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.

January 21, 2024 at St. Peter and St. Elizabeth Seton Catholic Churches in Naples, FL

Jonah 3: 1-5, 10 + Psalm 25 + 1 Corinthians + Mark 1: 14-20

I am not sure where it comes from, perhaps it was our parents or our educational system, but most of us to some degree are what our culture calls, “Control Freaks.” I know some people whose lives are totally directed by their plans, their calendars, and the clock. While they seem to be all neat and orderly, my opinion is that they are dull and not a lot of fun to be around. If anything happens unexpectedly that throws their plans off, they get angry and can’t figure out what to do next. This is not to suggest that a little scheduling and planning is useless, but letting our plans completely take over our lives with a fixation over doing what we think needs to be done might very well keep us from being attentive to God’s work, God’s plan, and God’s invitation to share in that plan.

Imagine what it might have been like if those four, Peter, Andrew, James and John, had been so busy and so focused on their fishing that they just let Jesus walk on by. We would never know their names, nor the church they built that covers the earth. I think Mark tells us about this so that we can see what it takes to be a follower, a disciple, of Jesus Christ. We have to be able to risk something unknown, make a change, even start up a new relationship. Simply put, we can’t fool ourselves into thinking or believing that we’re in control of everything and that our plans are the right plans. The big risk is that while we work at whatever we do all day, we lose sight of the one purpose for which we were made.

When I think about those apostles Jesus called to himself, it seems to me that they were not exactly the best this world had to offer. It would seem that the best and the perfect are not what Jesus looks for. Most of the time, the best and the perfect have spent their lives and all their talents making themselves look good and be successful. That doesn’t leave God much to work with. As it turns out, those four and their companions were not so perfectly suited for what was to come, but they went anyway. They probably signed up thinking they would be headed for glory, power, respect, and admiration. Anything would be better than fishing all night and mending the nets all day. What they got was a huge disappointment. Instead of going for the glory of a palace, they got the cross. After that, they re-grouped in some upper room, and finally, with the help of the Holy Spirit figured out something new discovering why they were made in the first place. It was not to mend nets and catch fish.

We are so like those fishermen and those other ordinary people who join them along the way. We misunderstand things, we betray, and sometimes desert this church and the relationship we have here in Christ. But here we are week after week re-grouping in this room counting on the Holy Spirit to keep us open to the new life to which we have been called.

God has called us to be a little more than we may have thought we were before we really listened to God’s Word. God called those men to do and be a little more than just catch a few fish to feed their families. God has not stopped calling. If you think you have everything under control and want to keep it that way, you may very will miss out on real life telling yourself that you have “the good” life which will end someday. We cannot, for all our planning foresee the future, no matter how furiously we squint. We never know all that we are getting into. Although that may appear to be a regretful limitation, it often proves to be the way to find a hope larger than our limited and puny imaginations. It all  just takes an ability and a willingness to think or try something new.

January 14, 2024 at St Agnes & St William Catholic Churches in Naples, FL

1 Samuel 3: 3-10, 19 + Psalm 40, + 1 Corinthians 6: 13-15 + John 1: 35-42

After hearing Luke and Matthew tell us about Shepherds and Magi, we pick up John’s Gospel today. For those two writers, it is place and family lineage that establishes the identity of Jesus. In this Gospel, it is John the Baptist. There is nothing here about the birth of Christ. What happens before the Baptism of Jesus is of no interest to John. This Gospel is about signs, and the first one will take place at Cana in Chapter Two. In John’s Gospel, the Baptist begins to fade away as Jesus begins to attract some of John’s disciples. Into the scene now steps a man named, Andrew.

I find Andrew to be one of the most fascinating characters in the New Testament. He is always willing to play second fiddle to Peter. He cannot keep the Good News to himself, taking delight in introducing people to Jesus. He is only mentioned three times in the New Testament. One time he brings that boy with five loaves and two fish to Jesus. Another time he and Philip bring to Jesus some Greeks who are asking questions. The third time is today’s reading when he goes to find his brother Simon to meet Jesus. 

That meeting must have been something because John tells us that Jesus looked at Simon. John says the same thing much later when Jesus is on trial and Peter has just denied knowing Jesus for the third time. John tells us that Jesus turned and looked at Peter. I am sure it was the same look of love that saw what was on the inside of Simon, not just what was on the surface. Jesus could see what Simon could become, and I think that’s the way it is when God looks at any of us. God sees not only what we are, but what we can become. 

Today, we hear the very first words Jesus speaks in John’s Gospel. “What are you looking for?” This is not a remark from an annoyed pedestrian suddenly aware that he is being followed. This is the Word of God addressed to every one of us who wants to take Jesus Christ seriously. What are you looking for in this brief life? 

They ask, “Where are you staying?” We might at first think they are asking for his place of residence, but the word translated into “Staying” really means something more like “Where are you rooted?” Today we might say, “Where are you coming from?” With that, there comes an invitation to “Come and See.” This is an invitation to do more than look around. It is an invitation to see what life is really all about, to see what God sees, to see what God desires and has planned. It can also mean to see what God sees when God looks at us and at those around us. It’s about what we can become not just what we are and certainly not what we have been. Just as with Andrew and Simon Peter, what we can become happens because of a relationship.

What is unfolding in this first chapter of John’s Gospel is the mystery and the wonder of a relationship. I think Andrew was looking for a friend and it looks as though he found one because John tells us that he stayed with him that day. It’s time together that creates friendships, and that truth applies to our relationship with Jesus Christ. There is no substitute in friendship for time spent together.

Here we are today, spending time together with the one who looks at us and sees what we can become inviting us and welcoming us into a relationship that will ultimately answer the question, “What are you looking for?”

January 7, 2024 at Saint William And Saint Agnes Churches in Naples, FL

Isaiah 60: 1-6 + Psalm 72, + Ephesians 3: 2-3, 5-8 + Matthew 2: 1-12

We turn to Matthew’s Gospel today, and the whole of this Gospel is structured to illuminate the final command of Jesus and his final promise. “Go out to all the world and spread the Good News. Behold, I am with you until the end of the age.” Those who study Matthew’s Gospel know that he is not writing a history. The stories he tells are very simple and stark without a lot of details. He shows more interest in the star than in Mary and Joseph. Perhaps because a star is a light for all the whole world to see. Joseph is the chief human actor in the nativity story. The birth itself is mentioned only in passing. And with that, Matthew moves on to his vision of a universal all-embracing Kingdom of God.

It’s as though Matthew is writing a screen play, and so today we are still in Act One, but now at scene two. Scene One has two characters: Joseph and Mary. Scene Two as these foreigners and Herod. These visitors are sometimes called “wise.” They stand in stark contrast to Herod who lacks far more than wisdom. It would be hard to count his deficiencies, but courage and openness would be among them. It never ceases to amaze me every time I read this Gospel that Herod and his court did nothing even after his scholars told him what was happening. I don’t know about you, but when I think about this, it sounds like our days and the information we have about climate change. We know about it, but nothing much happens for the same reason.

Herod’s problem was simply that he was too comfortable, self-assured, and too confident in his own power to allow something new, a change, or even be aware of a power greater than his own. In contrast to these strangers we could call “seekers” he sought nothing and therefore he knew nothing.  A theologian described people open to revelation this way: “The person who seeks is the person who knows.”

Herod knew nothing, and content to know nothing, he missed the revelation of Divine Presence and the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. Whereas these strangers were seekers, and because of that, they knew, they saw, they experienced an Epiphany – a Divine Revelation of God’s presence.

It does no good to hear or read this story without beginning to wonder about ourselves and what we know and how we know it. Disciples of Jesus Christ, true believers are always seeking, looking for signs and wonders of God’s presence and work among us. We can learn from Herod’s ignorance that unless we seek, open ourselves to what was before unknown and perhaps unlikely, we will never know anything about God much less come to see God. The world around us, the world in which we live, is often hostile to change, and it leads to a lot fear of the unknown. That fear and that hostility to allow something new is dangerous and becomes an obstacle to knowledge and the discovery of truth. We must be seekers. It will lead us to wisdom and knowledge. Those who are seeking may sometimes end up in the wrong places, but like these strangers, they can leave people like Herod to their own darkness and ignorance. It is always possible to reorient ourselves. Our journey will not end on this earth, but we cannot do better than spend our lifetime seeking.

December 31, 2023 at Saint Agnes & Saint William Catholic Churches in Naples, FL

Sirach 3:2-6, 12-14 + Psalm 128, + Colossian’s 3: 12-21 + Luke 2: 22-49

Luke has a way of balancing things throughout his Gospel and here in chapter two we get a perfect example of that, Mary and Joseph, Anna and Simeon. The men seem to be a lot alike. They listen a lot, and as a result of listening to the Holy Spirit, they find themselves in the Temple that day. Then there are the two women, Mary and Anna. We know nothing about Anna except that she is a widow which would at least tell us that she knew a thing or two about suffering.

We probably should not celebrate the birth of this child and the beginnings of this life without reminding ourselves how it will end. This is precisely why our tradition ends this week of Christmas with this sober reminder. These two women know sorrow. They will end their days as widows.

Sorrow can have one of two effects. It can make us hard, bitter, and resentful, or more understanding, kinder, and more sympathetic. It can take away our faith, or make our faith more solid. Which side of these alternatives happens will depend on what one thinks about God: whether God is a tyrant who sends sorrows with no apparent reason other than His own pleasure, or a loving Father who permits us to be tested to show who we are. To both of these women, God was a loving Father.

Our tradition tells us that Anna was 84 years old. Like sorrow, age can have one of two effects. It can sap one’s strength, take away our heart and leave us grimly resigned to the way things are or it can give us wisdom, humor, and other virtues. Here again how we experience age will depend on how we think of God. If God is remote and distant, we despair. If God is connected with our life and close at hand, we live through aging with hope. It is not hard to see that Anna had not stopped hoping, and she managed to stay like that through constant contact with the source of her strength as she came to the Temple day after day. That is a better description for a “fountain of youth” than anything on the market these days. Both Anna and Simeon shared a similar prayer life, and they both gave thanks to God.

Hours before a new year dawns on us, we can sit here with these holy people: two men wise enough to be found here in the Temple and wise enough to be good listeners, and two women full of hope. Hardened hearts bitter and full of resentment have no place here among us. Kindness and compassion, humor and hope is what belong to us wise enough to be here listening to the Holy Spirit speaking through the Gospels day after day.

Our God is no distant tyrant quick to anger and judgement. Our God is Emmanuel – close to us, no stranger to suffering, and gentle as baby. We can do nothing better than imitate Simeon and Anna and give thanks to God.