Tag: Commandments

Re: action

A homily for the Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 15, 2024

Is 50:5-9a, Jas 2:14-18, Mk 8:27-35

Wise people have embraced the maxim that we may not be able to control certain situations, but we can control how we react to them.

Thank you to whoever said that first, and to everyone else who has spread the word. Truer words were never said (to coin a cliché).

And we all, all too frequently, can find ourselves in situations that are — or may seem — grossly unfair. Especially situations we consider to be insanely unfair to us.

What is it about these happenstances that bring out the 2- or 3-year-old in us? Why is our first impulse to flail about and whine and act mortally wounded?

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Hugly

A homily for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 5, 2024

Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48, 1 Jn 4:7-10, Jn 15:9-17

Not everybody is a hugger, and that’s OK.

Whether it’s trees or teammates, cheek-pinching aunts or long-lost buddies, hugging just isn’t for everyone. And with so-called social distancing the rule during the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of us migrated toward social isolation.

Hugging correctly takes skill and emotion, regardless if we actually make physical contact or merely exchange sentiments from a few feet or even a dozen time zones away. Done right, a hug is a two-way sharing, a simultaneous giving and receiving.

For a hug to be done right, we have to take a huge chance and expose ourselves, our true selves, our inner selves.

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Long view

A homily for the Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 29, 2023

Ex 22:20-26, 1 Thes 1:5c-10, Mt 22:34-40

The long and the short of it — literally and figuratively — is that how we live our lives depends on our perspectives.

Every one of us is different, even identical siblings. Each of us was born at a different time, in a different place (even if your mom and mine were side-by-side in the maternity ward). We have different body types, in every way that can be possible. 

And through the sheer laws of physics, none of us can see and experience precisely what another of us sees and hears and feels because none of us can exist in the same space as somebody else simultaneously.

Eight billion of us today. Billions who came before us. And, God willing, billions and trillions yet to come after us.

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