Tag: Faith

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.

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Not to be missed

A homily for the 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 17, 2022

Gn 18:1-10a, Col 1:24-28, Lk 10:38-42

This is not a rant about people (especially motorists) whose faces are buried in their phones and digital devices nonstop (although it could be).

This is more of an observation about what they’re missing.

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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?

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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.)

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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.

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So far away

A homily for the Feast of the Ascension of the Lord, May 29, 2022

Acts 1:1-11, Heb 9:24-28; 10:19-23, Lk 24:46-53

Years ago, in an episode of St. Elsewhere, the doctor played by Howie Mandel dies on the operating table and opens his eyes in Heaven, where he sees former patients celebrating in a beautiful countryside. 

He asks one of the patients when he would see God, and then Howie Mandel taps Howie Mandel on the shoulder, introducing himself as The Almighty. 

“Everyone sees me differently,” God explains, “because I created each of you in my image and likeness, and to you, I look like you.”

Fascinating interpretation, yes?

Then, back on Earth, the surgeons at St. Eligius Hospital revive Howie’s character and he leaves Heaven. For the time being.

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