A little over 45 years ago, I stood in the living room of my college advisor, a beautifully wild man with wild hair and a creative spirit that had lit a fire in me and under me.
I was helping him pack.
He had not been granted tenure, and his contract was up, so he and his young family were heading out to his wife’s family home to work on their next steps.
It was, I recall him saying, the first time in 32 years that he would not be going back to school on Labor Day.
Back to school.
A homily for the Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Aug. 30, 2020
Jer 20:7-9, Rom 12:1-2, Mt. 16:21-27
Let’s start with a little confession: I don’t talk about Jesus all that much. Not really.
I’ll say “Praise God!” or “Praise Jesus!” sometimes when some little good thing happens in my life, but it’s almost a reflex and not a reflection.
No, I won’t start a conversation about any person of the Holy Trinity, though I will talk at length if I’m asked or otherwise engaged in a conversation.
That may seem strange, when you point out I’m an ordained clergy member, a preacher and teacher and online (and occasionally live) homilist. But it’s true.
A homily for the Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time, Aug. 23, 2020
Is 22:19-23, Rom 11:33-36, Mt 16:13-20
Who is this guy?
Who is this guy?
Who is this guy??
A homily for the Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Aug. 16, 2020
Is 56:1, 6-7, Rom 11:13-15, 29-32 , Mt 15:21-28
When we embrace The Way that Jesus blazed, we recognize that almost everything he preached was countercultural. Then and now.
Dining and bunking in with tax collectors and prostitutes, and forgiving their sins when they repented and promised to go and sin no more: Jesus was able to reconcile these dregs of society with the God of mercy, even if First Century Hebrew society left them at the margins.
A homily for the Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Aug. 9, 2020
1 Kgs 19:9A, 11-13A, Rom 9: 1-5, Mt 14:22-33
Like St. Peter’s, our faith is being tested right now.
Now, to be clear, I don’t believe the coronavirus is a punishment from God or an act of the devil. It’s not caused by demonic possession or the wrath of the Almighty for some transgression by our parents or grandparents. We’re long past those notions as a community of believers, or at least we should be.
Yes, COVID is testing our faith right now.
And it’s a hard test.
A homily for the Eighteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Aug. 2, 2020
Is 55:1-3, Rom 8:35, 37-39, Mt 14:13-21
On many Sundays, of our three Scripture passages, only the first reading and the Gospel are actually related. Often, if the first reading is from one of the prophets, our Gospel passage proclaims how Jesus is the fulfillment of that prophecy. In those cases, the prophet foreshadows the work and message of Jesus, not precisely in a fortune-telling way, but in a way the recognizes how the people of God B.C. were not quite following his rules and spiritual guidance. And the Gospel makes clear how Jesus came to complete the Law, not destroy it.
On those Sundays, the second reading — usually a letter from St. Paul — gently or firmly steers a group of believers back onto The Way of Christ. We humans do slip back into bad habits sometimes. The letters were written to Christian flocks in far-off places, and they were written to us. Hence their value.
Today, all three readings center around receiving and paying forward, and that blesses every one of us mightily.
