Sunday Homilies

The Way, the Truth, and the Life: We bring to our God our anxieties about going the right way.

On Mother's Day we consider the parallels between shepherding and mothering.

We can read into the "walk to Emmaus" our anxieties and confusion about ultimate meaning, and our discoveries about fulfillment "in the breaking of the bread."

Be aware of the First Letter of St. Peter as it is proclaimed through the course of the Easter season.

Considering the burial cloths and what was sparked in Peter's mind and heart.

A reflection on the possibility that Barabbas' first name was Jesus, and on Jesus' "everyman" role.

If God is who we think he is, he wouldn't be much of a God if we could not praise him eternally.  Jesus, for the sake of mortals, saw fit to get close to death, and to succumb to death, for our sake.

We are dependent upon the sense of sight; sometimes, however, it gets in the way.  We are called to a deeper appreciation of  insight.

The homilist did not preach last week.  This homily is on human thirst, and also on details of Christian initiation.

Hidden agendas, making the moment "about me," and other subtleties of temptation.

We reach an extremely important part of the Sermon on the Mount: Jesus' admonition against worry.

Jesus says a number of very provocative and memorable things in today's passage from the Sermon on the Mount.  We find freedom in understanding that Jesus is calling us to cultivate a healthy respect for our brothers and sisters.

We are set free when we understand that the people in our life are not objects to be manipulated but persons of inestimable worth in the sight of God.

Consider the drama of the Christ Child entering the place that was understood to be the unique dwelling place of God on earth.

I remember now that at Epiphany, January 5, which somehow did not get recorded, I simply read a column of Brother Guy Consolmagno, SJ.  I'll try to point you toward a transcript of that column.   "Has Christ been divided?"  Rips in the fabric of Christianity go back to the time of St. Paul.  We consider the absolute need for Christians to be woven back together.

My apologies for not being able to present Jan. 5 or Jan. 12.  During the "polar vortex" blizzard of January 5, my recorder remained on for over an hour.  The next Sunday, I wasn't thinking ahead when Bishop Paprocki was the presider and homilist at the Mass where I usually record the homily.  Consider the sober majesty of "the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world."

Lest you suppose that your family doesn't fit some kind of societal norm, remember that the Holy Family itself was far from typical.

In spite of the four-century struggle to state dogmatically who Jesus is, St. Paul, at the beginning of Christianity, demonstrates his awareness of Jesus as truly God and truly human.

Give me patience -- right now!  We must turn from our demands of immediate results and allow our God to lead us into a new consciousness of how the Kingdom of God operates.

How is the "peaceable kingdom" to be achieved?  Looking within is necessary.

Advent will most likely be a matter of our inner experience.  We remember the significance of the passage from Romans in the dramatic life of St. Augustine.

Yes, Americans can appreciate the concept of kin(g)ship.  We have a God who rules from the cross, where he intersects with all the griefs of the human condition.  "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."

The way to be in touch with eternity is to be absorbed in our present duty and to know why we are so devoted.

We are called to cultivate a sense of wonder that we are here in the first place.  This wonder helps us enter into a deeper faith in the eternal life by which God is rightly praised.

Do we see life as a bunch of random happenings?  Our loving God does not consider us as random occurrences.  We may apply to ourselves the surprise which Zacchaeus felt when Jesus looked up into the tree and called him by name.