Social Justice - Unpaid Bill

Gray matter

A homily for the Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 26, 2026

1 Kings 3:5, 7-12, Romans 8:28-30, Matthew 13:44-52

If we count all the noses in the world, we discover that there are 8.3 billion-with-a-B people on Earth. Here in the USA, we make up almost 350 million members of our human family. We’re quite a crowd.

Every one of the 8.3 billion of us — North and South Americans, Africans, Europeans, Asians, Australians and even Antarcticans — has a brain. It’s been that way for tens of thousands of years, maybe even millions.

That’s quite a gift. Thank you, God!

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Stew

A homily for the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 19, 2026

Wisdom 12:13, 16-19, Romans 8:26-27, Matthew 13:24-43

Some people can be fussy about what they eat and how. Some picky eaters insist that certain foods cannot touch other items on their plates. No gravy near their peas and carrots, no syrup near their eggs. And no pickles, ever.

Semi-fussy folks may eat one item at a time, clearing away the broccoli before the beef, even when they’ve been wokked together.

And there’s a good argument to be made for this: Individual flavors and textures deserve to be savored, remembered for their uniqueness.

But we also know that great chefs devote immense and intense time and skill to craft recipes that pair complementary or contrasting ingredients to create something new, fascinating and even more memorable than Harvard beets. A concoction to be experienced in its entirety, a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

God is the greatest chef of all.

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Purple mountains

A homily for the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 5, 2026

Zechariah 9:9-10, Romans 8:9, 11-13, Matthew 11:25-30

… and crown thy good with brotherhood…

God shed an incredible amount of grace on our not-so-little corner of the world. Every blessing that we celebrate in “America the Beautiful” and countless more: We Americans have much to be thankful for.

Yes, countless, countless blessings of every kind imaginable. Of every kind of person imaginable.

And we have much to be proud of. Not everything, of course, and the upright among us know that and acknowledge that.

But in 250 years, our forebears and we have achieved an abundance of good. We have shown ourselves to be that shining city on a hill, a premier force for good. Therefore, Christian charity and Catholic social justice demand that we continue to crown that good.

With brotherhood. Just as the song says.

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Surround sound

A homily for the Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, June 28, 2026

2 Kings 4:8-11, 14-16a, Romans 6:3-4, 8-11, Matthew 10:37-42

A half-century ago, more or less, the music industry had what they thought was a genius idea: quadraphonic stereo. Their engineers devised a way to embed not one but two soundtracks into each side of a vinyl record groove: a main one, intended to be heard from the front speakers, and another, for more depth or richness, to be piped through a set of rear speakers.

Four unique sounds blending harmoniously in our heads.

Critics, or, more accurately, cynics, saw this technology as a scam to sell more amplifiers, speakers and higher-priced albums.

We have only two ears, they argued. Why do we need four channels of sound through four speakers?

After a while, however, consumers like us — led by musicians and filmmakers — couldn’t imagine not having front and rear speakers and subwoofers and headphones and earbuds, with far-off timpani or coyotes howling.

Ah, depth and richness. A spatial experience. From an artist — a source — we embrace, even cherish.

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Almost there

A homily for the Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, June 14, 2026

Exodus 19:2-6a, Romans 5:6-11, Matthew 9:36—10:8

The other day, a motorcyclist was doing laps around a traffic circle on an older highway that crosses New Jersey’s waist like a belt. He — of course it was a he — zipped around the roundabout at least three times as I approached, and then he zoomed east through a small business district.

I caught up with him about a mile farther as he was lapping another circle. After these jumbo doughnuts, he headed west, as young men are advised to go.

The list of possible reasons for this biker’s Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride is long and indeed wild. A real head-scratcher. What I take away, though, is that his journey was at least as important as his destination. If not more so.

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Service

A homily for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, May 3, 2026

Acts 6:1-7, 1 Peter 2:4-9, John 14:1-12

In early June 1973, barely 12 hours after flinging a mortarboard into the air on the lawn at CBA, I was about to wade into a newly dumped pile of steaming asphalt.

“All right, men, let’s git it!” Joe Romeo, the foreman, hollered, and we attacked the hot asphalt with our short-handled square-point shovels.

Within minutes, my new white T-shirt was transparent with sweat and my even newer Sears blue jeans were sliding down my skinny backside. I didn’t notice if my feet were hot in my boots as I danced through the blacktop, pretty much making a mess.

Then I felt a powerful hand yank me by my belt loops and toss me off the pile. “Get outta there,” Romeo growled. I snapped back, “What’s your problem, man? I’m working my ass off!”

He then said the words that shaped the rest of my life:

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Ism

A homily for the Second Sunday of Easter, April 12, 2026

Acts 2:42-47, 1 Peter 1:3-9, John 20:19-31

Tattoos, T-shirts and trucks have become billboards for our thoughts and feelings, especially our social or political leanings. And, by logical extension, for our spiritual or religious or ethical beliefs.

But there’s not a lot of nuance in inked insights, in silk-screened slogans, or in bumper stickers telling the world where to stick it. Stick-figure images of the Remington and AR and Glock and Kalashnikov families could not be further from subtle.

Yes, we live in a broad-brush-label-’em world. Some of us have devolved into “if you’re not with us, you’re against us.” And that slippery slope leads to “if you’re against us, we have to shun you, or troll you, or worse.” Heaven knows, there’s a lot of “worse” to be found.

But there’s far, far more “better” out there, and it’s closer than we think.

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Here and there

A (belated and brief) homily for the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome, November 9, 2025

Ezekiel 47:1-2, 8-9, 12, 1 Corinthians 3:9c-11, 16-17, John 2:13-22

In every city and village worldwide, we’ll find houses of worship: temples, synagogues, mosques, churches, and more. Even storefronts and basements and tents and, yes, caves serve as gathering places for members of the human family to acknowledge in their culturally and religiously appropriate way that somebody somewhere loves us enough to give us our little blue marble in the sky.

To give us our own lives.

To give us our own unique lives, with our own unique abundance of gifts.

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Tabby Truth

A homily for the Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 19, 2025

Exodus 17:8-13, 2 Timothy 3:14-4:2, Luke 18:1-8

It doesn’t take long for any of us to realize why cat videos — and especially kitten reels — constitute about half the content on mainstream (fuddy-duddy) social media.

Cats are crazy.

Which qualifies cat people like my family and me as being a bit loony, too.

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Stuff it

A homily for the Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 7, 2025

Wisdom 9:13-18b, Philemon 9-10, 12-17, Luke 14:25-33

Amid all the news recently about wars and famines and the melting of the Earth’s biggest iceberg, one item stood out.

A young man named Doogie Sandtiger was awarded the Guinness World Record for the largest collection of Crocs. The Connecticut resident owns more than 3,800 pairs of the shoes, and he is still collecting. He hopes they will form the basis of a Crocs museum.

A fascinating human interest story, or just a crock?

How we view our own stuff will determine which side we come down on.

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