The Equation of Life

A Homily Given on the Solemnity of the Ascension

At St. Francis Xavier Church in Hyannis

to the Students, Faculty, and Staff

of St. John Paul II High School

and St. Francis Xavier Preparatory School

I always enjoyed math when I was a kid. It was so straight forward, so logical, so simple. And even as it gets more complicated, by and large, math does not get that much harder as much as it gets busy.

Math is always based on the reality of 1+1=2; its just that this phrase gets tacked on to other fairly simple phrases like it, relationships that we know to be true, in an order of operations that gets longer and longer and more complex.

Complex and yet fundamentally simple, because if you do the right functions in the right way cancelling out terms it all comes down to simple math.

Despite my like of Math and Physics in High School I quickly realized that I did not have the discipline, patience, or interest to keep

All those simple relationships straight. As I left high school I made an academic left turn away from the so-called hard sciences and toward the arts and philosophy in particular; However, one thing I realized very early on is that ideas matter! Even simple little ideas that perhaps seem cliché..  

Ideas are the simple terms in the equation of life that get put together in more and more complex ways. Just like the simple relationships expressed in a mathematical equation, no matter the complexity of a reality, or how accurately you describe it, if you don’t keep the simple ideas, like 1+1, in order, your whole project will be doomed to failure.

Today, Jesus gives us the answer to the final exam of life. He does so not that we can avoided actually solving the problem of life, but so that when we make mistakes, when we confuse simple terms in the equation of life, when we pick up bad ideas and ways of thinking, we will know that when the answer comes out to anything other than what Jesus shows us today, that we need to go back and check our work.

Sadly, like your math teachers have most likely told you again and again the answer is not as important as showing how you got there.

 And so what is the answer Jesus gives us today?

Why did God make you? He made you to be with Him forever in Heaven.

The answer to the problem is God, and so how do we get there?

Well, at the beginning of the year we talked about love,

but the problem with this is that God is Love,

and so saying Love is the way to God

is as your math teachers will have told you

the same as saying God is the way to God.

If God is unknowable, ultimately Love,

and here I am speaking of the transcendent perfection,

not the cheap human love of pizza or even our imperfect love of our mothers,

real Love, with an upper case “L”, is unknowable.

But there is Hope, because thankfully we have a divine math tutor who lays out all the terms of the equation.

In Scripture, Jesus tells us what Love means, when He lays out the Greatest Commandment, and its corollary the Golden Rule.

Teacher what is the greatest commandment of the Law?

“Love the Lord your God, with all your Heart, all your Mind, and all your Being.”
Here, Jesus expands on God = Love in two ways giving us the idea of Heart, Mind, and Being, and the idea of Commandments.

He further elaborates by saying the second greatest commandment is like it,

Love your neighbor as yourself.

In John’s Gospel, our divine Math tutor shows us what the equation of Love looks like, by giving us a peak over his shoulder at His work, when He says:

“Love one another as I have Loved you”

and

“No greater love has a man than to lay down his life for a friend.”

Giving us the example of the Cross Jesus shows us the equation for true love: cross multiplication--a simple equation, that does not admit counterfeits, but which is difficult only in that it demands everything.

If we pay attention to the terms in this simple equation God = Love

Love = 1Heart + 1Mind + 1Being / All given on the cross.

Remembering that this is the answer to the Commandments we see how Jesus, who came to fulfill, not abolish the Law desires us to do that mathematics of eternal life.

The hard part, is keeping your terms in order though, because like math, in life things start simple: thou shall not steal, thou shall not lie--but they quickly become more complicated as more and more terms, more and more ideas, more and more realities of human life are added to the equation.

One of the most frustrating things for me, and for your teachers, and parents, frustrating, I would guess in a sense, also for God, is that we can’t do the work for you--in fact, we have a hard enough time doing our own home work. 

You need to do it yourself in the complicated equation of your life, and a simple error, like a bad idea in philosophy, or a mistaken phrase in a mathematical equation, can throw everything off.

Thankfully, the time for your exam is the rest of your life.  Now that may seem like a long time, but time flies when you are having fun. For some life is just long enough, for others there will be time left over to help others, however, sadly the reality is that for some, for those who ignore the answer Christ gives and fail to check their life's work against it, when the divine proctor says put down your pencils at the end of life they will not have the right answer, and the work to prove it.

On this feast of the Ascension, Jesus invites you to check your work, to examine the ideas, and actions in your life, and ask if they lead to the answer giver today.

Today the Word who became Man, and who shows us what it means to be Human shows us that ultimately being human means leaving every created thing behind to be with God.

He does so, so that His Apostles and Disciples not be confused into thinking that anything in creation can truly make us happy.

When you think about the components, the terms of your life, the A + B +X / Y  less Pie that makes you who you are, remember if any term seem to be the answer

but doesn’t itself = God, or one of those terms that = God

Beauty, Truth, Goodness, Love, Being

then you have a mistake in the equation of life, that you need to fix.

Sorry for the lack of Material

I really like publishing my homilies here for the sake of posterity but for the past few years I have found myself not writing out my homilies any more.  The reason for this is, I hope, an increase in my skill as a preacher, my confidence, and comfortableness giving homilies, as well as advice given by parishoners who said my homilies were better when I freed myself from text.  The result is that while I might write some brief notes, I rarely take the time to write out a full homily unless it is intended to be published in some format.  Laziness, or the reality of my busy schedule, usually prevents me from putting into writing what I am not going to use a text for, however, this has resulted in some EXCELLENT (IMHO, as well as the opinions of others mind you) homilies never being posted here. Therefore I am hoping to look into the possibility of audio recording homilies and talks going forward so that I can upload them here.  We will see what time allows.  +AMDG+

In Christ,

Fr. Ron

The choice to believe.

A sermon for the XXIII Sunday throughout the year
at St. Sacred Heart Chapel in Yarmouth Port
By the Rev. Fr Ronnie P. Floyd, STL
on Saturday September 7th 2013


God’s ways are not fair. 

This is a refrain that I constantly hear in various shapes and forms, and over the course of the first five years of my priesthood I have come to realize that the difference between faith and faithlessness is fundamentally a difference in perspective. It is a choice, that we are given in freedom, to view the world as fundamentally good, in the midst of so much evil, or to doubt the goodness of existence.  It’s often said that we have a choice to view the world as a glass half empty or a glass half full, but for the Christian, it’s not only a glass half full but a glass half full in the process of being filled up.

And so while we may experience the emptiness of the parts not yet filled as a desolation and sorrow, because we choose to have faith, to TRUST IN GOD, even in the midst of what seems like darkness, there is light.  The other day I was with a woman who was vacationing here on Cape Cod with her husband. On the penultimate day of her vacation her husband returned from a round of golf, sat down on the coach, and had a massive heart attack. Praying with the woman in the Hospital she was of course filled with sorrow—and thinking about the situation anyone could easily see how our emotions could lead us to choose to view the glass of life as half empty,  and yet this woman had faith. Faith, which in the midst of this darkness, helped her to see her lose in the context of the Cross of Jesus Christ on Calvary. As a moment of emptiness, that opened the door to the fullness of resurrection;  over the course of the next hour I helped her in the midst of emotional sorrow to remember her intellectual joy, to see things in the bigger context of history.  Her last memories of her husband were happy ones, she had enjoyed his life for almost five decades, he had died quickly and painlessly…   When we look for Divine Providence, we almost always find it, and even if we are there we know by faith that it is there, that “all things work for the Good for those who love God.”  (Rm 8:28)

The Gospel today is one of many instances of double communication, where our Lord really challenges us to think in nuanced terms.  Today our Lord preaches that we must hate our mothers and fathers, and this shocks our sensibilities almost as it must have shocked his Jewish audience who must have been thinking, “is he setting aside the fourth commandment of the Law?”   The Law says honor mother and father, and yet this man says that unless we hate them we cannot be his disciples.  Obviously, Jesus, who we know comes to fulfill the law is not setting this part aside, so what is he getting at?  HATE, is not the opposite of love*, is what Jesus is trying to make us see.  Hate is necessary for love, because to love something you must hate whatever keeps you from your beloved; and so there is a legitimate sense that we must HATE all created things, if we are to love God.  In fact, REAL LOVE starts with love of God.  Love is not a finite thing when ordered to the love of God, it is not as if in keeping the Greatest Commandment, that we should love the Lord our God with our whole heart, mind, and being, that the well of love runs dry for others. On the contrary, in loving God with everything that we have that love overflows, being multiplied like the loaves and fish on the plain of Tagba, in superabundance.  In contrast, when we first try to love the creature, before loving the creator love because it is not well ordered often becomes possessiveness—we love only so long as we possess the others love—but how can we claim then to love our enemy when clearly we do not possess their love?

Jesus follows up this masterful challenge to consider the true nature of love with a parable. Speaking about entering into a task, any task, and our Lord suggests construction and war as examples, the Lord tells us not to start what we are unwilling to accomplish.  In the context of current events the clarity of what God is saying to our political leaders about engaging in violent conflict is striking.  The most important task however is the task of faith—and it is  task.  We must choose to have faith, and we should only choose to have faith, and to be faithful, if we are willing to GIVE EVERYTHING. 

“Naked I came forth from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall return, the Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord.”  God gives everything and once we have enjoyed it for a while, learning from the goodness of created things, He takes it away.  If we are not willing to have EVERYTHING taken away, if we are not willing with Jesus to take up the Cross, then we can NOT follow Him, and we shouldn’t try, because we will be made to look foolish. However if we do, if we choose to have faith, BELIEVING in the depths of our heart that all things are working for good according to God’s providential plan, then peace and joy in this life will be yours, and victory over the emptiness and darkness of sin in the life to come.

* As the philosopher Josef Pieper notes it is actually indifference that is the opposite of love, not caring about the other, essentially saying that their existence is not good,  hate in contrast always is a bulwark of something loved, and so the goodness or badness of hate lies in the goodness or badness of the thing loved. Cf. Pieper, Josef. "Faith, Hope, and Love,"Ignatius Press, March 1997.

Judge not the Lord your God!!!

A Homily given for the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

at St. Francis Xavier Church in Hyannis

by the Reverend Fr. Ronnie P. Floyd, S.T.L.
on September 1st 2013

At the beginning of time when God first breathed the breath of life

Into man and woman, He gave us a choice.

God created from that first big bang (FIAT LUX Gen 1:3)

An explosion of existence out of non-existence:

light, heat, energy, matter, all things

Allowing the law of physics He established to do its work

He carved a space into nothingness where eventually

our planet would stand in the midst of the chaos,

well ordered and well-disposed to shelter life.

On that planet He used the laws of biochemistry to allow things to evolve to the point where all the things we need to prosper were in place.

And then when all was complete, on the sixth day,

awaiting only the reason for creation He created us.

Breathing reason and freewill, the essence of who He was, into creatures

And making them unto His image and His Likeness.

Having given us REASON and FREE WILL

He gave us a choice

Accept the gift of creation, as is, in humility,

Or doubt it, and its Creator, making ourselves His Judge.

Original sin is an act of PRIDE,

and so it should not surprise you that our Lord recommends humility

both in word and example, as the remedy to this sickness.

However, in our day and age, I think many people fall into a modern trap

of proudly judging the Church and other Christians,

and failing to realize that true pride starts and ends

with humility before God!

In the Gospel today the Lord speaks a parable about a supper,

and the place at table which we choose for ourselves at that supper,

Is the Lord talking about a dinner party primarily here?

Elsewhere in the Gospel you might remember

James and John also asking about seating arrangements,

When they asked to sit at Jesus’ left and right in the Kingdom

To which Jesus responds:

Can you drink of the Chalice from which I am to drink?

When they respond yes, Jesus says they will drink of it,
but to sit at His right and left are not His to give.

Of course all this talk of dinners make one think of the Last Supper,

And the image of heaven as a banquet, the Supper of the Lamb

Which is a constant theme in the Gospel.

And so we see that while Jesus may be giving sound advice about not exalting ourselves down hear, the fact of the matter is that,

What he is REALLY warning us about is not exalting ourselves in Heaven.

How often do you come across the Christian who judges the Church

Or individual Christians for their pride,

While assuming the best place for themselves in the Kingdom of Heaven.

I am always struck by the words of St. Peter,

which you hear over and over again,

repeated in the words and writings of the Saints:

DEPART FROM ME LORD, FOR I AM A SINFUL MAN

Most of the Saints understood what the heretic priest Palegius did not,

That man can not EARN salvation!

That no matter how hard we try,

we are all poor sinners in need of a Savior.

Paradoxically, that’s a good thing, because if we were not sinners we would have no need of or access to so great a savior.

And so at the Easter Vigil, when the Church sings the Resurrection song, the Exultet, she sings of the HAPPY FAULT, the HAPPY SIN, of Adam.

The Church does not rejoice in SIN, but in the remedy for sin.

How often today do we hear people presuming upon God,
that everyone and their brother is in Heaven.

REALIZE, that by saying this, we are essentially saying that if perhaps

someone is not in Heaven, that we think should be, then God’s a JERK.

We are making ourselves His judge AGAIN!!!

As Catholics we believe that Baptism,

and membership in the Church is essential to salvation,

that is why it is CHARITY to share our faith with others.

And while we do not limit God’s ability to perhaps work in some other way (than Baptism) to share the necessary grace of this Sacrament, what if God decided, no, I am not going to give salvation to so in so.

Would we really judge the God of Love and Justice, unjust? Would we really dare to tutor He who knows all things in the facts of life?

We work our salvation in fear and trembling,

St. Paul says to the Philippians,
because none of us are worthy of a place at the table.

Much worse than the outcome of the parable today is the predicament of being asked to give up the place of honor and finding no seat left for us to take.

And so humble yourselves before God,

DO NOT MAKE YOURSELF HIS JUDGE, but seek to do His will, on Earth as in Heaven, fearful of your unworthiness,  BUT ALSO full of Hope because of His Love.

"Not my will but your will be done."

I think you will find that when you focus on your own sinfulness, and unworthiness, the most remarkable thing happens, it becomes easier to be humble, loving, and understanding, to the rest of us poor sinners.

An interesting movie about the problem of evil.

The gift of Free Will: The Eucharist

Free will—many people deny it, most take it for granted,
Often we abuse it, seldom do we take responsibility for it
But always does God give it and respect it
Hoping that we will use it for the other, to Love.

When you really stop to think about it free will is a marvelous thing.
Truly a wonder, a miracle in fact!

When we hear proclaimed on Holy Saturday night
At the Mass of Light the 27th verse of that first chapter 
of the Book of Genesis:
God created mankind in his image;
in the image of God he created them;
male and female* he created them.

Do we realize that physically, we do not look like God, 
Who is after all pure SPIRIT?  

Do we realize that the image of God is, as St. Augustine teaches,
This ability that no other animal shares to make choices 
free from the demands of our mortal nature?

Do we realize that free will is the image, 
and our correct use of this freedom, the likeness
of God, which he carved in our souls on the day of our creation
and which He restores tonight during this Sacred Triduum?

Why is this night different from every other night?  
Why is it different from every other of Passover night since God delivered His people out of Egypt? 

Because tonight is the night when the Lamb of God 
Chooses to fulfill God’s plan,
Chooses to bind his free human will to the Divine Will.

You see Jesus is True God, but also True Man,
This means that although He shares His Divine intellect 
and will with the Father and the Holy Spirit,

His human nature, means that he has human intellect and a human will.

Tonight is the night, where humanity is reconciled to divinity
Because God who became man, showed us that human nature, 
the human will, is strong enough to unite itself to God.

In short:  you can choose to love
You can choose to give God everything He gives you.
 You can choose to be a SAINT.

In the reading from Exodus we hear that 
every family must procure a lamb, a prefect lamb,
and slaughter it, marking their doors with its blood, 
and eating its flesh prepared as if on a journey.

By this we understand, that the Passover is not just a meal,
it is a sacrifice, and a sacrament (a sign), 
which prepares man to do God’s will
to make a journey, into the desert, to encounter God.

The problem is the lamb is just a lamb, tasty I am sure,
but only a symbol of what we owe God.

It’s a symbol, furthermore that can be lost, 
because we are commanded to eat the Lamb.
Imagine if Uncle Sam were as loving as our God,
asking us to sacrifice our tax dollars,
but then letting us keep them.

For God it’s the right use of free will that He cares about,
After all, as the psalmist quips,
“Do you thing [God] eats the flesh of rams, 
or drinks the blood of goats?”

Like the Sacrifice of Issac, the beloved son of Abraham, 
the Sacrifice that is offered is not the thing sacrificed, 
it is the CHOICE Abraham is asked to make
a choice to “do the will of the Father”

As Jesus’ says in the Garden: “…but not my will but thy will be done.”

Abraham, offers his beloved son, and seeing his willingness, 
God provides a substitute.

In the story of the Sacrifice of Issac, it was a ram, caught in a thicket,
But today that foreshadowing is accomplished.

Jesus is the Lamb, not caught by His horns in a bush, but completely free
who chooses to accept God’s plan, and to do the will of the Father.

He does so, experiencing everything that we experience,
Uncertainty, fear, pain,

But making a choice, in love, to TRUST IN GOD,
To allow God’s will to be done: to, and in, and through HIM.


On the night He was betrayed, He took Bread, 
and said THIS IS MY BODY 
And He took the Chalice and said: THIS IS MY BLOOD

In doing so He is not just having a meal 
or satiating human hunger and thirst

Our Catholic Faith teaches us, 
that by the power of the Holy Spirit, 
what looks, feels, and tastes like bread is bread no more
and what smells, moves, and seems like wine is truly His Blood.

And this is not just a parlor trick, 
he takes bread and wine and changes it into His Body and His Blood
So that by doing so He can give us a symbol, a Sacrament,
of His choice, made in complete human freedom,
to give everything to God, for you and for me.

Jesus, God, who became Man, 
is now the man who in freedom, which is the image of God
chooses freely, to become like God.

By doing so, not just by dying, but by FREELY choosing to die
He washes us of our iniquities, and cleanses us from our sins.

If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, 
you ought to wash one another’s feet.


Through the graces He wins for us, by this choice,
He invites us to do the same.

Jesus invites us all, when we enjoy bounty to praise the Lord
when we achieve great things to praise the Lord
when we work great marvels to praise the Lord
But also when we fail to praise the Lord
When we fall down to praise the Lord
When we are persecuted, especially for His sake, to praise the Lord
And when we must suffer, and perhaps even die
To suffer and die in PEACE, not lamenting our fate, 
but praising God as Jesus does today. 

This is the image of God, 
whose likeness Jesus restores to us in Baptism.

I have given you a model to follow, 
so that as I have done for you, you should also do.

Loving in ways people don't want to be loved

A Homily for the Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist
Given at St. Patrick's Church in Wareham
On Sunday, June 24th
By: Rev. Fr. Ronnie P. Floyd

Last week in the Gospel we heard about the Kingdom of God Being like a small seed which is tiny when planted, aut spreads out growing roots and branches in all directions.

 In my short homily, I spoke about how like a seed the truth of God’s love for us REQUIRES that our faith which might start out small, MUST GROW, spreading into every aspect of our life, if it is to stay alive.

 Today is the Feast of the birth of St. John the Baptist, and as we continue our reflection on religious freedom, we see how, the seed of faith: the love that God has for us; requires a response: namely that we learn to love God.  And as I have said so often before, LOVE, isn’t a gushy feeling, LOVE is an action. It is doing what is good for the beloved.

 Ironically enough, since God doesn't need anything from us doing what is good for God really means doing what is good for us. As Jesus says, “if you love me you will keep my commandment’s.” You know, the ones that He came to fulfill not abolish!!! Because God loves us and promises us that if we love Him, and keep His commandments we will find true happiness, which is all God desire’s from us—to enjoy His goodness!

Strangely enough, it is sometimes hard to do what is in our own best interest, namely following the commandment’s of God. This is because, as St. Paul tells us, sin is a type of slavery, which enslaves us to doing the things we don’t want to do and failing to do the things that we want to do.

 Let’s think about this in the light of some of the controversial positions that the world wants the Church to be silent about.

The church is pro-life, and challenges every Christian to follow Jesus’ Gospel of Life.

Wow, that’s controversial!!! The Church believes that every life, young and old, strong or weak Is good, and has a purpose in God’s plan. Isn’t this what every body wants to believe? In fact isn't this the basis of a free society based on the rule of law, the belief in the dignity of every human person? No healthy person grows up thinking that I want to harm human life; how many young girls do you think grow up thinking, when I grow up I want to kill my unborn child? No one CHOOSES abortion, rather we are coerced into it, enslaved to the culture of death by countless choices, that are in opposition to God’s will and plan.

Another controversial part of the Gospel is divorce. The Church is pro-marriage and has been since Jesus insisted that this was a central part of God’s plan for our happiness. Again, isn’t that controversial, the idea that divorce is bad and hurts everyone touched by it and so ought to be avoided like the plague! How many little boys grow up thinking: when I grow up I want to abandon my family, and break the hearts of my children and wife? How many people grow up wanting to have their ability to trust, and the ability of all those touched by this tragedy to trust, run over by the monster truck of marital infidelity, separation, and the betray of a life long promise?

Of course at the root of both of these sins, against life and marriage, Is the sin against our human sexuality, but that’s an issue for another homily…

Sin is a slavery that one little choice after another leads us into until we are destroying communities and ruining and perhaps even ending lives. Fundamentally, our faith is about setting people free from this slavery. This freedom is more important, according to the Gospel than freedom from physical bondage. 

Often non-Christian’s criticize this tenant of our faith by pointing to the letter of St. Paul to Philemon, in which Paul writes to a Catholic slave-holder, about a run-away slave who Paul is sending back to slavery. Paul enjoins the slave Onesmus, who by the way Paul says he loves like a son, to be obedient to his master, Philemon as he would be to Christ. Even though slavery in the first century had nothing to do with race many point to this and say that St. Paul is endorsing racial slavery.

Without getting into the intricacies of one of the most interesting and often overlooked letters in the New Testament, it is important to understand that Paul is not endorsing ANYTHING except the idea that we shouldn’t sin even to achieve a just result. Simply put, the ENDs never justify the MEANS. Paul is insisting that slavery to sin, is worse than physical bondage, or illness, or poverty, or any other physical evil… And he has a lot of credibility in saying that, since he was imprisoned several times for preaching the Gospel. This is after all the central message of the cross.

You know when the world see’s the Church preaching Jesus, in our own little corner of the world, they are ok with that. When it hears us preaching His love and therefore encouraging things such as: the education of children, care for the sick, feeding the poor, clothing the naked, caring for widows and orphan’s, comforting the mentally ill, or all those things that for two millennia the Church has pioneered, it says: well isn’t that nice. But if the seed of our faith is this the truth that God loves us and wants us to be Happy not just physically and in this world, but spiritually and in eternal life how can we fail to share this good news with our brothers and sisters? How can stop at just the physical needs of our neighbors and ignore His spiritual needs? Some times people need to be loved in ways they don't want to be loved--they need to be called to conversion.  In fact we have a phrase for it--TOUGH LOVE

Our faith, like the mustard seed, must touch every aspect of our life, even those we might prefer be left alone, and if we love God and our neighbors, we must in turn plant the seed of faith in other people’s lives, even when the ground seems rocky or unwelcoming.

This is the example that St. John the Baptism sets for us. John went into the wilderness not to feed the hungry, or shelter the poor, or cloth the naked, but to teach the ignorant, calling all of us sinner’s back to repentance. In fact, by going into the wilderness where he had nothing, and relying totally on the providence of God, He reminds us that “man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God”

St. John show’s us that our Christian faith can’t JUST take on those socially acceptable forms of Charity, that the world wishes that we would stick to St. John couldn’t limit his faith to the wilderness, as many want us to do today, rather he had to bring his message of repentance even to the seats of power. Eventually it cost St. John everything, and you know what, one day it might cost everything too, everything save the most important thing, the love of our God And the eternal paradise that comes with that love.

We MUST challenge the SINNER, not because we hate them, and not because we are judgeing their souls in place of God, but because we want them to repent and believe in the Gospel, and thereby experience the Love and Peace and Happiness promised by our Lord.

Sin, makes us slaves, repentance sets us free! On this Feast of St. John let’s renew our commitment to work for freedom from sin, freedom from sin in our own lives, and freedom from sin in our communities, country, and world.

St. John the Baptist, pray for us!