Why do we come here on Ash Wednesday? Why do we come now in greater numbers than on Easter? Why do we inconvenience our work day just to get a blackened brow that will embarrass us and confuse our colleagues? It’s not obligation that brings us—there is none. It may be custom, or habit, or …
Category Archives: Berkeley
Sunday Week 5 Year B
Stories, like ours, can reveal our own selves to us. Stories draw us in. Stories awaken in us a sense of who we are and what we desire. They tell us what is changing in us. That’s why we read the scriptures at Mass and not the catechism: because we want to be changed. That’s …
Sunday Week 3 Year B
In recent weeks we’ve been wondering what it’s like when God comes among us as a human being: as a tiny child at Christmas, as an adult now in these weeks of Ordinary Time. It’s a great gift given to us to meet the maker of the universe dwindled to infancy, vulnerable and frail. But …
Sunday Week 2 Year B
This year epiphany pursues us. In these weeks each gospel speaks about the way God is discovered in our lives. Today the epiphany takes the form of an awkward encounter. In an unexpected question: “What are you looking for?” In a question given instead of an answer: “Where do you stay?” In an answer that …
Baptism of the Lord Year B
Thirty years have flashed by in a week. Thirty years framed by two great epiphanies. Between the howling baby adored by shepherds and scientists and the silent figure coming to John at the Jordan—between them there is a lifetime of mystery. Somehow that helpless, demanding, fragile, noisy, tiny baby becomes a kid under his mother’s …
Sunday Week 3 of Advent Year B
Since Peter McGrath’s not here today it safe to let you in on a secret. In cynical circles, Jesuits are not known for their liturgical awareness. In fact, there’s a joke. How do you tell a good Jesuit liturgy? —No one gets hurt. Advent is a good example. In my house of 11 men, we …
Sunday Week 1 of Advent Year B
The first of December! No sooner are the turkeys all eaten than the Christmas trees are being sold. Why is it that December seems the shortest month? Once Thanksgiving hits and the dishes are all washed up you know that it’ll be no time at all before its January. However long November seems with its …
Sunday Week 33 Year A
Imagine something with me … What if the world were to end this afternoon, let’s say at 2:38? What if these next few hours the only ones left to you? Can you entertain the thought for a while, can you let it slap you in the face, can you believe it for a moment, can …
Sunday Week 31 Year A
I don’t know if you saw in the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday, amidst the murders and the political pundits, a little headline for a review of a new film about Cesar Chavez. It ran “Not a saint but human.” Not a saint but human. Where do we get the idea that holiness is not for …
Sunday Week 30 Year A
Two things happened to me this summer in England. I was ordained and I fell in love—more or less at the same time. Such is God’s comic timing! At just the moment I am reaffirming a public commitment to a celibate life my heart is soaring in an altogether different direction. “You shall love the …