A homily for the Fourth Sunday of Lent, March 19, 2023
1 Sm 16:1b, 6-7, 10-13a, Eph 5:8-14, Jn 9:1-41
Every place I’ve ever lived had shelves full of books, sometimes to the point of making the floorboards creak or sag.
When my Uncle Richard lived with us, my dad bought him a set of paperbacks that Time-Life considered to be the essential modern literature. I remember one being the “Ox-Box Incident,” which even to this day I have yet to read. The other essentials? Long forgotten. Shame on me.
A homily for the Third Sunday of Lent, March 12, 2023
Ex 17:3-7, Rom 5:1-2, 5-8, Jn 4:5-42
Water has been in the news a lot lately.
California has too much of it — in the form of unimaginably deep snow as well as downpours that would have challenged Noah — even as the state’s drought has yet to be solved.
The Great Salt Lake is drying up because the rivers that flow into it are drying up, and scientists and politicians are trying to engineer a way to save it.
Closer to home, March is coming in like a lion after a warm and dry winter. Slush and rain and flooded roads.
Yes, water has been newsworthy a lot lately.
A homily for the Second Sunday of Lent, March 5, 2023
Gn 12:1-4a, 2 Tm 1:8b-10, Mt 17:1-9
Years ago, when I was on a religious retreat, our main speaker became deeply theological and clearly logical on the significance of the voice from the clouds as chronicled in today’s passage from the Gospel of Matthew.
A homily for the First Sunday of Lent, February 26, 2023
Gn 2:7-9; 3:1-7, Rom 5:12-19 , Mt 4:1-11
Out in the backyard of my boyhood home in Lincroft, my brothers and I built a treehouse. Not just any treehouse. This was a classic, enough to make the Swiss Family Robinson jealous.
A homily, sort of, for the Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, February 19, 2023
Lv 19:1-2, 17-18, 1 Cor 3:16-23, Mt 5:38-48
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily /
To throw a perfume on the violet …/
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.
If you haven’t heard this week’s selections from Scripture proclaimed in a house of worship, or if you haven’t used the links above to read them, please do.
There’s absolutely nothing I can add to make them more understandable or clearer. There’s no call to action I can write or shout from the rooftops that these passages don’t deliver.
A homily for the Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, February 12, 2023
Sir 15:15-20, 1 Cor 2:6-10, Mt 5:17-37
Oh, well, a young man
Ain’t got nothin’ in the world these days
…
But you know, nowadays
It’s the old man
He’s got all the money
And a young man ain’t got nothin’ in the world these days
My Nana Zapcic, who lived downriver from Harrisburg and thus not far from Lancaster County Amish country, had a cheesy old refrigerator magnet that opined, “Ve get too soon oldt undt too late shmart.”
Well, I thought it was cheesy when I was 17 or younger. Now, not so much.
A homily for the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, January 29, 2023
Zep 2:3; 3:12-13, 1 Cor 1:26-31, Mt 5:1-12a
After 9/11, the phrase was everywhere. On bumper stickers and license plates. On flags and posters. On lapel pins and T-shirts. Spray-painted as graffiti.
United We Stand.
United.
We.
Stand.
Only we didn’t. We don’t.
A homily for the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, January 15, 2023
Is 49:3, 5-6, 1 Cor 1:1-3, Jn 1:29-34
I’ve written and spoken before about my “unchurched” years in college and thereafter, about how I was not being nourished spiritually at the parish of my youth when all I could take away from my weekly 50 minutes in the pew was the knowledge that Group No. 2 was working bingo that Wednesday.
Incessant reminders about seat collections, collections for the parish administration and overdue grammar school tuition drove me away from organized religion after high school at Christian Brothers Academy.
What kept me away was the very thing some people were convinced attracted people to Christianity.
Proselytizing.
A homily for The Epiphany of the Lord, January 8, 2023
Is 60:1-6, Eph 3:2-3a, 5-6, Mt 2:1-12
These are the days of miracle and wonder…
… The way we look to a distant constellation
That’s dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
In 1986, Paul Simon opened his “Graceland” album with the song “The Boy in the Bubble.” In it, his lyrics rattled off a list of technological marvels the world was only starting to learn about. Lasers in the jungle transmitting information. The baby with the baboon heart. The boy with no immune system who had to live in a germ-free bubble.
Fast-forward to now, and with the James Webb Space Telescope, we indeed are looking to distant constellations.
Miraculous.
Wonderful.
Amazing.
So what are we going to do about it?
A homily for the Nativity of the Lord (Christmas), December 25, 2022
Is 9:1-6, Ti 2:11-14, Lk 2:1-14 (the Mass at Night; for all Scripture options, click here)
This is the time of the year for us to be awestruck.
By Santa Claus? By 50 percent off and free delivery? By Jimmy Choo on consignment at The Real Real?
By our own ability to find a parking space right next to the front of the ShopRite, and then, for getting out of there with everything we went in to buy and with all of our limbs intact?
Uh, no.
To be sure: We can be happy this time of the year. Excited. Relieved, maybe, but not awestruck, despite what the solid-gold electric Cadillac commercials would have us believe.
None of that is awesome. Sorry not sorry, Madison Avenue.
