Homily for July 14, 2002
Year A - Cycle II
15th Sunday in Ordinary Time 

The Gospel was written at a time very different than our own. A different society, different culture, different economies than we experience today. Of course, it was primarily agricultural, so, today and the next couple of weeks, we’ll hear some parables that talk about the society in which Jesus lived and the people he spoke with.

Is there anyone here this morning who makes their living as a farmer? There was no one at the last mass. (Father, this is Los Alamos…. They don’t grow stuff here. They grow good families here. Last mass I mentioned they make things that explode here, but whatever….) Different times. However, human nature hasn’t changed any. Conditions of our life have. And so the Gospel is just as important to us today as it was then. It speaks to us today as it did then. And so this sower and the seed has a lot to say to us.

Now, just to make it perhaps easier for us to appreciate Jesus’ teaching, I have to question, is there something that you sow, or spread, in order to produce what you need or what you want? And I suggest to you there is, and that is time. Time has become more important in this day than ever before. If you have sixteen waking hours in a day, you have nine hundred and sixty minutes. The seed of time to sow good things or bad things.

One of the great things about time, surely, is that it is democratic. The richest or the poorest – the clock is the same for them. Time is the same. And like the farmer, if we scatter the seeds of time effectively, and use them wisely, put them in the right place, we can be assured of a rich harvest and a happy life. How precious time is. Even a little bit of time can be so precious. Ask an Olympic athlete how important a millisecond is. Or ask someone who just almost was killed in an automobile accident how important a second is. Ask someone who just missed an airplane how important a minute is. Ask a mother of a premature baby born a month early, how important a month is. And ask some of these kids that we have defending us in Afghanistan how important that year or so will be that they give to their nation in service. Time is important and precious. Do you agree? Time is so precious, and why do we waste it so?

Money is important too. Time is more important than money, right? And yet, we waste it. You don’t see money laying around on the streets, do you? And people don’t say "I don’t need that. Forget it." "Here’s the change." "Ah, you keep it." No. But we waste time.

Some of you probably read Steven Covey’s book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And in this book, what I remember most was a chart. And Covey had four quadrants on his chart. The categories on the top were "Urgent" or "Not Urgent." And on the left side of the chart were "Important" or "Not Important." And he went on to discuss how we spend our time.

Things that are urgent and important have to be done right now. Your daughter breaks her leg while playing with her friends. That’s urgent and important that you get her to the emergency room immediately.

Other things are urgent, though, but not important. The phone. Was that a good invention? I don’t know…. When the phone rings, it’s urgent. You know what drives me crazy? When I’m talking to someone and the phone rings and they turn away from me to answer the phone. Excuse me! Why is whoever is on the phone more important than whoever you’re looking at? After mass, someone said they don’t answer the phone. They pull the thing out during dinner. Get rid of it. Get an answering machine, turn it on low volume, and put the ringer off. Things that are urgent but not important take a lot of our time and a lot of our energy. Interruptions.

And then Covey went on to talk about things that are not urgent and not important. Oprah Winfrey (whatever her name is). Daytime television. (Not baseball. Let me tell you something. When I’m watching baseball or Nascar, I know that God’s watching at the same time. Race starts at 12:30, I gotta move this quicker….) But if you watch daytime television in big amounts frequently, you’re going to become stupid. I’m serious. That stuff makes you stupid. Its not important and its not urgent.

And then finally, the fourth quadrant is those things that are not urgent but very important. God. Your spouse. Your children. And because we spend so much energy on stuff that’s urgent and important, urgent and not important, we spend so much energy there that we don’t have enough energy to do anything so we vegetate in front of the television set and never get to the most important place that we need to be. And we need to change that. We can change that. You can change that. You can change it today. You can set yourself aright with God and the use of your precious time. Because God loses out in that equation. God loses out in our lives.

The minutes of the day are like seeds that we scatter, for good or bad. We scatter some of those seeds on hard ground and waste them. Following worthless pursuits or even bad ones. We throw some of those seeds on rocky ground. Maybe doing good things to excess. Working too much seems to be a Los Alamos problem. By the way, when is enough enough? Especially when you’re working to acquire stuff. When do you have enough stuff? Someone once said that some people act like life is "Whoever has the most toys wins." Have you ever seen a hearse pull a U-Haul trailer? Wouldn’t that be funny? And if you have a lot of stuff, your kids are going to fight over it. Seriously. So, spend it. Give it to the church! (I sound like those guys on TV!) Sometimes it is spent among the thorns of sin. Drugs and alcohol and pornography.

Just a comment on pornography, because I am convinced it is one of the greatest evils of the day. It is such an evil today because it’s on the internet. You have pornography in your room if you have internet access, and most of you do. And parents, watch your kids, especially your boys. Because here’s what pornography does. It’s addictive. It strips them of their self esteem. And it makes women sexual objects for their use and pleasure only. It rips the dignity of the human person away. Pornography is lethal and will bring about spiritual death.

And hopefully we spend time scattering our minutes on good ground and fertile ground. Time spent in prayer or with family or with a spouse. And of course you know your spouse is more important than your kids. Because if you don’t have that good relationship with your spouse, your kids are really going to be hurting. No matter how much you love them. No matter how much you do for them. And you know, one of the most fertile areas to put our time in, and it’s not a choice, is suffering. Because we’re going to suffer, it just comes with being alive. And suffering is redemptive. Saint Paul says we make up with our own suffering what is lacking in the suffering of Christ. If that wasn’t in the Bible we couldn’t say that. It says, "What was lacking in the suffering of Christ," that’s right. Jesus suffered, but he didn’t do it all. He started it and showed us how to do it, and then said "If you want to follow me, pick up your cross every day and follow me." So suffering makes us holy, if we accept it instead of curse it.

Last week, we had a parishioner die, a good man. He suffered for a year in a nursing home, terribly. And Tuesday night, he told the nurse, "Get me a priest. I want a Catholic priest now." And the nurse called the Rectory. Now, I was gone and I forgot to shut my answering machine off, and so, they thought that Father got the message. And there were three messages from the nurse, increasingly hostile. One at ten o’clock, saying "Come down here now and anoint this man." Another at midnight, said "Where are you? (Father Brown….)" (I took no offense.) And the third call at six thirty was almost abusive. "Well I hope you had a good night’s rest, Father Brown." I met the nurse and she said "I was wondering what a priest named Charlie Brown was doing in Los Alamos at midnight." I said "I don’t know what anyone would do in Los Alamos at midnight. I guess they sleep…." So I went to see him and he was out if it because of Morphine, and I went up to him (this has happened to me many times as a priest) and I went up to him and I said "I am a Catholic priest" and he went pop! And I said "Do you want your confession heard?" And he said "Yes!" He hadn’t been lucid for hours. And I heard his confession and anointed him and he went away…. He died a few hours later. That year of suffering prepared him for that moment. He was very happy that it had happened. I know where he is going or where he is now. Suffering is powerful stuff. You gotta do it, don’t waste it. Use it well.

Fertile use of time is time spent with family and time spent with God. Right? Why don’t we do it? Why do we waste it so? There’s a story, I think it’s a little hokey but it makes an awfully good point, about a man who comes home from work and he’s tired. He’s worked hard -- ten, eleven, twelve hours. His routine is he sits in his easy chair and reads his newspaper. His twelve year old son comes up to him and he says "Dad, how much are you paid for an hour’s work?" He says "Well, that’s not really your concern, but I’m paid $20 and hour. I have a good job and it’s important work. Now leave me alone while I’m trying to relax. It’s been a hard day." And the kid, dejected, goes to the bedroom and the dad feels guilty, so he thinks "Aw, he probably wanted a few bucks, and I was abrupt." So he went into the room and gave his son a $10 bill. The kid lit up. He ran to the dresser and took out all his money. He counted out $20 and gave it to his father and said "Can I have an hour of your time?"

After mass, a man who was retired from the lab here said "You know, Father, you are right about this work stuff. I loved my work and I’m still working." (Nobody retires here! You retire and you go to work and you get some other kind of money…. "I’m consulting!" No one asked me to consult. What was I saying? That’s why they don’t ask me to consult! Who wants to? What do I know? But for 8 bucks an hour you get what you get!) After mass, this guy says, "I have a regret in life, Father. I wish I spent more time with my kids. I was a good father and I spent time with them. But if I had it to do it over again I’d double the time I’d spent with them. I’d have fewer hours today, but I’d be a better man and I’d be happier."

Time spent in prayer. You all know there’s a chapel right here? And there’s a combination. It’s open 24 hours a day, if you know the secret combination, which is 1-3-4-turn. 1-3-4-turn. 1-3-4-turn. You can come any time. I was doing morning prayer one day last week, about seven, and this guy come in there with all his badges around (I guess he worked at McDonalds). And he came in and he knelt for ten minutes and prayed and then he left. He was on his way to work. And I was wondering, why doesn’t everyone do that? Do you have ten minutes? To visit the Blessed Sacrament? Can you imagine spending ten minutes with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and regretting it? "Oh, that was a waste of time. I should have looked at my portfolio…." That’s depressing. If you have stocks, I would just ask you, don’t short God. If you don’t know what that means, ask someone who knows how stocks work. But don’t short God. Ten minutes. Can you spend ten minutes in the morning, or at lunch hour, on the way home, or when you’re out for a walk at night? Can you spend ten minutes on your knees? Sitting there with the Lord?

There’s a story about an old man named Fidel, up in northern New Mexico. Fidel spent at least an hour every day, sometimes more, in the chapel. And he just sat there and he looked at the tabernacle. He never read anything or even prayed the rosary. And one day the priest said "Fidel, what do you do?" He said "Father, I just sit there… I look at Him…He looks at me…. Then I go home and I feel good." You’ll feel good.

How about daily mass once in a while? What a blessing that is. Great to come to daily mass. What a feeling that is. You don’t have to be here and it makes you feel good. There’s no collection and it’s shorter. What else do you want? And you receive the fullness of the Eucharist.

And then pray the rosary. If you haven’t prayed it, try it. I have never met a person who prays the rosary all the time that’s not really kind of happy. There’s something about that rosary. It’s a simple prayer. It just seems that people who pray it have a kind of peace that others want. Look, we all want to be happy.

Everyone knows what I’m saying about time is true. But today, lets just change. Let’s just promise that at least this day that we will use our time well. And try to make those visits to the Lord. And try to make the time for prayer. You’ll be blessed and so will your family.

If you’ll bow your heads now we’ll pray.

And together….