God welcomes us into the family of love – Luke 2:41-52, 1 John 3:1-2

Holy Family, Year C; Notre Dame (University Village)

We’ve just heard tell of a perfectly loving family.  But that perfectly loving family isn’t the one our feast celebrates today: the one perfectly loving family is not Jesus, Mary and Joseph, but God.  By which I mean: God the Father, and Jesus the Son.  God is family, and by that I don’t mean that God really likes families (though he does), or God is close to us like a familial relative (though he is), I mean it as literally as we can mean anything about God: God is a family, the one perfectly loving family.  The relationship of love between God the Father and Jesus the Son is the love from which all other love is spun.  It’s a love between father and son that drove everything that Jesus did; and everything that Jesus did serves to invite us into that love and empower us to respond in love.  It’s why had to be in his father’s house, about his father’s business.  It’s why Jesus prayed so much.  It’s the love that gave Jesus the strength and the trust to be able to offer everything for us.  It’s the love that drew Jesus up to return to his father after his resurrection, to continue to show us what love looks like, and that led him to send us the Spirit that we might live in that love.

God clothes us with joy – Zeph 3:14-18a, Phil 4:4-7

Advent, Yr C, Week 3; Notre Dame (FOG Graduate Student chapel)

We all like to be praised.  As humans, we have widely varying tastes and preferences in oh-so-many things, but being praised is almost universally liked, I think.  Sometimes being praised is utilitarian, a good grade, or letter of recommendation, or positive feedback from a reviewer: there, sometimes, the pleasure at the praise is really pleasure at what we can use the praise to do.  But there’s a deeper type of pleasure at being praised, a holier one, even, and that’s when we know that the praise comes from someone being really overjoyed because of us, and we rejoice in response not because the person’s important, but because we love them, and stimulating joy in someone we love is wonderful. 

The Word of God comes to us – Luke 3:1-6, Bar 5:1-9

Advent, Yr C, Wk 2; Notre Dame (Walsh Hall)

We love stories about journeys.  Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit, the Odyssey, The Earthsea books, the Wizard of Oz, Watership Down.  Some people even claim that every great story is at its heart the story of a journey (they’re wrong, but lots of people say it anyway…).  Whether they’re hobbits, women, girls, men or rabbits, we do love stories about plucky, beyond-all-odds heroes traversing through all kinds of sticky situations, normally to make it home, a better person for it.  I have a friend who just put in an audition tape for American Ninja Warrior, and it’s amazing how many people (including me) will spend hours of our lives watching people attempt that same short but grueling journey, in the hope that one of them might make it to the top of Mount Midoriyama.  We love these stories, I think, because we love to imagine ourselves on a journey, to narrativize our lives like that.  In fact, it’s a classic spiritual practice.  You can read books about the soul’s journey to God by saints like St. Bonaventure, and more recent spiritual writers, including our own Fr. John Dunne, a Holy Cross priest who taught at Notre Dame for 55 years.

God strengthens our hearts and raises our heads to live in freedom – Luke 21:25-28, 34-36, 1 Th 3:12-4:2.

Advent 1, Yr C; Notre Dame (Duncan Hall)

What do you want for Christmas?  How about just being free of finals?  As a fellow student, we’ve just come off this lovely break, but now we’re staring down the barrel of some pretty busy weeks here and being free of that, that’ll be a pretty good Christmas gift right there.  And I actually think there’s some spiritual wisdom in there for Advent.  That this is our time, a short four week period, to prepare ourselves to celebrate Christmas, the celebration of God’s first coming among us in human form, and by doing that to prepare ourselves for Christ to come again, which is what our readings on this first Sunday of Advent concentrate on.  And I think that asking ourselves what we want for Christmas, and making that less about what we want to get, and more about what we want to be rid of can be a very real way to do that.

Jesus gathers us – Mark 13:24-32, Heb 10:11-14, 18

33rd Sunday of OT (Year B); Church of Loretto, St. Mary's college.

When a bomb explodes, hyper-pressurized air pushes away from itself, initially moving at almost 200,000 miles per hour, twenty times the speed of sound, only slowing as it hits whatever stands in the way of its will to scatter.  The hyper-pressurized air’s abhorrence of being so concentrated, each particle’s hatred of being so close to each other particular, is what causes the explosive force.  The nature of violence is to scatter.  In our gospel, Jesus promises us that he will gather.

Jesus shows us hope – Mark 12:38-44, Heb 9:24-28, 1 Kings 17:10-16

OT, Yr B, Week 32; Farley Hall, Notre Dame.

Have you ever seen one of those optical illusions which are two pictures in one?  There’s one where it could be either two faces looking at each other, or a cup.  There’s a moving one (and I’d invite you to google this one now [people got their phones out to look at this]): the spinning dancer illusion.  Who thinks she’s rotating clockwise?  Counterclockwise?  It’s apparently called a kinetic, bistable illusion.  That means that once you’ve seen it one way, it’s really hard to see it any other way.  Now, in this case, that’s not really a problem.  There’s no moral reality that one way of seeing it is better than the other way, or even that flexibility with these kind of illusions is really a virtue.

Jesus calls us to delighted following – Mark 10:46-52

OT Yr B, Wk 30; Farley Hall (ND).  Welcoming the students back after Fall Break.

Like most of you, I was away this past week; and like many of you, I did a lot of driving.  As my friend and I drove up through West Virginia and Ohio yesterday, we passed a convoy of station wagons with Indiana license plates, being driven by college-student-aged-looking drivers.  We were pretty sure: this is the CSC Appalachia service trip making its way home.  It was a nice reminder of where we were going, and who we were going there with.  We were on the way, and so were they.

God fills us to overflowing – Mark 10:17-27, Heb 4:12-13

OT Yr B, Week 28; Farley Hall (ND).  My first attempt at a dialogue homily at a Sunday Mass.

I’m sure you all know that something big happened on campus this weekend.  Something that attracting big media attention, filled the social networks.  I’m talking of course, about the announcement that the optimistic lifestyle brand “Life is Good” has teamed up with Notre Dame to offer the brand’s first collegiate licensed apparel.  That’s right, as of next week, you can may 11 varieties of men’s and women’s shirts featuring the words “Life is Good” and your choice of interlocking ND monogram, or cute leprechaun.

Jesus brings us back to God’s creative love – Mark 10:2-12

OT Yr B, Wk 27; Duncan Hall (Notre Dame)

“Go back to the beginning… how did this all start?”  When something that was meant to be wonderful starts to taste bitter, that can be just the question to ask.  What was it that so exited me and led me to begin this course of study, to play on this team, to take this job… to marry this person?  How can I bring that initial fervor to life again, in the more mature way that’s needed to deal with our more seasoned problems or our creeping ennui?

God can heal us through anyone – Mark 9:38-48, Num 11:25-29

OT Yr B, Wk 26; Walsh Hall (ND).

There isn’t really a good transition from plucking eyes out to anything else, so I won’t try.  But, I’m not going to start by preaching about eye-plucking.  I’m not going to ignore that bit like it’s some kind of a dead letter, but let me start somewhere else, and then we’ll get there. 

Jesus embraces us – Mark 9:30-37, James 3:16-4:3

OT Yr B, Wk 25; slight variants preached at two different Masses at Notre Dame this weekend.

There’s a puzzle that British newspapers like to publish called ‘spot the ball.’  They’ll take a photo of a moment in a soccer match, use computer wizardry to render the ball invisible and invite readers to reconstruct where it must be.  It sometimes takes some thought, but it’s an eminently doable puzzle, because all the action really is revolving around the ball; everyone on the pitch treats it as the most important object in the world and focuses their action around it.  It’s the same when someone really important, really valued, really great is walking somewhere.  Maybe we see it on campus on weekends like this, or we’ve all seen media images of a rap star or president walking surrounded by their entourage.  They’re surrounded, in the center, all conversations and interactions are rooted around the great one in their midst.

God gives us goodness – Mark 7:1-23, James 1:17-27

22nd Sunday in OT, Yr B; Walsh Hall, University of Notre Dame.

Many great actors say that they relish playing villains.  Some stories create much of their delight and intrigue by making us root against someone.  If you come out of the movie theater feeling sorry for Scar, or thinking that Darth Vader wasn’t such a bad egg after all, you’ve kind of missed the point of those movies.  But that way of engaging narrative, seeking out the baddies… that can lead us dangerously astray when we apply it to the gospels, or to our day-to-day lives for that matter.  Because if you look at this gospel trying to find the hero, that’s clear and right; we find Jesus.  But if we look for the villains, we’d be tempted to find the Pharisees and scribes.  We’d start to read this thinking that Jesus is out to vanquish them, and miss his will to save them.  And we’d start to think that we need to distance ourselves from them, because they might defile us… too much contact with them might make us impure.  And then the gospel turns its head on us, on the judgments that rise up within us, and Jesus would sadly smile at us and tell us, “No, nothing that comes from outside can defile.”

God enlivens our relationships with love – Eph 5:2a, 25-32

Ordinary Time, Yr B, Wk 21.  Notre Dame, Badin Hall.

I seem to have an odd track record of readings about marriage coming up at Masses I celebrate in very different contexts.  We’re here, about to begin a new school year at Notre Dame, and one comes up.  Just a few months ago, on June 6^th, I presided at 8^th grade graduation Mass at the parish where I was serving before I came here, and the first reading was another marriage reading.  It was from the book of Tobit, a depiction of parental pride at children growing up and marrying.  And it worked pretty well for 8^th grade graduation.  Certainly, there was a lot of parental pride, even though none of these kids had gotten married.  But, praying as I prepared myself to preach at that occasion, I started thinking about what marriage really is.  Marriage is a totally human relationship that is blessed to show the world something of what God’s love for us looks like.  And the kids we were graduating had entered into relationships like that; they’d entered into authentic, maturing friendships.  I’d marveled often as I saw their love, their mutual challenge, and their forgiveness when things went wrong, and genuinely seen God’s love.  And, at their graduation, I felt some pride, marveled in gratitude, thanked them, and encouraged them to keep on loving like that.

God feeds us for the journey – 1 Kings 19:4-8

19th Sunday in Ordinary Time; Mission Appeals at All Saints, Logansport, IN.  (Bilingual)

Elijah was hungry.  He wasn’t just hungry for food: he was hungry for relief from persecution; he was hungry for meaning and purpose in his life; he was hungry for success as a prophet, not for his own sake, but for God’s; he was hungry for the intimacy and acceptance of God that had launched him on this path.  He was hungry.  And so God fed him.  Elijah had fled into the desert, running from the Queen who was out to kill him.  He was fleeing from his call to be a prophet, because it seemed almost hopeless.  He was hungry.  And so God fed him.  God fed him, and God led him.  God have him food for the journey, and leads him to walk His walk to the summit of Mount Horeb, where, in that famous passage, Elijah would encounter God in the still small voice.  A still small voice that re-commissioned him, sent him anew, to return to his people and prophesy, a task that would get no easier, but to which he would return fed, nourished by encounter with God.

God conquers division through intimate embrace – Mark 6:30-34, Eph 2:13-18

OT 16, Yr C; Sacred Heart parish.

Do you ever wonder how the apostles felt?  They’d just come back from their first mission experience without Jesus by their side.  It’d been hard, maybe harder than anything they’d ever known; Jesus has sent them out without provisions, without anything to keep them warm at night if they couldn’t find someone to take them in, shabbily dressed, totally dependent on those they went to serve.  And he’d warned them: they would encounter rejection, being ignored, being turned out of town.  And I’m sure they did.  But we don’t actually read about any of that in Mark’s gospel; he just gives us a short summary of their performance “they preached repentance, drove out many demons, anointed many sick with oil and cured them.”  It had gone great.  They must be coming back at once energized and exuberant with joy at their success, and at the same time completely exhausted.  And emotionally… they’ve probably missed Jesus.  So, when he invites them to come away with him, just the 13 of them, for an intimate time of rest and refreshment… that must be a dream come true!  It’s the two key moments of discipleship back to back: doing the work of Jesus, and enjoying the friendship of Jesus, just wasting time with him.

God heals through our dependency – Mark 6:7-13, Eph 1:3-10, Amos 7:12-17

Fifteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time; Holy Cross parish.

As a Brit living in America, I always find celebrating Independence Day a little odd.  Now, I like burgers and fireworks, so I quickly get over any feelings of oddness and just enjoy myself, but I’ve often wondered what it might look like if a civil celebration of political Independence was somehow paired with a more religious celebration of Dependence: an interior attitude of dependence on God, that’s expressed and formed by actions which make clear to ourselves and to others our total dependence on God’s creation, and the humans who crown that creation.  By Providence, that’s precisely what our gospel today encourages us to do.

God reaches out to us in the mundane – Mark 6:1-6a, 2 Cor 12:7-10, Ezek 2:2-5

14th Sunday in Ordinary Time; St. Adalbert's, South Bend.  (one English Mass; one Spanish).

Jesus was amazed.  Jesus didn’t get amazed all that much, at least not in the scriptural texts we have, and when he did, it was generally being pleasantly amazed at someone’s faith. But here, he’s amazed and the emotions that go along with that might be saddened, mournful, lost, dismayed.  He’d come home, to the place he was most familiar with, the place he might expected comfort, even might look forward to an enthusiastic welcome; but he finds a lack of faith, a dishonor that amazes him, shocks him.

Two weeks off preaching

I have a couple of weekends (this and next) without any preaching commitments, as I transition to Notre Dame.  In July, I have parish assistance gigs lined up for three of the Sundays and come late August, I'll be regularly preaching in one of the women's residence halls on campus.

God gives surprising growth – Mark 4:26-34, Ezek 17:22-24

11th Sunday of Ordinary Time; last Masses at Holy Cross and St. Stanislaus parishes!

For some reason that right now escapes me, I thought it would work fine to have this past week be my last at the parish, and then move to Notre Dame and start summer school on Monday.  So, the past week has been an odd mix of packing, moving and unpacking, physically as well as trying to wrap up projects or at least package them neatly enough that they could be handed over, to another member of our pastoral team, a parishioner, or just offered up to God.  Apart from my formal teaching in the school, which wrapped up nicely, so many of my ‘projects’ here are in fact people’s lives, and lives don’t wrap up into nice neat little packages.  As I’ve been praying this week with these scriptures, it strikes me that I’m leaving here with a lot of seeds still in the ground.  I say that about these two parish communities, I say that about many of the individuals and families who I’ve been privileged to serve in their more fragile, transparent moments, and I say that about myself: my priesthood, my discipleship.

God joins Himself to us – Exod 24:3-8, Mark 14:12-26

Corpus Christi, Year B; Holy Cross parish.

I have a confession to make: over the Easter season, I really enjoyed sprinkling all the water around on all of you at the start of Mass each Sunday.  On the somewhat rare occasions we have incense, I also enjoy wafting that vaporized medium of blessing towards the altar and giving it to a server to receive that same blessing myself before sharing it with you.  I’m not sure, however, quite how I’d do with all of this sprinkling of blood Moses was doing in the rite that made up our first reading.  I’m not sure how well we’d do at retaining sacristans and cleaners either, if we did all of that.  If the priesthood of the new covenant had inherited from the old the need to sacrifice young bulls… well, I don’t think I’d do very well at that either.  Praying with these readings, preparing to preach today, the first thought that came to my mind was: well, that’s not the question, “how good are you at sacrificing bulls?”  The question is, “How good are you at sacrificing yourself.”  And the first answer that floated to my mind was: “honestly, not very.”  But, then I heard a deeper answer resounding: “but Christ is.”

God brings us into His divine Life – Deut 4:32-40, Rom 8:14-17, Matt 28:16-20

Trinity Sunday, Year B (baptisms during Mass) -- Holy Cross parish

“The Lord is God in the heavens above and on the earth below.”  That’s what Moses has to say to his people.  They’ve been rescued by God from slavery in Egypt, they’ve encountered him and received the Law on the mountain, they’ve wandered the wilderness led by him, and now they stop on the plains before crossing the water into the Promised Land, and listen to Moses, who proclaims to them: “The Lord is God in the heavens above and on the earth below.”  And he proclaims it, because it matters.  I think we’re probably on board with God being God in heaven; it’s God on earth we might be disquieted by.  The idea that God, while totally incomparable to any finite, fallible, created thing, enters into our world, acts, concerns Himself intimately with each one of us, with our greatest triumphs, with the most mundane pieces of daily life, and with our sin, our hunger, our weakness and our need… it’s almost too much to bear.  God loved Israel so much he wanted to make them His own, and he loves us the same.  That changes everything, and that’s not always comfortable.  He offers us a mutual binding: he’ll commit to us, and He longs for us to commit to Him.  He’ll lead us, to the Promised Land; that’s an invitation for us: to follow.

God pulls us up by the flame of the Spirit – Acts 2:1-11

Pentecost; Holy Cross Parish.

Fire.  It fascinates us.  It captures our gaze and delights us.  How often do we gaze up in wonder at the stars; those gigantic balls of fire that seem so small to us?  Or did you, like me, feel extra joy these past few days when the sun finally came out?  Or have you ever spent time around a camp fire, or in front of a fire place, fascinated by the flickering?  Fire warms us, it lights up our world, it cooks our food, it fascinates us and attracts our gaze.

God’s love-accepted emboldens us –Mark 16:15-20, Acts 1:1-11

Ascension Sunday, Year B: Holy Cross parish.

I think that the Ascension is the hardest feast of the Church year to preach on.  Not Trinity Sunday, not Good Friday, not a funeral: the Ascension.  And I say that, because it’s the only feast on which the primary action of God, in Christ, that we celebrate seems to be his moving away from us.  We’re on earth, and he ascends: to heaven.  And that’s not the primary movement given to us to proclaim at any other time: the Christian story is consistently one of God reaching out to us, God coming to visit and redeem his people, of us turning away, but of God’s grace eventually conquering our stubbornness and repentance moving us to accept the glorious eternal embrace offered.  Except today: when the movement is of Christ ascending.

God tends to our fruitfulness – John 10:11-18

Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year B; St. Thomas More, Knebworth, UK.

Having been away from England for quite some time now, and only sporadically returning, there are things I forget and have to re-remember every time I come over.  One is quite how much it rains.  The other is more pleasant, and actually a consequence of the first: quite how green it is.  Especially after having just survived a long Indiana winter when it was first white and then various shades of grey and brown, it’s very refreshing to return to so much lush, living natural greenness.

God commits to us – John 10:11-18

Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year B; St. Thomas More parish, Knebworth (UK)

The first assignment I give in my confirmation class, for 13-/ 14-year-olds, is to write a short essay about which virtue they most want to grow in, as they prepare for and receive this sacrament.  I was surprised when a full half of them wrote about courage.  The other half, by the way, were pretty evenly split between faith, hope and love.  The better I get to know 14 year olds, the more I wish they would work on prudence… but, no, courage was the virtue most of them wanted to grow in.  And they knew well what heroic exercises of that virtue look like, but that wasn’t what excited them the most.  They longed to be able to exercise a day-to-day courage, a courage that is gloriously mundane.  They wanted to be able to stand up for what was right when that wasn’t popular, to not go along with the crowd, to dare to confront a friend about something when they feared a hard conversation about something.  And the fear that held them back from doing that, was fear that if they dared stick out, then they wouldn’t belong, wouldn’t be accepted, would be stranded from the flock.

Announcement I made after all Masses this weekend

Some of you may know that I was originally sent here on a two year assignment.  Well, you've all been putting up with me for almost two years now, and our Provincial Superior has announced that my assignment here will not be renewed.  So, I'll be moving on this summer.  I won't be going too far: just a couple of miles up the road to Notre Dame.  I'll be spending next year applying to PhD programs in New Testament, taking some classes to help me prepare and helping out a little on campus.

It's been our discernment for a while that I'm called to serve the Church and the world as a priest through scholarship and teaching.  I asked to begin my ordained life in a parish context, as I thought that would be a wonderful context in which to have priesthood first drawn out of me.  It has been.  I will leave with a lot of gratitude for all that has happened here.  These parish communities will always have a very special place in my heart, and I will continue to hold you all in prayer, and I ask you to do the same for me.

One final note: on Monday, I leave for a couple of weeks vacation.  I don't want you to hear I'm not around and think that I announced my departure and then right away packed my bags!  I'll be back in a couple of weeks, through the end of our parish school year and a little bit beyond, but then I'll move up the road.

Thank you.

Jesus turns fear through peace to love – John 20:19-31, 1 John 5:1-6

3rd Sunday of Easter, Yr B; Holy Cross - St. Stan's.

Our gospel begins with Jesus’ closest disciples having just heard about his appearance on the road to Emmaus.  We don’t really hear what their reaction was.  Maybe they don’t even have time to stop and realize for themselves how they’re reacting, because right then and there, Jesus appears in their midst.  And they’re terrified.  Which means they don’t get it.  Whatever their heads are doing, their hearts are not quite yet ready to receive their Lord; to receive the good news that his love for them, for us, is stronger than death, the good news that he longs to be with us,just as strongly as he longs to be with his heavenly father, so will act to bring us to eternal heavenly life, acting to sanctify us to the point that we can live heavenlily.  It’s the most extravagant, outrageous good news ever.  And it’s no surprise that after the trauma they’ve been through, they’re not ready to receive it.  They react to the coming of their Lord with fear.

Jesus opens the door to peace – John 20:19-31, 1 John 5:1-6

2nd Sunday of Easter; Holy Cross parish.

The disciples have locked themselves in a room.  They’re frightened.  And they have cause for fear!  Their lord and master had spoken to them of the persecution to come, and they’d seen what that looked like, they’d seen how it played out against his very flesh, and Peter had seen what would come from association with those that imperial power condemned.  So, they had every reason to be afraid.  It was entirely rational.  But, Jesus has better than that.  The law of love trumps the cold rationality of fear; perfect love casts out fear.

Jesus unwraps and unveils for us – John 20:1-9

Easter Sunday; St. Stanislaus parish.

Do you how much Americans spent on gift wrap last year?  Well, neither do I.  In the busy-ness of this week, the most recent data I could find was from 2010, when this country spent 9.36 billion dollars on gift wrap.  That’s over $30 each.  And gift wrapping isn’t a purely modern or uniquely American phenomenon.  The earliest reference to it is 2200 years old, and comes from China.  Why do we do it?  Why do we wrap presents, or to take an example that might be more timely: hide eggs?  There’s something very humane about the wrapping of gifts.  Somehow, the giving and, more importantly, receiving of a gift is made even more joyful when it’s wrapped.

Jesus restores us to life – John 18:1-19:42

Good Friday; Holy Cross - St. Stanislaus parish.

He came at night.  Judas came at night, with lamps and torches.  He had walked out on the Light of the World incarnate, to live in darkness.  He’d exchanged the Light of Salvation for lamps and torches, meager hope to illumine a cold, dark world.  Jesus had longed and had acted to set his heart aflame with burning zeal and fiery love, and he couldn’t take it.  It was too much, too daring: to entrust one’s heart to a man walking to his death, to one who calls us to a love as brilliant as his, a love that would love unto death, a love the darkness could not overcome, but could not comprehend either.  So he trades it in, for lamps and torches, barely enough to put the darkness at bay long enough to stumble to the garden of betrayal.

Jesus refuses abandonment – Mark 14:1-15:47

Palm Sunday, Yr B; Holy Cross Parish.

Jesus refuses to abandon the cup.  He doesn’t want this; he wants to stay and teach and heal and form disciples… but that’s not the cup that has been poured.  The cup of divine wrath: divine anger and anguish mixed into one at human suffering, sin and death.  He would drink that fully for us, he would never abandon his perfect obedience to being human, to being his father’s son, to being anguished at sin and, in love, consuming it.

Two weeks off preaching

Due to our increased offertory campaign, I've had two weeks off Sunday Mass preaching.  Here's a link to my homily from this Sunday last year, on the Scrutiny Gospel.

Jesus zealously sacrifices for us – John 2:13-25

Lent 3, Yr B; Holy Cross Parish.

“Zeal for your house will consume me.”  The disciples remembered those words from scripture, we’re told.  Well, they remembered wrong.  The psalm they were thinking of doesn’t say that.  It says: “zeal for your house has consumed me;” not ‘will.’  Their very memory has started to be transformed by their encounter with Christ.  Could they have understood what this renewal of their minds meant yet?  No, not yet.  But, when Jesus had been raised from the dead… then they’d remember anew.  They’d remember scripture and remember Jesus’ words, seeing the two as originating from the same source, and they’d believe.  But now, they let themselves be so transfixed by this encounter with zeal incarnate that their memory of scripture, a psalm they must have sung hundreds of times, gets transformed.

God provides ever more – Mark 9:2-9, Gen 22:1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18

2nd Sunday of Lent, Yr B; Holy Cross - St. Stan's

There used to be a show on British tv called Crackerjack.  It was a game show, with kids as the contestants.  After every question, the kid would get a prize no matter whether they answered right or wrong.  There were only two catches: firstly, the prizes would marvelous, getting better with each passing question, if they answered correctly; if they answered wrongly, they’d get a pretty boring prize, often a cabbage.  Catch two: they had to hold all of their prizes in their arms.  Drop one, and their time on the show was over.  I don’t think anyone ever got any of the most coveted prizes, because by the time they became available, they were too busy clutching earlier gifts to be able to receive the gifts they really longed for.

Jesus makes our impossible dreams possible – Mark 1:12-15, Gen 9:8-15, 1 Pet 3:18-22

Lent 1, Yr B; Holy Cross Parish.

To dream the impossible dream is great; it’s heroic; it helped Andy Williams sell a ton of records.  But the odds are a whole lot better when we dream possible dreams, fight beatable foes, and run where the brave have already gone.  And we run where Christ has bravely gone.  That’s what the incarnation does for us.  That’s how, in Christ, God expands our vision of what dreams might be possible.  The one where we live forever, living holily, intimately, joyfully with God, with each other, with the earth?  That one’s been made possible again in Christ, and we do dare dream it.  In our opening prayer, we asked to “grow in understanding of the riches hidden in Christ and by worthy conduct pursue their effects.”  That pursuing: that’s running where the brave have already gone.  That’s uniting ourselves to this forty-day journey Christ undertook for us, our forty days to Easter joy.

Jesus risks everything to heal us – Mark 1:40-45

OT Wk 6, Yr B; Holy Cross - St. Stan's

A hand reaches out to ask for help, and he can’t turn away.  Praying with this story over the past week, I kept coming back to the image of the Whisky Priest from Graham Greene’s novel, The Power and The Glory.  As I was preparing for ordination this time last year, person after person told me that if I was only going to read one novel in the months before my ordination, this should be it.  It’s set during the persecution of the Church in Mexico.  The main character, the unnamed Whisky Priest, is forced underground, on the run from the also nameless Lieutenant who seeks to have him killed.  Finally, towards of the end of the book, the priest has made it through an arduous border crossing into a neighboring province where he’ll be safe, leaving his home state priestless.  A known informant for the Lieutenant tracks him down and begs him to come back across the border, telling him that another fugitive, an American murderer, is dying in the desert and that he needs a priest to hear his confession.  The whisky priest knows in his head that this is a trap, that he’s being baited to return into the Lieutenant’s snare.  But, at that moment the courage that can only come from being moved with pity grabs him, and he consents.  He can’t leave a man to die with murder on his soul.  He returns with the informant, and he’s arrested, and shot.

Jesus leads us to loving intimacy with the Father – Mark 1:29-39

OT Wk 6, Yr B; Holy Cross Parish.

Jesus seems to be having a pretty good day.  Today’s reading picks up right where last week’s left off, and maybe we should have preceded it by a “previously, on ‘the Gospel according to Mark.’”  He showed up in Capernaum, preached in their synagogue, freed someone from a demon and everything was amazed at him, and marveled at his teaching.  And the day goes on.  Now, he heals Simon Peter’s mother-in-law, gets a good meal out of it, casts out more demon, cures many more sick people.  The whole town turns up at his door, seeking his help.  People are responding to the call!  It appears he’s up half the night with these people.  And then he leaves, quietly, when no-one’s watching.

Jesus frees us for devotion – Mark 1:21-28, Deut 18:15-20, 1 Cor 7:32-35

4th Sunday of OT, Yr B; Holy Cross - St. Stan's.

Brooks has one arm round Heywood’s throat, and the other is holding a knife to it.  It’s one of the most tense moments of the Shawshank Redemption.  Brooks has been an inmate at Shawshank prison for fifty years and has just learnt he’s been approved for parole.  Terrified of being released into a world he doesn’t know, he sees killing Heywood as his only way to stay inside.  He gets talked down, and he doesn’t harm Heywood, but he’s still terrified.  Red – who, given that he’s played by Morgan Freeman, pretty much speaks with the voice of God – explains what’s happened to Brooks: he’s been institutionalized.  “These walls are funny,” he explains to the younger inmates: “First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them. That's institutionalized… They send you here for life, and that's exactly what they take. The part that counts, anyway.”

God brings life through our hesitant rash words – Jonah 3:1-5, 10, Mark 1:14-20

OT 3, Yr B; Holy Cross parish.

Jonah is famous for being hesitant, for running away from God’s call.  The story of him sailing away from the place God had called him and surviving three days in the belly of a whale is probably one of the more famous stories in the Bible: an iconic tale of how God’s will is done despite human refusal.  Plus, it’s a great story: vivid, action-packed, and Jesus makes reference to it in his teaching.  What is much less well known though, is what happens next, what happens when Jonah finally gets to Nineveh.  Now, he’s no longer hesitant.  In fact, he’s pretty much the opposite.

God calls us in serving and resting – 1 Sam 3:1-10, John 1:3b-10, 19

OT 2, Yr B; Holy Cross - St. Stan's

The Lord called Samuel.  We’re not told exactly what that means.  We’re not told exactly what that experience was like for hm.  We do read that it wasn’t obvious: it wasn’t a burning bush or an angel.  In fact, it presented itself as something very mundane, very worldly; the young temple servant thought he was hearing Eli, the priest he worked for, calling him!  But, eventually, with Eli’s help, he realizes that something quite marvelous is happening.  God is calling him.

Jesus baptizes us – Mark 1:7-11, Isa 42:1-7, Acts 10:34-38

Baptism of Christ (Year A readings); Holy Cross parish.

Jesus’ baptism is clearly important.  Mark pretty much opens his Gospel with it, it’s narrated by more gospels than Jesus’ birth is, one of our stained glass windows depicts, in fact the stained glass window that I chose to put on my ordination holy card.  Yes, Jesus’ baptism is clearly important.  But, Jesus getting baptized isn’t what struck me as the most important thing in this gospel.  Studying and praying with it over this week, one sentence stuck with me: “He will baptize you.”

God guidess our restless hearts to a place of giving – Matt 2:1-12

Epiphany; Holy Cross Parish.

They only feature in these twelve verses of Matthew’s gospel.  No other evangelist mentions them.  But they capture our imagination, these magi from the East.  They’d noticed curious happenings in the sky, which doubtless most people had missed.  Given how strange the happenings on earth had been, that God who created the universe and holds the heavens in his span had been born in a Jewish backwater, that all-powerful God had embraced the vulnerability of babyhood; it should be no great surprise if the heavens themselves declared with ripple effects this divine irruption into the human world. 

God fills our hearts with a word worth contemplating – Luke 2:16-21

Mary, Mother of God.  St. Stanislaus parish.

I wonder what the experience of pregnancy was like for Mary; the experience of having her barely teenage body filled with new life, filled with Him who was Life itself.  There’s an embodied experience there that I can never know, and having spoken with so many friends who have born children, I’ve come more and more to realize that in a way, none of us can know, as no two women’s experience of pregnancy is the same.