Catholics, I think, have what you might call an ambivalent relationship with the Holy Spirit. We might know the definition, if we were paying attention in PREP class years ago, but at a personal level, it’s not part of our day to day vocabulary. And when we hear people start talking about being “moved by the Spirit,” we get nervous, because we worry this is all going to get very emotional and exotic. But on a day like today, we can’t avoid it. because we hear in the Scriptures that “receiving the Holy Spirit” was completely central to what Jesus promised to the disciples, the “advocate” who would be present…
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What’s important about these two disciples on the road to Emmaus, is that when you look closely, they are heading in the wrong direction. They are on the road out of town, going back home. Everything that happened to them, everything that drew them into Jerusalem, has all ended in a great letdown. There was going to be a revolution, and the whole world would be different. But, nothing worked out the way everyone thought. It all ended in Jesus being victimized by the powerful, and then confusion and disappointment and friends scattered to the four winds. They did hear unconfirmed reports that Jesus is missing, maybe risen from the…
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One of the reasons this story grips us is that this is the human world we know. It’s a story of everything turning bad for a person who truly did not deserve it, a life of teaching and peaceful religious work out in the countryside interrupted for no reason with something that should never have happened. We see Jesus pulled into a terrible sequence of events. We see religious leaders who are mainly concerned about keeping the system going and making sure there’s no trouble. We see friends we thought we could count on who suddenly let us down and break promises and disappear when they are most needed. We…
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This Sunday is the third in a series of five Sundays where we’re hearing some parts of the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew’s gospel, and I think it was going pretty smoothly until today. Here’s a brief refresher. First we heard the Beatitudes, about how the meek and peacemakers and mourners are the blessed ones, that’s how God is, all wonderful. Then in last week’s gospel, we were told we are the salt of the earth, we are the light of the world that shouldn’t be hidden. Also wonderful. But then there’s this week, when after these beautiful words about how God sees us and where we’re going we’re…
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I’m going to ask you to take a moment and think back before Christmas, if you can, and think about the last time we heard about John the Baptist here in the gospel readings. That was back in Advent, and there was a lot about John the Baptist. We hear about him then because he was someone who felt called by God to be on the lookout for God alive and active in this world. He believed that God was sending someone to us, someone who would change everything. And John had attracted huge crowds and gotten them very excited, telling them that he, John, was not that person, but…
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John the Baptist is one of the saints that everyone knows, but I think it’s fair to say that he is not anyone’s favorite saint, and it isn’t hard to see why. He seems primitive, coming from the desert looking like someone who has lost his connection with civilization. He seems threatening, talking about fire and wrath. And here in December, he really doesn’t seem very positive or upbeat or Christmassy. That’s because every year, he is trying to tell us something that is hard to believe and hard to focus on. John is the saint who tells us both that something is coming but also that something is wrong.…
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I think I speak for many Catholics when I say that gospel readings like the one we just heard really aren’t our style. All this talk about end-time persecutions, and wars that mean the world is just about over. This sounds like the kind of talk we usually leave to what we think of as more fringe-y Christians who think the end of the world is coming very quickly, and they are often people who seem to want it sooner rather than later, because it’ll be so great to be proved right about the winners and losers. But for the rest of us, we usually think something more like, I’ve…
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We hardly need a homily to give us the secret meaning of a gospel like this one. It’s not very subtle. It’s an unforgettable image, what the reading describes as a great chasm after death, a chasm between all the people we could have helped and us, but with the roles now reversed, the poor rewarded, the rich with nothing. It’s a nightmare of eternal life that we’d like to think would shake us up, give us enough of a cold sweat to change some priorities, like when the ghost of Christmas yet to come finally put the fear of God into Ebenezer Scrooge. And yet the point of this…
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Jesus was asked a lot of questions as he walked from town to town during his life, and he answered all of them, but he answered them in his own way. At first, it might seem like he always avoided the questions, because he rarely answered the question people thought they wanted answered. But he had his own way of doing this. He wasn’t like a politician who says “I’m glad you asked that question” and then proceeds to answer a totally different one. What Jesus does is answer the real question, the important life or death question, not the nitpicky religious question that frankly are usually the ones that…
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Like many people as they get older, I tend to think of myself in my mind as much younger than I am, but the reality all comes out now and then and it’s usually when I mention an entertainer or a politician who was active when I was young and I of course know all about, whereas everyone under 30 in the room looks at me like I just mentioned that I know someone from ancient Rome. Today I’m going to give you just that experience, since I want to start with a brief story about the old 20th-century comedian Jack Benny. Jack’s character throughout his career was that he…