Sunday Homilies

2024 Nov 17 SUN: THIRTY-THIRD SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME Dn 12: 1-3/ Ps 16: 5. 8. 9-10. 11 (1)/ Heb 10: 11-14. 18/ Mk 13: 24-32 So this is the time of year when in our liturgical calendar we find ourselves thinking a lot about what theologically we would call the last things. More popularly people will refer to the end of the world, although that specific phrase is not found in the Scriptures. But obviously the idea of the end of the world works upon our imaginations. I was thinking about the fact that there are a number of popular songs that in fact have the end of the world in the title. For instance you may be familiar with a 1987 song, "It's the End of the World as We Know It and I Feel Fine." I found the lyrics; they go on for a couple of pages and I really couldn't do anything with that song. [Laughter] I would stress that it seems that a lot of the imagination surrounding the end of the world has to do with things happening outside. And it seems these days as if there are some people who want to see it ha

2024 Nov 10 SUN: THIRTY-SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME 1 Kgs 17: 10-16/ Ps 146: 7. 8-9. 9-10 (1b)/ Heb 9: 24-28/ Mk 12: 38-44 or Mk 12: 41-44 Abundance and scarcity are on our minds as we consider the Scriptures today. We may have a variety of attitudes toward the gifts with which we have been entrusted. We may think of our situation here and now and say, "There isn't enough for me and for everybody else. I have to hug everything I have to myself." On the other hand, there is the attitude of abundance which recognizes that God gives us gifts and does so unfailingly. We also have the theme of widowhood in the first reading and the Gospel. We understand widowhood in our own day to be precarious, certainly from an emotional standpoint. From an economic standpoint, we see that there are many things which make up what we call an economic safety net. But in the times of Elijah and Jesus, such a safety net did not exist. So the widows we read about here are in an especially precarious position. We may think, "How ca

You may know that I and the various liturgical ministers get ready for Sunday Mass in a little room back in this corner.  It's called the prep room.  And it is a relatively small space for the number of people who gather there.  So I find myself getting vested for Mass and I try to catch a glimpse of myself in a full-length mirror, to make sure that the chasuble is on straight.  And yesterday before four o'clock Mass I was having a bit of trouble because there were so many people and someone remarked to me, "Ah, you can do it blind."  Well, perhaps I can, but I just find this to be an instance in which I am very well aware of how much I depend on my sense of sight for this and for so many things.  And we can all reflect on how we rejoice in our gift of vision.  We can think at this time of year -- even if we've seen it year after year -- we still marvel as we watch the colors of the leaves changing at this time of year.  Now Bartimaeus had a clear understanding of what he wanted to do with the gift of sight,

The homilist was away last week. Well the young people sitting up front here spent a night -- I don't know how comfortable it was because they were sleeping outside during the night.  It's what we call cardboard city.  It is an opportunity for them to have an experience of homelessness.  And I wonder whether at school you know people who are similar to what I am going to describe to you. In high school I had two classmates who had this ongoing feud about which one of them was taller.  It happened that they were the two shortest guys in the class. And right there we find something about the futility, the nonsense of seeking distinction.  Or trying to prove that someone is somehow superior. Well this is what we find in the Gospel.  James and John want distinction.  I suspect that if Jesus gave them their wish, and I don't know which of them was the older, they might have decided that these places were dissatisfying because the right side is considered preferable to the left.  So there may well have been some ki

This is a summary of what I preached on Sunday, October 6, 2024, the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time. So we had a Gospel about marriage accompanied by Genesis 2 and the creation of a woman. This is always an occasion to talk about marriage, and I have to say the main point I was driving at that day was that before people can be spouses they have to be friends; they have to enjoy a deep friendship. I used once again the exchange in Act 2 of the play "Our Town" in which George and Emily are coming close to saying to one another that they are to be married. I did not record the homily as I got distracted that day. That was the day that we held the Mass in the Grass in the Troy Park at the Gazebo. And it was a beautiful, perfect day to be out, and that was what distracted me from the duty to record the homily.

2024 Sep 29 SUN: TWENTY-SIXTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME Nm 11: 25-29/ Ps 19: 8. 10. 12-13. 14 (9a)/ Jas 5: 1-6/ Mk 9: 38-43. 45. 47-48 Very briefly I want to talk about some things in the second half of this Gospel and in the second reading. We know that Jesus is not calling us literally to maim ourselves. He is making a point that it is better to enter the kingdom of heaven one way or another rather than fail to do so. In the second reading -- this is our last selection from the letter of James -- James is already bemoaning the fate of those who cling to their riches. If they cling to them they cannot with open arms receive the gift of the kingdom of heaven. You and I may not consider ourselves especially wealthy but actually our economic standard of living is the envy of billions. We have to keep in mind that we are called to live lives of sharing with those in need.  The main thing I want to get to here is the theme that is obviously set up by the passage from Numbers and by the Gospel today. And it has to d

You may have been aware that the priests of the diocese were taking part in our annual convocation this past week. In addition, I attended a meeting of the Diocesan Pastoral Council in Springfield yesterday. And some months ago, there was a group of priests set up to study what you might call the use of priest energy in the 28 counties of our diocese. They gave us some interesting figures. First of all, that our weekend Mass schedule is such that we are ready for 112,000 people every weekend. The fact is, however, that we have only about 36,000 people at weekend Mass in our 129 parishes. So one recommendation which they are making is that across the board, across all parishes of the diocese, we consider dropping a Mass on our weekend schedule. So I have some ideas about this, and I'm not going to talk about them until I have conferred with neighboring pastors. I want to give you some reasons for this. They also gave us a statistic that a church feels full to the people assembled when we are at about 65% of se

As I think of a word by which to sum up all of the scriptures today, I believe that word is denial. Denial is a very common aspect of our consciousness. We decide that there are many, many things in life we would prefer to avoid. And so we exercise denial over them. One example is in the letter of James. We have here the image of a brother or sister, and we need to remember those words, "brother" and "sister" who does not have enough to eat or to wear. Denial puts distance between ourselves and this person whom we could help. Somehow we manage to say to ourselves, "It does not concern me. I cannot do anything." And I suppose that this denial is rooted in an unexamined fear, really an irrational fear, that says, "Well, if I start giving, I won't have anything." That's how our minds can work. We also find denial as Peter has this exchange with Jesus. Mark does not tell us exactly what Peter said, but we can look at other Gospels and see that Peter says, "God forbid that any such thing should happen to you." And

Well, here we are, gathered together in one place. Someone once said that the church could be described as "Here comes everybody." Because we understand this assembly is for everyone. We think in territorial terms, and we say that the people in a particular territory who are Catholic Christians come to this particular assembly or church, because they are members of this particular parish. And we know that we are to find out who we really are when we come together for this assembly, for the Sunday Eucharist, on which we give thanks for the resurrection of Jesus on a Sunday. But there are many questions that could be raised about our coming together here. And we hear some questions in the letter of James. And it's good for us to remember that in the very early years of Christianity, people came together for the Eucharist, for the breaking of the bread, for the most part, in private homes. So we need to imagine this. And James suggests that you might pay a lot of attention to someone with gold rings and fine clo

Have you ever had the experience of someone telling you a joke and you had to think about it for a little while before you got it? I'm thinking about something which I would say is not strictly a joke; it was an exchange between me and a student at a school I ran. This was about 30 years ago. And I asked a student, "What is a defibrillator?" And the student replied, "Is it a lie detector?" I thought that student was pretty sharp. There are things, and we hear this from Jesus today, that you try to say something and make something sink in. It might take a while. And that's what Jesus is saying here. And he uses some language here in Mark's Gospel. We've returned to Mark after hearing from John. Jesus is saying, "Hear me, all of you, and understand." I think I've seen some translations that say, "And try to understand." In other words, give it your attention so that a new idea might kick in. Now, we could think that these scribes and Pharisees had something important to point out. You and I have been through a

I hope that everyone has read the cover story of the latest issue of our diocesan magazine Catholic Times. It has to do with a person who was addicted to pornography, and this person is very, very forthright in describing the things which go on in the minds and in the feelings of all of us. And we realize that this is one example of the way in which people chase after various objects which we think will provide us with contentment and turn out to be anything but.    We have read from the Book of Joshua near the end of that book.  Joshua was the immediate successor of Moses. Now the people are in the long promised land of their own. And Joshua questions the people about their intentions.  He asks whether they will continue to serve the one true God, the Lord. They say, "We will." We know, however, that many, many people did forget about the Lord, and we can understand why. The Israelites were surrounded by neighboring peoples who had various gods and these gods had images, and there were people who were convin

I believe many of you know, because I've spoken about this at times, that I have been helped greatly by the sciences of psychology and psychiatry. And we recognize that these disciplines are addressing the human person in our complexity. And we are the most complex creatures of God. And I bring this up because our readings today mention wisdom. And I am thinking about one school of thought in psychology and it's okay to have many, many different schools of thought. Again, it's because of our complexity. There are so many ways that we can approach the human person. And I'm thinking about stages of normal human development. And I'm going to the end. I'm going to the last couple of stages. There are maybe eight or nine, or it looks like some people have added more. But anyway, according to my references, the second to the last stage of personality development is called generativity. And we hear that and we think, "Oh, yes, having children." That is obviously one way to be generative. But for those of us who do

Jesus ratchets up the tension as he makes declarations which are hard for most of his listeners to accept.

"I am the bread of life."  Some notes on how to receive Holy Communion.

We will get to "the bread of life" next week.  Today, I call on a teddy bear to help us focus on "bearing with" each other (Ephesians).

Ephesians, on the "assembly," fits in well with the other readings' emphasis on shepherding.

Five minutes of music at the beginning of a Mass at the Cathedral of the Apostolic Vicariate of Izabal, Puerto Barrios, Guatemala.  The entire country was celebrating the 500th anniversary of the first Mass in Guatemalan territory.

First Sunday homily with, perhaps, better audio quality.  On standoffishness and its opposite.

Using a new app for recording MP3 files.

Heaven will be beyond our imagining ... and also very familiar.