A homily for the Baptism of the Lord, January 12, 2025
Isaiah 42:1-4, 6-7, Acts 10:34-38, Luke 3:15-16, 21-22
“I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.”
— Groucho Marx
The world of entertainment lends us a cornucopia of perspectives on the Baptism of the Lord, over and above the guidance from today’s Scripture passages that we always should do what is right so that God will remain happy with us.
A homily for The Epiphany of the Lord, January 5, 2025
Isaiah 60:1-6, Ephesians 3:2-3a, 5-6, Matthew 2:1-12
I can still hear Mom’s voice when I find something I was looking for in the most obvious place:
“If it had teeth, it would have bitten you.”
Yeah: It was on the table in plain sight. That’s why I didn’t see it.
A homily for the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, December 29, 2024
Sir 3:2-6, 12-14, Col 3:12-17, Lk 2:41-52
Nearly every day between Thanksgiving and Easter, I wear a scarf. They’re always warm and occasionally stylish, though I’m not really aiming for a GQ-kind-of image.
I have a large, though not massive, collection of fuzzy scarves, and through the 26 weeks or so of Scarf Season, I wear all but one of them at least once.
A homily for The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, November 24, 2024
Dn 7:13-14, Rv 1:5-8, Jn 18:33b-37
Way back in 1776, the British colonists in the New World decided they’d had enough of a bad king who was making their lives miserable. So they declared their independence from George and any other first son of a first son wearing a shiny tin hat. The Americans were done with jewel-encrusted dictators acting like spoiled brats sitting in highchairs.
Ever since then, our rugged individualism has made us turn a cold shoulder to monarchs, except when there’s a royal wedding or coronation or anything else on TV that involves Cinderella-style horse-drawn carriages.
A homily for the Thirty-Third (and last) Sunday in Ordinary Time, November 17, 2024
Dn 12:1-3, Heb 10:11-14, 18, Mk 13:24-32
Several years ago, when I was in formation for ordination (the fancy name for deacon school), we had a session on time management. Well, kinda-sorta.
The presenter passed out wooden yardsticks and told us to find our ages on them by multiplying the inches by 2. He then mentioned that it’s customary for deacons to turn in their retirement papers at age 75 — just a little ways past the end of the yardstick, which represented 72.
The space between our age in inches times 2 and the end of the yardstick plus a little air represented the time each of us had/has to minister to God’s people.
(I did buy a copy of the time-management book he was hawking but I don’t recall ever reading it. Nonetheless, the in-person lesson stuck.)
A homily for the Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, November 10, 2024
1 Kgs 17:10-16, Heb 9:24-28, Mk 12:38-44 or 12:41-44
The other day, I was at the bank to trade in my coins for a couple of greenbacks, but I had to wait behind a couple who were emptying two water-cooler jugs filled with coins.
Well, actually, the jugs had been filled at one point; I luckily arrived as the duo was down to the last third of the second jug and the bank teller had snapped empty coin bags into the sorting machine.
As I stood there with my quart-size Ziploc, I wondered what the couple might use the money for (it turned out to be a lot). Mortgage payment? Vacation? A new car or repairs on their old one? Bet MGM Casino on a new iPhone?
But then, years of hearing MYOB from my mother and the teachers at St. Leo the Great kicked in, and instead I wondered what I’d do with the 20-ish dollars I’d walk out with.
I must confess that a work of charity wasn’t the first thing that came to mind.
Shame on me.
A homily for the Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time, November 3, 2024
Dt 6:2-6, Heb 7:23-28, Mk 12:28b-34
It’s bumper sticker season.
Likewise, it’s lawn sign season, and billboard season, and the season for enough political ads on TV that we probably welcome the commercials for Medicare Advantage and the little pill with the big story to tell.
For now, though, let’s stick with stickers.
A (belated) homily for the Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 20, 2024
Is 53:10-11, Heb 4:14-16, Mk 10:35-45 or 10:42-45
Twelve hours after I saw my Christian Brothers Academy mortarboard soar into the evening sky (against the orders of the assistant principal my classmates and I detested), I was standing in a pile of newly dumped asphalt, with a foreman hollering, “Let’s git it!”
In other words, shovel the smoking hot blacktop onto the end of a driveway that had been chopped up to widen a neighborhood street in Oceanport, New Jersey.
Within minutes on that June morning in 1973, I had sweated through my white T-shirt, and my new blue jeans were starting to droop near my butt crack.
A (somewhat brief) homily for the Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 6, 2024
Gn 2:18-24, Heb 2:9-11, Mk 10:2-16 or 10:2-12
These days, when it comes to weddings, I’m either the presiding minister-slash-official witness or I’m sitting at the far corner of the reception with the other haddas.
You know, the old people the young couple “hadda invite” to make their parents or — yikes! — grandparents happy.
Either way, though, I think weddings are fun, especially destination weddings with quirky themes and receptions that include alligator wranglers, such as the one Andrea and I are about to attend in New Orleans next Sunday.
Oh, by the way, it’s our son’s.
A homily for the Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 29, 2024
Nm 11:25-29, Jas 5:1-6, Mk 9:38-43, 45, 47-48
The other day, I stumbled across a pack of Magic Birthday Candles. You know, the ones that relight themselves every time you blow them out. I actually was looking for the gizmo that helps me open the jar of bread-and-butter pickles, but I found the three magic candles first.
I of course was rooting around in the kitchen junk drawer. It’s right next to the dishwasher in our house, and it holds a big screwdriver, a set of those tiny jeweler’s screwdrivers, scissors, pliers, measuring tapes — big and little — Scotch tapes, double-sticky-stuff, a Ziploc of glitter, and birthday candles, mostly half-burned.
All that and much more. Much, much more. Including three lonely little magic candles.
And everything in that drawer — which nobody in my family can close fully — everything in that drawer is absolutely essential for us to live a complete and meaningful life.
So is everything in our basement.
Absolutely essential.
Yours too, I bet.
