Homily: The 7th Commandment

[00:00:00] Can you imagine if you don't speak any English at all? Imagine you don't speak one word of English. Let's say that you come from Botswana, Africa, or Uruguay in South America, or Russia, or Vietnam. And let's say you don't speak one word of English. Can you imagine how difficult it is to learn English from somebody with a southern accent? Can you imagine how difficult it is, right?

[00:00:30] You're talking to somebody with a deep southern accent, right? Incredible. It's just amazing, right? I mean, we don't think about it, but in English we have many words that sound the same, that have totally different meanings, right? For instance, somewhere, we were, and we were. Totally different meanings.

[00:00:56] Most of us, I think at some point, have studied a second language, but there's some phrases that you learn when you're learning a language that are very important. Where is the bathroom? Very important. Check please. How do I get a taxi? And so we kind of learn these basic things. I can say for me, when I was learning Spanish years ago, Spanish was not the problem.

[00:01:22] The problem was the 20 or so Spanish accents priests encounter on a weekly basis. So we have to kind of adjust. Maybe we could say, apply that principle to the spiritual life, yeah? What are some of the basics we need with our language with God? Just the raw basics, the meat and potatoes, Father. Right? What are the meat and potatoes? Well, two things maybe.

[00:01:51] Number one, you are loved. You're loved. You know, we're, let's be honest, we're all kind of a hot mess in our own ways. Probably most of us have done or said things we're not proud of. You're, you're in good company. I mean, that's all of us, right? Including the apostles, by the way. You're loved. Jesus loves you. And he's going to meet you where you are and say, look, it's okay. It's okay. Follow me. And I'm going to work with you, buddy.

[00:02:22] Number two, we can never hear the voice of God in our life if we're too distracted. We're just not going to hear it. People will ascribe the voice of God to things that aren't the voice of God. It's really their own voice. But they say, God told me to do this. I'm like, did he? Did he? Or are you kind of superimposing your own voice on God? Real easy to go off the rails.

[00:02:51] So how do we hear the voice of God if he's, if he's leading us? Well, we've got to prune away things. In other words, another way to put it, we need to detox and downsize our life at times. Get down to raw basics. So talking about downsizing, do you, do you, how many pairs of shoes do you have at home? Anybody have some pairs of shoes? If I can go into your, your closet.

[00:03:18] Gentlemen, how many old t-shirts do you have in your closet from 40 years ago? Mm-hmm. I mean, I can say for me, one thing, full transparency here, one of the things I need to downsize, books. My name is Father Ben and I'm a booked addict. Hi, Father Ben. I mean, full on, I need to get rid of this. If somebody, if I died tomorrow, some poor soul would have to go through my closet. Oh my gosh, man. Right?

[00:03:48] It's good to downsize. It's liberating, actually. Today we're going to talk about the seventh commandment. What's the seventh commandment? You shall not steal. Right? It's probably a safe bet that most of us are not stealing on a weekly basis. You may take the last Oreo in the house, but most of us are probably not stealing. But it is, to that point, maybe we could just say, ask this question.

[00:04:16] What do we need and what do we want? What do we need and what do we want? Because sometimes we want, we get, the newness wears off. We want, we get, the newness wears off. We want, we get, the newness wears off. Until at some point after that continues for a number of years, people begin to say, now what? Is there, is there anything more?

[00:04:46] Well, then we have to listen. If we're going to get to that. Imagine you're pulling back the layers of an onion of your life. And some people, they don't want to go past the first layer. I want it on a superficial level, man. Because if I go deeper, I may find meaning in life, but I may have to look at things of myself I don't want to look at. But here's the thing. You can't be happy that way. You can't be fulfilled as a human being. Pull them, pull them, pull them. Go deep.

[00:05:16] Yes, it stings. There's part of that. But that's liberating. That's why Jesus says, truth brings freedom. You will find the truth and the truth will do what? Yeah, that's what he's talking about. You want to be happy? Go to the middle of the onion, man. You know, Jesus in the synoptic gospels, what are the three synoptic gospels? Matthew, Mark, and Luke. John's different.

[00:05:44] So in all three of the synoptic gospels, he sends out the 72, two by two. And he says this. He says, don't take anything with you when you go. Don't take a walking stick. Don't take money. Don't take extra clothes. Just go. It would be like us going out to get the mail at the street and just going on a journey. And I say, well, yeah, but Father, I mean, the apostles, they didn't have families. I got a family. True enough.

[00:06:14] But the point still kind of remains, right? Do we need to shed away, prune away, detox, downsize some of the things in our life, including on our schedules, to hear the voice of God? Could be. I'm not sure how many here drink wine. Since we have a few Catholics, I'm guessing we have a few that drink wine. Jesus' first miracle, he made a lot of it.

[00:06:44] But in case you didn't know this, there is a bottle of wine out there. It's called Chateau Latour. Retails about $800 a bottle. That's retail. It costs more than a restaurant. Chateau Latour. So let's assume that tonight I come to your house for dinner, okay? And I bring a bottle of Chateau Latour, $800 worth. And I leave it in the bag so you can't see the label.

[00:07:12] And let's say that I also bring another bottle from Costco that's $12. So I got a $12 bottle, $80 bottle, $800. Be honest. If we did a blind tasting, could you tell the difference? Probably not. Now maybe if it was Chateau Latour and Mad Dog 2020, okay? Maybe then. Who knows? All right? But I can tell you, I've taken many, many wine tasting courses over the years. I probably couldn't tell the difference.

[00:07:43] All right? Point being, if you talk to anybody in the wine industry, they will often say that the best wines, the very best, are the ones that don't sacrifice quality for quantity. Some of these vineyards over the years, they're like, well, let's sell more and more and more. And they sacrifice quality. See, the same thing, those of you that have been to Italy, the food in Italy, a good Parmigiano-Riggiano cheese.

[00:08:12] Oh, amazing, right? Or a good gelato. Mmm. They don't sacrifice. They're like, nope, we're going to make less and have better quality. I admire that. Maybe we could say the same thing, yeah, about our spiritual life. What's the quality of our relationship with God? Jesus talks about this too. He says, when you're praying, don't just go spattering off things. Speak from your heart. Just speak from your heart.

[00:08:41] Like you're talking to a buddy. Like to God. Right? And by the way, this may come as a shocker. Some of the best prayers that we can do, can you believe it? Include anger. Anger, anger towards God can be a beautiful prayer. Talk to anybody that's lost a child. They know what I'm talking about. It can be a beautiful prayer. Speak from your heart. I'm really angry with you, God. I don't understand you. Amen.

[00:09:12] It's a beautiful prayer. Give it to him. He can take it. He's a big God. There are some questions in our life that we will never, ever answer unless we prune away the things that distract us. In theology, they call them the what, the where, and the why questions in life. The what, the where, and the why questions. They get us to the center of the onion. You know what those are? It goes like this.

[00:09:42] What happens to me after I die? It's the meaning of life. Why am I even here? Where will we all be 200 years from now? None of us are here. Where are we going to be? You're never going to find the answers to those questions if we don't go to the center of the onion. And to go to the center of the onion,

[00:10:11] we've got to prune away the things that distract us from hearing God. I'm not sure, anybody here ever been to Seattle, Washington? Yeah, some of us. So about 30 miles east of Seattle, there's a little town, beautiful, beautiful town. It's called Fall City, Washington. It's in the mountains there. Beautiful, amazing. By the way, they have wonderful wine from that region too. Beautiful. So in this little town called Fall City, Washington,

[00:10:42] they have a treatment facility. And the treatment facility is, it is not for drugs or alcohol. You know what it's for? Cell phones. Technology. They call it restart, like you restart your computer. Raise your hand if when you were growing up, there was no cell phones. How many people grew up with that? Okay. So it may become as a surprise to those of us that just raised our hand,

[00:11:11] but some people have never known that world. They've known a cell phone their entire life. And we've all known people that are full-on addicted to their cell phones. They can't put them down. They're constantly checking. You go to restaurants with them, they're checking. Right? They just can't stop. So what they do at restart, they go through a 45-day, 45-day digital detox. 45 days without your cell phone. Did you do it?

[00:11:45] Interesting. What's interesting about some of the people that go through restart treatment, which is not covered by health insurance, by the way, they're paying out of pocket, they say after about 20 days without their cell phone, they can see the beauty in life. Because they're not distracted. And trust me, I am not anti-tech. I believe in technology.

[00:12:13] All I'm saying is cell phones are like unruly toddlers. They need firm boundaries or they will own your life. Right? No, we're not going to look at that now. I'm going to have dinner with my family. That's what I'm talking about. We've got to prune away that stuff, man. Otherwise, we're just going to be distracted. We're never going to see the beauty in life. So I've shared this story with some of you before, so you'll forgive me if I repeat myself.

[00:12:41] But many years ago, I went on silent retreat at a place called Gethsemane Monastery in Kentucky. That's where Thomas Merton was at. And I'm a morning guy, so I got up early. And I went for a walk around their grounds. Beautiful. And I came up on this lake that was so stunningly beautiful. The sun was coming through and there's steam coming off the lake. It's just gorgeous. It's beautiful.

[00:13:09] And I just stopped to kind of take it in, right? And I noticed at that point that something was right here next to my face moving. And I look over right here and it was a spider. And it was about three inches, what they call a garden spider. It's gold and black. So it was right here. And I was like, ooh. And then I saw another one here and another one here. And I went, just backed up.

[00:13:40] And I looked down the side of the lake and on all these cattails, there's thousands and thousands of these big spiders. And I just sat there and I was like, wow. And I have to tell you, it was both beautiful and very creepy. All at the same time. So I spent the next two hours standing next to this lake looking at these spiders as they're

[00:14:07] weaving their webs because they were getting the insects coming off the water, getting breakfast. And I thought to myself, yeah, how do these spiders know how to build a web? I mean, it's not like they go to spider school to learn this stuff, right? How does a bird know how to build a nest? No. But it was a really beautiful moment where I saw God's creation. And I have to tell you, this is why I'm telling you this story.

[00:14:37] I never would have had that God moment if I brought my cell phone. In fact, I probably wouldn't even have left my room. We have to downsize and detox if we're going to sometimes see the beauty in life, the beauty of God speaking to us and the beauty of the person in front of us at the moment. and see it all about birds in a bird. Whereas it has a big part. I just want to remember God's and the birds of the birds and the birds that are And then I've changed it from a bird.