Tag: Homily

Wisdom from space

A somewhat brief homily for the Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 20, 2023

Is 56:1, 6-7, Rom 11:13-15, 29-32, Mt 15:21-28

E.T. has phoned home and the spaceship has returned to Earth to pick him up. 

As the cultural touchstone film nears its end, the little alien botanist does two things that turn out to be profoundly theological.

He wags his index finger in mischievous Gertie’s face and says, “Be good,” stretching out the two syllables in that scratchy voice.

He then touches Elliott’s chest over his heart, and in a similarly elongated rasp, says, “I’ll be right here.”

The movie script could have come from today’s passages from Scripture.

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Bump in the night

A homily for the Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 13, 2023

1 Kgs 19:9a, 11-13a, Rom 9:1-5, Mt 14:22-33

A few years after my college graduation, I visited a friend and her husband in Casper, Wyoming, where they worked for an oil company — she as a geologist and he as a chemist. 

It was my first trip West, high in the Rockies and far different from anything I’d ever experienced as a Jersey Shore kid.

The first evening, Sue and John took me to hear the local symphony, and after the performance, as we walked back to their car, I noticed two things: The stars were close enough that I could pull one from the sky, and the light from the streetlamps didn’t seem to reach all the way to the ground.

Yes, it was that dark.

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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.

Continue reading Amazed? Or not?

On bended knee

A homily for the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 23, 2023

Wis 12:13, 16-19, Rom 8:26-27, Mt 13:24-43

The Bible is amazing and awesome.

First of all, it’s a book of books. We Catholics believe that the Old Testament comprises 46 books, and the New Testament, 27.

And Christians and Jews alike believe that these books contain the Word of God, faithfully recorded by women and men whom the Holy Spirit inspired.

We of the Judeo-Christian faith traditions believe that these books contain Truth, with a capital T.

That doesn’t mean these books aren’t head-scratchers sometimes.

Continue reading On bended knee

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.

Continue reading Reveille

When do you shower?

A homily for the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 9, 2023

Zec 9:9-10, Rom 8:9, 11-13, Mt 11:25-30

It’s been said there are two kinds of jobs, the ones you bathe before and the ones you bathe after. I’ve held both.

It’s also been said that we learn more through our fingers than we do through our eyes and ears, and I agree.

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Fandom

A homily for the Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 2, 2023

2 Kgs 4:8-11, 14-16a, Rom 6:3-4, 8-11, Mt 10:37-42

In the wacky 1992 comedy movie “Wayne’s World,” based on the “Saturday Night Live” skits by Mike Myers and Dana Carvey, and often in those skits, the Wayne and Garth characters bow down in adulation before their musician idols and chant, “We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy!”

In the wacky spring and summer of 2023, far more than two young people are screaming and waving and jumping up and down before their musical idols. Those fans, worthy or not, could cause Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour to gross $1.4 billion.

We humans do get excited when we’re in the presence of our favorite celebrities.

And we react in a host of different ways.

Continue reading Fandom

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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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.

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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