A homily for the Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 26, 2025
Sirach 35:12-14, 16-18, 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18, Luke 18:9-14
About 600 years before Jesus called out the Pharisees and other leaders of the people as hypocrites, the Greek moralist Aesop told a fable about a frog and an ox.
A homily for the Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 19, 2025
Exodus 17:8-13, 2 Timothy 3:14-4:2, Luke 18:1-8
It doesn’t take long for any of us to realize why cat videos — and especially kitten reels — constitute about half the content on mainstream (fuddy-duddy) social media.
Cats are crazy.
Which qualifies cat people like my family and me as being a bit loony, too.
A homily for the Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 5, 2025
Habakkuk 1:2-3; 2:2-4, 2 Timothy 1:6-8, 13-14, Luke 17:5-10
We’re slowly edging into autumn. It’s more than a month old, meteorologically, and a little over a week old astronomically. The trees are starting to show their fall colors (though this looks like a dull season), and not long from now the leaves of brown will come tumblin’ down (to steal some lyrics).
It’s the annual cycle of seasons here in the Northeast.
It’s the circle of life, to borrow some other lyrics.
And because all life on God’s Green Earth is interconnected, because every singular aspect of life — our lives — contributes to the whole of Creation, there’s a spiritual aspect to the very physical cycle of death and rebirth. A metaphor.
As witnessed by all the plants we refer to as deciduous or annuals.
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.
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.
A homily for the Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 31, 2025
Sirach 3:17-18, 20, 28-29, Hebrews 12:18-19, 22-24a, Luke 14:1, 7-14
The older folks among us will remember when the most-watched shows on TV were Westerns. “Gunsmoke.” “Bonanza.” “Wagon Train.” And even these days, they’re getting a pretty decent ride on rerun channels like MeTV.
I don’t remember which Western this happened on, but I do remember a scene in which some tenderfoot came up to a gunslinger, and their conversation went something like this:
“Some people say you’re the fastest gun in these parts. True?”
“It’s true. I can outdraw any man.”
“That’s some pretty serious bragging, mister.”
“No brag. Just fact.”
A homily for the Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 10, 2025
Wisdom 18:6-9, Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-19, Luke 12:32-48
As it turns out, most of the stories about Johnny Appleseed were true, and only mildly embellished.
Here are a couple of salient paragraphs from the Wikipedia entry on this American folk hero:
Johnny Appleseed (born John Chapman; September 26, 1774 – March 18, 1845) was an American pioneer nurseryman who introduced trees grown with apple seeds (as opposed to trees grown with grafting) to large parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Ontario, as well as the northern counties of West Virginia. He became an American icon while still alive, due to his kind, generous ways, his leadership in conservation, and the symbolic importance that he attributed to apples. …
The popular image is of Johnny Appleseed spreading apple seeds randomly everywhere he went. In fact, he planted nurseries rather than orchards, built fences around them to protect them from livestock and wildlife, left the nurseries in the care of a neighbor who sold trees on shares, and returned every year or two to tend the nursery. … Continue reading Seedlings
A homily for the Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 3, 2025
Ecclesiastes 1:2; 2:21-23, Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11, Luke 12:13-21
“He who dies with the most toys wins!”
Hmm…
I think that, when it’s my time to go, I’ll rate at least a bronze medal.
A homily for the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 20, 2025
Genesis 18:1-10a, Colossians 1:24-28, Luke 10:38-42
Most of us have compiled or received (or both) a honey-do list, a tally of all the stuff that needs to be done around the house. The list challenges us (nags us?) to get off our duffs and wash the windows, schedule the car maintenance, call the exterminator and, oh yeah, give Rover a long-overdue bath.
Without making the house smell like wet dog.
Quite often, the lists grow more like zucchini in a New Jersey summer than basketball-size green melons. In fact, mine qualifies as a watermelon list.
A homily for the Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 13, 2025
Deuteronomy 30:10-14, Colossians 1:15-20, Luke 10:25-37
It’s something of an urban legend that Amazon delivery drivers go undetected by Ring doorbell cameras. They place packages on our doorsteps, photograph them and email those photos to us as confirmation of safe deliveries.
Invisibly, somehow.
