Tag: Holy Spirit

Breathe in

A homily for Pentecost Sunday, May 28, 2023, Mass During the Day

Acts 2:1-11, 1 Cor 12:3b-7, 12-13, Jn 20:19-23

When I was a Boy Scout, the quarterly Parents Night extravaganzas invariably meant each patrol was responsible for putting on a skit, a skit that usually pushed the boundaries of taste and wit. In other words, something a dozen pre-teen through mid-teen boys would find funny and parents would find off-putting, like Mad magazine.

The recent passing of a Scouting friend’s younger sister reminded me of a skit their dad, a creative genius in the advertising racket, helped script. Dan and his patrol buddies staged a mock television newscast that poked fun at our troop leaders and included a forecast predicting the weather for Evanston, Illinois — headquarters of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union — would be dry. Dry today; dry tomorrow; dry forever.

Of course, only the savviest members of the gathering got the joke, which is to say not too many attendees did. True genius can puzzle some people, and Dan’s family’s genius was writ large.

Continue reading Breathe in

Up there, down here

A homily for the Ascension of the Lord, May 21, 2023

Acts 1:1-11, Eph 1:17-23, Mt 28:16-20

Years ago, I visited friends in Colorado Springs and Casper, Wyoming, taking a nonstop flight first to Denver and then a short hop from there to Colorado and back to Denver, and to Wyoming and back to Denver for my flight home. It was my first time west of Ohio.

En route to the Springs, the 737 flew above the Rocky Mountaintops, which were hugged by clouds, and I gasped. At first glance, I was convinced I had seen a city in the sky, the unfiltered sun glistening on the snowcaps and the crags looking like palaces and temples and skyscrapers.

Nature’s skyscrapers. And so they were.

Continue reading Up there, down here

Speaking louder, gently

A homily for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 14, 2023

Acts 8:5-8, 14-17, 1 Pt 3:15-18, Jn 14:15-21

I’d like to start with a story about what not to do.

Right after my college graduation, my then-girlfriend and I went to a concert in New York’s Central Park and, after it was over, we headed on foot to her apartment. We were waiting at a street corner for the light to change when she grabbed my arm, leaned closer to me, and shook her head in the direction of a man who was sort of shuffling his way toward us while trying not to make eye contact.

“Bill, that guy looks like a mugger,” she said, and for some bizarre reason I barked back, “Stay here.”

I grabbed the program from the show out of my coat pocket and walked briskly toward the man, waving the paper and saying, “Do you know Jesus? Jesus is your personal Lord and Savior. I have a tract right here that…”

He took off like a shot.

Continue reading Speaking louder, gently

Keep X in Easter

A homily for the Resurrection of the Lord (Easter), April 9, 2023

Acts 10:34a, 37-43, Col 3:1-4, Jn 20:1-9

We Americans celebrate holidays oddly, especially holidays with religious roots.

By one measure — how much money we spend to celebrate — Christmas is way up there. The winter holidays, as retailers refer to the season, are worth three times all the other holidays combined. Christmas shopping season starts earlier and earlier, in some places overlapping the tail end of BTS (back to school, not K-pop) and overshadowing Halloween and Thanksgiving.

Halloween is no slouch in the retail advertising world, though, and supermarket chains go all out for Turkey Day.

But there’s no mega-blitz of TV commercials for Easter, Cadbury bunny auditions notwithstanding.

And that’s perfect.

Continue reading Keep X in Easter

Divine smiles

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.

Continue reading Divine smiles

Alone time

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.

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Gilt-free

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.

Continue reading Gilt-free

Rechargeable

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.

Continue reading Rechargeable

How far?

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?

Continue reading How far?

Wholly queen

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!”

Continue reading Wholly queen