19th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jesus comes to the disciples today walking on the water – that’s a Big Moment, a miraculous moment, one that’s hard to miss, and it strengthens their faith.  Elijah is told in our 1st reading that the Lord will be passing by: there is a great wind, a tremendous earthquake, a blazing fire, and yet, Scripture says, God was in none of those seemingly big moments.  Rather, God was in a tiny, whispering voice – a Small Moment, so small it could be easily missed, but just as real as a Big Moment…and I would say even more important!  God’s ordinary language is in Small Moments, countless little whispers to us throughout the day.  He gives us a few privileged Big Moments precisely so that we will continue looking and listening for Him in the hundreds of Small Moments every day.

17th Sunday in Ordinary Time

There are two movements in the Christian life – one is a turning away from sin, the other is a stepping towards God.  The readings this weekend are more focused on the latter – stepping towards God.  The individuals in our parables find something of great value to them!  To get it, however, they have to sell everything else.  It’s a question of priorities and re-prioritizing things in their lives.  There are so many good things we can focus on in life, so many good actions and decisions we can pursue…but only one can be our top priority, and only one our second priority, and only one our third.  All of these good things can’t be our top priority, which means that much of the Christian life is deciding which priorities God is calling us to put first, and which ones (however good they may be) the Lord is asking us to put further down the list.  Following God isn’t just doing good things; following God is doing the good things God has planned for us to do!

As a second installment I invited Dan Tracy, a seminarian for our Diocese, to say a few words at the end of Mass.  He spent part of the summer here with us at St. Joseph and St. Ann parishes and will be heading back to seminary in the weeks ahead – he is a good man and will be greatly missed!

15th Sunday in Ordinary Time

With all of the polarization in the media and the emotionally driven statements part of me wonders what happened to true, honest, good ol’ arguments.  In this sermon, building off of my last sermon on judgment, I explore why I think our country has lost the art of argument (which we used to possess) and what steps we as individuals can take to bring that art back.  It won’t be easy, but bringing God back into the public sphere (which then brings respect for every life back into the public sphere) is part of the answer!

13th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Life requires decisions, decisions require judgments.  Tt follows, then, that we make judgments all day long.  Every decision we make involves judging and judgment of various factors (even indecision is making the choice not to decide, which is guided by our judgments).  So why does “judging” get such a bad wrap?  Why does God speak so directly against judging others in Scripture?  Can we judge or can’t we?  The answer is, “Yes, we can and should judge”…but there is a distinction to be made between two very different kinds of judgment – one that we must make, and one that we ought never to make.  The problem is, we often jump right from the first into the second!

5th Sunday in Ordinary Time

God our Father is the Divine Physician, the greatest doctor of both body and spirit in this entire universe.  In Jesus Christ the Divine Surgeon has expertly removed the cancer of our sin, through the Scriptures the Divine Physical Therapist gives us our necessary exercises, and in the Holy Spirit, prayer and the Eucharist the Divine Nutritionist gives us the sustenance necessary to be strengthened for the task.  God’s love and mercy is that He provides all of this to us for free (who by no means deserve it and have no means of paying Him back).  But God’s love and mercy can’t do it for us – we have to work with these gifts to reap the healing benefits that are freely offered.  And in this treatment plan, we all, when we’re totally honest with ourselves, know what our next step is.  This week, let’ start with our own personal next step of that treatment plan.

3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Do you remember as a kid walking around outside in the dark, seeing something move in the shadows and then freezing in horror – you tried hard to focus on it, sometimes you were convinced it was moving, sometimes you were convinced it couldn’t be – your imagination running wild…then other shadows and objects seem to start moving…only to come back the next morning, in the full light of day, to find that it was something as harmless as a pine tree or as simple as a fencepost?

In the darkness many things become confusing and uncertain – we think we see or understand something, we draw conclusions that seem to make sense in the darkness, only to realize in the light of day that the truth is quite different.  In the readings today Jesus fulfills an age-old prophecy from Isaiah and enters the lands of Zebulun and Naphtali, historically dark and gloomy (from the perspective of faith in God), in order to bring the light.  As Christians, we are called to follow Christ and bring the light to places of darkness and confusion in our culture.  Those in the darkness become pretty convinced that they are correct in their deductions, but it is our call as Christians to bring the bright the light of day, the truth, to seemingly difficult and controversial contemporary issues.  Christ came to bring the light, and we are Christ-ians – let’s live up to our name at least one more time than usual this week!

33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Hellfire, brimstone, damnation – words we don’t hear very often anymore, but words that our first reading calls to mind (and themes that arise out of our Scriptures).  And lest we think that Jesus ushered in an age full of only mercy, pardon and mushy-gushy “love”, Jesus Himself, multiple times in the Gospels, speaks strongly about judgment, hellfire, the separation of the righteous and the wicked, warning us of the wide and easy road that leads to destruction and encouraging us to follow the narrow and difficult road that leads to life.  This week I challenge you: have conversations about some of these difficult topics with friends and other believers, Catholic or otherwise.  These ideas aren’t culturally acceptable, many discount them these days, but if we call ourselves Christian, if we believe what Jesus (the Son of God, the Author of all truth) says, then we have to start taking these ideas seriously!

31st Sunday in Ordinary Time

Why is it that we as Catholics are the only Christians that pray for our beloved dead?  Why is it that we are the only Christians who believe in Purgatory?  In this homily I will explore how other Christians believe Jesus saves us versus how we as Catholics believe Jesus saves us, and what that difference means in praying for the dead, purgatory, and how we live our lives here and now!