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.