A homily for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, May 26, 2024
Dt 4:32-34, 39-40, Rom 8:14-17, Mt 28:16-20
When I was in the seventh grade at St. Leo’s in Lincroft, I had it all figured out.
No, not the meaning of life, or how to avoid taxes, or even how to win the lottery.
A homily for Pentecost, May 19, 2024
Mass During the Day: Acts 2:1-11, 1 Cor 12:3b-7, 12-13, Jn 15:26-27; 16:12-15
I suffer from writer’s block about as often as I suffer from allergies. Sometimes the attacks of either are stay-in-bed level; other times, I can power through. But like most of us, I do not relish either.
I have eye drops and antihistamine pills for my allergies, so their flare-ups qualify as annoyances and inconveniences.
But there’s no pill I can pop or lotion I can drop to cure writer’s block, especially when I’m dealing with a religious or spiritual or scriptural topic. And I consider that far more than an annoyance or an inconvenience. Especially as Sunday approaches.
A homily for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, April 28, 2024
Acts 9:26-31, 1 Jn 3:18-24, Jn 15:1-8
My brother Steve has lived in the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, area for at least two decades, and while his neighborhood can be described as all-American middle class, he and his family do encounter Amish people fairly often.
The Amish, also known as the Anabaptists or, more widely, the Pennsylvania Dutch, live in a closed society, pretty much. These descendants of German Protestant immigrants avoid most modern technologies. They travel in horse-drawn buggies and till their fields with horse-drawn plows. Actual horsepower, lubricated with elbow grease.
And because these Christians are so close-knit, their belief in all for one and one for all leaves The Three Musketeers in the dust.
A homily for the Second Sunday of Lent, February 25, 2024
Gn 22:1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18, Rom 8:31b-34, Mk 9:2-10
We all know about Clark Kent, right? Mild-mannered reporter for The Daily Planet, who wanted a job someplace where he could hear about emergencies or disasters anywhere in the world.
And why was he so interested in hot topics? Was he some sort of news junkie?
No.
As we all know, every time he took off his glasses and otherwise changed his outfit, he was duty-bound to go and help people in trouble. Whenever he arrived to save the day, everyone around him saw his true self, his true identity, the identity he kept secret the rest of the time.
A homily for the First Sunday of Lent, February 18, 2024
Gn 9:8-15, 1 Pt 3:18-22, Mk 1:12-15
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
