Sunday Homilies

from Father Kevin Laughery, Troy St. Jerome and St. Jacob St. James Parishes, Diocese of Springfield in Illinois. Note: Comments from this page do not reach me; instead, email: kl@kevinlaughery.com

The Podcasts

2024 Dec 15 SUN: THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT
Zep 3: 14-18a/ Is 12: 2-3. 4. 5-6 (6)/ Phil 4: 4-7/ Lk 3: 10-18

Very quickly, I want to let you know that we have a number of people who are coming forward and seeking to enter the Catholic Christian way of life, and therefore we are planning to reform our team for what we properly call the Order of Christian initiation of adults, the OCIA.

You'll remember it used to be called the RCIA for the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, but now we're told that Order is the proper word rather than Rite.

So we'll be making plans to come together after the first of the year, so you have time to consider whether you might want to participate in the process of bringing people into the Catholic Christian faith.

Obviously, today the theme is joy, and we hear this very clearly from St. Paul. We also hear it from the prophet Zephaniah.

He wrote a very brief book of about three chapters. It is surprising that he ends up talking about joy, because Zephaniah is also the source of a hymn which we don't sing very much anymore.

In Latin it's called the Dies Irae, English is Day of Wrath, and it emphasizes God's anger. So it's surprising that this same prophet should talk to us about our cause for joy for the coming of a Savior.

And in the Gospel we find cause for joy as well. We may think of John the Baptist as a severe sort of person, but it says at the end of today's Gospel passage that he preached good news to the people.

Well obviously we need to consider joy. Some of you may know that I have made a study on my own of what has been called emotional intelligence.

The idea behind that is that we seek to understand our own feeling states. To recognize that, for instance, anger can be channeled into steady work to undo injustice, for instance.

When we understand and are at peace with our own feelings, we can look at other people and develop what we might call fellow feeling or empathy with the people in our life, understanding ourselves as feeling people who are necessarily pushed around by the circumstances of life.

And we remember at all times if we can be pushed around we are limited creatures of God and we always remember our relationship with God, our Creator. In recent times we've been given a sort of vocabulary for understanding feelings.

There have been a couple of animated films that have come out in recent years. The first one, Inside Out, came out in 2015.

And then there was a sequel just this last summer: Inside Out 2. And the feelings in one person are characters in the film.

And in both, there is the character called Joy, and Joy is understood to be kind of a coordinator among all the feelings. We can think about this and realize that, for any one of us, to have joy is to have a sense of the whole of life, the entirety of life.

And we might ask ourselves where is joy when we are feeling sad? -- For instance, when we lose someone close to us.

One thing that sadness can do for us is demonstrate to us how important that person was, what a gift he or she was to us. And ultimately it informs a sense of joy, which joy is about the whole picture of life, the whole variety of life.

So as we come together on this day of Advent called Rejoice Sunday, Gaudete Sunday, we seek to understand that we can be joyful as we look ahead to our God, specifically Jesus, the Son of God, bringing all things to completion and perfection. We've said in recent weeks that we know of people who just think of that occurrence as "the end of the world."

We all have limited imaginations and the notion of the end of the world particularly limits our imaginations because, when all is brought to perfection, that is really the beginning. We step onto the threshold of eternal life itself and an unending joy.

So we give thanks that this season of Advent is preparing us to step onto the threshold of eternity, to find our complete vocation in praise of God who created us to praise him without end.

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I left out a lot from Saturday evening.  I left out John the Baptist almost entirely, and he is described as bringing "good news" to people.  The fact that he tells people, essentially, to do what is expected of you, is a response against elaborate sacrifices for supposedly getting God's attention.

Direct download: KML_2024-12-15_830am.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:52pm CST

2024 Dec 8 SUN: SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT
Bar 5: 1-9/ Ps 126: 1-2. 2-3. 4-5. 6 (3)/ Phil 1: 4-6. 8-11/ Lk 3: 1-6

 

I imagine that many of us, when we're trying to read the Bible, find a particular frustration in that we would like for the Bible to be sort of like journalism or a history book that mentions dates. We want to know when certain events happened. And the Bible is not good about that. These [issues] are not a priority. 

We do, however, have today the Gospel of Luke. It is using a lot of different data points to fix a particular event in history. And essentially to say that this event is for the sake of rewriting all of human history. Luke does this in the beginning of chapter two. We always hear at the Christmas Mass during the night about the first census of the Roman Empire and the fact that Jesus was born during that time. Luke then turns to a much more recent event, and he has a lot more data points. So we hear about who the emperor was and who the empire's governor was and various kings and high priests. So he fixes a particular time when John the Baptist began his proclamation of good news. And people have studied this, and it would seem then that John the Baptist began his work in the year that we call AD 27 or Common Era CE 27. And scholars have further determined that Jesus must have been crucified in AD 30, thus allowing for what we have traditionally understood to be a three-year public ministry by Jesus. 

And Luke is saying, pay attention. God is entering human history definitively through the Son of God, the Word made flesh. And thereby human salvation is assured, union with our God is assured. And that is the way in which history gets rewritten. This passage quotes Isaiah, who uses an image similar to the prophet Baruch in the first reading. And it must have seemed utterly fantastic what he was describing. I mean, we in our day have earth-moving equipment. But the idea of leveling mountains and filling up valleys, that's still a stretch for us to imagine. 

And these images are being used to say God wants to give us a straight path to Himself. And this is cause for joy. You know that in recent weeks I've been talking about the idea of the end of the world, which idea really does not appear in the sacred scriptures. The Bible does not focus on an end so much as the beginning of eternity. And we know that our hearts must be convicted of this joy that is open to every human being. And we know we are preparing ourselves well to welcome the fullness of the kingdom of God when in accord with St. Paul we seek to discern what is of value. There's another translation I like that says to discover what really matters. And that is the good news that you and I are hearing today. I need to make a transition now because Keith Detmer is going to speak to us about the Centennial Campaign, which is the responsibility of every one of us to participate in. So I will stop there and let Keith continue.

Direct download: KML_2024-12-08_830am.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:38pm CST

2024 Dec 1 SUN: FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT
Jer 33: 14-16/ Ps 25: 4-5. 8-9. 10. 14 (1b)/ 1 Thes 3: 12 -- 4: 2/ Lk 21: 25-28. 34-36

I have been thinking about how the events of our life present a variety of contrasts. Things we may desire, things we may not desire so much.

Yesterday I have to say I was not happy to see the snow come, Although I know that many people like to see the snow. For me it's one more thing to get through and try to live with. 

On the other hand, my nephew scored three touchdowns yesterday.

So this is how we all experience life. It's a series of things.

And I think especially the good things just take us by surprise. And we understand that we do not have to be the ones who die of fright, as Jesus says in the Gospel today. In fact all the Scriptures today are very encouraging.

We have the promise from Jeremiah. This is really a promise and a prophecy related to Jesus. The last shoot shall come to establish justice. 

And likewise St. Paul tells the Thessalonian Christians that they can look forward to what God is bringing.

Again we think of what is coming as something to dread. We can look back two weeks.

You never actually find in the Scriptures the term "the end of the world." But we have that popular notion. And of course most of the time when we hear the word "end" we think that something is over. It is not proceeding further.

And in fact all these blessings that we find in the midst of our sufferings are hints. They are pointing to something far greater than ourselves.

And really the season of Advent is about the good things that are coming to be. As we witness and recognize the fullness of God's Kingdom.

We know that here and now we struggle. So that God's grace might be at work within us. So that we might not be working against ourselves. Allowing the very life of God to show its love and its general goodness in what we do.

So as we enter upon this season we remember that even as we prepare to celebrate the humble coming of our Savior, we look ahead to His glorious coming and realize, "No, we don't have to die of fright." We can be the ones who welcome everything that our God intends to work for us and give to us.

Direct download: KML_2024-12-01_830am.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:35pm CST

2024 Nov 24 SUN: CHRIST THE KING S (Thirty-fourth and Last Sunday in Ordinary Time)
Dn 7: 13-14/ Ps 93: 1. 1-2. 5 (1a)/ Rv 1: 5-8/ Jn 18: 33b-37

This Gospel is a part of the passion according to John, which we read every year on Good Friday. And we need to take note of the overriding quality of that we find here. And that quality is the fact that Jesus is presented to us as someone who, though about to be condemned to death, is in fact in charge of the situation. Pilate is troubled, even though he goes ahead and condemns this man to death. He really doesn't know what is going on. And he is in fact just caught up in events which seem to be of his making because he makes that decision to have Jesus crucified. We heard at the end of this passage Jesus' words, "Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice." And we may remember that immediately after Jesus makes this statement, Pilate asks, "What is truth?" He is not asking as a sincere seeker. He is asking as a cynic. Because Pilate gave up his search for truth long before this moment. We must understand the kingship of Jesus. Really, Jesus is saying that titles such as king do not do him justice. Very likely Pilate in his conversations with the religious leaders heard them translating Messiah, the anointed one, to mean a king because they thought that was the only way that Pilate would understand what they considered to be the crime of Jesus. So we come to this celebration of Jesus as universal king. And we understand that he reigns over us because he is completely our servant. He has laid down his life for all human beings. And we understand that if we are to serve as Jesus served, we will be looking for ways to aid our brothers and sisters. This is a surprising kingship, and it causes us to feel great surprise within our own hearts every time we think about our crucified king who won for us resurrection.

Direct download: KML_2024-11-24_830am.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:31pm CST