Month: September 2025

Sez who?

A homily for the Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 28, 2025

Amos 6:1a, 4-7, 1 Timothy 6:11-16, Luke 16:19-31

George Booth was a cartoonist, mostly for The New Yorker magazine, and he was famous for his detailed line drawings of wacky people and their even-wackier pets. His trademark character was a skittish bull terrier, and he once drew a cartoon with 86 cats and 74 dogs, along with a bunch of people and a cloud of buzzing flies.

George Booth’s cartoons were hilarious.

But he could be profound.

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No Smileys

A homily for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, September 14, 2025

Numbers 21:4b-9, Philippians 2:6-11, John 3:13-17

A symbol is defined as “a thing that represents or stands for something else, especially a material object representing something abstract.”

Our lives are chock-full of symbols. The American flag, and flags of all the other nations on Earth. Stick-figure women and men on restroom doors. Stick-figure people in wheelchairs. Smiley faces.

Crosses and crucifixes.

And the simpler and clearer the symbol may be, the more complicated our understanding of it and our relationship with it becomes.

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Stuff it

A homily for the Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 7, 2025

Wisdom 9:13-18b, Philemon 9-10, 12-17, Luke 14:25-33

Amid all the news recently about wars and famines and the melting of the Earth’s biggest iceberg, one item stood out.

A young man named Doogie Sandtiger was awarded the Guinness World Record for the largest collection of Crocs. The Connecticut resident owns more than 3,800 pairs of the shoes, and he is still collecting. He hopes they will form the basis of a Crocs museum.

A fascinating human interest story, or just a crock?

How we view our own stuff will determine which side we come down on.

Continue reading Stuff it