Switchbacks

A homily for the Second Sunday of Advent, December 5, 2021

Bar 5:1-9, Phil 1:4-6, 8-11, Lk 3:1-6

Sometimes a twisty road is the one to take.

A twisty road might hug a riverbank or an ocean shoreline. It might wrap around the side of a mountain or follow the contours of a valley. It may be twisty because it’s zig-zag terraced up the side of a hill, and that was the safest way to get the path to the other side.

More simply put, a road with plentiful curves often hews to the reality that nature — and God — laid out.

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Where you are

A homily for the First Sunday of Advent, November 28, 2021

Jer 33:14-16, 1 Thes 3:12—4:2, Lk 21:25-28, 34-36

In 1965, John McPhee’s book profiling Bill Bradley, “A Sense of Where You Are,” hit the shelves.  In it, the then-student athlete at Princeton University explained how he was able to accurately fire a basketball through the hoop by maintaining, literally, a sense of where he was on the court.

Bradley, who distinguished himself as an Olympian, a New York Knick, a U.S. senator from New Jersey and a true statesman — among innumerable accomplishments — has kept that sense of where he is not only physically but emotionally, psychologically and spiritually throughout his life and career.

Advent challenges us to do the same.

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Monarch

A homily for The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe

Dn 7:13-14, Rv 1:5-8, Jn 18:33b-37

If human kings throughout history had been one scintilla of the kind of king Jesus is, we Americans would not cringe at the thought of following a crowned head of state, let alone revering one.

But they weren’t, and we rebelled 2½ centuries ago, and we’re still a rebellious bunch. Empty seats in church are only one sign of many to make that point.

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Silver lining

A homily for the Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, November 14, 2021

Dn 12:1-3, Heb 10:11-14, 18, Mk 13:24-32

Judy Garland sang it:

So always look for the silver lining
And try to find the sunny side of life

Today’s Scripture passages are none too sunny as we close out Ordinary Time and the year of Mark’s Gospel.

Frankly, “gloom and doom” only begin to categorize them.

So let’s look for the silver lining and the sunny side.

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Real value

A homily for the Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, November 7, 2021

1 Kgs 17:10-16, Heb 9:24-28, Mk 12:38-44 or 12:41-44

Shortly after I started college, I turned my back on the church. Oh, I’d drop in occasionally to the Sunday evening everybody-sits-on-the-floor-around-the-guitarist Mass in the private dining rooms opposite the main cafeteria, but for the most part, I stopped being a church-goer.

I wasn’t being lazy, and I hadn’t lost my faith or sense of spirituality. (I wound up minoring in theology.) But I was annoyed at my home parish’s incredible preoccupation with money. Well, anyway, that’s how I perceived it.

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Take care

A homily for the Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 31, 2021

Dt 6:2-6, Heb 7:23-28, Mk 12:28b-34

Let’s imagine for a minute that it’s Christmas, and we’re 10 years old.

Our favorite uncle has given us the bicycle we’ve been dreaming about — shiny, painted in a red-and-gold sunburst, custom seat and no training wheels.

We throw our arms around Uncle Joe and say, “Thankyouthankyouthankyou!” about a hundred times.

We grab our coat, wheel our prized new bike out into the December chill — which we don’t feel at all — and pedal around the block a few times.

Just like Ralphie in the movie, this is the best present we ever got or would ever get.

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In focus

A homily for the Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 24, 2021

Jer 31:7-9, Heb 5:1-6, Mk 10:46-52

What makes a good photo?

Composition, yes. Lighting, indeed. The right subject, absolutely.

Focus? Essential.

The same is true when we look. Look, and not merely see. Because the act of looking adds focus to all the visual inputs that can bombard us when we open our eyes.

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Walk a mile

A homily for the Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 17, 2021

Is 53:10-11, Heb 4:14-16, Mk 10:35-45

It’s such a cliché: “Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.” The activity is supposed to give us a sense of what it’s like to be that person, or a person of that person’s ethnicity, or socioeconomic situation, or belief system, but it’s a fundamentally flawed exercise.

I am not, and never will be, anything but a white male human descended from Irish-Welsh-French-Alsatian-Croatian-Slovak stock, raised in the suburban dead center of New Jersey, educated at Catholic grammar and boys prep schools in that aforementioned Central Jersey and at a small, private liberal arts college in the rural dead center of Pennsylvania.

Put me in Manolo Blahnik shoes and I will not be a supermodel. Put me again in work boots atop a pile of hot asphalt and I may labor but I will not be a laborer. Put me in moccasins and — at best — I am guilty of cultural appropriation.

We may try, we may try with every fiber of our being, to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, but in the end, the most we can hope for is partial enlightenment.

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A stitch in time

A homily for the Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 10, 2021

Wis 7:7-11, Heb 4:12-13, Mk 10:17-30

It’s still possible to buy a needle threader, an incredibly brilliant yet simple tool that helps people with unsteady hands or so-so eyesight — or without the patience and tolerance for frustration — to pass a thread through the eye of a needle.

The fine wire goes through the eye first, and then the thread gets slipped through the lasso-like diamond on the other side.

A quick tug on the handle — or whatever it’s called — and the fine wire lasso hauls the thread through the eye.

Of course, you have to get the needle threader’s wire lasso through the eye first, but pound for pound that’s a far smaller challenge than jabbing a limp, frayed string through a tiny metal oval.

And, no, using a tool is not cheating.

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The bigger they are

A homily for the Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 3, 2021

Gn 2:18-24, Heb 2:9-11, Mk 10:2-16

We’ve all heard the old saw “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.” And history has proven that true time and again.

But what about “The bigger they are, the more humble they become”?

Doesn’t sound familiar.

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