Tag: Parable

Switchbacks

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.

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A stitch in time

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.

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When bigger is better

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.

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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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Red-carpet couture

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.

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Interstate 80 at 80 mph

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.

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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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A cup of sugar

A homily for the Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Aug. 16, 2020

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

When we embrace The Way that Jesus blazed, we recognize that almost everything he preached was countercultural. Then and now.

Dining and bunking in with tax collectors and prostitutes, and forgiving their sins when they repented and promised to go and sin no more: Jesus was able to reconcile these dregs of society with the God of mercy, even if First Century Hebrew society left them at the margins.

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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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