April 12 homily Prep - Mercy Sunday

-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at Www.usccb.org/readings
-check out this weeks LinC letter www.parishLinCLetter.blogspot.com
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 5:30, 8:00 and 11:00

Not a Miracle, but a Conquest!

Jesus' resurrection is more than a miracle, it is more than an apparition to his disciples, it is the powerful conquest over the powers of sin and death.  Death no longer has power over those who believe.

I don't think we have been believing in the resurrection.....even though we say,

"I  Believe in the Holy Spirit who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, who has spoken through the prophetsg. I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins and I look forward to the resurrection of the deadI believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. and the life of the world to come. Amen."

I am beginning a season-long reflection upon the powers of death that reign in the world ans eh life and liberation that is now unleashed in Christ risen in triumph over death. You believe in the witness about Jesus' resurrections?  Really?  Maybe we don't recognize death and its powers. Likewise, the power and freedom off life in Christi might eluding us us as well.

Under which "power" are you engaged?

April 5 Easter Sunday Prep

-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at www.usccb.org/readings
-I will be celebrating Easter mass this weekend at 9:30am in the Hall and 12:30 in the Church

Triumph over death

The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is not only a miracle revealing Jesus as the son of God but it has changed the powers and principalities reigning in our world. Death and the powers and principalities of death reign in the world. In Jesus Christ risen from the dead we have triumphed over death, Death has no more power over us, and we now can live in his life which is freedom.

Have you been released from the powers of death?

Mar 29th - Palm Sunday of the Lord's Passion

-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at Sunday Readings
-check out this weeks LinC letter at LinC Letter
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 5:30 and 11:00am

Don't stand there waving your palms, follow him

Some might be of the mindset that we are, in this holy week, reenacting the historical events in the life of Jesus. That would be real failure in the call to "fall, conscious, and active participation". We are not enacting history we are opening Mystery. 

Do not stand along the side of the road and wave your palm branches at Jesus as he goes by in the person of the church. Rather get up from your timid, individualized, isolated state in life and mind and follow the church by faith into the Mystery of the saving love of God.

Lent V Homily Prep March 22

-Last Sunday's homily is available by email request
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at www.usccb.org/readings
-check out this weeks LinC letter at www.parishlincletter.blogspot.com
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 4:00pm and 9:30am

 If you're not changing you're dying!

That title could be turned around by today's Gospel, "if you're not dying, you're not converting". The preaching this weekend is going to be focused upon an adage that I read that said "before you die you better die so that when you die you won't die".

If the grain of wheat remains just a grain of wheat and does not die it does not fulfill its purpose, it's mission, or goal. The same can you say about the disciple of Jesus. By giving oneself away in love we accomplish the dying of Jesus that we see in baptism. The death and resuscitation of Lazarus is A great image for all of us to do this "preliminary" dying or necessary dying while we are still living so that we might come to the fullness of life in Christ in spite of death.

This "dying" is what is at the heart of the Paschal mystery, the Easter mystery, the font of baptism, the holy Eucharist, and discipleship in general.  We must acknowledge the existence of the false self and the need for its ongoing and continuous death, in this way we will make room for our new life in Christ begun in baptism fulfilled in confirmation, deepened in the Holy Eucharist, and experienced/expressed most perfectly in self-sacrificing love of discipleship. We call it communion. 

So are you dying? Or are you living a defensive, strategic,'s false self protective death?

Let me know how this figures into your call to discipleship

Lent IV, March 15 Homily Prep

-Last Sunday's homily is available
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at www.usccb.org
-check out this weeks LinC letter at www.parishLinCLetter.blogspot.com
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 8:00am and 6:00pm

 Is it a sin?  Well, is it a "work done in God"?

This lent we have been hearing the call to be "Reconciled as +ONE". This call has raised the topics of sin and forgiveness. Our Lenten mission part II this Thursday night will pick up the notion of "forgiving:a key to a life in communion".

I am often asked, "Father, is this a sin?"  It is a strange but pretty regular question. I think the Gospel this Sunday gives the best answer as to whether or not something ought to be confessed. If we bring an action of ours into the light of honesty we can pretty clearly see whether it is a "work done in God" or whether it is a work of the dark that remains in the dark.

Maybe this litmus test for our Christian lives would be helpful as we respond to the call to be reconciled as ONE.

March 8 Homily Prep

-Last Sunday's homily is available
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at www.usccb.org/readings
 -check out this weeks LinC letter at www.parishLinCLetter.blogspot.com
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 5:30 and 11:00am

Why are you so angry all the time?

That phrase is the reframe to a country music song but it might be the best question we could ask this Lent.  Some of us are "angry all the time".all of us are angry sometimes. Our Lenten mission speaker Bro Loughlan Sofield, at last week's mission part I discussed with us what makes us angry and the role that anger plays in destroying our communion.

The question might be first asked what made Jesus angry? Do you and I know what to do with our anger so that it becomes part of the remedy of our broken communion rather than the source of it?

Let's see...

Second Sun of Lent Mar 1st

-Last Sunday's homily is available by email
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at Www.usccb.org/readings
-check out this weeks LinC letter at www.parishLincletter.blogspot.com
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 5:30, 9:30 and 12:30. We have a guest speaker at all  masses

Homily Prep February 22

-Last Sunday's homily is available by email
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at Sunday readings www.usccb.org/readings
-check out this weeks LinC letter Www.parishLinCLetter.blogspot.com
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 5:30 Sat, 8am, 12:15(at cathedral) &6:00pm

My only message this Lenten time: definitely put down something in your life to which you have too tight of a hold. But, my goodness, don't fail to pick up something that the Lord has in store for you.

February 15 Homily Prep: Don't Tell Anybody, but We Need Healed!

-Last Sunday's homily is available by email request
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at www.usccb.org/readings
-check out this weeks LinC letter www.parishlincletter.blogspot.com
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 4:00pm on Saturday and 12:30pm on Sunday

 Don't Tell Anybody, but We Need Healed!

The title of this homily is obviously an attempt at a play on words regarding the gospel text.  Jesus in Mark's gospel has this dueling banjos messaging:  He is the very announcement of the presence and power of God in the world AND he doesn't want to be represented to the world through misunderstood expressions.  If you and I go around telling everybody NOT what Jesus did for us but who we think he might be - that would cause a problem.  That's why Jesus in Mark is always telling people (and demons) to be quiet about him.  Jesus prefers to speak for himself. 

I would say that this is the reason that every Christian needs to learn about Jesus from personal direct encounter.  We have to meet Jesus where and as Jesus presents himself.  That fact is at the root of the sacramental church - "don't trust my description of God's mercy - meet and drink deeply of the merciful Lord yourself."

That's why those of us who are his disciples need to resist the often condescending and guilt-inducing preaching that attempts to get "people to go to church".  So many of us so often are trying to tell others (especially younger people) why they need to go to church.  That reason is because we have judged them to be lost or broken and church would go a long way toward "straightening them out"!  Yuk.  I hear Jesus saying to all of us presumptuous preachers, "don't tell anyone about me, just go and show yourselves to be healed" and that will be enough proof for them. 

So, the charge of those of us who have been healed by Jesus is to live a life of health and gratitude to God and all the people in the world who are lost and sick will follow us to church. 

Jesus and the Leper break every law on the books in this story today.  One who was uncleam came to one who was clean and the unclean was made clean and the clean was declared to be unclean, worthy to be hung on a tree.  Wow.  So the laws of Jesus' reign are not about "isolation" and "quarantine" but contact and communion - that's eternal life. 

Have you been willing to break the laws of broken humanity and to expose yourself to the Lord's power even if it means that you will die to this world's system, condemned in the court of popular opinion? 

The Leper need to first accept that he was in need.  He then had to break a few rules and beg for mercy (real men don't beg).  Jesus had to break a few rules (he had and showed compassion, he  touched him) in order to fix the system.  He had to be the victim of the system in order to transform it.  To lay down your life.

Do we have such courage?  Have we even had such an idea?  Not me - I'm a rule-keeper.  I'm in the system.  Look at pope Francis....he doesn't not allow the system and the rules to silence his call for compassion, mercy, contact with Jesus. 

Don't tell anybody, but we need healed.

February 8 Homily Prep

-Last Sunday's homily is available by email
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at www.usccb.org/readings
-Check out this weeks LinC letter at www.parishlincletter.blogspot.com
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 5:30 Sat, 9:30 and 11:00 on Sunday

Healed or Cured?

A scholars has expressed a distinction regarding Jesus' miracles and mission in Mark's Gospel that he describes as "curing" and "healing".  Basically, what Jesus does in the synagogue last week and in Peter's house this week is miraculous cures.  Physical, psychological, spiritual cures are astounding people and revealing Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God (story 1).   The symptom of these cures is pretty obvious - the removal of that thing that is afflicting the body from full function in the world.

But Jesus reveals that his mission and purpose is not to cure but to heal (the root word of which is "salus" from which we get the words "salve" and of course "salvation").

This healing that Jesus has come to accomplish is that of liberating humanity from the self-imposed prison of alienation, self-centeredness, autonomy, isolation, antagonism, from and with God and neighbor.  Jesus has come to heal us by restoring our relationships, humanity with God and brothers and sisters with one another. The symptom of this healing is self-sacrificing service (I have come not to be served but to serve).

Peter's mother-in-law is a perfect example of one who is cured AND healed, liberated and saved, because she gets up immediately when Jesus takes her by the hand and she serves.  Sel-sacrificing love is the symptom of salvation in God's reign.  Service is the coin of the realm.

This is world marriage day.  I think we have all kinds of marriages: broken marriages, sick marriages, cured marriages and healed marriages. In what category does yours fall?  How can you tell?

Have your ever experienced a cure?  Was it also a healing?  How can we tell?  Did it result in more loving service of God and neighbor?  There's your answer.

February 1 Homily Prep

 -This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at Www.usccb.com/readings
-check out this weeks LinC letter at www.parishlincletter.blogspot.com
 -I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 8:00, 11:00 and 6:00pm

Do We Recognize Him?

The demons recognize Jesus as the holy one of God. They fear him because they recognize his "authority" - Jesus is the human face of God.  The disciples and enemies of Jesus do not recognize him as the incarnation of God, the son of God, Abba Father.  This lack of recognition limits Jesus' authority or power to heal them.

It challenges me to wonder whether I have recognized Jesus as the very Son of God. What really makes me wonder is the fact that God has not healed me from my isolation, sin, selfishness, sadness.  Maybe I have never really recognized Jesus' power as God.

The call to submit my life to Jesus' mission. - reconciling all people IN God - is offered over and over in and through the Church. Again this week I have the chance to see Jesus as he is - Lord and Savior. Will I take the chance?

Jan 11 Homily Prep -Bapt of the Lord

-Last Sunday's homily is available By email
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at Sunday readings
-check out this weeks LinC letter at LinC Letter
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 4:00 Sat, 9:30am and 6:00pm Sunday

Bluetooth Discoverability to Network Connectivity

Our God, through the Incarnation, has become discoverable to the Bluetooth ( longing for love and happiness) of all human beings - all nations.  That was last week's Christmas message.  This fifth and final feast of this great season of Incarnation, the Baptism of the Lord, is aptly described as the introduction to the network of Salvation - connectivity in the cyber world, incorporation into Christ in the Christian gospel.

Rather than God being made visible to human hearts, we see now that human hearts make God visible. Every human heart is called to be incorporated through Baptism into the mission of God-made-flesh, Emmanuel!  This is the flip side of sacramental thinking.

In sacramental thinking grace and faith make "the invisible visible". So that our God can be touched, seen, held, heard.  The grace of Baptism and the mystical Body of Christ is that we are transformed from the "material appearance of our lives into the divine face of God".  Each individual, isolated, separated human life is incorporated as one into the divine presence of the whole Body of Christ.

Incorporation into Christ through baptism helps us to know our identity (as members united in the network) and our mission (as access points/doorways of salvation in the world).

These words were spoken by Card. Greh before conclave that elected Pope Frnacis. "Let us listen to Augustine: "The apostles saw Christ and believed in the Church that they did not see; we see the Church and must believe in Christ whom we do not see. Adhering firmly to what we see, we will come to see him whom we do not now see. "

In Christ Alone, as members of one Body, as agents and instruments of the Kingdom, as human faces of divine Communion - we are the Church.

Woohoo!  Are you in?

Dec 28 homily prep

-Last Sunday's homily is available
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at Sunday readings
-check out this weeks LinC letter at LinC Letter
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 4:00, 8:00 and 6:00pm

Dec 21 Homily Prep

-Last Sunday's homily is available At email request
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at www.usccb.org
-check out this weeks LinC letter at LinC Letter
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 5:30 on Sat and 11:00 and 12:30 on Sunday

More God

I'm thinking that David's temptation and Mary's distraction in relationship to Gods Presence is the same thing that afflicts us: we don't want God where God is available.  Both Mary and David get sidetracked by details, protocol and procedures. In both instances God (through the prophet or the angel) is all about being present and received not about being "processed".

Are we not more interested in changing the procedures, details, and processes of a life with God then we are living with God as life is in God?  We usually want changed circumstances  and arrangements from God rather than more God in the circumstances that are.  Isn't it hard for us to find God in the messy details of a suffering life?

When life challenges us do we pray for more God and more life as it is? Or do we pray for changed circumstances and details in life? Could we pray for more God instead of more health. Could we pray for more God than more safety?  Could we pray for more God than less pain?

I think this turnaround might be at the bottom of our unsuccessful prayer life or spiritual life.

If we would begin praying and pleading for more God in every circumstance of our life then our prayers would be more miraculously answered. It seems God is always ready to give more of himself to us in our present circumstance. In fact, I believe that is God's identity and God's job description and God's mission. God is not able to overcome The painful circumstances of our own creation. God gave up that power when he created us in his image and likeness.

Then again, maybe it is precisely in having and knowing "more God" in a particular circumstance that is the path way through and out of difficulty.  in fact, that may be the purpose and the mystery and the meaning of life with God. Remember, with God all things are possible.

Dec 14 Homily Prep

-Last Sunday's homily is available by email request
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at Sunday readings
-check out this weeks LinC letter at LinC Letter
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 9:30 and 12:30

"What are you so happy about"

I am thrilled (read rejoicing) over our return to a renovated church. It is right that we would make this move on Gaudete Sunday (rejoice).  What is the move in your life that has brought you such joy? Yes, true joy comes from the recognition of something ever-new in our lives. Your move!

Dec 7 Homily Prep

-Last Sunday's homily is available by email request
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at Sunday readings
-check out this weeks LinC letter at LinC Letter
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at Sat 4:00, 8:00am and 6:00pm on Sunday

Comfort

Do you find any comfort in life?  From where, from whom?  Not at all?  What is the effect of repreatedly experiencing the hardness of life?  Can we lose hope in the God of compassion?

I believe the call to offer tender mercy in our world is the fundamental characteristic of the disciples of Jesus. After considering your personal encounters of the last 24hrs. what number of them would qualify as tender, merciful, kind?  How many wer missed opportunities?

November 30 homily prep

-Last Sunday's homily is availableby email request
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at Sunday readings
-check out this weeks LinC letter at LinC Letter
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 12:30 Sunday

Advent I -"watch me, watch me, watch me"

Like a three-year-old at the swimming pool jumping off the edge demanding that the parent, or in my case uncle, watch his every move. That is what our Advent  God reminds me of with these scriptures and the call to attention.

This is the most "childlike" that our God appears. Desiring and calling for our constant attention. Maybe this advent we might open our eyes and respond to our God calling us "watch me, Watch me, watch me, are you watching me?"

Why do we tire of "watching God"? Why is it easier to watch other things, realities, thoughts, games, problems?  Why do our artificial hearts easily distract from the real God?  Why do our broken human hearts drift off to the Foolsgold of entertainment, judgment, "reality TV"?

Nov 23 Homily Prep

-Last Sunday's homily is available By email request
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at Sunday readings
-Check out this weeks LinC letter at LinC Letter
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 5:30, 9:30am and 12:30pm

Can You See Me?

This weekend's feast of Christ the King and the great gospel text of Matthew 25 provides the opportunity for continuation of my reflection Vision 2016 "every one add one: renew, reflect, reach out!" The opportunity to renew our faith lived in communion with God in the parish is most accessible by serving a compassionate ministry here with others.

If we can "read" or "see" the world and daily life through the lens of the gospel then we can recognize and encounter the Lord Jesus in the simplest acts of compassion which becomes a new path for "remaining in the Lord".

Our plan or vision is that others find us credible witnesses to the life of Jesus Christ risen from the dead. Others are most likely to see and "encounter" the communion of God Father, Son, and Holy Spirit by experiencing our sincere and compassionate service. Recall, that Jesus said "this is how they will know you are my disciples, by the love you have for one another."

Those words of Jesus indicate to us how we would make one small step more deeply into the communion of the love of God and that is by turning to our brothers and sisters in community with compassion. This is maybe less heroic service then turning to the stranger, however, it demands that we take a new look and see the littleness, neediness, Christlikeness in our brothers and sisters (our spouses, our children, our parents) and see it as openings for compassion and service right where we live.

This is what the vision "every one and one" means by renew. If each of us could renew the way that we are relating to our neighbor in communion we could deepen our faith in communion. This deepening or renewing of our faith is a necessary step to our reaching out to our neighbor in the form of invitation to return to church.

So, let's turn our vision to the people closest to us and see them as the needy Christ in our midst. Renewing or deepening our love for them through new compassionate service is the first step to inviting them to encounter the love of God that we have found in our parish "communion of the faithful here".

Homily Prep November 16 Feast of St. Albert the Great, Patron

-Last Sunday's homily is available by email request
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at Sunday readings 
-check out this weeks LinC letter at LinC Letter 
-I will be preaching at all the weekend masses

Can You See It?  Every One Add One!

I will be presenting our Vision 2016; Every One Add One!  This is the feast of our patron, St. Albert and we will be introduced to our parish prayer, our parish hymn, our vision, its logo, and the six pastoral strategic goals that have been established to help us achieve this vision Every One Add One!

Pray for Us!

Homily Prep Nov 9th - Church Building

-Last Sunday's homily is available by email
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at Sunday readings
-check out this weeks LinC letter at LinC Letter 
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 5:30 Sat and 11:00 Sunday

Our Church Building

I would understand that those of us at St. Albert parish this year would read the title of this post and think "church building renovation".  But that's not what I mean by using it here.  On the feast of the Dedication of John Lateran Basilica we are given scriptures about "our church building" with and among the living stones.  You and me.....communion.

Last month I reflected upon the preciousness of each person's life - so much so- that each human life is an expression of God's life and presence.  A young woman told me that she had never really thought about "her" life as the presence of God.  I am thinking that this "blindness" to the quality and nature of our lives might be affecting our thinking about church.  Most of the baptized do not consider themselves to "be the church".

I think most of the baptized think that guys like me, we are the church.  Most people think the Pope and the priests - THEY are the church.  Well, the Vatican Council II reasserted firmly that it is the baptized, the faithful that are the living stones of the church  - the pope and the pastor are just two of those members.

I'm thinking that this blindness to your preciousness as a living member of the church might be getting in the way of our parish community "acting" like the church - building church or church building.  If one does not consider oneself a dignified member of the church then the mission of the church doesn't really involve you.

Let's open our eyes to see ourselves as living stones built into the Church, the Body of Christ and let's imagine how that identity and dignity might change the way we act.