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.

Acts 2, 14, 22-33 + Psalm 16 + 1 Peter 1, 17-21 + Luke 24, 13-35

April 23, 2023 

This Homily will not be delivered as I am attending the Blessing and Dedication of a new Pipe Organ at Saint Mark Parish in Norman, OK.

Their grief and disappointment are not hard to imagine. We get that part. Most of us have been there. However, their failure to recognize this one in whom they had placed their hopes is more troubling. I wonder sometimes if perhaps their hopes simply did not match God’s hopes. We have all had times of disappointment and discouragement when God failed to live up to our expectations of what God should do or how God should act. They had hoped for a Messiah who would lift them from the oppression of the Romans, but the Romans prevailed destroying the one they had hoped for. They could not imagine a Messiah who would be rejected and murdered even though the Scriptures they knew and the prophets they had read should have prepared them.

As much as this story from Luke’s Gospel is about the Resurrection. As much as it is one more example of how slowly those disciples moved into the truth of the resurrection, it is also an opportunity to think more deeply about hope which is really a state of mind, a lens through which we might view both the joys and sorrows, the victories and failures we experience in this life. The problem for those disciples headed out of Jerusalem was that they thought hope was the conviction that something would turn out well. It didn’t, and they were about to give up on hope.

A better way to think about and hang on to hope is to see it as the certainty that something can make sense no matter how it turns out because it is God’s plan, and the discovery of God’s plan comes from reading and knowing the Scriptures which is exactly what happens here as they walk along with that stranger discussing the prophets beginning with Moses as Luke tells us. What happens is that their sight is transformed by this study and prayer, by their walking with others and listening, by their taking, blessing, and breaking in a shared meal. What happens is that the Jesus they thought they knew is transformed into the risen Christ who stays with them.

Acts of the Apostles 2, 42-27 + Psalm 118 + 1 Peter 1, 3-9 + John 20, 19-31

April 16, 2023 at St. William & St. Peter Churches in Naples, FL

The tomb is open and empty. The room is locked but full. There is a deliberate contrast here in John’s mind as he continues the Gospel, and we should not miss this subtle message. Locked in a room out of fear, the one who has broken from a tomb comes to set them free; not just free from their fear, but free for the mission he is handing over to them. When we look for a way of describing or naming that “mission” it can only be called, “The Mission of Mercy.”

When we begin to understand that mercy is verb not a noun, the mission with which we have been entrusted becomes clearer. In other words, “mercy” is not something you get, earn, or possess. It is something you do. Mercy is what Jesus did on this earth, and mercy is what Jesus expects us to continue. Mercy is action, not an emotional feeling. It is real, a concrete, generous response to the needs of another. As we see mercy in action it is not a response to those who deserve it either. The mercy revealed to us through the action of Jesus and through his parables is indiscriminate. A disrespectful and selfish son receives a welcome home. An enemy Samaritan is cared for generously by a passerby. Some don’t even have to ask like a widow about to bury her only son who sees him brought back to life. She never even asked. It nearly overwhelms me to think what this means for us. We don’t deserve anything when we are honest with ourselves, yet we have found a God whose mercy toward us knows no end.

As we gather in the coming weeks to continue our celebration of the Resurrection, we will hear again and again about the appearance of Jesus. These reports are not to prove the resurrection. They describe for us the gradual transformation of disciples into apostles. It’s a transformation from a passive learner to an active servant, and what “fires that up” if you’ll excuse the pun, is the Holy Spirit finishing the job on Pentecost.

My friends, it does no good for God or for us to observe “Mercy Sunday” thinking that “mercy” is all about God. Because “Mercy” is the very nature of God, and therefore the very nature of the Church and its members. Mercy comes to us with an uncomfortable grace. It is the grace of a vocation. We are called to step out of the fears, the locked-up rooms, narrow, exclusive ways of thinking, out of old habits and our privileged lives to be what God is and to do what God is still doing through his son.

We can’t ask for mercy, my friends, until we give it. When that happens, it will come back to us a hundred-fold.

Acts of the Apostles 10, 34-43 + Psalm 118 + Colossians 3, 1-4 + John 20, 1-9

April 9, 2023 at St. William & St. Peter Churches in Naples, FL

There is a lot of running around in this story and none of the runners seem to know what’s going on. This Mary runs to tell Simon Peter that there’s an empty tomb. Then Simon Peter and another disciple go running as though it was a race, and the Gospel tells us that Peter came in second. A lot of running around over an empty tomb, and no one seems to understand why much less why they were running around early in the morning.

This Gospel give us a lot of details, but not much real information. It does not tell us why she was up at that hour roaming around in the dark among tombs. But when she apparently finds the tomb she had come to see, she jumps to the only logical conclusion. Someone took the body away. If we get the details right, she was there when the body went in, so she had the right tomb, but as we know it, the wrong conclusion. Sometimes logic has nothing to do with faith.

These two men seem to take turns peeking into that tomb, and all the Gospel tells us is that one “believed”, but it does not tell us what he believed. At the same time, it tells us that they didn’t understand, and that raises an important question: “How can you believe what you don’t understand?” Did he believe what the woman had told them, or did he believe something else? The Gospel writer leaves them standing there, and simply tells us the obvious, they didn’t understand, because an empty tomb proves absolutely nothing.

Our scientific age always looking for evidence and collecting data is at loss when it comes to this story. Rolled up and folded cloths, prove nothing. That leaves us today with no proof and a question about believing when you don’t understand. These are people of “little faith.” That’s how Jesus once described them. What we can see is that the “little faith” they had was something to grow on, and they did. So, can we. One thing that beloved disciple understood completely was that he didn’t understand, and at that point, they could begin to be drawn into the mystery of the Scriptures and the message that love is never overcome when it comes to God.

Mary was certain that someone had taken the body, but her little faith began to crack her certainties. All three of these people had just enough faith to allow them to distrust their verdict that this was the end of the story with Jesus. There was more to come as there always is, and it isn’t logical.

We are in this church as people of little faith. We don’t understand a lot of stuff these days, but if we believe just a little bit and listen a little more to the Sacred Scriptures, we can see what this Gospel is teaching us that we are not going to understand the Resurrection until we finally face the tragedy of evil that seems powerful enough to break us. Those disciples teach us not to flee from tragedy, but to stand in front of it with a little faith and a little hope, and not be terrified by what we do not understand and yet are willing to believe.

For anyone still wanting some proof for the Resurrection, we will have to be all they get. Those wanting proof will eventually have to simply look at us, how we live, how we face fear, tragedy, and evil. They may not understand, but they just might come to have a little faith or at least let the certainty of their unbelief be called into question. They empty tomb is not the end of the story. It is the beginning of our story.