You should all be glad that you haven’t had to live with me for these last couple of weeks because I’ve done nothing but moan about this gospel reading. I do not like it. In fact, I hate this reading! It troubles me, it irritates me. Well, since I’ve had to suffer it, I thought …
Category Archives: Homilies
Sunday Week 1 of Easter Year A
At the end of the film “Terminator” Arnold Schwarzenegger—part-man, part-machine—is finally dying after being crushed, boiled and baked. Stripped right down to his metal skeleton he utters his last words—”I’ll be back!” Schwarzenegger was the bad guy, but it’s the same for the goodies. At the end of another film—”Aliens 3″—our hero, Ripley, gives her …
Sunday Week 5 of Lent Year A
It’s tough being dead—until you get used to it—though it’s a damned sight better than what goes before with the mess and the blood and the battle for every breath. Not to mention my sobbing sisters, wailing away—at least Mary—she’s never been one to hide her feelings. Martha’s different—she knows the strength in sparing words …
Sunday Week 2 of Lent Year A
Lent is a time to be selfish. And the problem we have is that we don’t really know how to be selfish. Selfishness just doesn’t come all that easily to us. We are not good at it! In the spirit of election year I’d like to take a straw poll: Hands up those of you …
Ash Wednesday
The apocryphal story being told at breakfast this morning in my community is about Pat Buchanan. Apparently, so someone says, Bob Dole had been talking again about his humble origins in Kansas, how he started with nothing, and how he’s had to work hard for everything he has. On which Buchanan supposedly comments: “if he’s …
Sunday Week 7 Year A
At the beginning of a new year and with Lent just around the corner we are faced today with the urgency of the command: be holy. It is a command spoken three times in the scripture today. Not a request, not an option, but a command. And not just for some, not just for a …
Sunday Week 5 Year A
Salt used to be a good thing — now it just raises our blood-pressure. Once packaged foods delighted in their saltiness — now they vie for the label “low Sodium.” Like “no fat” and “caffeine free” what we once sought out for pleasure, we now avoid for long life. Salt used to be precious—Roman soldiers …
Sunday Week 2 of Advent Year A
Something is coming. Two voices proclaim the same thing. Hear the voice of a desert herald: Prepare the way, something is coming. Hear the voice of an ancient prophet: A dead stump is sprouting, something is coming. Two voices, as unlike as day and night, are agreed. Something is coming. Isaiah speaks softly and soothes …
Sunday Week 32 Year C
These are bloody readings! Readings of torture and death — yet here we are moving towards the holiday season! Our year is moving to its end in celebration, while the Church year comes to an end in violence. Which is more real? In these weeks, Jesus has been on the road to Jerusalem. Last week …
Sunday Week 29 Year C
Justice is not easy to come by. We know that justice is not easy to come by. We know that people don’t start off in life with an equal chance. We know that the laws that we make deepen that injustice. And we know that often enough politics, and police, and the whole machinery of …