Some brief thoughts in lieu of a homily* for the 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 25, 2022
Am 6:1a, 4-7, 1 Tm 6:11-16, Lk 16:19-31
Everything we have is a gift, even if we are convinced otherwise, even if we are convinced that we did it all ourselves.
Even if we supposedly earned or won everything we have on this Earth, we earned it or won it with innate skills or talents or intellect or sheer dumb luck that themselves were gifts.
A homily for the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 18, 2022
Am 8:4-7, 1 Tm 2:1-8, Lk 16:10-13
Trust.
It’s at the heart of every relationship: personal, business or governmental. It underpins every transaction.
It’s the first byword of the Boy Scout Law: A Scout is trustworthy.
A trust — a structure that manages finances for someone or some group — ensures stability and security in perpetuity.
And speaking of finances, even our money says simply, “In God We Trust.”
Trust is an absolute.
A homily for the 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 11, 2022
Ex 32:7-11, 13-14, 1 Tm 1:12-17, Lk 15:1-32
A news article about the cleanup of a toxic-waste dump quoted an environmental scientist about the contaminated soil.
It’s like a kitchen sponge, he said. You can rinse a sponge and squeeze it again and again, but you never get all the soap or dirt out of it, no matter how many times you try, no matter how hard you try.
You can get really close, but that’s it.
Which is exactly what happens when we seek forgiveness.
A homily for the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 4, 2022
Wis 9:13-18b, Phmn 9-10, 12-17, Lk 14:25-33
The late great George Carlin had a bit in which he lampooned Americans’ obsessive materialism. Everything, he would say, was about stuff.
We go to work to make money to buy stuff. We buy houses to keep our stuff in. When we’ve bought more stuff than our houses can hold, we buy bigger houses.
And then someone invented storage units.
Meanwhile, the bumper sticker reminds us: Live Simply So That Others May Simply Live.
