November 9, 2025

Ezekiel 47:1-2,8-9,12 1 Corinthians 3:9-11,16-17 John 2:13-22 And now, a word from our sponsor. In place of our usual programming, we interrupt this program for the following special announcement. The feast for today kind of feels like that. We’ve been rolling along since June doing the readings in Ordinary Time Sunday after Sunday and then last week and this, we take a break from the ordinary – last week for All Souls, this week for the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica. This doesn’t happen very often. The last time was in 2014 so it demands our attention. The feast for today is about a church, but not just any church. It is about the cathedral in Rome. The Pope is the pope because he is the bishop of Rome and although St. Peter’s Basilica gets all the attention it is not the cathedral of Rome because it is not in Rome — technically Vatican City is its own unique country. The cathedral of Rome, the chair of the bishop, is the Lateran Basilica. So in celebrating this feast today we are really honoring the Holy Father since from his cathedral he pastors the entire church. The feast itself is about a building, a particular building, a really big fancy building, which was dedicated on this day. Since St. James lost its church building before many of us, most of us, starting attending this parish, our attachment to buildings is somewhat tenuous. We have found that buildings don’t make a church, people do. We have created our own sacred space out of this old school hall. Which prompts the questions: what makes a place sacred? What makes anything sacred? The dictionary defines “sacred” as “connected with God.” We think of churches as sacred since they fit that definition. But there’s a scene in the Color Purple which gives one pause. Talking with Celie Shug says, “Tell the truth, have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show. Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me. And I think all the other folks did too. They come to church to share God, not find God.” Then she invites Celie to look around for the signs of God’s presence, something as simple as a purple flower in a field. We can rejoice that there are sacred places like churches but let’s keep alert for other sacred places – the moon rising over Lake Michigan, the waterfall at Starved Rock, the dining room of a home at Thanksgiving. What might be your color purple which reveals God to you? Again, is there such a thing as a sacred person? Maybe the pope – is he a sacred person? Last week I was at a priest meeting sitting next to an Augustinian friar. Fifty years ago he was in school with Robert Prevost, now known as Pope Leo XIV. They attended seminary together and were ordained together. According to him, Robert was just another guy, if a little more nerdy than the rest. This ordinary guy whom he used to elbow out of the way playing basketball is now recognized as sacred, as the Holy Father. That is not unique to Robert Prevost but is really the story of us all. We are all just ordinary blokes until we are recognized for who we truly are, children of God, blessed beyond belief, sacred in our very being. The child crying during the deacon’s sermon, the elder who is feeling the weight of years, the parent who is trying to cope are all sacred. Keep alert, for everyone we meet is sacred since they have a family resemblance to Jesus if we have the eyes to see. Can we broaden the notion and say the we, the people gathered here, this community, is sacred. That is what St. Paul claims for us in the epistle. Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? The temple of God, which you are, is holy. How can we claim to be holy? We are a mess. We make mistakes all the time. We aren’t sure exactly what God wants us to do. We can treat each other poorly. On the other hand, are we holy because we are hospitable to one another, because we care about social injustice, because we are generous with the poor? Go back to our definition of what it means to be holy – namely, that which connects us with God. Our identity as a holy people is not due to anything we do or don’t do. Rather, it is because we come together to point beyond ourselves and seek the God who is the foundation of everything that lives and moves and has being. What happened, Church, when Jesus came was that the whole notion of the sacred was stood on its head. Because God chose to enter the creation, to enter the world, the world itself became the home of the divine, holy by definition. Jesus not only drove money changers out of the temple, he also drove demons out of people, drove leprosy away from the afflicted, drove death back for Lazarus to accent the sacredness of everything. The distinction we used to make between the sacred and the profane, between the natural and the supernatural no longer holds. Everything is supernatural because the grace of Christ permeates everything. Remember the scene when Moses encountered the burning bush. He is told to take off his shoes because he is on holy ground. If that is the requirement is still in effect, we’d all better be prepared to go barefoot since, because of Jesus, our whole life long all we are doing is moving from one piece of holy ground to another. As the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins put it: The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed…. Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

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October 26, 2025

Sirach 35:12-14,16-18 2 Timothy 4:6-8,16-18 Luke 18:9-14 A news reporter heard that a woman, Mrs. Jones, was the prophet of a new religion. He interviewed her and asked about the core belief of the new faith. Only those who are members of my religion will get to heaven, she answered. How many members of the new religion are there? The reporter asked. Only two, she answered, me and my maid, Mary. So only you and Mary will go to heaven? After a long pause Mrs. Jones answered, I’m not that sure about Mary. Judging who is in and who is out, who is up and who is down, is a perennial human practice. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus commanded that we avoid doing so. “Stop judging lest you be judged,” or to put it in commandment form “Thou shalt not judge.” In the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector or Publican the problem was not so much that the Pharisee was listing all his spiritual accomplishments, his prayers, fasting and generosity. Those were, in fact, true and to his great credit. His prayer was one of gratitude that God was so much a part of his life. The problem arose because the Pharisee compared himself to others in general and to the publican in particular. “Oh God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity or even like this tax collector.” He violated the commandment to stop judging. To be sure there is judging and then there is judging. For example, we judge whether this politician is telling the truth or not. We make good decisions about who to vote for because of our judgments. What we shouldn’t do, what Jesus commands us not to do, is judge how that person stands before God. When we are deciding to answer someone’s friend request, we judge whether she would be good for me, not whether or not she is a good person. Only God knows all the factors which has formed this other person and how they became who they are. We can judge whether what they are doing is good, not whether they are good. The mistake the Pharisee made was to judge another person in comparison with himself, not being willing to cut them some slack. Okay, bragging about yourself and judging other people is bad and being humble is good. We get that. But a closer look at the parable suggests Jesus is after a deeper meaning. To understand the parable as Jesus spoke it requires looking at the translation. Remember that the Gospel of Luke was written in Greek fifty or so years after Jesus spoke the parable in Aramaic which we now read 2000 years later in English. We sometimes have to dig to get what is going on. In the parable, after the Pharisee says his prayer he might have heard the prayer of the Tax Collector. Now tax collectors were despised as collaborators with the enemy and Pharisees were local heroes in Jesus’ time. So imagine the Pharisees surprise when he hears the tax collector’s saying: “O God, be merciful to me a sinner.” This might have caused him to re-assess his judgment. Perhaps the tax collector was not as hopeless as he thought. According to the story, they both went up to the temple to pray, the Pharisee telling God how good he is; the tax collector how bad he is. Then comes the crucial line: (this translation) “The latter went home justified, not the former.” The word translated as “not” is the Greek word “para.” This translation understands it to mean “instead of.” The latter (the tax collector) went home justified instead of (para) the former (the Pharisee). But the word “para” has been incorporated into several English words which shows it can have different meanings, for example “parallel.” In this case the word “para” means “along side.” The lines are parallel if they lie along side one another. If we translate this gospel passage taking “para” to mean along side then it would say: The latter went home justified along side the former. In other words both the good guy and the bad guy went home equally justified. Why? Not because of how good or how bad they were. No, they were both justified because they both recognized their need for God by coming to the temple to pray. God justified them, not their actions for good or for ill. If this translation is correct (I didn’t make this up, some Biblical scholars have suggested it) – then both the Pharisee and the Tax Collector were in the same boat because of their need for God. Could that be the lesson Jesus wants us to glean? God hears the prayers of everyone along side each other. One prayer isn’t better than another. The prayer of the cloistered monk who spends eight hours a day kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament is received by God along side the prayer of the harried mother who, in the midst of feeding the children breakfast, ironing a shirt for work, putting a load of laundry in, taking out the chicken to thaw for dinner, fixing lunches to take to school, and calling the car pool to say she’s running a bit late manages to work in a “Dear Lord, help me make it through this day” prayer. Both prayers belong along side one another because both are precious to God. In both instances the pray-er recognizes that it is only with the grace and love of God that we live a full and happy life. The Pharisee when he heard the Tax collector’s prayer discovered that God alone was enough. All of his tithing and fasting did not make him a good person. God’s grace did. The Tax Collector also found that God was enough. Even though he had messed up big time God’s forgiveness and mercy let him know he was loved. The monk and the harried mother both knew that God was enough to help them make each day worth living. And God is enough for you and me. As a famous prayer of St. Ignatius puts it: “give me only your love and your grace. That’s enough for me.”

October 19, 2025

Exodus 17:8-13 2 Timothy 3:14-4:2 Luke 18:1-8 Some of the most memorable movies have a surprise ending, a twist that makes us look at everything we’ve seen so far in a new light. Think for example of the original Planet of the Apes, almost sixty years old. Given its age this is not exactly a spoiler alert but the final scene of the movie shifts the narrative in a different direction. Astronauts (Charleton Heston in the lead) think they have flown to a new world where apes are ascendant and homo sapiens is subordinate. As Heston flees the apes he comes to a ruined Statue of Liberty and realizes that they have not traveled in space but in time. The planet of the apes is future earth after it had been ruined during a nuclear war. Surprise! While Jesus does not give a surprise ending he often gives a twist to the parables he tells. Today’s story of the Unjust Judge and the Widow at first seems pretty straightforward. St. Luke introduces the parable as a lesson about “the necessity to pray always without becoming weary.” The widow keeps badgering the judge until she wears him down and he delivers “a just decision for her.” The lesson seems to be if a judge who is unjust will respond to a fervent plea from someone in need how much more will the just and loving God respond to those who cry out to him. That’s a good lesson but the final line of the parable shifts is meaning. “When the son of Man comes will he find faith on earth.” The parable is not about, or not only about, praying always. It also about keeping the faith. If you think on it, prayer really is about faith – faith that God is for us, that God cares about us, that God listens to us. When we pray we are showing our belief that God is not above it all, sitting on the throne beyond the concerns of mere mortals. Rather, God cares about us so much that God chose to become one of us in Jesus, to bring the whole of human experience into the realm of divinity. That raises the question: why do we need to pray always without becoming weary? Doesn’t God know what we need already? Doesn’t God care for us as a loving Father? Why do we have to keep banging on heaven’s door so that God will do what needs to be done? Asking those questions suggests that we might look at the parable in a different way. What happens if we reverse the roles – if the unjust judge does not stand for God but for us and if the widow should be looked upon as God pleading with us? We are certainly like that unjust judge who “neither feared God nor respected any human being.” We want what we want when we want it, irrespective of God’s will for us or how it will impact other people. My happiness, my comfort, my security are what matter. I’ll do my thing and if you and God can fit into my plans all the better but I’m not waiting for that. And how is God like the widow? God is constantly calling us to follow him. Remember the famous picture of Jesus standing at the door and knocking, waiting for us to open and let him in? Like the widow God never gives up on us but continues to invite us again and again into a life of repentance, into a life of grace. There is a famous poem by Francis Thompson called “The Hound of Heaven” that begins: “I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind; and in the mist of tears I hid from Him.” We can flee from God but God never gives up on us. We might imagine that we can do without God but no matter where we turn God’s love and God’s mercy will confront us. Is this re-imagining of the parable with the dramatis personae switched a valid interpretation of the words of Jesus? I must confess that I read several commentaries and none of them suggested it. Even if it is stretching the parable to the breaking point, this reading does suggest something necessary in the Christian life. To be a disciple, to be a Christian, to encounter Jesus confronts us with the need to change, to conversion. The constant temptation is to simply add the faith to the list of things which make me me. I’m a man, I’m old, I’m an American, I’m a religious, I like baseball, I like to cook, I go to plays, oh, and I am a Christian. The hound of heaven does not pursue us down the labyrinthine ways so that faith can be added onto the rest of my life like a hobby. No, faith demands a re-orientation of our lives so that everything we do, every idea that we have, every relationship we are in, every value that we hold flows from God and leads back to God. When the hound of heaven catches us, we surrender our old life in order to live the fuller life that God desires for us. We know how this works because this is, in fact, very similar to something we are familiar with – falling in love. When you fall in love the whole world looks different. How you spend your time, where you spend your money, what political opinions you hold, the books you read and the shows you see are all viewed through the eyes of your beloved. Your world is remade because of the love which fills your heart. That is how a grace-filled conversion works. When we fall in love with God we want always and only what God wants. How wonderful it is to finally give up making our own way and surrendering into the loving arms of God for that is where true peace and joy can be found.

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October 12, 2025

Gratitude is tricky when it shifts our focus on the consolations of God rather than the God of consolations 2 Kings 5:14-17 2 Timothy 2:8-13 Luke 17:11-19 The expression of gratitude at the healing of the leprous Samaritan is a familiar story. “He returned glorifying God in a loud voice and he fell at the… Read More »

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September 28, 2025

Some texts in the Bible are a little frightening, like God raining fire and brimstone down on Sodom and Gomorrah, Pharoah’s army drowning the Red Sea or the walls of Jericho tumbling down. While these are scary enough, the gospel story of the Rich Man and Lazarus is the text that terrifies me. The way Jesus tells the parable the Rich Man ends up in torment after death NOT for anything he did, but for what he didn’t do. As near as we can tell the rich man was a nice guy. He certainly cared about his brothers. He knew his Bible: he knew Abraham, Moses and the prophets. There is no evidence that he violated any commandment or spoke any harsh words. We can suppose that he worshiped God as any good Jew would. What lands him in hell was what he failed to do: he failed to see a poor man named Lazarus, lying at his door. It’s not that he was mean to him or harsh towards him. The rich man was so wrapped up in himself and his world that he simply ignored the needs of someone outside of his circle. No doubt entering or leaving he averted his face so he wouldn’t have to look at the pleading eyes right in front of him. He failed to understand that what he possessed was not his to squander as he wanted but from God meant for a divine purpose. For what he failed to see, to understand, to do he paid the price of damnation. This text terrifies me because the parable suggests that omission can be as damning as commission. Avoiding doing wrong is not enough. We also must do what is right. What, or better, who am I missing in what God wants of me? Have I grown too focused in my little world that I am not seeing something God wants me to see and not doing what God wants me to do? To lessen some of the terror of this parable three important lessons need attention. First, the poor man has a name, Lazarus, and the rich man knows his name. In all the parables that Jesus told this is the only time a character is named. In the other parables the protagonists are generic: a sower, a merchant, a woman baking bread, a father with two sons. Even here the rich man is not named but the poor man is. We should take from this that when Jesus calls us to expand our circle of care he is asking to do something specific. In Jesus’ time as in ours the needs are seemingly endless. We don’t know what to do about “poverty,” about the large volume of those seeking help, about those suffering bodily or mentally. By naming the poor man as Lazarus Jesus instructs us not to make our immediate concern dealing with an unnamed, generic, poor, suffering individual. Rather, we must ask ourselves what is the name, who is the specific person that demands my attention? The second thing to notice about the parable is that the poor man, Lazarus, is “lying at the door.” When I was a student at Catholic University of America, Mother Teresa gave a moving talk about her mission and spirituality. After her presentation there was time for questions and one of the students asked her: wouldn’t it be better to change the conditions which produced poverty instead of treating the victims of poverty after the fact. Mother Teresa answered that in the providence of God she was sure that it was someone’s vocation to improve society in a way that eliminated or, at least, reduced poverty. She prayed every day that whosever vocation it was would step up. However, her vocation was different. She had reached the point where she could no longer walk past one more poor person. She felt called to respond to the need which was right in front of her. That seems to be the point of the parable as well. We can’t do everything but we can do something, something for the needs which are in our face. There are lots of Lazarus’ out there but it is the one lying at our gate, the one we can call by name that has a claim on us. The rich man blew it. He knew Lazarus and his situation but did nothing and that was what got him condemned. Who is at our door? The third notable aspect of the parable: all Lazarus wants is “to eat his fill of the scraps which fell from the rich man’s table.” One thing that inhibits our responding to the needs in front of us is that we can only do a little bit. We can only give scraps – a little kindness, a little help, a little time — and we get discouraged because it doesn’t seem like much in the face of so much suffering. A story: an old man was walking the beach. A big storm has passed. The beach is littered with starfish in both directions as far as the eye can see. A boy approaches. His pants are rolled up halfway to his knees. He bends down, picks up something, then flings it into the sea. The old man watches awhile. Finally, he calls out, “Hey, sonny, what are you doing?” Comes the reply: “Throwing starfish back into the ocean. They got stranded on the beach from the tide. When the sun gets high, they will die unless I throw them back.” The old man replies, “But there must be hundreds. I’m afraid you won’t be able to make much of a difference.” The lad bends down, picks up yet another starfish and throws it as far as he can into the ocean. He turns, smiles, and says, “It made a difference to that one!” Church, we are called to make a difference. Who in your circle of care is hurting, in need, suffering? Who is Lazarus for you?

September 6, 2025

Does this sound familiar? You’re six years old and you can’t reach the cookie jar on the counter. You drag a chair over and climb up and just as you’re about to reach the prize your mother walks in and says, “Get down off there before you fall and break your neck.” Or, you’re doing homework on the dining table next to your sister and you start having a sword fight with your pencils and your mother sees you and says, “Cut that out before you poke your eye out.” Or, you’re sitting minding your own business watching TV and your mother comes in and says, “I’ve told you a million times to take the trash out.” When you point out that, in all likelihood, you won’t break your neck or poke out your eye and her reminders have been far fewer than one million mother responds, “Hyperbole added for emphasis.” My mother was in the habit of exaggerating the consequences in order to get her point across. Jesus, like my mother, added hyperbole for emphasis: hate your relatives, deny yourself, renounce all possessions. Jesus used exaggerated language to make sure we got the point that being his disciple was costly. We aren’t disciples of Jesus by treating it as a hobby, as pastime, an added bonus to life. Discipleship changes the entire way we look at things, we think about things, we act on things. Married couples know instinctively what Jesus means because they know the cost of their relationship. Once they got married, they learned to look at things from the perspective of “we” and not just of me. They had to die to their individual lives in the interest of the deeper and wider life they would have in common. The cost of being married was a death to self. Parents know instinctively what Jesus means about the cost. They have had to reorient their entire lives to care for their children. Their time is no longer their own. The finances are now geared toward caring for their children. They have to put their children’s needs ahead of theirs. Parents deny themselves as the cost of having children. Athletes know instinctively about the cost of success at their sport. They make sure they eat the right things, do their exercises, get adequate rest, stretch out, pump iron, practice over and over again. Athletes can’t run around like their peers if they want to be successful at their sport. Being an athlete costs. Jesus says that being his disciple is similarly costly. For example, a disciple has to change the fundamental question of life from “what do I want to do” to “what does God want me to do.” Our normal tendency is to look at what we enjoy doing and ask God to help us to accomplish that goal. Discipleship requires that we flip that on its head and say to ourselves, “God has blessed me in so many ways. How can I live in such a way to use my gifts as a way of giving thanks to God?” A disciple does not ask God to help me to accomplish my goals; rather, we seek first to know what God wants for my life and respond with generosity. The cost of discipleship also includes the way we treat others. The temptation is to divide the world: friends and enemies, neighbors and strangers, natives and foreigners, men and women, black and white, like me and unlike me. Discipleship demands that we throw out divisive distinctions. We are all one in Christ, all children of God, all made in God’s image and likeness, all precious in God’s sight. The cost of discipleship is that we must give up the safe cocoon of having two groups in my life: people that I care about and the “others” whom I can ignore. Rather, every person has a claim on us since we are all members of the same family, the family of God. Another cost of discipleship is a literal one. Being a disciple can hit our pocketbooks. That is what lies behind the epistle for today where St. Paul is writing to his friend Philemon. The background: Philemon was a slave owner and one of his slaves, Onesimus, had run away. Onesimus somehow connected with Paul and was converted to Christianity. Paul, being a loyal Roman citizen, knew he had to return a runaway slave to his owner but he understood that according to the law Onesimus could be severely punished, even having his foot cut off so he wouldn’t run away again. So Paul writes to Philemon and basically guilt trips him. I am sending the newly baptized Onesimus back to you, my old friend, “that you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave but as more that a slave, a brother…. Welcome him as you would welcome me.” Herein lies Philemon’s dilemma. Let’s say he does what Paul asks and accepts the newly Christian Onesimus as a brother. He’ll be out one slave but he could probably absorb that loss. But what will all his other slaves think? “Hey, Onesimus was freed because he became a Christian. I’ll become a Christian too and then my owner will free me as well.” The Bible doesn’t tell us how Philemon resolved his dilemma but the letter is included in the Bible because it illustrates that following Jesus impacts all that we are, including our bottom line. This is not simply a lesson from history but current events as well. How we use our monetary resources must be viewed through the eyes of faith. For a disciple of Christ the monies we have are meant to help us fulfill our role in bringing about the kingdom of God. That will look different for each one of us but all of us must ask: what is God’s will for what I have acquired. The lesson of the gospel: for the disciples of Jesua everything about us – money, family, time, health, relationships – only makes sense when it helps us connect with God. God’s grace is free, but it costs.

August 30, 2025

TWENTY-SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME – C Sirach 3:17-18,20,28-29 Hebrews 12:18-19,22-24 Luke 14:1,7-14 Young people might have a hard time imagining this but in the olden days – that is, after the dinosaurs but before the internet – there were only three television channels. Viewers had to wait for the station to decide which movie… Read More »

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