You CANNOT Be Ambivalent to This | Fr. Patrick Schultz

Welcome to Slaking Thirst, a podcast that's all about bringing the thirst deep within our hearts for love and communion to the heart of Christ, a divine heart, who is seeking our love and communion in return. The hope is that the two thirsts would meet, and both thirsts would be slaked. Well friends, good evening. It's good to be with you here this night as we celebrate the 18th Sunday here in Ordinary Times.

So last week, we wrapped up the four-week series that we've been journeying in doing this study on the gospel. Raise your hand if you read all four weeks. You heard all four homilies. Great, that's awesome. So I kept using this word, kerygma. It's a Greek word. It means proclamation. The word kerygma means proclamation. It was the news. It was the announcement that...

St. Paul, St. Peter, the earliest apostles, the earliest evangelists. It's what they were sharing with the known world as they were going around making this announcement. It's the story at the heart of the story. Because the gospel... was being proclaimed before the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were written, right? There was a message, there was a proclamation being delivered. That's what we were looking at. And we looked at it through that lens of created...

captured, rescued response. Create a captured, rescued response. The Kerygma is a beautiful, beautiful, essential element that we have to know as Catholics, we have to know as Christians. In his encyclical letter that St. John Paul II wrote years ago, it's called Catechesi Tridente. It's on teaching and catechesis. He had this to say about the Kerygma, what it is.

and what it's meant to accomplish, right? So this is what he says. He says the kerygma, that proclamation, he says it's the initial ardent proclamation by which a person is one day overwhelmed. and brought to the decision to entrust himself to Jesus Christ by faith. Want to read that again, right? The kerygma is the initial ardent proclamation by which a person is one day overwhelmed and brought to the decision to entrust himself to Jesus Christ by faith.

Perhaps for some of you, I pray, I hope, right in the midst of this four-week series, you felt that. Like, I know, I was well into my seminary years before I heard the Kerygma being proclaimed like this. And I was overwhelmed. It was one of those, how come I've never heard it put this way before? I was utterly overwhelmed, and I prayed so hard that in those four weeks that some of us would feel that, that we would finally be overwhelmed.

by this story, that this is what the story is. This is what he's done for me. He's rescued me, right? I pray that all of us would at least be renewed. In our understanding of all of this, this sense of awe and wonder that when I say the gospel of the Lord and you say, that's a little bit better than the first time we did this. That's pretty good, right? Usually it's the gospel of the Lord.

Praise you, Lord Jesus. That's usually what it sounds like. But no, that was pretty good. That was pretty good. I wanted us to feel in our bones a little bit more deeply what this story is. But look, perhaps we're just not there yet. Perhaps you're not there yet, and that's okay. Perhaps you weren't overwhelmed, and that's not a reflection of me. That's just how the Lord works. That's how he works. His timing is unique for each of us.

But we should beg for the grace. Lord, if I haven't yet been overwhelmed, I beg for the grace of being overwhelmed by this. Overwhelm me by the story. Overwhelm me by what you've done. Let me finally hear. Let me finally see. Pierce me. Let me be overwhelmed by your love. Here's what I want to get to.

What we must though, what we must insist upon, whether or not we've felt the overwhelmness of the gospel or we have, what we have to insist on is that this faith of ours, this story of ours, this drama, whatever it is, it isn't boring. It's not boring. There are a lot of bored and boring Catholics, but Catholicism is not boring. There's a lot of bored and boring Catholics. Some of you, I just saw you yawn. Stay with me. Okay, stay with me. The faith is not boring.

It's real. It's captivating. It's a high-stakes drama with real consequences and real foes and real rewards and real consequences. It's real adventure. It's real and it's personal. And like, I cannot be, you cannot be ambivalent to it. You cannot be neutral about this story. At a certain point, you have to decide. To whom will you follow? To whom does your allegiance... To whom is your allegiance owed? You have to decide this. This faith, this gospel, it's not neutral.

This analogy, I don't know if this is going to land for you. This is what the Lord gave me when I was praying about this. It's like the gospel, it's a lot more like the adventure that Ferris Bueller goes on in the movie. Is you with me? That it is the teacher in the classroom up there going, Bueller, Bueller, Jesus, gospel, right? This story, I don't think that landed for any of you. Okay, we're just going to keep trying.

Christianity is a lot more like the romance, a lot more like the drama. It is the choicest wine of Cana. It's not the vinegar that we've let it turn into. It's not beige. It's not domesticated. So, friends, my prayer...

again, is that we would continue to be overwhelmed by the gospel, that this parish would continue to be a place where our hearts are set on fire. So, enough preamble. I want to dig into the gospel that we have today. the scriptures we have today. I just mainly want to focus on the gospel we just heard, and just mainly one element from this gospel, this distinction that you hear some theologians, especially Bishop Robert Barron,

He makes this beautiful distinction between what he calls the ego drama on the one hand and the theodrama on the other. So we're making a distinction between the ego drama and the theodrama. What is the ego drama? It's the self-insulated, self-determined life. It's the self-referential life. Closed in upon oneself versus the theodrama, which is this life that is opened up by God's action. God's grace breaks in. It's a life that is open upon a greater horizon.

It's not self-enclosed. I want to reread this section of the gospel and point out what leapt out to me. Okay, so here's Jesus. He gives them this parable. He says, I do not have space to store my harvest. And he said, this is what I shall do. I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones. There I shall store all my grain and other goods. I shall say to myself, now as for you,

You have so many good things stored up for many years. Rest, eat, drink, be merry. Did you hear the self-enclosed ego drama in that section in this parable? He asked himself, what shall I do? This is what I shall do. I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones. There I shall store all up my grain and other goods, and I shall say to myself, Self, as for you, You have so many good things stored up for many years. Rest, eat, drink, be merry. Who is he talking to? Himself. Himself.

This is a man engrossed in himself, enclosed in the confines of his own world, his own thoughts, his own designs. He is the quintessential modern man, modern woman. Caved in, curved in upon oneself. Closed off to the most essential thing about being human, which is relationship with God. It's the most essential thing to being human.

Because we are the only creature that God made for himself. We're the only creature that God made that has a capacity to be in relationship with him. And now here he is, closed in upon himself, cut off from God.

But then here comes this little detail from Jesus. Jesus says in this parable, after this whole long self-centered diatribe, we hear this. But God said to him, You fool! Right? Slaps him around. God said to him, You fool! This night your life will be demanded of you, and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?

Okay, now look, for the purposes of just this homily tonight, I just want to sidestep for a moment the point that Jesus is driving at, this whole discussion of possessions and greed. That's another homily for another day, but I just want to highlight simply this. This dynamism, this dynamic, the theodrama breaking into and disrupting this ego drama.

But God said to him, you fool, this night, right? The Lord, the living God broke in. That's the point. He broke in and he speaks. He disrupts. He's real. That's what real people do. That's what he really wants to do. At a certain point, all of us, we have to be broken out of our own small little worlds, our own self-talk. So as what? To be encountered by him.

to be encountered by him. I just, I'm convinced of this, that I think there's a lot of Catholics who come to Mass faithfully, week after week, Sunday after Sunday, and we come here and our prayers... So much, so often sound like this man's ego drama conversation, right? You come here and you kneel. I'm thinking about this. I want this. I need you to do this. I'm asking for this. I'm begging you to change this. Me, myself, I, all these things. What are we doing? We're monologuing.

in this echo chamber because we don't think he's real. We don't think he's going to speak somehow. He is the living Jesus. And he's not just going to leave you be, right? The rescuer. He wants to rescue. He's the general. The general wants to wage war for you. The liberator wants to liberate. The healer wants to heal. The one who is mercy, he wants to reach.

Your depth is more than anything. He wants to break in. He wants to break in. I'm going to end with this. So C.S. Lewis, you're going to learn this. C.S. Lewis is one of my absolute all-time favorites. C.S. Lewis puts it this way. It's beautiful. This idea of the theodrama, God breaking in. It is always shocking to meet life.

where we thought we were alone. I had this experience on vacation just last week. I'm walking in the ocean, stepping on the sand, and all of a sudden my foot stepped on something that wiggled and swam off, and I... I screamed. I ran out of the ocean like I just got bit by a shark. Okay. It's like a guppy. Okay. It's shocking to meet life where you thought you were alone. Look out, we cry. It's alive.

And therefore, this is the very point at which so many draw back. He says, I would have done so myself if I could and proceed no further with Christianity. He says, an impersonal God? That's well and good. A subjective God of beauty and truth and goodness inside our own heads. Better still, a formless life force surging through us, a vast power which we can tap. That's best of all. But God himself, alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps approaching at an infinite speed.

The hunter, the king, the husband, that, he says, that is quite another matter. There comes a moment when the children who've been playing at burglars Suddenly, was that a real footstep in the hall? There comes a moment when people who've been dabbling in religion suddenly draw back. Supposing we really found him. We never meant for it to come to that. Worse still, supposing he had found us. Okay, friends.

Here's my prayer, that in this Mass tonight, in every Mass, as we gather as a parish family, I pray that that would be our story. That we would not come here insulated, stuck in our own little ego drama. That we would come here and we would be encountered. That we come here expecting to meet something alive. To break into our world.

To break into our world. In this Mass right here, right now, tonight, may we have hearts that are open. What do we attempt to sing in that psalm? If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts. May that be us in this Mass tonight. Amen. To listen to more homilies, talks, and reflections from Fr. Ryan and Fr. Patrick, please check out slakingthirst.com and consider becoming a subscriber to the Slaking Thirst YouTube channel.