A homily for the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 10, 2022
Dt 30:10-14, Col1:15-20, Lk 10:25-37
What’s in your pocket?
If this were a TV commercial, you’d answer one way.
If this were “Let’s Make A Deal,” you’d answer another.
If you were being frisked, your answer would be something else entirely.
But this is none of those situations.
What’s in your pocket?
A homily for the Fourth Sunday of Lent (Laetare), Cycle C, March 27, 2022
Jos 5:9a, 10-12, 2 Cor 5:17-21, Lk 15:1-3, 11-32
The well-known parable of the Prodigal Son is a story of gifts, but not necessarily the ones we’re fully conversant in.
There’s the fattened calf (I prefer the old-school “fatted calf,” but this is the current translation, sigh) and the welcome-home party for the repentant son, plus the ring on his finger and the hug from his father, who greets this ne’er-do-well as if he had risen from the grave.
And we recognize the gift of God’s eternal mercy toward everyone who repents, as echoed by the actions of the young man’s father. That, in fact, is the traditional and simplest Occam’s Razor interpretation of this sizable passage from Luke’s Gospel. And it’s a totally valid understanding of the passage: Jesus intended the forgiving father in the parable to represent The Forgiving Father of All Creation.
But wait, there’s more:
A homily for the Third Sunday of Lent, March 20, 2022, Cycle C
Ex 3:1-8a, 13-15, 1 Cor 10:1-6, 10-12, Lk 13:1-9
If patience is a virtue, then a whole lotta Americans are far from virtuous. Especially New Jerseyans.
We proudly list the dozens — hundreds, even — of things we jam into every day, and at the (actual) end of the day, we mourn what we didn’t do rather than celebrate what we did.
Yeah, we’re a little warped that way.
A homily for the Second Sunday of Advent, December 5, 2021
Bar 5:1-9, Phil 1:4-6, 8-11, Lk 3:1-6
Sometimes a twisty road is the one to take.
A twisty road might hug a riverbank or an ocean shoreline. It might wrap around the side of a mountain or follow the contours of a valley. It may be twisty because it’s zig-zag terraced up the side of a hill, and that was the safest way to get the path to the other side.
More simply put, a road with plentiful curves often hews to the reality that nature — and God — laid out.
A homily for the Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 10, 2021
Wis 7:7-11, Heb 4:12-13, Mk 10:17-30
It’s still possible to buy a needle threader, an incredibly brilliant yet simple tool that helps people with unsteady hands or so-so eyesight — or without the patience and tolerance for frustration — to pass a thread through the eye of a needle.
The fine wire goes through the eye first, and then the thread gets slipped through the lasso-like diamond on the other side.
A quick tug on the handle — or whatever it’s called — and the fine wire lasso hauls the thread through the eye.
Of course, you have to get the needle threader’s wire lasso through the eye first, but pound for pound that’s a far smaller challenge than jabbing a limp, frayed string through a tiny metal oval.
And, no, using a tool is not cheating.
A homily for the Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Nov. 15, 2020
Prv 31:10-13, 19-20, 30-31, 1 Thes 5:1-6, Mt 25:14-30
The best way to check if something — or someone, or you — is alive is to make sure it’s growing.
If it is, it’s alive.
But if someone is already 6-foot-7, and that’s the tallest they’re going to get, are they still growing?
If someone is truly alive, the answer is yes, because people have the God-given ability to grow intellectually, emotionally and spiritually every day of their lives. Which means, of course, that someone needs to grow in these areas to be more than merely existing.
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.
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.
A homily for the Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Oct. 11, 2020
Is 25:6-10A, Phil 4:12-14, 19-20, Mt. 22:1-14
Every so often, the Lectionary — the book we use at Mass with selections from the Law and the Prophets, the Letters of Peter and Paul, the Gospels of the Four Evangelists, and other New Testament books — gives us a short version and a longer version of a reading, usually the Gospel. This is one of those occasions.
It’s notable this weekend because the impact of each of the versions can be felt in opposite ways, and that makes choosing between the two a head-scratcher.
A homily for the Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Sept. 27, 2020
Ez 18:25-28, Phil 2:1-11, Mt 21:28-32
As you may or may not know, I was a deadline editor at newspapers for 40 years, and several times during my career I was part of a team whose task was to (a) transform the look and feel of the newspaper, (b) add the news to websites and apps, (c) revise the look and feel of the newspaper again, and so on. And on and on.
Also, as you likely know, the news never stops. So all of these transformations had to be engineered and accomplished while we reported, fact-checked, re-reported, re-fact-checked, edited, illustrated, designed and published the newspaper and website.
We did not get to stop what we were doing to rip apart, tear down, gather materials and rebuild.
We realized we had to work as if we were changing the tires on Interstate 80 at 80 miles per hour.
