Father Kevin A. Codd

This Sunday, Paul's Letter to the Philippians takes center-stage for this homilist. Midway through the reading, Paul seems to break into song, a canticle to Christ! The hymn magnificently captures the extraordinary humility of Christ in not grasping onto his divinity but becoming one among us. This pouring out of himself is the key to peace among ourselves.  Homily shared with the Saint Francis Ca...

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts and my ways are not your ways..." Thus the Prophet Isaiah powerfully identifies one of the great failings of people of religion: we make our thoughts God's thoughts and our ways his ways. Today's Gospel parable is a perfect example of the temptation: even today, we do not like this parable of the master who pays all his laborers the same no matter how long th...

How many times must we forgive? Not seven times but seventy-seven times, Jesus responds to Peter. Jesu must have sensed that the numbers weren't enough to impress upon his disciples what was at stake here, so he tells a parable...and what a parable it is!  Homily shared with the Saint Francis Catholic Community in Cuenca, Ecuador.

At the heart of Jesus' instructions to his disciples about "fraternal correction" is the fundamental reality that if they are to nurture to maturity the infant church following his return to the Father, then they must understand the profound communion that binds them to him and one another. Without that communion, they would be just another "fraternal organization".   Homily shared with the Saint...

Peter goes from "hero" to "zero" in just six verses! Last Sunday, he proclaimed Jesus as messiah and Son of God and this Sunday he remonstrates with Jesus not to follow the way of suffering and death his Father has given to him. Peter clearly hits a major nerve in Jesus, causing him to snap at Peter: "Get behind me, Satan!" It is not so difficult to identify just what that nerve is and why in that...

"Who am I?" is one of the preeminent questions young people ask themsleves as they work their way through adolescence and young adulthood. It is a question that Jesus would never have thought to ask himself for his identity was clear in his own mind and heart. But he does ask it of his disciples who are still working through what they believe and know of Jesus. Simon's bold answer is what Jesus ne...

"A Canaanite woman" is all we know about the extraordinary person who engages Jesus in today's gospel story. Those few words tell us a lot about her and why she receives what seems to be a cool reception from Jesus and his disciples. In reality, she turns out to be a model of great love and great faith.  Homily shared with the Saint Francis Catholic Community in Cuenca, Ecuador. 

No one gets through life without a storm or two. Both the great prophet, Elijah, and Jesus' lead apostle, Simon Peter, face great storms in today's Liturgy of the Word, but the stoms of nature were only signs of greater storms going on within them. The Lord touches Elija with a gentle breeze and a whisper. Jesus saves Peter with that same whisper made flesh as he extends his hand to the sinking Pe...

Today's story of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes in Matthew's Gospel can lead people to focus on the "math" of the moment: "how did he multiply all that?". But the full story leads us away from an abracadabra moment to something much deeper: beginning with the death of John the Baptist and continuing through Jesus' return to the desert to his profound compassion for the hunger and thir...

The very mention of the name, "Solomon", brings with it an immediate association with the precious gift of wisdom. Young Solomon's request of God for this gift as he takes on the heavy burden of being king after the passing of his father, the great King David, is a surprising, but lovely petition as he asks the Lord God for "an understanding heart." Would we make the same request of the Lord?  Hom...

It is a strange expression: "It is all going to hell in a handbasket." Who knows where it comes from or why a "handbasket" is involved, but the pessimism is something we do well understand. When we look at the state of the world with objective eyes, a profound pessimism about our future as a race seems obvious. Yet, the Scriptures today give us an alternative view: not thin optimism nor rose-color...

An often-asked question of priests is what is your favorite thing to do as a priest? It is not-so-easy to find an answer because there are so many things priests like doing! One of the most tender things we do is anoint the sick with the simple gestures of laying hands on the ill person and anointing their forehead and palms of their hands with the Oil of the Sick. It is curious that the Gospel re...

How doe one measure the value of a simple glass of water? For most, it costs us less than a penny, but for the thirsty, it's worth is more than all the treasures of the world. As a gift of hospitality to the thirsty, it is a blessing to the recipient and to the giver...a blessing of God.  Homily shared with the Saint Francis Catholic Community in Cuenca, Ecuador.

This is the audio version of a post I wrote on my Substack account about my recent decision to buy a place in the small barrio of Auquilula, about ten miles outside of the city of Cuenca.  The original text can be found at this link:  https://substack.com/@kacodd/note/p-202195219?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=87og5y

Cuenca, Ecuador sure knows how to celebrate the Feast of Corpus Christi! Yet, in all the sweets that line the streets, the fireworks, and even the crazy dancing bulls, there is a need for some caution: don't lose the "Christi" from Corpus Christi! Father Kevn reflects today on how that word of caution applies to all of us every Sunday as we celebrate the Eucharist in our parish churches. What is i...

Father Kevin returns to the ambo of our church family after a six-week visit to the United States and today visits the great mystery of the Holy Trinity, so difficult to explain, but so beautiful to experience! Homily shared with the Saint Francis Catholic Community in Cuenca, Ecuador. 

Poor Thomas gets a very bad rap for having doubted his fellow apostles' proclamation of the Lord's Resurrection. Yet, in the end, he is the true hero of John's Gospel with his simple, profound, and altogether perfect profession of faith: "My Lord and my God!" It too a bit for him to get there, but that profession of faith is the capstone of John's Gospel.  Homily shared with the Saint Francis Cath...

John's account of the First Day of the Week particularly highlights the fact that the first to find Jesus' tomb empty was Mary of Magdala; she is also the first to encounter the Risen Jesus and proclaim his resurrection to the other. The immensity of what she experienced when Jesus called her by name is all the more grand by the darkness that preceded that moment of resurrection grace!  Easter mor...

Hearing once again the devastating story of Jesus' passion and death (Gospel of John), the simple question of "Why?" comes to the fore. Why did Jesus have to suffer like this to save us? Let us see if we can approach an answer... Homily shared with the Saint Francis Catholic Community in Cuenca, Ecuador. 

Memory is the key to understanding tonight's mysteries. We remember the Passover and in the remembering, it becomes present to us. We remember Jesus' breaking of the bread and passing of the cup and he becomes present to us, flesh and blood. We remember Jesus' washing of the feet of his apostles and in the remembering he is washing our feet.  Homily for the Mass of the Lord's Supper, Holy Thursday...

Grief is a most weird experience. It has its own timtable and agenda, coming and going in waves of all sizes. Grief maoy be weird because death, too, is a most strange experience. She who was alive one minute is dead the next: the disjunction between the two realities is confounding in a deeply troubling way. Jesus' encounter with the sisters of dead Lazarus, his great friend, reveals him as one w...

Jesus' encounter with the beggar born blind in John's Gospel reminds us that there are a variety of "blindnesses" among us. There is the physical blindness of the beggar himself, then there is the economic and social poverty that is the consequence of that disability, and then there is spiritual poverty of being known for all time as a sinner, someone punished by God for some great sin. The beggar...

Miracles in the gospels come in two types: those that bend the laws of nature and those that bend the laws of society, culture, and in the end, the human heart. Today's reading from John's gospel is of the second type: a miracle of the heart that leads a Samaritan woman of rather dubious repute to life as a kind of neo-apostle proclaiming Jesus as the messiah to her neighbors. All this because Jes...

The "real world" is not always so easy to live in. It is one that is marked by all the afflictions mentioned in the story of the expulsion of Adam and Eve even into our own age. It would be easy to say with some existentialist philosophers of the 20th century, that there is nothing more than the life we know here...and death...so just buck up and accept it. Jesus and his disciples had just had a b...

The story of Adam and Eve's original sin is a sin of hubris: striving to become gods themselves by knowing what God knows. The consequenses of that sin reverberate to the present day. God's response to our human inclination to make ourselves gods is to come to humanity, God in flesh here with us, so we don't need to be gods. Jesus' fundamental temptation in the desert, then? To shortcut his humani...