Holy Spirit 3 - Unpaid Bill

Shhh…

A homily for the First Sunday of Lent, February 18, 2024

I’m pretty sure I have a bad case of FOMO. Or I’m just plain nosy.

Then again, I’m legitimately extremely curious, and with better-than-average peripheral vision and much-better-than-average hearing — even in my dotage — I’m easily attracted and distracted by interesting things and events.

Such as God’s Creation, and the various activities of my fellow children of God. In other words, Life.

I always have been.

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Aha

A homily for The Epiphany of the Lord, January 7, 2024

Is 60:1-6, Eph 3:2-3a, 5-6, Mt 2:1-12

In laypeople’s terms, an epiphany is a revelation or a realization, one that sometimes confounds or dumbfounds someone.

At other times, the epiphany provides reassurance or utter joy.

An epiphany is the light bulb going off over somebody’s head, or the forehead smack — duh! — of somebody who’s caught unawares, or the out-of-nowhere guffaws when that one particular friend finally “gets” the ice cream joke.

An epiphany is a confirmation through observation that something we suspected to be true really and truly is.

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Legendary

A homily for the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, December 31, 2023

Sir 3:2-6, 12-14, Col 3:12-17, Lk 2:22-40

I am the oldest of the six sons of William J. Zapcic MD and Julia M. McCosker Zapcic RN, who, as family legend tells it, met in an operating room during a Caesarian section.

The first four of us arrived in brisk sequence; we all know the impolite term for siblings close in age. And all six of us are unique individuals, united by ancestry and gene pool more than by shared interests. Nonetheless, our love runs deep.

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Inching forward

A homily for the Second Sunday of Advent, December 10, 2023

Is 40:1-5, 9-11, 2 Pt 3:8-14, Mk 1:1-8

I’m spoiled, and on this particular subject, doubly so.

Having lived at the Jersey Shore essentially all my life, I’ve rarely sat in the kind of summer weekend traffic that transforms the Garden State Parkway into the Garden State Parking Lot. And our family weekend getaways in the summers of my youth were to the Kittatinny Mountains in Northwest Jersey (yes, both are real…), so we traveled opposite the Shore traffic both ways, 5 mph over the speed limit while they motored at about 6 mph. As in only 6 mph.

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(T)rusty

A homily for the Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, November 19, 2023

Prv 31:10-13, 19-20, 30-31, 1 Thes 5:1-6, Mt 25:14-30

A while ago, I was doing one of my occasional (rare!) sort-out, clean-out, throw-out, organize visits to the basement when I stumbled on a couple of tools I bought back in my college days, way back when I built theatrical sets. I realized I’ve owned this hammer and adjustable wrench for three times as long as I didn’t — the better part of 50 years.

And like their owner, a half-century later, they were rusty.

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Long view

A homily for the Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 29, 2023

Ex 22:20-26, 1 Thes 1:5c-10, Mt 22:34-40

The long and the short of it — literally and figuratively — is that how we live our lives depends on our perspectives.

Every one of us is different, even identical siblings. Each of us was born at a different time, in a different place (even if your mom and mine were side-by-side in the maternity ward). We have different body types, in every way that can be possible.

And through the sheer laws of physics, none of us can see and experience precisely what another of us sees and hears and feels because none of us can exist in the same space as somebody else simultaneously.

Eight billion of us today. Billions who came before us. And, God willing, billions and trillions yet to come after us.

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Solid

A homily for the Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 27, 2023

Is 22:19-23, Rom 11:33-36, Mt 16:13-20

Back in 1977, a silly little film called “Rocky” defied all odds and won the Best Picture Oscar as well as a bunch of other awards.

The movie told the tale of a ne’er-do-well second- or third-tier boxer who was given a shot at the world championship as a publicity stunt for the current champ. Rocky Balboa was a simple guy, not credited with a lot of smarts other than street smarts, and he had zero chance of winning.

Except he almost did win, defying all odds, because he worked hard and believed in himself. And maybe he almost won because he wasn’t savvy enough to understand that he was just supposed to be a punching bag, a laughingstock.

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Amazed? Or not?

A homily for the Feast of the Transfiguration, August 6, 2023

Dn 7:9-10, 13-14, 2 Pt 1:16-19, Mt 17:1-9

I always wanted a time machine. Between the H.G. Wells novel and the cheesy but omnipresent sci-fi shows of the 1960s (thank you, Irwin Allen), the notion of traveling to the future to see what humankind would do and design and build was irrepressible.

When anyone asked me the standard adult-to-child question — “What do you want to be when you grow up?” — I usually answered with some variation of “somebody who’s concerned with the future.”

And I still am. Deeply, almost desperately so.

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Reveille

A homily for the Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 16, 2023

Is 55:10-11, Rom 8:18-23, Mt 13:1-23

Late in my freshman year in college, I was persuaded to give Army ROTC a try. It didn’t stick, but that’s another story. And from my buddies in khaki, I first heard about The Rack Monster.

No, this wasn’t/isn’t the rack of medieval torture infamy. In military slang, a rack is a bed, a bunk, a cot, and, occasionally, a couch.

Thus, The Rack Monster hangs onto you and clamps your backside to the bed when reveille sounds.

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Abba

A homily for the Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, June 18, 2023

Ex 19:2-6a, Romans 5:6-11, Matthew 9:36—10:8

While I was on vacation, I watched the “Avatar” sequel, and while I don’t necessarily subscribe to the New Age-y theology that undergirds the plot, I do agree with a key notion: A father’s role is to protect.

Now, let’s clarify how we define “protect.” In the movie — possible spoiler here — the human-turned-Na’vi was protecting his family from death and destruction as angry Earthlings rained down fire upon them. That’s capital-P protection. Macho stuff, arguably, yet still an expression of love.

But protection is a range. Shades of gray or a spectrum, if you will.

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