Farewell Homily to Ss. Peter and Paul, Naperville
10th Sunday in Ordinary Time
9 June 2024
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What is the greatest tragedy in human history? Besides, of course, for the day that Steve Bartman caught that ball at Wrigley Field in 2003 and the comparably awful moment when the first person decided that coconut should be included in desserts.
Last night, I was in the mood for some hard-hitting research…you know, a real high-octane academic enterprise; so I asked ChatGPT the question: “What is the greatest tragedy in human history?”
Here’s what it said:
Determining the greatest tragedy in human history is inherently subjective and depends on various perspectives, including the scale of human suffering, historical impact, and the legacy left behind. Several events stand out due to their immense human toll and lasting effects:
(Then, it listed things that probably came to your mind)
World War I&II, The Holocaust, The Black Death, The Atlantic Slave Trade (and, really, slavery anywhere at anytime), the Great Chinese Famine, Genocides anywhere, etc.
What is the greatest tragedy in human history? Is there something that each of these have in common – perhaps a thread that runs through each of them?
Genesis describes it this way: “The woman saw that the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eyes, and the tree was desirable for gaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.” (Gen 3:6)
Sin. Sin is the greatest tragedy in human history. Not just in Eden, wherever that is, but here in Naperville – here in our hearts and minds, in our everyday living: when we give in to the urge of sin which has us prefer worldly wealth, pleasure, power, and honor over all that we know to be good and beautiful and true, we participate and re-engage the greatest tragedy in the history of the world. These desires for wealth, pleasure, power, and honor represent the core of all interpersonal and intrapersonal conflict; “I want what I want and I want it right now.” Even though everything we could have needed and wanted had already been given to us by the one who knew us better than we know ourselves, because he’d created us.
So that’s the tragedy. What is the greatest shock in the history of the world? Again, the first reading today: “When they heard the sound of the Lord God walking about in the garden in the cool of the day, the man and his wife hid themselves from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. The Lord then called to the man and asked him: where are you?” (Gen 3:8-9)
Where are you, O man? Adam, my son. My creation. Where are you?
The Lord – the creator, the giver of everything who’d just been betrayed in the most spectacular way – returns first and completely by his own will – and speaks the words that have the ability to pierce any heart that is truly awake: “where are you?”
Adam replies, “I heard you in the garden, but I was afraid, because I was naked, so I hid.”
In the person of his Son, Jesus, who is our model for life precisely because of his obedience to what the Father asked of him – for this reason we call Jesus the “new Adam” – God the Father continues to walk through the sin-soaked landscape of our dark world here below, and with the same composure and love as God in the garden he calls out, “where are you?” Adding encouragement, of course: “Come to me, all you who labor! All you who mourn! All you who are persecuted! All you meek and pure and sad and hungry. I want to give you rest.”
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I’m not sure whether or not I’m allowed to tell you this, so let’s just keep it between us, okay? Three years ago, when I was still on the Priest Personnel Board, I was given a choice at the very last meeting of the year between two parishes: a parish named after an archangel in a town very close to here that starts with a W and rhymes with “heaton” and Ss. Peter and Paul in Naperville.
Peter and Paul, no question. For me, Peter and Paul has never been a question. It’s has always been a “yes” for me. Two years ago, when I was going to be full time at Chesterton, they wanted me to move. I told them no. When the bishop called me in April to tell me I’d be going to Visitation, I did my Fr. DeSalvo impression and tried to convince him he’d called the wrong number. Alas.
For as long as I can remember, at least in my adult life, Peter and Paul has been a refuge for me. The quiet place to pray after getting obliterated by Finite Math at North Central; the late night adoration chapel visits in 2011 when my roommate in Patterson Hall was blasting his music; altar serving as a college student at the Sunday evening Mass; being invited by Deacon Ron and Brendon Heffron to altar serve at Midnight Mass in 2010 even though this wasn’t technically my parish.
That Midnight Mass changed the course of my life. I was sitting over there where these young men are sitting now. As the Gospel of Christmas was being proclaimed, I was looking toward the back of the Church at the Christ the King window, and I heard someone calling my name. “Ryan! Ryan!” I was the incense guy, so I thought maybe I’d overdone it and was just hearing things. Mass continued, and at the moment of the epiclesis – when Fr. Milota put his hands over the bread and wine and said “Send you Spirit on these to make them Holy.” I heard it again: “Ryan. Ryan!” This time, I knew who it was.
Now, I get to say those words of consecration and look at that Christ the King window every single day
If you listen to or read any versions of my vocation story that I gave while I was still in seminary, you’ll hear me say that it was at that moment that I perceived Jesus was calling me to the priesthood. But I don’t believe that’s true anymore.
Vocations are planted in hearts at the moment of baptism, so the Lord had been calling me to priesthood for my entire life. But that moment on Christmas night was something else, something – believe it or not – much more personal and important.
“Where are you?” He was saying. “Make me King of your heart. Come, follow me.”
That night was like an Automated Internal Defibrillator – a true shock of grace, an invasion of God’s love and life into my heart and mind and it caused me to ask a very important question for the first time in my life: “where am I?”
And I realized that at that moment, I was an English major with an emphasis in writing and Secondary Education, but that I really hated everything I was reading and writing about. I knew I wanted to teach, but I could not see myself teaching high school English as I planned. I was 18, and only just barely beginning to wake up to the idea that the world is insane, and really scary, and will eat me alive if I go through it blind and numb.
The way of the world – the way of sin and death – is painfully boring. It’s so predictable; you all perceive this when you come into the confessional and lament that you are confessing the same things you always confess. There is nothing new or beautiful in a world captivated by sin and death. That is why Pope John Paul II was able to topple Communism by reminding the people of Eastern Europe that it is “Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are attracted; it is He who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise. It is He who urges you to shed the masks of of a false life.”
Later on in this Mass, we will hear one of my favorite songs, The Summons. Nick – I really don’t care which verses you sing but you must sing verse 4: “Will you love the ‘you’ you hide if I but call your name? Will you quell the fear inside and never be the same? Will you use the faith you’ve found to reshape the world around, through my sight and touch and sound in you and you in me?”
Because when Jesus calls out to you, “Where are you?” He really wants to know! Where are YOU? Not the version of you that everyone knows, or you wish you were, or you’re trying to be. But you, as you. Where are you? And sometimes life throws these curveballs that are so unpredictable, so disruptive, so dang hard that we really have no choice but to stop everything and dig very deeply to find out precisely where and who we are.
But what comes on the other side of that? The other side of the searching and suffering? The other side of that heart-piercing question?
What Paul told the Corinthians today he speaks also to us: “Everything indeed is for you, so that the grace bestowed in abundance on more and more people may cause the thanksgiving to overflow for the glory of God.”
Everything is for you. The length and width and height and breadth of the human experience are yours when you are hidden in Christ Jesus. “For this momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.”
What else does this mean except that in Jesus, because of Jesus, with Jesus…everything is different. That it is possible to live a life without fear, without condemnation, without judgment, without anxiety.
If 25 years from now, you’re out walking the dog or watering the plants or in the delivery room or presenting to the board or changing your oil or walking to Sparrow; or maybe you’re locked up in jail or just leaving divorce court or reeling from the news of the diagnosis; or maybe you just dropped her off at college or starting a new job or learning to paint with watercolors in art therapy or watching an elderly Taylor Swift take the stage…if in the midst of your life, wherever it takes you – up, or down, or in between and all around – if you happen to remember a certain 32 year old priest who reminds you of George Costanza and Woody Allen, I hope you remember his quirks and faults less than you remember what he told you: that with God all things are possible; that in Jesus, all things are bearable; and that in Christ, everything can be different, because everything is new. But you have to let yourself and your worldview be changed, which comes often through suffering.
When we get ordained, we all get very excited about bringing the Love of Christ to the whole world!!! I understand now that isn’t at all what Jesus is asking me to do. He never said anything to me about the whole world. As far as I know, he just asked me bring his love to Naperville as best as I could; and to receive his love from all of you as best as I could. It wasn’t perfect, but I think it turned out pretty good.
On July 1st, 2021 I took refuge once again at Ss. Peter and Paul, and on July 1st, 2024 I will say goodbye. For now, from the bottom of my heart, I just want to say “thank you.”
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