"The Poor Are Your Venmo" —St. Augustine, Probably

There's lots of room to debate how we care for the poor: locally, politically, economically. What is not up for debate is that we must give to them, and that, quite literally, our souls are on the line when it comes to it. It uncomfortable to hear the Church Fathers talk about what we, the rich, must do for the poor. That probably explains why you, like me, never heard the Fathers while we sat in the pews. What's more remarkable is that I never heard these direct quotes in the seminary. The first time I even heard reference to the Fathers having an opinion on this topic (don't those guys just talk about homoousios?) was sitting in on a Chesterton fan club meeting at my high school friends' very trad Catholic college. The synoptic gospels say much about giving to the poor; the Church Fathers insist that those words are not just hyperbole. (if you just want to hear the Church Fathers, i.e. part three, jump ahead to 11:00.)

(The image is "Saint John Chrysostom and the Empress Eudoxia" by Jean-Paul Laurens)

5th Sunday of the Year, Year A

The Poor Are Your Venmo

So first, a little bit about the genesis of this homily. 

Back in November, when I was talking about different things that people could get excited about and spend money on, I talked about how we have certain special projects coming up. Maybe the idea of getting a youth minister or giving some sort of stipend to our musicians, repairing things in the church, replacing things. And I also mentioned the St Vincent de Paul Society, which most people probably hadn't heard of before. And then this spring (it's not quite spring yet, but) in February, January, we had the sheets with time and talent. And one of the options was to join a new St Vincent de Paul Society. And I heard a lot of people saying, "Well, I was kind of interested. But what is a St Vincent de Paul Society? I might be interested, but I'm gonna need some more info." I had a lot of people ask me on that. 

So because today's first reading highlights our responsibility to the poor, I figured, hey, this is as good a time as any to explain what that looks like. 

I also want to talk a little bit about our local poor. And then finally, I want to have you hear some of the quotes from the Church Fathers on our responsibility to help the poor. 


Part One:

So let's start with the gospel. Open up your books to Page 58. 58 is today's gospel. 

It's about halfway down on the left hand side there. 

So we are in the Sermon on the Mount. And last week we would have had the Beatitudes, the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, except it was the Feast of the Presentation, and it bumped that. And then next week we have the famous "You have heard it said X, but I say to you Y" part of the sermon. 

Today, we get the comparison of salt and light. Look at just the very last couple of lines at the end of the gospel. Jesus says, "Just so your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father." Alright. 

We've all heard this plenty of times, but when we see that "light", let's see how that connects to the first reading. Turn back a page to 57. There's always be a connection between your first reading and gospel on a Sunday. So you notice halfway down on the left hand column... left hand column, halfway down, you see the first reference to light: "Then your light shall break forth like the dawn," and you see it again on the right hand side, about four lines in the bottom: "Then light shall rise for you in the darkness." So they too were being promised that light would be coming. But look at the "if"—what makes the light come about? Back in the left hand column, we're told that it's "share your bread at the hungry, shelter the oppressed and the homeless, clothe the naked. And when you see them, do not turn your back on your own." That's how you get the light. 

On the right hand side, same question. How do you get there? "If you remove from your midst oppression, false accusation, and malicious peace speech. If you bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted, then the light will rise for you." So that's that's the connection. 

And this is in Isaiah. Isaiah was very well known to the Jews of Jesus' day. So if Jesus says, "your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds," they're going to hear: "Ah, Isaiah. 'Do good to the hungry, the oppressed, the afflicted, and then your light shall break forth'." That's what they're going recognize. Go ahead and close your missalettes. 

So there is a constant call to the people of God to take care of the poor— in the Old Testament, in the New Testament, and then in the Church after that. But if we're being honest, in the last five hundred years, Christians have put much more energy into arguing over doctrines or trying to make converts than listening closely to this call. 

And therein begins the fascinating story of the St Vincent de Paul Society. So it actually was not started by St. Vincent. He had died about 200 years earlier, It was started by a guy named Frédéric Ozanam. He's now called "Blessed Frédéric Ozanam". And so he was living in Paris in the 1830s. This was a period of extreme unbelief and even anger at the church. (Sound familiar?) So this is 40 years after the French Revolution and all its anti-Christian ideas. And also after the reign of Napoleon and all of the ways in which he tried to co-opt the church into his regime and stuff like that. So at this point, the Faith is legal, but it's sneered at. People look down upon Christianity and say, "It's old fashioned. It went out with the kings like Louis XVI and stuff like that. We don't need that now."

Now Frédéric is a student at the university. Then he becomes a journalist and then a lawyer and then a professor back at the university. And so he, like a lot of men at the time, would belong to debating clubs or dinner clubs or you'd have different topics come up. And it's a mix of Christians and atheists and agnostics and stuff like that. And one day the question came up, "Is the church still good?" And someone said, "You know, the church was once clearly a force for good. Back in the day when it took care of people..." Then they asked Frédéric this question: "What is your church doing now? What is she doing for the poor of Paris? Show us your works and we will believe you." And that cut Frédéric to the heart. And so he when he left there, he said, "I am going to do something. I know there are Christians who care, then I need to organize them."

So he started organizing people who said, "We will take care of the poor in the streets of Paris. And he chose St. Vincent de Paul as the patron of the group, because nobody, even the most atheistic people, could doubt that St. Vincent de Paul really cared about the poor, the widow, the orphan, the wounded veteran. All these people were the people that St. Vincent cared for 200 years earlier. And Frédéric figured that even an atheistic Paris in a very secularized France had to recognize the beauty and holiness of St. Vincent. And the Society's goal was to help all: everybody in Paris, especially in a material way, but also in spiritual ways. And to help them regardless of faith and regardless of whether or not they were practicing a faith. Their goal was charity first, then you can preach the gospel. Whereas too many today think it's the opposite: preaching the gospel, and then maybe help them out if they believe, right? No, he said "Charity first. Then they'll have ears open to hear." And now, 200 plus years later, we have 800,000 members of different St Vincent de Paul societies throughout the world. 

When I was in Lincoln at St. Patrick's, my first parish, they had really vibrant St. Vincent society. And what was interesting was, you know, St. Pat's is on the north end; it's a little more blue collar than like the far southeast, which is a little more affluent. And like St. Peter's and St. Joe's down in the south, you know, if they had somebody call their St. Vincent de Paul Society. They would just be like, "Okay, you need help of the bill? Here's some money. You need help getting this? Here, we'll give you money. Go get that." But St. Pat's didn't have the money. So they just did a lot on their own. 

They had a couple of retired and semi-retired people who really took seriously that on any given day, we can help you out before the day is over. And so sometimes they would be building things. They had guys who could fix things. And then a whole garage of stuff they had scrounged together over the years. They're like 20 mattresses, little kids mattresses, big people mattresses. They had beds, they had bunk beds. They had like secondhand stoves and laundry machines. And if people said, "Hey, I just moved and I have nothing, can you help me out?" And they would show up with a truck. It was like an ice cream man, but a truck full of appliances going around town. It was awesome. 

And I am convinced that the fruitfulness of St. Patrick's Parish came out of the faithfulness of their St. Vincent de Paul group. Father Doher is an example. He's a vocation out of St. Pat's. But there's been a flurry of vocations out of St. Pat's the last 30 years. And I think it's because of that prayerful, charitable support that comes out of that parish. And I'm convinced they were able to build a church which was really —most people thought— out of their means and ability, because God rewarded them for the way they'd taken care of the poor in their community, one on one. 


Part Two:

So let me talk for a second about our own local poor here in Wahoo. So currently most charity is taken care of by the ministers in this community, Protestant and Catholic both, by the priests and stuff like that. 

In our own church, St. Wenceslaus we have a Good Samaritan fund. When I first got here was called Good Angels, which was very confusing since it's very similar to Guardian Angels, which is like school scholarships. So we said, "call it Good Samaritan." And when I got here it had like six thousand dollars in it. People had given money to give to charity and stuff like that. And so as people would call, I would cautiously and with some questioning, you know, help them out. I try to be as generous as possible, but I definitely have people hang up on me because I ask too many questions sometimes. Because I want to be respectful of your money. 

But I also thought, you know, I don't want to die or get moved from here with $6,000 still in that account. That would mean I didn't actually use your money for what you wanted to be used for. So again, I ask questions, but I make sure to hand it out. And we pretty much use that money up, which is a great thing to actually be able to say we've done what we're supposed to do. Mostly we help out with gas vouchers and stuff like that. Sometimes we help with bills, we always say, "Let's do half. You need help with rent. You need help with your electric bill. If you can get half, we'll do the other half." That's oftentimes what we do there. And that's how most of Saunders County runs —with actually the clergy doing it. 

Now, I want to give you a little stats from our state census. So Saunders County—this is the county, not the city. The median income is $66,700, with the average of the poverty level in the county is 7.8%. That's the percent that is below the poverty level. You move into Wahoo proper though, the income drops to just $53,900 and the poverty level doubles to 16.1%. And to put that in perspective, the average for the entire state of Nebraska is around 11%, maybe 12% some years. So we're quite a bit more impoverished in the city of Wahoo than the state as a whole. I also looked at disability, because I think it plays in there. Of those in town below the poverty level, 29% of men and 32% of women are disabled. They are officially, according to state, considered on disability. 

And I'll say that's completely true from what I see at the food pantry. Tons of people at the food pantry are coming in on disability and you can tell they are hurting. 

So the reason I bring that up is because the constant teaching in the New Testament is that charity begins at home. Mother Teresa used to be upset when people would fly to Calcutta. They'd go to India to work with the Missionaries of Charity, and she'd be like, "Why are you here? There are plenty of poor people in your own hometown. There are homeless throughout your state. You have them. You don't need to fly to India (and whatever that plane costs) to come and look for them here." Now she would let them stay, but then quickly she'd be like, "Go home and find them in your own area."

Christ in the City is an apostolate in Denver, Colorado, that works with homeless there in the city. It's one of the most successful apostolates of the last 15 years I'd say in the Catholic Church. And one thing that they're really good at —so they hire, well, they recruit, 20 or 30 college-aged kids to work for them for a year or two— and then they bring in high school groups and college groups on spring breaks and summer trips. And they do have them work with the homeless for a week. And they say, "OK, we've taught you how to do it here, but don't come back here. Go do it in your own hometown. Go do it in your own area. Do it there."

There's a young man from Hastings whose name is Blake Brouillette, who took that so seriously. He's from Hastings. He went to college at UNK. He took a trip out to Christ in the City. He heard that message and he came back and he took seriously, "I'm gonna start visiting homeless in Kearney, and in Hastings." They are small towns, but they have them. And then he would go visit his friends in Lincoln, the ones who went to UNL, and his friends joked that you always knew what it was going to look like when Blake came in for a Saturday night or Friday night in town. You're going to stop at Wal-Mart. He's gonna buy about 50 pairs of socks and some water bottles and sandwiches. And you're gonna go down under the O Street overpass and he's gonna start handing out socks and water bottles to people and you're gonna go with him. And then you're gonna go have dinner or go out to do whatever you're going to do on a Friday night. And for a bunch of college kids, that was life changing to have one of their own saying, this is how we start a day of hanging out. We do it by taking care of the poor first. 


Part Three:

So this brings me to my third part. I want to share with you what the church has said, pretty constantly for the first 1500 years about the poor. We all know Matthew 25: feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the imprisoned. We all know they we're told to give and give generously; it will be given back to us. We know that we're told that it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than this for a rich man to enter into heaven. We know that. 

But what I'm about to tell you now with these quotes from the Church Fathers—this is going to hurt. None of us are going to like hearing this. These are quotes mostly from within about 100 years after the legalization of Christianity in the Roman times. These are bishops. These are Church Fathers. These are the brightest minds of their day. We still look back to St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, John Chrysostom, St. Basil the Great. These are our brightest minds and they're bishops; they're men of the world. They're not like, you know, crazy hippie types like St. Francis, throwing off their clothes in the city square and running off to the hills. No, these are normal church leaders in big cities. And we're going to be amazed, what we hear from them. 

First of all, a big warning. These are statements about our responsibilities. They're not a statement of how to do them. In other words, do not take a political meaning from these quotes. There is lots of room for legitimate debate about how we do this economically, politically. Some would say, hey, it's a strictly private affair, individual charity —more of a libertarian approach. Others would say, hey, use the state apparatus, you know, use the county, the nation, the state level to help people out. We can legitimately debate how to help the poor. What these quotes show us is that we cannot not take care of the poor. 

So a first one for introduction. This comes from St. Basil the Great. He was the bishop of Caesarea, which would you be a mid-sized diocese like maybe like an Omaha sized city. And he says, first, "How can I make you realize the misery of the poor? How can I make you understand that your wealth comes from their weeping?"

That's pretty intense, Basil. Right? I want you to notice that as we go on that they don't talk about it as being a question of "charity" to the poor. They call it "justice". They say it's not that you're giving out charity. You're actually returning something out of justice. You're giving to poor people what is actually theirs. 

This is Ambrose of Milan next. He's the one who converted St. Augustine. He said, "You are not making a gift of your possession to the poor person. You are handing over to him what is his."

And then we have from St. Basil again: "When a man strips another of his clothes, he is called a thief. Should not a man who has the power to clothe the naked, but does not do so be called the same? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry. The cloak in your wardrobe belongs to the naked. The shoes you allow to rot [in your closet] belong to the barefoot. The money in your vaults belongs to the destitute. You do injustice to every man whom you could help, but do not."

This is so hard for us to accept in 2020. Right? The idea that our surplus isn't just charity to the poor, but they actually have a right to it?? And notice who he considered "the rich" in that one: The common trope you hear people talk about is: Who is rich? If you ask the people who are poor, they'll say somebody who makes $100,000 a year is rich. Then if you ask person with $100,000, they say it's somebody who makes a million a year. You ask that person and they say it's somebody who makes 20 million dollars a year. 

But who does Basil say is rich? Anyone with two cloaks, anyone with spare bread, he says, is rich and can help the poor. 

I think about this every single time I'm on my day off, I'm in Lincoln on Thursday, I think by getting a fancy coffee at some business. "Ooo, can I justify getting this? Like, can I really do that in light of what St. Basil says?"

And as you hear these, you might be thinking, like many people, that this is kind of an attack on private property. "Isn't it trying to take away what we have legitimately earned or bought with our earnings?" Well, actually the Church Fathers answer that directly. 

St. John Chrysostom is next. He is the patriarch of Constantinople. That's the capital of the whole Roman Empire. This would be like being the bishop of New York City or of London or something that. In his parish are the emperor and the empress, generals and nobles. And these are the people in his front row when he's saying this. And John says, "The rich are in possession of the goods of the poor, even if they have acquired them honestly or inherited them legally." Wow. 

And then again Basil says, " 'I am wronging no one,' you say. 'I am merely holding onto to what is mine,' you say. What is yours?? Who gave it to you so that you could bring it into life with you [when you were born]? Why, you are like a man who pinches a seat at the theater at the expense of latecomers, claiming ownership of what was for common use. That's what the rich are like: having seized what belongs to all, they claim it as their own on the basis of having gotten there first. Whereas if everyone took for himself enough to meet his immediate needs and released the rest to those in need of it, there would be no rich and no poor." 

Dang. This is pretty intense, right? So for 2,000 years people have been saying things like, "You know, the poor, lazy— it's their own fault. They do this to themselves." John Chrysostom totally disagrees. He says the opposite. He says, "Now, don't tell me that you actually work hard. If you call earning money, making business deals and caring for your possessions 'work', I say, 'No, that is not work. But alms, prayer and protection of the injured and like— these are genuine work.' You charge the poor with idleness. I charge you with corrupt behavior."

And then finally, one last one from John. He says, "Let us learn that as often as we have not given alms, we shall be punished like those who have plundered. For what we possess is not personal property. It belongs to all." 

Now, Saint Augustine sees this a little bit differently. I mean, he agrees with them, but he sees in it an emphasis on what's happening in our souls at the same time. Augustine says, "You can take [with you] nothing of what you've loved in this world. What you do [however] take with you is the vice of having loved it." Right, so you can't take your possessions, but you can take your vice of greed. He says that's the danger. 

And then he draws this amazing analogy, this image of two Christian men on a journey, the journey of life. But he says neither of them can make it, if one of the two men is rich. He says that while the wealthy find their possessions are weighing them down on the road, the poor are too hungry for that journey. So, let the rich give their heavy possessions away to the poor man, and it will help them both. So it's a great analogy: to think of them—by trading their stuff—they can both make it. Whereas if one holds onto it, neither one can make it. 

He also has this analogy with that. He says the poor are the "porters of heaven, the porters to heaven" for the wealthy— lifting off of them their spiritual burdens and their possessions. He says, "For when the rich give generously to those in need, the poor will be nourished, and the poor will transfer that wealth to heaven for the rich, where those possessions will be transformed to reflect the heart's eternal treasure: loving communion with God."

I was thinking about the porter image, and was like, "Oh, it's like the poor people are like Western Union. You give them money that goes to some other place!" Then I realized: half the church doesn't know what Western Union is anymore. So, let's put it this way: "The poor are like Venmo. If you give money to the poor people, they will make it land in heaven for you and you can [have treasure] on the other end. But you have to send it through them if you wanted to arrive on time.

St. Clement of Rome of the first century —he's our fourth Pope— he reflects on this. He says there's a prayer difference here; there's a benefit here. He says, "Let the strong take care of the weak. Let the weak respect the strong. Let the rich man minister to the poor man. Let the poor man give thanks to God that he gave him one through whom he can be satisfied." It's an awesome reflection of how they're both receiving a spiritual gift there.

So I want to ask you: In 30, 40, 65 years of going to church, have you ever heard any of these quotes before? I know I had not. I never heard them grow up. And even in the seminary where we should be learning this, never. They pussyfooted around this topic, but they never went there directly. And when I found this out, I was mad. I was mad because I don't want to risk me going to hell because my professors didn't share the gospel with me, because my priests back home didn't preach it to me when I was growing up. 

When the gospel says give generously and give away your possessions— that wasn't hyperbole, at least not to the Church Fathers and the Church Doctors. These are, you know, the brightest minds in the Church, and they thought this was the truth about the human condition. 

So let us all ask along with them: How do we care for the poor? What are we holding onto ourselves? And how does that greed eat away at our hearts? Everyone may hurt when they hear this, but we should also be thankful for having heard the truth. 

And finally, let me say again, it doesn't matter exactly how we take to this work. It matters that we do take to this work. Maybe that means joining the St Vincent de Paul Society. Maybe it means giving money to the poor directly. Maybe that means setting up a special account that they can be helped out. 

But it definitely means doing something. Since our money apparently is not actually our own, but it's truly the poor's possession, and not ours. 

Resources:
Assorted Church quotes on the rich and poor
St. Basil's whole sermon "To The Rich"
A good paper with many quotes for John Chrysostom
Good article on St. Augustine's thought
Another collection of Patristic quotes 

Midnight Candlemas: Darkness and Silence

This Mass. It was so much fun. We have to do more of these. Like everywhere.

The Inaugural "Word of God Sunday"

Last fall, on the feast of St. Jerome, Pope Francis declared that the 3rd Sunday of the Year shall be designated as "Word of God Sunday". This is more like World Mission Sunday or The World Day of Prayer for the Sick, rather than an additional liturgical feast like Divine Mercy Sunday or Christ the King were. But anyway, as a word nerd and a Word nerd it's pretty exciting. So here's the homily, which was mostly quotes from the Pope's document Aperuit Illis, i.e. "He open for them", quoting Luke about the risen Jesus opening the Scriptures to the two on the way to Emmaus.

What Lambs Don't Do

We were all taught wrongly about Jesus as the Lamb. John the Baptist wasn't invoking existing language about sacrificial lambs and a removal of sin. There was none. The O.T. never shows sin taken away by sacrificing a lamb (and Hebrews would say it's not by any sacrifice). John was presenting something utterly unheard of: that for the first time ever, something could take away sin, —someone.

Discovering Your Own Family

1) It's kinda tough that most of us don't remember our baptisms. 2) But then again, we figured out our natural families and identities without remembering our birth. 3) What family we have, is chance. Learning to be part of that particular family, is choice.

What Matthew Thinks Epiphany Means

For millennia, we have focused on the Epiphany as being the moment that God's light has been revealed to the Gentiles. And it is. But looking at its context in Matthew's Gospel, and especially in the context of the Hebrew Scriptures (including the two readings for today), we see that Matthew sees it as proof that God's kingdom on earth has begun. All the prophecies that someday the nations will worship the one true God are now going to be fulfilled, even if that kingdom must start small, grow in pain, and still not be perfect today—it still has been revealed as happening.

 

Money, Sex, and Power vs. The Family

Money, sex, and power are three big human appetites, and they quietly but decisively break families. This homily is about: How money, especially inheritance, divides families. How pornography attacks individuals which then disintegrates families. And how power and pride are drugs that make us think of self and not God and neighbor, including family members.

Money, Sex, and Power

Holy Family Sunday, 2019

So today is a Holy Family Sunday. Some years on this day we talk about the Holy Family itself: Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Sometimes we talk about family life in general, like, how to have a prayer life; how to grow in virtue; stuff like that. We sometimes talk about defending the Christian ideas of the family. Or talk about our duties within a family. 

But today, I want to talk about the dangers to the family. And here I'm not talking about external things, like legal and civil threats to the definition [of a family]. I'm talking more about internal threats, things that we do to ourselves, things that weaken or even break families. And to go a step further, I want to be clear that this isn't just stuff that slows down the growth of virtue and love in a family, things like, you know, not calling home as much as you should or not praying together as a family, or having too much screen time. But hey, we're talking about actual, big, direct, "torpedo in the water" threats to the family. 

And I think the biggest ones out there today revolve around the three big human appetites that have threatened human beings from the beginning. Now they're appetites, so they're not morally bad in and of themselves, but they're the kind of things that tend to grow and get out of hand. And the famous triad of these are money, sex and power. Again, they're not bad in themselves as appetites, but they are appetites that manage to actually grow with the feeding. In other words, they get hungrier, not more satisfied, the more that they consume. 

And these are the classic three that Jesus addresses in the Sermon on the Mount. And that both Jesus and Paul give examples about how to restrain them in your life. We even talk with the evangelical counsels —things coming out of the gospel— how to live the opposite of money, sex and power. And the evangelical counsels are poverty, chastity and obedience. One to match each of the others. And we see that Jesus and Paul first live them out, and then religious men and women later live them in a very radical way. Literal vows of poverty, chastity, obedience. 

And then others in the world, families and single folks, are called to live them in a certain way, according to your state of life. So, a spirit of simplicity with money and material goods. Chastity in the sense of limiting oneself to acting only in marriage. And then a spirit of humility and obedience to those that we need to show those things, too. So that's what the appetites are. Again, money, sex, and power. And then the opposites, the evangelical counsels. That's when Jesus gives to balance those. 

Now those appetites can sometimes seems small, but when those little flames get out of hand, they become fires that devour our homes and scorch our families. 

So let's start with the first one; let's start with money. 

We know that families can fight over money. We know that it's one of the things that couples most fight over and that we fear there being a tension in a family about. We just had Christmas and we know that we spend more during the holidays. And so it can cause stress. 

We know that we can be playing keeping up with the Joneses. Right. And that we worry about, "Man, if our kids don't have this or we don't have that on the exterior, man it's going to look like we're cheap or we're not really, you know, making it, and we're struggling." Stuff with that. So we compare, and we worry about comparison back at us. 

And that's not just between different families. Sometimes it's between family members, too. Now, if only it was just fighting over, you know, who has the fullest stocking or who gets to play the Xbox first, that would be nice. But those days are gone. Right? As we grow up, we fight over more and bigger stuff. We fight over big ticket items. We fight over inheritance. We fight over houses and farm ground and stocks. And we fight when someone dies. And even, honestly, leading up to that person dying, sometimes families are already fighting about what's going to happen. 

And it seems like in just about every town in this county has some story about, you know, two families have very similar last names. And the people who are in the know, know that once upon a time they were one family. But, you know, two brothers got in a fight once upon a time and one moved to the other side of the hill and they changed the spelling of their last name. And they have acted like separate families ever since. It seems like every single town in this county has one of those. 

It's amazing, as a priest, when doing funeral preparations and wedding preps, how it happens that you ask, "How many people are probably coming?" And they start counting off and they say, "Well, OK. So, so-and-so's are our cousins, but we haven't talked to them for a long time." Oh, OK. Why? What happened? "Like, well, I don't know. Our mom and their dad got in a fight about something in the will one time and something like that. We used to Christmas together, but we haven't been together with them for 30 years." That's constant. That is an incredibly regular thing that probably comes up every two to three times when we have one of those. 

And we hear about tensions about, you know, "Who's dad's favorite, and how that's not fair." Or, you know, we hear about how "Well, of course I'm closest to mom and I'm the one she tells stuff to, confides in, because I'm the one living in her state. I'm the one checking in on her. Where are you guys?" Right? So we have those kind of tensions. 

And we can call those fights a desire for justice. But we're blind if we can't also see the tug within ourselves of that appetite for money. It's this hunger and we worry about it and it eats at us. 

And we're always looking over at other persons' bowls, and how much they have in their bowl and checking it versus ours. This is bad enough with neighbors, but it's even worse if it's happening within a family. 

So parents, write it down plainly what you want. So plainly that no one can argue with what it means. And honestly, if it's going to cause a fight, have the fight while you're still living. It's not fun and might cause tension, might even cause separation for a little while now. But it's better to say it and explain it to them, and even say, hey, this is my money, this is my choice. I chose to do this. This is my will. Because I can promise you, if you wait until you're gone, the fighting and the distance will be worse. 

And children. Adult children. Ask yourself, "What's more important? Is the more important that you can give your children more money from grandma and grandpa? Or that they will always be able to play with their cousins growing up because your families are still together?"

So, now, if that wasn't awkward enough, let's move on to sex to make it even more awkward. All right. 

So, sex. Pretty obvious how that affects families, right? I mean, we largely define the idea of the breaking of marriage vows by focusing solely on the question of physical fidelity. And that itself is a huge danger. And if that threatens, people who need to be ready to seek counseling before it actually gets to that point. And if it does happen, hard questions need to be asked and we need to have some painful talks, and be honest about what happened and why. And both have to ask themselves, "Are they willing to try and save this?" "Can this be saved?" "What are you willing to try to do to make this something that can be saved?". 

But that's the obvious one. And statistically, that's still not that common. But there is a much more common threat, one that looms huge but that society doesn't want to face: whether it's because, well, it's free speech, you know, or we have this shame about it or whatever. And churches really don't want to address this because, again, the shame factor. But that's the effects of pornography, especially from the Internet and other kinds of acting out that often arise from that. 

And just like money, this is an appetite and an addiction that doesn't wait for a certain time in life. It often starts early and then it grows with the feeding. And the stats on this danger are pretty clear: 56 percent of all divorces involve at least one partner having an obsessive interest and use of Internet pornography. It cools the love of couples even before it's been found out. It fogs up the user's mind, so they're not engaged in family life. It breaks down trust when it is discovered and it can escalate to other behaviors that create risk both for the spouses personally and for their marriage. 

So that's in a marriage. But because it's an addiction, it can start before, and then can't be shaken even when they have a spouse. Or it can develop in the middle of a marriage and then the person just can't change course. So we don't limit our concern just to married couples. And also unmarried people get hurt by it too, just because it develops bad habits and develops certain vices within us. 

So just how prevalent is it? Well, we know that the average age of first encounter is around 10 or 11. That's the average. But a very high percentage of children report encountering it as early as age 7 or 8. Look, I was a second grader when a kid brought in two sheets that he'd torn out of a magazine from his brother's library and brought it into class and was showing it to the other guys at lunchtime. That was in 1986. That was way before the Internet. Right? And so you can imagine how much more prevalent it is now. 

Among people aged 13 to 24 —Men and women, boys and girls— 76 percent of all young people said they use it at least weekly. 

And what's very interesting is there's no significant difference in these statistics between whether or not a person is a Christian or not. Sometimes the behaviors are different, right? One person who's not religious might say, "Well, it's fine, it's natural, it's normal, it's good, right?" The Christian person maybe be like, "I don't want it. I don't like it. I want to escape it. Jesus, take this from me. I want to be done with it." And I try and do things, but because it's an addiction and it warps a part of the brain, they can get away for a month or two months or whatever, white knuckling. And then, boom, they're back in it because the addiction kicks in and it becomes this thing, even though they have all the Christian faith in the world. Even though they pray multiple holy hours and rosaries, they're still getting bombarded with that temptation, because it's an addiction. 

We're told that 68 percent of all churchgoing men use it on a regular basis. Do you know who the Promise Keepers are? That's a very strong evangelical Protestant group. They're like the Navy SEALs. They're like the best of the best in the Protestant world. And they're dedicated to family and faith. And they had a huge conference. And these are kind of guys that go to a conference, right, a religious conference. And they did an anonymous poll, and 55% of the best of the best, the crème de la crème said I've used it in the last week. Fifty five percent. 

And here's the thing, sometimes it gets assumed that it's a male struggle, right? Oh, that's a guy thing. That's a guy temptation, that's a guy problem, right? But it's not. We have stats that 33% of women under the age of 25 use it with the same regularity as those male stats. And 25% of women over age 25. 

And here's the problem, because he gets assumed to be belonging to [only] one gender's brokenness. Then if you struggle with it as a woman, there's this really strong, even worse, shame and stigma you like, "Oh, my gosh. Like, I have a problem that I should even have that. Like nobody I know would have this." Well, that's the thing: you don't know. And so the shame and stigma build up even more. There's a book called "Uncompromising Purity". It just came out a couple of weeks ago. And it's actually telling women, "Hey, you're not alone. Other people have struggled with this. We can get through this. Let me tell you my story. Here's how this gets better." So women are actually one the fastest growing groups that this is affecting, but it's growing in all categories. Every part of the bar graph is going up in every category. 

I quote these things not to shame anyone, but to say, "You're not the only person." Many people out there are struggling with these things and really want to get rid of them and they're looking for help. And you can, too. And there are many places to get help, but help only comes when people are honest enough to say it. If we want to protect families, we need people to get help and healing. But they can't do that if there's too much shame to be honest. We have to give people a safe space to be able to ask for help. There are tons of resources, but the shame factor is often too big. 

So just to let you you know, there's actually lots of options. Wahoo's a good place to be living for this. So we're a half hour from Lincoln and Omaha. Omaha has two very powerful, strong, wise, nationally known counselors who are very, very good at this stuff, both the addiction and the trauma. 

Lincoln has many options, too. There's this Catholic Social Services. There's the Marcottes: they're a husband and wife pair who work on these kind of things. There's any number of other counselors in both cities that can do these kind of things. 

Also groups. A lot of you'll find that therapy is not enough. They need a therapist and a group to work together to give them support and to give them clinical advice. So there's a lot of groups out there, some that meet weekly, some that literally meet daily, every single morning they have a meeting that's available for people who would like needing it and say, hey, I need it every day until I get going here. They can be attended live, but some also have a call-in where they can call a certain phone line and you can listen in and respond as well. 

There are online groups. Google has like Google Hangouts. And you can have like a Google phone number that you can call and join a group there. And they are in the big cities, but even here in Wahoo, there's a group, at least for men. And I don't know, there might be a women's group, too, that maybe has gotten started as well. But both [genders] are really starting to grow the numbers and the availability. Some are open to men and women. Some are just men, some are just women. 

So there's things out there. And there's like accountability software Things that lock down your computer, your iPad, your iPod, your phone, all that sort of stuff. 

But again, the key is being willing to say, "Tell me about that stuff. How do I get started? I don't know what to do. How does this even begin?" And if you need help, but you're afraid to talk to anyone in person, just ask the priest in confession. They've got resources available to them, you know, whether it be groups or counseling and stuff like that. And even if you just wanna remain anonymous and stay behind the grill, the priest can still give you a lot of information even in that in that way. 

And if you're a partner who's been left hurting because your spouse has this problem, there's hope for you, too. There's special groups, different groups, that help the spouse on the other end of this. Because you have to go through your own kind of recovery that is different, if that's the deal. So there are resources. 

And for people who are not married: nip this in the bud now. This is the time to fix it so you don't bring it into your marriage. And parents, I want to say to you: You have to find the courage to talk about this, because if you're not bringing it up, someone else is bringing up the topic. And like I said, we have to overcome shame as a community in order to be able to overcome shame in families. So that people can trust, in order to be able to de-escalate the shame for young people so they can ask questions when they're confused. "Dad, I saw something and it confuses me." Right? Or that they need help to get away from it. Maybe they even need professional help, maybe they need some counseling because they've really been affected by it. It's not their fault, but it still generates shame. And so we have to be able to counteract that. 

And I'll say this, if you're not blocking all your devices —your computers, your portable devices, even your TV if it has access to to certain other channels and stuff like that— if you're not blocking that, it's getting looked at in your house, I promise you. If you're not blocking it. 

And the blocking software, like Covenant Eyes, it's a little over 100 bucks a month. And you' re like, "Ooo, that's pretty steep." A hundred bucks. Well, it covers all your devices. So if you've got 10 devices in your house, it covers all of them. And as Todd Bowman, who's a really great psychiatrist out of Kansas City who works with this, says, "Look, I charge $200+ an hour.  If your 14 year old gets hooked and they don't start getting help till they're 24.... How many $200 sessions do you think it takes me to undo 10 years of an addiction? Trust me, it's cheaper: get the software," is what he says. 

Also, the last couple weeks, we've talked about mental illness. We talked about depression and anxiety. We've talked about physical illnesses and going to the doctor... Put addictions in those same categories of things that we like to pretend aren't a danger, but that we need to wise up and actually face. 

OK, so those two took a really long time. So I'm going to do power very briefly. Power is the third one. Very briefly. 

We human beings, we want to win, right? We want to be right. We want to have our way. We want to have that sense of being first, of being the best. And we want to have the ability to exert our will over someone else. 

So we might not think about it always; we might not think that it's a bad thing —maybe it's a good kind of pride in one way— but it also can be a bad kind of pride and a bad kind of power. It's there. All the time, in us. Ever since Adam and Eve in the garden. That was their sin. Right? 

You know, if you find yourself arguing on the Internet, "I just got to win." That's it, creeping up. Arguing with the spouse? Oftentimes that's a power thing, right? We don't want to admit, "I'm sorry. I messed that up. That was my fault." And so we blame or we project that on other things or other people, because we can't just say "I'm sorry." We can't say it; we can't say; we just hope it goes away in time. But it really doesn't. 

And more importantly: What do we see Jesus do? What is his most constant thing? It's that he's constantly surrendering his power. <points to Cross> And he's constantly calling us to do the same thing: to let go of our pride, to let go of even our strengths. And the things that we think of as good, to say, "These aren't mine, and these aren't mine to wield in a certain way." And ask yourselves, who are we using them against for power and leverage? 

So do an examination of conscience: How am I clinging to my power, my pride, and my desire to win? 

Back on Christ the King I preached about how Jesus lost. Jesus was a loser, and he was willing to lose. And he called us to lose in many, many ways as well. And he didn't just lose so that he could become the victor on Easter Sunday. Because all the things he told us to do was still kinds of losing. Losing, surrendering, giving up, handing over to the other person what you most want. Changing yourself to be humble and poor and weak and surrendering. That's what Jesus teaches. 

So these three— money, sex and power. If you want a healthy family, if you want to protect your family, don't just protect it from external dangers. Fight the internal dangers too. Fight the dangers of money, sex, and power in our own hearts. Fight them within our families. 

Be ready to admit what's out there that's threatening us. Be ready to be honest about what's tempting us on the inside. And be ready to surrender them to God who wants to heal them, to heal us. Because we can be healed. And we can be transformed. And we can be made into better, holier, and happier people by his healing.