This gospel we just heard about the widow giving away her last pennies in the temple offering might seem like it is a gospel about money and generosity. You might even be fearing that this could easily turn into a fund-raising homily, this gospel gets used a lot for that. But you’re safe on that front, in 30 years no one has ever asked me here to take on that assignment. At least not so far. So rest assured we’re not doing that today. In fact, let’s think of it today not as a gospel about money at all, the money here stands for something else. This is a gospel…
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This is a gospel story that inevitably starts by making us all a little uncomfortable whether we are rich or not. Because I think all of us have a great tendency to imagine that if we were ever to have a conversation with Jesus about what we should do with our lives, it would go a little like this conversation in the gospel does. We think we would be told that we would have to do something that would seem to us impossible, or something that really, deep down, we just don’t want to do. You know, we’d be asked to be a missionary saint, living in complete poverty, whether…
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Here’s a question to start today: When we try to pray, how do we begin? What do you do? I would imagine that if we actually took a survey here today which, don’t worry, isn’t going to happen, it would take way too long, but if we did, I think we would get a wide variety of answers, ranging from one of the memorized or traditional prayers that some of us have known for years, to a few people who would be very honest and say, well, you know, a lot of times I don’t really know how to start, I feel awkward and like I am not really good…
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Today we find ourselves back in Ordinary Time, but with a gospel that isn’t an ordinary everyday gospel. We are right at the beginning of Jesus’s public ministry in the gospel of Mark, and Jesus has begun his work, but he hasn’t begun it with quietly teaching and preaching. He is telling people that the Kingdom of God needs to be built on this earth, but he is also confronting some opposing powers head on, the forces that don’t want that Kingdom built. And his opposing powers aren’t the scribes, coming around already here to pick at him and question him, he is opposing something bigger: He is confronting demons,…
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We have all been trained, maybe not on purpose, it just happens, but we’ve all picked up an image of God that isn’t entirely correct. In fact, it might even be all wrong. It’s not so much our idea of what God looks like that’s wrong, but about where God is. The problem is that we hear people talk all the time about God “up there.” You know, “the big guy up there” and all that. Maybe it happens because we’ve all seen pictures of an ancient God the Father seated in a chair in the clouds, maybe it’s the paintings in the Sistine Chapel of God literally on the…
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Years ago when I was a college student, I remember that it was the fashion for the evangelical students on campus to come up to people and ask them if they had a personal relationship with Jesus. For all I know, this is still a thing, but it certainly was back then. And of course my reaction was, besides please go away and leave me alone, my reaction was it seemed like if they did have a personal relationship with Jesus that they were being really braggy and smug about it, you know, of course I have a relationship and it’s a great one, it’s easy, and that seemed wrong.…
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The ritual we are going to see in just a couple of minutes I would say that most Catholics have never seen in their lifetimes. I can say that with some confidence because we only see this ritual on Holy Thursday, when we read John’s gospel of the last supper, the only gospel where we hear about Christ washing the disciples’ feet. And so the only people who get to see this are you, who are among the elite who have figured out that this next three days, no offense meant to anything else, but this three days are really the best thing the Catholic Church has to offer all…
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If you were listening to the reading from the Old Testament, I wonder how many of you were immediately discouraged when the first thing you heard was about scabs and pustules. If you have ever sat down to try to read the Old Testament all the way through it’s passages like this that probably convinced you that if you were going to make it there are some parts you would end up skipping. But the fact is our ancestors in the faith thought that things like this were a serious issue for their community. There are many rules and regulations about various illnesses and most importantly, types of uncleanness. Why…
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I tried to see whether there was any research done on this topic, but I couldn’t find anything, so I’ll just have to go with my own observations over the years, and you can tell me if you think I’m wrong: which is that John the Baptist really isn’t anyone’s favorite saint. He has great name recognition, you have to admit that, but it often doesn’t go much beyond that. You never hear about anyone who has a special devotion to John the Baptist, you know, who just loves the idea of him being a role model. You don’t hear about people choosing him as a confirmation name. I’m sure…
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We all have a question after hearing this story, and we have this question no matter how many time we’ve heard it. And the question is, “Why?” Why did this have to happen? We’re told Jesus in some way died for us, that this was necessary. Even he said so, it had to happen, and no one understood him, and we don’t either. So how do we answer this “why” question that is here each Good Friday? Our mistake is to see what happened here as a tragedy, someone who got something terrible he didn’t deserve. But we can’t ever forget what kind of story this really is. Because what…