Sunday Homilies

How do we evaluate the reliability of a prophet?  Consider whether or not he is enriching himself.

"He can't be any good, because he's from  here!"   We have to consider this very common and very strange way of thinking.

The heartwarming account of Jesus piling healing upon healing.

The homilist was away last week.  Today, in light of God's address to Job, we consider the encyclical of Pope Francis on the environment, and the murders in Charleston, S.C. 

In this year's Scriptures, we focus on the meaning of the blood of sacrifice.

God, in his dynamism, demonstrated in the relationships of the Trinity, enters into human affairs, definitively so in Jesus.

The fruits of the Holy Spirit are amazing and peaceful indications that conversion has occurred.

The homilist was away on May 10.  Let's be careful when interpreting the snakes and poison of the conclusion of Mark's Gospel.  The one who ascended did so because he had first descended to the depths of human misery.

A vine and branches are the same substance, just as Jesus is truly human and thus of the same substance as ourselves.  We see, in the case of the converted Saul/ Paul, how important community is for certifying who has experienced conversion.

First John hints at our exalted dignity.  Peter comments on the uproar over the healing of the beggar at the Temple gate.

Jesus resurrected our enfleshed humanity.  We must take this seriously as we seek to appreciate how God affirms the goodness of the way he made us.

The earliest Christians "had everything in common."  We who are invested in the notion of private property may find this practice challenging.  If we are heirs to the resurrection, other possessions become less of a concern.

I accidentally left the recorder on after the homily.  I don't think there's anything ugly or shameful in the forty-some minutes which were inadvertently recorded.  You may enjoy this for its capturing some of my typical Sunday morning.

Jesus makes a statement about the death of the grain of wheat, applying it to himself.  We seek properly to apply it to ourselves.

God has given us all things.  We seek to express our thanks.

There's no recording for March 1, since I cancalled Sunday Masses due to heavy snow.  Today we are introduced to the scandal which leads to Jesus' crucifixion: the scandal of his affirming that he is the Son of God.

We must be well aware that the sufferings of Jesus have meaning because he willingly took them upon himself

A consideration of the many ways in which we separate ourselves from each other.

Jesus demonstrates his own weariness, which is quite similar to what is described by Job.  We need refreshment in the midst of activity.

"Predictions are always difficult, especially about the future."  Prophecy is not necessarily about the future; God, speaking through prophets, has a lot to say to us about how things are right now, and how they must change.

Satire is in the news, and it's in the Bible.  The Book of Jonah gives us the portrait of an unwilling prophet and as we laugh at Jonah, we learn to laugh at our own resistance to God.

Here I am.  How do I hear and understand a call from the God who has given me life?

Baptism symbolizes many things, including a thirst for human existence to make sense.

Can "foreign" people really be as human as we are?  Somehow we resist this obvious fact of life.  The manifestation of Jesus to the nations helps us break through our self-imposed barriers so that we appreciate our kinship with all people.

We understand Mary of Nazareth to have been the most free person of all.  We consider whether we will dispose ourselves to cooperate with God as Mary did.