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.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: The Lord be with you.
Reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke.
[00:00:31] Speaker A: Glory to you, O Lord.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: Great crowds were traveling with Jesus and he turned and addressed them.
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.
Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.
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.
Otherwise, after laying the foundation and finding himself unable to finish the work, the onlooker should laugh at him and say, this one began to build but did not have the resources to finish.
Or what? King marching into battle would not first sit down and decide whether with 10,000 troops he can successfully oppose another king with 20,000 troops.
But if not, while he is still far away, he will send a delegation to ask for peace terms.
In the same way, any one of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.
The Gospel of the Lord.
[00:02:07] Speaker A: Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
[00:02:10] Speaker B: I have really made a concerted effort to, in the last 20 years or so to not be materialistic.
But I failed in a couple of aspects of my life, and the one I failed the most in is on hunting equipment.
It has gotten to be almost ridiculous.
I have a good half dozen packs because I never know which one's going to be perfect for taking out to my blind.
I've got more hunting knives than I care to admit to, along with every possible kind of insulated and uninsulated garment to wear, including some that are waterproof, some that are not, some that are woolen, some that are synthetic, all just to be ready no matter what the temperature or the conditions.
And I have learned to begin to prepare for the great expedition by setting aside a room about a month and a half before and laying everything out.
So I have my woolens, I have my synthetics, I have a box for knives all. And this all gets spread out.
And unfortunately, I called the Air Force and they wouldn't Give me a C130 to get it all up to Alpena County.
So I have to be real careful in how I pack, but I can always get everything in my jeep.
But one year I got all the way up to camp and I started to unload those things. I need to take into the cabin. And I went, uh, oh, with all that great organization and all that other stuff, I didn't bring any boots and I was wearing Crocs.
Now, God blessed me by making it a very dry and somewhat warm season.
So I managed to survive going out to my blind and crocs, hoping no one would see me.
But here we have Jesus telling us to not put too much stock into absolutely anything that is of this world, relationships, property, anything, and instead focus on his presence, the boots, if you will, that are so necessary.
And the reason why he's telling us this is that if we make his presence and our relationship with him the center of who we are, all those other things are going to fall into place.
Our relationships with brothers and sisters, children and spouses become easier because our heart becomes more understanding and more compassionate and more generous.
Our struggles with anything we face that could seem so insurmountable suddenly become not just bearable, they become okay for us. We can deal with them, but it's only when we place all of our focus in that one thing that is important and that is our relationship with Christ.
Now, most of us have a real hard time learning that lesson.
So we busy our minds with all those other things that we think are the most important.
And at times they can become overwhelming for us and we can't quite figure out why we feel at ease.
And that's because we haven't picked up our cross like he tells us about in the gospel.
Because when we embrace that, we embrace his presence. And it's his presence that allows us to truly get through absolutely everything.
Now, I need your favor though. Sometimes I do these self disclosures and they can be a bit embarrassing.
So I trust that you will keep this information here because the last thing I'd ever want to happen is that people find out I have a pair of crocs.
