Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time

          “Who do you say that I am?”  This is the question that Jesus asks His disciples.  And I want to get to this question of who Jesus is very shortly, but before I do that, it occurs to me that perhaps many of you are still wondering who I am.   I certainly don’t want to make this homily about me (frankly, I’m not that interesting), but being that this is the first “regular” weekend of the school year, I think this might be as good a time as any to more formally introduce myself.  For those who don’t yet know me, my name is Fr. Thom Hennen.  Everyone has been asking me what I would like to be called, just “Thom” or “Father Thom” or “Father Hennen.”  For most of my priesthood I’ve just been “Father Thom,” so that works for me.  

I am originally from Ottumwa, Iowa, where my parents still live, as well as a sister and brother-in-law, and a niece and her husband and their two children.  I am the youngest of eleven children: seven girls and four boys. 

I came to St. Ambrose as a freshman in the fall of 1996, in fact the very year that my predecessor, Fr. Chuck, joined the faculty here.  Merredyth McManus recruited me and Dr. Paul Koch registered me for my first semester of classes.   I was enrolled in the college seminary for my first year, then discerned out of the seminary at the beginning of my sophomore year, but remained a student here at St. Ambrose.  I discerned back into the seminary program (and Fr. Chuck graciously took me back) my senior year.  I ended up with a double-major in History and Philosophy, but was for a time was also a Secondary Education major.

After graduation from St. Ambrose in 2000 I went on to major seminary at the North American College in Rome, and was ordained in 2004.  I returned to Rome for my first year of priesthood to complete a licentiate degree in moral theology and then came back to the Diocese in 2005, where I was assigned as parochial vicar to Jesus Christ, Prince of Peace Parish in Clinton, Iowa.  I served there for five years until 2010, and then was assigned as parochial vicar at St. Mary’s in Iowa City and priest campus minister at the Newman Catholic Student Center at the University of Iowa.  After one short year there I was caught up in the “chain reaction” of assignment changes that happened when one of our priests was named a bishop.  And so, Bishop Amos asked me to become the Director of Vocations in 2011.  I served solely in that capacity until 2014, when in addition to vocation work I started as chaplain and senior theology teacher at Assumption High School.  I did that until just this spring of 2017.  (Some of my former students are now Ambrosians, so I was very happy to know that there would a few familiar faces on campus when I came.)

When I was a student here, I was involved in a little bit of everything.  I was a Resident Advisor, I worked security, I worked in the campus coffee shop and as a work-study for the History department.  I was involved, of course, in campus ministry, retreats, and service trips.  I was involved with SGA and I even played intramural basketball a couple of years.  My main hobby, though, was theatre.  I was in two main stage shows each of my four years here and involved in a couple of smaller productions here and there.  I even had the opportunity to return to the Galvin stage in 2012 for an alumni production of a play I had been in my freshmen year.  So, the theatre is very near and dear to my heart.

As for some of my other hats, I sit on the Priest Personnel Board for the Diocese, as well as on the Priestly Life and Ministry Committee, and I am one of the Courage chaplains for the Diocese.  For those who don’t know, Courage is a Catholic, international apostolate that reaches out to men and women who experience same-sex attraction.  I am the spiritual director for and teach some in the permanent diaconate program for the Diocese, and I have also been very involved in youth and young adult ministry throughout my priesthood, but especially since becoming vocation director in 2011.

I am very excited to be here.  I can’t tell you how both strange and wonderful it is to be back at St. Ambrose.  But I think it definitely helps that I know your experience, at least to some extent, having been a student here myself.  One more thing, and I promise I’ll get on to the real homily.  Please be assured of my daily prayers for all of you, and please, please pray for me for the wisdom, understanding, courage, and patience I need to serve this community well as your chaplain.  Pray, of course, also for my fellow Campus Ministers (Tammy, Chris and Kaitlin) and for our Peer Campus Ministers.  Okay, now back to the real homily.  

“Who do you say that I am?”  Jesus had heard plenty of other people’s opinions of Him as His disciples tell Him that some think He is John the Baptist risen from the dead, or Elijah or Jeremiah or one of the other prophets come again.  But that’s not really what He was after.  So, He asks them more directly, “But who do you say that I am?”  I can only imagine that even though the twelve had followed Jesus for some time now and had heard Him preach on numerous occasions and witnessed Him work many miracles, that they were still very unsettled by this question.  It must have been a very awkward moment for them.  Unfortunately the text doesn’t tell us how much time, how much awkward silence, there was between the time Jesus asked, “Who do you say that I am,” and Peter’s eventual (and inspired) answer, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” but I like to think that there was at least a little bit of space between question and answer, as the disciples searched their hearts.  

          “Who do you say that I am?”  I’m normally pretty cautious about taking a passage of scripture and applying it too personally, in the sense that while Scripture can and does still speak to us today, it is also good for us to remember that it was written in a particular time and context and for a particular audience.  So, we should be careful in how we apply Scripture to our own time and specific situation.  Having said that, I think this is one of those instances where the words of Jesus, as recorded by Matthew, can and should be directed to us as well, even as we “listen in” to this conversation some 2000 years later. 

So, I want you to do a little Ignatian “composition of place.”  And by that I mean, simply put yourself in the scene with the disciples walking along with Jesus, having this conversation, and then hear Him ask you, “Who do you say that I am?” As you imagine our Lord asking you this question personally, does it make you squirm a little bit?  I’m not sure I would have wanted to be on the other end of this question when it was first asked, and even now (even when I know—at least intellectually—the answer) it stirs something up in me.  But it is a good question for us to ponder:  “Who do you say that I am?”

          I think if this question were to be re-phrased today, it might be asked, “Who is Jesus to you?”  And I have to admit, I wince a little bit at this phrasing because it might easily be taken as a kind of religious relativism, as though Jesus can be somebody different for everybody and they are all right.  We could take a thousand people, sit them down in a room, and ask them this question—“Who is Jesus to you?”—and we would have a thousand different answers.  Some would say that Jesus is an intriguing historical figure, a provocative moral teacher (but nothing more).  Others would say that He is a pure myth—the fabrication of people desperately searching for meaning in their lives.  Some would say that He was a god, but not the God.  Some would say that He was simply a prophet.  So, this question (as I have rephrased it here—“Who is Jesus to you?) admittedly doesn’t get us all the way.  Nonetheless, and despite my misgivings, I think that there is still some value in this question.

          And that value comes when we honestly search our hearts and come up with an answer.  As Christians, we know (or at least hopefully we know) intellectually what the answer to this question is—it is the answer that Peter gave: He is “the Christ, the Son of the living God.”  And yet, do we really believe this?  And do we act as though Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

          “Who do you say that I am?”  Who is Jesus to you?  How can I say that He is my master and teacher if I do not allow myself to learn from Him?  How can I say that He is my friend if I do not talk to Him?  How can I say that He is my destiny if I do not put myself on the path that leads to Him?  How can I say that He is my Lord, my life, and my all, if I act so often as though He didn’t even exist, or at least as though I didn’t know Him.

          The fact is Jesus is who He is, nothing will change that.  He is not simply whoever we would like Him to be.  He is, just as the Father reveals Him to Peter: “the Christ, the Son of the living God.”  And this should have a certain claim on us as Christians.  This should have a claim on our lives.  We can’t just casually accept this truth of who Jesus is and not allow it to affect our whole being.  In a sense, the acknowledgement of Jesus as “the Christ, the Son of the living God” comes with an office, a responsibility, for every Christian, just as it did for Peter.  When after however long a silence there was, Peter (prompted by the Holy Spirit) finally blurted out, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” Jesus immediately gave Him a job to do:  “You are Peter (“rock”) and upon this rock I will build my church…I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.”

          The same is true for us (though not in exactly the same way as Peter and the ministry entrusted to him and his successors, the Popes), but nonetheless, our acknowledgement of Jesus for who He is comes with a job, and that job is to live in such a way as to reflect that reality, to live truly each and every day the life of a disciple of Jesus Christ.  He is our master and teacher, He is our closest friend, He is our destiny, He is our Lord, our life, and our all, and our lives should reflect that in the way that we go about our day, in the way that we treat one another, in the choices that we make, in how we think, pray, speak, and act.

          And so, imagine our Lord once more asking this question to you personally, “Who do you say that I am?”  “Who do you say—with your life—that I am?”  May we recognize Jesus for who He truly is in this Eucharist, and may we shape our lives accordingly, so that it may be said of each one of us: “Truly this is a disciple of Jesus the Christ, the Son of the living God.”