2 Kings 4: 8-11, 14-16 + Psalm 89 + 1 Romans 6:3-4,8-11 + Matthew 10: 37-42

July 2, 2023 I am at Mary Mother of Light Maronite Church this weekend.

We have all lived with the Gospels long enough by now to know that a literal reading is likely to get us into trouble or lead us to close the book and go further. The beginning verses we proclaim today are a perfect example since the bond of family love can hardly be in conflict with our love for God. In fact, mis-reading these verses might raise some conflict with the fourth commandment. The truth is, the quality that marks our relationship with other people is, in fact, the quality that marks our relationship with God. So, we have to go deeper to get the point that Christ is urging on us here. I think it may be a challenge to distinguish between what matters and what does not.

All of us, for all kinds of reasons, find ourselves, now and then, attaching great weight and importance to very unimportant things. Being able to sort that out requires knowing the difference between a want and a need. Needs must be met. It is everyone’s natural right, and it becomes immoral to refuse another’s need. To refuse someone’s right to health care, food, clean water, or even life itself, is immoral. 

Wants are a different thing. They do not have to be met. Of course, life would be more pleasant or comfortable, or even more fun if they were met, but if the wants are not met, nothing really terrible happens. With that in mind, there is really only one great need in life, and that is Salvation. It’s the only thing that can ever really last. Everything else, even our deepest human relationships become less important. Not unimportant, mind you, but certainly less.

Christ is not calling us to leave or ignore our family and friends. Christ is not asking us to embrace a life empty of human relationships. He is calling us to a balanced life realizing that nothing is more important than our relationship with him simply because it is on that relationship that everything else begins to depend. It is from that relationship that real good begins to flow, that justice and peace become possible. Any other relationship that endangers it is not worth having.

Jeremiah 20: 10-13 + Psalm 69 + 1 Romans 5: 12-15 + Matthew 10: 26-33

June 25, 2023 at Saint William and Saint Peter Churches in Naples, FL

“Be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.” Have you ever wondered who that is? The easiest answer is, “God”. But the easiest answer is not the right answer, because God does not wish or will us to be destroyed or go to hell. The right answer is, “We can.” Others may be able to destroy our body, but we are the only ones who can destroy our souls and land in Hell. So, the question then is not “who” can destroy both soul and body, but “what” can do that. 

Jesus will address what that is once more at the time of his arrest when he tells a disciple, “All who take the sword will perish by the sword.”  When Jesus sends out the disciples, and they are not welcomed, he gives them a stern warning, and the message is simple and clear. If they abuse you, make fun of you, harm you, be careful how you respond. Physical harm is nothing compared to the power revenge has to eat away one’s soul and destroy one’s spiritual life. Revenge destroys one’s physical well-being, and it does serious psychological damage as well. Revenge will make your life hell.

Revenge is a dangerous motivation that drives people to do and say terrible things. It comes from deep within a person who has forgotten the love of God who called us and always suffers with us. To wish for or offer another person suffering only increases the suffering of this world, and there is already enough of that. Revenge from a sharp tongue or some physical act does nothing to change the world or make peace. It makes reconciliation all the more impossible. It makes the work, the mission, the suffering and death of Jesus Christ be for nothing. 

We live in a world gone half mad by the evil and the power of revenge. Like an infection it destroys communities, beaks up friendships and marriages to say nothing of how often and easily it causes war. Our children are more at risk from this madness than from the latest virus. It has corrupted our sense of Justice to the point that when people seek “Justice” what they really mean is revenge.

To all of us tempted by this, Jesus reminds us that we are worth more than many sparrows. Now, I don’t know how much a sparrow is worth, but I get what he means. We do matter when it comes to God. We are worth the death of his only Son. We are worth the gracious gift of Jesus Christ. What God wants for us is goodness, peace, and joyful happiness living together in God’s love. Yet, that is impossible when there is anger and revenge within us. The best revenge is forgiveness, and that revenge will set us free. Without it, we are caught in a self- destructive cycle. None of us can get ahead while trying to get even, and the only people we should get even with are the people who have helped us.

Exodus 19: 2-6 + Psalm 100 + 1 Romans 5: 6-11 + Matthew 9: 36 – 10: 8

June 18, 2023 at Saint Peter the Apostle Church in Naples, Fl

The last verse of this Gospel leaves me stunned and for me it suggests what God may ask of me when I stand for judgement. I don’t know how you could not feel the same way. The translation we just used said: “Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.” That complicated choice of words might be an excuse for missing the point. When you start to think of it more simply it means: “The gift you received, give as a gift.” That is a command, not wish or a hope. It is a command given to disciples of Jesus Christ. If you count yourself in as a disciple, then you know what to do with your life, you know your vocation and what God expects of you.

A problem comes when we forget that everything is a gift and begin to think that we somehow earned something or deserve something. That is foolishness at its best. If we have something, it may be because we worked for it, but what we have to work with is still a gift, and without that gift we would have nothing, and perhaps be nothing.

Jesus speaks of a harvest today and longs for someone to bring it in. The harvest is good, and it’s time for the harvest. It is ready to be reaped. Yet, we wait. We wait all the time. It started early. We waited to get through High School. We waited to get through that day of graduation from college and get that job thinking the time had come for bearing fruit and enjoying it. Some get married thinking that someday I’ll have kids, then someday they’ll grow up, and I will reap the harvest. Retirement comes. What do we do? We do what we have learned, we wait and postpone once again. What we have learned is how not to harvest.

Listen to what Jesus expects from this harvest time now: “Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers drive out demons.” That’s not some body else’s job. We all heard it just now. He said it to each of us today. 

The walking dead who think there is no point, no promise, no possibility can be called from their tombs by our hope and our encouragement. There are still lepers among us, shunned, outcast and undesired. They may be gay, foreigners, homeless, mentally ill, whatever. They long for our welcome. Spells cast on our children who are obsessed with trinkets, social media, and all kinds of illusions are ready to be broken. Our children need to be set free. How is this done, we might wonder. Well, not by postponing or waiting for someone else. Those disciples were all those people were going to get, and some in this world get only you and me.

Faith, Hope, and Charity are a resource that is renewable. Faith, Hope, and Charity are the gifts we have received. The more we share them, the greater they become. Those first disciples had no idea when they set out how to do what was asked of them, and that may have been for the best because, they did not have a plan or a program. They just went out and were present to anyone they came upon. 

In our day and age, it always seems like we have to have a program to solve every problem. Even the church sometimes thinks that way. We have to have program for converts, for engaged couples, for Confirmation. Those programs are nothing without someone to simply be there for others, to sit and listen, to wait, and watch. I never think we can program the Holy Spirit nor scheduled the Spirit’s work.

However, it is time for the harvest, and today we have received our instructions: give as a gift the gift you received.

Deuteronomy 8: 2-3,1 – 4-16 + Psalm 147 + 1 Corinthians 10: 16-17 + John 6: 51-58

June 11, 2023 at St. Agnes & St. William Churches in Naples, FL

A couple of weeks ago, I was having dinner with a couple here in Naples. The conversation wandered around from our neighborhoods to education, and then somehow to the Gospel of John. We skipped over golf, baseball, and the weather as my host told me that he found the Gospel of John almost impossible to read. I laughed and said that it’s, sort of like trying to read Thomas Merton or Catherine of Sienna. With a laugh he agreed, and I went on to point out that the three writers had something in common. They were mystics, and you can’t read the writings of mystic like you read the newspaper or a novel. John has Jesus say things that people understand in the simplest way, at “face value.” With that he invites the reader or listener to think more profoundly until they get caught up in unexpected depths of insight which lead to union with Jesus. We always have to look deeper and wonder what Jesus was trying to say.

In Chapter Six, verses of which we have just proclaimed, Jesus speaks about eating and drinking, simple things that we know are necessary for life.  We know that what we eat becomes a part of us, part of our very flesh and blood. Go a little deeper, and we might consider that the most intimate connection we have in life is with what we eat. Then John draws us even deeper by revealing the desire of Jesus for that kind of intimacy with us by comparing our reception of food to our reception of him as he then says: “I dwell in you.” Then comes the real astonishing thing as he says: “And you dwell in me.” It is an invitation into a profound relationship we call, “communion.”

When we sit with this wonder and contemplate what John says, the mystical experience is beyond words. We have to venture beyond what we see as bread into what we are offered, communion with God in and through Christ as members of the Body of Christ. We stumble around with words to express this mystical gift. The scholastics liked to call it Transubstantiation. However, that idea, that complicated metaphysical word, focuses solely on what we see and tries to explain how that bread becomes the Body of Christ. What good is that. It does no good at all to know how this happens if we do not move on to what it means, and who it is.

What we need these days is a focus on how the very flesh and blood Christ becomes our flesh and blood. The biggest challenge for us goes beyond repeating the words of Thomas: My Lord and My God before the Holy Eucharist. The biggest challenge is to experience and live in that intimacy Jesus invites to share. The first step into this mystery is the consecration at this altar. If we don’t make the next step it’s all for nothing. Seeing the Holy Eucharist as our greatest treasure must lead us to consume that Eucharist and enter into the very real relationship that Jesus shares with the Father. It does not happen by looking. The gift we have been given, the eucharist we see, is not some thing, some object. It is a person! This opens a relationship that is both personally unique and mutually inclusive. “I dwell in you, and you dwell in me.”

I do not see how it is possible to enter into this intimate, life-giving relationship without it changing how we look to others. If they do not see very one whose body and blood we share, something has gone terribly wrong with God’s plan. If we cannot look at others and see the image of God, then we are far from communion. This feast, and the mystery it reveals must draw us ever more deeply into being who we were created to be. 

Provers 8: 22-31 + Psalm 8 + Romans 5: 1-5 + John 16, 12-15

June 4, 2023 at St William & St Peter Churches in Naples, FL

We have moved out of the Easter Season now, and after 50 days and last week’s celebration of Pentecost, we reach deep into our tradition with this Sunday’s reflection on the Holy Trinity and next Sunday’s reflection on the Body and Blood of Christ. We are being teased a bit by the Church to try and imagine what is unimaginable and invited to approach what is really beyond us.  We take time this week to think about what God is like and what that means for us. From the beginning we have tried all sorts of images and ways to describe God and express what God means to us: omnipotent creator, artist making creatures from mud, someone who walks and talks with Abraham, a God of fire with a voice of thunder, that angry one from the prophets, and a consoling stranger who walks with disappointed and grieving disciples on a road to Emmaus.

In that first reading today from the Book of Exodus God tells us what God is like “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and rich in kindness and fidelity”. No wonder that man Moses who first heard those words wanted God to come along with that unruly crowd he was leading, because this is a God of communal love who creates in order to share that love. Then, Jesus, the Son of God, reveals by what he says and what he does how that love of God takes on human flesh, not just his, but ours as well. His promise to send the “Spirit of Truth” is what guides and preserves us. When he speaks of the “Spirit of Truth”, the key word here is Truth. In Greek, the word for “True” can mean a lack of forgetfulness. Understood in this way, it has nothing to do with right or wrong, it simply suggests that with the Spirit we will not forget. We will not forget our past, our tradition, or forget our roots in the apostles and the teaching of Jesus about unity, forgiveness, fidelity, and love.

When in our freedom we lost the image of that God in whose image we were created, God broke through our stubbornness with one who was ready to put God’s will before her own, and the Word was made flesh restoring us and all humanity to its divine origins, through, in, and with Jesus Christ. That Spirit will not let us forget in whose image we have been made.

One of several things that keeps this old man fascinated with the Word of God is that ongoing studies of language keep refining our translations bringing them closer to what was intended long ago by the sacred writer. What we proclaimed from the third chapter of John’s Gospel today provides a verse we have seen on billboards and signs at sporting events. It says: “For God so loved the world…” Recent studies suggest that this passage is best translated as: “For in this way, God loved the world.” It is a subtle change that shifts from how much God loved the world, to simply how God loved the world. If that is John’s intention, he is telling us that God loves through this unique and only son suggesting that God’s love is shown by action, and the sending of that promised Spirit is one more powerful action that shows God’s love for the world. 

Lest we forget again who we are, lest we forget again what has happened to us through the Incarnation, another Incarnation with the Spirit comes to fill us with mercy, to keep us gracious, slow to anger and rich in kindness and shape us more profoundly into the very image of God revealed in Jesus Christ. It’s all about the wonder of this God who will not leave us alone, a God whose profound and undeserved love takes on human flesh that we might see what is unseen, and begin to imagine what is beyond us. It is a God whose Spirit now in us continues to be revealed by what we do and what we say in the name of his only Son. This is the Trinity we experience greater than the Trinity of Theologians. It is the Father, it is the Son, and it is a spirit-filled people who remember in whose image they were made.

Acts of the Apostles 2: 1-11 + Psalm 104 + 1 Corinthians 12:3-7, 12-13 + John 20: 19-23

May 28, 2023 (This weekend I serve at the Maronite Parish in Tequesta, Fl)

We like to think that there was something miraculous going on with the Pentecost story that Luke gives us in the first reading today. Thinking that way is to forget that the Sacred Scriptures are not recording history. To get all curious or excited about how those apostles were able to speak in different tongues is a silly distraction. To think that this is some kind of miracle is to miss the real miracle being described here. The real miracle here is that of a bunch of cowardly, frightened men hiding out in a locked room suddenly had the courage to come out, and not just peek out, but burst out on fire with news that God has raised up a crucified man and made him Lord and Messiah.

What ought to leave us stunned is what happens when the Holy Spirit enters into cautious, timid, and not too courageous people whose faith gets shaken by tragedy and whose expectations get crushed by the reality of power abused and sinful ambition.

What ought to leave us stunned is what happens when that risen Messiah suddenly stands in that locked up room, and with a breath drives out fear and sadness restoring all creation to peace.

What ought to leave us stunned is how little of that peace has blown around this world, and how few people seem to have enough fire and courage to do anything about it. 

The stories we preserve in our tradition and tell on this day can still unleash that creative breath. The power of God’s Word can still fill us with Joy and open up minds and hearts that are locked up by a narrow and privileged ways of thinking. In this day and age, when no part of the world is unreachable and every language can be translated in an instant, it is time to appreciate the unavoidable and blessed awareness that we are all part of one another and can no longer think in terms of them or those. It’s only “us.”

This Feast of Pentecost holds the promise of yet another miracle, one that will bring peace from people like us who remember that we have been sent into the wild and wonderful variety of God’s creation with the gifts that the Spirit within us brings. To do that will require that we broaden our outlook, question those dogmatic assumptions we use to protect ourselves and ask the Spirit for guidance. Pentecost is not a date on the calendar. 

Every day is Pentecost because we have been stunned by grace and God’s mercy. We have been made new, brought to life, and have nothing to fear. 

Acts of the Apostles 1: 1-11 + Psalm 47 + Ephesians 1: 17-23 + Matthew 28: 16-20

May 21, 2023 at Saint William Church in Naples, Florida

There is danger with this Gospel. It is the danger of thinking that this is about something that happened in the past and something about the apostles. That is wrong, and getting it wrong has consequences for the Church and its apostolic members.  This feast and the event we commemorate tells us that we, the Church, must be a community of mission. We have a mission in this life, all of us, and the mission is not to play cards, golf, travel, or sit in the sun. For that matter, the mission of the Church is not to build big lovely buildings unless those are tools for accomplishing the mission we have been given. We are to go, baptize, teach, and remember.

The first step of this mission is the going. Without that, nothing else happens. Yet, that “going” is in a state of denial in our western world. We do not seem to have the heart to seek converts with anything like the vigor of the past. Many do not want to hear what the Lord asks or the message of the Church anymore. Perhaps that is because the Church, at least in the west is too preoccupied with internal problems, often of its own making. The same thing can be said of us individually. Being preoccupied with our own problems keeps us from going. Until we go, there is no baptism, no one to teach, and nothing to remember.

In this country, we hardly notice that the Church is exploding by leaps and bounds in India, Africa, South American, and southeast Asia. Why do you think there are so many missionary priests coming here from those places? Because they have them to spare and they are willing to go. I did some research as I began to think about this after sitting with this Gospel. The greatest number of Jesuits in this world now live and work in India! Every community of religious women is growing by leaps and bounds all through Asia. Seminaries in Vietnam are full. They are so full that the Communist Government restricts the numbers, and many young men are willing to wait their turn.

It’s not that there is something wrong with the comforts we enjoy or some sophistication, but these do not satisfy the spiritual hunger of the human heart. Pleasure is everywhere, but joy is missing. Inner peace is absent, and without it there are wars and violence. The expectation of a joyful future beyond the grave is missing. And so, we drug ourselves on the NFL, health clubs, the TV or computer screen. Meanwhile, complacency sets in all around us with the attitude that someone should do something. Churches close and parishes are consolidated while our young people drift away looking for something to do, something to be, something to remember.

Those first apostles had to get out of their routine, their comfort zone, their own neighborhood. They had to go to people who did not think and talk like they did. They had to take the risk of being laughed at, called names, and even suffer physical harm. They taught about Jesus not just by words, but more convincingly by their actions, gentleness, charity, and joy. They remembered the promise that they would never be alone, so they never left anyone who was lonely.

This day we call “The Ascension” is really not about Jesus returning to the Father nearly as much as it is about the Spirit of Jesus entering into us and about what he asks us to do so that he may truly remain with us always. When we feed the hungry he is with us. When we visit the lonely he is with us. When we give someone thirsty a drink he is with us. When we forgive he is with us. When we welcome the stranger or a sinner, he is with us. When those things happen because we do them, all will know that the Kingdom of God is at hand.

Acts of the Apostles 8: 5-8, 14-17 + Psalm 66 + 1 Peter 3: 15-18 + John 14: 15-21

May 14, 2023 at St William Church in Naples, FL

We are still at the table of the Last Supper with these verses of John’s Gospel, and Jesus is explaining that soon his followers will not know him in the flesh as they had. A hard and painful transition lies ahead. They don’t want to let go of what they have, much less face what is coming. He promises he will not leave them as orphans. Like children whose parents are taken away forever, they would question their identity and how they would survive without him. Yet, the promise is made, a promise that leads them to experience that while he will not be with them, he will dwell within them. 

With that promise, we are being teased by John’s Gospel today, teased and drawn into a deep and profound mystery. On the surface, the words sound almost like a riddle as he says: “On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” There is something profoundly personal about this that challenges any idea of a god that is remote, distant, foreign, or frightening. A transcendent God becomes a personal God. 

There is something intimate here, and the only way we can begin to understand and articulate this intimacy is through the experience of real, true, human love. If we take the experience of being loved and of loving in return, we are at the threshold of realizing this promise that the God who is in Jesus Christ will also be found within us. This is way more than affection. It is a relationship that changes our identity, a relationship that changes how we think, feel, and look at all creation and at one another. Like the true and sacramental love of a husband and wife, of parents for their children, there is nothing that can separate them, not even death. That loved one is deep within us present in all our waking hours bringing peace and the blessed assurance that we are acceptable and we are loved unconditionally.

That love is the promise made to us all as Jesus shared that final meal with his disciples. That love is why we keep the commandments, not because we fear punishment, not because we think it will get us points or earn our place in the presence of God, but because we love God and fulfilling the will of God is all we want to do. To whatever extent we have conformed ourselves to Jesus Christ, to whatever extent we have shaped our lives to be like his, we shall share his experience of union with the Father through union with him. This is more than saying that God is the source of all life or that God is first in our life. This is to believe that to love all others is to love our creator. This is what it means to be in Christ, because Christ loved everyone, and in so doing, he showed us how to love God and draw us deeply into everlasting divine life. So, no one is alone if we are there for them. We are never alone as long as we come again and again to this table and confirm this covenant of love and service God has made with us.

Acts of the Apostles 6: 1-7 + Psalm 33 + Peter 2, 4-9 + John 14: 1-12

May 7, 2023

This homily was not delivered during the Liturgy as I am at the Maronite Parish in Tequesta, FL

In John’s Gospel the final night of Jesus’ life is five chapters in length. We pick up today verses from near the end. As with Moses, Joshua, David, and Tobit, the leader gathers his family and closest friends to bid them farewell and offer insight into the future giving some final instructions. We must sense that intimate moment in these verses today. Jesus is about to leave. He gives us some final words of encouragement and consolation: Be faithful to God’s Word and Law, Remember and live what I have taught you. Better days are coming.

Do not let your hearts be troubled, he says to those around him. Yet, they are troubled, and so are we troubled about so many things that seem so wrong, so difficult, so contradictory. In these days, the talking heads on television and elected officials are all trying to frighten us and scare us into accepting their ideologies promising things they can never deliver. The gentle comforting words of Jesus are nearly lost in the noise, threats, and fears some think will motivate us to believe their lies and self-serving dreams for the future.

For those of us who gather around and listen to the one leader who speaks the truth to us, there is hope and peace in the midst of all this noise that could frighten and confuse the best of us. The disciples are confused and very frightened, and like them we can hear the Word of God and trust what we hear.

In Matthew, Mark, and Luke there is always great concern over the identity of Jesus. They are always asking, “Who is this?” In John’s Gospel the question is not “who” but “where.” “Where are staying? Where are you going? Where are you from” asks Pilate near the end. Even on Easter, Mary wants to “where they have taken him.”  What John reveals to us is that “where” is not a place or location. It is an inner communion that rests on belief in God and in Jesus Christ. What Jesus offers us and desires for us is that same relationship with God that he enjoys. It is that union with “The Father” that keeps him calm, focused, and faithful even when everything around him is falling apart and everyone around him is running for cover.This is not an easy thing to grasp, let alone begin to follow. Yet, we do know the way into the untroubled heart of God because Jesus is the way. While some continue to shout their frightening ideologies that polarize us and lead us to deaminize anyone different from us, a quiet voice can still be heard calling us to follow, to find in our faith the way to peace and justice that is found only where God dwells in the hearts of God’s people. Where there is mercy, there is God. Where there is justice, there is the Just One. Where there is forgiveness we shall find the forgiver, because, “the one who believes in me will do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these.”

Acts of the Apostles 2, 14, & ,36-41 + Psalm 23 + 1 Peter 2, 20-25 + John 10, 1-10

April 29 and 30, 2023 at Holy Spirit Parish in Mustang, Oklahoma

I have always found the “Shepherd / Sheep” image of the Gospel to be something of a challenge. Left on the shallowest level, this image in the church supports a kind of “clericalism” that I believe is not at all healthy for the us as a church in our age. It suggests that shepherds are in charge and that sheep are passive willing to fall in line at the shepherd’s orders. That sort of thinking creates a mindset that is not healthy for our church and a bit contrary to the meaning and consequences of our Baptism. I find it difficult to think that with these words Jesus was proposing a governance model for the church, and certainly this Gospel writer did not have that in mind as he preserved these words for posterity.

More likely what this Gospel proposes is that the whole Church is Shepherd, not just some members. Leaving others to be like sheep was is not very complimentary for those who know the behavior of sheep. In listening to and sitting with this text we might risk imagining that if Jesus is the Shepherd, then the Church, the Body of Christ is Shepherd, and what he describes as the behavior of the Shepherd is the behavior of a Church that carries on his mission and is his presence in this world. 

We are not being called sheep. A baptized, confirmed people filled with the gifts of the Holy Spirit are not a running around in danger at every moment, having no idea where we are or where we are going. We are called to be this “Shepherd” and this “Gate” through which those seeking security, salvation, and hope might have access to peace that comes with hearing the Word of God, and being affirmed, respected, cared for, and called by name. That’s what Shepherds do.

This proposes a very important mind-set for us and a kind of behavior that is more in tune with the kind of Church John is writing for. It draws us more closely into the image of God as we were created. It means caring for others, seeking the lost, protecting the vulnerable, knowing people by name, and by our merciful kindness opening the way for those who are wandering, lost, and confused to find their way into the Kingdom of God.

We are the gate as well as the Shepherd. Through our patient mercy, our willing forgiveness, our generous service, our faithfulness to the Word of God, others can see through us the way to salvation, holiness, and peace.

My friends, what Jesus is we, the Church, must be; a source of reconciliation, of healing, and reason to hope when there seems to be none. This is not the responsibility of those entrusted with leadership. It the vocation of every one of us who have passed through the waters and risen to new life in and through Jesus Christ. Those entrusted with leadership came from among us. They are not called to do our work so that we may lie down in green pastures like a heard of lazy sheep. Those entrusted with leadership must stand among us to remind, encourage, support, and keep us focused on the one shepherd who has already laid down his life which is what we eventually must do if we are any good at all as shepherds. Lay down our lives in committed loving service to those who have not found the gate.