Sunday Homilies

Jesus says, "Let your light shine"; but he also says "Don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing."  Does he contradict himself?

Jesus begins his Sermon on the Mount with the Beatitudes: promises that we will be happy even if it seems we are out of step with what most of the world is doing.

This is the Sunday of the Word of God, and we begin our year-long reading from the Gospel of Matthew with Jesus' choosing of his first four disciples.

We are getting started with the long expanse of Ordinary Time and particularly with a continuous reading from Paul's first letter to the Christians of Corinth, Greece.

The Bishop of Rome Emeritus, Pope Benedict XVI, died yesterday.  His resignation in 2013 provided an example to all of us that we all must acknowledge our limits.  Mary's identity as "Mother of God" means that she is pointing to her Son and encouraging us to greater amazement at his identity as truly God and truly human.

In our age of information, the Scriptures for Christmas Day are all about the Word who says everything to us.

Advent points us to completion and fulfillment.  What do we think such fulfillment will look like?

Entering the privileged time of Advent, we are invited into timelessness and the possibility of doing something productive with our swords.

Please note: A number of Sundays are missing.  I know that I left the device at home on the Third Sunday of Advent, when I pointed out a crescendo in what the prophets and the Gospels were saying about "the one who is to come."  Other Sundays, the deacon preached. Kingship and kinship: Christ is King of humanity because he has identified with our lowest ebb.

The Sadducees did not believe in eternal life; therefore, they were sad, you see.

Last weekend, the deacon preached.  -- If we think about sin, we must also think about mercy, forgiveness, and healing.

Prayer is not for the sake of controlling God.  We must immerse ourselves in prayer so that we may discover how to be united with our God.

The story of Naaman inspires us to consider failures of imagination and the concept of local gods.

Again, the homilist must have forgotten to record September 18.  Too bad; it built on an earlier Sunday's pronouncement that life is not a game.  On September 25, the deacon preached.  -- We need to become more comfortable with the statement "We are unprofitable servants" so that we will wait actively for "the vision."

The weekend of September 4, the homilist was in Paris and North Arm while their priest made a Mission Co-op appeal in the homilist's parishes on behalf of his diocese in Rwanda.  -- The stories of Luke 15 can be revisited countless times, and they do not get old.  God's mercy does not make sense -- but we know we need it.

Jesus is not giving an etiquette lesson.  He is asking us why we are so concerned about status when people who cannot gain any such status need to be responded to.

The homilist must have failed to record August 14, shortly after his mother's funeral.  -- Anyway, LIFE IS NOT A GAME and is, in fact, BETTER than a game.

The homilist preached on the short form  of the Gospel, seeing no need to talk about beatings.

After three weeks away, because of a visit to Guatemala and the souvenir he brought back (Covid), the homilist returns and considers the vanity-content of our lives.

Do you think that perhaps Jesus was seeking new recruits because he was having second thoughts about James and John?

The return to Ordinary Time and a consideration of vocation was somewhat overshadowed by a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision and its implications.

This separate celebration of the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist can never be separated from Holy Thursday and the Passion of Jesus.

Two persons of the Trinity are called "Father" and "Son."  Therefore I decided to stick with family relationships.

We, the Christian community, can work through our problems together.

The Christian people began with a small number; Revelation promises that this nucleus will grow into a vast throng.