Tag: Epistle

Return trip

A homily for the 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 11, 2022

Ex 32:7-11, 13-14, 1 Tm 1:12-17, Lk 15:1-32

A news article about the cleanup of a toxic-waste dump quoted an environmental scientist about the contaminated soil. 

It’s like a kitchen sponge, he said. You can rinse a sponge and squeeze it again and again, but you never get all the soap or dirt out of it, no matter how many times you try, no matter how hard you try.

You can get really close, but that’s it.

Which is exactly what happens when we seek forgiveness.

Continue reading Return trip

Yard sale

A homily for the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 4, 2022

Wis 9:13-18b, Phmn 9-10, 12-17, Lk 14:25-33

The late great George Carlin had a bit in which he lampooned Americans’ obsessive materialism. Everything, he would say, was about stuff.

We go to work to make money to buy stuff. We buy houses to keep our stuff in. When we’ve bought more stuff than our houses can hold, we buy bigger houses.

And then someone invented storage units.

Meanwhile, the bumper sticker reminds us: Live Simply So That Others May Simply Live.

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Aw, shucks

A homily for the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 28, 2022

Sir 3:17-18, 20, 28-29, Heb 12:18-19, 22-24a, Lk 14:1, 7-14

Imagine for a second that you’re a top-flight horseback rider and you’ve just won a coveted blue ribbon.

Or maybe you’re a quilter, and you’ve won a blue ribbon.

Or a chef, and you’ve achieved Cordon Bleu.

The applause is deafening. Your family and friends and total strangers are cheering for you, clapping for you, patting you on the back, maybe asking for your autograph.

Then it’s time to say a few words.

Continue reading Aw, shucks

Make the leap

A homily for the 19th Sunday of Ordinary Time, August 7, 2022

Wis 18:6-9, Heb 11:1-2, 8-19, Lk 12:32-48

Flo wants us to bundle our homeowners’ insurance with our other policies.

The Property Brothers say our burglar alarm system should be fully integrated with our electronic house-management system.

And the Geico Gecko … well, he/it does have that cute British-ish accent.

We spend a lot of money protecting the things we spent a lot of money on.

Continue reading Make the leap

Two worlds

A homily for the 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 31, 2022

Ecc 1:2; 2:21-23, Col 3:1-5, 9-11, Lk 12:13-21

Remember when we were young and boisterous and our parents admonished us to use our “inside” voices?

Remember going to a fancy place for a special dinner and being told we were on our best behavior, that we had to use “country club” manners?

Remember having to change clothes from too casual to dressy?

We could never be fully ourselves. Not really fully, not just plain us.

Our lives were sliced up, boxed up, compartmentalized. School life. Play life. Sports life. Home life.

Continue reading Two worlds

Pocket change

A homily for the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 10, 2022

Dt 30:10-14, Col1:15-20, Lk 10:25-37

What’s in your pocket?

If this were a TV commercial, you’d answer one way.

If this were “Let’s Make A Deal,” you’d answer another.

If you were being frisked, your answer would be something else entirely.

But this is none of those situations.

What’s in your pocket?

Continue reading Pocket change

This way

A homily for the 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time, June 26, 2022

1 Kgs 19:16b, 19-21, Gal 5:1, 13-18, Lk 9:51-62

In 1966, Walt Disney produced a movie called “Follow Me, Boys!” about a man who settles down in a small town and becomes a scoutmaster. It starred Fred MacMurray, best known to the TV generation as the father in “My Three Sons” and to the Turner Classic Movies generation as the star of “Double Indemnity.”

In one scene in “Follow Me, Boys!” MacMurray stumbles into a restricted area and is questioned by the Army. After he explains he’s a scoutmaster, the soldiers challenge him to tie a sheepshank, a complicated knot he never got the hang of.

Had he tied it, the knot would have been incontrovertible proof that he was a troop leader.

Oops.

(His identity did eventually get clarified.)

Continue reading This way

Gift above all gifts

A homily for The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, June 19, 2022

Gn 14:18-20, 1 Cor 11:23-26, Lk 9:11b-17

Our news flashes and history books are filled with accounts of women and men — heroes, we call them — risking their lives or even making the ultimate sacrifice for the good of others.

Often, these heroes act for the benefit of absolute strangers. Sometimes those strangers are right there where the act of heroism takes place. Many times, the strangers are thousands of miles away, across oceans on another continent.

That’s the case, of course, in world wars.

And sometimes the strangers who will benefit the most have not yet been born, because the act of heroism has a history-making or civilization-changing impact.

Risking their lives. Making the ultimate sacrifice. Smothering a grenade with their body. Spilling their blood.

Continue reading Gift above all gifts