Fr. Brendan McGuire - Podcasts that Break open the Word of God

The exercise of free will comes with consequences. In other words, when we choose to do bad things and we harm ourselves, these are the consequences of free will. We do silly things, silly things happen, and we pay the price for it. But also on the other hand, when we choose to do good things, and not only good for ourselves, but good for everyone else, there also are good consequences. Positive c...

It is a sense of “all in” that Jesus is talking about in today's gospel. That he wants to set our hearts on fire. He wants us to set our hearts on fire about God and about his message of love for this world. And he says that I wish the whole earth was ablaze with a sense of passion that we could understand what he is trying to say. Now, Jesus is not Pollyanna. He knows that if you do become t...

We have an internal fairness scale that measures that. And it is true in in life too. That is why I suppose that we have higher standards for those who hold higher places in office. Especially the way we we regard our politicians, we have high expectations for them. Regardless of what party they are in, we have a certain sense of violation when they do not hold up their highest standards. We feel...

We are all called to go, and we are sent not to be just disciples, but missionary disciples to go forth into the world to proclaim it through our words and actions. I sometimes fear that we are a little insecure, and we think that we need theology degrees or we need to be qualified as professionals. That that you need to be somehow more trained than others, but that is not the case. (Read more…) H...

Today is the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, two towering figures in the church. They literally laid down their lives in proclamation of the faith. But you know, Peter and Paul were not perfect people. We remember Peter's famous threefold denial. There he was, the closest of the apostles, and he himself denies Christ. And then Paul, who was once called Saul, was a persecutor of Christians. He...

Today is the feast of Corpus Christi as we used to call it, the Body and Blood of Christ. It gives a particular reverence to what we do at this table and at the Eucharist, our primary purpose for gathering us in thanksgiving. I am grateful for all of you being here, but it is hard for me to know there are so many more who are at home choosing not to come, not to offer thanks to God. (Read more…) H...

The Trinity, this sacred symmetry, is all about the flow of love, love from the father to the Son and the Son to the Father. The love that flows between them is the Holy Spirit. It is a beautiful sort of understanding. It is about this sacred symmetry and the the rhythm of life. (Read more…) Here is my homily email from the Solemnity of the Most Holy trinity. Please feel free to share this email w...

There is a certain freedom to how wild geese fly because of the unity that the goose brings to it. A goose never flies alone, they always fly in formation. And when geese fly, they fly in a “V” formation. Those who are at the front expend 70% more energy than the ones on the wings. They will readily get pretty tired, and then they move to the back of the V formation. Each one will take their role...

In Celtic Christian spirituality, we believe, that when we are born, we become a traveler. We move from the invisible into the visible and then journey through this life. Then when we die, we complete the circle and move from the visible back to the invisible and our soul continues the journey.  (Read more…) Here is my homily email from the Feast of the Ascension. At the vigil Mass, I had the hono...

The challenge is that we often do not want to listen to the Holy Spirit. We want our own opinion, and we want to what we want to do. What makes us as a church and institution different is that we promise that we are going to listen to the Holy Spirit. But this institution is more than just an institution. This church we do, we live. It is we, the body of Christ. We, the people of God, are the chur...

Jesus is talking about how they will know us by who we are. They will know that you are followers if you love one another, or if you see this constant behavior in your life. They will recognize in your behavior that you are a follower and a believer in me. You see, it is not enough just to believe in Jesus Christ. We have to become followers of Jesus Christ, and that requires action, and those act...

We all just know our mother's voice. It is not that we are not unfamiliar with it. It is just that we may not always be paying attention to it. In the same way, we all know God's voice in our own life. We may just not be paying attention to it. We may not be hearing what we are called to hear. And here is the interesting thing, we can be busy about many good things in this world and stil...

The reality is in all of our lives, we sometimes wander from the trail of life, in this journey of life, we do miss a sign or two. We get thrown off, and we follow a path that takes us to a place where we may sometimes take us a little time to figure out that we were down the wrong path. But then all we have to do is work our way back to that sign, the sign that points to God's love, and that...

No matter what, it is always better to be a person of the truth, and if you make mistakes, to tell the truth, to hold yourself accountable to that. It is not always easy to tell the truth or be a person of the truth because there is a certain amount of shame. But believe me, there is greater shame that comes from a lie when you do not tell the truth. (Read more…) Here is my homily email from the S...

Pope Francis called the whole church with that sense of calling us back to the roots of who we are. He kept on bringing us back to Jesus. He kept on calling us back to primarily God’s mercy, his love, and his joy. I always remember his first letter to us, the Gospel of Joy. He talked about how important it is to be men and women of joy. And he has lived that in his papacy over these long years. He...

We are called to let the light of Christ shine not only on us and within us, but from us, so that others can see that they have the grace, the gem of grace within them. These luminous minerals that we have in rocks are like the luminous grace of God within us. We are called to shine the light of Christ on others. It is not enough that we just celebrate here together with all of us who believe, we...

To watch a hopeless death is one to be avoided at all costs. But Christianity has a response. It may not be the answer we want, but it does have a response. Let me offer it to you because it is about what happens today. This is the response: it says first of all that not only God recognizes the suffering and the pain, and he does not remain at a distance. He enters into the suffering and the pain....

My friends, tonight is about service. Can we find a way to serve some other person in our community who feel completely left out? Some neighbor who feels estranged, maybe have lost a spouse, there is nowhere else to go. Can we love them where they are and get down low and serve them and realize that this is a new perspective for us. (Read more…) Here is my homily for Holy Thursday - Evening Mass o...

The scriptures are a collection of defining moments for the Jewish and the Christian people. They have been put together for the most defining moments of our history. The Gospels are collection of defining moments of Jesus' life. And today's Gospel is a bevy of collective and of defining moments. We have multitude of them, not only just for Jesus, but for others. (Read more…)   Here is m...

Today, more than ever, we need to be people who are willing to show up, to show up and not save people, not to rescue them, but to be present to them in the midst their suffering. Whether it be from a divorce or whether it be from a rejection of their family, or whether they are immigrants and they feel no longer welcomed, or whether they feel left out on the sides of society. Our job is to show u...

All of us have made mistakes. We have all done something that was wrong, whether a little thing when we were a child or something older. We will always remember how we were treated in that moment of shame, that moment of being caught. That moment can shame us and maim us, or it can transform us into something much better, something more profound. (Read more…) Here is my homily for the Fifth Sunday...

Our lives have become so busy and even about the good things, we can be so busy, we miss God speaking to us at these liminal moments where God is trying to say something different than what we want to hear. It might be saying something challenging that we do not want to hear. It is those moments when we are called to pause like Moses and approach it and take courage to lean in and to move closer t...

Sometimes the darkness in our lives can be in fact our friend, because it allows us to focus only on what we need to focus on. Today we have this reading, this classic reading of the man born blind in his blindness. Here is the irony. Here is a man who is born blind, who cannot see, and yet he sees Jesus for who he really is and calls him the son of God. The Pharisees and the scribes can see, but...

Sometimes we find it hard to accept that God would forgive us for our mistakes. Sometimes when we hurt somebody who we really love and we know we have hurt them and we ask for forgiveness from the Lord, we ask in a sense why did I do that? And we want almost to be punished a little bit because we know we were wrong. So we find it hard to sometime accept. But hopefully we will finally accept God’s...

We are called to take the living waters, take the bread of life that we receive from here, and to share it with those who so desperately need that fresh living water. You and I might be the only person this week who offers it to them. If you get an inkling to be kind and gentle and not judgmental to someone in any of those categories, then this is your moment.  (Read more…) Here is my homily for t...