A homily for the 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 24, 2022
Gn 18:20-32, Col 2:12-14, Lk 11:1-13
Can we talk?
Can we take a minute or three to talk about talking? Because there’s a lot to say.
Tag: Father
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.
Bask in love
A homily for The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, June 12, 2022
Prv 8:22-31, Rom 5:1-5, Jn 16:12-15
Everything.
Everything for everyone, everywhere.
All around, always
A homily for Pentecost, June 5, 2022
Acts 2:1-11, 1 Cor 12:3b-7, 12-13, Jn 20:19-23
Inhale.
Exhale.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Take a deep breath.
Let it out slowly.
The process is called respiration.
Respiration keeps us alive.
For joy
A (brief) homily for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, May 8, 2022
Acts 13:14, 43-52, Rev 7:9, 14b-17, Jn 10:27-30
The Apostles headed out to spread the Good News, traveling mostly by foot from town to town, telling people they met about everything they had heard and seen during their days with Jesus of Nazareth.
Some people listened and followed. Some people heard but turned away. Some people ignored them completely.
Some people ran them out of town.
No problem.
The Apostles shook the dust off their feet and moved on.
(I love that image, knowing that the dust they were shaking off contained all sorts of mean, nasty, ugly stuff. Much more powerful than rude hand gestures.)
Empty nests
A homily for the Fourth Sunday of Lent (Laetare), Cycle C, March 27, 2022
Jos 5:9a, 10-12, 2 Cor 5:17-21, Lk 15:1-3, 11-32
The well-known parable of the Prodigal Son is a story of gifts, but not necessarily the ones we’re fully conversant in.
There’s the fattened calf (I prefer the old-school “fatted calf,” but this is the current translation, sigh) and the welcome-home party for the repentant son, plus the ring on his finger and the hug from his father, who greets this ne’er-do-well as if he had risen from the grave.
And we recognize the gift of God’s eternal mercy toward everyone who repents, as echoed by the actions of the young man’s father. That, in fact, is the traditional and simplest Occam’s Razor interpretation of this sizable passage from Luke’s Gospel. And it’s a totally valid understanding of the passage: Jesus intended the forgiving father in the parable to represent The Forgiving Father of All Creation.
But wait, there’s more:
Outlook
A homily for the Third Sunday of Lent, March 20, 2022, Cycle C
Ex 3:1-8a, 13-15, 1 Cor 10:1-6, 10-12, Lk 13:1-9
If patience is a virtue, then a whole lotta Americans are far from virtuous. Especially New Jerseyans.
We proudly list the dozens — hundreds, even — of things we jam into every day, and at the (actual) end of the day, we mourn what we didn’t do rather than celebrate what we did.
Yeah, we’re a little warped that way.
Fame unfortunately
A homily for the Second Sunday of Lent, March 13, 2022
Gn 15:5-12, 17-18, Phil 3:17—4:1, Lk 9:28b-36
Celebrity is a strange concept, especially how it’s practiced today.
We have the self-declared so-called Influencers, who use TikTok and other social media du jour to dictate what their followers must say, think and do. Influencers actively promote themselves incessantly and shamelessly. They preen so that they can be seen. And they attract millions of disciples.
We have the Reality Stars, who broadcast and stream from their Los Angeles Kompounds and from their Real Houses all over the world and from the Jersey Shore, and whose lives and loves and fun and faults are laid bare, similarly shamelessly. And millions more kan’t take their eyes off them.
We have Traditional Stars, who mesmerize us on massive movie screens (remember those?) and in our home theaters. Off-screen, they project a public persona that mirrors or dovetails with the characters they play, but they work equally as hard to shield their true private lives from the public’s prying eyes. They, too, have millions in their thrall.
Why, then, would Jesus not want to be in any of those groups? Think what he could have done with all those beliebers.
Take care
A homily for the Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 31, 2021
Dt 6:2-6, Heb 7:23-28, Mk 12:28b-34
Let’s imagine for a minute that it’s Christmas, and we’re 10 years old.
Our favorite uncle has given us the bicycle we’ve been dreaming about — shiny, painted in a red-and-gold sunburst, custom seat and no training wheels.
We throw our arms around Uncle Joe and say, “Thankyouthankyouthankyou!” about a hundred times.
We grab our coat, wheel our prized new bike out into the December chill — which we don’t feel at all — and pedal around the block a few times.
Just like Ralphie in the movie, this is the best present we ever got or would ever get.
Walk a mile
A homily for the Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 17, 2021
Is 53:10-11, Heb 4:14-16, Mk 10:35-45
It’s such a cliché: “Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.” The activity is supposed to give us a sense of what it’s like to be that person, or a person of that person’s ethnicity, or socioeconomic situation, or belief system, but it’s a fundamentally flawed exercise.
I am not, and never will be, anything but a white male human descended from Irish-Welsh-French-Alsatian-Croatian-Slovak stock, raised in the suburban dead center of New Jersey, educated at Catholic grammar and boys prep schools in that aforementioned Central Jersey and at a small, private liberal arts college in the rural dead center of Pennsylvania.
Put me in Manolo Blahnik shoes and I will not be a supermodel. Put me again in work boots atop a pile of hot asphalt and I may labor but I will not be a laborer. Put me in moccasins and — at best — I am guilty of cultural appropriation.
We may try, we may try with every fiber of our being, to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, but in the end, the most we can hope for is partial enlightenment.