Homilies

December 15, 2024

The African American spiritual, “Ain’t Got Time to Die,” declares, “Lord, I keep so busy praisin’ my Jesus, I ain’t got time to die. When I’m healin’ the sick, when I’m feedin’ the poor, I’m praisin’ my Jesus.

December 8, 2024

According to one wag, More than at any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom…

December 1, 2024

There are nine hours and one minute of daylight today. That’s 14 hours and 59 minutes of darkness. As Advent begins, we may find ourselves more than ever “in the dark,” a darkness that leaves us vulnerable to…

November 30, 2024

November 23, 2024

In 1925, the world was rebuilding after World War I. Mussolini and fascism were on the rise, while the Church had lost its political power. As a reminder to Christians that their allegiance was not to earthly kings, potentates, or…

November 17, 2024

When it comes to predictions about the end of the world, I really don’t care to know when it’s going to happen. Whenever it comes, it’ll be hard to miss. And as for fearing it, I, for one,…

November 10, 2024

Please allow me more-than-the-usual self-disclosure today to provide some context. The past few weeks have been a workout for me as I’ve been experiencing some significant grief: some the result of recent situations, some related to…

November 3, 2024

I know it will jeopardize our tax-exempt status but, what the heck, I’m just going to tell you who to vote for. And then I’m going to run out that door. Patty can deal with the IRS tomorrow.

October 27, 2024

In a 1959 letter to a friend, Flannery O’Connor wrote, My cousin’s husband [became a Catholic] last week. He had been going to Mass…but never showed any interest. We asked how he got interested and his…

October 20, 2024

I wonder if other religious professionals are as uneasy as I am with today’s gospel. Jesus’ scene with James and John raises for me the question of whether I do what I do in order to get some…

October 13, 2024

I’ve spoken frequently of my devotion to St. Ignatius of Loyola, captivated as I am by his remarkable and instructive conversion story. As a soldier in the Battle of Pamplona, Ignatius was struck by a cannonball. During his…

October 6, 2024

Marriage, I’m told, is not for wimps, as evidenced in Jesus’ serious stand on divorce. Notably, the all-important context of Jesus’ response to the Pharisees is the patriarchy of his first century culture. It permitted a man to…

September 29, 2024

“Xenophobia” is the fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners. Journalist Brian Resnick writes that there’s a reason every country with immigration has pockets of xenophobia. We instinctively are distrustful of those we perceive to be “them” rather…

September 22, 2024

Monday, December 8, 2008: I was driving down Upton Avenue South near 47th Street that gray winter afternoon, heading home for a quick nap before an evening Mass. Especially tired after getting up early that morning to anoint…

September 15, 2024

If you’ve watched the TV series, The Chosen, the drama based on the life of Jesus, you will recall the episode that includes the raising of Lazarus. It’s intense. After an eternal lead-up, Jesus stands before the tomb,…

September 8, 2024

An “impediment” is something, literally, that gets in the way of our feet—our “pedi,” in Latin (pedicure, pedal, pedestrian). Jesus’ healing ministry consisted of clearing away impediments, stumbling blocks, that got in the way of people making their…

August 18, 2024

I have a tee-shirt that reads, “Sorry I’m late. I didn’t want to come.” I’m not the most social guy. Being relatively shy, having to go to things like wedding receptions, Christmas parties, or gatherings that involve a…

August 11, 2024

Stanley Hauerwas writes, “If Christianity [makes] any sense, it must be because of something to do with eating that meal.” I’d go even further to say that if anything makes any sense, it must have something to do with eating.

July 28, 2024

“May you live in interesting times.” While sounding like a blessing, this proverb was written as a curse. One presumes that most of us long for less interesting times: those terribly tedious and tiresome stretches of peace, prosperity…

July 21, 2024

Frederick Buechner says that “compassion is the sometimes-fatal capacity for feeling what it’s like to live inside somebody else’s skin.” As much as anyone could, Jesus felt and knew the cost of living inside another’s skin. When he…

July 7, 2024

Biblical scholars, and those who think they are, have forever speculated on just what was St. Paul’s famed “thorn in the flesh,” that “angel of Satan” which he begged God to rid him of. Was it a physical…

June 30, 2024

When valedictorian Bryce Dershem stepped to the lectern at his Voorhees, New Jersey high school graduation, he wanted to share how his mental health challenges worsened when school was interrupted by the pandemic. He began with the customary thank-yous, then…

June 23, 2024

I was in a group last week that was led through a guided meditation: feet planted on the floor, back straight but relaxed, eyes closed. We were asked to recall a notable storm that we’d experienced. After a…

June 16, 2024

My First Communion picture is on the piano in my living room with a votive candle next to it. The candle holder bears the saying of the mystic Julian of Norwich: “All shall be well, and all shall…

June 9, 2024

The Church recognizes June as the month of the Sacred Heart. David Richo writes that the Sacred Heart is not a reference to the physical heart of Jesus of Nazareth, but the heart of the Risen Christ. It…

June 2, 2024

Imagine one Sunday during the singing of the Gloria that it wasn’t water we were sprinkled with, but blood. That’s what Moses did. Bound by the covenant, the Israelites were “blood brothers and blood sisters” of God. To drive the…

May 26, 2024

Legend has it that as the brilliant bishop, St. Augustine, was walking on the beach, he came upon a little boy with a bucket, running back and forth from sea to shore, pouring water into a hole he had dug…

May 19, 2024

A forthcoming book by The New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman, is titled, What You Say When You Listen. He says that, in his experience as a journalist in the Middle East, two things happen when you listen.

May 12, 2024

The poet, Maya Angelou, describes her grandmother who raised her in Stamps, Arkansas, as “a tall cinnamon-colored woman with a deep, soft voice,” whose difficult life caused her to rely utterly on the power of God. Angelou envisioned Mamma “standing…

May 5, 2024

The husband-and-wife acting team of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne credit their fifty-five-year marital and professional success to the fact that they were never impolite to one another. It seems like a relatively reasonable starting point for a…

April 21, 2024

In his book, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, Father Richard Rohr maintains that we spend the first half of our life figuring things out, accumulating, and striving to achieve our goals. And the last half of…

April 7, 2024

Today is the “Second Sunday of Easter,” which has also come to be celebrated as “Divine Mercy Sunday.” In the past, it was known as “Low Sunday,” a downgrade from last week’s festivity. And in some places, this is “Thomas…

Easter, March 31, 2024

My Dad My dad was born in north Minneapolis in 1921. When he was two years old, his mother took him and his two siblings to her native Slovakia to escape her husband’s unbearable abuse. There,…

March 24, 2024

Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated on March 24, 1980. Six days later, on Palm Sunday, more than 50,000 were present for his funeral in the square outside the cathedral of San Salvador. There, 40 people died after a…

March 17, 2024

“Sir, we would like to see Jesus,” some Greeks say to Philip today. Where might we direct them? In his famous prayer, St. Patrick cries, “Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ in…

March 10, 2024

At some point in my adolescence, I sat my parents down in the living room to berate them for not loving me. I don’t remember exactly what I presented as evidence, but I suspect that, among other things,…

March 3, 2024

En la novela, La casa de arena y niebla, un padre, está de rodillas y presiona su cabeza contra el suelo de la sala de espera de un hospital y le ruega a Dios que salve a su hijo gravemente…

February 25, 2024

A couple of weeks ago, someone said to me, “Your homily: you’ve told that story before.” Indeed, I had. I frequently look at what I wrote three or six or eighteen years ago on that Sunday’s readings. Sometimes I think,…

February 18, 2024

Last week, I mentioned my 30-day retreat where, in a profound encounter with Jesus Christ, I came to know him, like never before, as my constant companion, always and everywhere with me. It remains an exhilarating and pivotal…

February 11, 2024

At the end of the 2003 Broadway musical, Wicked, the two witches, Elphaba and Glinda, sing of how their lives have been changed by their unlikely friendship. Glinda says that, while she doesn’t know if it’s true that people come…

February 4, 2024

I find Simon’s mother-in-law charming. Getting out of bed after a miserable fever and a miraculous cure, she puts…

January 28, 2024

An essay/sermon by Rabbi Sharon Brous appeared in last week’s New York Times. She recounted a third-century Jewish practice when Jews would go on pilgrimage to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Entering its massive plaza, the pilgrims would turn right,…

January 21, 2024

How did they do it, Simon and Andrew? How could they, just like that, abandon their boats, leave their livelihood, and run off with Jesus? And James and John. They left their father, their poor dad, in a…

January 14, 2024

Whenever I’d stand and stare blankly into the open refrigerator, my mom would ask, “What are you looking for?” “I don’t know,” I’d say. “I’m hungry.” Looking for something, not sure just what. The first words Jesus speaks in St.

January 6, 2024

A recent letter from the Vatican with the title, “On the Pastoral Meaning of Blessings” has gotten a lot of attention for the direction it offers for blessing gay and lesbian couples and couples not married in the…

December 31, 2023

In Nikos Kazantzakis’ novel, The Last Temptation of Christ, a man complains to Jesus about the hiddenness of God. “I am an old man. During my whole life, I have always kept the commandments. Every year of my…

Christmas 2023

NPR ran a story last week on this year’s Christmas observance in Bethlehem. They reported: There’s no Christmas tree or sparkling lights in Manger Square or along the cobblestone streets that should be bustling with foreign…

December 24, 2023

We’re right at the edge of Christmas; an opportunity to share one last pregnant, expectant moment with Mary, a moment to prepare for the next chapter in this enthralling story. In this familiar pre-Christmas meditation, the 14th century…

December 17, 2023

The abbot was greatly distressed with the decline of his monastery. There were only a handful of monks left. They were demoralized and quarrelsome. One day the abbot came upon the rabbi who walked in the woods. When…

December 10, 2023

Three thousand years ago, the people of Israel were in exile in Babylon, disheartened and desperate. They dreamed of returning to Jerusalem. God tells Isaiah to stir up hope: “Comfort, give comfort to my people.” Five hundred years…

December 3, 2023

The first three of the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous read: 1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable. 2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us…

November 12, 2023

I hate to wait. I hate lines at Target. Or at the airport. I hate waiting for an event to start. I can’t wait more than thirty seconds for a test result. Wait rhymes with irritate. And agitate.

October 29, 2023

Couples about to get married might reasonably be asked if they love one another. Theologian Stanley Hauerwas writes, “What a stupid question! How would they know? A Christian marriage isn’t about whether you’re in love. Christian marriage is…

October 22, 2023

God and Caesar, Church and state, the reign of God and civil society: complicated relationships. In what may have surprised his interrogators today, Jesus recognizes the necessity of contributing to the wellbeing of the state and acknowledges legitimate civil authority.

October 15, 2023

Throughout the year, I go to more than a few fundraisers, wedding receptions, and other such gala events. I typically skip the cocktail hour and arrive just in time for dinner. I’m not entirely antisocial, but being somewhat…

September 24, 2023

I reflexively assume two things with this parable. One: The workers standing around idly all day are lazy. And two: I’m not one of them. I’m in Group A, one of the hard workers who’s getting stiffed.

September 17, 2023

In a presentation titled, “The Danger of a Single Story,” writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie says that, as impressionable children, some of us absorbed and adopted one-dimensional impressions of certain classes of people after hearing “single stories” about them.

August 20, 2023

Early in life we’re told that sticks and stones may break our bones, but words are harmless. Big fat lie. Being a chubby kid, and chubby teen, and chubby young adult, and chubby old man, I was leveled…

August 13, 2023

“Quite a storm we had Friday,” we say. We’ve all got a storm story. If we’re still around to tell a storm story, it means we made it. In a word, we “weathered” the storm. Even though we may have…

August 6, 2023

In a 2015 speech in Bolivia, Pope Francis said: When we look into the eyes of the suffering, when we see the faces of the endangered campesino, the poor laborer, the downtrodden native, the homeless family,…

July 30, 2023

Our attachments and addictions to which we give time, energy, and attention are evidence of our unrelenting longings and desires. In the end, they fail to satisfy and ultimately, if we’re lucky, bring us to our knees. To…

July 23, 2023

Our landscapes—our governments, churches, schools, workplaces, cities, neighborhoods, and homes—are invariably fields of weeds among wheat. Good progresses, yet evil does, too. Our discouragement with the current landscape and all those weeds may lead us, in the words of today’s…

July 16, 2023

One may look at the world and be troubled or cynical at how little grain, how little good, has come from century after century of sowing of God’s word. On the other hand, one might be amazed that God’s word…

July 9, 2023

“Come to me, and I will give you rest.” This familiar gospel passage rings just right on a lazy July weekend. If we haven’t yet gotten into the summer groove, Jesus encourages the hard-working and world-weary to take…

July 2, 2023

An influential woman welcomed the prophet, Elisha, providing him a little room on the roof: bed, table, chair, and lamp. In return for receiving the prophet—given that prophets can be hard to take—she received a prophet’s reward: she…

June 25, 2023

The Rev. Bernice King, daughter of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., says that her father was a freedom fighter and a civil rights leader, but his essence was something else. “He was a pastor,” says King. “He was a…

June 18, 2023

Friday was the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Greeks of an earlier time might have celebrated the Feast of the Sacred Spleen. Or they might have said that they love you with their whole liver. While we know…

June 11, 2023

Mass would be easier if it I could do it all by myself. Or with people just like me: those who looked like me, talked like me, thought like me, believed just like me. My self-absorption could go unchallenged. If…

June 4, 2023

There is a legend about the brilliant bishop, St. Augustine. While walking on the beach one June day, he came upon a little boy with a bucket, running back and forth from sea to shore, pouring water into…

May 28, 2023

I’ve stopped telling the joke about the Holy Trinity trying to decide where to go on vacation. The punchline has the Holy Spirit saying, “Let’s go to Rome. I’ve never been there.” Audience reaction is always mixed, and sometimes the…

May 21, 2023

After she was sexually abused at the age of seven, the poet, Maya Angelou, did not speak for nearly ten years. Out of that devastation and silence, she rose to become a person of rare eloquence. She attributed…

May 14, 2023

“[God] is our Father; even more [God] is our Mother.” So said Blessed Pope John Paul I. Had Jesus not been born into the deeply patriarchal culture and time in which he was, he himself may…

April 30, 2023

The image of the Good Shepherd is one of the most familiar and beloved in our tradition. Some, however, find it problematic, even irritating. Commentators often point out that comparing people to sheep reduces the intelligence of humans who, if…

April 23, 2023

“We were hoping that he would be the one.” We were hoping. We were hoping that she would get better. We were hoping that he would change. We were hoping that she would stop, hoping that…

April 16, 2023

They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers. They had all things in common. Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in…

Easter, April 9, 2023

After 40 days of lead-up, you’d think we get a bit more razzle-dazzle than, “We don’t know where they put him.” But stay tuned for what we might call “The Resurrection Tour.” In the next 50 days, Jesus will make…

April 2, 2023

In all the accounts of Jesus’ passion, we’re told that as Jesus was led away, Peter followed him “at a distance.” The women followed Jesus all the way to the cross, but then stood looking on “from a…

March 26, 2023

Friday was the feast day of St. Óscar Romero and the 43rd anniversary of his assassination while saying Mass in the chapel of a cancer center in San Salvador. St. Óscar endured some measure of fear, knowing that…

March 12, 2023

Walker Percy writes, “There are few joys greater than drinking cool water after a serious thirst.” The thirsty one in today’s gospel is Jesus. We, who usually turn to God for help, find Jesus, the Christ,…

March 5, 2023

I had lunch on Friday with my friend Ann, a social worker and therapist, and asked her if she could tell me why, at my advanced age, I feel quite unadvanced when it comes to emotional and psychological…

February 26, 2023

Lent is a so-called “penitential” season. To be sure, Lent involves penance. It includes giving up and giving over whatever it is that we need to give up and over: both the self-aggrandizing and the self-minimizing that Jesus…

February 5, 2023

The archbishop of Paris during World War II, Cardinal Emmanuel Suhard, says that being a witness means living in such a way “that one’s life would not make sense if God did not exist.” In other words, the…

January 29, 2023

One of my more irrational fears is that one day my dog, Chucho, is going to start talking. He has no filter, so he’ll no doubt blab about everything to everybody. Almost as unlikely, I once met a…

January 22, 2023

In the familiar medieval legend, Faust, cultured and successful, is nevertheless dissatisfied with his life, leading him to make a pact with the Devil, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. He “sells his soul.” Perhaps we’ve…

January 15, 2023

Father Henri Nouwen writes, The world tells you many lies about who you are, and you simply have to be realistic enough to remind yourself of this. Every time you feel hurt, offended, or rejected, you have to…

January 8, 2023

Once upon a time there are three—yes, three, very wise scholars of the natural sciences…They are sitting around in their own countries minding their own business when a bright star lodges in the right eye of each of them. It is so bright that none…

January 1, 2023

At Christmas, Mary deserves her own feast for all that she’s been through. We’re told that Mary held on to everything about it, all of it, reflecting on it “in her heart”—not in her mind or head, but…

December 24, 2022

“The Gift of Salvation” by Mahani Dickson Christmas is coming soon In December, six months away from June Candy canes are being piled into shoes And the air smells of delicious foods.

December 18, 2022

Many years ago, a young woman from my family’s circle of friends was pregnant. Ann Marie was 18 or 19, and unmarried. It was not her first pregnancy: word was that she’d had one, maybe two abortions. She…

December 11, 2022

In 1969, Peggy Lee immortalized the rather depressing musical question, “Is That All There Is?” The song tells of a little girl watching her family’s house burn down, the disappointment of her first circus, the disillusionment of her first love.

December 4, 2022

Holiday lights, sights, sounds, smells, songs, and stuff: it’s all intended to cheer us up, and it works, for the most part, for most people. For some who suffer, however, the holiday cheerleading is not helpful. It can…

November 27, 2022

I’m on my 66th Advent. Isn’t Jesus here yet? A more pertinent question may be, “Are we there yet?” After 66 years, shouldn’t my spiritual life be richer? Shouldn’t I have a more stable emotional life? Shouldn’t that addiction or…

November 20, 2022

An article titled, “Jesus Was a Wimp,” discusses something called “Macho Christianity.” The article describes the trend as “a movement started by men who say traditional church services are just too feminine and sissy.” One follower says that…

November 13, 2022

By the time this gospel was written, the destruction of the Temple predicted by Jesus had already occurred. So had the earthquakes, famines, and plagues. As the bumper sticker says, calamity happens—in every age, in every life. I hate to…

November 6, 2022

Since its founding in 1898 with three classrooms, Ascension Catholic School has been the heartbeat of this block. Today’s Ascension Catholic Academy, founded in 2016, our thriving four-school consortium, emerged out of 118 years of generous women and…

October 30, 2022

A few years ago, the parents on the animated sitcom South Park blamed Canada for their children’s degenerate behavior after the kids—with parental permission, of course—had watched a Canadian film of questionable taste. They sang, We…

October 23, 2022

A friend of mine was in Rome last week and I asked a favor of him as I often do of those visiting Rome: to pray for me at the tombs of a certain few saints whom I regard as…

October 16, 2022

Although nuanced, we’re asked today to compare God to a stubborn and dishonest judge to demonstrate how badgering God with requests ultimately pays off. It’s not a helpful exercise for me. If things were so, cancer would be cured, we’d…

October 9, 2022

On the day before Mother’s Day in 2003, my mom was dying, the blood vessels around her heart and brain inflamed. We celebrated the Anointing of the Sick. After anointing her forehead, I rubbed the oil into her dishpan hands.

October 2, 2022

On Wednesday, the Church celebrated a feast of Mary under her title of “Untier” or “Undoer of Knots.” As Pope Francis explains, Even the most tangled knots are loosened by God’s grace. And Mary, whose “yes” opened the…

September 25, 2022

Long before their more recent despicable tactics to depersonalize immigrants to this country, some politicians insisted on the term “illegal aliens” to describe the immigrant poor, a label that suggests creatures from another planet. But suppose we Christians substitute the…

September 18, 2022

In a world where capital is king, solidarity with those who are poor and with significant needs is profoundly countercultural. The dominant voices that surround us urge us to upward mobility. But that voice is absent in the gospels. The…

September 11 2022

Emmy Kegler is the pastor of Grace Lutheran Church in northeast Minneapolis. A couple of years ago, she published a book titled, One Coin Found. In the forward, a colleague said of her, What I love…

September 4 2022

At the beginning of the baptismal rite for a small child, we ask the young, earnest parents, “Do you clearly understand what you’re undertaking?” And at a wedding, we ask, “Will you love and honor each other as…

August 17 2022

In the late 1970s, Archbishop Óscar Romero was often accused by political and ecclesiastical authorities alike of being part of the left-wing Marxist opposition to the Salvadoran government, that he, like the guerillas, advocated the use of violence…

August 7 2022

A familiar story worth hearing again these days: Discerning the direction of his future ministry, a priest went to work at Mother Teresa’s home for the dying in Calcutta. When Mother greeted him, she asked, “What can I do…

July 24 2022

Being a very late middle-aged celibate male, I am, of course, an expert in parenting. On my Target runs, I observe and judge (harshly) the interaction of parents with their…

July 17, 2022

I admire those who excel at entertaining, who have a gift for hospitality. Most impressive are those who are unruffled with last minute guests, or who can throw something together at a moment’s notice or after a full workday. I…

July 10, 2022

It’s called the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Not the Parable of the Bad Robbers, or the Heartless Priest, or the Uncompassionate Levite. In Jesus’ time and place, with its brutal violence, intractable polarization, and ethnic bigotry, he calls out…

July 3 2022

When I was growing up, I regularly heard about the “Old Country”: Poland and Slovakia and other places from which my Eastern European relatives had emigrated. The Old Country sounded far away and long ago. It was all left behind…

June 26 2022

St. Paul’s great “cry of the heart,” his “cri de couer” today is, “For freedom Christ set us free!” Paul declares freedom from the “yoke of slavery,” the Mosaic Law. Theologian James Alison likens the law to those baby walkers…

June 19 2022

Entering St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, your eye goes immediately to the main altar beneath the bronze canopy. Beyond that is the Altar of the Chair where on the back wall a chair belonging to St. Peter is…

June 12 2022

I am grateful for the gift of a good education. The other day, I counted the number of theology courses I’ve had in my life. They add up to exactly one million. Sadly, I only remember seven or…

May 29 2022

After she was sexually abused at the age of seven, the poet Maya Angelou was unable to speak for nearly ten years. Out of that devastation and silence, she rose to become a person of rare eloquence. What accounts for…

May 24 2022

Where are you going?” “How long will you be gone?” “Who will take care of us?” Like kids watching Mom head out the door, the disciples look to Jesus as he leaves and wonder, “What will happen to us after…

May 8, 2022

I saw a t-shirt recently. “I met God,” it said. “She’s black.” Why does that grab our attention? We know that God is neither male nor female, with no skin color: God has no skin. But, at the same time,…

May 1, 2022

Some questions make me squirm, like, “How’s that diet going?” or “Are you saved?” Or, “Do you love me?” Jesus poses that awkward one to Peter not once, but three times—not because of insecurity on Jesus’ part, but to offer…

April 24 2022

The novel, The Illumination, by Kevin Brockmeier, tells of a miraculous happening at 8:17 one Friday night, when life as we know it is altered by one degree: all human pain begins to manifest itself as light. From a shaving…

Easter 2022

Our Ascension School Fifth Graders presented a dramatic presentation of the Stations of the Cross on Thursday. One scholar, portraying a soldier, told me that he had to hold onto Jesus’ arm throughout the story. He said Jesus was a…

Good Friday 2022

Calvary,” a poem by Marie Howe: Someone hanging clothes on a line between buildings, someone shaking out a rug from an open window might have heard hammering, one or two blocks away and thought little or nothing…

Holy Thursday 2022

When I was growing up, my favorite spot in the living room every evening during TV time was next to my mother in her big aquamarine upholstered rocking chair. I’d snuggle in, her right arm around me, my head in…

April 10 2022 Palm Sunday

Richard Rohr writes, “Trust the down, and God will take care of the up.” We hear today in the letter to the Philippians an ancient Christian hymn that sings of Jesus’ descent from his high and mighty throne: being born…

April 3, 2022

On Thursday, members of Canada’s Assembly of First Nations gave Pope Francis a “cradleboard,” a traditional baby carrier, and asked him to keep it overnight as he reflected on what happened to Indigenous children who were sent to Catholic residential schools, especially…

March 27, 2022

The beginning of the film, The Child in Time, has Stephen Lewis, a young father (played by Benedict Cumberbatch), on a routine visit to the grocery store with his four-year-old daughter, Kate. Riding in the shopping cart, she urges him…

March 20 2022

Some of you may be too young to remember, but in the olden days, you didn’t automatically get R, S, T, L, N, and E in the “Wheel of Fortune” Bonus Round. You had to ask for them. And everyone…

March 6 2022

For how many years of Ash Wednesdays have Catholics in Ukraine gone to church and had a cross of ashes imposed on their foreheads? How many Lenten pews did George Floyd or DeShaun Hill’s mother sit in and hear about…

February 13, 2022

My mother suffered the death of her first-born son, Georgie, when he was 13 months old. He died in a car accident while sitting on her lap. She grieved for the rest of her 50-some years. In 1948, there were…

February 6, 2022

My dog, Chucho, and I were at Ascension School on Wednesday to judge the Catholic Schools Week door decorating contest. At one point, a first grader in the hallway came over and petted Chucho, and then scampered back to his…

January 30, 2022

When St. Paul penned his lyrical ode to love, he didn’t have starry-eyed brides and grooms in mind nor an impending Valentine’s Day. It was written for a very messy church community in Corinth, with their feuding, factions, and finger-pointing.

January 23, 2022

The ancient Greeks had a word for someone who was solitary and isolated:“idios”—suggesting that one who didn’t participate in community life, who tried to make it on their own, who didn’t contribute to the common good, was an “idiot.” Likewise,…

January 16, 2022

What does Miss Manners instruct one to do if one were to run out of wine at one’s wedding? She doesn’t answer that question. She says it must simply never ever happen. So it was in Jesus’ time. Wine is…

January 9, 2022

In a New York Times opinion piece, Frank Bruni writes that “recrimination, rancor and indecency” characterize American life and discourse these days. Our communal spirit is close to broken. “We’re a mess,” he says. St. Óscar Romero asks, What…

January 2, 2022

Dr. Barbara Brown Taylor begins her sermon for the feast of the Epiphany saying, Once upon a time there are three—yes, three, very wise scholars of the natural sciences…They are sitting around in their own countries minding their own business when a bright…

Homilies

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