Promises, Faith and Prayer

Of course, we are gathering already on the second Sunday of Lent.

Readings today invite us to think about faith and trust and promises of God,

things that seem like nice ideas, and we can say, I trust God with my life.

I trust God until, you know, we get sick, until things don't go our way,

lose a job or child is not listening or not accomplishing things or not being

a faithful Christian, when things get out of control, when they are no longer

ideal, no longer the way we want,

we really learn what trust in God means.

Or when we are faced with choices that promise something, but we don't know

if they're going to deliver, you know, like priesthood, like marriage,

like college, like opportunities.

Communities we think and someone says this is

going to be great like marriage right is going to be great you

think you believe that and then suddenly problems pregnancy

problems raising children problem faith problems job problems um compatibility

issues you know or like seminarians or i remember going to seminary and um at

some point you know i'm 20 years old And I'm like,

okay, at some point it dawns on me like, okay, celibate life.

Like, what is that going to look like?

How is that going to be? And no one has a good answer because everybody has

only the answer that they understand because they're either living it out or

they have a theoretical answer.

But no, I cannot know how it's going to be until I arrive.

But in order to arrive there, I have to trust God.

Just like Abraham today and it's not

only me it's like every priest who went into

seminary had to like deal with this everyone who made a commitment to the unknown

but promising like marriage like children like whatever commitment you're making

had to go through this or our commitment to God.

Notice, and I'm sure you've noticed

that, we live in times when people are running away from commitments.

They are terrified of commitments. We have all these men who are living out

with women for decades, pretending to be married but not really married because

it will require a commitment.

And so they're like adult children. And we know that.

We know it's not good. Parents know it's not good. Sometimes they don't say

anything because I don't want to be this, the one who says, please say something.

When you see somebody not developing, not growing up when they should grow up,

then you actually are not loving them properly.

That's not the kind of love that is Christian. Christian kind of love says,

okay, I'm going to treat you with love, but the love is changing according to

where you should be in life as well.

Otherwise you're just gonna remain a child forever

and that's not good for anyone we need to be we

have to achieve some sort of level of maturity to

be able to say what Abraham says when he's an elderly man when God takes him

out of his comfort out of his home and the elderly retired let's say who has

worked all of his life and now has a good retirement and he just wants to take

an RV and go all around the United States,

sometimes even like, you know, the children will call and say like,

hey, can you stay with the kids?

Like, no, because I need to go to Colorado. No, I need to go to California.

No, I need to go and see the whatever, another place.

So no, sorry. Well, it used to be different, right?

In other times, we're like, okay, we had the certainty.

Okay, When we have children, the grandparents will come and help us raise them.

And now I hear that oftentimes we have children, but the parents are like,

you know, on their seventh trip this year, you know, another continent and nowhere to be seen.

And well for you

to judge like are we getting to this point of like no

commitment or like is self-sacrifice not

present like what's winning here like what is the added what attitudes are winning

what is going on because Abraham is in this moment like he's comfortable let's

say we would have an RV or a beautiful one and he's ready to just chill but

God enters into his life and it's an example to all of us.

Let's say at the end of his life or close to the end of his life and says now

no I have a greatest mission of all missions for you at this point of your life

and what are you going to say you're going to choose it you're going to trust

me because I'm going to make your descendants,

as numerous as the stars impossible because

it's like you're looking into the cosmos right we have

the access to looking at the whole cosmos in a sense when

we look at the sky at night and it presents all

these possibilities and yet is so distant and so

mysterious and then God speaks to him and

he he believes the unbelievable

he believes what he cannot really comprehend and no one really could in the

past for him there is no blueprint for him to follow and that's why we call

him the father of our faith and we are part of that promise actually because

we are Judeo-Christians We call Abraham the father of faith. How is your faith?

How is your faith? I think you should ask yourself, even if you're a child of

the age of eight, you're going to First Communion and up, you should ask yourself, how is your faith?

How is your faith when maybe you are in a family where parents are fighting

and you are overwhelmed by it and you don't have recourse to God?

Or do you have recourse to God?

Are you able to find a quiet place in your room and pray for your parents?

Do you have that faith? Or when you are a teenager and dealing with rejection,

with confusion, with sexual confusion,

with all these things that come upon you, do you know how to find God in it

and invite Him to all of these issues, do all of these challenges?

You know, growing up without a father present in my home,

I told you so many times, people sometimes ask me like how did you survive the

post-communist very aggressive in a sense culture in Poland in the cities and

I said to be honest with you and it was a grace of God.

I would process everything with god

like no one taught me how to do it there was no

priest in my parish who would come and give homilies they're

a practical my priest was just not that kind

of a priest so i don't remember anything he ever said

and i was like an altar boy sorry like don't do that

but i don't remember i told you i was like counting beams on

this on the ceiling when he was talking um but

by the grace of god maybe because i was

going to be a priest i was you know so let's say i'm going to school i'm afraid

of something i'm going to high school i'm going to deal with bullies for like

first few weeks whatever the challenge was and there was no father to go to

him and say like hey dad like what am i supposed to do here am i supposed to

do with this fear with this challenge, with nothing.

I never did it. But I always went to prayer.

And I always poured my heart to God and process all these fears,

anxieties, unknown with Him, inviting God.

And then when I closed the prayer with Father, Son, Holy Spirit, I was at peace.

Because I knew I gave it to the Father, the Almighty.

The one who is looking down at me and whatever happens now, let it be because

I have already given it to my heavenly father.

And that, to be honest with you, from the age of eight until today,

41, that's what I've been doing all of my life.

And for the last three years almost well to almost three years will be when

it comes to the challenges of this parish all the decisions all the things the

changes that whatever is going on.

When it comes to my priesthood and when it comes to you when it comes to preaching

when it comes to praying when it comes to anything every unknown before i even

ask somebody i will process it with the Lord.

And when I process this with the Lord, I will make a decision and I will do it.

And sometimes you'll be upset and say like, I don't know why he's doing this.

I don't know why he made this decision.

And I have my defense. I'm like, well, I process this with the Lord.

Like he did not say anything, right? He didn't say no. And I kind of felt like

that's it. I'm just going to do it.

Now, what happens if you don't do it? What happens

if you don't have challenge if you don't pose

if you don't choose challenges if you

don't choose freshness in your life what happens well you're

slowly dying if your marriage ceases to

be an adventure when you can where you can behold it when you can look at the

next child or when you can look at the lack of child or anything that happens

that is difficult as an adventure because that's what it is god is inviting Abraham out of himself,

out of his comfort to make him a better man,

to make him more masculine, and to also invite him to an adventure that is never

ending with God, but if you don't do it, what are you doing?

You're slowly getting old, and you're dying in a sense, like literally and figuratively.

In your marriage, it's like it's stale, at war gets stale, then depression comes in, right?

Because we're not busy we we are not posing challenges

we are not trying to improve ourselves or our

environment or or set out on the greatest adventure

that there is with god right people who are not believers but atheists or agnostics

who are looking there they're sometimes looking at christians and saying like

if you believe that jesus were true or like in the eucharist like you would

be a little bit different like why aren't you different like why aren't you different,

are you even processing things with God are you even going to prayer when you

have difficult time and literally invite him and say like okay Lord this is

what I'm going to face tomorrow at work,

and the things that I don't even know what I'm going to face like I'm going

to process all the fears and anxieties and the possible scenarios fine with

you and then I'm closed with the prayer and like walk away from it like it nothing

happened because I know you got it and no matter what happens?

Even if they take me out, I know I left it at your foot of the altar of Almighty God. Do you do it?

Because when Abraham is looking up in the sky, he promises God,

the promises of God made to us is, I am with you always.

Nothing is impossible for God. Be still and believe that I am the Lord.

I will never forsake you.

These words can be used to cast out the enemy. And I have hold on to them for all of my life.

I would be like the, you know, the demanding kind of son of God.

I would say like, Lord, you promised, then now deliver because I trust in you.

You promised. He promised.

And he is more than willing to deliver on his promises.

But do you even do it? That's my question. Because when I ask my friends when

I was 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 18, how they prayed, because I did.

We were like sometimes, you know, on the way to high school,

I would literally always come into the church, to the cathedral in the city,

and pray for a minute or two.

And some of my friends would stay outside.

They're like, I'm not going. I'm like, okay, fine.

I would always go. And I would ask them, like, how do you pray?

They're like, I don't know what you mean.

How is it? Because it may be like this with you when it shouldn't be.

It needs to be an uh otherwise there is

no fruit of prayer otherwise you you're

like you know that you should be more but you're not or your relationship with

God should be like I said some time ago when at the end of the day you pray

with God and even if you're married or not at the end you say like Lord at the

end is you and me as it's true it's true because marriage is until death,

and we should be able to say like Lord and if you say it for 20 years 30 years 40 years,

you develop this relationship with God that cannot be

broken and you kind of feel confident about the

future as well because you just at the end look at him it's like

Lord it's again you and me something to

encourage you to do if you haven't yet um

just to move on from the first reading to the transfiguration of

course transfiguration is what well it's

the moment when jesus reveals his glory why does he reveal

his glory right to the apostles um peter

james and john well it is because they gonna need this right that's that's how

he reveals himself to us on on on certain um stages of our life when i was like

going to the seminary having very difficult time in the beginning and doubting everything, right?

God would like give a special grace. That was his revealing himself to it. And what would I do?

What would I do? I would get down on my knees in like, you know, hard prayer.

There was one semester in my seminary that for six months I was praying so much

that I never prayed like this in my entire life because I was making a decision to leave the formation.

And I was praying so hard that I had callus on my knees, but I was on my knees.

I was on my knees I,

Sometimes, you know, and that's something I want to challenge you.

This is not a judgment, but challenge, because yesterday Bishop was here and

we were talking about this after Mass.

He was so happy with the altar railing, and he said, it's just like it organizes

the mess, David, that we've had with Holy Communion in the church in general. It's been a mess.

It's like every church, different type of communion distribution.

And what's the proper one? Like I said, Bishop, do you agree that kneeling to

communion is the proper one? And he's like, yes.

Why is it proper? Because we should only kneel to Jesus.

But if we don't even kneel to him, then what is the awe?

I'm in awe. And I'm saying it, guys. There are some people here who cannot kneel

and they shouldn't kneel.

Because if they kneel, they'll stay there. And we're going to have to carry them out, right?

Kneel and that's it. Or we'll trip.

But there are some some elderly even who are

like really trying there is one particular one who i

told specifically like don't kneel and he's just like bam he

kneels because of his great faith and reverence for

jesus reverence for jesus that's what

we need to have but there are sometimes those and like you know

father mother standing and then children are like imitating

and i'm like well they're not imitating you and

other things but when it comes to that then

for some reason they're going to imitate i tell you children and i

tell you teenagers and i tell you everybody who

is fit enough to kneel please kneel to

communion please kneel to

come did you see the padding here it was extra to pay it to buy it six thousand

dollars extra so you can kneel so please do it why because you're going to kneel

before jesus not before me not before the bishop not because called the servers, but before Jesus,

the body of Christ, the transfiguration made in front of us,

and then one day in your life, you may remember that, and people say that.

When they, especially those who left the church and came back,

they say like, what do they say the most?

Men specifically who left the church for many years, they say, why?

I used to be an altar boy, and I used to kneel, I used to kneel like your servers,

I used to bow, I used to serve the Latin mass, whatever they say, But they remember that.

Don't bow to anybody else. Don't kneel in front of anybody else.

Don't go to North Korea and bow down in front of the statues of the rulers there or the dictators.

Because that's what they make people do. But here kneel.

If you can, children, parents, kneel down.

It's going to be good for you because these are the moments when you are before

the Lord, like Peter, James, and John, before Jesus transfigured,

and it changes them, right?

Poor Peter, of course, never knows what to say. He's like, hey, should we set up tens?

It's like, okay, Peter, I'll cast you out.

But this is good. This is our devotion. This is the most important moment we have to show our faith.

But if we're just standing there, we're kind of saying, like, I'm equal to Jesus.

I'm standing in front of him. If there was a king, you would kneel on your knee

because they will make you kneel in front of the kings, right?

Oh, you don't have to, like, get down on one knee or something.

I'm not going to make you do it. I want to encourage you to do it,

especially those who are fit enough.

You will be amazed what this posture will do to your relationship with Jesus.

And if you don't, then ask yourself, why not? And then how is my faith?

Is Jesus real for me? Is he the son of man?

God says today, this is my chosen son.

Listen to him, follow him, love him, defend him, honor him. He is real.

He is the Lord of Lords. He's the God of gods. He's the only one.

And we have to show him respect in order to be able to draw from that fountain

when the time comes to apply our faith, to be able to get down on your knees

without like wondering why are you doing it.

And so time of communion is a profound encounter with Jesus who wants to feed

us with his life and transform us like he did to Abraham, who simply went out

to look at the sky at night.

I don't know, maybe he wished like he didn't go out, right? But he did.

So the question today, where is God asking you to trust in him?

Or maybe you have built your trust so much everywhere else but with Jesus,

then now you look at him with suspicion like Judas did.

And that's why he betrayed him because he was disappointed with Jesus.

Are you disappointed with Jesus?

Maybe this week, some concrete steps. Choose one way to act on that trust this week.

Maybe make a commitment of like, I'm going to give up this or I'm going to give

up that phone, TV, and I'm not going to die.

Like that's a promise. You're not going to die. You may be scared,

but the promise is you will be just fine and God will liberate you and make

you stronger because every time you deny yourself something,

you become stronger because you become more free.

And so maybe, maybe surrender something to Jesus, maybe through accepting something

difficult with patience, maybe by offering small fasts, maybe doing something

good for your mother, father, or your spouse.

Or maybe by kneeling today to communion and seeing how it is,

how beautiful it is to kneel before Jesus.

Because the truth is, God, who promised Abraham countless descendants,

is the same one who reveals himself in Jesus on the mountain.

And he says to us, this is my beloved son. Listen to him.