Opponents or Partners? The Whole Picture!

-Last Sunday's homily is available by email
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at USCCB.org
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 4:00pm Saturday and 11:00am Sunday

Feast of St. Peter AND St. Paul - Why Together?

You know, when we place two peoples' names in a title or on a marquee or in a song it legitimately raises the question as to whether they're competitors or partners?  David and Goliath, Romeo and Juliet, peanut butter and jelly, mom and dad, oil and water?

The title of this weekend's feast, St. Peter and St. Paul, is no exception to this conundrum. Are they competitors or partners? Do they compare or contrast? I think, as with  many of the mysteries of our faith, the answer to that question is "both".  What I mean is that St. Peter and St. Paul represent two sides of our beautiful Christian faith AND they represent the competing poles of our discipleship "head" and "heart", "pastor" and "teacher", "love" and "truth".  I am presuming that the icon of Peter and Paul is the invitation and the "target" of every baptized member of the church that we would all have the solid faith in the love of God that St. Peter represents and the zeal and eloquence for announcing that face like St. Paul.

Pope emeritus Benedict XVI wrote his fundamental encyclicals on love, faith, and hope. In the first of these, God is Love, the pope explained the need to keep the truth lovingly and to express love truthfully.  He warned there that to separate the two would be to empty both of their power and their God-likeness.

Maybe this feast of St. Peter AND St. Paul encourages us to what Pope Francis calls "missionary discipleship". What I think he means by that is that we should each have the love, friendship and attachment to Jesus Christ reflected by the witness of St. Peter AND the zeal and the dedication to spread the love of God in the world witnessed by St. Paul.

Probably too many of us pride ourselves on being Christian by "loving everyone" (while we avoid the difficult and necessary confrontation with falsehood, evil, and sin). Others of us are tempted to live as the righteous followers of Jesus in the church claiming to be right and justifying our alienation from others because they are wrong. The head and the heart in competition.

Let's allow this feast of Saints Peter AND Paul to help us to adjust our roadmap to holiness. From whom do we need to learn most today so that "our witness" in the world might be the whole picture of missionary discipleship in the world?

Becoming What You Are Celebrating

-Last Sunday's homily is available by email
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at USCCB.org
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 4:00pm on Saturday, 9:30am and 12:30pm on Sunday

Turn Around Time

That expression "turn around time" is usually used by people that are attempting to get something done for us - they need "so much turn around time."  I am using it today because of the call to "conversion"  that is imbedded in the Feast of Corpus Domini, or The Body and Blood of the Lord, Corpus Christi. 

You see, "conversion" comes to us from the Latin word to "turn", thus turn around.  I am seeing in the Church's teaching on the Eucharist, the Body and Blood of Christ, in the consecration, that we believe this bread and wine is "turned into"(in its substance), the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ.  Another word of "turning into" is transubstantiation. 

So, you can see why I have thought of the Mass every Sunday or everyday (transubstantiation) as "turn around time".  However, there is a second consecration in the Eucharistic Prayer that is prayed over the assembly at prayer - that they/we would become "one body, one spirit in Christ".  St. Augustine charged the church to "become more of what we celebrate", to be "converted", turned into.... turn around time.

Conversion, being turned into something that we are not quite fully yet - that's the fundamental journey for Christian believers in the Holy Eucharist.  That once again today, here and now, in the power of the Holy Spirit and by the prayers of the priest, I would be turned, changed in my very substance, from alienated, broken, isolated individual to the very life and presence of Jesus Christ Himself. 

So, again today for the Bread and Wine and for Little 'ol me and actually little 'ol US - it's Turn around time.  Be changed or die!

Trinity: Our Beginning, Our Calling, and Our Path! +ONE 2016

-Last Sunday's homily is available by email
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at USCCB.org
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 5:30 on Saturday, 8:00am and 6:00pm on Sunday

Blessed Trinity: Renewing Our Communion!

The Trinity is our call and pattern for the life of faith - to love. Communion is the height of our worship and the path of our lives of faith.  I will speak at all the masses this weekend and present the liturgical engagement survey as the beginning of our quest to renew the life of communion at St. Albert and to widen that communion to include 6000 worshippers.

Pentecost - June 8th

-Last Sunday's homily is available by email -This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at USCCB.org -I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 4:00, 8:00, and 12:30

Forgive or Forget It #8 - Spiritual Forgiveness

On this Pentecost feast our gospel text returns us to the upper room and Jesus' commissioning of the disciples BY forgiveness FOR forgiveness. What we need to see in this final Homily of the Easter season is that our practice of intellectual forgiveness and emotional forgiveness can lead us into conformity with Christ-the forgiving Redeemer - spiritual forgiveness.

As we are convinced of the rightness and the truth of forgiveness in our spiritual lives, we begin to take on the likeness of Christ. This likeness can be construed or seen as a "spirituality".  A spirituality is the tone, color, characteristics, habitual manner of relating to God and neighbor. When we intentionally take on the spirituality of forgiving we can claim to be practicing spiritual forgiveness-our way of being like Christ is in imitation and participation with his forgiving mission.

I don't think most Catholics have thought about becoming known as people who are living a life or a spirituality of forgiving. This is fundamental to our baptismal faith and to our happiness in the church and the world. Could you see yourself as a child of God who employs forgiveness as the primary, principal, and most often chosen means of living life in communion with God and neighbor?

 As you have heard in these homilies over this Easter season, I am convinced that those Catholics who prefer a "spirituality of charity", being loving and kind, getting along with everyone, of necessity must first adopt a spirituality of forgiving. Forgiveness is the fuel for charity, forgiveness is the gateway to authentic Christian loving. Are you ready to adopt a spirituality of forgiving? Spiritual forgiveness. I am trying.

Homily Prep June 1st

-Last Sunday's homily is available by email
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at USCCB.org
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at Sat 4:00, Sun 9:30, 11:00 and 6:00pm

Forgive or Forget it! #7

May 25th Homily Prep

-Last Sunday's homily is available by email
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at USCCB.org
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 5:30 Sat and 12:30 on Sunday

Forgive or Forget It #6

A holy Thursday Homily/"I have a dream"

This Homily is transcribed from the holy Thursday Homily that I delivered. It is being referred to as one "the morphing Homily", "the bat homily" or the "I have a dream" Homily. Someone asked that I publish it here

Throughout my priestly life I have had seven different assignments and in each case I had to live in the quarters that were provided to me. In one of those assignments I lived in a very old house. Maybe similar to the farmhouse where Fr. Winters lived on this property many years ago. The features of this old house were  that it was not only old but it had a third story walk up residence in and among the eaves of the house surrounded by the attic.

What was important about this living arrangement was ....by the way, did I tell you that I am deathly afraid of bats?  One night when I was asleep in my bed I heard the fluttering of wings which I presumed to be a moth. However, this fluttering of wings was so powerful that it was moving the plastic rod that hangs down from the miniblinds that you turn to open the blinds. I realized that the wings of a moth could not produce such movement-it was a bat. 

I quickly slithered off the bed onto the floor, pulled the comforter down off of the bed on top of myself, and then in rather "commando style" on my belly elbowed and kneed my way out of the room in a panic.

Of course, the next morning I pleaded with the pastor to take care of the bat problem. He called the exterminators and they quickly informed me that bats coming into the attic of the house during the winter months to prepare for childbearing is nothing easy to stop. I asked if they could plug up the openings through which the bats were entering. They informed me that when bats desiring to  get into the house for the purpose of having their babies they can reduce themselves, morph themselves, as small as one tenth of their body mass-maybe the size of a cigarette or cigar and fit themselves through a dime-sized hole. That was some new and horrifying information for me and of course it did not make me very happy.

"Morph"  it is a Greek word that means "shape or form". We are familiar with the term from our science classes - metamorphosis, the changing of shape or form.

Brothers and sisters this notion of morphing, of changing the shape or form or appearance, is central to our experience of this Easter mystery - this most solemn Triduum. Our God from the beginning of time has been driven by a singular mission or purpose and that is to be in communion, in love with us, his creatures. God formed  humanity as the only creature "for himself alone".  Throughout salvation history God has continually striven to "touch our humanity with eternity" - his love. God's method of reaching out to us has been emptying himself, throwing off his glory, assuming the lowly, humble, yes even human, accessible form - morphing into the effective form so that he might touch us and save us in love. 

This is most beautifully revealed to us in our Christian Scriptures and especially our gospel text today in which Jesus assumes the shape or the form of a slave and washes the feet of his disciples. It is a most poignant example of this mission of our God of morphing so that humanity might be touched by eternal love and thus transformed itself into love alone.

Of course the most famous morphing of our God is in the womb of the Virgin Mary where he casts off his glory as the author of the Hebrews tells us, "in the fullness of time, he lowered himself and took on our human nature, he clothes himself in our humanity". He morphs into an effective agent. He abandoned his divine glory and embraced our humanity, humbling himself so that our human nature could be touched and given access to eternal love.

This mission, this means, this mode of saving us -this lowering himself, coming down, condescending as the theologians tell us, was so beautifully expressed in this past Sunday's, Palm Sunday's great Philippians Hymn, in which St. Paul writes "that he did not deem equality with God something to be grasp at rather he emptied himself taking the form of a slave being obedient even to death, death on a cross." This is the divine method, the mode, and the means of our salvation - God throwing off his glory and taking on, morphing into, "humble servant love". Kenosis is the word - to empty. 

So in this Gospel today, as we commemorate this greatest night, this institution of the holy Eucharist, this commissioning of his disciples as priests, is just a most brilliant example of God's method of saving humanity - "humble service in love".  Jesus stands up and takes off his garment, throws aside his "status" as teacher, master, Lord and he assumes the shape, or the form, he morphs into his preferred appearance as the humble servant in love.

Of course this gesture of washing feet, this servitude in humility and in love is just a foretaste of his greatest morphing into the sacrificial lamb on the cross. However, in the holy Eucharist which we commemorate on this most holy night, is yet another example of this morphing from greatness into the little, the least, the most accessible "he took bread, broke it , blessed it, and gave it to his disciples and said "this is now me". So that the bread that you eat and the wine that you drink is now no longer that lowly basic simple food but it is the accessible, attainable, ingestible, humble divine touch of eternal life - the salvation of our humanity. 

Morpheus, as you probably know, is the Greek god of dreams, the maker of shapes and forms in our sleep. (I was discussing this at dinner with the Priests this evening and when I said the name Morpheus the youngers said - yea, he's the character from the movie Matrix. I had no idea of that) Morpheus comes to mind in this reflection of God morphing himself into accessible "humble service in love" because of his role as the dream maker. He reminds me that I have a dream and it is a dream about morphing- a dream for our parish ministry. Morphing like God. 

Pope Francis has been teaching, especially in his great and first document to the church "The Joy of the Gospel", that we are called to be missionary disciples, a missionary church. What the holy father is indicating to us is that we must be always focused on this mission of God's I mentioned at the beginning which is to present His eternal love to the world through humble service. Emptying ourselves for the sake of eternal love. God's mission can change enslaved humanity into the freedom and joy of eternal life. 

My dream is that we as a great Parish would be morphed into this God-shaped Mission as "humble servants for the sake of love" and that we would allow the eternal love of God to touch and change the human lives in our midst by this humble service. St. Albert is a great Parish, no doubt, but we are called to morph into a missionary parish. This would begin of course with our own lives being touched by eternal love here, like the bread and wine, and be turned, each of us and all of us, into humble missionary parishioners. 

And what this dream of mine entails is that we would each be morphed into God's humble serving love in the world for just one person. We each know that brother-in-law, that sister-in-law, that neighbor, that father-in-law, that coworker, who would be so opened to the eternal touch of God's love IF it would come to them through your humble and tender concern. It is by our humble service in love that God intends to save the world one heart at a time. Each of us and all of us can be morphed into these effective, humble servants-missionary parishioners

Join me in considering this fundamental means or mode of God at work in the world - morphing the divine glory into humble service in love for the sake of changing human lives that are dead, empty and hopeless into Christian lives of communion in faith, hope, and love.

This is our calling, this is our opportunity, this is God's mission and purpose, this is the purpose of the church, and this could become our purpose-morphed into a missionary Parish. This is the commissioning of the disciples by Jesus at the Last Supper.  Yes, this is about the sacramental priesthood - but it is more deeply about the Body of Christ, the life of the Church.  We are to become the priestly missionaries off baptism - morphed into God's humble servants in love - missionaries to the world that the world might be touched and transformed from hopelessness and slaves of death into joyful servants of Christ in freedom and eternal life. 

Help me in the days and months ahead to realize this dream, this morphing of our individual lives and our parish life, that we might become the very "humble servants for the sake of love" transforming the world one life at a time into a holy Communion of Christ's missionary disciples.

Why not?

Homily Prep May 18

-Last Sunday's homily is available by email
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at USCCB.org
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 4:00, 8:00, & 11:00

Forgive or Forget it #5: What Forgiveness is Not

Homily video prep May 11

-Last Sunday's homily is available by email
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at USCCB.org
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 11:00am and 6:00pm

Forgive or forget it! Part IV

May 4 Homily Prep

-Last Sunday's homily is available by email
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at USCCB.org
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 12:30 Sunday

Forgive or Forget It - Again

"Forgive or Forget It"

-Last Sunday's homily is available by email
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at USCCB.org
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 5:30 Sat, 9:30am and 6:00pm Sunday

Sent to Forgive

I am entitling this homily "sent to forgive" because I cannot decide which of these things is more pressing-that we are sent or that we are called to a mission of forgiveness. I am thinking that the mission of God (to be in communion with his beloved human creatures) would vote for:  forgiveness. What I mean is that Jesus' great work was reconciling humanity with God(that involves the forgiveness of sin). Because of our Godlikeness and our Christlikeness we humans cannot be reconciled with God without being reconciled with our brothers and sisters. There is the forgiveness piece.

I am reading a new book entitled "facing forgiveness". Evidently, those who are happy identify forgiveness as the quality most associated with their happiness.  This forgiveness/reconciliation is the crux of the Paschal mystery that we have just celebrated in the Lenten/Easter event.  

Forgiveness is also the most troubling and difficult act/mystery for Christians who are serious about their spiritual life. Forgiveness or mercy is certainly the least attractive or recommended virtue by our secular culture. We do not have good examples from public life of those who forgive or how to forgive or the benefit of forgiving.

Would you like to learn more about forgiving?

Holy Week Homily April 13

-Last Sunday's homily is available by email
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at USCCB.org
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 4:00pm on Saturday 8:00am and 12:30pm

 Holy Week?  Holy Spirit? Holy Catholic Church?

April 6 Homily Prep

-Last Sunday's homily is available by email

-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at USCCB.org 

-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 11:00am

Do you believe in Jesus Christ???

March 30 -Fourth of Lent

-Last  homily is available by email 

-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at USCCB.org

-I will celebrate Mass at 5:30 Sat and 9:30am and 6:00pm on Sunday

Is your believing "seeing"?

March 23, lent 3 Homily Prep

-Last Sunday's homily is available by email
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at USCCB.org
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 4:00 PM, 8:00 AM and 12:30 PM on Sunday

Do you renounce Satan and all his empty show?

March 16 video Homily prep

-Last Sunday's homily is available by email
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at USCCB.org
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 5:30 and 9:30 and 12:30

Have you rejected Satan, and all his works?

Do you reject Satan?-Sunday, March 9 prep

-Last Sunday's homily is available by email
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at USCCB.org
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 5:30 sat and 11:00am Sunday

Do you reject Satan?

Homily Prep March 2

 -This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at USCCB.org
 -I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 5:30, 8:00, 6:00pm.

Servants of Who?

Servant of the "Self". It may be just my perception rather than a fact but the message I hear in the public square is constantly saying that simply obeying the law (avoid hurting other individuals) makes us virtuous, paying taxes (with all of our legal deductions) is an unjust burden of having to care for the lazy poor, and being tolerant (no hate crimes) is the highest form of civility(being a good neighbor)

There's a few obvious problems with this.  One, it has resulted in a distorted sense of what it means to be human, especially in the young. Two, it is an understanding of goodness or morality(civility) that is imposed upon us - not chosen by us out of devotion to our beloved citizenship.  Three and most troubling, it has produced a very low functioning "collective" of individuals we call society. The participants int this collective busy themselves with adoration of broken heroes (that make us feel good about ourselves), celebration (with religious devotion and fervor) our annual "high holy days” of Superbowls and shopping frenzies, excitement in almost weekly fads (to dull our sense of loneliness) - all with an almost schizophrenic demand that the world "leave me alone"(privacy).

That's apparently who human beings are in American society.  Servants of the "self".  At least that is what our behavior and story line says. This Sunday's scripture call us to be something very different: the Servants of Christ.

In contrast to the worldly servants of the "self", the servants of Christ are formed into their identity by living with and among a community(not a collective of individual isolates), a living organism, a body, whose mutually dependent members (not privacy-demanding paranoiac's)  are dedicated to God our creator and redeemer as the beginning, center, and goal of life. What we learn from these children of God is that obeying the law is simply the beginning of righteousness (which is the cause of holiness), paying taxes is what others can demand of us and ultimately is all about our our survival ( having very little to do with our need to give ourselves away for the sake of love and the least), and tolerance is not loving at all and it is to be applied only to the unavoidable pain and losses of life so that through those, the wisdom of our Suffering Saviour, can increase in our hearts and minds.

As with the servants of the "self "in our society, there are a few obvious problems with the storyline of the servants of Christ. A huge majority of Catholics (75%) live lives in the world and in relationship to the church that say that the communion of the faithful is not necessary for a full and happy life. Even more startling may be that some Catholics who regularly celebrate the holy Eucharist do so from under this worldly delusion  or storyline. Jesus has identified this worldly attitude of the self lived by religious people as that of the Pharisees. Remember, that his sermon on the mount of this Sunday's Scriptures was begun with "your righteousness must surpass that of the scribes and Pharisees".

Which storyline is your life the product of? Which storyline is closest to your experience of church? Which story line is your life in the church communicating to the world?

Servants of who?

Homily Prep for February 23 - right?

-Last Sunday's homily is available by email
-his Sunday's Scriptures can be found at USCCB.org
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 4:00, 12:30, and 6:00pm

Is being right, righteousness? Don't think so.

-Last Sunday's homily is available by email
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at USCCB.org
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend on Sunday at 9:30 and 11:00am


Is Right Righteous?

I think we might be in for a big surprise this weekend with the call to be righteous.  I'm thinking that we won't be able to respond to the call because our society has basically forgotten what righteousness is. Our society has replaced the call to righteousness(which by the way means right with God and neighbor according to justice) with the insistence with simply always being "right". 

This idea of being "right" all the time is the manifestation of our society's loss of humility and a sense of personal sin.  People today pretty much strive to always see themselves as "right".  What I mean by right is that I can never admit to any fault, sin, or wrong.  So that endless television programs and radio talk show keep presenting to us this line of thinking...."according to my self-created standards, I haven't done anything that anybody else can judge as wrong. In fact, no one has the right to judge me at all."

The fancy word fo this societal rationale is relativism.  It is at work in our daily lives.  Everyone has decided that no one else is allowed to judge them for believing what they believe.  And everybody is allowed to do or say whatever they feel/determine is best for them at that time in their circumstances.  And even if other people don't like it, that doesn't make it wrong.  That just makes other people cranky and judgmental.   The mantra of this "rightness" is "Only God can Judge Me(by the way they have created their version of God so even God won't judge them".


A Pharisee was someone who had achieve a certain level of righteousness (right order with God and neighbor), someone who also took created for it.  Just another self-centered, God-imitator.  Jesus says that we ought to be minimally as righteous as the pharisee - but exceed that to give God the credit.  It is tough being someone who plays by the rules in a world where everyone else is changing the rules whenever it suits them. 

So Jesus is calling us and empowering us to recognize laws that come from God, obey them as they are interpreted by the Church, and live them in humility and service to other who have no clue or interest in God, obedience, faith, Church, humility or love of neighbor?  That is righteousness.