone and not me! The reality of our situation can seem so hopeless. We can just say, “I am incapable of being a good servant in preparing for the Lord,” and just leave it at that. Or we can say, “Yes, I am incapable, but Christ Jesus who is my Lord and Savior is the one who can work through the deficiencies in me to make me capable for his Kingdom. On top of that I am well aware of my deficiencies and am willing to bring them to you Lord.”
We can very easily know the master’s will but not make preparations. Here we get beaten severely. Or we can be ignorant of the master’s will but our beat down will only be “light.” I don’t know about you, but I would rather claim invincible ignorance at this point. A light beating sounds better than a severe! I would like to claim, “I don’t have a clue so the heck with this and I will excuse myself of any responsibility.” Then the words of the Confiteor at the beginning of Mass come back to haunt us, “In what we have done and in what we have failed to do.” It is the failure to do is what really scares me. Sorta like that fear that Joseph Pieper was talking about in his book On Hope. Fearful of not reaching the potentiality of being. Not so much the fear of the beating, but the fear of the deficiency of our resolve to be magnanimous. Jesus’ words hit home at this point, “Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.” Brothers and sisters in Christ, this is where we fall short so very often. We run away as fast as we can from the fuller responsibilities to prepare ourselves that God is asking us to do! We do this way more than what we realize. God is asking of us to do great things for him and we are like, “Not me...I’m incapable of this.” We feel God asking us to do something magnanimous, to set out on a journey for souls and win glory for Him, but we think it is all on ourselves to make it happen. This is the short-circuit of the spiritual life that disables us, that self-destructs us and we are no more than chatterboxes talking a good fight, but not actually living the good fight of faith.
Listen to this lengthy Cantalamessa quotation: God is provoked by the profane, idle chatter that goes on in his Church. (“Profane” means having no connection with God’s plan, having nothing to do with the Church’s mission.) Too many human words, too many useless words, too many speeches, too many papers. In the age of mass communication the Church is in danger, at least in affluent countries, of burrowing into the straw of useless words, of talking for the sake of talking, of writing because the reviews and the magazines are there to be filled. It is a new Noah’s Flood, from which few souls are saved today too. How can the world perceive the energetic Word of God in the hubbub of useless words emanating from the Church? We offer the world the best excuses for sitting tight in its unbelief and its sins. If unbelievers could so much hear the authentic Word of God, they would not find it so easy to get away with saying (as they often do after hearing our sermons): “Words, words, words!” The human race and the Church, too, are sick with uproar; we need “to declare a fast” from words. We need someone to shout, as Moses once did: “Be silent, O Israel, and listen!”
Preaching for example is a full-out acknowledgement of one’s complete incompetence. Just by standing up here, I’ve condemned myself because ill-preparation and lack of faith has already condoned the very words I speak. The only recourse, then, is an acknowledgment that a splinter of what I say may have some redeeming merit to bear fruit in you the listener! Do you see what I’m saying! Even our best intention, however good it might be, will never be the adequate preparation for us to gain the glory of heaven! Our only hope is Jedi Master and force guru Obi-Wan-Kenobi....no, it is Jesus Christ folks! He was wrought for us the victory! The kingdom of God is at hand! Our preparation should then be nothing more than a desire to please our Lord out of love and Him alone. No one else, nothing else will prepare us for the master’s return. No amount of words, no idle chatter, no not doing anything. We are preparing the field by tending to the acts of love that Jesus is demanding of us in the here and now. Our frivolous expectation of what could be is only undermined by our self imposes distractions. The project is not in human hands, but in God’s divine plan. Let us give to Jesus our incapable capacities. Let us humble ourselves before Him in authentic hope acknowledging the true Revealer of Redemption. Let us realize that the greatest obstacle is not someone or something else, but the gargantuan giant of our own ego.
And for you summer staff departing CYE this Thursday, if I may exhort you one last time in a Sunday homily; never believe that a lack of preparedness is a judgment upon your true self, but a condition of sin. A sin that does not define you, but in a mysterious way enables you to place all trust, all hope, all faith and all love in the person of Jesus Christ. His love for you. Be magnanimous in failing miserably for Jesus to allow his victory to pick you up. As the good archbishop Latour says in Death Comes to the Archbishop, “I shall not die of a cold, my son. I shall die of having lived.“
You will face some stringent giants of self-doubt and be plagued by the hesitant nature of the condition of sin, but you must not allow that to over-reach it’s bounds. Do not give the evil one that privilege to deny faith. Remember that hope is the evidence of things not seen and your preparedness will only be sufficient to the degree that you place your life in the hands of Jesus Christ. Do not be chitty-chatty but resolved in mission of purpose, silently going about your prayer and duties. Admit your ignorance, but ask Christ to reveal Himself to you. Seek out God’s will and you will know God’s will. He will confirm you in the light of His Truth. He will prepare your hearts to a perfection through a spirit of adoption as sons and daughters. We then can receive the inheritance which has been promised and we will then be prepared to reap a generous harvest of souls.
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