Today’s homily is about Jesus calling us to perfection.  Recently, I said to a good Catholic: “I’ve known you for about ten years now, and I see a theme: I encourage you to give Jesus more, more of your heart and time, but you always say, ‘We need to be realistic.  I’m busy.  I have other priorities.’  You want to grow closer to Jesus, and so I push forward, but you push back.

So, let me say something similar to you: I’m generally pushing you.  I look forward to the day when you’ll push me, when you say, ‘Fr. Justin, let’s give Jesus everything!’

Today, in the Second Reading, St. Paul is finishing his letter and passing on the torch to St. Timothy, who’s a young bishop: “As for you, man of God; pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness” (1 Tim 6:11).  ‘Man of God’ was a title used for Moses, David, and the prophets; it meant “being a channel of God’s will for his people” (Fr. George Montague, First and Second Timothy, Titus, in Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture, 127).  Many Catholics are faithful, but are they ‘men and women of God’?

Paul tells Timothy to ‘pursue’ these six virtues, because he needs to have these qualities in order to pass them on.  In the same way, I have to prepare you to pass on these virtues to others.  So, the first goal I’d like to set before everyone is what’s called ‘spiritual stability,’ meaning, even when our life falls apart, our faith in Jesus is tested but not affected.  Have we ever realized that we may not be spiritually stable?  E.g. Our daily prayer is inconsistent because we’re spiritually up and down; we feel close to God and then volunteer, then we feel far and we stop.  But, when we’re spiritually mature, we have an intrinsic motivation to pray and practice virtue; no one needs to encourage us anymore to be with Jesus; it comes from within.  Once it comes from within, we can pass on this relationship with Jesus to others.

St. Paul then says, “Fight the good fight of the faith” (6:12).  This is a sports analogy which Greek people loved.  St. Paul was Jewish, but because he’s writing to Timothy, who had a Greek father, and because Timothy was bishop of Greek Christians, Paul knew this would speak to them.  In order to be spiritually strong, we need to train.  That’s the second goal: spiritual strength.  Once Jesus saves us and we make Him the center of our lives, we need to fight to grow.  I should have explained this before: We may subconsciously think that, once we make Jesus the center of our life, we’re already spiritually strong.

Statistics Canada says that people aged 18 and older should do 2.5 hours of moderate to vigorous activity weekly —this is the minimum for health but doesn’t mean we’re fit.  Question: How many push-ups can you do?  The Mayo Clinic in the U.S. says these are the amount of push-ups we should be able to do according to age.  

Deacon Andrew will be testing everyone after Mass.  It’s the same thing spiritually: If we’re going to Mass every Sunday, praise God!  But our love is not strong, not yet.

When I was a teenager, I didn’t know that, to overcome my repeated mortal sins, I needed to pray and serve every day.  I thought Sunday Mass was enough.  Remember what we said about 15 minutes of daily prayer?  That’s good but is the minimum.  So, let’s be clear about the goal: To get to spiritual stability and strength, we should reach one and a half hours of daily prayer plus service.  Now, we start at 15 minutes a day, and over the years, we add more, just like we do physically.  That is the level of spiritual fitness that allows us to overcome sins, become virtuous, and help others flourish.

St. Paul continues, “Take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called [In other words, don’t lose your grip on the eternal life you’ve embraced!], and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses” (6:12).  This refers to St. Timothy’s profession of faith when he was baptized.  Even now, whenever someone is baptized, we make baptismal promises.  So, Paul is saying: ‘Remember the promises you made?  Now, “In the presence… of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you to keep the commandment without spot or blame” (6:13).  Jesus bore witness before Pontius Pilate, and so, since we are His followers, we bear witness to His teachings until death.  This kind of perfection isn’t a matter of rules; it’s a matter of love.

This is Blessed Franz Jäggerstätter:

He resisted the Nazis even when everyone urged him to capitulate, and so was executed in 1943.  What I found interesting was that he wasn’t devout in his youth.  He once spent days in prison for a fight, and had sex before marriage, resulting in the birth of a daughter.  But, sometime before or around his marriage, he had a conversion.  People noted that he acted very differently than before.  He and his wife read the Bible together daily and he became a sacristan at their parish church, where he attended daily Mass.

He was a regular person like all of us but reached perfection in about 12 years.  

So, how can we grow?  First, a strong foundation built on Jesus and making Him the center of our lives.  Some of us know the recent story of Steve Skojec.  He was very intentional about his Catholic faith: He went to the extraordinary form of the Mass, founded the website OnePeterFive. However, during the COVID crisis, after his priest wouldn’t baptize one of his children, Skojec became agnostic.  In a recent article, he wrote about faith, the Church, the Mass, and his search for truth.  It’s beautifully written and intelligent.  Yet he never talks about Jesus.  I’m not joking when I say he would benefit from taking Faith Studies.

Second, our Discipleship Pathway () isn’t perfect, but it’s a great process that has helped many of us mature.  Speaking of which, here is our final invitation to this round of Faith Studies (Nigel Altmann).

Third, the Sacraments: more daily Masses, Confession, and adoration.  For our 100^th anniversary, we’d like to grow in our devotion to Jesus in the Eucharist.  So, for 2027, we’re aiming to have 500 of us sign up for weekly adoration.  This December 7 and 8, we’re having world famous Matthew Leonard, whose ministry is called Science of Sainthood, fly in and give us four hours of his wisdom to inspire us to recommit to adoration.

Fourth, reports say that St. Carlo Acutis limited video games to one or two hours a week.  Discipline is essential.  If we spend an hour with Jesus and then waste an hour on our phones, it will kill our spiritual ‘gainz.’  Be aware, when we avoid wasting time online, we grow in spiritual strength.

The Second Reading ends with, “It is he alone [our Lord Jesus] who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no human being has ever seen or can see; to him be honour and eternal dominion” (6:16).  Paul is referring to Jesus in His divine glory; even the Transfiguration wasn’t the beatific vision.  To see love in all its beauty requires that we must be full of love.  It’s like looking at the sun: To look at it directly would blind us, so our eyes need to adjust.

We’ve talked before about the seven mansions of the interior life, according to St. Teresa of Avila.  In the first mansion, we’ve begun praying, are in a state of grace, and have good desires; in the second, we pray more regularly, temptations don’t draw us as much, and we persevere through trials; but in the third, we reach spiritual stability, praying faithfully, generous in works, avoiding venial sins. And, in the seventh, the soul has a vision of the Trinity—not the full beatific vision but it sees through some kind of sight what we know through faith (St. Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle, VII, 1, 6).

Now, from what I observe, and I don’t observe everything, I don’t know if any of us are beyond the third mansion—I hope I’m wrong.  Most of us are in the first or second.  It was humbling for me to realize that, after so many years, I wasn’t as far as I thought, but that admission opened up deeper humility and grace.  So, don’t be discouraged.  Be motivated.  Let’s aim for the third mansion, which is our third goal.  We are loved by Jesus, and, we could say, He’s pushing us.  I’m pushing you.  I hope you will push me and each other to perfection.