March 16, 2025
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, the persecuted…
Read MoreHomilies
March 9, 2025
How many Ash Wednesdays have we had a cross of ashes, a symbol of death, casually imposed on our heads? And how often has our mind drifted as we heard yet again the story of Jesus’ stumbling to Calvary, as…
Read MoreMarch 2, 2025
With all the shouting going on these days, it’s hard to be heard. The only solution is to shout louder. But I don’t think before I shout, and consequently my loud talking is usually not only thoughtless but…
Read MoreFebruary 23, 2025
Whenever my friend Ben and I argue, he remains collected and serene. He refuses to raise his voice. It’s very annoying. Ben lives out of a mash-up of pacifism, socialism, Buddhism, and radical Christianity. Abhorring expressions of violence in the…
Read MoreFebruary 16, 2025
St. Paul says today that if we’re satisfied with life as it is, “we are the most pitiable people of all.” Pitiable if we, in our time, grow accustomed to and increasingly tolerant of indifference, meanness, cruelty, and…
Read MoreFebruary 9, 2025
I was with one of our First Communion classes yesterday, and the lesson was about being made in God’s image. It included a short video on Rosa Parks, a hero in the Civil Rights movement. These days, whether…
Read MoreFebruary 2, 2025
Prior to 1962 and the reform of the liturgy, the Christmas season only came to an end today, giving us 40 days of Christmas, not a measly 12, to ponder the great mystery of the Incarnation. Today, the prophet Simeon…
Read MoreJanuary 26, 2025
The old adage, “There but for the grace of God go I,” really bugs me. I’m annoyed whenever someone says it, and ashamed when I catch myself thinking it. When someone else suffers, yes, I count my blessings,…
Read MoreJanuary 19, 2025
The Reverend Bernice King, daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., says her father was indeed a freedom fighter and civil rights leader. But at his core, she says, “He was a pastor. He was a prophet. He…
Read MoreJanuary 12, 2025
I read a woman’s reminiscence about her anguished days as a teen when she felt unable to leave the house because of severe acne on her face. One day her father asked if he might offer a suggestion.
Read MoreJanuary 5, 2025
In her sermon for the feast of the Epiphany, Dr. Barbara Brown Taylor says, Once upon a time there are three…very wise scholars of the natural sciences…They are sitting around in their own countries minding their own business when a…
Read MoreDecember 29, 2024
Some years ago, I traveled with my father to Slovakia to visit his family and the home from which he had emigrated some 50 years prior. Ten days of pierogi and vodka, and hugs and kisses connected me…
Read MoreChristmas, Dec. 25, 2024
In his poem, “Saint Francis and the Sow,” Galway Kinnell tells of St. Francis putting his hand on the creased forehead of a sow, touching her, blessing her, all down her thick length “from her earthen snout all the way…
Read MoreDecember 22, 2024
Christmas is about finding life where you don’t expect to find life. Unexpected life in Elizabeth: they called her “sterile” and “barren.” Unexpected life in Bethlehem: an out-of-the-way hick town. Unexpected, astonishing life in Mary: a 15-year-old peasant,…
Read MoreDecember 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.
Read MoreDecember 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…
Read MoreDecember 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…
Read MoreNovember 30, 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…
Read MoreNovember 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…
Read MoreNovember 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,…
Read MoreNovember 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…
Read MoreNovember 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.
Read MoreOctober 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…
Read MoreOctober 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…
Read MoreOctober 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…
Read MoreOctober 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…
Read MoreSeptember 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…
Read MoreSeptember 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…
Read MoreSeptember 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,…
Read MoreSeptember 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…
Read MoreAugust 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…
Read MoreAugust 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.
Read MoreJuly 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…
Read MoreJuly 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…
Read MoreJuly 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…
Read MoreJune 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…
Read MoreJune 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…
Read MoreJune 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…
Read MoreJune 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…
Read MoreJune 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…
Read MoreMay 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…
Read MoreMay 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.
Read MoreMay 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…
Read MoreMay 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…
Read MoreApril 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…
Read MoreApril 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…
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