Categories
HOMILIES

FALLING SHORT OF THE GREATEST COMMANDMENT

This homily is based on Matthew 22:34-40.

Singer/songwriter Howie Day has a couple of great lines in his 2003 hit, “Collide”:

Even the best fall down sometimes.
Even the wrong words seem to rhyme.

Never mind the rest of the song–which, of course, is a love song–but I think those two lines capture something pretty basic in our lives:  Sometimes even the best of us can screw things up!

Categories
HOMILIES

SUNDAY CHRISTIANS, CAFETERIA CATHOLICS, ETC.

This homily is based on Matthew 22:15-21.

In today’s Gospel reading, our Lord utters his famous line:  “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and repay to God what belongs to God.”  At first glance, the Lord seems to be proposing a division between our usual lives and our so-called spiritual lives.  Sort of like Sunday Christianity, when people act like Christians only when they go to Sunday services.  As for the rest of the week, they act “normally”–that is, not in any particularly religious or even moral way.

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Categories
HOMILIES

EXPIRY DATE

This homily is based on Matthew 21:33-43.

In his monologue at a Saturday Night Live (SNL) episode, comedian Aziz Ansari warns against stereotyping the people who had voted for Trump–except for that group of people who, as soon as Trump won, told themselves: “Hey, we don’t have to pretend like we’re not racist anymore! Whoo!’”

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Categories
HOMILIES

HOW I ALMOST FLUNKED MY ORAL EXAM BECAUSE OF TODAY’S PARABLE

This homily is based on Matthew 20:1-16.

Many years ago I was a student in a class called “Homiletics.” Maybe you can’t tell, but people training to be priests take a class to learn how to  preach.

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Categories
HOMILIES

THE TWO THINGS WE NEED TO KNOW ABOUT FORGIVENESS

This homily is based on Matthew 18:21-35.

Today’s Sunday Gospel is about forgiveness: Peter, on the one hand, monitoring his quota on forgiveness, and our Lord, on the other, tossing all that accounting out the window by reminding us that by the way, we all of us are recipients of the Father’s boundless mercy, remember?

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