Tag: Holy Spirit

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:

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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.

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Yin and yang

A homily for the Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, February 13, 2022

Jer 17:5-8, 1 Cor 15:12, 16-20, Lk 6:17, 20-26

When we think back to a banquet or an awards dinner or a wedding, what do we remember right off the bat?

Probably the dessert.

And there’s a scientific reason why we remember the wedding cake. Psychologists call it the serial position effect.

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Infamy

A homily for the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, January 30, 2022

Jer 1:4-5, 17-19, 1 Cor 12:31—13:13, Lk 4:21-30

The Rock and Roll and Country Music halls of fame. New Jersey Hall of Fame. Halls of fame for every sport imaginable, at every level conceivable: pro, college, amateur and more.

In fact, there probably are halls of fame for every endeavor in which more than three people participate.

And if an inductee is somebody local, then every family member and every neighbor and every teacher and preacher and the mayor and fire chief and three marching bands parade down Main Street to hail the Hometown Hero.

So why did Jesus have to slip away from his home village to avoid being run out of town on a rail?

Didn’t he qualify as a Hometown Hero? 

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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.

Continue reading Take care

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.

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A stitch in time

A homily for the Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 10, 2021

Wis 7:7-11, Heb 4:12-13, Mk 10:17-30

It’s still possible to buy a needle threader, an incredibly brilliant yet simple tool that helps people with unsteady hands or so-so eyesight — or without the patience and tolerance for frustration — to pass a thread through the eye of a needle.

The fine wire goes through the eye first, and then the thread gets slipped through the lasso-like diamond on the other side.

A quick tug on the handle — or whatever it’s called — and the fine wire lasso hauls the thread through the eye.

Of course, you have to get the needle threader’s wire lasso through the eye first, but pound for pound that’s a far smaller challenge than jabbing a limp, frayed string through a tiny metal oval.

And, no, using a tool is not cheating.

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Now what?

A homily for the Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 19, 2021

Wis 2:12, 17-20, Jas 3:16—4:3, Mk 9:30-37

The core of our faith — the core of our relationship with our Creator and all of Creation — is the Two Great Commandments: Love God and Love Neighbor.

So beautifully simple and pure that even a child can understand them, to paraphrase a slogan, which is part of why Jesus is so often chronicled as embracing children, who in his day were considered replaceable chattel the same way women were.

So we have two radical ideas: Love can be uncomplicated and children and women are people with worth in God’s eyes.

Now what?

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Miraculous

A homily for the Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 5, 2021

Is 35:4-7a, Jas 2:1-5, Mk 7:31-37

Every day is a day for miracles. And every day is a miracle in itself.

The sun rose today (well, actually, the Earth rotated so that we could see more and more of the Sun, but let’s not get too astrophysical …). Out there in the east, cruising through the south toward the west, with or without clouds, Sol is shining on Terra Firma.

A miracle.

God loves us and showers us with gifts, often when we don’t realize it.

More miracles.

Miracles for today and every day of our lives.

But what happens when we start to take miracles for granted and, more to the point, when we remove the role of the Almighty from miracles?

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The boss of me

A homily for the Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 29, 2021

Dt 4:1-2, 6-8, Jas 1:17-18, 21b-22, 27, Mk 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

When we think of gifts, we usually imagine big boxes wrapped in colorful paper tied up with shiny ribbons and a big bow. And as we tear into them, first ripping through the wrapping and then digging through the tissue paper to find the surprises inside, we try to imagine what toys we’ve been dreaming of could be inside.

Unless, of course, the gift is a pony. Then we just try to figure out how Mom and Dad got it into the box.

Regardless of the occasion — birthday, Christmas, First Holy Communion — we expect any gift we receive to be fun, or pretty, or at least something to keep our feet warm in the winter.

We don’t expect gifts to be stone tablets that tell us “No!”

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