A loving father disciplines

One of the most important questions in life and a question we often are not confronted with until we get out on our own is who is God to me. Your parents can plant a lot of seeds, but it's when you get out in your own life and you get to make your own decisions, your own relationships. That's where we're really confronted with who is Jesus Christ and what is my belief and who is He in my life. I was, even though I was called to be a priest when I was in college and had a conversion, I was confronted with that question when I was out at seminary in Connecticut, because it was the first time I was separated from all of my family and friends for years. And I remember one night I was so resentful against God because it was the calling that I felt like had taken away my life and my hopes and what I was going towards. I mean, I was had such a great life before the pertinent, it was nothing, so much more came after. But it's like I elected all, the little that was there, I elected. And there was some resentment against God in that. And I remember one night I was just decided to go on a walk, just kind of aired out and as I was walking, just thinking, I heard a question coming from God, who am I to you? How do you see me in the midst of this? Who am I to you? And those words, those last words really hit me to you. And the more I thought of you are the one who is to me, who's towards me, who's with me. And I realized in that moment that even though I had never gone through more suffering in my relationship with God, I had never felt God more present in my life in that very time of deprivation. Sometimes those two go very much hand in hand. And in that moment I had a memory of being further when I was in junior high and a friend of mine, we both decided to just think out of our houses at like nine o'clock at night. There's a late night focused Bible study that we were both going to. Focus Bible study party. And we went to a party and then we snuck back and I was like, well, maybe I'll just try to go to his house with him. And so we were coming into the back kitchen and the stairwell and the backside and everything was turned off as kind of middle of the night. And we get inside and we open up his door. We close it. We turn on the light and I find ourselves looking right at his father and a dead stare at both of us. His father was also very much towards us at that moment, but it was not with mercy or love, but with proud. And the moment I just turned and I looked at my friend and I said, this isn't where I parked my car. And I turned around and I left as fast as I could. So and I walked home and I knew that he was getting the near call himself. And I get into my house and I sneak downstairs. Everyone's asleep and I get to my bedroom. And as I'm laying there, I first of this constellation of I wasn't found out. I got away with it. And then the realization hit me like a kind of just a loneliness, a deep sorrow. And in that moment I was thinking I would do anything to have come home and found my father waiting in my room for me, caring about me that much. So in that moment when I was praying with those words with God, who am I to you? I realized that even though God has called me out further and called me to do more than I ever would have done on my own, and caused more suffering in that journey, I knew it was because he was a present father that he loved me and he cared about my life into the degree that I gave myself to that presence that even when it was difficult, he would bless me and guide me. You know, and so in the gospel when Jesus says, well, when the disciples asked, how many will be saved? Will it only be a few? Jesus's response, he doesn't give a number, he says, strive, strive to enter the narrow gate because many will try, but they're not strong enough. And what's fascinating is the number one predictor of success in life, do you know what it is? A present father in one's life. The strongest correlation between success between who you are as a child and where you go in future life is who your father was to you in your youth. And that's why I think that second reading is so important when we talk about this striving to get to the narrow gate. So do not disdain the discipline of the Lord or lose heart when we prove by Him. For when the Lord loves a son, He disciplines him. A good father disciplines his child to set it up for success for the future. You know, if you think no one is ever successful by accident, whether it be Tiger Woods and Gaul for Michael Jordan in basketball or the William sisters in tennis, the common denominator between all of them is they had a very strong father presence in their life that was pushing them to greatness. And it's fascinating because there's a study that was shown, these group of psychiatrists studied a whole demographic of youth for like 30 years. And some came from these three different groups. One was a liberal demographic, democratic group. The other one was more authoritarian, perient parental lifestyle. That's my preferred. I love that. And then the third, the third group, the middle ground was authoritative. And so the liberals ones were like, they want to just be best friends with their kids. And like, I want you to experience life. I don't want you to be bogged down by rules. And I just want you to go out and live and make your own decisions. The other ones was, you know, the authoritative was hypercritical. Always had bedtimes, always had rules. Both parents always looking kind of helicopter parents. And then third one was a middle ground. They had strong rules, strong disciplines, but they're also present to their children. Which one do you think was most successful? Yeah, the ones that had the discipline and also show that they were loving and present. The authoritative, the children often rebelled later on in life. But especially the ones who were more liberal and just, I want you to go experience life. They had the lowest rate of success for the future. So when God is saying telling us in the second reading that do not, do not reject the disciplines of the Lord, because they will bear fruit in the future, that only made sense if we understand God as a loving, present father in our life, who wants our good. And what the message of the world so often in our times, if you look behind it when it says, don't let anyone tell you what to do, life is about experiences, and you can sleep, and you can drink, and you can have all these different things doesn't matter. Well, what they're really saying is no one cares. No one's behind the other side watching you or rooting for you. So you might as well make your own decisions. One woman, I remember, I'll never forget this. I feel like God allowed this to happen my first weeks coming to BSU years ago. That's why I'm a fifth year senior this year. So it was my first year, five years ago now, and I had this young woman come into my office. She started crying. I have no idea what to do with the crying woman, that baby just confused me. But she started sharing with me about her life a little bit, and she just said, this is my first time back. She was a senior at this time. She was, this is my first time really coming to the center, and she goes, I went down a lot of dark paths when I came to college. I was raised Catholic, but I got here, and there wasn't a strong community, and we didn't have this really cool priest here, like you obviously are, and so I just wasn't as involved. And she goes, she said, I've done a lot of things I regret all these past four years, because but what was causing her to cry, she was, but what's killing me right now is that my father knew that I had fallen away. He knew I wasn't going to church. He knew what I was up to, and he never said anything to me. He never tried to stop me, to try to warn me. And I felt like God was putting that before me in that time, to ask me the question, what kind of father are you going to be to your spiritual children? And I remember at the time we need to understand the reason Jesus emphasized so much the fatherhood of God is that if we don't understand that God loves you more than anybody on this earth will ever love you, more than you love yourself, that he wants your good, your future, more fruitful than anybody else could ever bring about. If we're tempted to not believe that, then we're going to take God's disciplines and his commandments and his rules as an absentee landlord, as an authoritarian, someone separated and just telling us that you have to do these things, rather than one who is more invested in our life than anybody else in this world. I once almost preaching a homily and I saw one guy's face, it was kind of like going down more and more as he felt called out by what I was saying. Afterwards, I found, and I was like, I hope that homily wasn't too discouraging. And he goes, no, you just hit some things I do need to work on, but he goes, he had converted from Protestantism just a couple of years before. And he goes, to be honest, there was no greater desolation I ever experienced than when I was a Protestant and I was sinning, I was committing all these sins in the background and I'd come to the Protestant service on Sunday and the pastor would say, you're saved by grace. What you do doesn't matter, your sins will never be better than God, you're okay. And all I could think about in that time was that, does my life not matter to God? Does he not care what I do? So when we feel God calling us further, calling us out on how we should live our life, that's the very sign that he is a loving father, that he is present, and that he does care about us. We have one of our young men, Ethan, who's about to go to a seminary, Ethan, there he is. He got the authoritarian parenting from me, but he's turned out quite well. And I remember one of the guys that is about to go, well, I actually went just a couple of years before Ethan, who was very blessed to have him live in a facadey house with myself and a bunch of guys. He said something to me that when he's gone to seminary, he never felt more alone. He never felt more desolate, but at the same time, he never felt God's presence more palpable in his life than when he started to live according to his commandments. And I guarantee you, the beginning, when he first got a seminary, when you're leaving everything, it is this detachment from everything that was, and it's a great poverty. But with that, the father comes to reveal his love and take us so much further. But I really want to encourage everyone here, is commit yourself to the faith at the beginning. Because right now, as the college system stands, 70% of Catholics and Christians lose their faith in college, 70% stop going to weakly masses, stop utilizing the sacraments. And I don't think it's a theological argument that gets them in that place. Just little by little, how we live our life. If we live our life as if God doesn't care as if he's not watching, then we slowly lose the purpose behind coming to church and giving him that time and building the foundation of our college experience upon him. It's a narrow gate in college, especially BSU. And if you're not striving for it, if you're not striving to get through that, many are not strong enough. But we have a beautiful community here. You have Bible studies that are being offered almost every day of the week, that you can sign up for after that. We have daily mass, we have daily confession. We have everything that you need in this home, and that's what this center is supposed to be for you. It's a home. And the one thing that I really felt called to remind you of in this mass is that you're never going to have to, whatever you go through out there, whatever sins you commit, whatever mistakes you make, no matter how long you've been away at times, you're never going to have to come into this home and find it empty. You're always going to find me here in the dark judging you and no, not I won't be here personally. You're always going to find Jesus Christ here present in the Eucharist. This is your home, Jesus Christ must become your home. And when you truly encounter that in your solitude and in your poverty and in your homelessness, although at times the Catholic faith will feel like a discipline and a pain as you're going through it with all the different roads you can go down in college. In time, you will realize that the gift that we have in the faith is the greatest and most desirable gift that we all desire, which is a present Father, one who knows us, one who loves us and most of all a Father who is with us.