March 24, 2024 at St Peter and Saint William Catholic Churches s in Naples, FL

Mark 11: 1-10 + Isaiah 50: 4-7 + Psalm 22 + Philippians 2: 6-11 + Mark 14: 1-15:47

Mark begins his report of the Passion with a woman who anoints him, and it will end with more women who come to a tomb to anoint him once more. Women, in Mark’s Gospel, are the only ones who stay and see the death of Jesus. The men are all off hiding somewhere. Among these heroic women is this first one with no name. With a name, she would be identified and defined. With no name, she can represent everyone who follows her example.

By the time Jesus arrives in Bethany for dinner at the home of a leper, there was already a sense so danger. Everyone understood the parable he had told before fleeing Jerusalem. His friends understood that like the murderers in the parable, his death was being plotted. Danger is in the air. The powerful are scheming over how to be rid of him. Yet, one woman gave her all in an extravagant gesture of faith. She broke that expensive jar spilling all the precious ointment over Jesus, all of it.

She does not show up when Jesus was being followed by admiring cowds awed by his power and is words. For her, he was a King to be anoinited as all the Kings before him. She saw a vulnerable man who was about to die. When fickle crowds, confused disciples, and threatened authorities turn on him because he is not the Messiah/King they wanted, she comes to proclaim her faith that God was working through this man who taught that love was the only law of life. With all her riches, she broke the jar and poured out everything in it showing us that wealth is worthless and God is not revealed through human power.

We can learn something important about faith from this woman that Mark puts before us today probably hoping that what she does will become what we do and what she believes will shape our our belief.

She is unafraid to show her faith in a powerless man who has entered Jerusalem like a pauper riding someone else’s ass. She can see the divine in a man who is helpless to defend himself with no one to defend him. She can see a King about to die and believe that selfless service, pouring out all that one has is the best way to honor the real King. 

As I am serving a Maronite Parish this weekend, this homily will not be delivered at Mass

Ezekiel 37: 12-14 + Psalm 130 + Romans 8: 8-11 + John 11: 1-45

I spent much of my life in Oklahoma. Other than oil and gas, cattle and horses, it is wheat country. Wheat and Rice are probably the most fundamental source of nourishment around the world. So, it’s not surprising that the one who will feed us on his body and blood would use the image of a wheat grain to describe his future.

The whole cycle of farming up there in Oklahoma and throughout the wheat belt was fascinating to me, a city boy whose first assignment as a pastor was to a little country town where the entire congregation was farming families except for the Postmaster. At the end of summer, just a little before the first frost, the wheat gets planted, and if it rains, by November, the fields are green as far as you can see. By the first of December, the cattle are turned out to feed on the green wheat. Then, toward the end of February, they cattle are taken off the wheat which then grows for three months until it turns golden in late May and early June when harvest begins. The whole cycle happens because of one thing: rain – water. If it does not rain, there is no food. If it does not rain there is no life.

It is an amazing cycle that gives us both grain and meat. Both have to die for us to have food to live. In my mind, that grain becomes bread that then becomes flesh the food at this altar that gives us life. The whole natural cycle shapes our liturgy in this church. First the water of Baptism that brings us to life, then as we grow up we learn to love and serve those around us, dying to self or selfishness like that wheat grain so that we might be born again.

The church puts these ideas in our head on the last Sunday before Holy Week because we are inevitably headed toward a death on Good Friday and toward our own inevitable death. We know the truth even though it might frighten or make some uneasy. We are born to die, and every day we die a little more moving one day closer to that moment when we shall be planted or buried in the earth.  Only those who die to themselves really ever live a full and fruitful life. The self-centered, leave nothing behind and bear no fruit. Those who die a little each day to selfishness, to pretense, and to sin hold the promise of a new life that is the fruit that springs from their dying. Every time we pass from one stage of life to another something in us dies and something new is born. We taste death in moments of loneliness, rejection, sorrow, disappointment, and failure. Some die before their time living in bitterness, hatred, and solation. We create our own death by the way we live.

What Jesus teaches us is that when we forget ourselves that we are most free and most happy. It is getting out of ourselves, in dedicating ourselves to causes beyond ourselves, that we grow and bear fruit. The world is poorer and more hungry when people put their own personal safety, security and self-advancement first and last. When people are willing to go beyond themselves and die to self-interest the most precious things humanity possesses have been born.

Jesus gave his life. It was not taken from him. He gave it out of love of God and love of us. To love is to accept that one might die another kind of death, before one dies at the end of life. The way of love is the way of the cross which leads to the resurrection. As priest standing countless times at a bedside for someone’s final moment of life, I have come to believe that those who have died to themselves throughout life find the moment of physical death easy. The hour of death becomes an hour of glory. It is by dying that we are born to eternal life.

March 10, 2024 at St Peter and St William Churches in Naples, FL

2 Chronicles 26: 14-16, 19-23 + Psalm 137 + Ephesians 2: 4-10 + John 3: 14-21

Nicodemus is mentioned three times in John’s Gospel and always at night. What we hear today is the one time Nicodemus comes to Jesus. He comes at the risk of being criticized and laughed at. He comes even though he does not understand what Jesus is doing or what Jesus is talking about. But he comes anyway.

There is a lot of Nicodemus behavior in us. We sometimes avoid any public display of our faith cautious and conscious of what others might think or say about us. We get uncomfortable now and then lest someone think we might be serious about our faith or look too pious or holy. We keep quiet when we hear something that is not quite right not wanting to seem as though we take matters of justice seriously. When some judge immigrants or the poor to be lazy or criminals, we say nothing when we could remind those who judge so unjustly that the poor are really God’s favorites.

Yet, to me, what speaks most powerfully about Nicodemus beyond his courage to come at all is that he comes to Jesus even though he does not understand what Jesus is doing or saying. It seems to me that there is something right about that. Instead of throwing up his hands and taking off when he does not understand, he comes anyway. 

All of us from time to time experience and see things we do not understand, wondering why God works in ways that are beyond us. Too often it is a very painful or tragic event that leaves us wondering if there even is a God. Even more often a painful experience drives some away from God rather than being drawn closer.

The two other times Nicodemus is mentioned in the Gospel are closer to the end when he urges his collogues to listen to Jesus and be slow to judge. Then at the end, it is Nicodemus who provides what is needed for the respectful burial of the body of Jesus. Even though he does not understand everything Jesus says and does, and even though he risks the ridicule of others in the Sanhedrin, he stays, he serves, he speaks up.

Nicodemus stands as a model for any of us who struggle to understand the ways of God that are not our ways. Even Jesus struggles with the God’s plan as we shall soon hear in the Passion when it becomes a mighty struggle against what he sees is God’s plan. In the end, he throws himself on the ground surrendering to God’s will and plan. For that, he is raised up on the third day. It would be the same for us if we simply stay and take the risks.

March 3, 2024 at Saint Peter the Apostle in Naples, FL

Exodus 20: 1-17+ Psalm 19 + 1 Corinthians 1: 22-25 + John 2: 13-25

Part of what gets the authorities riled up in wild opposition to Jesus is this talk about the Temple’s destruction. For them, the Temple is not so much a place of sacrificial worship as it is the center of commerce and business. It is the economic engine of its time. Talking about its destruction would be like destroying Wall Street. That is not going to fly with them, and they need to stop that talk and silence this man who keeps saying things like this. You can understand the threat all of this talk means to them. Instead of the Temple sanctifying the city. The city was desecrating the Temple. If those desecrators had been asked what religion was theirs, an honest answer would have been “profit” and another would have been “power.” The most cynical and honest might have said, “none” which is what we hear a lot of these days.

What they did not understand and sometimes we still do not either, is that Jesus is talking about his body not some architectural wonder. Jesus is teaching us that God’s presence cannot be captured in buildings. The Incarnation, our fundamental belief that God has taken human flesh, is the reality here. The Body of Christ is the dwelling place of God, not the Temple, and in these verses of John’s Gospel, Jesus is telling anyone who will listen that they can destroy his body, but it will rise again.

There is plenty of evidence that what this Gospel proclaims with the words of Jesus is still not being understood or accepted. My friends, what makes this church holy is the people who assemble here. It is not that tabernacle, the statues, or the glass. It is you and me, the Body of Christ. The Holy Eucharist in the tabernacle could not be there were it not that we have assembled here. Sharing the Eucharist in Holy Communion makes us one in the Body of Christ. We become what we eat.

My friends, the whole wonder of the Incarnation is that God’s dwelling place is first of all, and perhaps best of all found, honored, and respected in human life. There is a real presence in human life just as truly as any Temple, building, or man-made object. This Gospel invites and challenges us today to examine just how we decide what is sacred and what is profane. It is a felon to deface a church, and people get in an uproar every time one is vandalized. Yet, there is hardly a whisper of concern when one of God’s people dies of hunger or is homeless living in a car or a tent.

My friends, the very rock of our foundation in faith is the Incarnation. God’s desire to live, to love, and to be revealed in human flesh and blood. God speaks to us with the very human voice of Jesus Christ when we are here together. We must listen and learn because we can be the face and the merciful hand of God to anyone looking and longing for God. This season calls us to repent and change how we think, how we see things, and how we treat each other. This third week of Lent offers a chance to check carefully how well our behavior reveals our beliefs.

February 25, 2024 at Saint Peter the Apostle in Naples, FL

Genesis 22: 1-2, 9-13, 15-18 + Psalm 115 + Romans 8: 31-34 + Mark 9: 2-10

The whole purpose for the writing of Mark’s Gospel is the identity of Jesus. Who is this? That is the question Mark wants to answer. For a real true and honest relationship to develop you have to know who a person is. We can work or live beside people for a long time without ever really getting to know them. It is one thing to know about people, and quite a different thing to really know someone. and it usually takes some unexpected surprise or some tragedy for that to happen which is what is unfolding in Mark’s Gospel. They are slowly getting to know Jesus.

Mark pulls out all the stops, so to speak with this story. Because we are hardly familiar with the Old Testament, it is easy to miss the details that would have alerted that early community of Jewish converts he is writing to. The six-day comment that begins this story would immediately remind them of the time Moses spent on Mount Sinai where the cloud of God’s presence covered the mountain for six days before God spoke to Moses. What demons knew at the beginning of Mark’s Gospel and what Jesus heard at his Baptism is now revealed to those disciples. Once again, God speaks to answer the question that drives this Gospel. But knowing about Jesus is not enough. Peter and those with him thought they knew all about the Messiah, but the one they thought was the Messiah kept talking about being handed over and rising from the dead after three days. How could they possibly know what that meant until it happened. Those disciples will eventually let go of what they knew about a Messiah and really come to know Jesus. But that will not happen until the end when the tragedy of his death takes place.

It would be easy to look at this Transfiguration story as a mid-point encouragement for the apostles giving them something to remember when they see Jesus on another hill crucified between two criminals. The transfiguration is far more than that.

A deeper meaning is that even after moments of great glory we have to come down the mountain and continue to listen to the voice of Jesus, and follow him on the way to the cross. Those apostles were struggling to get to know Jesus and I believe that what they learned on that mountain is that things and people are not always as the first appear. They followed Jesus up that mountain without a clue about what was to happen or what they might see.  How could they know that heaven was about to break loose in front of them?

My friends, there is a hidden glory deep in the heart of things. We get a glimpse of it in flowers and sunsets, but it is also there in darkness and shadowy places where we might not want to find ourselves. There is always glory concealed in loss, and there is always glory behind every cross. You can’t see Easter from Good Friday, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Sometimes you do not see the image of God in an enemy or some foreigner, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. If we want to get to know someone, if we want to have a lasting and beautiful relationship with someone, we just have to listen which is exactly what God has had to say.

February 18, 2024 at Saint Finbarr Church in Naples, Fl

Genesis 9: 8-15 + Psalm 25 + 1 Peter 3: 18-22 + Mark 1: 12-15

The Gospel of Mark just proclaimed to us says that the Spirit Drove Jesus into the desert. It is the same verb used to describe what Jesus did to unclean spirits and how Jesus cleansed the Temple. There is something powerful about that verb with a sense that there is a great force at work here, and that idea carries all through Mark’s Gospel when it comes to the ministry, the intensity, and the force driving Jesus back and forth across that lake, from Galilee to Judea, from one Synagogue to another, from one town to another, up mountains and out to the desert. If you ever really step into Mark’s Gospel, it isn’t long before you begin to see and understand that this driving force in the life of Jesus was both a powerful desire to do the Will of his Father, and a fire of compassion and love for those around him.

This Sacred time we call, Lent, might well give us cause to examine just what it is that drives our lives or maybe ask if anything at all is driving us. There some who sit around all day flipping from channel to channel on TV driven by nothing at all. Sometimes I wonder what is driving some whose whole life is planned around dinner parties or Tee Times at the Club. For others it’s clear that ambition, greed, and an insatiable desire for approval are the forces driving their lives. Whatever, this season offers a chance to examine the force that drives us, and when that force drives us might be worth some examination and review as well.

The force driving Jesus was first took him to Baptism. Some might wonder why the Holy Son of would need that. Sin couldn’t be the reason. In Mark’s Gospel it is clearly a way of expressing the incarnation, the very reality that Jesus Christ, the Son of God was one of us experiencing and doing what we do, one with us in everything. Then, just in case that point is missed, he goes to the desert where he lives between beasts and angels, the bad and the good, being tested, not tempted to make sure he has the strength or the force to do what is asked of him by his Father.

Some force drove you here to this church today, and it was not your Lincoln, Escalade, Honda, or Toyota. Some force is at work in all our lives to awaken lazy compassion or drive us out of self-serving, pleasure seeking comforts. There is a reason for us to be here. There is something for us to do here that will transform our lives, lift us out of our over-privatized, individualistic fake worlds, and plunge us into the truth of who we were meant to be, awaken us to what our lives ought to be about, and stir up our dreams about what God had planned for us from the beginning.

There is a force in our church called: Liturgy, and that force is way more than the rituals we experience here week after week. It is a force that can drive us home – drive us back into the arms of God – drive us back into Paradise. Yet, too many have no clue about how it works, what it needs, and what we can expect of it. Don’t ever think you came here to get something. The force of liturgy does not give you something, it takes you somewhere, and it makes something of your ordinary and sometimes dull lives.

I’m going to talk about that the next three nights. I will come to talk about the reason the force of the Holy Spirit has driven you here so often and for so long. Hunger is a force that is driving people all over the world to get up and move looking to be fed. Those of you who are hungry need to get up the next three nights and let that force open the pantry of our church’s traditions so that once like the one who feeds us here, compassion and love, service and sacrifice will drive us home and into the arms of our loving God.

February 14, 2024 at Saint Eugene Catholic Church in Oklahoma City, OK

Joel 2: 12-18 + Psalm 51 + 2 Corinthians 5: 20-6: 2 + Matthew 6: 1-6, 16-18

Prayer, Fasting, Almsgiving: the traditional and common practices we observe in the coming forty days. Prayer and Almsgiving hardly need any commentary. For one thing, we ought to be doing that all the time, not just in Lent. But when it comes to fasting, we’re not very clear about that, and actually have not shown any great enthusiasm for figuring it out much less putting it into practice. We live in a world of plenty. In fact, our world is more than plentiful, it is downright wasteful. There is enough food thrown away in the back of every grocery store to feed a small city for a week. What is not sold is destroyed.

If you have ever tried to explain Catholic regulations on fasting to a Muslim, a Jew, or a Hindu, you would be laughed at. Somehow “one full meal and two lesser ones not equaling it” does not cut it in the eyes of other world religions. Their idea of fasting is closer to what our doctor has in mind when he tells you to fast before coming in for a blood test.

I would like to suggest that this might be the year for us all to rediscover a valuable spiritual life practice and stop playing games with it. Too often we think of fasting as a kind of self-punishment for sin or as a way to earn forgiveness. The problem with that thinking is that it ignores the fact that forgiveness has already been granted. It is not earned. We tend to think that God will love us if we change, but God loves us so that we can change. Fasting, my friends, is about liberation. It is not about suffering.

It is not helpful to think about or practice fasting without prayer and alms giving. In fact, without them, fasting is more like going on a diet.

Here’s an example. A second century mystic writes: “In the day on which you fast you will taste nothing but bread and water; and having added up the price of the food that day which you might have eaten, you will give to a widow, or an orphan, or to someone in want.”

In just a few moments all of us will reach back into the earliest days of our faith tradition and accept a mark that must mean more than tell other that you came to church today. We cannot do this because we always have. To do so for those silly and shallow reasons makes a mockery of what we are about and the sacred season we are beginning. If you accept these ashes, you must accept what it means and what goes with it: Prayer, Fasting, and Alms giving.

If prayer, fasting, and works of justice called, “Alms Giving” form the core of Christian life, they must be so through the whole year. These forty-days are a time of testing, improving, and renewing these practices so essential for Christian life. Friday is for us the day of our salvation. It is now and always has been the day of all days when we fast celebrating our freedom from sin and our freedom for life with Christ. The most simple and consistent observance of Friday is the absence of food until evening, or one meal a day as simple as possible.

We are not a body and a soul, two separate things. We are one reality. What is good for my soul is good of my body and vice versa. Fasting nurtures humility and reminds us that we are dependent on our Creator for all good things. And, fasting is marked by moderation. Like everything else in the spiritual life, it is not about doing it all or doing it right. It is just about doing it in a spirit of faith and love.

In every culture and religion in history, fasting has been an instinctive and essential language in human communication with God. Let us not be the ones who forget the reasons, the rituals, and the words.

February 11, 2024 at Saint Eugene Catholic Church in Oklahoma City, OK

Leviticus 13: 1-2, 44-46 + Psalm 32 + 1 Corinthians 10: 31-11:1 + Mark 1: 40-45

Even though we have moved out of the age of leprosy, we still retain the social attitudes that went with it. We still bring our common fears and we still isolate people who are not like us in one way or another. There might just be a challenge in this Gospel today to name our modern-day lepers and change our attitude from fear and exclusion to understanding and inclusion. This is not easy when public figures and elected officials fan the fires of those fears with sweeping accusations, and horrible condemnations of those we would isolate for no other reason other than our fear.

A very brave man comes out of nowhere in this Gospel to approach Jesus. I always think that even before the leper was healed, Christ had worked a miracle simply by filling that man with enough hope and enough faith to risk coming forward. That’s the first miracle. It is the stirring of hope in someone trapped in a hopeless situation. 

Mark is very specific with this scene when he describes what the man asks, and what the man gets. He does not ask for a cure or healing. He asks to be made clean. It’s as though he is a dirty piece of trash, and that is exactly the way he has been treated. Mark then pushes a little deeper into this moment as he tells us that Jesus was moved with pity. The Greek word that Mark uses to describe this deep emotional response is far stronger than “pity.” It literally means to “move the intestines.” To say it another way, Jesus had a gut reaction to that man’s appeal. That reaction moves Jesus to treat that man with the utmost respect in sharp contrast to the way he had been treated by others before.

The result of that gentle touch and that deep sincere respect from Jesus is more than healing. That man discovered that he was loved and accepted and that no one and nothing could ever take that away. 

There is a real manifestation of God’s power here, but it is not that someone sick recovers, but rather that a person thought to be repulsive, unlovable, and even evil, is in fact, loved, and is the object of God’s mercy and compassion. And that is a greater miracle. Leprosy in our time has been cured by science, but science cannot cure what really troubled that man and still troubles too many others. Jesus did not see an unclean leper but a human soul in desperate need. Let’s be clear about this, these miracles were never intended to draw attention to Jesus which is why he so often asked for silence and kept trying to avoid the crowds who wanted more. He came to teach, he says over and over again. These miracles should awaken our faith in God’s providence, restoring a vision of a world where humanity is united as brothers and sisters in the love of God and one another. Anyone who would be a disciple of Jesus Christ should rise above the fears being stirred up in us and let their own miracles of charity, mercy, forgiveness and justice be proof of our trust in the God who is the real worker of wonders in our midst.

February 4, 2024 St Agnes Catholic Church in Naples, FL

Job 7:1-4, 6-7 + Psalm 147 + 1 Corinthians 9: 16-19 + Mark 1: 29-39

We need to be clear in our thinking about these healing stories that will be told to us all through the first half of Mark’s Gospel. These are not told to provide the divinity and power of Christ. When proclaimed in this Sacred Liturgy, God is speaking to us about one person doing whatever is in their power to ease the suffering of another human being. We do not need to be told about the power and divinity of God’s only Son. We do need to be reminded about the suffering and the needs of others and our power and resources to help them.

Perhaps to make that point more clearly, Mark moves Jesus around in this first Chapter. That first miracle happened in the synagogue. The second happen in someone’s home. Jesus is not just present with his healing power in a place of prayer. He is just as merciful and attentive in the place where we live. To make the universality of his mercy even more clear, after a man is healed, a woman is healed. There is not distinction when it comes to God’s mercy.

I am always struck, and I hope you are too, by the simplicity of this scene. Jesus says nothing. There are no commands. There is no great sweeping gesture. He simply takes her by the hand. To me, it is the simple gesture of friendship, holding hands. He helped her up. That’s all. Jesus did not do this to enhance his attractiveness to people. He did not do this out of duty. He did it because he was interested in people who needed help.

This story and others like it are kept alive for us as they were for countless others before us to awaken faith and trust in the Word of God, to restore in humankind “God’s vision of a world united as brothers and sisters under God’s providing love. “This is why I came” says Jesus. This kind of human compassion put in us by God breaks down stereotypes and defenses that divide, segregate, and marginalize people. The ministry of Jesus is not to restore bodies to health but to restore spirits to wholeness.

We must come here seeking that miracle for ourselves ready to reach out and take a hand, lift someone up, and bring to life the kind of compassion that belongs in real children of God. Only when we want to and decide to share the suffering of another seeking to understand and hear about whatever has pushed them down can we truly experience the power of God that has been entrusted to those of us who eat his flesh and drink his blood. There is someone somewhere down waiting for us to take their hand. There will be more miracles like this one in Peter’s home when friendship and compassion overcome a self-centered, individualistic hearts that look at others as foreigners and outsiders, rather than as brothers and sisters waiting for a hand to touch them.

 St William Catholic Church in Naples, Fl Saturday 4:30pm

Deuteronomy 18: 15-20 + Psalm 95 + 1 Corinthians 7: 32-35 + Mark 1: 21-28

It was a normal Sabbath day, and the folks there in Capernaum went, as always, to the Synagogue to hear a rabbi teach. All of a sudden, right in the middle of the rabbi’s teaching there was a terrible disturbance as someone began to shout at the young rabbi calling him names. You might imagine what that could be like if it were to happen right here! I can imagine it because it happened to me years ago when a man with some mental problems walked in during Sunday Mass shouting as he walked down the aisle toward me. Not realizing for a moment that I was quoting Jesus, I shouted back at him: “Be quiet and sit down.” He didn’t, but two policemen in the congregation jumped up and removed the man, but not without a struggle. Mark tells us that the people in that synagogue were “amazed.” I can tell you, I was more than “amazed.” Mark does not tell us if Jesus continued his teaching, but I can tell you I did not. I was not presiding, only preaching at that Mass. So, I walked back to the priest who was presiding and said: “You may continue. I’m going home.” 

Amazement is what Mark leaves us with. It’s a kind of wonder or surprise. Those people did not have a clue about the identity of Jesus. It’s only the first chapter, and it takes all sixteen chapters to reveal his identity, and even then, as the Gospel ends, no one is quite sure except a Roman Centurion, an unlikely witness. What amazed those people was a new kind of authority, and they seemed to have liked it. People of authority at that time bossed people around and told them what to do. That was not what they experience in Jesus. Authority as exercised by Jesus was service and care. Rather than tell people what to do, he showed people what to do. We should remember that the word “Authority” comes from the root word: “Author.” The Authority of Jesus revealed the “Author” the Father – the God in a new and most welcome way that left the people amazed and astonished.Those people never expected anything like this, and they had no other way to respond. Some were frightened and some were threatened. But, those who followed him suddenly had new hope and some excitement about the future. It could be so for us. With authorities ready and anxious to serve and care rather than enforce rules and order people around, our own future might be a great deal more promising and peaceful, and the reality of God’s presence, providence, and care might give us all some inner peace, making our church more attractive to others leaving us anxious for more to come as it did those people in Capernaum.