“You duped me, oh Lord, and I let myself be duped.” How many of you, when your kids were young children, and they had to eat something healthy either or had to take medicine, how many of you duped your kids into doing that? See, some of you. What did you do? How did you dupe them into it? The meat wasn’t ready yet, so that’s when they ate the vegetables. Applesauce over here. Any others? Ice cream, what would you do, hide something in ice cream? You did, okay.
That gives us an example of what that means because it can seem weird that God would dupe us, right? It’s just like a mother or father taking care of a child. Sometimes you’ve got to dupe them into doing something good and right for them, healthy, and maybe tastes terrible, like medicine.
Two wealthy brothers use their money to do less than noble things. These two brothers lived pretty scandalous lives but still came to church every Sunday. They came to church, and they dressed up, and everything looked good. But they would use the money in less than holy ways while away from Mass. So, once the pastor retired, a new priest came in. Sounds familiar, right? Not only could this new priest see the brothers’ deception, but he also realized what they were doing. Because this assembly was growing and growing, they had to build a new church, so the pastor started doing a fundraiser for the church.
These wealthy brothers made a pact with each other and said Whoever dies first, we will give your portion of the money to the church. But here’s the thing, when you do it you’ve got to convince the priest that we’re holy. So, when one of the brothers died, the other brother met with the priest, and he said to the priest, “I’ll give you this money, and you can build the whole church. I’ll give you a blank check, and you can build the church.” If anybody wants to do that, I would gladly accept it (laughter). And he said, “You can build the whole church with this money under one condition. At the funeral, you have to call my brother a saint. The pastor knew this, right? The next day they have the funeral, and as the pastor is preaching the homily, he says how evil this man was. That he was a cheater, he was a scoundrel, he was a liar, and he did horrible things in his life, but compared to his brother, he was a saint (laughter). So, you duped me, Lord, and I let myself be duped.
When we enter into our vocations, the calling that God comes, when we genuinely become disciples, this time is like the honeymoon period. You may have noticed a new face up here. Daniel Liberator just finished his first week in the seminary. Give him a round of applause (applause). He looks pretty good right now, doesn’t he? He looks pretty happy, but at some point during this semester, he will say, “You duped me, God.” That was always the joke during challenging times in the seminary. We’d say to each other, “Man, we got duped.” But it’s true for all vocations in all ways of life, right?
If you think about even a kid going off to college. They’re excited initially and then decide that this major may not suit me. Or you know someone who is newly married. There’s that phrase, “The honeymoon is over”. When you begin to get married, everything’s lovely, and at some point, the honeymoon is over. Maybe it’s a new career that you take, and at the beginning, you’re excited, and everything’s lovely. There are just different ways that we’re called in life. Maybe it’s even living a single vocation. Maybe your life didn’t turn out like you expected it to. In each of these ways of life that we all live at first, there’s this wonder and awe when God calls us. There’s this excellent experience, but at some point, for every one of us, we’re going to get duped. We will all have to embrace the cross at some point.
What’s interesting about Peter in this gospel, remember last week’s gospel when they went to Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asked, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter says, “Truly you are the son of God.” This is moments later. Jesus then tells Peter that he must go to Jerusalem, suffer, and die. Peter says to him, “Surely not, Lord.” He says, “God forbid that that happens.” Then Jesus says these words that are so stinging. He says, “Get behind me, Satan, for you are acting like an obstacle.” What’s interesting about this is the word ‘Satan’, in the original Greek, means a stumbling block or a stumbling rock.
If you’re walking along the path and there’s a rock there and you trip on it, that’s what it means. Jesus is saying, “You are the rock on whom I will build my church,” right now, you become a stumbling block, so you got it wrong. In a sense, Peter was duped into this because Jesus was telling him who I am, and the disciples were working miracles, they were doing these amazing things, they thought everything was excellent, and now it turned. Jesus says, “You must take up your cross and follow me.” It’s true for every one of us. There will be a point when we have to take up our cross and follow him, where our vocation begins to be tough, marriage begins to be tough, and our labors begin to be tough.
We go to the second reading. St. Paul says to the Romans, “I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices.” We are invited to offer our bodies as sacrifices as the Lord did. That can seem like a strange, like, how do we do that? How do we offer ourselves as a living sacrifice? At every Mass, the priest comes to the altar and offers the bread and wine, transforms them into the body and blood of Christ Jesus, and then offers himself to the Father. As a priest, I am offering myself to the Father, and every one of you is offering yourselves to the Father. That means there is no other place in the world where we can truly live our vocation of offering ourselves to God than in the Eucharist as we celebrate this Mass.
There’s a line in Eucharistic Prayer one. The line says, “Pray for my brethren that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to the almighty God.” So, pray that my sacrifice and yours be acceptable to almighty God. When you were baptized, you were baptized into priest, prophet, and king. This is our role of priesthood in offering ourselves to God, and we can do that at every Eucharist. St. Peter Chrysologus, one of our church’s early saints, said, “Listen now to what the apostles urge us to do. I appeal to you, listen, to present your bodies as living sacrifices. Paul has raised all men to the priestly status, and each of us is called to be a sacrifice to God and his priest. Do not forfeit what divine authority confers upon you. Keep burning continually the sweet-smelling incense of your heart on the altar.”
At the end of the second reading, we hear, “Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind; you may be pleasing and perfect to God.” Then at the end of the first reading, “This idea of the prophets who has been duped.” So, he’s duped by God and says, “Whenever I cry out, whatever violence and outrage is my message, the word of the Lord has brought me derision and reproach all the day long,” and he says, “I cannot endure it.” He’s hit rock bottom. He’s come to the point where he cannot endure what he is suffering anymore.
A few verses later in Jeremiah, this is said, “When I found your words, Lord, I devoured them. Your words were my joy and my heart’s happiness because I bear your name, God of Hosts. I did not sit celebrating in the circle of merrymakers under the weight of your hands. I sat alone because you filled me with rage.” He’s filled with this rage. “Why is my pain continuous? Why is my wound incurable, refusing to be healed? You are like a deceptive brook.” Listen to what he’s saying to God. “You are like a deceptive brook. Waters that cannot be relied on.” Did you ever feel like that with God? You can’t be relied on, God. You duped me again. Then he says, “And the lament comes to an end, and he expresses praise and trust in the Lord our God.” It changes from this feeling of being duped to realizing the beautiful things that God is doing in his life.
Finally, I want to close with the quote from St. Augustine. St. Augustine lived a very scandalous life. If you ever read his confessions, he had his conversion, which came through his mother’s intercession. St. Monica prayed for her son to be converted. There is no stronger prayer if you have a child, children, or grandchildren away from the faith. After his conversion, he says, “Late have I loved you ever ancient knew. Late have I loved you. You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness, I plunged into the lovely things of creation. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you. If they had not been in you, they would not have been at all.” Here’s his conversion. “You called, you shouted, and you broke through my dumbness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me. I drew in a breath, and now I pant for you. I have tasted you. Now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.”
As we received the Eucharist today, let this be a moment we are joined with Christ. Let this be a moment that we entrust ourselves to him so that if we feel duped in life, we can entrust ourselves to him and receive his very body and blood into us to burn with that same passion. All our sorrows can turn into joy, and we can share his light. When Daniel came here Friday night, he stayed with me for the weekend, I just wrote him a little card. I said to him I hope you let God dupe you over and over and over again. For every one of us, I hope for all of you that you let yourselves be duped because when we let ourselves be duped by God, we give up our way of life. We enter the life that he desires for us, and we will discover that it is truly good to be duped by God.
