Tag: Insight

It’s a virtue

A homily for the Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Nov. 8, 2020

Wis 6:12-16, 1 Thes 4:13-18, Mt 25:1-13

Imagine, if you will, that you’re standing at the train station waiting for the 5:14 to New York, and it’s 5:12 p.m. Where are you looking? At your watch or smartphone? Randomly, all around?

Maybe.

But the odds are good that you’re looking up the tracks in the direction your train will be coming from. You want to see the train coming. You want to be ready when it arrives … as if you weren’t already ready to climb aboard.

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Fork in the road? Take it

A homily for the Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Oct. 18, 2020

Is 45:1, 4-6, 1 Thes 1:1-5B, Mt 22:15-21

Today’s Gospel is well-known, most likely among the Top 5 for people of faith to cite when they list WWJD.

And because of its familiarity, this passage is usually interpreted as an either-or.

Choose the things of the world or choose the Ways of God.

But that arguably barely scrapes the surface.

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Fair’s fair

A homily for the Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Sept. 20, 2020

Is 55:6-9, Phil 1:20C-24, 27A, Mt 20:1-16A

For some people steeped in timeclocks, hourly wages, collective bargaining and labor law, this Gospel has always been a head-scratcher.

If the worker who was employed from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. gets, let’s say, 75 bucks but then the worker who started at 6 a.m. also gets 75 bucks, how is that remotely fair? The late-starter is getting $75 an hour while the guy from the Dawn Patrol is getting $6.25. What should the hourly rate be? Shouldn’t it be the same for everybody?

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Better than new

A homily for the Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Sept. 13, 2020

Sir 27:30 – 28:7, Rom 14:7-9. Mt 18:21-35

My late father used to say, “I’ll forgive, but I won’t forget.”

He wasn’t the only person I ever heard say that. In fact, he ran with quite a big crowd on that sentiment.

“I’ll forgive, but I won’t forget.”

I never understood that. I still don’t.

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Seasonally affected

A little over 45 years ago, I stood in the living room of my college advisor, a beautifully wild man with wild hair and a creative spirit that had lit a fire in me and under me.

I was helping him pack.

He had not been granted tenure, and his contract was up, so he and his young family were heading out to his wife’s family home to work on their next steps.

It was, I recall him saying, the first time in 32 years that he would not be going back to school on Labor Day.

Back to school.

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I I U R, I I U B

A homily for the Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 26, 2020

1 Kgs 3:5, 7-12, Rom 8:28-30, Mt 13:44-52

Have you ever asked for something? Asked Mom or Dad or Uncle Mike or Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny?

Did you get it? After you got it, was it really what you wanted? And even if you thought it was, did you get tired of it after a while? Or, after a long while, did you realize that, no, it really wasn’t what you wanted after all?

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Turf wars

A homily for the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 19, 2020

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

Crabgrass. Goosegrass. Chickweed. Dandelions. Clover. Those tall spiky things with the leaves every two inches up the stem: Whatever they are.

For those of us with lawns, keeping weeds under control can be a never-ending struggle. Because, at best, we control weeds. We never defeat them. They’re stubborn and invasive and pervasive.

One weed becomes two becomes four becomes 16 becomes 256 becomes a math problem and that’s less fun than the weeds themselves. If only we can rid our lawns of that first one, we’ll be spared the outbreak. But how often does that happen?

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Speak truth to …

A homily for the Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 12, 2020

Is 55:10-11, Rom 8:18-23, Mt 13:1-23

Back in the days of “Children should be seen and not heard” and “Because I said so,” Mom always justified those neanderthal rules with so-called “biological math”: 

“You have two eyes and two ears but only one mouth. Which do you think are more important?”

And she, like all mothers, made a good point. If we don’t see and hear, if we don’t watch and listen, we don’t learn. If we don’t learn, we live in the dark.

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