Tag: Epistle

Inventory

A homily for the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, January 19, 2025

Isaiah 62:1-5, 1 Corinthians 12:4-11, John 2:1-11

There’s a little door in our hallway that opens to something called a linen closet. 

The closet hasn’t held linens in about 30 years.

In it are various cleaning supplies, paper goods, soaps and shampoos, dental-care items, COVID-19 tests, and prescription and over-the-counter medicines.

Definitely no sheets or towels.

And every year around this time, in the cold of mid-January, I’ll haul out the closet’s contents and keep what we’ll actually use in the coming 12 months and toss or find a home for the unneeded or expired stuff. (Expired! Expired! Expired!) 

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Yule wisdom from E.T.

A wish for Christmas, December 25, 2024

Is 52:7-10, Heb 1:1-6, Jn 1:1-18

This Christmas, if the only gifts we give and receive are justice and fairness, hope and kindness, that will be enough. More than enough.

Oh, and throw in a bountiful measure of joy, and the present of our presence with other people, and our day and our season will overflow.

At the end of the classic movie “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial,” just before the alien botanist goes home, he gives little sister Gertie (Drew Barrymore) some powerful advice, in his scratchy-mechanical voice:

“Be good.”

Jesus, born this Christmas Day, said it first.

Be good.

Be kind.

Be loving, as God is love and God loves.

Yes: Be good.

Brilliant.

Merry Christmas!

The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen!

Home stretch

A homily for the Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 22, 2024

Mi 5:1-4a, Heb 10:5-10, Lk 1:39-45

Hope.

Peace.

Joy.

Love.

All four candles of our Advent wreath are glowing today, the candles symbolizing hope, peace, joy and love. Our season of preparation to celebrate the Nativity of the Prince of Peace is nearly complete.

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LED

A homily for the Third Sunday of Advent (Gaudete), December 15, 2024

Zep 3:14-18a, Phil 4:4-7, Lk 3:10-18

One winter holiday evening about 30 years ago, our extended family decided to go out light-peeping. As my sister-in-law suggested a few nearby places to check out, her son asked, “Can we go see The Hinges?”

The Hinges?

Kathy laughed and explained that, when she first saw how one house was decorated, she said it was lit up like the Hinges of Hell.

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Linear

A homily for the Second Sunday of Advent, December 8, 2024

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

It’s been said that God doesn’t create in straight lines, and anyone who’s ever taken more than a second to look at the shapes of ocean beaches, lakefronts, leaves and flowers and trees and and and … realizes that.

Even the wind gets the twisties.

So what’s the big deal with straightening roads and flattening the landscape? If God created this world all curvy-hilly-bumpy, why do the prophets make such a big deal about paving some sort of interstate highway system over God’s handiwork?

What’s wrong with leaving it as is?
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Observant

A homily for the First Sunday of Advent, December 1, 2024

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

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Ferris Bueller

It started with Black Friday, this fast-moving season of life, and this year, the December 25 deadline seems even sooner, because it is. A late Thanksgiving has compressed the frenetic shopping season to its second-shortest-possible iteration.

If we don’t buy, buy, buy, our big holiday may pass by, by, by. And yule be sorry (couldn’t resist).

Oh, wait.

What? Wait?

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Uniquely unique

A homily for The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, November 24, 2024

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

Way back in 1776, the British colonists in the New World decided they’d had enough of a bad king who was making their lives miserable. So they declared their independence from George and any other first son of a first son wearing a shiny tin hat. The Americans were done with jewel-encrusted dictators acting like spoiled brats sitting in highchairs.

Ever since then, our rugged individualism has made us turn a cold shoulder to monarchs, except when there’s a royal wedding or coronation or anything else on TV that involves Cinderella-style horse-drawn carriages. 

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Change

A homily for the Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, November 10, 2024

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

The other day, I was at the bank to trade in my coins for a couple of greenbacks, but I had to wait behind a couple who were emptying two water-cooler jugs filled with coins.

Well, actually, the jugs had been filled at one point; I luckily arrived as the duo was down to the last third of the second jug and the bank teller had snapped empty coin bags into the sorting machine.

As I stood there with my quart-size Ziploc, I wondered what the couple might use the money for (it turned out to be a lot). Mortgage payment? Vacation? A new car or repairs on their old one? Bet MGM Casino on a new iPhone?

But then, years of hearing MYOB from my mother and the teachers at St. Leo the Great kicked in, and instead I wondered what I’d do with the 20-ish dollars I’d walk out with.

I must confess that a work of charity wasn’t the first thing that came to mind.

Shame on me.

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Impatience

A homily for the Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 27, 2024

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

One of the cultural touchstones that “Seinfeld” wove into America’s consciousness was “Serenity Now.”

George Costanza’s father, Frank, is told by a supposedly inspirational tape to say “serenity now” every time he gets angry as a possible way to keep his blood pressure down. And Frank barks the phrase often, loudly and angrily.

“Serenity Now!”

“Now” being the operative word.

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Work boots

A (belated) homily for the Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 20, 2024

Is 53:10-11, Heb 4:14-16, Mk 10:35-45 or 10:42-45

Twelve hours after I saw my Christian Brothers Academy mortarboard soar into the evening sky (against the orders of the assistant principal my classmates and I detested), I was standing in a pile of newly dumped asphalt, with a foreman hollering, “Let’s git it!”

In other words, shovel the smoking hot blacktop onto the end of a driveway that had been chopped up to widen a neighborhood street in Oceanport, New Jersey.

Within minutes on that June morning in 1973, I had sweated through my white T-shirt, and my new blue jeans were starting to droop near my butt crack. 

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