St. Leo the Great - Unpaid Bill

Proclaimed

A homily — or perhaps a sermon — for the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, January 26, 2025

Nehemiah 8:2-4a, 5-6, 8-10, 1 Corinthians 12:12-30, Luke 1:1-4; 4:14-21

Many of us grew up when Catholics weren’t supposed to read the Bible. We heard passages from Scripture at Mass, and the priest — always a priest in those days — would share some insights and his learned interpretations, and we’d be enlightened by the Word of God.

‘Nuff said.

Most, if not all, of us had Bibles at home, but those stayed on the shelf, pretty much. If that Bible was a family heirloom, its inner front and back covers held the kind of birth and baptism and marriage and death information that Ancestry.com would drool over.

The pages in between, though … those didn’t get much of a looky-see. Sad to say, some of those family Bibles wound up being used as door stops or tools for pressing dried flowers.

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Say aah

A homily for the Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 8, 2024

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

My father, a family physician who practiced quirky but scientifically sound medicine for more than 50 years, was his own worst patient.

His family members came in second, but we’ll get to that later.

This physician not only could not heal himself, he did not even try, as far as my brothers and sisters-in-law and I could ever determine.

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W, X…

A homily for the Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 1, 2024

Dt 4:1-2, 6-8, Jas 1:17-18, 21b-22, 27, Mk 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

The Sisters of St. Francis from the Glen Riddle, PA, mother house who taught us at St. Leo the Great School in the 1960s were an enlightened bunch. They clarified the difference between nationalism and patriotism, framing the former as potentially sinful. They instructed us in single-gender classes about sex and love and how both are gifts from God, with only minimal blushing. (Yes, I know the joke.)

And they believed in buy-in. They knew that people older than 3 deserved to know “why” for them to follow rules. So the sisters took the time to explain, for example, why we were forbidden to talk during a fire drill (the person in front of us might turn around to listen, might trip, and then everyone would tumble over them, disastrously).

Rules, we learned, were for our well-being. Even the annoying ones … which weren’t as annoying once we understood the “why” they were built on.

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Insistent

A homily for the Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 14, 2024

Am 7:12-15, Eph 1:3-14 or 1:3-10, Mk 6:7-13

Let’s start with a story about how not to evangelize.

When I was in the third grade at St. Leo the Great School in Lincroft, our teachers told us of the great rewards that awaited us in the afterlife if we brought other people into the faith. If we made converts.

Most of us, myself included, expected a shorter stay in Purgatory or, better yet, coconut cream and key lime pies for dessert at every meal in the Heavenly banquet.

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Trio

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.

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Ash Wednesday, a reflection

Remember, O man, that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return.

Each Ash Wednesday during my eight years at St. Leo the Great School, we were marched up the center aisle of church, class by class, a single file of boys alongside a single file of girls, to be reminded of our mortality.

For the first four or five years, we knelt on the red velvet cushion at the Communion altar rail; after Vatican II dictated the rail’s removal, we inched forward in that same center aisle in those same single-file lines.

It was years before I realized the black schmutz that was being absolutely mashed into my forehead with that scary prayer was supposed to be in the shape of a cross, not merely the pastor’s thumbprint, and that the blessed ashes came from the burning of the previous year’s palms, not what we emptied out of the pencil sharpener.

It was years before I understood why we were being reminded that life is short:

We have only so much time to do good, to care for each other and to care for all of Creation as a sign of God’s Spirit within us. So get cracking!

It was even longer before I fully understood that this prayer leaves out the best part:

Through his painful crucifixion and glorious Resurrection, Jesus conquered sin and death and made a home for us in Heaven.

When to dust our mortal bodies return, to our loving Almighty Creator our immortal souls return.

May this Lent offer us all 40 days of quiet times and thin places to meet our loving God.

Longfellow

You’re a poet, and you don’t know it, but your feet sure show it: They’re long fellows and they smell like the dickens!

The assignments at St. Leo the Great School could be challenging, and by that I mean they often challenged us to get out of our comfort zones. They challenged us to think outside the box. They challenged us to try something new.

With widely varying results.

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