Homily for the 16th Sunday of Ordinary Time "'The light shines in the darkness,' [and] according to the verse in Matthew, 'When the wheat sprang up... then the weeds appeared too' (Mt. 13:26). Thus the darkness glorifies God, and the light shines in it, not so much as opposites placed next to each other, but … Continue reading A Mandorlic Life

Homily for the 15th Sunday of Ordinary Time For us Christians, for us who try our best every day to follow Christ, I think it is important to remember, in the light of the gospel passage for this Sunday, that we are not the sowers, we are not the ground, rocky, thorny, fertile or otherwise, … Continue reading Christian Fertilizer!

Homily for the 14th Sunday of Ordinary Time A favorite spiritual teacher of mine suggests a question we might ask ourselves at the start of each new day. And that questions is this: "Am I going to add to the aggression in the world today?" What if the labor and the burden, from which Jesus … Continue reading An Ever-Vigilant Openness

Homily for the 11th Sunday of Ordinary Time At several places in the gospels we hear Jesus say something akin to: "Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you hold bound are held bound." Now we often reduce that biblical injunction to something that the priest alone does in the confessional. It … Continue reading An Economy of Gift

Homily for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ 2023 Wisdom speaks and says: "God has made everything appropriate to its time, but he has placed the timeless in our hearts." (Eccl. 3:11) There is a philosophical concept that comes out of the French School of Catholic thought and that concept … Continue reading Corpus Christi

Homily: Trinity Sunday 2023 This great feast of the Most Holy Trinity can too easily and too often get weighed down by technical, even exotic, sounding theological language like hypostatic union and homoousios, or it can get easily run over by people picking clovers and quite anxious to explain the meaning of 3 in 1. … Continue reading The Great Feast of Intimacy

Homily for the 5th Sunday of Easter: Quare venisti, Bernardi? Quare venisti? It is said that the medieval monk and abbot, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, asked himself that same question everyday of his long life in the monastery: "Bernard, why are you here?" "For what did you come?" And it's not that Bernard was constantly … Continue reading Return to Your Galilee

A Homily for the 3rd Sunday of Easter 2023: One of my favorite lines of scripture is contained in the writings of St. Paul. It is his shocking, and yet strangely ignored words: "And we with unveiled face are being transformed from Glory into Glory." Those are shocking words because they are so fundamentally true … Continue reading Let Them See the Glory!

Homily for the 2nd Sunday of Easter (Divine Mercy): Where is Mercy? And what exactly does Mercy look like? If you've encountered Mercy how would you know? And, if asked about it, how would you articulate your own experience of Mercy? I would like to suggest, on this 2nd Sunday of Easter, also known as … Continue reading Where Mercy Resides

"Gardening the Dead: Relearning Vulnerability in a World of Violence" (This Sermon/Story served as an Epilogue to my doctoral dissertation. This is the first time its seen the light of day!) Somewhere, treading along the rim of eternity, like tight rope artists whose slightest half-slip might cost them everything, Mary Magdalene, Mary, and Salome moved … Continue reading An Easter Story!