Count the Cost: A Homily on Wisdom and Discernment | September 7, 2025

Readings and Virtual Homily for September 7, 2025, Twenty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time, R&R in Boston

Readings for Mass this Sunday: 

• Wisdom 9:13-18

• Psalm 90:3-6, 12-17

• Philemon 1:9-10, 12-17

• Luke 14:25-33

Dear Friends and Family,

Wisdom might be said to be a major theme in the readings for this week.  Wisdom is, of course, one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and we know it may be differentiated from knowledge and even from understanding, as these, too, are counted separately as gifts.  Wisdom might loosely be said to combine both knowledge and understanding, but it is a reality in its own right.  It does not depend on knowledge to exist and it surpasses human understanding; there is an infusion of divine understanding involved, when we are discussing wisdom.

I have a deep experience of this gift, about which I have written before, in these homilies, but it is worth re-tracing it by the light of this week's beautiful readings, all of which resonate deeply with me.  I will describe my experience itself and weave the readings in, as we go.

In the spring semester of 1995, I started my studies for priesthood with the Dominicans at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley.  I was an independent graduate student, not yet sponsored by the Diocese of Sacramento, but I had been accepted as a candidate for priesthood by Sacramento, and it was understood that once I had completed the required courses in philosophy with the Dominicans, I would transfer to St. Patrick's Seminary on the peninsula, to study theology as an official seminarian for the Diocese of Sacramento.

The reason for this arrangement is that I was in debt, both with my car and on credit cards, and I needed time to get my debts paid off.  I was working at the Career Planning and Placement Center at Cal, where I had worked since my graduation from Berkeley fifteen years earlier.  I was living with my sister Liz (who had recently separated from my brother-in-law) and my three Oakland nieces, who were enrolled in Catholic schools (two of them at that point in high school).  Liz and the girls needed my income; I had lived with my family in Oakland for a decade, that spring.

 Given my ambition to become a priest, I planned to take a second, part time job, that year.  Something very flexible, evening and weekend work, maybe ten hours a week, $400 a month.  By my estimate, I would be two years getting clear of my debts.  Those two years would also give me the time I needed to complete the philosophy requirements for entry at St. Patrick's as a theology student, as a full-fledged seminarian.  I trusted that in that time, as well, my family's situation would continue to stabilize and improve; my brother-n-law had found work in Los Angeles (where he had moved because his family was there) and was contributing to the family finances.  

This was a challenging period for all of us.  But I had high hopes and deep confidence.  Staying with the program as I had it planned, I would get to the seminary in two years.  My prayer in those days might have been summed up by the last verse of today's psalm: "Prosper the work of our hands, O Lord; prosper the work of our hands."

Then came the offer, late that spring, from the bishop of Sacramento to pay off my debts and so free me to leave for seminary that fall.  I am not going to take the time to tell you why I could find no peace with this offer.  I am only going to say that it deeply disturbed me.  The poor bishop!  I think he was imagining I would leap for joy at the prospect.

I prayed.  I talked to those I most trusted.  I prayed more.  I made a seven-day silent retreat at Christ the King Retreat Center in Citrus Heights (suburban Sacramento) and I discussed the situation with my spiritual director there (Fr. Cedric Pisegna, whom some of you may recognize; he has been on EWTN a lot; at that time, he was just beginning his media ministry).  

Fr. Cedric recommended the Ignatian method -- go to Scripture.  I followed his advice and, asking the question, Do I go to the seminary against all my will or not?, I was led to...

Today's Gospel passage.  Luke 14:25-33.

I read the passage once, in shock.  I read it again (as is required, by the Ignatian method) and was even more profoundly shocked; was plunged, really, into something like dread.  Like real fear.  Like -- "NO.  I CANNOT DO THIS."

Because the passage, of course, instructs us to take up our cross and follow the Lord (vs. 27).  

I read the passage a third time, shaking my head and trying to bring reason and clarity to my thoughts, which were all over the place.  I could only see myself at the seminary, looking back across the bay in the direction of Oakland, fearful for my sister and nieces, and resentful, more than resentful, angry, at the fact that I was not there to help them.  Angry as well that I had been ripped away from my deeply challenging, but very good and just barely workable set of circumstances, working at Cal, working a second job as well, studying at the Dominican School, living with and helping my family and gradually paying off my debts.  That set of circumstances, demanding as it was, gave me peace, gave me optimism, hope and confidence.  Leaving for St. Pat's that fall, short of Liz winning the lottery, filled me with entirely negative emotions.

Yet, "Take up your cross..."

I read the passage a fourth time.  

And this time it hit me.  This time through, I saw it.  I recognized what the passage was actually saying to me.  For the passage does not end with verse 27.  It goes on for six more verses and those verses urge us to...

Count the cost.

"Which of you wishing to construct a tower does not first sit down and calculate the cost?" (vs.28).  Verses 29-32 ask what king with ten thousand troops would not first determine whether he could be successful in battle against a king with twenty thousand.  Count the cost.

At once, it was as clear to me as the hot and bright blue sky on a Sacramento summer day: I did not have what it would take to leave for the seminary that fall.  I am rushing this, because this is already long.  But the sense of release was more than huge.  It was overwhelming.  So was the flood of peace which invaded my heart, my mind, my entire being in that moment.  This turned out to be the single most important moment of discernment in my fourteen-year journey toward ordination.  I could not have known it at the time but in this discernment, in this decision, lay my eventual future as a priest not for Sacramento but for Oakland.

And there was something else as well.  There was The Marysville Youth Group.  Remember that I had planned to find a part-time job with flexible evening and weekend hours, paying $400 a month.  The job found me; I did not go looking for it.  It came looking for me, not just a job but a vocational call, and as you know, I took it.  And in that decision lay the second most important development in my fourteen years of preparation for priesthood.  In that decision lay, eventually, my appointment as chaplain at Bishop O'Dowd High School, twenty years later.

I would have missed Oakland.  I would have missed the teens.  All of them.  Two generations now, of them.

Count the cost.  If you have not got it, God is NOT asking it of you.

And, from the first reading, one of my favorites from the Book of Wisdom: "Who knows God's counsel, or who can conceive what the Lord intends?" (vs. 13).  My resistance to the bishop's well-intended offer was not just mine.  It was from the Spirit, who, of course, knew that youth ministry was coming; who knew as well that my destiny was Oakland, not Sacramento.  

I might go on another eight or ten paragraphs, regarding the operation of wisdom in our lives.  But this is already waaaaaaaaaay long.  You take my meaning, I think!

Although my sabbatical is officially only entering its second (of five) months, I have considered myself to be on sabbatical since the end of the spring semester, at the start of June.  That being the case, this month marks the sabbatical's midway point.  Though I have plenty of ambitions yet ahead, I way back in June decided to mark the half-way point in the sabbatical with a quick get-away to see friends in Boston, which as most of you know, is just one of my favorite cities on the planet.  

As you are reading this, our plan is to be on the Cape -- in all my many visits to Boston since the first in 1984, I have never seen Cape Cod.  I am writing this before I fly, however (the homily's release is pre-set) so I cannot offer any initial impressions of this famous strip of American Atlantic real estate.  But I can say that I expect to enjoy the visit.  

I'll be back Tuesday evening; to re-engage the work of the sabbatical.  The writing and printing of books, the filming and editing of videos, the meetings with our far-flung staff (not just in both the north and south state, but in Kansas City and New Jersey, as well).  And of course, the marketing launches -- plural, as we this month are initiating a direct book appeal to complement our efforts on You Tube.  There will be a second, broader book marketing launch later this year.  It is all going forward great guns, and so I am able to take a quick break and...relax along the sandy shores of the Cape.

Will close it here.

Take good care and God bless.

Fr. Brawn