Episode Transcript
[00:00:12] Speaker A: Welcome to the blessed Sacrament Homilies podcast where our mission is to help everyone recognize and experience the presence of God. We hope you are nourished and encouraged by the word. Thank you for joining us.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: The Lord be with you.
A reading from the holy gospel according to John, glory to you.
Jesus said to his disciples, as the father loves me, so I also love you.
Remain in my love.
If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my father's commandments and remain in his love.
I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.
This is my love one another as I love you.
No one has greater love than this to lay down one's life for one's friends.
You are my friends if you do what I command you.
I no longer call you slaves because a slave does not know what his master is doing.
I have called you friends because I have told you everything that I have heard from my father.
It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give you this. I command you, love one another. The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ the incidence of anxiety in our country has gone up exponentially in recent years, and psychologists and sociologists can probably point to a myriad of reasons why that is happening.
And thankfully, mental health professionals have some strong techniques that can help people get past debilitating anxiety.
But for some, I've come to believe that the advice and words of Jesus can do a lot to help as well.
And I want to give you a personal example from my life.
It goes back to February 25, 1994, in the small San Francisco barrious city of El Cerrito at St. Jerome's Parish, because it was on that day, in that place that I was to be ordained a transitional deacon.
And most people think being ordained a priest is the kind of pinnacle of stress. But it's actually the diaconate, because that's when you make your real commitment to the church and to the bishop, and you make some promises that are for a lifetime.
So you're struggling with, do I do this? Do I not do this? Is this the right thing? Is this what God really wants for me?
And it gets you a little bit tied up in knots?
Well, besides that part of the anxiety, Bishop untner was actually flying out to ordain me, and my parents had arrived a few days before to be there.
Our vocation director had arrived about the same time.
And I'd worked at this parish and lived there for three years. So a lot of people had gotten to know me, and I knew full well that for that Saturday evening regular mass where this was going to happen, the church is going to be packed.
Well, at 11:00 that morning, I received a phone call from Bishop Huntner, who was about to board his plane at Tri City airport.
And I already began to think, well, this is cutting it a little close.
Now, what happens in Michigan in late February?
Right?
Well, not only was he flying from Tri City, but he had a layover in Chicago. What happens in Chicago in February?
So around 01:00 ish, I received a phone call from him in Chicago, from O'Hare. Well, they're de icing our plane again.
I should still make it.
Well, as we're preparing to celebrate this mass, it is now quarter to five.
There is no bishop untner to be found.
It's now ten minutes to five.
There's still no bishop to be found.
Four minutes to five.
Three minutes to five.
Two minutes to five. At which Don Osuna, the pastor, came up to me and he said, this is our regular Saturday mass. I'm sorry, but we have to start at five. Which I said, I totally understand that.
Well, at about 10 seconds after five, I heard screeching tires and saw a puff of burned rubber smoke.
One of our seminarians, his name was Kevin. He never did get ordained for our diocese, but let's just say he was a bit of a wild card.
And Kevin was in charge of picking up the bishop from the airport.
Now, you have to understand, he was from New Jersey, so he had a little bit of aggression in him.
And he got the bishop to the parish almost on time, but we couldn't rehearse. And I didn't even get to talk to the bishop before we processed down the aisle.
So my anxiety level was somewhere, on a scale of one to ten, about 450, because I wasn't even sure what was going to happen, other than I knew I had to answer a bunch of questions.
Well, everything went without a hitch.
And the bishop did one of his amazing homilies. The people were enthralled with him. It was a great celebration.
And afterwards, a group of us went out to dinner, and Kevin, the seminarian, gave me a present, and it's one I still have. And I opened it up. He was an artist before he started seminary, and it was a painting of a portion of this gospel.
It was not you who chose me.
It was I who chose you, and I appointed you. To go and bear fruit. Fruit that will remain the perfect gift because it helped to remind me of something I had long since forgotten. That it wasn't about me and me making the right decisions and being where I needed to be. It was about trusting God, putting me where I need to be, and guiding me where I need to be, and strengthening me where I need to be.
And when I find myself with anxiety or stress, I try to remember those words well, they're not just for me. They're for all of us.
Wherever we're at in our lives. If we learn to trust that God is with us during those moments and will give us what we need, that level of stress and anxiety can easily melt away.
