05/24/26 Near Occasion of Grace

1:19 Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ. May you have a seat. so if you remember um so if you remember there uh the second sunday of easter was the divine mercy sunday and on that sunday we heard this exact gospel we heard the gospel of how jesus had given the holy spirit to the apostles to be able to forgive sins retain sins and so the invitation or the uh yeah invitation to make a commitment to go to confession every two to four weeks as we go through the Easter season, as we go into summer, was kind of put out there. I put that out there. And so hopefully in the last seven or so weeks, you've been to confession a couple times. But here's the thing. That's not to make you feel guilty if you haven't gone. But it is, A, a reminder. And B, there's something about when we go to confession, what do we confess? Oftentimes we confess our sins, but also we confess the near occasion of sin. And so maybe you've heard that phrase before, the near occasion of sin. So what is the near occasion of sin? It's Basically, what are those people, places, and things that they're not of themselves?

2:21 They're not a sin, right? They're not bad of themselves. But if I look at my life, I can see that they often lead me to sin. So that's one of the—it's just really smart to be able to be aware of what are those near occasions of sin that, again, on their own, they're not wrong, they're not evil, they're not bad. But I know that if I find myself with these people, find myself in that place, or find myself doing these things, it's a new occasion of sin. It leads me to sin often. So keep that in mind. Keep that in mind as we enter into this Feast of Pentecost. But also, you know, it's funny, I came across this study, it was back in 2006, it was a Harvard study of the STEP project. So what the STEP project was, was it was a prayer experiment. And what they had done is they said they wanted to find out, does prayer actually do anything? Is prayer efficacious? And so they found about 1,800 heart surgery patients and they divided them into across the Harvard Medical, Harvard hospitals, and they divided them into three groups. The first group was those who were prayed for, but they didn't know they were being prayed for. The second group were people, the heart surgery patients who weren't prayed for. They were the control group. And the third group was heart surgery patients who were prayed for, but they knew they were being prayed for.

3:38 And so they kind of did this whole thing, 1,800 people. And the results were, there were no results. The results were basically, there was no significant difference between those who were prayed for and those who were not prayed for. There was one little side thing they discovered. They discovered that those who were prayed for and they knew what they were being prayed for, they had slightly more complications, which is kind of problematic. Where we say, I'm praying for you. Like, okay, what are you doing to them? Maybe the reason why was because people were more anxious, like, wait, you're praying for me? Things must be really serious. Maybe I would have thought that going in for heart surgery was serious. But it's one of those situations where they came to this conclusion of the STEP project of saying, well, prayer must not work. Prayer must not be efficacious. Prayer must not actually do anything. If we were to come to that conclusion, I would say this.

4:32 I would maintain that we'd be wrong for a couple of reasons. One is, there's a lot of factors we can't account for. How do you know that those prayers were good prayers? I mean, legitimately, how do you know? Or how do you know that those prayers, people who were praying, were good prayers? Right, St. James, he wrote, he said, the prayer of a righteous person is powerful. Maybe you got a bunch of unrighteous people, I don't know. Or maybe the people who weren't being prayed for, maybe someone else was praying for them. Maybe they had family, maybe they had friends. Maybe there's a religious community in a convent somewhere who are interceding on behalf of heart surgery patients constantly. So we have no idea. You say that's the control group, but we actually don't know if there's any way to control it. The ultimate issue is this. It's not, was it actually a scientific study? The ultimate issue is they got prayer wrong. Because what is prayer?

5:27 Prayer is not a tool to manipulate God. We know this. Hopefully we understand this. Prayer is something vastly different. Although I think for a lot of us, we look at prayer as a way to manipulate God. Okay, God, here's the deal. I will show up. I will do these things. I'll say these words. I'll make these sacrifices and you're gonna respond. And you're gonna give me what I want. Sometimes we can get into that mindset. So when it doesn't happen, what didn't work? And I think it's fascinating, especially about today's feast. Today's feast, Pentecost, what's the setting? You have the disciples, they're all together. They're all in one place. they're all together, they're all praying, and they're praying for the same thing Jesus had told them as he ascended to heaven. He said, go back to Jerusalem, basically, and intercede. Wait for the promised Holy Spirit. Basically, pray for this kind of thing. They were told to go pray, and they went and prayed. And what happened?

6:21 Well, what happened for them is something that hasn't always happened for me. There have been plenty of times in my life where I'm like, okay, Lord, I come before God and I'm like, okay, God, here's the thing I'm desperate for. Here's the thing that, whether it's for myself or for someone else, like here is the thing that I am interceding for. Here's the thing I am pleading for. Here is the thing that I'm praying for.

6:42 And I'm tempted to come to this conclusion. I prayed and nothing happened. And maybe you've been in the same place where you've come to that conclusion. Look at the apostles, look at the Bible, and you're thinking, man, these people prayed and something amazing happened. I prayed and nothing happened. That's so easy for us to slip into, fall into that mindset. It reminds me of, I was out in Bakersfield, California, not too long ago, and the bishop of Bakersfield was giving his homily. And at one point, he reminded the people here in that church, he reminded them of when he was named their bishop. and the first time he ever went to the Diocese of Fresno to kind of present himself as their bishop and he reminded him, he said this, he said, when I showed up and I let you know that I was your bishop, he said, I remember I said this, I stood in front of you all and I said, hi, my name's so-and-so, I am the answer to your prayers and everyone laughed and he's like, it's true, I'm the answer to your prayers because why?

7:38 Because in the Diocese of Fresno, they had been praying for a bishop and he's like, and I'm your bishop. He's like, I'm not necessarily the bishop you wanted, but I am God's answer. You prayed and God answered, here I am. And that's the situation. It's like, that's so often the case. You know, he was right. He was making a joke. He might not have been the bishop they wanted, but he was the one they were given. He actually is the answer to their prayers. Because why? We know this. God always answers. It actually is false for us to say, I prayed and nothing happened. God always answers. because he's good. But because God is good, sometimes the answer is yes, and sometimes the answer is no, and sometimes the answer is wait. Because when it comes to prayer, we can't get this wrong. When it comes to prayer, we never tell. We can only ask.

8:34 When it comes to prayer, we never come before God and say, okay, God, here's the arrangement. Here is the manipulation. I mean, we know we're invited into a relationship with the Lord. We're not invited into a manipulationship. We're not in a... We're invited to a relationship, not a manipulationship, where we just say the right words, do the right things, do the certain ritual and God has to do what we ask him to do. That is not true. He is God. He's not our butler. we ask, and he always answers. And this is the good news. We know that God is good, right? He's not irrational. He's not negatively unpredictable. God is not fickle. He is good. He's just. He cares about it. He knows, I mean, what does Jesus tell us? Jesus says, essentially, God knows your name. When he says he's counted every hair on your head, you're more precious to him than many birds, which I appreciate.

9:26 He loves you, but he is so high above us. God is so, he is not us. He's not like us. He can't be convinced, but here's the good news. He doesn't need to be convinced.

9:47 So when we pray, what do we do? When we pray, if that's God, if God is so high above us that he is God, he's not our butler, if God can't be manipulated, if he can't be coerced, he can't be convinced, then when it comes to prayer, what can we do? And I think the answer is we do exactly what the apostles, we do exactly what the disciples did.

10:09 Remember, when it comes to sin, going to confession, we have that, I confess our sins, we also want to bring to the Lord the near occasion of sin, where we resolve to avoid the near occasion of sin. The near occasion of sin, once again, is those people, places, and things. that make it likely for us to fall into sin? what did the disciples do for Pentecost? They prayed and they asked God to send the promised Holy Spirit. They did not coerce God. They did not force God. They did not manipulate God. They did not convince God. They simply put themselves in what you might call a near occasion of grace. Just like we can have the near occasion of sin, where these are the people, places, and things that, man, I'm likely to go off the rails. there's such a thing as the near occasion of grace. The near occasion of grace is what?

11:02 Is I'm gonna show up in the Lord's presence. The near occasion of grace is I'm gonna actually pick up my Bible and let the Lord speak to me. The near occasion of grace is I'm going to mass and I'm gonna pray. And yeah, sometimes I go to prayer, I feel nothing. Sometimes I read the Bible, I'm like, ugh, I'm struggling with this. Sometimes we go to mass and there's that sense of like, okay, I'm so distracted. Sometimes we go to confession and we're like, I don't know, I didn't feel anything. but those moments, those people, those places and those things are the near occasion of grace and if we want to be saints, we have to seek out again, we cannot manipulate God we can't convince him to make us saints but what we can do is we can place ourselves in the near occasion of grace now, keep this in mind, this is the last thing we know this. We know that proximity does not equal intimacy.

11:51 I was praying, I was literally praying in this chapel last night about this in anticipation of this Mass. And I was sitting in here and I was so distracted. I was thinking about this homily. I was thinking about the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. And I was realizing, okay, Lord, I've placed myself in the near occasion of grace. I've placed myself close to you, but my mind and my heart is far from you. We know this. Proximity does not equal intimacy. So what do we need to do? It's not simply about, okay, putting myself in the new occasion of grace. It's also being where my feet are. It's also, I'm not just here bodily. I'm also here with my soul, my heart. Because it's possible to be in the Lord's presence. and be distracted on purpose.

12:43 But it's also possible to trust him. Remember, I can't convince God, but I can trust him. I can put myself where he has best access to my heart, and we can do that. Those places, confession, mass, praying the rosary, praying the chapel at divine mercy, reading the Bible, being in adoration, even just entering into silence in your car and sitting there and saying, speak, Lord, your servant is listening, putting ourselves in the near occasion of grace. is really good prayer.

13:23 Because remember this, God already loves you. God wants to bless you. And not only can we not convince God, we don't have to. We don't have to convince God to give us the Holy Spirit. We don't have to convince God to make us saints. We don't have to convince God to make us holy. He already wants to. All you and I have to do is put ourselves