Sharing grace & a practice homily

Hi friends! I'm sorry it's been so long since I've posted, but life has gotten quite busy with Christmastime, an adventure to Chicago, and now trying to finish up my thesis research. Let's talk a little bit more about that adventure to Chicago. The first few days of the year were spent there attending FOCUS's SLS (student leadership summit) conference. I had a very powerful experience during prayer teams (more on that in another post). On the bus ride back to Omaha, we shared graces from the week at the conference and mine was remembered by a friend as he worked on a school assignment. The unique thing about this friend & this assignment though is that he is a seminarian (one studying to be a priest) and his assignment was to write & give a practice homily. God-willing he will be ordained a deacon later this year. When he asked if he could use a bit of my testimony in his homily, I quickly agreed as my hope in sharing the grace was that it would inspire others. So, needless to say, for this post, we have Bill's practice homily which goes along with the readings for this coming Sunday, Feb 4th (the 4th Sunday in Ordinary Time). Here's a link to the readings if you would like to read them before continuing to read his homily below (http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/020418.cfm).



How do you endure a sleepless night? I know that I really hate those times, knowing that I have a busy day coming up and need rest, but due to anxiety, illness, pain, excitement, or whatever else, I just can’t get to sleep. Even more, it’s during these sleepless nights that our suffering becomes amplified. In the dark and delirium, everything becomes a little scarier, showing why horror movies often contain this theme of darkness and restlessness. You can probably identify a recent time when you couldn’t get to sleep and became filled with fear, confusion, or suffering. Maybe it was a couple of months ago. Maybe it was last night. This is what Job is experiencing in the first reading today. He says, “So I have been assigned months of misery, and troubled nights have been allotted to me. If in bed I say, ‘When shall I arise?’ then the night drags on; I am filled with restlessness until the dawn.” Imagine how dark and scary these painful nights are for Job in the midst of his sufferings; can we at least relate to him a little bit? Often times, the question that first comes to us when we suffer is, “Why? Why am I lying awake on this miserable night? Why are things falling apart around me? Why am I suffering from this event or because of this person?” And as we know, there’s really no way we can answer this question in the moment. We don’t know why – we don’t have the full picture. And in fact, with the seeming randomness of the world, as we see in natural disasters and sudden accidents, there is sometimes no answer to be found. Instead of why, I’d like to propose a new question for us to ask. “To whom will we go in our suffering?” When we suffer, because we all do to some extent, to whom do we go? Do we turn in upon ourselves, putting up walls and not letting anyone else in? Or do we turn to others to help us, entrusting our problems to them and being vulnerable? Most importantly, do we turn to Jesus and cry out to Him for His healing and grace? Look at today’s Gospel, and we see several instances of how this happens. Simon Peter’s mother-in-law is sick in bed with a fever. This may seem like something small, but remember that there were no prescription medications or pain relievers back in Jesus’ time. A fever could easily turn into something deadly. It is into this situation that Jesus comes. By grasping her hand and lifting her up, he heals her. Then consider all of those who came to Jesus. It is nighttime, and in this darkness, probably illuminated by a just few candles and the moonlight, the whole town comes to Jesus. One by one, Jesus heals them and drives out their demons. Some of these who came to him likely struggled out of their beds, desperate for something to happen, and indeed, Jesus does provide them with healing and a new life. From all that I’ve seen as a disciple and now as a soon-to-be-deacon, I say confidently along with all the saints: when we pray to Jesus with sincere hearts, it may not be what we expect, but something always happens. Jesus always hears us, and he provides us with what we most need. We can reflect on the painful times in our lives and see: there are the graces that I needed to make it though, there are the people who walked with me as Christ would. And when we ask him to open our eyes to His graces, we begin to see them all around us, and we can hear plenty of testimonies to how Jesus is healing and loving us today. I was reminded of this recently through a student I know at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. The first week of January, I accompanied the Newman Center on their trip to Chicago for the Student Leadership Summit, put on by FOCUS, the Fellowship of Catholic University Students. After five days of prayer, talks, and a lot of fun with the 8,000 others who attended the conference, we did a sharing of graces and testimonies on the bus ride home, and this student shared her story. As I prepared for this homily, her story came to mind, and I asked her to write about her experience, which she did so gladly. I knew her a little bit before the conference, and I was aware that she had been going through several difficulties. She said that, “Before the conference, I had a really hard time accepting God’s love for me (mostly stemming from mental illness & other personal struggles). I knew I was loved and that I was a beloved daughter of the King, but it was never ‘real’ for me.” Then she shares her experience from the conference, saying: “I literally saw the face of Jesus. During prayer teams, which were available on the third night of the conference, one of the people praying with me asked me to look into the eyes of the other person there while he continued to pray. During that time of prayer, I saw such kindness, compassion, and care in the eyes of that missionary that I didn't see her anymore. It was as if I was looking directly into the eyes of Jesus. I felt, for the first time in my life, completely and utterly loved by the Father. It allowed me to recognize, in a profound way, His love for me and my identity as a beloved daughter of God.” In the midst of her suffering, Jesus came to her in a real way, and it’s certainly affected her life. It’s not that the difficulties and darkness magically disappeared, but she received a new strength and courage to enter this semester, knowing that Christ was always with her. Particularly, she wrote that, “Even Mass, which can become so routine to so many of us, has taken on a new meaning in a way that allows my soul to receive a hug from Jesus every time I receive Him in the Eucharist.” Her story reminds us: if God truly has an infinite and personal love for us, He desires to show us glimpses of this love in the midst of our suffering. He has something unique to share with all of us, and our response is to seek out and ask for this love and healing because Christ desires us to come to Him as we are. In him, we see that he is also the ultimate answer to, “Why?”, that he has made us for himself and desires our response of love. He himself gives us the example to follow: in the Gospel today, he gets up out of his own bed early in the dark morning to seek the Father’s face in prayer, giving him strength. So we too can turn to the Lord in prayer anytime we are suffering, asking him for healing, strength, and peace. To whom shall we go in our suffering, in our sleepless nights, in our restlessness? We can all bring that to prayer in this week; just to simply imagine Jesus looking upon us in love, just as he looked upon Job in his suffering, just as he saw Simon’s mother-in-law as she lay in her bed, just as he looked upon all those coming for healing, just as he looked upon my friend in her suffering and doubts. And with this look of love, we can then rest in His peace, until the dawn of heaven comes.