"All In For Christ" - 23rd Sunday Homily

The other night I watched the movie Rudy, again.

Got me fired up for the football season starting up now.

I pay particular attention to a scene that I think applies directly to the gospel, where Rudy first goes to Notre Dame.

And this is kind of spur of moment.

Left everything.

After his best friend's funeral, shows up in Notre Dame, talks to the priest, and the priest thinks, given the whole situation, that Rudy wants to be a priest.

And he says, son, are you fully aware of the sacrifices you're to need to make?

And that's like Rudy's language.

Not to be a priest, but to play football for Notre Dame.

And he says, I'll do whatever it takes.

And that's, so he's all in.

And that's what happened the rest of the movie, and that's the story.

That's the way Jesus wants us in discipleship, to be all in.

That very conversation he would love to have with us.

Are you fully aware of the sacrifices you're gonna have to make to follow me?

And for each of us to say, I'll do whatever it takes, Jesus.

and he calls us to renounce possessions.

These aren't necessarily bad things, but they're things that are hindering us from going all in for Christ.

For Rudy, it was a good life.

Remember when his dad was trying to dissuade him from going to Notre Dame?

He said, can have a good life here.

Rudy was called to greatness.

So he renounced the good life, the normal life, to pursue a great life.

That's what the call of Christ looks for each one of us.

As Rudy found out, it's not just for priests.

Jesus calls each of us.

all of us to go all in.

Now he can make that call because he went all in for us.

You can picture him in his prayer to the Father having that same conversation.

The Father saying, are you fully aware of the sacrifices you need to make, especially the big sacrifice on the cross?

And the Son's response was, I'll do whatever it takes to save them.

These two examples that gives, I think he's saying to us to go all in with love and with trust.

A of mine was in her 30s, a single woman and Greek Orthodox.

And I introduced her to Eucharistic Adoration.

She fell in love with it, and so many people here have in our chapel.

And so she looked for it in her orthodox church but couldn't find adoration

So she wanted to become Catholic, which would have been a big problem in her Greek family.

They would have taken it not just renouncing the religion, but renouncing the family, renouncing the culture.

So she discerned it for two years and then decided to make a leap to become Catholic.

To love God more than anyone or anything.

When we hear Jesus say to hate your family members, even your own life, he needs to love all those things less than God.

And so my friend, Love for God, was a remember when Jesus said a few weeks ago.

He wished that the earth was blazing with love for God.

My friend's been on fire for love for God ever since she met the Eucharist.

Then we get to the resources with constructing the tower and troops going into battle.

And that's where trust comes in.

A lot of what holds us back as disciples or the call to discipleship is we're calculating the costs as if we're doing ourselves.

But God provides everything in discipleship.

We just have to make the leap and trust He's going to provide all the resources.

And what He does, it's greatness.

I was working with a couple over 20 years ago, and they told me, you know, we've had our two kids, we're done.

I said, okay, can you be maybe just a little bit open to, just a little bit openness to God's plan, because that's the whole thing with procreation and...

open to life is trusting God.

And they said, okay, and sure enough God had in store for them to have two more children, in fact twins, which to me was miraculous because they didn't have twins on either side of

the family.

And now they can't imagine life without these two precious girls who are in their twenties.

So the full call, the full in on four children, and then there's that greatness that God intended for them and for each of us.

So he calls us to go all in, and when we do, when we renounce those things that are in the way of going all in, in love and in trust, when we go all in, Jesus leads us to greatness.