A homily for the Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Sept. 13, 2020
Sir 27:30 – 28:7, Rom 14:7-9. Mt 18:21-35
My late father used to say, “I’ll forgive, but I won’t forget.”
He wasn’t the only person I ever heard say that. In fact, he ran with quite a big crowd on that sentiment.
“I’ll forgive, but I won’t forget.”
I never understood that. I still don’t.
A homily for the Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Sept. 6, 2020
Ez 33:7-9, Rom 13:8-10, Mt 18:15-20
Our Gospel passage today concludes with one of the greatest promises Jesus ever made to us:
“For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”
Jesus’s promise — to be truly present anytime we gather in remembrance of him — invokes and evokes faith, hope and love. All three.
A homily for the Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Aug. 30, 2020
Jer 20:7-9, Rom 12:1-2, Mt. 16:21-27
Let’s start with a little confession: I don’t talk about Jesus all that much. Not really.
I’ll say “Praise God!” or “Praise Jesus!” sometimes when some little good thing happens in my life, but it’s almost a reflex and not a reflection.
No, I won’t start a conversation about any person of the Holy Trinity, though I will talk at length if I’m asked or otherwise engaged in a conversation.
That may seem strange, when you point out I’m an ordained clergy member, a preacher and teacher and online (and occasionally live) homilist. But it’s true.
A homily for the Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time, Aug. 23, 2020
Is 22:19-23, Rom 11:33-36, Mt 16:13-20
Who is this guy?
Who is this guy?
Who is this guy??
A homily for the Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Aug. 16, 2020
Is 56:1, 6-7, Rom 11:13-15, 29-32 , Mt 15:21-28
When we embrace The Way that Jesus blazed, we recognize that almost everything he preached was countercultural. Then and now.
Dining and bunking in with tax collectors and prostitutes, and forgiving their sins when they repented and promised to go and sin no more: Jesus was able to reconcile these dregs of society with the God of mercy, even if First Century Hebrew society left them at the margins.
A homily for the Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Aug. 9, 2020
1 Kgs 19:9A, 11-13A, Rom 9: 1-5, Mt 14:22-33
Like St. Peter’s, our faith is being tested right now.
Now, to be clear, I don’t believe the coronavirus is a punishment from God or an act of the devil. It’s not caused by demonic possession or the wrath of the Almighty for some transgression by our parents or grandparents. We’re long past those notions as a community of believers, or at least we should be.
Yes, COVID is testing our faith right now.
And it’s a hard test.
A homily for the Eighteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Aug. 2, 2020
Is 55:1-3, Rom 8:35, 37-39, Mt 14:13-21
On many Sundays, of our three Scripture passages, only the first reading and the Gospel are actually related. Often, if the first reading is from one of the prophets, our Gospel passage proclaims how Jesus is the fulfillment of that prophecy. In those cases, the prophet foreshadows the work and message of Jesus, not precisely in a fortune-telling way, but in a way the recognizes how the people of God B.C. were not quite following his rules and spiritual guidance. And the Gospel makes clear how Jesus came to complete the Law, not destroy it.
On those Sundays, the second reading — usually a letter from St. Paul — gently or firmly steers a group of believers back onto The Way of Christ. We humans do slip back into bad habits sometimes. The letters were written to Christian flocks in far-off places, and they were written to us. Hence their value.
Today, all three readings center around receiving and paying forward, and that blesses every one of us mightily.
A homily for the Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 26, 2020
1 Kgs 3:5, 7-12, Rom 8:28-30, Mt 13:44-52
Have you ever asked for something? Asked Mom or Dad or Uncle Mike or Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny?
Did you get it? After you got it, was it really what you wanted? And even if you thought it was, did you get tired of it after a while? Or, after a long while, did you realize that, no, it really wasn’t what you wanted after all?
A homily for the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 19, 2020
Wis 12:13, 16-19, Rom 8:26-27, Mt 13:24-43
Crabgrass. Goosegrass. Chickweed. Dandelions. Clover. Those tall spiky things with the leaves every two inches up the stem: Whatever they are.
For those of us with lawns, keeping weeds under control can be a never-ending struggle. Because, at best, we control weeds. We never defeat them. They’re stubborn and invasive and pervasive.
One weed becomes two becomes four becomes 16 becomes 256 becomes a math problem and that’s less fun than the weeds themselves. If only we can rid our lawns of that first one, we’ll be spared the outbreak. But how often does that happen?
A homily for the Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 12, 2020
Is 55:10-11, Rom 8:18-23, Mt 13:1-23
Back in the days of “Children should be seen and not heard” and “Because I said so,” Mom always justified those neanderthal rules with so-called “biological math”:
“You have two eyes and two ears but only one mouth. Which do you think are more important?”
And she, like all mothers, made a good point. If we don’t see and hear, if we don’t watch and listen, we don’t learn. If we don’t learn, we live in the dark.
