2025 Aug 31 SUN: TWENTY-SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Sir 3: 17-18. 20. 28-29/ Ps 68: 4-5. 6-7. 10-11/ Heb 12: 18-19. 22-24a/ Lk 14: 1. 7-14

Wednesday morning, Andy Schwierjohn sent me an email. He had received word of the shooting at the Catholic parish in Minneapolis.

He remembered that my sister Kathy is a teacher in a Minneapolis Catholic school. So I turned to the news and it was not my sister's school.

In fact, I had spoken with her just a couple days before and I knew that her school was not starting till this week. But Kathy did inform me after this shooting that she has a number of acquaintances and connections with Annunciation Parish and School.

And we can repeat the words of many being heartbroken over this very sad event. To orient ourselves with today's Scriptures, we might think about what is described in the Letter to the Hebrews.

That writer is making a contrast between the things that were experienced in Old Testament times such as the dark cloud coming over Mount Sinai. He contrasts that with what he describes as the heavenly kingdom whereby we find ourselves in a place of light and peace, a place of joy.

And really every time we gather for Mass we are experiencing a preview of heaven itself. And so it is all the more painful that we find such a gathering interrupted in a lethal way.

We can also think about our first reading, our Psalm and our Gospel today. And we see that all of these passages are making connections between humility and what we might call solidarity.

There is a union with people who are suffering in various ways. And so we don't simply have an etiquette lesson from Jesus.

We find ourselves with that concept of humility. And as we reflect on who we are, we realize a number of things.

In light of the horror that many parents have felt, they realize that it is difficult, if not impossible, to say to a child, "I will always be able to protect you." We know our limits and we know how great a problem we are facing.

And I just read a very thoughtful column by someone who said when something of this nature occurs, our tendency is to want to blame some deficiency in the political positions of those we consider the opposition. But we know that that simple blame does not get at the heart of the matter.

It also happened this week that Pope Leo announced the theme of the World Day of Peace coming up this January 1st. The theme is "Peace be with you" -- one of the first things that Jesus himself said once he was risen.

We have to consider, and this is another bit of the work of humility, is to consider the aggression to be found in all of us. And we know that an energy toward defending ourselves is, to some extent, needed in all of us.

We must, however, consider that we are inclined against actually showing aggression. We don't want to use our fists, for instance, but we can also use words that cut and damage.

And in light of Pope Leo's theme for the World Day of Peace, he is speaking of that peace with a memorable phrase. "Peace which is unarmed and disarming." I consider that phrase, and I have said to myself, "That's a striking phrase." And right away you say, "Well, striking, there's aggression even in that word." So we have much work to do in exercising humility, and there is one more thing that we can consider.

I seem to have heard this in the news reports, but I can't say that I can confirm it. I do know what the Psalm was on that Wednesday, and it was Psalm 139. It is said that the gunfire began during the Psalm.

It happens that Psalm 139 is the great psalm about God's intimate knowledge of each of us, and his love for each of us, and the invitation that we have to grow in self-knowledge by which we can learn to have peaceful hearts, and encourage peace in others.

2025 Aug 24 SUN: TWENTY-FIRST SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Is 66: 18-21/ Ps 117: 1. 2/ Heb 12: 5-7. 11-13/ Lk 13: 22-30

I remember, from about 20 years ago, being at a meeting with a number of non-Catholic Christian pastors and I was explaining to them what the Second Vatican Council had to say about the possible salvation of people who've never heard of Jesus Christ. And Vatican II, in the Constitution on the Church, says that such people, if they are seeking what is true and good, they can be granted entrance into the heavenly kingdom. And I remember one of the pastors objecting to this. He says, "That's universalism." Universalism traditionally has been the idea that everybody is saved. And I suppose that it kind of tore at his idea of religion. I guess he had this idea that there are winners and losers. I don't know. But we have this question posed today. It says that someone asked Jesus, "Lord, will only a few people be saved?" 

Well, Jesus does not give an answer -- a numerical answer. He does tell us that we need to pay close attention because this is a relationship we are talking about. A relationship into which every one of us has been invited. He says it isn't enough to say yeah we knew you, you taught in our streets, you should know us.

That is not sufficient. We are called to cultivate a truly personal relationship with the Son of God who came among us truly human as well as truly God -- in order to bear on our behalf all that we find ourselves having to bear in this often painful mystery of our earthly existence. Saint Teresa of Avila wrote that Jesus is our best friend precisely because he chose to take upon himself what we find ourselves having to suffer in a sinful world.

The pastor I remember from 20 years ago could be confronted today with what we hear from just about the very end of the prophet Isaiah. There is universalism being expressed here. You heard all those unfamiliar place names. In fact there's one in there that is so unfamiliar that nobody can identify it with anything. They don't know which nation Isaiah is talking about but they are converging from the east and the west and from the north and the south.  

And those are Jesus' words today in the Gospel. Yes, there is something universally offered. We have the responsibility of really accepting this gift of the God who became one of us and we hope that, by the way we live our lives, many others will be attracted to this Kingdom of God announced by Jesus. 

Of course we might talk about these things in ways that do not open themselves to relationships. We've heard it in the news over the past week about people reflecting and worrying, I guess you could say, about whether they would get to heaven. And that's a very American way of putting things. We can find it if we pick up a great American novel, Huckleberry Finn, and discover that Huck is being taught about the "good place" and the "bad place." Well, it's not so much a place; it is a relationship. It is coming to love the God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who first of all created us and then recreated us through the sacrifice of Jesus. So Jesus, when he speaks about the narrow way, is talking about what the Letter to the Hebrews is illustrating. Yes, we find ourselves disciplined, but this is so that we may be strong. He refers to our hands and our knees. Hebrews is saying you can keep traveling this path because you are on a path in which you discover that you are being healed.

2025 Aug 17 SUN: TWENTIETH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Jer 38: 4-6. 8-10/ Ps 40: 2. 3. 4. 18 (14b)/ Heb 12: 1-4/ Lk 12: 49-53

We have heard in the book of Jeremiah about the lot of the prophet. People didn't like what Jeremiah was saying, and he was essentially saying, "You had better become more faithful to the Lord, the one God. Otherwise you will be taken captive and carried off to Babylon." People didn't want to hear that -- the princes, it says. So they threw him into a muddy cistern.

Well, it is said that the purpose of a prophet is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. And there is a prophetic element in preaching. And we must be clear that primarily a prophet is not someone who foretells future events. The prophet speaking on behalf of God might refer to future developments, but they are rooted in what is going on in the here and now. And it is interesting to hear reactions. I've sometimes heard people say, "I have chosen this parish instead of another parish because over there they're too political." I would propose that it is the listener who is being political. The listener hears basic principles that derive from our Christian faith principles of justice. But the listener is being political because that listener is clinging to his or her own certainties, things that they have decided upon, and that no one -- not even a word from God -- must contradict. People are uncomfortable when we say such obvious things as war is a bad idea, and people should not be deliberately starved to death. People are uncomfortable when they are told that from the time of the Holy Family's flight into Egypt, the Church has had a deep regard for people who have to migrate. And there are those who say, "Oh, you can't talk about racism. That's controversial." Racism is perhaps the most obvious thing in the world. 

Jesus refers to splits among family members, but I think we can go deeper even than that to look within our hearts and to discover the contradictions that we hold within our hearts. 

We say that we live according to the Word of God. But so often we reject the obvious applications of the Word of God. So we must consider, in accord with the exhortation in the Letter to the Hebrews, that Jesus embraced the cross. He did so out of love for people who are filled with contradictions. We act with love as we receive the Word of God and as we discover how to apply it. We have been given true gifts. The Son of God certainly did not have to become one of us, but he was pleased to do so because he has loved us in our misery and, often, self-imposed misery. So we welcome the love of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and we pray that his example will move us to act in accord with the Word of God and to live lives reflecting justice.

[The homilist was away on August 3.]

2025 Aug 10 SUN: NINETEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Wis 18: 6-9/ Ps 33: 1. 12. 18-19. 20-22 (12b)/ Heb 11: 1-2. 8-19/ Lk 12: 32-48

About 60 years ago, there was a popular song that began "Don't Know Much About History." Well, as we think about that opening line, we must understand that you and I, in fact, must know much about history.

There are people who say that history repeats itself. We've heard people say that it doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme -- an interesting thought. And we also heard it said that those who do not know the mistakes of the past will be condemned to repeat them. So we have all these ideas about history, and in the case of believers in Jesus Christ, we understand that God intervenes in our history in surprising ways.

We start today considering Old Testament times. In Hebrews, we do have an account of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who came to know God. And in the case of Abraham and Sarah, it came about in a most remarkable way by their having a son, Isaac, in their old age. 

The Book of Wisdom describes the Exodus from the slavery of the children of Israel in Egypt. Again, God is intervening in human history in a surprising way. And then we come to the Gospel, and we understand that these words of Jesus have to do with His bringing all things to completion.

You know, we talk about that quite a bit during the season of Advent. People talk about the end of the world, and the idea that seems to be behind that is, well, everything's over, but that's not what it means. When we come to what we call the last day, it is the last day because time is over, and we enter into timelessness. And we forever will be able to praise our God. We will be able to behold Him. 

Now, again, we tend to think of this as somewhat forbidding, rather scary. We think of a judgment, and we imagine that we will just squeeze in by a hair. But we have to consider what is going on in this Gospel passage, in this parable. Jesus is setting up a situation in which we imagine ourselves as servants at some great estate. And we are hoping that it appears to the Master that we are at our jobs, and we hope that He will look favorably upon us and not fire us and allow us to keep our jobs.

Jesus is describing something utterly different. He is saying that when the Master meets the servants, He will surprise them. He will say, "I am so happy to see you that I want you to recline at the table, and I will wait on you." That's something we do not expect.

But if we are truly to appreciate the love that our God has for us, we need to reflect on that idea. So as we think about the course of history and our brief moments within it, we remember that time is followed by timelessness. And that timelessness as we gaze upon the loving face of our God forever will be filled with great joy.

2025 Jul 27 SUN: SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Gn 18: 20-32/ Ps 138: 1-2. 2-3. 6-7. 7-8 (3a)/ Col 2: 12-14/ Lk 11: 1-13

We can take the second reading today to provide a foundation for what is being discussed in the first reading and the Gospel. So from St. Paul's letter to the Colossians, we have a statement about the death and resurrection of Jesus and the sacrament of baptism. He says that each of us in our baptism has been joined with the death of Jesus and with his resurrection. So these are gifts. This is a mystery which we are living now. And if we are aware of how great this gift of baptism is, we will understand how to pray and particularly we come to understand that we must pray in order to emphasize and affirm the relationship which is set up because of this entry into Jesus' Paschal Mystery. So in the first reading we have Abraham bargaining with God. And there really is no definite conclusion here and in fact Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed. But this bargaining that Abraham carries out is a sign to us of the mercy of God. And we must have mercy on our minds when we pray. We say God is merciful; we must be merciful as well. 

So we come to the Gospel. We have a parable and we are called to imagine someone who has called it a night and locked the door and gone to bed. And then at midnight somebody comes knocking with this request. And it is a perfectly normal thing to say, "I can't do that." But Jesus says it is because of persistence that the man in bed will get up and give what the petitioner is asking for. I always want to edit one of the lines in here. Jesus says he will get up to give him whatever he needs because of his persistence. I always want to read it: He will get up to give him whatever he needs just to get rid of him. 

And then we have the promise from Jesus. Ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you. We understand that [in] living the mystery of being united with our God, prayer is essential to that relationship. And yes, we ask for many things, but again going back to our foundation in baptism, we come to understand that our God has given us many things, many things which we never thought of asking for. We have our life, we have our health, we have the company of the people that God has put into our lives and they are gift to us. Jesus says if you ask, you will receive the Holy Spirit and that could be like looking at a box we haven't unwrapped. We still need to find out who that Holy Spirit is and what strength God the Holy Spirit gives us. So we need to consider these things about prayer and realize that prayer is not merely petition, it is also thanksgiving. And we enjoy and indeed revel in our relationship with our God as along with the petitions we give thanks for everything.

2025 Jul 20 SUN: SIXTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Gn 18: 1-10a/ Ps 15: 2-3. 3-4. 5 (1a)/ Col 1: 24-28/ Lk 10: 38-42

We may have been confused last week by some words of St. Paul in this letter to the Colossians, and today he provides us with another puzzle.

He says, "In my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ for the sake of His body, the Church." And we have to ask, what could that possibly mean?

We understand and we teach consistently that the suffering, the passion of Jesus, His death, His resurrection, these things are sufficient for our salvation, that free gift we often talk about.

So what could Paul mean by this? It seems that he is thinking about the growth of the Church, and feeling a sense of solidarity, we might say, with all the people who will come into the Church, the People of God. As he makes his way around various communities along the Mediterranean Sea, he witnesses growth, and he knows that sufferings will have to take place as a result of this growth.

And we turn to the first reading today, and we have a demonstration of a quality to be expected in that world at that time. The quality -- the virtue -- of hospitality.

And we find this to be a somewhat strange story, because it's kind of disjointed. First it says that Abraham met the Lord, and then it says that there are three men before Abraham.

So this is rather confusing. As Christians, we have tended to look back on this incident of Genesis chapter 18, and we see here a foreshadowing of the revelation of God as Trinity, one God, three persons. And of course the Trinity was not revealed until the time of Jesus. So that is a thing that we as Christians can do when we reflect on the Old Testament, that there are things there that are pointing to the Christian revelation.

And so Abraham and Sarah exercise hospitality. Their world was a bit different from ours. And we can reflect and realize that you and I have time itself sort of chopped up into little pieces, because we are going here and there and meeting social responsibilities of various kinds.

Abraham's world was not like that. They had the time to pay attention to somebody who would just show up. They had traveled long distances themselves, and they knew that there were very, very few stops along the way for refreshment. 

So they exercised hospitality, and then comes the message: "By about this time next year, Sarah will have a son." And if we go on further in chapter 18 of Genesis, we find out that Sarah is listening and she's laughing. And later Abraham said, "You were laughing." And she replies, "No, I wasn't." So it's quite a thing, and an obvious thing to laugh about if you are past childbearing. But yes, they had their son, Isaac, and that name comes from a root meaning laughter. 

Hospitality is at work in the Gospel as well. And this time, Martha, the one offering the hospitality, is consumed with anger, not anger, with anxiety. Yeah, there's anger mixed in there too, definitely, as she thinks that Mary ought to be helping her. But what prevails in Martha is anxiety. And Jesus speaks to calm her.

"Martha, Martha, you are anxious and upset about many things. Only one thing is needed, and Mary has opened herself to that one thing necessary."

Every one of us knows that we have a lot of anxiety. This is kind of well an unorganized feeling, you might say. We know that we believe that much is expected from us, and we go about meeting various obligations, and we wonder whether we have met them all.

And so, like Martha, we can be filled with anxiety. I know I have been in such circumstances, and there is no contrast like the contrast between anxiety and peace.

And we know that our God wants peace for every one of us. And so, with Martha, we trust, we learn to know what really matters, what things are peripheral, so we can settle ourselves in great peace.

Remembering that we can have this gift because God does care for us as Jesus expressed it to Martha. You are anxious and worried about many things, and all you need is my peace.

2025 Jul 13 SUN: FIFTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Dt 30: 10-14/ Ps 69: 14. 17. 30-31. 33-34. 36. 37 OR Ps 19: 8. 9. 10. 11/ Col 1: 15-20/ Lk 10: 25-37

We have all heard from teachers and other people that there is no such thing as a dumb question. No such thing as a stupid question.

We may find ourselves having to ask quite fundamental questions, for instance, if we're in an unfamiliar situation and we just have to get ourselves oriented. We have a case here of someone who is afraid that he has asked a dumb question.

This scholar of the law reminds me of the wealthy man that we also find in the Gospel who asks the same question. And it seems as if both of them want to figure out how to get this salvation thing sewn up, because it is such an inconvenient thing to have to be thinking about salvation all the time.

This man has to give himself credit, because when he answered Jesus' question about what is in the law, he took two laws that are in different books of the Torah and put them together. That is actually something to be proud of.

But after he receives that answer from Jesus, he feels embarrassed. He thinks, "I just asked him a dumb question." And so he had to justify himself by going deeper, and he latches on to that word "neighbor." He asks, "Who is my neighbor?" And Jesus definitely has an answer for him.

So we have this man who has been robbed, stripped, beaten up, and is in a terrible condition on the road. And then along comes what we could call a professional religious person.

And what does that professional religious person do? He says, "I didn't see that." And likewise, another, a Levite, likewise a priest, comes along, sees what has happened in the road. And he says, "I didn't see that." 

And then Jesus says that a third person comes along, and he is a Samaritan.

Now it's kind of strange. The origins of the division between Jews and Samaritans is rather obscure. But it may be somewhat like the situation of our own families, where maybe there's one branch of the family that we don't have anything to do with.

And someone might ask, "Why is that?" And the reply may come back, "I don't remember." But there was this split.

Well, the Samaritan who is looked down upon by the Jews acts with compassion. He is reading the law which is in his heart.

He's in an unexpected situation, but he knows that he has the time and he has the money to address this situation. And he is doing precisely what Moses is talking about. When Moses says, "The law is not up in the sky. The law is not across the sea. It is right here in your heart. You have only to carry it out."

So we have to think very deeply about the answer that Jesus gives to this scholar of the law. And it is interesting that this man cannot bring himself to say "the Samaritan." He says: "the one who treated him with mercy." And Jesus says, "Yes, that is what it means to be a neighbor." And he says, "I respond to the common humanity of all of us in spite of any barriers we may put up." 

In addition, we're beginning to read from St. Paul's letter to the Colossians, which begins with actually a hymn, a canticle, which describes Jesus as the firstborn of all creatures. That line has caused us a lot of trouble. It was especially troublesome in the very early Church. People read that line and said, "Oh, Jesus is not God. There was a time when he was not." But we corrected that mistaken notion.

In fact, it's been said that it's probably well to translate that line, the firstborn OVER all creation. And we remember that there is another line in there that echoes that line. It is the line, "He is the firstborn from the dead." It's good for us to keep those two lines of this canticle in our mind and in our heart, remembering that Jesus toward us has been the good Samaritan, responding to the sorry state, the state of sin that we find ourselves in. He has responded to us on the road and he has lifted us up.

2025 Jul 6 SUN: FOURTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Is 66: 10-14c/ Ps 66: 1-3. 4-5. 6-7. 16. 20 (1)/ Gal 6: 14-18/ Lk 10: 1-12. 17-20

Our Scriptures begin today with an image from the prophet Isaiah of the most natural thing in the world: a mother feeding her child with her own milk. It is an image of comfort. And comfort is something that we all need. We turn then to the Gospel and it seems as if there's not much in the way of comfort. These 72 disciples are to go out on Jesus' command to proclaim the Kingdom of God in various towns. And Jesus himself seems to foresee, well, you're going in among wolves. That doesn't sound very comforting. They go in pairs and if we, if we reflect on this, we realize that if two people can get along with each other that would seem to be a proof of the integrity of what they are talking about.

And it happens that they come back rejoicing. They are proclaiming and in so many cases successfully proclaiming the Kingdom of God. Now that expression is something that we hear very often but we may not have a good grasp of it. We know the kingdom of the world. We know that our world operates according to many rules that need to be discarded. We proclaim the Kingdom of God to the extent that our own hearts are changed, to the extent that we bring God's peace and love into our own social situations. And in fact we are instruments of this kingdom. Our hearts have been changed and from those changed hearts we bring comfort to the world and we ourselves find comfort. So we must all live on behalf of the Kingdom of God and we must all be disciples like these 72. We take responsibility for bringing good news to a world which needs to be healed and comforted.

These 72 came back rejoicing. You and I, as we carry out our own discipleship, may find that the process is wearying; but we know that our God gives us the perseverance which is necessary for us to keep going. A perseverance which has a goal in mind: our own fullness of life. We hear today from St. Paul at the end of his letter to the Galatians and he is reflecting on the ways in which God has changed him and how he has found that he is to preach freedom to people across the world that he knows. And he is looking at his history of doing this and he says, I bear the brand marks of Jesus on my body. He is speaking about what can be seen. We have to look deeper and remember that, yes, with those brand marks in place there is also a heart which is overflowing and again saying I am here to give comfort to God's people.

2025 Jun 29 SUN: PETER AND PAUL, APS S
Vigil: Acts 3: 1-10/ Ps 19: 2-3. 4-5/ Gal 1: 11-20/ Jn 21: 15-19. Day: Acts 12: 1-11/ Ps 34: 2-3.4-5. 6-7. 8-9/ 2 Tm 4: 6-8. 17-18/ Mt 16: 13-19

When we think of Peter and Paul, we think of their leadership in the early Church. They did different things. They both found themselves in Rome, we believe somewhere between the years 64 and 67, and they were martyred while Nero was emperor. They had differing personalities and they did different things. And it is instructive for us to consider how they led the earliest believers in Jesus.

We see, of course, from the Acts of the Apostles that Peter spent a good deal of time in Jerusalem and the area surrounding it. And what we hear today from the Acts of the Apostles is the threat of death that he was under there. And in fact that passage from Acts 12 begins with the martyrdom of St. James, the brother of John. He was the first of the apostles to be put to death. And it appeared that Peter himself was going to be part of that deadly process. We read about how he was freed from prison in spite of all those guards and all those locks. The locks and the chains fell away and he felt like he was in a dream. And I think we can apply this to ourselves.

Peter did not have an instruction manual for how to lead the People of God. And I'm sure it has occurred to most, if not all of us, that as we carry out our work, it does end up being a case of on-the-job training. We find out for ourselves how to flourish in our chosen work. And we have to get used to that idea for all the dimensions of our life. There are things we feel called to do that we may not dare to do, but the Holy Spirit is giving us strength, giving us the grace to live authentic lives. And we know that that always comes at some risk to ourselves. But we do find ourselves affirmed as we carry out the commands of love and witness to justice for all people. In Peter's case, he became the first bishop of Rome, that is the first of the Popes. And it was with that leadership role that he was put to death. 

Paul had a different journey. He was far more educated than Peter was. He was zealous in persecuting the first Christians. But he met the risen Jesus on the road. He experienced conversion. And in fact, when we are engaged in on-the-job training, that is what is offered to us. Conversion, by which we know that we belong to God and to the God who became human out of love for us. And that truth has to work on us every day. Paul became, as we call him, the apostle to the nations. And he traveled around the Mediterranean world to various places. He founded churches, Corinth in Greece, for instance. And as we hear his words today, which we believe were written from prison in Rome, he says he has fought the good fight. Now this doesn't necessarily mean aggression in the sense that we think. He has fought the good fight by witnessing to the one who has completely changed his life.

And we seek to do the same thing. In our day, the bishops who have succeeded Peter and Paul are lifting up their voices on behalf of justice, especially for people who are poor and utterly vulnerable in our country. They are lifting up their voices. And this is something that Peter in particular had to learn.

To be a leader is not to say I have all the answers. To be a leader is to say I am carrying out a service for the people. And in fact, I do not have all the answers, but I can give witness to what I know is real, to what I know is necessary to live by. I know that the Redeemer of humanity laid down his life out of love for us. And we must ask ourselves every day, in order to be good leaders: Why has God loved us in this way? It is something that just stops us in our tracks. How is it that the Son of God, who did not need to go anywhere near our misery, how would he embrace our misery? Well, he has done so. He has given his life for us. And in submitting to death and to all that would seem to reduce us, in submitting he has been victorious over death. And we give thanks for this sort of leadership.

2025 Jun 22 SUN: THE BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST S
Gn 14: 18-20/ Ps 110: 1. 2. 3. 4/ 1 Cor 11: 23-26/ Optional Sequence Lauda, Sion/ Lk 9: 11b-17

This solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ was instituted in the 13th century. There were people at that time who said, "There needs to be a celebration of the Holy Eucharist which is apart from Holy Thursday." Apparently they had the idea that celebrating the Eucharist on Holy Thursday, the day it was instituted, made things too somber because Jesus' betrayal and arrest and condemnation and crucifixion immediately followed. 

Well, I don't think that we can separate the mystery of the Holy Eucharist from those events because Jesus was instituting the Eucharist so that, as Saint Paul says today, we can proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes again. So we have from Saint Paul this most ancient account of what the earliest Christians did right away after the resurrection and after Pentecost, after the Pentecost event: they gathered together to celebrate the Lord's Supper. 

We also have today this very brief passage from the book of Genesis. There is a concept in Scripture study and it's called typology. In other words, when we examine the Old Testament we can discover things that seem to point to persons and things that happen in the New Testament; and probably the strongest example of typology is Melchizedek. We have to think about this figure who very quickly appears and then just as quickly disappears. He is described as the King of Salem or Jerusalem, so he can [also] be understood as king of righteousness.* That's what we get out of Melchizedek or from the name of Salem, Jerusalem, a king of peace, Shalom. He is described as the king of Salem or Jerusalem and this is more than a thousand years before David claimed Jerusalem as his city. We don't know the origins of Melchizedek and we don't know where he goes after this incident recorded for us in the 14th chapter of Genesis; and he offers bread and wine. So this is a very powerful image of Jesus himself, king of righteousness, king of peace, eternal high priest. These are the many things that we find in Melchizedek which point to Jesus himself. 

So then we come to the Gospel, and I believe that every one of us is always conscious of our need for food such that we will not wander out somewhere where we can't eat or drink. But this is exactly what the people following Jesus did, and I think that this is an indication to us that the people who were following Jesus were well aware of a hunger that went much deeper than the hunger for physical food. They considered all the woes and griefs of their life and they said, "I am in fact hungry for something deeper. I am hungry for my life to make sense and especially for interactions among people to make sense." And so we have this incident recorded. This is actually one of many in the four gospels of Jesus multiplying food. And we see that it is saying, "Yes, we have the deepest needs and hungers of them all. We hunger for life to make sense, for our relationships to make sense, and we find the fullness of sense, of peace, and of love." As Jesus says, "I will not simply feed you with loaves and fishes. I will feed you with myself."

*The "tzedek" of his name refers to righteousness.

2025 Jun 15 SUN: THE HOLY TRINITY S
Prv 8: 22-31/ Ps 8: 4-5. 6-7. 8-9 (2a)/ Rom 5: 1-5/ Jn 16: 12-15

Last evening I spoke about current events and I'm not sure that everybody got the context. And the context is this. There were shootings in the Minneapolis area early yesterday morning. A state representative and her husband were killed. A state senator and his wife were badly injured but it is believed that they will survive. 

You know I've talked in the past about my sister Kathy. Kathy lives in Minneapolis and teaches at a Catholic school, three blocks from where George Floyd was killed.

So yesterday morning I texted her: "How are things where you live?" And she said "quiet" and I said "good." And she said, "My friends and I were going to protest but we have decided against it." And I just replied to her, "There will be time to protest and plenty to protest about." 

We have to lift up our voices.

I refer you to today's bulletin and it ran in last weekend's bulletin as well. And that notice amounts to a protest by the bishops of the United States, and their organization Catholic Relief Services. And it is protesting what I believe is legislation already passed. Cutting back feeding programs in many countries. And all I can say to that is that feeding the hungry is simple humanity.

We must lift up our voices. 

Regarding the Blessed Trinity: We have this beautiful thing from the book of Proverbs. Wisdom always existed with God and we may say that wisdom is the Holy Spirit because after all we list wisdom as one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. We have this description of wisdom as craftsman: One who is playing in the midst of creation. Finding delight in it.

We go on to Saint Paul and he says that the love of God has been poured out upon us in the Holy Spirit. We need to consider whether we are allowing ourselves to receive the Holy Spirit. Maybe we have armor on. Maybe we tell ourselves that we are self-sufficient and we have the right opinions and nothing can touch us. Well, if nothing can touch us, we suppose that God does not need to touch us. Romans talks about being justified by faith. There are too many of us, maybe all of us -- we have the idea that salvation is about getting God to notice us and be favorable to us. Well, God has always known us, has known us for eternity and there is no putting on an act with God. In our vulnerability, and this is a vulnerability that we all must be in touch with, in vulnerability we do allow a small space at least and our God will take advantage of that small space in order to touch us, to love us, so that we will be overwhelmed with what we may have been guarding against. We will trade in doing good things to get God's favor. We will trade that in for the love of God for us and we will do good things simply out of thanksgiving.

And finally, Jesus speaks with his disciples about the activity of both the Father and the Holy Spirit. Jesus, of course, is our point of easiest access. We find it so easy, even though we are filled with wonder that God would become human. But Jesus in his very humanity invites us to see how God loves us. And so we rejoice in God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, not a puzzle to be figured out, a mystery simply to be lived. We pray that being loved by the Holy Spirit we will find the way to true justice.

2025 Jun 8 SUN: PENTECOST S
Acts 2: 1-11/ Ps 104: 1. 24. 29-30. 31. 34/ 1 Cor 12: 3b-7. 12-13 or Rom 8: 8-17/ Sequence Veni Creator Spiritus/ Jn 20: 19-23 or Jn 14: 15-16. 23b-26

We come today to the conclusion, and you might say the crown, of the season of Easter: Pentecost -- what we also refer to as the Birthday of the Church.

And if you were following in Breaking Bread, you may have found it somewhat difficult because of a variety of options for our Scriptures. In fact, there are a variety of options both today on Pentecost itself and also yesterday on the Vigil of Pentecost. Because there are a great number of images of the Holy Spirit, and it's good for us to appreciate those images and discover which are most helpful to ourselves. 

On the banners we have the dove which is associated with the baptism of Jesus. We have other images as well. When the Holy Spirit came down upon the Apostles, it was with a driving wind and with tongues of flame. And in the Gospel today, Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as the Advocate. We can imagine ourselves being sued or otherwise finding ourselves in court. And we want someone to plead our case for us. So this image might be useful as well. 

And St. Paul today speaks of the Spirit as opposed to what he calls the flesh. Now human flesh is not a bad thing in itself. And we remember that the Son of God took on our human flesh out of love for us in order to raise us up, to lift us up. When Paul speaks of the flesh, he is referring to the tendency to think of the self alone. And we know that that sort of self-centered thinking is the cause of much distress in human life. Instead of thinking about the self, we are to understand ourselves as brought together in the Holy Spirit, who makes us here and now into the Body of Christ.

So we have heard many examples of how we might imagine the unimaginable Holy Spirit. And we take comfort in the fact that the mystery of the Holy Spirit -- like the mystery of the Trinity which we will celebrate next week -- this mystery is not a puzzle to be figured out. It is a gift which we are to live. We think of the gifts of the Holy Spirit poured out upon us in the sacrament of confirmation. And we think as well of the fruits of the Holy Spirit, the ways in which the Holy Spirit makes us new people. In fact, I sneaked St. Paul's list of the fruits of the Holy Spirit into the June birthday blessing today. So be sure to listen for those. And we know that there is a difference in our lives. We can find ourselves in a state of agitation or anxiety because a particular situation is affecting us in some way. And we feel powerless in many respects. But we can allow the Holy Spirit to grow within us and to bear fruit so that in similar situations we are not unnerved. We can have peace even when everyone else is in a state of agitation. So we know the working of the Holy Spirit in our own lives. And we are thankful for the difference as we accept God's peace and the understanding of His Word.

2025 Jun 1 SUN: ASCENSION OF THE LORD S (Seventh Sunday of Easter)
Acts 1: 1-11/ Ps 47: 2-3. 6-7. 8-9 (6)/ Heb 9: 24-28; 10: 19-23/ Lk 24: 46-53

As I mentioned last week, I am intending to concentrate through the 15th of June on God the Holy Spirit. 

And we have another help today in the passage from the letter to the Hebrews. He is asking us to imagine the heavenly sanctuary itself, which of course is beyond imagining. I know it exists. It is the proper place for the blessed Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We are to picture God the Son returning to that heavenly sanctuary with His own blood offered in sacrifice for the salvation of all of us. And we are called to understand the difference between offering sacrifices over and over, as opposed to the one great sacrifice which is effective for all of us for all time.

And we understand that once the Son of God has returned to that heavenly sanctuary, He does send power from on high, and this is God the Holy Spirit. I mentioned last week that I think of the Holy Spirit in terms of what you and I experience as we get to know one another and seek to live together according to the love of God. We know that we can put two people together and they can feel very isolated from one another. They can also feel hostile to each other, but the Holy Spirit is in our midst and that Spirit allows us to become friends, to appreciate and love one another.

We understand that the Holy Spirit comes to form the body of Christ here and now in our earthly existence. Today we have also been given two accounts of Jesus' ascension, one from the end of Luke, the other from the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles. And we understand that we are in fact to be the body of Christ here and now following the Apostles. And of course next week we celebrate that strange and beautiful event in which there's a mighty wind and tongues of flame and the ability to communicate across barriers.

This is what we seek to receive and to exercise. This is the gift won for us through the death and resurrection of Jesus in his breaking of the power of evil, in his giving us an invincible power, the power of love.

2025 May 25 SUN: SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER
Acts 15: 1-2. 22-29/ Ps 67: 2-3. 5. 6. 8 (4)/ Rv 21: 10-14. 22-23/ Jn 14: 23-29 (In the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois, the Ascension of the Lord supersedes the Seventh Sunday of Easter. Therefore, the following second reading and gospel may be substituted today: Rv 22:12-14. 16-17. 20/ Jn 17: 20-26)

Given that today is the fifth anniversary of the murder of a man named George Floyd in Minneapolis, we do need to keep in mind all of the ways in which humanity must keep growing. And that includes growing out of cruelty, growing out of race-based conclusions about people. We come together and we hear of the love of the Son of God, and we know we still need to be transformed into His loving likeness.

What I intend to do for the next few weekends is consider the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit may well be the person of the Blessed Trinity which we have the hardest time knowing.

The Scriptures today will help us, but as I say, we will take several weekends through Trinity Sunday on the 15th of June to really focus on the Holy Spirit within God who is Trinity. And of course we all know that the Trinity itself is the mystery in the most strict sense, because it had to be revealed to us. It was not something that our intellects would reach. It had to be revealed to us, and we need to consider how it has been revealed. 

In this Gospel passage, Jesus is speaking as He does so many times of His relationship to the Father. We can consider the relationships we know of Father and Son, of mother and daughter, and we can name many, many more. And as much as we know the love which is shared in these relationships, we must understand that in the Blessed Trinity between the Father and the Son, it is all the more intense. And we have to keep that in mind as we consider the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. So Jesus is introducing to the disciples the Holy Spirit whom He describes as the Advocate, the one who speaks on our behalf. And this is one of many images of the Holy Spirit. I believe that we can look at the other two Scriptures today to gain an appreciation of the Holy Spirit.

First of all, we have from the Acts of the Apostles the first great controversy which the early Church had to work through. That is the question of whether non-Jewish people who come to believe in Jesus are bound to various Jewish laws. The answer came back, no. It had to be worked out at a council in Jerusalem, and we have heard some of that account today. You can read it in full starting in the 15th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. And happily, those who met realized that this was not a time to cling to opinions and to dominate by saying that the opinions that one holds must be right and you must be wrong. It was a process of thinking and praying together, and they came forth with that result. And I like to think that the Holy Spirit is the thing that makes the difference when we think of relationships between two people. The difference between the awkwardness or hostility that we may see there. And the love that can and must develop. We see the Holy Spirit there.

And then in our passage from Revelation today, once again a beautiful image of the new Jerusalem descending from heaven. It says that there was no Temple in the city because God was everywhere within it, and there was light everywhere. And those images can likewise help us with appreciating the Holy Spirit. So we can think on these things and we will continue to stretch our imaginations and come to this deeper appreciation of the Holy Spirit, which is in fact the love shared between the Father and the Son. We know we need love to heal us. We welcome a love that has loved us from the beginning, which we then can apply for healing the world.

2025 May 18 SUN: FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER
Acts 14: 21-27/ Ps 145: 8-9. 10-11. 12-13 (see 1)/ Rv 21: 1-5a/ Jn 13: 31-33a. 34-35

The word "love" is sort of tricky. We have to consider that we give two main meanings to the word "love." And one of them really is a starting point, whereas the other is the goal. We use the word "love" to refer to a simple attraction, such as, "I love ice cream." And that's what we're saying, that ice cream is an object which is desirable to us. It doesn't do anything for the ice cream, so it's not relational. The ice cream has its own fate, which does not build it up in any way. So we have to consider that that is a starting point. There's nothing wrong with it, but we have to build on it.

We find with experience and with, above all, the grace of God, that love is a virtue which recognizes the dignity and worth of all the people in our life. And we respond with love as we say, "Yes, God has given me this dignity, and I want others to respect me and therefore I respect them." And in fact, if I have a responsibility to a particular person, I am utterly committed to that person, and I accept that person even with his or her faults. This is difficult, and we know we need a lot of practice. And we know we need to make mistakes, and the mistakes teach us very well what the opposite of love is.

I think of some history that I am listening to right now. This has to do with the civil rights movement, and in particular I was listening to people who were known as "freedom riders" back in 1961. They confronted unjust segregation laws, witnessing to the injustice, but acting with love, non-violently confronting people. And of course, if we think about that, to respond to violence with non-violence is to cause the violent person to have many, many questions. To ask, "What does this mean? That these people are, first of all, standing up to us, and then not even responding to our force with force." This was a powerful witness in those days, and we see that this applies to our own lives and our own situations, even today.

This requires a lot of practice and a lot of discipline to be so focused on the virtue of love. And this is what Paul and Barnabas were attempting to do. We read today about their visits to various cities along the Mediterranean Sea. They found that there were many people who accepted the good news of Jesus, and there were those who quite flatly rejected them, but they kept at it. They kept going, and we know that that sort of persistence is necessary for us as well. 

We have again a beautiful image from the Book of Revelation of the new Jerusalem coming down from the heavens. We may be puzzled by a statement of John that the sea was no more. We have a reference to this actually in the opening hymn today, which refers to God as the master of the sea. And we may wonder, "Why is the sea no more?" It is because the sea was looked upon as the source, a source at least, of chaos, and it was supposed that there were great sea monsters in the deep.

So "the sea was no more" simply means that God is doing away with chaos and threats. And we ourselves must consider what is chaotic or what is monstrous in the ways in which we respond to one another. And as we reflect and as we accept the grace of God, we will find that we can live out this command: Love one another.

2025 May 11 SUN: FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER
Acts 13: 14. 43-52/ Ps 100: 1-2. 3. 5/ Rv 7: 9. 14b-17/ Jn 10: 27-30

In my junior year of high school at Decatur St. Teresa, I was in a religion course called Social Justice. And in that course I learned about the social teaching of the Catholic Church, which began in 1891 with a writing called Rerum Novarum, that is, "of new things." And in this document, the new things being treated were the changes in society having come about as the result of the Industrial Revolution. And this writing championed the rights of workers so that they might not find themselves as mere cogs in a money-making machine, but that they might be respected in the fullness of their humanity, in the depth of their gifts. This caught my attention because my father was a factory worker at the Decatur Plant of Caterpillar Incorporated. And this is what I needed to hear because I was thinking about the priesthood, but apparently I needed to hear something which would secure for me a sense of the credibility of the Church. And I found it when I heard about this social teaching. The Pope who issued Rerum Novarum in 1891 was Leo XIII. 

Now we have all experienced some amazing events in these past few days, and I can well imagine that you are expecting to hear from me something like, "Oh, Pope Leo, personal friend of mine." No. We are two years apart in age. The thing that we have to keep in mind is that we were on different tracks: he as a member of a religious order, the Augustinians, while I was studying to be a diocesan priest. And it is of some interest that there is some overlap. Two instances. I went to St. Louis in 1977 for my third and fourth years of college seminary. And in that same year, 1977, Pope Leo went to St. Louis for his novitiate period. And no, we did not run into each other. And then we were also studying canon law in Rome at the same time. But we were at two different universities. So there is no possibility of my claiming some kind of closeness. 

But I go back to the thing that sparked my sense of the credibility of the Church back when I was in high school. Robert Francis Prevost took the name Leo XIV because of what Leo XIII wrote about justice. And he said as much to the Cardinals yesterday. And for that reason, I feel a kinship with Pope Leo because our minds and our hearts are on the same thing. We want to see every human being in the world realizing their dignity first of all as being created by God the Father and by being lifted up by the love of Jesus for all of us. 

Now, our bulletin deadline is Tuesday. And I realized, well, I won't have anything about a new pope. And I suspected we'd have a new pope by Friday. Well, it came on Thursday. But I had the bulletin deadline. So I wrote something about the writings of Pope Francis. And it turns out again yesterday as he was addressing the Cardinals that the first apostolic exhortation of Pope Francis, which I mentioned on the front of the bulletin today, was also cited by Pope Leo yesterday. And he intends to continue all that Pope Francis has taught. I am grateful for that. 

Now, this happens to be Good Shepherd Sunday, quite aptly. And we have an account of the difficulties that Paul and Barnabas ran into in proclaiming the Good News. We also have a very joyful image from the Book of Revelation about all the people in white garments who have been washed in the Blood of the Lamb. And again, the Lamb who had been slain is at the center there. And then Jesus, speaking about shepherding, notes the fact that sheep are very good at distinguishing voices. And we pray that we, every one of us, will be attuned as we get to know this new pope and as we consider all the teaching of the People of God, the Church. That we will hear the voice of the Shepherd.

2025 May 4 SUN: THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER
Acts 5: 27-32. 40b-41/ Ps 30: 2. 4. 5-6. 11-12. 13 (2a)/ Rv 5: 11-14/ Jn 21: 1-19

Many people look upon the Book of Revelation as a rather forbidding sort of writing, full of things that can cause terror in people's hearts. But today we have an utterly joyful passage from Revelation. We have a description of heaven itself. And there is mention of the creatures of earth, all creatures, on land and in the sea. And in the center of it all is the Lamb that was slain. We need to think about this. The reason for the great joy is that the Lamb, who is Jesus, was slain, but has overcome death and lives forever. So this is the joyful image of heaven which we receive from the Book of Revelation. 

And as we turn to the other readings today, we see further cause for joy. In the Gospel we find Peter in some sense wishing that he could just disappear. And we're familiar with how he feels. He demonstrates embarrassment when John says it is the Lord. Peter is embarrassed. He says he needs to tuck in his garment. And it says also that he jumped into the water. Now, if he wanted to obscure his presence, he could have done one thing or the other. But he does both. And all of us who are familiar with our own embarrassment can recognize that we can have an exaggerated response to our sense of embarrassment.

Now, embarrassment is particularly tough because we feel powerless when we feel it. And we also feel its connection with shame. And we need to know that shame does not do us any good, whatever. If we feel guilt, we are saying to ourselves, "I did something wrong." But when it's shame that we feel, the message is, "I am something wrong." And that, of course, is something that we must allow to die within us.

Although we've heard that many times, it's not true. And if we experience embarrassment, it's uncomfortable just to feel that way. But we can also kind of torture ourselves by anticipating that we might be embarrassed somehow. And that keeps us in a state of tension which is definitely not creative tension. It is tension which damages us, really. And then we think of Jesus asking Peter three times, "Do you love me?" This is for Peter an occasion for embarrassment because he is remembering the three times he denied even knowing Jesus at the time of his arrest and his passion.

But Jesus is setting Peter free. He is telling him, "You can go forward and you can proclaim the good news of my death and resurrection." It's expressed in somewhat forbidding terms here that there will come a time, Jesus says, when you will be led where you do not want to go. And it's fitting for us at this time when the See of Peter is vacant that we consider what Peter did in laying down his life. And by tradition we understand that this was around between the years 64 and 67 on the Vatican Hill in Rome that Peter was crucified. And this was during the cruel reign of the Emperor Nero. And every successor of Peter, including the one we will probably receive later this week, every one of the successors of Peter is a human being with faults and sins.

Nevertheless, because of the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, we as a church have been able to carry on and not go completely wrong. And we see that Peter goes on in the Acts of the Apostles today to say, "We will obey God rather than men." They received their warning and they said, "We have to keep doing what we've been doing, proclaiming the good news of Jesus." So that was quite a step forward from wanting to sort of hide himself. He and the other apostles were happy to witness and we benefit from their witness. And in this season of Easter, we banish shame from our hearts and we embrace the joy of all that has been won by the Lamb who was slain, but who lives.

2025 Apr 27 SUN: SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER
Acts 5: 12-16/ Ps 118: 2-4. 13-15. 22-24/ Rv 1: 9-11a. 12-13. 17-19/ Jn 20: 19-31

Well, a week ago was Easter Sunday, and after Holy Week and the Easter Triduum, I was ready to get away for a few days. That's exactly what I did.

And awakening Monday morning and learning that Pope Francis had died, I was shocked. Now, we all knew that his health was precarious. We had heard from his doctors that he needed at least two months of recovery. In other words, not doing very much. And at least I had a prediction that came true, and that was that he did not do the washing of feet on Holy Thursday, as much as that act means to him. But on that Holy Thursday, he did visit a prison very close to the Vatican. And we are aware that on Easter itself, he was present and made himself present. He was with us through Easter Sunday itself. And then, as we know, he died.

And we have had a great gift from Pope Francis in his 12 years as Bishop of Rome. I am planning to give you information on his various writings over the past 12 years. They are utterly beautiful and they are very easy to access. You just have to go to vatican.va. Of course, one difficulty with papal documents is they always have, or most of the time, have a Latin name, sometimes an Italian name. So that's always a bit difficult, but we have the bulletin at our disposal so we can make those very precious documents known to all of us. 

And here on the Second Sunday of Easter, we're getting started in the Acts of the Apostles and the Book of Revelation. And it is especially significant that this first passage we have from Revelation includes Jesus. This is the one like a Son of Man, amid the seven lampstands that St. John sees. 

And of course, Jesus is present in this Gospel.

We have to understand that the good news, which we proclaim Sunday after Sunday and indeed day after day, is absolutely precious to us. In fact, our own faith in resurrection relies upon the witness of these people.

And we know that they were not just making something up. They tell us that they were surprised and amazed that this had happened, that Jesus was risen from the dead. He had told them this many times, but they were afraid to question him further about that. They were already in great sorrow when he said he had to lay down his life: he had to die. And so they are bringing us this greatest of good news as people who weren't expecting it. 

There's a theologian I rely upon a great deal who explains that you and I live in a world mediated by meaning. Well, what does that mean? We know we have our own personal experience of things, and that personal experience is extremely important. We also have what we call common sense, and then there is the world mediated by meaning. 

We can't personally experience everything that goes on in the world. Our ability to reason out particular things, that is quite limited as well. But then we have mediation by meaning, and by this is meant that so many things that we know are given to us by people who have had the personal experience. And for this reason, we understand the witness of the apostles to be utterly precious to us. This is the basis on which we have faith in Jesus' resurrection.

Jesus said to Thomas, "Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed." Well, this is the vast majority of all Christian believers, all through the nearly 2,000 years since these events occurred. We want to develop a sense of being profoundly gifted. And in this way, we will be happy to keep passing on the gift.

2025 Apr 20 SUN: EASTER SUNDAY. The Resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Acts 10: 34a. 37-43/ Ps 118: 1-2. 16-17. 22-23/ Col 3: 1-4 or 1 Cor 5: 6b-8/ Sequence Victimae Paschali Laudes/ Jn 20: 1-9 or Mk 16: 1-7 or, at an afternoon or evening Mass, Lk 24: 13-35

On this day of resurrection, we remember how we came here. We remember that it was through a remembrance during the weeks of Lent, a remembrance of how the Son of God [had] taken on our human nature and be[come] truly human, as well as truly God.

Submitted to all the sufferings which every human being encounters in this world which is twisted by sin, he offered his life. He accepted the cross, and he said, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." And then the incredibly surprising thing occurred. It was something that even those closest to him were not grasping and did not grasp until it occurred.

When he rose victorious from death, he conquered all the griefs of this world. We may want to question how he did it. We may want to say, "Well, in an instant at the time that you rise from death, why didn't you banish all suffering?" One partial answer to that is the fact that we have to turn our hearts over to him.

We read at the Easter Vigil last night Ezekiel's words about a new heart and a new spirit, exchanging our stony hearts for truly living responsive hearts of flesh. And we must remember that the resurrection is not some otherworldly thing.

As Peter told Cornelius in the Acts of the Apostles, "We ate and drank with him after his resurrection." We profess every Sunday that we believe in the resurrection of the body. Our God loves us as we are, body and soul.

And as we turn our hearts over to him, and as we recognize the meaning of the baptism by which we ourselves have died and are risen with Jesus, so we are called, as Colossians says today, to live out that baptism, and we can do so because, in fact, we have died with Jesus.

If the resurrection is something that we find we have a hard time with, we have to remember that those closest to Jesus did not dare to ask him what he meant. When he said, "I must be put to death and then rise from the dead," they never pressed him on that question.

The news of his death stopped them in their tracks. It was something that it seemed impossible to believe. They would not dare to believe it.

But in our baptism, in our conversion, as our stony hearts become hearts of flesh, we discover that we are willing to bear the griefs of this world in witness to Jesus' resurrection. So this is our great joy and promise this day, and throughout all the Sundays of the Easter season leading up to Pentecost.

We have before us a world which obviously has not been rid of suffering. We look at the human family across the world, and we see wars, and we see policies of government which in no way speak of the inheritance of all the people of God, an inheritance into resurrection and eternity.

We must, as we witness to resurrection, witness to the human dignity which leaves wars behind as something curious and cruel, things that we cannot abide. This resurrection is for the sake of our changing and of the world changing.

Jesus has given us his death and his resurrection. We are called to act with courage, to witness to truth and goodness and love in this world of sorrows.

2025 Apr 13 SUN: PALM SUNDAY OF THE LORD'S PASSION
Procession: Lk 19: 28-40. Mass: Is 50: 4-7/ Ps 22: 8-9. 17-18. 19-20. 23-24/ Phil 2:6-11/ Lk 22: 14 -- 23: 56

We have heard from a suffering servant song of Isaiah and also from the great hymn of St. Paul's Letter to the Philippians regarding the self-emptying of Jesus, true God, and true man. And there is so much that we could comment on in St. Luke's Passion, but I will point out just one detail. Anyone else who addresses Jesus in Luke's Gospel uses terms such as Lord and Master. But the man who is crucified along with Jesus, the man who rebukes the other criminal, this man says, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." And this is the only time in Luke's Gospel* in which Jesus is addressed by his name. So there is a great intimacy to be found in this strange spectacle. He must have heard Jesus teach at some point. And now as both are dying, he makes this request with his first name, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." And Jesus replies, "This day you will be with me in paradise." 

We remember that the reason for Jesus' death was that he might open the gates of heaven, the gates of paradise, so that all could enter. And we think very kindly of the first man who proceeded [there] with Jesus.

* [in fact, in ANY Gospel]

2025 Apr 6 SUN: FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT
Is 43: 16-21/ Ps 126: 1-2. 2-3. 4-5. 6 (3)/ Phil 3: 8-14/ Jn 8: 1-11

Last week I spoke of the Easter Triduum and specifically the Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord's Supper. That will be 7 p.m. Thursday, April 17th right here.  I mentioned foot washing and, along with the sign-up for the chicken dinner, I have a sign-up for people who will commit to having their feet washed at that Holy Thursday Mass. So I hope you will sign up. I think I had, last time I looked, I had four out of the twelve. So please give that careful consideration. 

I have something rather disturbing to talk about first of all. I, just yesterday, I read about a priest in the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas who was shot to death on Thursday. He was from India and specifically the Diocese of Cuddapah. Now just in the past couple of weeks I have been in touch with another priest of the Diocese of Cuddapah, one who works in South Carolina, because the Diocese of Cuddapah is to be the recipient of our offerings on the occasion of our Mission Co-op weekend. When we do this once a year we have someone make an appeal to aid the church in places that really need it. The priest in South Carolina, Father John Bosco, said, "Well, I won't be coming, but I will be finding for you a priest working in the States to come to your parish." And we think it will be in July. But that's particularly shocking because we already feel a connection with that particular diocese in India. So we pray for the priest who was killed and for the shooter and for all who are in mourning over this tragic act. And we want to remember that as a matter of fact there are numerous [such] priests working in the United States. We refer to them by our shorthand as international priests and they are serving us so very well right here in our midst. And we are grateful for them. 

Well, the prophet Isaiah says today that God is doing a new thing. And we might consider a new thing that comes to be in our own hearts. This is the gift of compassion, mercy, and forgiveness which is exercised by Jesus himself in this very tense Gospel incident. It's unclear what particular law these experts in the law were referring to when they said, "This woman should be stoned. What do you say, Jesus?" Well, we have Jesus going much, much deeper than looking at observed behavior. He is looking deeply into the hearts of this woman and the accusers and in fact all of us. And it's interesting that these men go away one by one beginning with the elders. I trust that that is a sign of the wisdom we all hope to gain as we reflect on our lives.

So Jesus and the woman are there and Jesus exercises complete mercy. And this is a mercy that you and I all count on. And it does settle our hearts, makes them very, very peaceful. We grow in a sense of personal connection with the one who died for us.

We also hear today from St. Paul and he is saying that his conversion experience, his Damascus Road experience -- when he turned from persecuting the Christian way to embracing it -- Paul says that in light of that, so many other things in life are just so much rubbish. "Rubbish" is the polite translation. You go back to the original; he is actually talking about earthier stuff. But we want to develop this attitude as well: to learn to value all the gifts we have received from our God, especially the forgiveness of our sins.

We accept the peace which comes to us and we proceed to celebrate the gift of Jesus' death and resurrection.

2025 Mar 30 SUN: FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT
Jos 5: 9a. 10-12/ Ps 34: 2-3. 4-5. 6-7 (9a) / 2 Cor 5: 17-21/ Lk 15: 1-3. 11-32

Well, we are coming close to the celebration of Holy Week and the Easter Triduum. And I ask you especially to keep Holy Thursday in mind. We'll have the Mass of the Lord's Supper here Thursday, April 17th at 7 p.m. And you know that there is an element of Holy Thursday which is very, very dear to the heart of Pope Francis. And obviously he is not going to be doing this himself this year. But we need to do it, all the while praying for his good health and his recovery. It's the washing of feet. And you know that Pope Francis has gone to various places in Rome on Holy Thursday to perform the foot washing. And very often he goes to prisons when he washes the feet of men and women alike. And many of the people are not Catholic or Christian. But he has gone and he has performed this singular demonstration of service as a prelude to his ultimate service of offering himself on the altar of the cross. So please keep the Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord's Supper in mind. And think of the fact that our God does go to people who think they are abandoned or who think they have lost any chance of being united with God. I believe that makes for a very powerful prayer.

So today we have heard a very well-known story told by Jesus. And I consider it his second most annoying parable. I think the most annoying is the one about the workers in the vineyard who get surprised at the end of the day by the way in which the owner of the vineyard pays them for their day's work. Jesus meant for these parables to be annoying, to be provocative. And we find ourselves in this parable saying, "What would we do if we were in this situation? What if I were the younger son? What if I were the older son? What if I were the father?" These parables are intended to work on us. And as we are reminded here today, Jesus directed this parable to the scribes and Pharisees: people who had hardened their hearts against Jesus, who thought that they had no need to listen to him. 

I've been thinking about the connection between this parable and the first reading from the book of Joshua. And it is a somewhat obscure reading and it does require a certain amount of explanation. Joshua was Moses' aide. And when Moses died, Joshua took over as the leader of the people, and at long last they emerged from their 40 years in the wilderness. They emerged into the land which God had promised to them. And I think the connection between Joshua and the parable is that it has to do with the expression we have, "coming into one's own." And we use that expression to mean that after much preparation and much anticipation, the person finally comes into his or her vocation and is able at last to use the abilities God gave to them.

I believe that this parable is about a man who had a strange idea of what it meant to come into his own. He said, "Give me the share of the estate even though you're not dead yet." And then he took all that wealth and yeah, his life was a never-ending party.
Well, of course, never-ending parties come to an end. But this is what is going on. He has a very maladaptive idea of what life is about. And he discovers what it really is as his father welcomes him back. 

We also have from St. Paul a discussion of the uniqueness of Jesus. And of course we will be celebrating his uniqueness as our Savior, particularly in the Easter Triduum. St. Paul says, "God made him who did not know sin to be sin," which may be a rather puzzling statement to us. We can actually develop it by saying he became a sin offering, and in fact he became THE sin offering. It was he who bore our sins and all the effects of the sin of this world in order to liberate us.

And so we have something pointing us directly toward Easter. And we open our hearts in thanksgiving to this personal gift of the Son of God who became one of us and has loved us sufficiently so that we too can come home.

2025 Mar 23 SUN: THIRD SUNDAY OF LENT
Ex 3: 1-8a. 13-15/ Ps 103: 1-2. 3-4. 6-7. 8. 11 (8a)/ 1 Cor 10: 1-6. 10-12/ Lk 13: 1-9

It is good to learn that Pope Francis has been released from the hospital. He was going to do -- so this would have been almost four hours ago, a noon praying of the Angelus that is a Sunday noon day custom, there in Rome. And following that he was going back to his home in the Casa Santa Marta. And the doctors say that he will need at least two months of recuperation. It's remarkable that the doctors also said he's been a very good patient. Well, I hope so. [Laughter] But, you know, we're talking about repentance today, and from what I can tell, Pope Francis has this deep, deep urge to be active. And when you have that attitude, it is a hard thing to acknowledge your limits. And you've probably heard this more than once from me that word "limits" is a very big word in my own spirituality. Because I remember that I am God's creature. I am necessarily limited. I am not the one God who is unlimited. So we continue to pray for Pope Francis, and we are grateful that he will remain with us. And we look forward to everything which comes from the next years of his papacy.

These readings seem to be about time. We have this second reading in which St. Paul is making connections between the Exodus of the Israelites and our own Christian sacramental life, particularly baptism and Eucharist. He is comparing baptism to the escape through the parted Red Sea and connecting the Holy Eucharist with the manna from heaven. 

So this is a profound encounter between God and Moses. When it comes to fast and slow, Moses saw this bush that was aflame, and he was assuming that the flame would very quickly consume the bush, but that did not happen. God told Moses of his concern for the people, and that he would deliver them from their slavery. When we think about the events of the Exodus, the tenth plague upon the Egyptians was the death of the firstborn, and this happened in one night. And the Israelites had to leave in great haste. On the other hand, once they escaped, they wandered in the desert for 40 years. 

So we find various expectations about how long something is going to take. And we have to acknowledge that as we move from our slavery to sin, it seems to us to be a long process, particularly, I believe, because we know that we have to change certain habits of ours, and the habits have been long in the making, and undoing them takes a long time as well.

But as we turn to the Gospel, we understand that repentance, in the sense of being a turning toward God, that turning cannot be delayed on our part because the gift of forgiveness, the gift of mercy, is such a precious gift that we must not presume upon it, even though we know we drag our feet in many ways.

And Jesus is saying, don't conclude just from your observation that something terrible happened to someone, that this was God's judgment upon them.

In fact, he directs us to this parable, the fig tree which is not bearing fruit. And the owner of the orchard wants to do away with this tree, but the gardener says, "Give it another year. We'll give it some special attention." Well, this is our time to give ourselves special attention. We know we must quickly orient ourselves toward our God. God does give us time for this cultivation, for this fertilizing.

As we sang in the psalm, "The Lord is kind and merciful." We welcome the time which God gives us, and we want to recognize that this moment is a most acceptable time for the turning of our hearts.

2025 Mar 16 SUN: SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT
Gn 15: 5-12. 17-18/ Ps 27: 1. 7-8. 8-9. 13-14/ Phil 3: 17 -- 4: 1 or 3: 20 -- 4: 1/ Lk 9: 28b-36

My brother had a friend when we were growing up, and my brother passed along to me some of the things that he heard from this friend about their family. 

So apparently it was kind of a ritual with them: that they would start on a vacation getting into the car and driving and their dad was driving. He would at some predictable point exclaim, "Isn't this great, kids?" 

The kids did not know what was so great. I'm sure that the dad was enjoying the fact that he was not at work and he was looking forward to some time where he could just be present. And really I think that's what he was expressing. Just being present to the moment. But his kids thought it was funny. 

St. Paul says to us today, "Our citizenship is in heaven." And we in fact can be aware of heaven in our midst. The more that we are just present to a moment of relaxation and rest and contemplation, we can be filled with wonder as Peter, James and John were so filled at the time of Jesus' Transfiguration. Luke says that Jesus was preparing for his "exodus" which he would accomplish in Jerusalem. Exodus, of course, refers us to the freeing of the people of Israel from their slavery in Egypt. And Jesus' death and resurrection are properly referred to as the exodus: deliverance from the evils of this world. 

So we are likewise called to a sense of wonder. Before he was Abraham, he was Abram, and the Lord said to him, "Look up into the night sky. Try counting the stars. Can you do that?" Well, you can be filled with wonder because as numerous as the stars are, will your descendants be. And this was a cause for wonder.

On the part of Abram who was unsure whether he would ever have a child by his wife Sarah, he was furthermore filled with wonder. When he saw this eerie thing taking place, the Lord had told him to cut some animals in two. And a representation of the Lord, a fire pot and a torch, passed between the halves.

This was the establishment of the covenant, the bond between God and his people. And it was saying on the part of the Lord, "If I go back on my covenant, may I be as these animals that have been split apart." So there was cause for wonder in the life of Abram, later to be called Abraham.

And we in this Lenten time can cultivate our own sense of wonder. We can look at God's creation. There are things in God's creation that call us to a sense of wonder. We think of the people in our life and the fact that we share love with these people.

Yes, it is great. Our preparation for the Easter mystery is one which includes the favor given to Peter, James and John so that they might not completely lose heart at the time that Jesus was crucified. We saw them weaken, particularly Peter, but they did not completely lose heart. And they had had the opportunity to gaze upon the evidence of Jesus' resurrection.

So we are called through the Word of God today to be present to the wonders which surround us and realize the degree to which we have been loved by the God who has made us and brought us together. And he has made an unbreakable covenant of life and love with us.

2025 Mar 9 SUN: FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT
Dt 26: 4-10/ Ps 91: 1-2. 10-11. 12-13. 14-15/ Rom 10: 8-13/ Lk 4: 1-13

Our Scriptures begin today with an account from Deuteronomy of some of the history of God's chosen people. It refers to slavery and liberation. We move on to St. Paul, and he is telling us that the gifts of salvation and liberation, which come from our God, are not exclusive. He says that everyone, whether Jew or Greek, calling upon the name of the Lord Jesus, will enter into salvation and a great sense of peace in the presence of God. And we see through the Gospel that Jesus has embraced our difficulties to the ultimate degree because he has been subject to temptation. Now as we mentioned at the beginning [of Mass], we might say, well of course he resisted temptation because Jesus is God. Well, we have to understand that Jesus really did embrace our human nature, and as Paul says in Philippians chapter 2, he emptied himself. He did not cling to his identity as the Son of God. He entered into our miseries.

We can recognize something here in the temptations which Jesus is experiencing. You and I are all proud of our identity, and someone could come along and question that identity and say, "If you are so great, do X, Y, or Z. Show who you are." And you and I would tend to take the bait. We'd say, "Yeah, I'll show you." And that's the sort of temptation that Jesus experienced. We have no idea how the consciousness of Jesus as God and human worked itself out. That is perhaps one of the deepest issues of theology. We don't know, but we see that there is a resistance to claiming that glorified identity, and staying with the lowly human identity. And this is a call to ourselves to refrain from glorifying ourselves, instead saying, "I know I am human. I am not God. I am not self-sufficient. I rely upon my God and on the people around me who love me." These are practical thoughts which must occupy us during this season of preparation for celebrating the Easter mystery.

2025 Mar 2 SUN: EIGHTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Sir 27: 4-7/ Ps 92: 2-3. 13-14. 15-16/ 1 Cor 15: 54-58/ Lk 6: 39-45

Have you ever heard this expression: "Just sayin'"? I hear that and this is how I translate it. "I'm going to pass along some information to you and it may be distasteful to you, but I am distancing myself from it. Please don't hit me." That's how I feel about that statement.

And it certainly goes against the idea which we hear very clearly from the book of Sirach and from the gospel today, that every one of us is responsible for the words we say.

There's another example. In the online world, there is a lot of reposting that goes on, reposting done by people who don't even know for sure if the original post is true. So we have to consider how we take responsibility for what we say. And as Jesus tells us, it comes from what is stored in our heart. And he gives us another image of a good tree bearing good fruit. We have to ask ourselves, "What is my participation in my social situations doing? Is it building up or not?" 

And of course, I'm sure that Jesus was having fun with these images that he gives us, especially the one about seeing the splinter in someone else's eye when your own vision is impaired. You say, "Let's take the splinter out of your eye" when all the time you have a 2x4 in your own eye. That's pretty obvious. It certainly means that before [we] seek to criticize, it is necessary for us to examine ourselves and recognize that there is much to be corrected in our own personality. Therefore, we can have that experience and, "Okay, yeah, that's out of my eye. I'm seeing a little more clearly. And maybe I am in a position to correct." But then again, we come around and we realize that every one of us has faults, and we might do people a lot of good if we are patient with them. That often is much, much better. 

We think about these things as we conclude St. Paul's reflections on the gift of resurrection. He reflects on the mystery of Jesus and says, "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" And he's pointing us to Jesus who won the victory for us, and we can never forget that the victory was won because he truly died. He died with us and for us. He chose to undergo what you and I have no choice about, and he has lifted us up.

2025 Feb 23 SUN: SEVENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
1 Sm 26: 2. 7-9. 12-13. 22-23/ Ps 103: 1-2. 3-4. 8. 10. 12-13 (8a)/ 1 Cor 15: 45-49/ Lk 6: 27-38

HOMILIST'S NOTE: I ran afoul of Pope Francis's directive from his general audience of December 4, 2024, when he said that a homily should be in the six-to-eight-minute range.  This one ran over 12 minutes.

We all know that at every weekend Mass following the Profession of Faith, we have a prayer that goes by a lot of different names. You've heard it called the Prayers of the Faithful. It's also called the Universal Prayer. If you go to other English-speaking countries, you may hear it called the Bidding Prayers. My favorite term for it is the General Intercessions.

Now for some months I have been writing the general intercessions and I believe in keeping them concise and for the lector who has those prayers, I want to make sure it's on just one sheet of paper, one side of the one sheet of paper. And in fact when I'm keeping it concise, I'm able to present it in a pretty good-sized font. So much the better for the lectors.

But this weekend they're running a little bit longer and they're in a little smaller font. I had some parishioners of Saint Jerome say to me that they wanted to supply some intercessions of their own for this particular weekend, the Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C, the year of Luke, because of the emphasis we have today on the mercy of God. We've heard this in the first reading. We're aware of how King Saul, the first king of Israel, was obsessed with his belief that David was a rival to him and that he had to kill David. And so we have this Scripture today about that deep slumber that the Lord put Saul and his men into and in which David and his assistant were able to come right up to Saul and they could have killed him, but they did not.

We also hear from First Corinthians today about the fact that you and I have to move from being the first Adam to being the second Adam. That is, we need to be transformed by the gift of salvation in Jesus. We must be transformed. We must experience conversion. And, you might say, become a surprise even to ourselves. 

So there is an awful lot in the gospel and it starts with love your enemies. Three years ago I think I said that I misread that for a very, very long time. I was thinking it said "don't have enemies" and I put it on myself to go make peace. No, that doesn't work. No, if you are a genuine Christian you will have enemies. And what you can do for them is love them. Particularly as we think about what we're witnessing in our country these days, we do have to ask about God's gift of mercy and about whether it has taken hold. And I'm thinking of two of the principals right now in this process we're seeing. And based on the reading I have done about the upbringing of these two people, it appears to me that in their upbringing they never had mercy shown to them. And that is a serious deficiency in character. They may never have known mercy as they were growing up. And it's possible that in more recent times people have attempted to show them mercy but they didn't understand it. So we need to acknowledge these facts and we need to look at the rest of the things here in this gospel. There's an awful lot. 

turning the other cheek and giving to people. These are things that, again, I tended to misinterpret these. I thought it meant I had to be a doormat. Actually when you turn the other cheek you're offering a challenge. You give the attacker something to think about. And then, yes, with giving, it doesn't mean that you abandon any sense that you have rights and dignity of your own. It means that you know that life is much more than your possessions. Do to others as you would have them do to you. Now that's been called the golden rule, but Jesus didn't call it the golden rule. We know that Jesus as an infant received gold but he demonstrated through the course of his life that he was not interested in gold. So I don't know whether calling it the golden rule is any great compliment; but this is something that makes total sense to us as we try to grow in a sense of empathy, to see our neighbor as another self and to respond to them as we would like to be responded to. And I think that keeps us at a level of realistic, kind interaction which does respect the other. And that gifts will be given to you that full measure falling into your lap: For me that is quite simply the sense of peace which I have discovered in myself, and it is a wonderful thing when we discover it, because all of us can enter into an anxious state in which we are placing pressure on ourselves. When we are saying we have to do A, B or C in order to prove that I have the right to be here, that anxiety is existing in all of us and we are greatly blessed when we can come to see that as something that we use to block the very peace of our God. It is wonderful when we can lay that anxiety aside. So we have so much to think about and as we sang in the Psalm, "The Lord is kind and merciful." And we need to reflect on the people who have shown us mercy,  and realize that it [mercy] is real and that it is transforming and that as much as so many people in the world are moved by other influences, we know we give a witness that says peace is possible and peace begins with what is going on in your own heart.

2025 Feb 16 SUN: SIXTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Jer 17: 5-8/ Ps 1: 1-2. 3. 4. 6 (40: 5a)/ 1 Cor 15: 12. 16-20/ Lk 6: 17. 20-26

We know that in Matthew's Gospel, Jesus at the beginning of his Sermon on the Mount gives us eight or maybe nine depending on how you count them, eight or nine beatitudes. They are promises that people are going to be happy in unexpected ways. We remember the first one, "Blest are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God." 

Well, we turn to Luke's Gospel and this is called the Sermon on the Plain. It says there that they're on a level stretch of ground. And it's interesting that Luke has Jesus proclaiming four beatitudes and four woes. And you know I've been in the habit recently of referring to people to whom I believe the woes reply -- [rather,] to whom the woes refer. But to some extent every one of us has sold out to one of these things that Jesus warns are woeful. We trust in wealth and we trust in not missing very many meals. And instead of developing a genuine sorrow, we do try to treat life as a joke. And we rely on people speaking well of us. So we need to consider how we are to be among the people who enjoy the beatitudes, the people who are blessed. We have a hint from the first reading and the Psalm today. Jeremiah talks about the need for a tree or some other plant not to be just out in some salt and empty lava waste. Instead that plant must rely upon a steady source of water. And this is the same thing we just sang about in Psalm number one. We know that we cannot rely upon ourselves. We must be rooted in the God who has given us all things and who is calling us to fullness of life, to eternal life, to heavenly life. We know we can do this because, because Jesus is risen from the dead. 

And we hear this truth proclaimed effectively by St. Paul. He is responding to people who they probably have gotten their Christianity mixed up with some other philosophy. And there are some who are saying there is no resurrection from the dead. And St. Paul says you have to get rid of that idea. The faith stands or falls on the fact of Jesus' resurrection, or not. We come together on the day of resurrection every Sunday to celebrate the fact that Jesus did die for us and he had to die before he could rise. He died for all of us. He is risen for all of us. We take this to heart and we are happy to reevaluate the things that bring us true happiness.

2025 Feb 9 SUN: FIFTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Is 6: 1-2a. 3-8/ Ps 138: 1-2. 2-3. 4-5. 7-8 (1c)/ 1 Cor 15: 1-11/ Lk 5: 1-11

If you're so smart, why aren't you rich? You've heard that expression. And it seems that in our culture, the test of whether you are intelligent is whether you make a lot of money. Now, in fact, there are plenty of intelligent people in the world who go about their lives doing things for which money is not the main object.

But what do we have today? We have some people who consider themselves very smart and who happen to be very rich, and who say, "It's my riches that prove to me and to you that I am the most intelligent and I will go about doing things from my mind alone." These people are so full of themselves that they allow no room for some other inspiration, perhaps the voice of God Himself.

In contrast, as we turn to the Gospel here, we find Peter with his net empty. And obviously he identifies with his net, and he feels himself empty. And that is a good thing for him, because in his emptiness, he does make room for the God who gave him life in the first place to surprise him and change him.

And so the nets are tearing and the boats are in danger of sinking. And what does Simon Peter say to Jesus: "Depart from me, I am a sinful man." This is similar to the call of Isaiah when Isaiah responds, "I am a man of unclean lips." He is likewise empty and ready to receive what God gives him. And the gift is symbolized by the use of a burning coal on his lips, and the angel says, "There, now you are ready." 

We cannot understand ourselves by means of our own projects. We must understand ourselves as being converted and remade by our God. And we have a very good example of this in what Paul has to say today. He says, "I do not deserve to be called an apostle because I persecuted the Christian way, but by the grace of God I am what I am." And it is important -- indeed it is necessary -- for us to understand ourselves as being defined by the grace of God which has changed us, has given us peace, has given us a sense of generosity. And we can use that Psalm that we've sung today, Psalm 138. One of the lines in that Psalm is, "I thank you for your love for me which excels all I ever knew of you." 

We are not to go through life full of ourselves. We recognize our emptiness and we make room for the love of the God who transforms us, who changes us, who gives us peace.

From time to time I have heard people speak of what is called an elevator speech. I don't know if you've ever heard of that. If you are in some sort of group that is sponsoring a cause of some kind, for instance, the elevator speech is the way you summarize and distill your message to such a brief amount of time that you can give this speech during a journey in an elevator.

I don't think I've ever succeeded at this, mainly because the things that I care about I think require a lot of explanation. But it occurs to me that today's feast of the Presentation of the Lord gives us something close to an elevator speech about who Jesus is and what he came to do.

So we have this remarkable Gospel, a moment when Mary and Joseph are bringing the child Jesus, when he is 40 days old, to the Temple in Jerusalem.

And then we have the figure of Simeon. Simeon who has waited into old age so that he himself can gaze upon the consolation of Israel. He takes the infant Jesus in his arms, blessing God, and he offers a prayer which in the official daily prayer of the church we offer every night at night prayer. It is what you might call a prayer of submitting to our own limits and remembering that God is carrying out salvation. Simeon says, "Now, Master, you may let your servant go in peace. Your word has been fulfilled. My own eyes have seen your salvation which you prepared in the sight of all the peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and glory for your people Israel." We say this prayer when we are about to retire for the night, and it's saying, "Yes, I have my human limits and I have to go to sleep and someday I will die, but your salvation will be carried out." 

Then we have his words to Mary, and we have this image of the fall and rise of many in Israel. And I think it's good to connect this with what we heard in the first reading about purifying gold and silver. Now that to carry this out, the gold or the silver must reach a very, very high temperature. So it is, if we imagine ourselves in the place of gold or silver, we find this to be a real test, a true stress. And I believe we can say that when we think of the fall of people, that this fall is not permanent; that in the process of conversion, as God changes our hearts and makes us more alive to His very presence, as He does this, we find that we can be truly ourselves as God created us to be.

We also have the passage from Hebrews, from chapter 2 of that 13-chapter letter. And it is saying, and we cannot say this too many times, that the Son of God was absolutely pleased to enter into our existence, to take on our human flesh, to suffer for us so as to lift us up.

And there we have, I believe, the elements of an elevator speech. We know that the Son of God has been pleased to show mercy to the human family, and to do so by being completely one with us.

2025 Jan 19 SUN: SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Is 62: 1-5/ Ps 96: 1-2. 2-3. 7-8. 9-10 (3)/ 1 Cor 12: 4-11/ Jn 2: 1-11

We are getting started on a course we will pursue during this entire year, and that is we are getting started on Ordinary Time, which is actually a favorite time of mine because we hear the Scriptures in a continuous fashion. Now during this year of Ordinary Time, we will be reading primarily from the Gospel of Luke. But we haven't heard from Luke yet today because we have some business yet from the Christmas season. Two weeks ago we celebrated Epiphany, which means manifestation. And associated with Epiphany are three events by which Jesus manifested himself to all of the human family. First of all, the visit of the Magi to the infant Jesus. And then what we celebrated a week ago, Jesus' baptism by which he expressed solidarity with all human beings. And then finally, as John calls it, the first of his signs, the changing of water into wine at this wedding. So these are ways in which Jesus manifested himself to all peoples.

And you hear the use of that word "sign," which is really a better word than the customary miracle that people will use to characterize certain actions of Jesus. To me, miracle sounds like a performance, but this is a sign. And it comes to us actually very quietly. It was just the servers who filled the water jars who knew about it. And the head waiter did not know. And we don't know exactly whether it is as a compliment or as a puzzle to him that there's still good wine. But this is the first of the ways in which Jesus was beginning to reveal his divine identity. 

We also have, as always at this time of year, readings from St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. And this is a letter discussing many practical issues which arose in this early Christian community at Corinth, Greece. And we're reading from the last part of First Corinthians now. And St. Paul is bringing up a theme which will be developed further next week. And that is the theme of the gifts of the community. And we understand that this really is the proper way to think about the people in our life. That every one of us is a gift to the community. And we have to recognize those gifts. 

Now you and I have been hearing about the possibility of a lot of deportations from our country. And yes, we can argue back and forth about what is to be done. But you and I have to recognize that our starting point is a principle of Catholic social teaching: which is that every human being has a fundamental right to migrate. It seems to me that this is not in keeping with the idea that everybody has gifts. It seems to be a process of judging that people are first of all problems. And we have to start from another point of view: that people wherever they're from or wherever they find themselves are a gift to the community.

So we consider the gift of Jesus. And we do it in the context of a wedding. This is an image that we hear from the prophet Isaiah as well: that God has chosen his people and we are to discover that in our relationship with the bridegroom, our God, we discover the gifts that we are to share with one another, so as to build up the beloved community.

2025 Jan 12 SUN: BAPTISM OF THE LORD F
Is 40: 1-5. 9-11/ Ps 104: 1b-2. 3-4. 24-25. 27-28. 29-30 (1)/ Ti 2: 11-14; 3: 4-7/ Lk 3: 15-16. 21-22

We have had an interesting few days. We received more snow than we're used to. And from my point of view, it's a hardship. It's tough to get around.

Of course, we can think of the inconvenience of the snow and realize that there is no comparison with what people are undergoing with these fires in the Los Angeles area. We know that real hardship is common to the human family generally. 

Today we are completing the season of Christmas. And this is a time for merriment. But I believe that as year after year gets added to our ages, we are all the more aware that even merriment does not do away with hardship. And we want to make sure that our hearts are united with those who are suffering for any reason, whatever. And of course, that leads us to prayer. And we can all increase both the time we spend in prayer and its intensity. We see very, very clearly how much we need those words from the first reading today.

"Comfort. Give comfort to my people." This is an acknowledgment that comfort is needed and it is a universal need. Really, these scriptures taken together are kind of a summary of the Christmas season. Isaiah is, as we know, associated with Christmas and with Advent. The letter of St. Paul to Titus is used at two different Christmas Masses. And it is always remarkable to hear those words. To hear "God and Savior Jesus Christ," to know how early in Christianity the divinity of Jesus was affirmed. 

And then we come to the Gospel, one of the portrayals of Jesus' baptism. As we said at the beginning of Mass, Jesus had no need of a baptism of repentance. But he submitted to baptism just as he submitted to the human nature that he assumed. He wanted to be completely united with us. And this baptism is a sign to us of the fact that he intends and he remains completely united with us in our human nature.

So we reflect upon both the merriment and the pain which are associated with the season of Christmas. And especially how it must have been incredibly strange for the Son of God himself to take our griefs upon himself. And we can look at this as a preparation for what the rest of the year brings. 

Easter is relatively late this year. It will fall on April 20th. That means that Ash Wednesday is not until March the 5th. We see the baptism of Jesus as a boundary between his hidden life, of which we know practically nothing, but what we heard two weeks ago on the Feast of the Holy Family about Mary and Joseph searching for Jesus who said, "You know I had to be in my Father's house, in the Temple." We have just that little window on his youth. But then when he was about 30 years old, he received this baptism and he began his public ministry, which we think was about three years. We are led into sober thinking. That is, in our lives of prayer we are developing an awareness of the needs of the whole human family. And we find ourselves moving more deeply into the mystery of Jesus embracing our state of life and lifting us up by dying for us. So we have several weeks of Ordinary Time and then in early March we enter into Lent, which will prepare us to celebrate more fully the Easter mystery of death leading to resurrection. We give thanks for these gifts and as we remember Jesus' baptism, we seek to be immersed more deeply into his mystery.

2025 Jan 5 SUN: EPIPHANY OF THE LORD S
Is 60: 1-6/ Ps 72: 1-2. 7-8. 10-11. 12-13/ Eph 3: 2-3a. 5-6/ Mt 2: 1-12

I want to start by looking at two words. It seems to me that more recently there has been some confusion between these two words, and I think it is helpful for all of us to maintain a distinction between them.

The words are epiphany and insight. Very often, and I believe this is the source of confusion, you will hear people say from time to time, "Oh, I've just had an epiphany." Well, I think they're really talking about an insight, and I want to explain the distinction that I see.

As we said at the beginning of Mass, epiphany means manifestation. It means something external that people can see.

An insight, however, is something that goes on within us when we are looking at what appears to be the same reality we've always known, but somehow we see something quite different about it.

And that is a change within ourselves. I think that insight is really the proper word for that concept.

And in the Word of God today, we see that St. Paul is saying that an epiphany is an external event happening, the manifestation of the Savior to the nations.

This external event prompts insight. And what is the insight St. Paul says? Gentiles, the nations, the foreigners, they are coheirs with the Jewish people. They also receive the gift of salvation in Jesus.

Really, the Epiphany is a time for us to be aware of an insight we probably receive many times during our earthly lifespan. And that insight has to do with breaking down something that we tend to suppose. That is that we look at our own people, the people we are familiar with, who look and talk and believe like us. And then we think of foreigners and happily, because of the great increase in our day of communications and travel, we are much more in contact with peoples of other nations. And we have this insight that amazingly, they are just as human as we are. And it's a kind of an insight that has us saying, "Oh, why didn't I know that before?" Or, "Why didn't I think of that before?" But it's an extremely important insight.

And we see what happens in the words of Isaiah today. "You shall be radiant at what you see, your hearts shall throb and overflow, because you begin to understand that people of all nations are a gift to us." We build one another up. And that's certainly a good alternative to what I would call caricaturing people of other nations. And indeed, I believe that is a major source of the troubles we have in our world community: that we don't see other peoples as being quite human. And then we have a pretext for doing inhuman things to them.

So this is the thing that can carry us through another year, as we reflect on the mysteries of the Epiphany. There has been an external manifestation which causes us to rethink what's going on in our hearts and to develop the insight that far more than the symbolic gifts which the Magi gave to Jesus, we have gifts in one another as fellow members of the People of God.

2024 Dec 29 SUN: HOLY FAMILY F
1 Sm 1: 20-22. 24-28 or Sir 3: 2-6. 12-14/ Ps 84: 2-3. 5-6. 9-10/ 1 Jn 3: 1-2. 21-24 or Col 3: 12-21/ Lk 2: 41-52

I find that these readings today can be summed up by quoting another reading, not found among these. I'm thinking of a verse in St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 6, in which he says, "You are not your own. You have been purchased and at a price." Paul is referring to the mystery of Jesus' death and resurrection, by which all of us have become new people who absolutely belong to God. 

We turn to these readings and it seems as if they are saying, "Your children are not your own." There is a universal tension behind these words. They are felt in every family, these tensions.

Because we know what the normal response of parents is to their children. They want to exercise some sort of control over them. At the very least, even though they won't say this outright, parents will be hoping that their children will not repeat their own mistakes. They may be hoping that children will achieve a success which is beyond their parents'. They may subtly or less subtly be placing expectations upon their children as to whom they marry or what sort of career they have. And we know, again, this is founded in a desire to see the best things come about for children. But as much as we want to direct our children, the more we find that each child is a mystery. And it is necessary for parents to stand back, stand back and see what happens, because the ways in which children grow and mature will always be surprising. 

We have read from the Old Testament about a woman who understood very well that her child belonged to God. Hannah had prayed for a son, and Samuel was born to her. She remembered the fact that she prayed earnestly for this child when she went to the sanctuary in Shiloh. It is perhaps better described as a tabernacle or a tent. And Hannah could not forget the fact that she would see to it that this child would be dedicated to the Lord's service.

We go then to the Gospel, and we can see that by the time Jesus was 12 years old, that is, one year before he would be considered an adult, we can see that Mary and Joseph settled into comfortable parental roles, and they were not willing or eager -- eager is probably the better word -- they were not eager to see that this child would grow and become something beyond their imaginations. Luke tells us that when Jesus says to them, "You knew I had to be in my father's house." Mary and Joseph did not understand. I believe, however, that at least in Mary's case, at some level of her awareness, she knew what Jesus was talking about. That indeed, if you were in Jerusalem, you would know that he would be in the house of God, whom he would begin to call "Father." And it must have been painful for Mary and Joseph alike. But we have this window, a very brief window, into the childhood and youth of Jesus. And we see that he was on the path of his mission to love human beings as the Son of God and to do so by giving himself completely for our salvation.

And we can take all this and come to understand better the words of the first letter of Saint John. We are God's children now. What we shall be has not yet come to light. But somehow we will be like God, for we shall see him as he is. We are reminded again, we all belong to God, absolutely. Our children are gifts given back to God and given, in fact, to the whole human family that we might all mature together. So this is the tension and the difficulty of considering family. And we find it even in the Holy Family. And we trust it will be a creative tension.

2024 Dec 22 SUN: FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT (O Rex Gentium)
Mi 5: 1-4a/ Ps 80: 2-3. 15-16. 18-19 (4)/ Heb 10: 5-10/ Lk 1: 39-45

You know that for several weeks we have been looking at Scriptures which have to do with what are called the last things. Again, that technical word is eschatology. We've been thinking about the fact that people find something quite emotional in a concept called the end of the world.

And we learn to understand that what people call the end of the world is simply the beginning of eternity. And therefore we take comfort in all the things that we are hearing, especially about the definitive, glorious coming of the Son of God when God brings all things to completion and perfection.

And we read from the prophet Micah a mention of a place called Bethlehem. In the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Bethlehem is noted as the place of the birth of Jesus.

And remember that Bethlehem is associated with King David -- that he came from that area. And remember that the genealogy at the beginning of Matthew's gospel traces the lineage -- that is to say the legal fatherhood -- of Jesus, and it goes through David who is looked upon as the ideal king.

The letter to the Hebrews speaks to us about the definitive thing that Jesus did in laying down his life. He did the will of his Father. He offered himself for the salvation of all human beings.

And as we heard very clearly this morning, he did that once for all of us. And therefore it is not necessary for any of us to do something extraordinary or extravagant in order to get the attention of God the Father so that he might smile on us. That is, all of that is accomplished already. 

In the Gospel we have two women sharing the favor of God upon them. Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, is the one who brings this child to birth even though she is past the age. Mary is the mother of the Word Made Flesh, the Savior, and in her case she does not know man.

So these two women know of God's special favor upon them. God favors us as well.

In the case of Elizabeth and Mary, these are things that could not be easily shared really with anybody. And in our case as well, God brings us peace in ways that are hard for us to explain to another person.

But as it's been said, each of us has the same secret -- that idea refers initially to the same secret of wondering how inadequate we are. We can also take that phrase, each having the same secret, and apply it to the fact that in various ways, in unique ways, our God signals to us in our daily living that our humanity is blessed.

It has been consecrated because we have received the gift of the one who laid down his life so as to conquer death and give us all resurrection and eternal life.