Homily: Priorities

[00:00:01] Good morning. Welcome to St. Mike's to all of our visitors today. It's good to have you. Welcome. So, going back a few years to the year 1839, some of you may know that the very first Catholic Mass was celebrated here in Memphis, going back a few years, at the home of a guy named Eugene McGevney.

[00:00:26] And Eugene McGevney was an Irish immigrant who came here and had a house down on Adams, which is still there by the way, the McGevney house. And apparently the priest who was there visiting from Nashville took a chest or drawer, like a dresser drawer, and celebrated Mass right there in the den. Very first Mass. Two years later they had the first Catholic baptism here in Memphis.

[00:00:56] And so this took place right before the big Irish potato famine. Some of you may know that happened in the year 1845. And so we had like a tidal wave of Irish immigrants come into the states, but especially to Memphis, a lot. Raise your hand, I'm curious, how many Irish do we have here? Okay, how many Italians do we have here?

[00:01:21] How many Southerners do we have here, right? Okay. So I don't know what I am. I know I'm Southern. Okay. That's my nationality. So one of the things that McGevney did, which is really cool, is you may know in those days, man, they did not speak the Irish and the Italians. I mean, never the twixty shall meet in those days. And so one of the things he did is he said, that's crazy. We need to come together.

[00:01:48] And he was very instrumental in starting the very first Catholic church here in Memphis, which was what? St. Peter's, right? Which is to this day, right next door to the McGevney house on Adams. I think it's kind of hard for many in our generation to understand what these people went through.

[00:02:13] I mean, it was hard, man, to be a Catholic Christian in those days. Some of you may have heard me talk about a group called the Know Nothing Party. If you're not familiar with the Know Nothing Party, look them up after you leave. So the Know Nothings, they hated Catholics. They were very anti-Catholic. And they were common, especially in the South, they would burn down Catholic churches. And they really, really did not like the Irish and the Italians.

[00:02:43] And so after they burned a church down, the police would say, hey, do you know anything about this? I know nothing. I know nothing. So they called them the Know Nothings. And they went through this. Huge persecution, man. Huge. And in those days, they often made the delineation between having religion and having faith. Hmm. What's the difference?

[00:03:13] Having religion but having faith? Because the truth is, people can be part of religion and have no faith. Right? Anybody know what the word religion actually means? It means to bind with an oath. To bind with an oath. It means we're part of a community, all 1.5 billion of us around the world. Here comes everybody.

[00:03:38] But when we have faith, well, what that means is I'm putting my trust in someone who's not me to help me. Namely, the person of Jesus Christ. And those guys had faith, boy. They had to have it. Which kind of brings us to this question, right? What does it mean then to honor God with his day?

[00:04:04] Remember last week, we talked about God, honoring God, honoring God's name. And today we talked about honoring God's day, the third commandment, yeah? On this feast of the Holy Trinity. If we could sum up maybe the Ten Commandments in one word, my opinion, priorities. We keep our priorities where they should be.

[00:04:29] So when we honor God's day, people would say, you know, look, Father, look, I got to work on Sunday. And I'm like, dude, I'm there with you. I used to work Sunday brunch. I know what it's like to work on Sundays. But here's the cool thing. Did you know there's six other days of the week? Did you get that memo? Right? So if you're interested in this, second chapter of Genesis, first paragraph, it says,

[00:04:56] After God made everything, he rested on the seventh day. Now, here's the truth. God didn't need to rest. He could snap his fingers. But he rested to give us an example to follow. Do you know that last week we had the feast of what? What feast day did we have last week? Pentecost. And so at Pentecost, we hear this, that our first pope, who's our first pope?

[00:05:25] Peter, 267 popes ago. We're told he celebrated mass with the community. Our first pope. That was the birthday of our church, 2,000 plus years ago. We're told that St. Paul went to Corinth. We heard about Paul to the Corinthians today. He went to Corinth, we're told, and he was celebrating mass there. Do you know that he was actually doing that before the gospels were written?

[00:05:57] That's how old this is. Okay? Wow. It's amazing, right? And Jesus, many times, he asks us to honor the Sabbath, honor his day, because we remember it's the day of the resurrection. So one of the things that we remember by honoring the Sabbath is our eternal perspective, the saints call it. In other words, we realize that, look, this time in this world is not long. But our time in the next world, yeah, that's long.

[00:06:29] So some of you may have heard of Cardinal Tim Dolan. He recently retired as the Cardinal Archbishop of New York. And as I shared with some of you, he was one of our seminary instructors. Wonderful, wonderful guy. Totally just a great guy. And so the day he was named a bishop in 2001, was in St. Louis. He was one of our instructors. So we had a big party for Bishop Dolan.

[00:06:59] And they asked me, they were having a dinner for 400 people and they asked me to do the dinner. And I was like, okay. I said, I have one condition. They said, what? I said, I get out of class for two weeks. And they immediately said yes. I said, man, I should have said two months or whatever. So I spent two weeks making this dinner. They had dignitaries, archbishops, cardinals, people from all over the world, the press were there, politicians were there.

[00:07:28] And so we do this dinner and the desserts finally go out, five courses. And at that point, everybody said, where's Bishop Dolan? He was just here. Where did he go? I said, I don't care. Look, it's been a long week. I'm going to go to bed. So I left, left the whole group in the dining room. I left. I'm walking back to my bedroom.

[00:07:57] And I walked right by the chapel. I thought, well, I hadn't prayed in two weeks. I should probably say hi to Jesus. Right? He's so needy. Right? So I opened the chapel door. I opened the chapel door and there's one person kneeling in front of the tabernacle in the chapel. Guess who it was? Bishop Dolan.

[00:08:25] He's the only one in the chapel kneeling right here in front of the tabernacle. Meanwhile, there's 400 people in the next room ready to shake his hand and get a photo op with him. And I will never forget that image as long as I live. Because I remember looking at him up here thinking to myself, that is a man who has his priorities in line.

[00:08:54] And I share this with you because really that's what this is all about, isn't it? When we talk about honoring the Sabbath. You know, I have to say this as a personal note. Take it for what you want. I never worry about young adults in their 20s or 30s who leave the faith. Who grow up Catholic and leave the faith. Statistically, the vast majority of them come back. When they come back, they're in. They're in like Flynn. I don't worry about that group. You know who I worry about?

[00:09:24] I worry about the parents who consistently do not bring their children to mass. Those are the ones I worry about. Jesus has very, very strong words about that. Because basically what they're telling their children is this. God is important as long as he's convenient. As long as he can work it around our vacation schedule, our sports schedule, our sleep schedule. Then he's important. If he doesn't, don't worry about it.

[00:09:55] My response to that? Hmm. Let's fast forward 200 or 20 years. Let's fast forward 20 years. And when your child is having a crisis moment. What do you think they're going to need more? Their memories of vacation? Or their relationship with God? What's our priorities? This is a priority.

[00:10:25] People will make priorities for what and who is important to them. It's just that simple. If it's working out, if it's visiting our elderly parents, whatever. They're going to make priorities for that. Which by the way, we're going to hear about next week too. So I'll close with this. If that's true. That honoring the Sabbath is all about keeping an eternal perspective of life after this life. Then what that means for us is this.

[00:10:55] One of the greatest gifts that you and I can give ourselves is to find peace with our own mortality. That we will one day leave this world. And one of the greatest ways to find peace with our own mortality is to find peace with our own immortality. And here's the hard truth. I'm just going to throw it out there. There are many people who do not want to die who do.

[00:11:25] And there are many people who do want to die who don't. There are people who don't want to die who do. Think about September 11th. Think about the young men stuck in the USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor trying to stay alive. But they do for whatever reason. We don't know why. And there are people who want to go home to the Lord who aren't. Maybe their spouse has died. Some of their children have died. All their friends have died. They're here and they're like, why am I here, Lord?

[00:11:55] Why am I here? Please take me. Maybe they've gone through long, extensive cancer or Alzheimer's. Why am I here? But they're here another day. We don't get to choose when and how we will leave this world. But you know what we do get to choose? Where we will be after we do leave this world.

[00:12:21] This is why it is so important to stay close to what happens at that altar. Because Jesus tells us that the Eucharist gives us eternal life. It's priorities. This is why? It's not a study, but it's kind of easy on your body. It goes into lessons when you're not going to die or you know each other. You are and I are the most likely to die. That's a great question.