Homilies

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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