Tag: Prophet

Infamy

A homily for the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, January 30, 2022

Jer 1:4-5, 17-19, 1 Cor 12:31—13:13, Lk 4:21-30

The Rock and Roll and Country Music halls of fame. New Jersey Hall of Fame. Halls of fame for every sport imaginable, at every level conceivable: pro, college, amateur and more.

In fact, there probably are halls of fame for every endeavor in which more than three people participate.

And if an inductee is somebody local, then every family member and every neighbor and every teacher and preacher and the mayor and fire chief and three marching bands parade down Main Street to hail the Hometown Hero.

So why did Jesus have to slip away from his home village to avoid being run out of town on a rail?

Didn’t he qualify as a Hometown Hero? 

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Star gazers

A homily for the Feast of the Epiphany, January 2, 2022

Is 60:1-6, Eph 3:2-3a, 5-6, Mt 2:1-12

The calendar of events for seniors in a Central Jersey local newspaper, now defunct, used to occasionally include a listing for a “mystery trip.” The Old Age Club — yes, that’s what they called themselves back in the 1980s — would rent a bus and sell tickets, and the participants would find out where they were going once they were underway.

These trips were so popular that every one of them had a waiting list. Obviously, the Old Age Clubbers were the adventurous sort and, obviously, they were pleased with how their adventure turned out, or they wouldn’t have gone again. And again.

Obviously, the participants had faith in the organizers.

As did the Magi.

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Where the heart is

A homily for the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, December 26, 2021

Sir 3:2-6, 12-14, Col 3:12-21, Lk 2:41-52

A little girl is watching one of the dozens of rerun channels on TV and asks her parents, “When you were my age, were you in black and white?”

Because, of course, before Adam West appeared IN COLOR twice a week at the same bat-time on the same bat-channel, everything indeed was black and white.

Maybe not visually, but definitely in society.

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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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Where you are

A homily for the First Sunday of Advent, November 28, 2021

Jer 33:14-16, 1 Thes 3:12—4:2, Lk 21:25-28, 34-36

In 1965, John McPhee’s book profiling Bill Bradley, “A Sense of Where You Are,” hit the shelves.  In it, the then-student athlete at Princeton University explained how he was able to accurately fire a basketball through the hoop by maintaining, literally, a sense of where he was on the court.

Bradley, who distinguished himself as an Olympian, a New York Knick, a U.S. senator from New Jersey and a true statesman — among innumerable accomplishments — has kept that sense of where he is not only physically but emotionally, psychologically and spiritually throughout his life and career.

Advent challenges us to do the same.

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In focus

A homily for the Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 24, 2021

Jer 31:7-9, Heb 5:1-6, Mk 10:46-52

What makes a good photo?

Composition, yes. Lighting, indeed. The right subject, absolutely.

Focus? Essential.

The same is true when we look. Look, and not merely see. Because the act of looking adds focus to all the visual inputs that can bombard us when we open our eyes.

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Walk a mile

A homily for the Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 17, 2021

Is 53:10-11, Heb 4:14-16, Mk 10:35-45

It’s such a cliché: “Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.” The activity is supposed to give us a sense of what it’s like to be that person, or a person of that person’s ethnicity, or socioeconomic situation, or belief system, but it’s a fundamentally flawed exercise.

I am not, and never will be, anything but a white male human descended from Irish-Welsh-French-Alsatian-Croatian-Slovak stock, raised in the suburban dead center of New Jersey, educated at Catholic grammar and boys prep schools in that aforementioned Central Jersey and at a small, private liberal arts college in the rural dead center of Pennsylvania.

Put me in Manolo Blahnik shoes and I will not be a supermodel. Put me again in work boots atop a pile of hot asphalt and I may labor but I will not be a laborer. Put me in moccasins and — at best — I am guilty of cultural appropriation.

We may try, we may try with every fiber of our being, to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, but in the end, the most we can hope for is partial enlightenment.

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Truth in action

A homily for the Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 26, 2021

Nm 11:25-29, Jas 5:1-6, Mk 9:38-43, 45, 47-48

Let’s imagine a 3- or 4-year-old is playing in the yard some morning when firetrucks race by, lights flashing and sirens wailing. The child looks down the street, sees that the house where the emergency crews are headed is on fire, and then rushes inside to tell Mom or Dad what’s happening.

This child has become a prophet.

S/he sees the facts (firetrucks driving to the house that’s aflame), she understands the truth (a burning house is dangerous to life and property), she knows what must be done (douse the blaze) and she anticipates what the best result will be (fire extinguished, no one hurt, little damage).

This is not soothsaying or Nostradamus-like fortunetelling. Prophecy is extensive observation, critical thinking, action-planning and well-formed prediction, and we all can do it.

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Miraculous

A homily for the Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 5, 2021

Is 35:4-7a, Jas 2:1-5, Mk 7:31-37

Every day is a day for miracles. And every day is a miracle in itself.

The sun rose today (well, actually, the Earth rotated so that we could see more and more of the Sun, but let’s not get too astrophysical …). Out there in the east, cruising through the south toward the west, with or without clouds, Sol is shining on Terra Firma.

A miracle.

God loves us and showers us with gifts, often when we don’t realize it.

More miracles.

Miracles for today and every day of our lives.

But what happens when we start to take miracles for granted and, more to the point, when we remove the role of the Almighty from miracles?

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