4 - 2024 - Unpaid Bill

Barn raising

A homily for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, April 28, 2024

Acts 9:26-31, 1 Jn 3:18-24, Jn 15:1-8

My brother Steve has lived in the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, area for at least two decades, and while his neighborhood can be described as all-American middle class, he and his family do encounter Amish people fairly often.

The Amish, also known as the Anabaptists or, more widely, the Pennsylvania Dutch, live in a closed society, pretty much. These descendants of German Protestant immigrants avoid most modern technologies. They travel in horse-drawn buggies and till their fields with horse-drawn plows. Actual horsepower, lubricated with elbow grease.

And because these Christians are so close-knit, their belief in all for one and one for all leaves The Three Musketeers in the dust.

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Vantage

A (brief) homily for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, April 21, 2024

Acts 4:8-12, 1 Jn 3:1-2, Jn 10:11-18

Thank you for bearing with me while I’m out of town on personal business this weekend. A fuller homily — which I will preach at all Masses next weekend — will be here as usual.

A few years ago, I started having trouble with glare while driving at night. Headlights, streetlights, traffic lights: I saw them as stars, or as beams with rays shooting out in several directions.

The experience was jarring.

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A-plus

A homily for the Third Sunday of Easter, April 14, 2024

Acts 3:13-15, 17-19, 1 Jn 2:1-5a, Lk 24:35-48

I was a guest at a wedding reception at a Jersey Shore restaurant on the Atlantic Ocean boardwalk. The sun-dappled waves were breaking almost under our feet; the food was delicious and plentiful; the other guests were fascinating and friendly.

A good time was had by all, to coin a phrase.

One element that truly elevated the evening, though, was the extraordinary service. The brigade of men and women attended to all our requests promptly and, in particular, delivered and removed the multiple courses of the meal cheerfully, seamlessly and efficiently. Not a detail was overlooked.

A+ service. A+++.

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Expect the unexpected

A homily for the Second Sunday of Easter, April 7, 2024

Acts 4:32-35, 1 Jn 5:1-6, Jn 20:19-31

The night our daughter was born, Andrea and I attended my 10-year reunion at Christian Brothers Academy. As we sat nibbling on dessert, a tall, powerfully built man I did not recognize ambled over to our table and introduced himself in a basso-profundo voice.

He was a CBA classmate I remembered as being short, a little pudgy, with a squeaky voice.

“Yeah,” he said with a wide grin, “I’ve been getting that reaction all night. I shot up in college and bulked up at Quantico during FBI training.”

I did not expect that.

I saw him again at another class reunion. This time, though still tall, he was rail-thin. He’d left the Bureau and started running marathons.

I did not expect that, either.

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