Homily
for May 20, 2007
Liturgical Year C - Cycle I
7th Sunday of Easter
By Fr. John Carney Topic:
Do You
Seek The Things That Are Above? +
+ +
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I was surprised as I looked
at this graduating
glass. It is probably about 70%
female. Is your senior class
disproportionately female? About
50/50? Of course, there’s the boys who
just don’t want to be at mass, huh?
About 70%, maybe 75% female.
Actually, we’ve really got to stop calling you boys and girls – you are
men and women, and we respect you as such. Today, we celebrate the Ascension of
Christ into
Heaven. It can be a difficult homily
subject for a priest. Next week is
Pentecost, where the Spirit comes upon us, and there’s a lot to talk
about
there. However, the Ascension is like,
“OK, He ascended into heaven.” What does
that mean to us? I was reading a letter
from St. Augustine, written probably 16 centuries ago. He
said, “Our Lord ascends to heaven, let our
hearts ascend with Him.” Jesus tells us
in John’s Gospel, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw
all men
to Myself.” Paul tells us in Colossians,
“If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above,
where
Christ is. Set your mind on things that
are above, not on things that are below.”
I think that’s probably a pretty good topic to use to describe the
Ascension, and also to talk to graduates from high school. To
seek the things that are above. You could say that we already have one
foot in
heaven. Jesus is in heaven, we are with
Jesus, we are a part of His body (as you have just heard), and so where
he is,
we are, and so we have one foot in heaven.
We want to look like we believe that.
We want to act like and lead lives that reflect the fact that we love
Jesus Christ. The comments that I wrote for this
weekend are not
addressed to graduates, specifically, but I think they apply to all of
us. They perhaps apply as well to graduates. Do you seek the things that are above?
Or are you immersed in the things of this
earth? That is the question today. I would like everyone
here to reflect on
that, in your own life. Don’t worry
about anyone else. Just answer these
questions for yourself. Take an
inventory on how you are doing as a Christian.
I just picked five or six or seven subjects to discuss. First, there is literature. We
can all read. What a blessing it is to be able to read. It
is a relatively new gift for
civilization. I was putting papers
together for my Irish passport about 8 years ago, and I needed the long
form of
my mother’s birth certificate. I got a
copy of it, and there was my grandfather’s mark (X). I was
surprised my grandfather could not
write. (And on my father’s side of the
family, his whole family immigrated to America in the 1920’s and early
30’s,
because they were poor and America was and is a land of great
opportunity. My dad had one sister, my aunt Mary, who
couldn’t immigrate to America because she wasn’t literate. And
so, they got her to Cuba, and my dad
smuggled her into New York. There is an
illegal immigrant in my family. I thank
God my father did it. I grew up with my
aunt Mary. She never married and I was
her favorite. She used to give me
money. She never married, and she worked
as a maid for wealthy people.) What was
I talking about? Oh, literacy. What a gift we have to be
able to read. You know that, how it opens up doors and
windows, it engages the imagination; it permits you to express yourself.
It is a great gift. How do you use it? If we looked at your
reading habits, would
anyone know you are a Christian? There
is a lot of great literature, there really is.
In fact, on our parish website, there is a list of great books that we
recommend to you for summer reading, or for reading at any time.
There is a lot of trash out there to read
also. Many trashy novels. There are some great novels.
Surely, none of us should be reading the
stuff on supermarket check out aisles.
People buy that stuff – none of you do!
But people buy it. I guess the
question about your reading – is it edifying?
When you have finished that book or that periodical, or that article,
are you edified? Are you lifted up? Do you know more? Are
you challenged? The same is true of films. There
are a lot of great films. It’s a new art form. There’s some
really excellent films, and
there are some terrible films. I don’t
go to the movies a lot, but when I am with my buddy Father Ray in
Phoenix, we
see every movie that is out, just about, that we can. Last
January we went to see The
Departed. It was vile trash. If someone said, “What was the
plot of
it?” I would say, “Well, they collected
50 Irish sociopaths and let them go at each other for 2 hours.”
It was an awful movie. As a matter of fact, I came out of the
theater and Fr. Ray said, “John, I was going to ask you mid way if you
wanted
to leave with me.” I was going to ask
him the same thing. Nevertheless, there
are many good films, and there is a lot of trash. We need to
support the former, and not look
at the latter. The same is true, of course, in music.
What goes in your ears can come out your
mouth. You know that. I don’t know what I am talking about,
because
I can’t understand the words to these songs.
I can’t. I listened to a couple
of them, someone says, “Listen to this, Father.” “Wow.
What’s it saying? What language
is that?” However, you guys can listen,
and you understand what they are saying.
Some of that stuff is sexist, it’s violent, it’s anti-women, it’s just
disgusting. Don’t listen to that. It is bad for you.
Christians don’t listen to that. How do you dress?
Do you dress like a Christian?
How does a Christian dress? A
Christian dresses modestly. I think we
are getting better. When I started here
five years ago, we were in the bare midriff era. Girls, don’t do
that! You know what I mean, boys? You know what I am
talking about? And boys, boys don’t dress immodestly. Some
of them dress insane! I was in Sam’s Club Friday, and there were
these two guys, probably nice kids. They
were somewhat thin. They probably had
28-inch waists, and their pants were 38 inches!
Without belts! They were walking
around holding their pants up. And they
didn’t always succeed. I was reminded of
a scripture that says, “The less noble parts of the body should be
covered up
with clothing.” But I can’t say that’s
immodest. I was thinking, “Oh, man! Don’t dress like that.” Your daily schedule.
If anyone looked at your typical daily schedule, would they suspect you
are a Christian? Is there time in there
for prayer? We’ve got to pray every
day. We can’t make it on our own. Most of us find that out
the hard way. Your finances.
(You don’t have any, so disregard these comments.) But it’s true,
if you tithe, you can be
safe. 10% of what you have is God’s. If you give that to
the things of God, then
you can spend the other 90% and have a good time with it without any
guilt. That says a lot about us, what we
do with our stuff. Then there’s the TV and internet.
The internet is, in a practical sense, about
10 years old. You don’t know that, but
it’s new. We grew up without internet,
or even the concept of the thing. It is
probably the greatest technological gift that I could imagine.
Right?
You guys all know about the internet.
But it’s also very dangerous.
There’s so much filth on the internet, and you can access that
anonymously, and it can lead you to dark places. I’m not only
talking to you, you know. I hear confessions. It’s a real
problem. We need to use TV and the internet
appropriately. Anyway, you get the idea. We are excited for the young people
among us today. We just hope you have great lives, holy
lives. Let me leave you with a
question. C.S. Lewis poses this
question. Anything he wrote is good. He said, “If you were
accused of being a
Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?”