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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
A homily for the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, January 29, 2023
Zep 2:3; 3:12-13, 1 Cor 1:26-31, Mt 5:1-12a
After 9/11, the phrase was everywhere. On bumper stickers and license plates. On flags and posters. On lapel pins and T-shirts. Spray-painted as graffiti.
United We Stand.
United.
We.
Stand.
Only we didn’t. We don’t.
A homily for the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, January 22, 2023
Is 8:23—9:3, 1 Cor 1:10-13, 17, Mt 4:12-23
There are a couple of ways to go fishing, and each is vastly different from the other, but in the end, both catch fish.
One method, which the Apostles used in their day jobs, and which modern commercial fishermen still use, drags a net through the water, catching fish by the boatloads. The crew then usually dumps the entire catch onto the deck of the boat and culls out any unsuitable fish or trash. If it’s a responsible crew, they toss the undersized fish or unwanted species back into the water, and head for home with what they kept.
A mass catch.
Another method, pretty much the other main method, involves a rod and reel, bait or lures, and a skillful solo angler. The fisherman casts into what he hopes is a school of fish and reels them in one at a time. If he knows what he is doing, he’ll reel in only the type of fish he wants, at the right size. After a good day fishing, the angler takes home a freezer’s worth of bass.
A selective catch.
A homily for the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, January 15, 2023
Is 49:3, 5-6, 1 Cor 1:1-3, Jn 1:29-34
I’ve written and spoken before about my “unchurched” years in college and thereafter, about how I was not being nourished spiritually at the parish of my youth when all I could take away from my weekly 50 minutes in the pew was the knowledge that Group No. 2 was working bingo that Wednesday.
Incessant reminders about seat collections, collections for the parish administration and overdue grammar school tuition drove me away from organized religion after high school at Christian Brothers Academy.
What kept me away was the very thing some people were convinced attracted people to Christianity.
Proselytizing.
A homily for The Epiphany of the Lord, January 8, 2023
Is 60:1-6, Eph 3:2-3a, 5-6, Mt 2:1-12
These are the days of miracle and wonder…
… The way we look to a distant constellation
That’s dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
In 1986, Paul Simon opened his “Graceland” album with the song “The Boy in the Bubble.” In it, his lyrics rattled off a list of technological marvels the world was only starting to learn about. Lasers in the jungle transmitting information. The baby with the baboon heart. The boy with no immune system who had to live in a germ-free bubble.
Fast-forward to now, and with the James Webb Space Telescope, we indeed are looking to distant constellations.
Miraculous.
Wonderful.
Amazing.
So what are we going to do about it?
Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, January 1, 2023
Nm 6:22-27, Gal 4:4-7, Lk 2:16-21
“Oh, your poor mother!”
I can’t count the times I’ve heard that whenever I told someone I’m the oldest of the six male offspring of Dr. Bill and Nurse Julie Zapcic.
Six boys. No girls.
A new brother every year or so, with — sadly — a couple of pregnancies lost to miscarriages.
And an uncle — a bruncle — my dad’s then-teenage brother, whom my dad moved in with us for Richard’s last two years of high school, his four years of college and a bit longer for grad school and the early part of his career.
There was enough noise in our 1950s-era development split-level to drown out the roar of the cars on the Garden State Parkway behind the hill that ate half of our Lincroft backyard.
“Oh, your poor mother!” they say. And I — and all of my brothers and our uncle — simply reply, “She loved it!”
