A homily for The Epiphany of the Lord, January 5, 2025
Isaiah 60:1-6, Ephesians 3:2-3a, 5-6, Matthew 2:1-12
I can still hear Mom’s voice when I find something I was looking for in the most obvious place:
“If it had teeth, it would have bitten you.”
Yeah: It was on the table in plain sight. That’s why I didn’t see it.
A homily for the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, December 29, 2024
Sir 3:2-6, 12-14, Col 3:12-17, Lk 2:41-52
Nearly every day between Thanksgiving and Easter, I wear a scarf. They’re always warm and occasionally stylish, though I’m not really aiming for a GQ-kind-of image.
I have a large, though not massive, collection of fuzzy scarves, and through the 26 weeks or so of Scarf Season, I wear all but one of them at least once.
A wish for Christmas, December 25, 2024
Is 52:7-10, Heb 1:1-6, Jn 1:1-18
This Christmas, if the only gifts we give and receive are justice and fairness, hope and kindness, that will be enough. More than enough.
Oh, and throw in a bountiful measure of joy, and the present of our presence with other people, and our day and our season will overflow.
At the end of the classic movie “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial,” just before the alien botanist goes home, he gives little sister Gertie (Drew Barrymore) some powerful advice, in his scratchy-mechanical voice:
“Be good.”
Jesus, born this Christmas Day, said it first.
Be good.
Be kind.
Be loving, as God is love and God loves.
Yes: Be good.
Brilliant.
Merry Christmas!
The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen!
A homily for the Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 22, 2024
Mi 5:1-4a, Heb 10:5-10, Lk 1:39-45
Hope.
Peace.
Joy.
Love.
All four candles of our Advent wreath are glowing today, the candles symbolizing hope, peace, joy and love. Our season of preparation to celebrate the Nativity of the Prince of Peace is nearly complete.
A homily for the Third Sunday of Advent (Gaudete), December 15, 2024
Zep 3:14-18a, Phil 4:4-7, Lk 3:10-18
One winter holiday evening about 30 years ago, our extended family decided to go out light-peeping. As my sister-in-law suggested a few nearby places to check out, her son asked, “Can we go see The Hinges?”
The Hinges?
Kathy laughed and explained that, when she first saw how one house was decorated, she said it was lit up like the Hinges of Hell.
A homily for the Second Sunday of Advent, December 8, 2024
Bar 5:1-9, Phil 1:4-6, 8-11, Lk 3:1-6
It’s been said that God doesn’t create in straight lines, and anyone who’s ever taken more than a second to look at the shapes of ocean beaches, lakefronts, leaves and flowers and trees and and and … realizes that.
Even the wind gets the twisties.
So what’s the big deal with straightening roads and flattening the landscape? If God created this world all curvy-hilly-bumpy, why do the prophets make such a big deal about paving some sort of interstate highway system over God’s handiwork?
What’s wrong with leaving it as is?
Continue reading Linear
A homily for the First Sunday of Advent, December 1, 2024
Jer 33:14-16, 1 Thes 3:12—4:2, Lk 21:25-28, 34-36
“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
Ferris Bueller
It started with Black Friday, this fast-moving season of life, and this year, the December 25 deadline seems even sooner, because it is. A late Thanksgiving has compressed the frenetic shopping season to its second-shortest-possible iteration.
If we don’t buy, buy, buy, our big holiday may pass by, by, by. And yule be sorry (couldn’t resist).
Oh, wait.
What? Wait?
A homily for The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, November 24, 2024
Dn 7:13-14, Rv 1:5-8, Jn 18:33b-37
Way back in 1776, the British colonists in the New World decided they’d had enough of a bad king who was making their lives miserable. So they declared their independence from George and any other first son of a first son wearing a shiny tin hat. The Americans were done with jewel-encrusted dictators acting like spoiled brats sitting in highchairs.
Ever since then, our rugged individualism has made us turn a cold shoulder to monarchs, except when there’s a royal wedding or coronation or anything else on TV that involves Cinderella-style horse-drawn carriages.
A homily for the Thirty-Third (and last) Sunday in Ordinary Time, November 17, 2024
Dn 12:1-3, Heb 10:11-14, 18, Mk 13:24-32
Several years ago, when I was in formation for ordination (the fancy name for deacon school), we had a session on time management. Well, kinda-sorta.
The presenter passed out wooden yardsticks and told us to find our ages on them by multiplying the inches by 2. He then mentioned that it’s customary for deacons to turn in their retirement papers at age 75 — just a little ways past the end of the yardstick, which represented 72.
The space between our age in inches times 2 and the end of the yardstick plus a little air represented the time each of us had/has to minister to God’s people.
(I did buy a copy of the time-management book he was hawking but I don’t recall ever reading it. Nonetheless, the in-person lesson stuck.)
A homily for the Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, November 10, 2024
1 Kgs 17:10-16, Heb 9:24-28, Mk 12:38-44 or 12:41-44
The other day, I was at the bank to trade in my coins for a couple of greenbacks, but I had to wait behind a couple who were emptying two water-cooler jugs filled with coins.
Well, actually, the jugs had been filled at one point; I luckily arrived as the duo was down to the last third of the second jug and the bank teller had snapped empty coin bags into the sorting machine.
As I stood there with my quart-size Ziploc, I wondered what the couple might use the money for (it turned out to be a lot). Mortgage payment? Vacation? A new car or repairs on their old one? Bet MGM Casino on a new iPhone?
But then, years of hearing MYOB from my mother and the teachers at St. Leo the Great kicked in, and instead I wondered what I’d do with the 20-ish dollars I’d walk out with.
I must confess that a work of charity wasn’t the first thing that came to mind.
Shame on me.
