A homily for the Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 21, 2025
Isaiah 7:10-14, Romans 1:1-7, Matthew 1:18-24
We imperfect humans ask a lot of questions about our perfect Deity.
Many of them compare God’s persons and unlimited … everything … to our own limitations.
Nope; God is unnnnn-limited
A homily for the First Sunday of Advent, November 30, 2025
Isaiah 2:1-5, Romans 13:11-14, Matthew 24:37-44
The folks who run Starbucks, Burger King, movie theaters and especially Cinnabon, among thousands of similar outfits, are geniuses.
They have made it impossible for even the most strong-willed among us to pass by their kiosks and shops without pining — yearning! — for their products. Regardless of how bad they may be for us.
A homily for The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, November 23, 2025
2 Samuel 5:1-3, Colossians 1:12-20, Luke 23:35-43
In first-century Jerusalem, Jesus of Nazareth …
… Jesus, the descendant of David who was born in a Bethlehem stable …
… Jesus, the Son of God and son of Mary …
was a terrible king.
Horrible.
Incredibly bad.
At least, that’s what a lot of Israelites believed.
A (belated and brief) homily for the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome, November 9, 2025
Ezekiel 47:1-2, 8-9, 12, 1 Corinthians 3:9c-11, 16-17, John 2:13-22
In every city and village worldwide, we’ll find houses of worship: temples, synagogues, mosques, churches, and more. Even storefronts and basements and tents and, yes, caves serve as gathering places for members of the human family to acknowledge in their culturally and religiously appropriate way that somebody somewhere loves us enough to give us our little blue marble in the sky.
To give us our own lives.
To give us our own unique lives, with our own unique abundance of gifts.
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-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 prayer-homily for the Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 17, 2025
Jeremiah 38:4-6, 8-10, Hebrews 12:1-4, Luke 12:49-53
This weekend, I was humbled and honored to represent the Church of St. Anselm at a Community Day of Prayer in Tinton Falls, New Jersey. The devotional celebration was sponsored by a variety of churches in Monmouth County; it was coordinated by St. Thomas AME Zion Church and their pastor, the Rev. Danica L. Frink.
I was one of seven preachers called upon to lead the attendees in a prayer for specific needs. Again: humbling, yet uplifting.
A homily for the Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 27, 2025
Genesis 18:20-32, Colossians 2:12-14, Luke 11:1-13
Back at the peak — or was it the depths? — of the COVID pandemic, many of us took up new hobbies to pass the time while we were in lockdown.
Some of us finally read the books collecting dust on our shelves, those assigned readings we faked our way through to write term papers.
It turns out, some of them were actually interesting. Who knew?
A brief thought for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, June 15, 2025
Proverbs 8:22-31, Romans 5:1-5, John 16:12-15
Our belief that the almighty, omniscient, omnipresent deity we call “God” is one Supreme Being in three distinct Persons usually makes our brains hurt.
Makes them explode.
Makes us do that thing when we flip the sides of our index fingers against our lips to make that wubba-bubba sound to indicate we’ve gone crackers.
