A homily for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, May 3, 2026
Acts 6:1-7, 1 Peter 2:4-9, John 14:1-12
In early June 1973, barely 12 hours after flinging a mortarboard into the air on the lawn at CBA, I was about to wade into a newly dumped pile of steaming asphalt.
“All right, men, let’s git it!” Joe Romeo, the foreman, hollered, and we attacked the hot asphalt with our short-handled square-point shovels.
Within minutes, my new white T-shirt was transparent with sweat and my even newer Sears blue jeans were sliding down my skinny backside. I didn’t notice if my feet were hot in my boots as I danced through the blacktop, pretty much making a mess.
Then I felt a powerful hand yank me by my belt loops and toss me off the pile. “Get outta there,” Romeo growled. I snapped back, “What’s your problem, man? I’m working my ass off!”
He then said the words that shaped the rest of my life: