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

Fifteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B; Holy Infant

A week and a half ago, I was in the great city of La Porte, IN, celebrating the Fourth of July (and we’ll put aside for now the strange incongruity of someone who’s a British citizen and American permanent resident celebrating that particular holiday… they were burgers and fireworks, it was great). But, more seriously, going back and re-reading the Declaration of Independence, I was struck again by how it concludes with a commitment to Dependence: Reliance on Divine Providence (depending on God), a mutual pledge to one another of our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor – a confession that to be a nation, we need to depend on one another. And, providentially, while we celebrating the independence of one nation a week and a half ago, this Sunday the Gospel gives us the perfect opportunity to celebrate the dependence of the whole Church.

God reaches out in the mundane – Mark 6:1-6a, Ezek 2:2-5

Fourteenth week of OT, Year B; St. Adalbert's.

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. And in that shock lie three gifts to us: comfort, good news, and an invitation or challenge.

Leaky Jesus (Mark 5:21-43)

Thirteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B.

I didn't preach this weekend (enjoyed hearing Mark DeMott preach mission appeal instead), but this gospel is a really important one for me, so I wanted to share some thoughts here. Four years ago today, I was admitted to our infirmary because my lungs were slowly filling up with gastric fluid (and, yes, that's about as bad as it sounds). I'm fine now, but if I don't manage certain things carefully, or if I'm just unlucky, it could easily happen again. The next semester, I took a class on medicine, magic and miracles in the New Testament with Candida Moss who shared her interpretation of this week's Sunday gospel, Mark 5:21-43, which is usually termed "the woman with the flow of blood," but she titles "the man with the flow of power." Having only recently discovered how my body is pathologically leaky, it was very powerful to (re-)discover that Jesus' body is leaky too. He gives up control, so that healing can leak out of him. "Leaky Jesus" isn't normally one of the invocations in the litany of the Sacred Heart, but I figure he's OK with me calling him that.

God forms us through weakness for powerful speech – Luke 1 Extracts

Birth of St. John the Baptist; St. Casimir's.

[Vigil and Mass of Day present two different extracts from the story of Zechariah. At each Mass I preached through the whole story, narrating it afresh for the portions we hadn’t heard. So, what was preached differed more substantially than usual than what is reproduced below. In the introduction to the Mass, I explained that we’re celebrating the birth of JBap today, why this feast is always 6 months before Christmas (/3 months after the Annunciation), why it is celebrated even on a Sunday.]

What we just heard from Luke’s gospel was really just an extract from what Luke tells us about how the birth of John the Baptist came about, and to get a sense of what God might be saying to us through this, we really need the whole story.

Dios crea un hogar para todos – Marc 4:26-34, Ezeq 17:22-24

11o domingo ordinario, Año B; San Adalbert y San Casimirio.

El profeta Ezequiel entendía la sensación de falta de hogar, de no pertenecer, de estar lejos de donde quería estar. Él había sido sacerdote en el templo de Jerusalén y los babilonios habían venido, habían destruido el templo, la casa de dios, y el palacio, la casa del rey, habían destruido toda la cuidad y exiliado a todo la gente, incluso Ezequiel. Los babilonios habían llevado a los exiliados a Babilonia.

God frees us from fearful grasping – Mark 3:20-35, Gen 3:9-15

10th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B; St. Adalbert's and St. Stanislaus' parishes.

I’m guessing I’m not the only one here with the following habit: when I’m bored, my hand will often reach down to my left pocket to take out my phone to distract me. Maybe it’s the right pocket or the purse for some of you, but I know this isn’t just a generational thing; I see people of all ages distracting themselves from boredom with their phones. Now either I’m sufficiently absent-minded or the habit is deeply enough engrained that a few weeks ago I was distracting myself with my phone and some website was taking long enough to load that I got bored and, without even thinking, my hand reached down to my left pocket, trying to grasp something that wasn’t even there that wouldn’t even have relieved what was wrong.

God joins His life to ours – Exod 24:3-8, Mark 14:12-26

Corpus Christi, Year B; Holy Infant parish.

I don’t know what you all think, but, the sprinkling rite that we do for some Masses during the Easter season, where the people get sprinkled with holy water… I think it’s kind of fun. That’s really why it’s assigned for Easter Sunday and an option for the other Sundays of the Easter season, because it’s kind of a joyful thing to do. It’s also a beautiful way of showing how God’s blessing is distributed with a divine playfulness. On the rare occasions we use incense, when the grains of incense are blessed and then vaporized and the vapor fills the whole space, whilst at the same time being more closely directed to certain iconic parts of our space, like the altar and the paschal candle, that’s a beautiful way too of showing how God’s blessing fills every space. I like these different physical symbols of how God’s blessing spreads, but I’m not sure, however, quite how I’d do with all of this sprinkling of blood that Moses was doing in the rite that made up our first reading.  I’m not sure how well we’d do at retaining sacristans or 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 tonight, the thought did come to me, that was momentarily relieving: well, that’s not the question by which priesthood (either the ordained or the baptismal priesthood) is measured: “how good are you at sacrificing bulls?”  The question – which is actually much harder – is, “How good are you at sacrificing yourself?”  And that wasn’t immediately relieving, because the first answer that floated to my mind was: “honestly, not very.”  But, then I heard a deeper answer resounding: “but Christ is.”