Tag: Prophet

Reveille

A homily for the Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 16, 2023

Is 55:10-11, Rom 8:18-23, Mt 13:1-23

Late in my freshman year in college, I was persuaded to give Army ROTC a try. It didn’t stick, but that’s another story. And from my buddies in khaki, I first heard about The Rack Monster.

No, this wasn’t/isn’t the rack of medieval torture infamy. In military slang, a rack is a bed, a bunk, a cot, and, occasionally, a couch.

Thus, The Rack Monster hangs onto you and clamps your backside to the bed when reveille sounds.

Continue reading Reveille

When do you shower?

A homily for the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 9, 2023

Zec 9:9-10, Rom 8:9, 11-13, Mt 11:25-30

It’s been said there are two kinds of jobs, the ones you bathe before and the ones you bathe after. I’ve held both.

It’s also been said that we learn more through our fingers than we do through our eyes and ears, and I agree.

Continue reading When do you shower?

Fandom

A homily for the Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 2, 2023

2 Kgs 4:8-11, 14-16a, Rom 6:3-4, 8-11, Mt 10:37-42

In the wacky 1992 comedy movie “Wayne’s World,” based on the “Saturday Night Live” skits by Mike Myers and Dana Carvey, and often in those skits, the Wayne and Garth characters bow down in adulation before their musician idols and chant, “We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy!”

In the wacky spring and summer of 2023, far more than two young people are screaming and waving and jumping up and down before their musical idols. Those fans, worthy or not, could cause Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour to gross $1.4 billion.

We humans do get excited when we’re in the presence of our favorite celebrities.

And we react in a host of different ways.

Continue reading Fandom

Breathe in

A homily for Pentecost Sunday, May 28, 2023, Mass During the Day

Acts 2:1-11, 1 Cor 12:3b-7, 12-13, Jn 20:19-23

When I was a Boy Scout, the quarterly Parents Night extravaganzas invariably meant each patrol was responsible for putting on a skit, a skit that usually pushed the boundaries of taste and wit. In other words, something a dozen pre-teen through mid-teen boys would find funny and parents would find off-putting, like Mad magazine.

The recent passing of a Scouting friend’s younger sister reminded me of a skit their dad, a creative genius in the advertising racket, helped script. Dan and his patrol buddies staged a mock television newscast that poked fun at our troop leaders and included a forecast predicting the weather for Evanston, Illinois — headquarters of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union — would be dry. Dry today; dry tomorrow; dry forever.

Of course, only the savviest members of the gathering got the joke, which is to say not too many attendees did. True genius can puzzle some people, and Dan’s family’s genius was writ large.

Continue reading Breathe in

Up there, down here

A homily for the Ascension of the Lord, May 21, 2023

Acts 1:1-11, Eph 1:17-23, Mt 28:16-20

Years ago, I visited friends in Colorado Springs and Casper, Wyoming, taking a nonstop flight first to Denver and then a short hop from there to Colorado and back to Denver, and to Wyoming and back to Denver for my flight home. It was my first time west of Ohio.

En route to the Springs, the 737 flew above the Rocky Mountaintops, which were hugged by clouds, and I gasped. At first glance, I was convinced I had seen a city in the sky, the unfiltered sun glistening on the snowcaps and the crags looking like palaces and temples and skyscrapers.

Nature’s skyscrapers. And so they were.

Continue reading Up there, down here

Speaking louder, gently

A homily for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 14, 2023

Acts 8:5-8, 14-17, 1 Pt 3:15-18, Jn 14:15-21

I’d like to start with a story about what not to do.

Right after my college graduation, my then-girlfriend and I went to a concert in New York’s Central Park and, after it was over, we headed on foot to her apartment. We were waiting at a street corner for the light to change when she grabbed my arm, leaned closer to me, and shook her head in the direction of a man who was sort of shuffling his way toward us while trying not to make eye contact.

“Bill, that guy looks like a mugger,” she said, and for some bizarre reason I barked back, “Stay here.”

I grabbed the program from the show out of my coat pocket and walked briskly toward the man, waving the paper and saying, “Do you know Jesus? Jesus is your personal Lord and Savior. I have a tract right here that…”

He took off like a shot.

Continue reading Speaking louder, gently

Eye drops

A homily for the Third Sunday of Easter, April 23, 2023

Acts 2:14, 22-33, 1 Pt 1:17-21, Lk 24:13-35

I watch a fair amount of cable TV, primarily news, and with the programming come the unavoidable commercials, mostly for medicines and the like. You know the ones: They start off by listing the one or two benefits of that particular snake oil and then rattle off the 10,000 possible side effects that include painful death or dismemberment, significant gain or loss of weight, or terminal halitosis.

(And have you ever noticed that the actors playing some of these couples’ children are biologically inaccurate, if not impossible?)

Continue reading Eye drops

Keep X in Easter

A homily for the Resurrection of the Lord (Easter), April 9, 2023

Acts 10:34a, 37-43, Col 3:1-4, Jn 20:1-9

We Americans celebrate holidays oddly, especially holidays with religious roots.

By one measure — how much money we spend to celebrate — Christmas is way up there. The winter holidays, as retailers refer to the season, are worth three times all the other holidays combined. Christmas shopping season starts earlier and earlier, in some places overlapping the tail end of BTS (back to school, not K-pop) and overshadowing Halloween and Thanksgiving.

Halloween is no slouch in the retail advertising world, though, and supermarket chains go all out for Turkey Day.

But there’s no mega-blitz of TV commercials for Easter, Cadbury bunny auditions notwithstanding.

And that’s perfect.

Continue reading Keep X in Easter

Hop in, Lord

A homily for Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion, April 2, 2023

Mt 21:1-11, Is 50:4-7, Phil 2:6-11, Mt 26:14—27:66

Some spring morning early in the second half of the 20th century, the fourth- or fifth-graders (I forget which …) at St. Leo the Great School in Lincroft had an assignment: If you invented a time machine that took you back to Jerusalem in 33 A.D. and saw Jesus along the Way of the Cross, what would you do?

The answers — most of them illustrated as best as we Warhol wannabes could — ran a wide gamut as we each stood up and presented them to the class.

Some of my classmates insisted they would snatch the cross from our Messiah and take his place on Golgotha. Some said they would comfort him as he walked past, offering him water and snacks. Some promised to be yet another Simon of Cyrene.

I guess my answer was Cyrenian, sort of.

Continue reading Hop in, Lord

To life

A homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent, March 26, 2023

Ez 37:12-14, Rom 8:8-11, Jn 11:1-45

In one of the big production numbers in the musical “Fiddler on the Roof,” Tevye the milkman and wedding guests get rowdy and sing l’chaim — to life!

To life, to life, l’chaim.
L’chaim, l’chaim, to life.
Life has a way of confusing us,
Blessing and bruising us.
Drink, l’chaim, to life!

Every day, most of us raise a glass of something — wine, coffee, Gatorade, water — to life.

We’re grateful for a new day, another day, and we’re grateful for the people, places and things in our lives. Grateful to be sharing the day with them.

We’re grateful to be on this side of the daisies, as the sassy expression goes.

Continue reading To life