January 21, 2024 (Third Sunday in Ordinary Time)

by Fr. Bob Glynn, S.J.

[This text is an automatically generated transcript. Some edits have been made.]

About 10 days ago, I was confronted with a massive crisis. I was finishing my novel and usually I have two or three lined up afterwards and I had nothing to read. Now these are the things my life is made up of crises. So what am I going to do? This was There was panic. So I went to my usual sources The New York Times Book Review a number of others in which reading through now, I don’t know about you, but when they make these choices, they are crucial. And so there are certain things that set me off. I want something humorous and I look and then it will say, a romantic comedy. No, those are giveaway. Romantic comedy means something like a Hallmark movie that is cutesy. No. Or something that says it was so funny, I laughed out loud again and again. I have learned from experience that I never laugh out loud, again and again, particularly with these books that have been reviewed. So I looked through and I finally found one this was this was quite a research effort that said, humorous and provocative. I thought okay, that sounds like me. Alright, so I stuck with that.

And the book I found was this book called Confidence and it starts out in a promising location. They’re not in the prison, and they’re not in the juvenile facility. They’re in this place called The Last Resort Ranch, which is a place that’s supposed to sort out adolescents who are in trouble, but whose families have enough money to pay their way to go to this instead of juvenile hall. So everybody in this kind of juvenile Ranch is rich, except for Ezra Okay, who has gotten a scholarship to attend last resort ranch, and Israel is everything that everyone else is going to make fun out. Okay. He’s short. He has huge cost Coke bottle Google Glasses, he can barely see everything about him says, torture me. And he’s having a terrible time because everybody is faking it until the arrival of Orson now orison is the second and last person to come to this ranch on scholarship. And Orson is very different from Ezra insofar as he is very good looking very charming and can get people to do almost anything you want, and no one picks on the two of them because Ezra has the brains, the two of them combined to start basically, a number of scams in this ranch because all of the rich kids have hidden away money so that when they arrive there, they could bribe people and do things except there’s nobody to bribe etc.

So they begin procuring drugs and alcohol and different good things that you need to make you happy when you’re at that prison Ranch, but that’s not the principle. Until finally, the counselors with camp, figure out what’s going on and as I endorse and escape once they escape, they’re together and they realize that they are a brilliant confidence team. And these windows people less than or left and right now they’re only in 18 years old, and it’s kind of small stuff but they’re making money, but they kind of keep have moving because people catch up with them eventually. They begin to make more money and they realize why are we staying here? We really have talent. Let’s go for the big time. So they moved to Palo Alto, California where they enroll as auditors at Stanford University. At Stanford, their big thing is to figure out some big scam because I think they know the Bay Area is the center of big scams in the United States. So they’re going to these classes then they’re networking, they finally meet this kid who’s very bright is in some sort of engineering, you know, it’s one of those, alright, and they realize that he has a serious alcohol problem. So they managed to get lots of information out of them till finally Orson says, look, what we need this guy to tell us is we want an electronic device that will make people happy, because that is the surest way to get everybody on board. So they’re with this guy and he says, oh, yeah, I made this prototype. And it’s this little thing that they can put it on their head, and it has magnets and zaps. Look at it like you’re getting electric shock therapy at home. Alright, so they try it and they’re delighted with it. It doesn’t have much effect but kind of temporarily, you’re feeling better and all of that.

So they get in Brunker and they get him to sell over the patent rights that he doesn’t have to this thing. And then they begin to raise money. And Ezra’s point in all of this is you need to go to people who think they aren’t happy and have a lot of money and want to make themselves happy. So they ingratiate themselves with number of wealthy people on the peninsula in San Francisco, and they get people to begin to bank roll the bliss machine and they begin to market all over the country. It’s a massive success. People are putting on this thing. Celebrities are coming to testify. There is never been anything like this to make you happy. So it keeps happening people in there, you know, oh we’re deliriously happy. And this this thing keeps snowballing so that they have to make bliss machine too, because people are getting bored with lists, machine one. And lists machine three is on the books while they’re starting their own ranch to give these special sessions in bliss. And all of this will then you know eventually the FBI catches up with them these things happen. All things must come to an end. And so Ezra is put in one prison and Orson in another and Ezra is just tortured in this prison. Until one day there’s been a massive prisoner transfer and Orson arrives and is put in the same cell as Ezra and they look at each other both of them a mess, and Orson says Are you ready to make people happy again, and the scam begins.

Now, I found it interesting it began and ended in a prison but alright. They managed to cultivate an immense following by promising the one thing everybody wants, which is happiness. Okay. It’s a rather intangible, but it’s what they promise. Today in the gospel. We have Jesus who wanders along the Sea of Galilee. And says, You, you follow me? You, you follow me? And these people who are in the middle of a work day, get up and go. Now why do they go? It is not answered there. I mean, I think this is it’s fairly telling that we don’t know why they go. Our presumption is that they think, Well, this is Jesus and he’s a great guy. And, and, of course, I’ll follow him. The subtext This is the key, this will make me happy. Okay, so they leave everything behind the number of them seem to have families, okay, and off they go. Now, what is interesting here is that this promise of happiness is never made by Jesus to the disciples. He doesn’t tell James, John and Andrew and Peter, come along, I will make you happy. Isn’t say your lives will be wonderful and joyful and you’ll never have a moment of boredom or disappointment or sadness again. You will be in bliss.

But Jesus does not do that. In fact, Jesus doesn’t tell them anything of the plan, except that you will be fishers of men, whatever that made me. And in this moment, something happens for the disciples. What is it that happens? The disciples who have been at work, who have been doing the thing that they have been doing for years and years and years, hear a voice that liberates them from what it is that they have seen as their whole of their life and their destiny? Are they happy? Who knows? Are they free? Yes. In that moment, they are free.

What happens in the Gospels is a story of the continuing freeing of them from the limits of the world which they have seen. They don’t leave because they’re bored, and they don’t leave. It seems to make a fortune, although several of them think that they will, when they understand that Jesus has something to do with this kingdom of heaven that they don’t understand. But what happens to the disciples throughout and what happens to the people who are the recipients really of Jesus word and Jesus’s healings is that they are free. The paralytic is not made happy, he rejoices, but his joy is not in being happy. Happiness is temporal. Happiness comes and goes. It’s good. We like it. There’s nothing wrong with it. But it is not the end. It is the feeling they associate with liberation. When the paralytic can walk his life opens to new possibilities. Yes, he’s not paralyzed, but he’s going to have to work for a living now. But he’s open to new possibilities. And all of the people who are healed when demons are cast out of them, they are not made happy. They are made free and freedom is the prerequisite for everything else. I don’t move from happiness to freedom. I move from freedom to every other possibility. So that for the disciples, the following of Jesus is this sense that in this call, they are liberated from the things that they are worried about. The only things that they perceive can make them happy in this life. Whether it be the job, the house, the children, the family, whatever. The call here liberates. For what we don’t know.

The disciples don’t all follow Jesus in their way own way there with him as who they are as individuals. But what happens to them together is that they remind each other, that he is there to free them from the bonds of Satan, from the things of this world that they believe are crucial to getting through this life. These moments of happiness, the occasional joy, the success that makes other people jealous of them. And so their response is one of love and service to follow the Lord because when they are with him, as Peter says, To whom else will be go for you have the words of grace, of freedom of everlasting life.