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

You are not going to win every hand in your plan, in your life. That is just the way it is. You get some really doozy hands sometimes when you are sick and when you are suffering and you have gotten a bad hand, you still have to play the hand. Pick up your cross and come and follow me. You can not just fold the hand every single time. And that is what the Lord is trying to tell us, that he is in e...

In today’s gospel, Jesus moves in close with this deaf and mute man. He moves in real close. And Jesus just does not say be healed or be opened in this case, he sticks his fingers in his ears. He puts his spittle on his tongue. I mean, that is moving in pretty close. He is intimately engaged. It is ultimately what Jesus did in becoming human. (Read more…) Here is my homily from the Twenty- Third S...

Henry Nouwen, the great Catholic priest and theologian of modern times, explains this reconnection concept using four words: taken, blest, broken and given. These connects us back to God as his beloved. When we truly discover that we are the beloved of God, that changes everything.  (Read more…) Here is my homily from the Twenty- Second Sunday of Ordinary Time. Please feel free to share with other...

We come to church not just for ourselves. We come for the sake of others. If there was only one person here, it would not be a celebration. It is a celebration because so many of us have made the decision to come here. That is what makes church.  (Read more…) Here is my homily from the Twenty-First Sunday of Ordinary Time. Please feel free to share with others.

I want us to understand what we need to do because the whole world needs this nourishment so desperately. We are the remnant few who come to church. We need to be the bread of life for the world. If we do not do it, then who is going to  do it? There is no one else out here. It is just us guys. It is up to us to live what Christ gave to us and to become that in the world. (Read more…) Here is my h...

Watching the Olympics was such a wonderful counterpoint to so much we listen to in the news. It is such a relief for the human spirit. Because all we ever seem to see or hear is all bad news. But it is such a relief to watch this, the best of humanity. And it is such a relief and joy to watch. I cannot help but think of that phrase from St. Ireneus. “The glory of God is man, fully alive.” (Read mo...

What we can do is share the nourishment we receive from here. And what does that mean? It is exactly what Paul says in the letter to the Ephesians. He said, “We shed the old self and we put on new self.” We need to become different when we come back from here. We need in some way to be nourishment for the world. We need to be the bread of life for the world. That is what will convince people, it i...

Jesus sent out the apostles, the twelve. In Mark's gospel, it depicts as just the twelve. But in the other gospels he sends out all his disciples. He sends all of us out to share the good news of the gospel with others. How we do that is incredibly important, but more important is that we do something to spread the good news. (Read more…) Here is my homily from the Fifteenth Sunday of Ordinar...

Let us open our eyes and see what is among us and see if we can participate. At least recognize them for the gifts that are here, that are the ordinary being turned into extraordinary. That we can be grateful for the gift among us and be part of it, maybe to be willing to step in  and to help in some way. (Read more…) Here is my homily from the Thirteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time. Please feel free...

What does it mean then for us to be faith-filled? And what does it mean for us to be humble as disciples? The lesson of the woman with the hemorrhages gives us is to reach out and touch his garments, if I could just reach out and touch God. Our constant sort of mode is to always be looking to touch God in our lives. (Read more…) Here is my homily from the Thirteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time. Please...

There is something consoling about knowing when the storms will come and go. It does not take away from the fact that storms are there and they are coming and the damage that they are going to do, But it does sort of help to get ready for it. That is kind of the way it works. I find it very helpful, very consoling. (Read more…) Here is my homily from the Twelfth Sunday of Ordinary Time. Please fee...

It is true that the little things are what matter in our own lives as well. It is the little things we will become known for. The little things that we do or say that matter the most. That is what Christ is saying in today's gospel with this parable of the kingdom of God. A mustard seed is the smallest of seeds, but yet when it grows, it becomes the largest of plants. (Read More…) Here is my...

Today, I do not want to focus on the fall of humanity. I want to focus on the rise of humanity that will return to being fully human, fully alive, by seeing with new eyes, by hearing with new ears, by tasting and touching and smelling with new vitality so that we want to drink in the whole world and give glory to God. (Read more…) Here is my homily from the Tenth Sunday of Ordinary Time. Please fe...

Henry Nouwen, the great theologian and Catholic priest wrote in a book called Open Hands, Open Heart, “Most Catholics, when we come to church on Sunday, in fact, do not have open hands or an open heart. When we come, our hands and our hearts are full of many other things, and they are not open.” He challenged us in a very strong way. He said, “many of us have fists clenched tight, full with many t...

A lot of ink has been spilled over the mystery of the Holy Trinity for the past many years. Indeed, actually sadly, even more blood has been spilled over it. Even now, the East and the West Church are still split over a single word called the Filioque. This means that the spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. The gospel today brings us back to the core of the Trinity and t is more about mis...

The message is God loves us. The good news is that God loves you completely. The bad news, he loves everyone else completely too. But it is not really bad news. Of course, it is good news all around. The challenge then is, where we are called to be the church in the world where we are called to share this love where we are called to witness this love in the world, where are we called to do it to e...

God loves us not for what we have or what we do , what we own or what we look like . God loves us for who we are. We know that intellectually, I guess we know that, but we need reminders of it. And in this world, there is so much coming at us that we need reminders often for that purpose. Sometimes there are things in our life that will illustrate the love that God has for us, that breaks it open...

“I looked out upon my window and I saw the leaves and the flowers falling from my beautiful tree outside my window. And I lamented as I saw the barren branches appear, and I lamented the beautiful flowers and leaves I had. And then I noticed, as I looked through the tree with its barren branches, the stunning mountains behind the tree that I had not seen.”   (Read more…) Here is my homily from the...

Over the last few weeks, we have been reading from the Gospel of John and it hammers away at this metaphor of the Good Shepherd. And today’s version is a powerful one about how a good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. That is the image, a good shepherd. But I sometimes wonder if we really internalize that message? Do we really understand what he is trying to say? (Read more…) Here is my h...

Our faith is all about God as love and how we are called to be love to one another. And we are called to bring that story alive. We gather every Sunday to tell this story but sometimes I fear that we do not really believe the story, I am not sure we are convinced about the story we tell. (Read more…) Here is my homily from the Third Sunday of Easter. Please feel free to share with others. Alleluia...

We often name the gospel from this Sunday as “Doubting Thomas." One of the things that has always struck me about this particular gospel passage is that Jesus has now risen from the dead, glorious victory over death and he has wounds. Why does he have wounds? Is this what it will be like when we all are raised? We will have all our wounds or broken legs, and our bad hips. We will all have the...

Our role is to witness to love in the world so that others will come to know and experience the joy of eternal life. In the gospel t we get a hint of what the disciples found it hard to do it. Jesus says, “Go to Galilee.” Galilee was not just a physical location, it was much more. It was where they first met Jesus, where they first fell in love with Jesus. (Read more…) Here is my homily from Easte...

When we witness something that is powerful, we tend to want to immediately mirror it. Our brains wire immediately to repeat it. If we witness a young person helping an elderly person we will typically say, “Wow, that is really wonderful. ” Our brain is now rewiring to repeat something like that for ourselves within the next twenty four hours. We will attempt to mirror that because we witnessed it....

We look upon Jesus on the cross and we take all our suffering wherever we have been, whether we have witnessed it, whether we are currently in the middle of it or when we are indifferent to it. We talk to Christ and accept his invitation of the cross to move beyond the cross. (Read more…) Here is my homily from Good Friday. Please feel free to share with others.

We tend to think there are good people in the world and there are bad people in the world. Of course, we are part of good people, right? I mean, we do not ever consider ourselves bad, so we are the good ones. And they, whoever they are, are the bad ones. The challenge with that is that it is simply not reality as much as we want to believe it. (Read more…) Here is my homily from Palm Sunday. Pleas...