It’s the look that makes all the difference in the world. … There’s a quiet little magic that almost slips by unnoticed in the gospel today. Jesus, heartbroken by the crowd, gathers disciples but sends out apostles. In the space of a sentence twelve bewildered beginners are promoted to full ambassadorship with authority to speak …
Yearly Archives: 1999
Trinity Sunday Year A
Somebody’s hiding here. Or, truer to tell, someone’s being hidden. E-mail! All those messages flying up and down the wires. All that urgency of communication. And what’s in these person-to-person packages of such life and death import? Jokes, get-rich-quick schemes, and invitations to porn. Isn’t technology wonderful? OK, somewhere in there, there are messages that …
Monday Week 8 Year I
The time may be ordinary but the liturgy still packs a punch. These are sturdy messages to hear after the heated rush and joyful babble of Pentecost. A bit like having cold water thrown in your face. Repentance. Burning desire. And bitter disappointment. Like I said at the beginning these two turnover times—between semester’s end …
Friday Week 7 of Easter
Just what I don’t want to hear after breakfast on the beach—the taste of fish still strong in my mouth—salt and smoke in my hair. Here we go! “Do you love me?” “Yeah, of course I love you!” “No, I mean it … do you love me?” “Yes! I love you.” There’s something about those …
St Mathias
It seems Christian apostolate is a team sport… and twelve-a-side at that! But thank God we don’t pick teams the same way the Eleven did when they were looking for one more to make up the number. I can feel myself standing there defiantly faking non-embarrassment as one after another gets picked and I get …
Sunday Week 6 of Easter Year A (Mothers’ Day & First Communions)
A friend of mine back in Britain has just been made head of the British Jesuits. I asked him yesterday what he was going to preach about this morning: “loneliness,” he said. …You may remember David since he’s been here to Mass a few times—big guy, blond hair, my age (you know, young). Anyway, it …
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Sunday Week 4 of Easter Year A
“When they heard this they were cut to the heart.” This morning’s New York Times magazine had me in tears. Ten years ago I spent just three months in Guyana, South America, from New Year to Holy Week. A country so poor its coinage had no value outside its borders and precious little within them. …
Friday Week 3 of Easter (St George)
George was a martyr. He faced terrible torture for years without giving in to his torturers. He lived with valour and died nobly. But of course that’s not why we remember him. We remember him because he killed that dragon. It’s the one thing everyone knows about St. George. And he didn’t just kill the …
Sunday Week 2 of Easter Year A
“You have never seen him, yet you love him, and without seeing you believe in him, and rejoice with inexpressible joy touched with glory.” Well, do you? … Do I? “You have never seen him, yet you love him, and without seeing you believe in him, and rejoice with inexpressible joy touched with glory.” That’s …
Easter Sunday Year A
“Christ is Risen!” … “Christ is Risen Indeed!” But what if he weren’t risen? Or what if he were risen from the dead and we never got to know about it? You see so much hangs on the events we hear about this morning. What if Mary Magdalene hadn’t been so grief- stricken, or hadn’t …