A homily for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, May 26, 2024
Dt 4:32-34, 39-40, Rom 8:14-17, Mt 28:16-20
When I was in the seventh grade at St. Leo’s in Lincroft, I had it all figured out.
No, not the meaning of life, or how to avoid taxes, or even how to win the lottery.
A homily for Pentecost, May 19, 2024
Mass During the Day: Acts 2:1-11, 1 Cor 12:3b-7, 12-13, Jn 15:26-27; 16:12-15
I suffer from writer’s block about as often as I suffer from allergies. Sometimes the attacks of either are stay-in-bed level; other times, I can power through. But like most of us, I do not relish either.
I have eye drops and antihistamine pills for my allergies, so their flare-ups qualify as annoyances and inconveniences.
But there’s no pill I can pop or lotion I can drop to cure writer’s block, especially when I’m dealing with a religious or spiritual or scriptural topic. And I consider that far more than an annoyance or an inconvenience. Especially as Sunday approaches.
A homily for the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord, May 12, 2024
Acts 1:1-11, Eph 1:17-23, Mk 16:15-20
Souvenez vous que nous sommes dans le sancte présence de Dieu.
A Christian meme made its way around social media recently, depicting Jesus ascending to Heaven on a cloud, with the caption “Ascension Thursday: When Jesus Christ started working from home.”
I have it on good authority he has great bandwidth at his place.
But even as we acknowledge through this holy day that the Son is where he belongs — on his throne at the right hand of the Father — we also must recognize that God is not far, never far from us.
A (brief) homily for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, April 21, 2024
Acts 4:8-12, 1 Jn 3:1-2, Jn 10:11-18
Thank you for bearing with me while I’m out of town on personal business this weekend. A fuller homily — which I will preach at all Masses next weekend — will be here as usual.
A few years ago, I started having trouble with glare while driving at night. Headlights, streetlights, traffic lights: I saw them as stars, or as beams with rays shooting out in several directions.
The experience was jarring.
A homily for The Resurrection of the Lord (Easter Sunday), March 31, 2024
Acts 10:34a, 37-43, Col 3:1-4, Jn 20:1-9
It’s been more than 30 years since videogame systems went from curiosities to must-have additions to nearly every household, at least here in America.
Children and parents alike learned about levels and bosses and cheat codes, especially how left-left-down-A-A-C-up-B-C could give a player extra lives.
Extra lives.
Before cheat codes and game-reset buttons, the only notion of extra lives revolved around cats and their supposed nine of them.
A homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent (Scrutinies), March 17, 2024
Ez 37:12-14, Rom 8:8-11, Jn 11:1-45
Mom died in the hospital on Easter morning 1987 in the middle of telling her roommate a joke. The roommate said Mom headed to Heaven right before she delivered the punchline.
Yeah, telling jokes was more my father’s thing.
Julia Marie McCosker Zapcic was a month shy of her 58th birthday. She left behind a husband, six sons and several (forgive me; I forget how many at that time) daughters-in-law. She never met some of my brothers’ wives, nor did she get to play with 12 of her 14 grandchildren. Mom knew only my two now-grown offspring.
Our family often wondered what else she never had the chance to do.
A homily for the Fourth Sunday in Lent (Scrutinies), March 10, 2024
1 Sm 16:1b, 6-7, 10-13a, Eph 5:8-14, Jn 9:1-41
Long before Airbnb, a colleague of mine and his son toured Iceland by staying in several of the guesthouses Icelandic families offered to tourists to make extra income. As I recall, they took the trip near the end of summer, and they asked their hosts how they coped with the dark days and nights of Arctic winters.
As opposed to what? the Icelanders replied. It’s what they know, they said.
A homily for the Second Sunday of Lent, February 25, 2024
Gn 22:1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18, Rom 8:31b-34, Mk 9:2-10
We all know about Clark Kent, right? Mild-mannered reporter for The Daily Planet, who wanted a job someplace where he could hear about emergencies or disasters anywhere in the world.
And why was he so interested in hot topics? Was he some sort of news junkie?
No.
As we all know, every time he took off his glasses and otherwise changed his outfit, he was duty-bound to go and help people in trouble. Whenever he arrived to save the day, everyone around him saw his true self, his true identity, the identity he kept secret the rest of the time.
A homily for the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, February 4, 2024
Jb 7:1-4, 6-7, 1 Cor 9:16-19, 22-23, Mk 1:29-39
In my first job as a professional journalist, at the now-defunct Daily and Sunday Register in Shrewsbury (better known as the Red Bank Register), I was obliged to do a lot of typing. Sports scores and statistics, mostly. Long, long lists of stats and records. Much of it was on a tweaked IBM Selectric typewriter, modified so my words on legal-size paper could be scanned into a rudimentary computerized typesetting system.
This was 1978, after all.
I also had the task of tapping the keyboard of a hand-me-down phototypesetting system, sent from The Register’s absentee owners in Toledo. Yes, the hometown of Max Klinger from M*A*S*H. Into that “tube,” I transcribed the wit and wisdom of George Sheehan, The Running Doctor, as well as the results of the thoroughbred races at Monmouth Park.
It was tedious, what a colleague years later would refer to as “chimping.”
A different colleague, though, had a more sanguine outlook: “That’s why they call it ‘work.'”
A homily for the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, January 21, 2024
Jon 3:1-5, 10, 1 Cor 7:29-31, Mk 1:14-20
In a “Hägar the Horrible” comic strip, the red-bearded Viking’s son, Hamlet, asks Hägar if he has any words to live by. Yes, his father replies, there are three things to always remember.
“Never apologize.”
“Never explain.”
Then Hägar pauses and leans closer to Hamlet, who asks, “What’s the third?”
“Don’t get caught!”
