Christ meets us in our offering – Isa 63:16b-17, 19; 64:2-7; Advent I collect

 Advent I, Year B; St. Adalbert's parish

Video (homily starts at 14:40).

We live with all kinds of distance and separation and isolation right now. And maybe there are actually ways to use that fruitfully for our spiritual lives. It’s like how we fast in Lent. Now, hunger isn’t a good thing, hunger is a bad thing we want to eradicate, but we can use a bit of hunger in our spiritual lives, because what we feel so easily in our stomachs is just as real, but sometimes harder to sense, in our hearts and in our souls. We hunger for holiness, we hunger for God, and a little dose of hunger in our stomachs can help us recognize and name that and respond to it. In this same way, any pangs we feel of distance and separation from loved ones, very real, not a good thing, but maybe they can help us recognize and name that just as real but sometimes harder to sense distance from God. That distance that led the prophet in our first reading to cry out, “Would that you would rend the heavens and come down!”

 

Jesus hungers for us – Matt 25:31-46, Ezek 34:11-17

 Christ the King, Year A; St. Adalbert's.

We feel so scattered right now. Isolated, divided. That could be physically, in terms of what we need to do for our safety and that of others in this pandemic, and the social losses that come with that. It could be grief for loved ones. It could be political divisions that seem to be becoming more and more entrenched. Or it could be a feeling of distance from God. Where is God in all of this?

God gives us what we need to prepare for joy – Matt 25:14-30

 33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A; Basilica of the Sacred Heart.

Video (Homily starts at 13:56)

How would you like to be given $217,500?  Or, more precisely, to be trusted with $217,500 of someone else’s money?  That’s fifteen years worth of full-time minimum wage employment in Indiana.  And that’s what a talent was. That unit of currency was a huge sum of money. A ‘talent’ was a unit of currency worth 15 years’ worth of day laborer pay.  That’s what the least trusted servant is entrusted with: $217,500, one talent. When the master we hear about in the gospel is doling out these sums of money, it’s not always clear to us what meaning they actually carry.  And going back and doing a little economic history this week wasn’t just me indulging my geeky side, but a step in appreciating the grandeur of God’s grace.

God is close, and we have enough oil to light up the world – Matt 25:1-13, Wis 6:12-16

 Thirty-second Sunday of Ordinary Time; St. Casimir's.

Ever have the experience of looking for something that’s right under your nose? Like going searching for your glasses when you’re wearing them (which I guess would make them on your nose, not under it, but the point stands). Or, my personal favorite, the time a little while back when I noticed that my trouser pocket seemed a little light, reached down to check what was in it, thought “Oh no! Where are my car keys,” then realized… I was driving. Well, both our first reading and our gospel are about that kind of possibility, only not with glasses and keys, but with Wisdom, and Wisdom incarnate, Christ at his coming.

God makes us saints – Matt 5:1-12; Rev 7:2-14

 All Saints; St. Adalbert's Church

Video (homily starts at minute 18)

What we’ve just heard in our gospel is, I think, one of the most beautiful readings in scripture; the beatitudes. I remember being excited that I was going to get to teach this text to our confirmation students when I used to work at Holy Cross parish and school here in town, but then having an odd moment of discomfort when I noticed quite where in the textbook it was. They’d put it in the morality section, on the right-hand page of a double-spread, I remember, with the ten commandments on the left-hand page. And I remember finding that really odd, because those are such different texts. The Ten Commandments, of course, are wonderful too. They pretty obviously belong as the first thing in a section of Catholic religion textbook on morality. A list of do’s and do not’s that we all could do with being more faithful to. I could tell the kids, make sure to honor father and mother when you get home. Tomorrow, maybe work on not coveting so much. And there are plenty of similar moral texts in the New Testament that could have sat on that right-hand page next to them. But you can’t use the beatitudes in the same way. You can’t use them as a to-do list to make yourself a saint. Firstly, because you can’t make yourself a saint, that’s God’s job. And secondly, because they’re not a to do list. At least, they’re not our to do list, though in a way they are God’s.