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.
A homily for the Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time, November 3, 2024
Dt 6:2-6, Heb 7:23-28, Mk 12:28b-34
It’s bumper sticker season.
Likewise, it’s lawn sign season, and billboard season, and the season for enough political ads on TV that we probably welcome the commercials for Medicare Advantage and the little pill with the big story to tell.
For now, though, let’s stick with stickers.
A homily for the Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 27, 2024
Jer 31:7-9, Heb 5:1-6, Mk 10:46-52
One of the cultural touchstones that “Seinfeld” wove into America’s consciousness was “Serenity Now.”
George Costanza’s father, Frank, is told by a supposedly inspirational tape to say “serenity now” every time he gets angry as a possible way to keep his blood pressure down. And Frank barks the phrase often, loudly and angrily.
“Serenity Now!”
“Now” being the operative word.
A (belated) homily for the Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 20, 2024
Is 53:10-11, Heb 4:14-16, Mk 10:35-45 or 10:42-45
Twelve hours after I saw my Christian Brothers Academy mortarboard soar into the evening sky (against the orders of the assistant principal my classmates and I detested), I was standing in a pile of newly dumped asphalt, with a foreman hollering, “Let’s git it!”
In other words, shovel the smoking hot blacktop onto the end of a driveway that had been chopped up to widen a neighborhood street in Oceanport, New Jersey.
Within minutes on that June morning in 1973, I had sweated through my white T-shirt, and my new blue jeans were starting to droop near my butt crack.
A (somewhat brief) homily for the Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 6, 2024
Gn 2:18-24, Heb 2:9-11, Mk 10:2-16 or 10:2-12
These days, when it comes to weddings, I’m either the presiding minister-slash-official witness or I’m sitting at the far corner of the reception with the other haddas.
You know, the old people the young couple “hadda invite” to make their parents or — yikes! — grandparents happy.
Either way, though, I think weddings are fun, especially destination weddings with quirky themes and receptions that include alligator wranglers, such as the one Andrea and I are about to attend in New Orleans next Sunday.
Oh, by the way, it’s our son’s.
