Tag: Faith

Keep X in Easter

A homily for the Resurrection of the Lord (Easter), April 9, 2023

Acts 10:34a, 37-43, Col 3:1-4, Jn 20:1-9

We Americans celebrate holidays oddly, especially holidays with religious roots.

By one measure — how much money we spend to celebrate — Christmas is way up there. The winter holidays, as retailers refer to the season, are worth three times all the other holidays combined. Christmas shopping season starts earlier and earlier, in some places overlapping the tail end of BTS (back to school, not K-pop) and overshadowing Halloween and Thanksgiving.

Halloween is no slouch in the retail advertising world, though, and supermarket chains go all out for Turkey Day.

But there’s no mega-blitz of TV commercials for Easter, Cadbury bunny auditions notwithstanding.

And that’s perfect.

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Hop in, Lord

A homily for Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion, April 2, 2023

Mt 21:1-11, Is 50:4-7, Phil 2:6-11, Mt 26:14—27:66

Some spring morning early in the second half of the 20th century, the fourth- or fifth-graders (I forget which …) at St. Leo the Great School in Lincroft had an assignment: If you invented a time machine that took you back to Jerusalem in 33 A.D. and saw Jesus along the Way of the Cross, what would you do?

The answers — most of them illustrated as best as we Warhol wannabes could — ran a wide gamut as we each stood up and presented them to the class.

Some of my classmates insisted they would snatch the cross from our Messiah and take his place on Golgotha. Some said they would comfort him as he walked past, offering him water and snacks. Some promised to be yet another Simon of Cyrene.

I guess my answer was Cyrenian, sort of.

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To life

A homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent, March 26, 2023

Ez 37:12-14, Rom 8:8-11, Jn 11:1-45

In one of the big production numbers in the musical “Fiddler on the Roof,” Tevye the milkman and wedding guests get rowdy and sing l’chaim — to life!

To life, to life, l’chaim.
L’chaim, l’chaim, to life.
Life has a way of confusing us,
Blessing and bruising us.
Drink, l’chaim, to life!

Every day, most of us raise a glass of something — wine, coffee, Gatorade, water — to life.

We’re grateful for a new day, another day, and we’re grateful for the people, places and things in our lives. Grateful to be sharing the day with them.

We’re grateful to be on this side of the daisies, as the sassy expression goes.

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Embossed

A homily for the Fourth Sunday of Lent, March 19, 2023

1 Sm 16:1b, 6-7, 10-13a, Eph 5:8-14, Jn 9:1-41

Every place I’ve ever lived had shelves full of books, sometimes to the point of making the floorboards creak or sag.

When my Uncle Richard lived with us, my dad bought him a set of paperbacks that Time-Life considered to be the essential modern literature. I remember one being the “Ox-Box Incident,” which even to this day I have yet to read. The other essentials? Long forgotten. Shame on me.

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H 2 … Oh!

A homily for the Third Sunday of Lent, March 12, 2023

Ex 17:3-7, Rom 5:1-2, 5-8, Jn 4:5-42

Water has been in the news a lot lately.

California has too much of it — in the form of unimaginably deep snow as well as downpours that would have challenged Noah — even as the state’s drought has yet to be solved.

The Great Salt Lake is drying up because the rivers that flow into it are drying up, and scientists and politicians are trying to engineer a way to save it.

Closer to home, March is coming in like a lion after a warm and dry winter. Slush and rain and flooded roads.

Yes, water has been newsworthy a lot lately.

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Divine smiles

A homily for the Second Sunday of Lent, March 5, 2023

Gn 12:1-4a, 2 Tm 1:8b-10, Mt 17:1-9

Years ago, when I was on a religious retreat, our main speaker became deeply theological and clearly logical on the significance of the voice from the clouds as chronicled in today’s passage from the Gospel of Matthew.

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Alone time

A homily for the First Sunday of Lent, February 26, 2023

Gn 2:7-9; 3:1-7, Rom 5:12-19 , Mt 4:1-11

Out in the backyard of my boyhood home in Lincroft, my brothers and I built a treehouse. Not just any treehouse. This was a classic, enough to make the Swiss Family Robinson jealous.

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Gilt-free

A homily, sort of, for the Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, February 19, 2023

Lv 19:1-2, 17-18, 1 Cor 3:16-23, Mt 5:38-48

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily /
To throw a perfume on the violet …/
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.

If you haven’t heard this week’s selections from Scripture proclaimed in a house of worship, or if you haven’t used the links above to read them, please do.

There’s absolutely nothing I can add to make them more understandable or clearer. There’s no call to action I can write or shout from the rooftops that these passages don’t deliver.

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Oh, grow up!

A homily for the Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, February 12, 2023

Sir 15:15-20, 1 Cor 2:6-10, Mt 5:17-37

Oh, well, a young man
Ain’t got nothin’ in the world these days
…
But you know, nowadays
It’s the old man
He’s got all the money
And a young man ain’t got nothin’ in the world these days

— “Young Man Blues,” by Mose Allison

 

My Nana Zapcic, who lived downriver from Harrisburg and thus not far from Lancaster County Amish country, had a cheesy old refrigerator magnet that opined, “Ve get too soon oldt undt too late shmart.”

Well, I thought it was cheesy when I was 17 or younger. Now, not so much.

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Rechargeable

A homily for the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, February 5, 2023

Is 58:7-10, 1 Cor 2:1-5, Mt 5:13-16

There are three little bins on a shelf in our basement with batteries in them: double-A, triple-A, and some random C, D and 9-volt types. We go through the double-As fairly often, and I reload the bin whenever it gets low, whenever a couple of them leak, or whenever Costco puts the 40-pack on sale.

There’s another, smaller bin on a shelf built into my desk at home, and it has a bunch of rechargeable double-As and a four-battery charger. They’re collecting dust.

They shouldn’t be.

They are, however, symbolic.

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