 Please allow me to begin by saying how honored I feel to be here at Franciscan University. I'm originally from Pittsburgh and would often come here with my family to get a little bit of injection of life and spirit. My mom at a certain point would look around at our parish and see mostly gray hair, and so she said, please, on my day off, please let's go down to Steubenville, would sneak in right before the noon mass, and my mom would get so excited when she would see so many young people who were not only waiting in line for confessions, but also who would be so involved in the celebration of the Eucharist, and so for me to have the opportunity to celebrate Mass here is a real singular honor, and certainly in the presence of so many men and women who are making such an incredible contribution to our church at a very difficult time. Now being here with such talented people has a little bit of its difficulties and challenges as well. I certainly was worried about preparing a homily, and so I spent a lot of time preparing what I had hoped was going to be a very good homily. It was going to begin with the line that we had in our first reading today, I believed therefore I spoke, and then Father Sean spoke so beautifully about that very passage last evening. I was going to go on then and talk about how important it is that when we speak, having believed, that we speak the truth with love, and then Bishop Gainer spoke about that for 50 minutes. I really then wanted to speak about how it is that defending the faith requires that we live the faith. I was going to use this really interesting quotation attributed to St. Francis, preach the gospel always if necessary, use words, and then that was debunked by Patrick Madrid. I was going to say how important it is that for us to be able to defend the faith as I mentioned, we need to live the faith, but to do that with love and humility, accompanying those who think otherwise. And that was illustrated so beautifully last evening by Matt. At this point, my instincts say punt. You can see, however, that even though I'm in a field house, I'm not much of an athlete. And because of that, I've developed a rather unique punt over these years. And it's usually at this point that I somehow or another throw into the conversation something that reveals that I went to Harvard. Before I heard Dr. Crafe speak, there's always, I always had that thought that somehow if I was able to throw that in, that even if I gave people drivel, they would somehow think it was above them. But Dr. Crafe just pulled that rug under my Harvard train feet. Who can doubt that God has a sense of humor? But more than having a sense of humor, God has an incredible plan. Certainly, the saint whom we honor today, St. James, the greater, St. James, the apostle, is a saint who really demonstrates that in his very life. He probably would have been the most unlikely of disciples, the most unlikely of apostles. He and his brother were together called the sons of thunder. And it was no reflection on their father or their mother. Rather, it was their own impetuousness, their impulsiveness that made them sons of thunder. You wonder if they didn't have a little bit of Irish temper somewhere there. If you read between the lines, certainly in today's gospel, you get a little bit the sense that maybe James and John could have been a bit annoying. Their mom has this encounter with Jesus, who's very patient. But you hear that the other apostles immediately become indignant at James and John. What all had they been doing that would make the apostles so indignant at them so easily? Clearly, St. James was an earthen vessel. And yet, this annoying son of thunder was going to play an important part in God's plan. He was the first of the apostles to be martyred, the first to shed his blood, bringing growth to that early church. That impetuous son of thunder becomes a convincing witness to the gospel. He's martyred for his adherence to Jesus, which we know is his adherence to the truth. Somehow, from the time of the exchange that we heard in the gospel to the day in which he gave up his life in service to Jesus, he learned what Jesus was teaching that day, that the greatest is the one who serves. The greatest is the one that might appear to be the least, the one who's the slave. How wonderful that he was able to assimilate that lesson. And every time that we hear that appellation, James the greater, we always have to see it in this context, that to be the greater means to be the one who is the slave. Certainly, that's incredible planning on God's part. He knew when he was calling James and John and the other apostles, just who they were, how fragile they were, what their weaknesses were. He knew what experiences they would have to have in their lives if they were going to be able to be effective proclaimers of the gospel, witnesses to Jesus and his love, that they were going to have courage in their hearts, the courage to be virtuous. And our God knew just what experiences they needed to overcome those weaknesses. And so we read in the gospels how James was given that incredible internship with the other apostles. Three years of this intense experience of learning from Jesus in the course of his public ministry. But James, along with John and Peter, had some intense seminars as well too. They were the three that were called to go up with Jesus for that experience that we call the Transfiguration, where they had that incredible glimpse of God's glory. It was James, along with his brother John and Peter, who too were taken with Jesus, came with Jesus, were invited by Jesus to join him in the Garden of Gethsemane on that night where Jesus' agony would be so great that he would perspire drops of blood. Just as James had been a witness to God's glory shining through Jesus, in the Garden that evening, he knew how great was the sacrifice that Jesus was making for us out of love. Two incredible experiences that transformed the way that James looked at the world and would eventually lead him to the point where he would be willing to give up everything to defend the faith because of his love for Jesus and his desire to spread that love and that mercy. Now that's an incredible planning on God's part. That planning didn't stop with James the Greater. Indeed, our God continues to plan with each one of us who's gathered here, crammed here in this beautiful spot made holy, not only by the celebration of the Mass and the proclamation of the Gospel, but by your presence and your prayer. God has a plan for each one of us, and he knows just which experiences we need in life so that we can learn, as James did, that to be great means to serve. That we can come to love Jesus with every fiber of our being so that we can give him everything in our lives to desire nothing more than life with him. God continues to plan. I'm not sure if for you this experience, this conference, is the mountaintop experience of the transfiguration or maybe it's that experience when you come to encounter the depths of Jesus's sacrificial love that James would have seen in the Garden of Gethsemane and then again on the cross. But it's an experience that God gives to you so that you're able then to go forth and to build up the church. He plans daily. He knows that we, like James, are indeed those fragile earthen vessels. And yet he knows that it's in that way that we're able to allow his glory, his wisdom, his treasure to shine through us. My brothers and sisters, as we continue with this celebration, let's be grateful for God's planning in our lives. Let us be grateful for those experiences that we have, whether those that are truly experiences of great triumph or those that take us into the tomb, trusting that God and his eternal wisdom knows just what we need so that we might, like James, be able to say yes, that we might be able to give everything that we have not only for defending our faith, but for defending and loving Jesus with our hearts, with our minds, and with our souls.