A homily for the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles, June 29, 2025
Readings from the Mass During the Day: Acts 12:1-11, 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 17-18, Matthew 16:13-19
Anyone who’s ever been laid off or received a buyout from a company — especially after a long period of service — knows the flood of emotions the pink slip or fat envelope brings.
A homily for The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, June 22, 2025
Genesis 14:18-20, 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, Luke 9:11b-17
Many folks know I’m a retired journalist, which means I made my living for four decades through the careful use of words. So let’s take a moment today to think about an important word. A word that’s important today and every day.
The word is “this.”
T-H-I-S.
A brief thought for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, June 15, 2025
Proverbs 8:22-31, Romans 5:1-5, John 16:12-15
Our belief that the almighty, omniscient, omnipresent deity we call “God” is one Supreme Being in three distinct Persons usually makes our brains hurt.
Makes them explode.
Makes us do that thing when we flip the sides of our index fingers against our lips to make that wubba-bubba sound to indicate we’ve gone crackers.
A homily for the Solemnity of Pentecost, June 8, 2025
Acts 2:1-11, 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13, John 14:15-16, 23b-26
Back when I was a sophomore at Christian Brothers Academy in Lincroft, I was struggling to learn French. (I didn’t do much better in the years that followed, but that’s a story for another day.) My accent was horrendous, my memory of numbers was awful, and I failed miserably at determining which person, place or thing was a le and which was a la.
But one night as she was doing bed checks, Mom heard me talking in my sleep, in what she swore was flawless Français. I scoffed. So the next time she thought I was doing my best Maurice Chevalier, she recorded it, to play back in the morning.
I sounded more like the “pardon my French” you might hear on a golf course but never in church.
