Homily 12th Sunday C – 96 Because I lived in Washington, DC for 15 years, I would often go to those mass demonstrations on the national mall.  Pro-life marches annually from 1990 – 2001, marches for housing and employment in 1996, the Million Man March in 1995, even the Promise Keepers in 1997.  I was something of an equal-opportunity marcher, although truth be told I … Continue reading Homily 12th Sunday. June 23, 2013

Homily 10th Sunday C – Miracles!   Our readings today are about healing, but not just the regular, run-of-the-mill, standard-course-of-antibiotics healing.  We’re talking about miracles.  Dead-one-minute, walking-around-the next miracles. Even the epistle is about miracles, as St. Paul explains that his deep understanding of the faith came directly from God by a miraculous revelation. It’s as if he’s standing there saying, “I didn’t need to … Continue reading It’s a Miracle! Homily for June 9th, 2013

Our language is full of expressions that reward individual initiative, and see that as a model of leadership.  The early bird catches the worm.  Take the bull by the horns. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.  God helps those who help themselves.  (That last one isn’t in the Bible, by the way.  It’s from Benjamin Franklin.)  Our culture values the go-getter, the entrepreneur, and the … Continue reading Homily for Oct. 21, 2012

Every once in a while we get a set of scripture reading for a Sunday that make it really hard to croak out that “Thanks be to God” at the end of the reading.  It can be a real challenge to search out some good news in a set of readings that seem so rigid and unbending.  But that’s where we are today, so here … Continue reading Homily for Oct. 7, 2012.

I have to say, just between you and me, that I sometimes have a problem with the people that get all up in arms about the secularization and commercialization of Christmas. You know the ones I’m talking about: the folks who get all worked up over “Xmas”, despite the fact that it’s been used for centuries because the Greek letter chi is the initial for … Continue reading Christmas Homily 2011

2nd Advent “B” / 5 I’ve always been fascinated by the character of John the Baptist. In the Gospels he’s depicted as a sort of primitive: coming out of the desert, wearing camel hair and leather, eating what he can scavenge. These are all the marks of a prophet, and John is very much cut from the mold of the ancient Hebrews, like the author … Continue reading Homily for 2nd Sunday of Advent, December 3, 2011

A quick show of hands: How many of you work for a company or organization that has a Mission Statement? OK, now, how many of you could tell me what it says? Not many! The Mission Statement is the greatest invention of the management consulting industry of the 1980’s. Great fortunes were made by consultants who hired themselves out to help organizations generate Mission Statements, … Continue reading Homily for October 23, 2011 St. Philip Neri Parish, Portland OR

Every year on January 25th, the Church commemorates the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul. This is a particularly important day for us Paulists, and we generally treat it as our primary feast day of the year. We see ourselves as successors of St. Paul, bringing the Gospel to those outside the Church, and using the best contemporary tools of communication to do that. … Continue reading Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul

If, like me, you attended a Catholic elementary school in the 1960’s (or earlier), your memories of the feast of Christ the King probably include lots of marching.  We’d line up– boys on one side, girls on the other, and led by our battalion commander, Sister Mary Alma, we would march from the school yard into the Church, singing some sort of martial hymn proclaiming … Continue reading Homily for November 21, 2010: Christ the King