A homily for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, June 7, 2020
Ex 34:4b-6, 8-9, 2 Cor 13:11-13, Jn 3:16-18
We bless ourselves in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
And then we lock it in with a solid “Amen.” “It is so.” “Truly.”
We baptize this way. Confirm this way. The Trinitarian way.
A homily for the Feast of Pentecost, Sunday, May 31, 2020
Acts 2:1-11 , 1 Cor 12:3B-7, 12-13, Jn 20:19-23
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Take a deep breath. Let it out slowly.
Breathe deeply through your nose, yoga-style, then hold it for a count of 10.
Let it out slowly through your pursed lips, as if you were going to whistle. And whistle softly if you want; it’s optional.
Now let your breathing go back to automatic. It’s not that easy, is it? Not after doing controlled breathing exercises.
A homily for the Feast of the Ascension of the Lord, May 24, 2020
Acts 1:1-11, Eph 1:17-23, Mt 28:16-20
As they were looking on,
he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight.
While they were looking intently at the sky as he was going,
suddenly two men dressed in white garments stood beside them.
They said, “Men of Galilee,
why are you standing there looking at the sky?
This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven
will return in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven.”
Let’s join the friends of Jesus as they stood together that day in the First Century A.D., and for a moment let’s assume we have the same knowledge of science and other academic disciplines that they did.
A homily for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 17, 2020
Acts 8:5-8, 14-17, 1 Pt 3:15-18, Jn 14:15-21
When it became clear, two or three months or so ago, that the novel coronavirus was becoming dangerous, then really dangerous, then life-threatening, most of us bugged out à la M*A*S*H from our places of work or school. Quickly. Messily.
Very quickly. Very messily.
We grabbed the essentials to continue as essential workers; we powered down everything else; we scooted out of wherever with barely a “See ya” or a “Take care.”
Unlike mobile Army surgical hospitals, we never had bug-out drills. We never practiced shutting it all down and setting it all up somewhere else. We exited without a playbook, making it up as we went along. Some things we got right. Too many things, we got wrong.
A homily for the Fourth Sunday of Lent, March 22, 2020: Jn 9:1-41
Kittens are born blind, essentially. (Puppies too, but let’s not mix apples and oranges, to coin a phrase.) Baby felines’ eyes and ears are sealed for the first week or even weeks of their lives, to allow their senses to develop and their sensory organs to strengthen before they’re exposed to the strong stimuli of the world.
And once their eyes are opened, cats famously can see in near-total darkness, which makes them superb nocturnal prowlers, as anyone who’s ever heard a tchotchke go flying off a dresser at 3 a.m. can attest.
In the darkness, cats can see what most other creatures can’t, especially the humans who serve as their personal assistants … uh … are their pet owners.
Think about all the times you plodded down the hallway barefoot at night with the lights off to check out some creaking noise in the kitchen or bathroom. Stubbed your toe, didn’t you? Whacked your shin, right? Humans aren’t built to see in the darkness.
Which is why we got the ultimate gift of a Messiah, the bringer of true light.
In today’s Gospel, St. John goes into specific detail about the man’s blindness. He was born blind. We’re not completely sure how old the man was, other than he was an adult, or at least past his bar mitzvah — “he is of age.” He was reduced to begging for his daily bread, however much or little there was of it. Everyone knew him as a blind man, the man born blind, sightless from birth.
Let’s take a second to look at some details of this man’s life through more modern eyes, no pun intended. If he had been born without eyesight, we know from our current science that his other senses likely were heightened. Acute hearing, taste and smell. Fine touch. His mind and memory would know family and friends by their voices, their scents, by the shape of their faces as traced by his fingers. He’d know them in the dark that was his normal.
So when Jesus gives him sight — a new normal, but an extraordinary one — the man is astounded. Does the desert sunlight hurt his eyes? Does the glory of God, shining through the Son?
The Gospel says the man is grateful, but that’s debatable. Everything he knew is gone: the map of the city he stored in his head, the faces he knew by touch, even his livelihood, as dodgy as it was. He has no skills or trade, because those in the 1st century A.D. were sight-dependent. He can’t read.
He has to build a new life from scratch, which nonetheless he seems willing to do.
Like a kitten, perhaps this man was born blind because he needed all this time for his eyes — both his physical eyes and, more significantly, the eyes of his soul — to mature enough that he could see.
See the truth.
St. John makes clear — in this, and in all chapters of his Gospel — that Jesus is the Way and the Truth and the Life, that Jesus leads all of humanity out of the darkness. John uses the man born blind to illustrate the radical transformation, the total shedding of a prior life in exchange for an everlasting one in the Kingdom of God, needed to follow the trail Jesus is blazing.
For the man born blind. For all of us.
We all are born blind, more in the way kittens are, perhaps, than in the way this man was. Each of us has an eye-opening experience of faith in our own time, in our own way. Some of us open slowly, carefully, deliberately, delicately: an awakening at dawn, as our spiritual lives dawn and grow brighter through the days of our lives. Some of us — BAM! — get a flash, a lightning bolt, a cardiac shock that leaves us bug-eyed and mouths agape, and with the rhythm of our lives topsy-turvy like the man who could beg no more.
Our common challenge, regardless of how our eyes are opened to the Word of God in Jesus, is to acknowledge that once our spiritual eyes are indeed opened, we must continue to grow in our relationship, mature in our relationship, treat our relationship with God as one that deserves the kind of attention we lavish on any loved one.
We have to build a new life, maybe even from scratch. Is that something we’re willing to do?
We may never be able to see through the darkness the way cats can. But we always will be able to see the light if we allow Jesus to open our eyes.
