Prophet 13 - Unpaid Bill

I’ve been blessed — or cursed — with good peripheral vision, as well as a really quirky ability to see certain things really quickly. It manifests as words or phrases literally jumping off a bulletin board or something similar when I pass, and then I have to stop and read the whole poster or memo to find out where “Donald Duck” or “#6 Sub” was referenced.

And when I say “I have to stop,” I mean this phenomenon literally freezes me in my tracks. I can’t resist.

Training back in my Boy Scout days added to this. Long before “See something, say something” became the American mantra, we Scouts were taught to be highly aware of our surroundings. I recall our scoutmasters actually brought in experts from Fort Monmouth to run the workshops. The military chant is “Stay alert — stay alive!”

I must concede that being highly aware of your surroundings is a great skill to have on the Parkway at 80 mph at 8 a.m.

But back in Catholic school, during the other hours of my day, Sister Raphael Marie browbeat us nonstop with a totally opposite message:

MYOB

Mind. Your. Own. Business. (or Beeswax, when somebody was going for “cute”)

Don’t stick your nose in where it doesn’t belong.

And MYOB seemed diametrically opposed to WWJD.

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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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Good things come

A homily for the Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 19, 2021

Mi 5:1-4a, Heb 10:5-10, Lk 1:39-45

As the Advent season of waiting nears its end for 2021, one key question remains:

What are we waiting for? Or for whom?

Certainly not Godot.

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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.

Continue reading Where you are