A homily for Pentecost Sunday, May 28, 2023, Mass During the Day
Acts 2:1-11, 1 Cor 12:3b-7, 12-13, Jn 20:19-23
When I was a Boy Scout, the quarterly Parents Night extravaganzas invariably meant each patrol was responsible for putting on a skit, a skit that usually pushed the boundaries of taste and wit. In other words, something a dozen pre-teen through mid-teen boys would find funny and parents would find off-putting, like Mad magazine.
The recent passing of a Scouting friend’s younger sister reminded me of a skit their dad, a creative genius in the advertising racket, helped script. Dan and his patrol buddies staged a mock television newscast that poked fun at our troop leaders and included a forecast predicting the weather for Evanston, Illinois — headquarters of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union — would be dry. Dry today; dry tomorrow; dry forever.
Of course, only the savviest members of the gathering got the joke, which is to say not too many attendees did. True genius can puzzle some people, and Dan’s family’s genius was writ large.
