weekday homilies

Wednesday, Twelfth Week of Ordinary Time

~ Retired Bill ~ Leave a comment

Scripture Readings for June 25, 2025

Genesis 15:1-12,17-18, Psalm 105: 1-4, 6-9, Matthew 7:15-20

It seems to me that today’s readings are about having faith.

In Genesis we hear one of the foundation stories for Judaism and Christianity. God making promises to Abram. It is worth noting that God acts first by promising to protect Abram and only once God speaks does Abram raise the legitimate question about whether God’s protection will end up meaning anything because Abram doesn’t have any children to be heirs of God’s goodness.

Before I raise a question about this, notice that next God promises to give Abram a lot of land that belongs to someone else. Abrams responds by asking “how will I know that I will possess it?”

Here we have God offering Abram his protection and land for his use and Abram first reaction is to question its value and then whether he can trust God or not. Doesn’t that seem pretty bold to you?

I would like to suggest that’s not unlike today. You can’t always tell when God is tapping you on the shoulder. That is exactly what Jesus is talking about in today’s Gospel. Maybe it’s not God, maybe it’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

I write this blog because I am a confident believer in Christianity. I think Jesus was God’s son, that the God Jesus shows us is for real and that living based on the Gospels is the right thing to do. But I have met people, some friends and other acquaintances, bright people, honest, sometimes amazingly open and loving people who aren’t sure of anything about the outcome of this life. They believe all sorts of non-Christian, unorganized, speculative things about how life works. I’m not talking about people who have faith in other religions. I mean people who are unsure of any religion or randomly combine ideas from here and there and in the end aren’t sure what they have. My point. It is still pretty tough to tell if God is talking to you. Jesus’ comments don’t just apply to people in sheep’s clothing but also situations in life. How do we read them. Are they telling us something good or bad? I don’t think it’s easy even if you do believe in God to know how to respond in some situations.

So that reality makes Jesus advice helpful. Does the person or situation you encounter bring about good things for life or bad things? What kind of fruit comes from this tree, this set of circumstances, this person and who they are? That might seem like too easy an answer. But I don’t think it is, because in order to determine the nature of the person or situation you have to be able to judge what is good and what is bad. Making that judgment can be difficult for a number of reasons but I would like to focus on one. You can’t make a judgment about good or bad if you haven’t settled on some way of life, some standard. If you haven’t already said you believe in something. If a person just keeps flittering around different ideas, concepts or people with different opinions, that person will never be able to decide what is good and what is bad for them. You have to accept something for yourself, without that, you are lost.

This happens in our reading today when after the Lord promises Abram that he will have descendants like stars in the sky, Genesis says, Abram “puts his faith in the Lord.” Abram decides he will trust God in that moment and God accepts his trust as an act that defines something about Abram. Abram has taken a stand. It doesn’t end here. Even with this trust in God, determining what is from God takes real effort. Notice that when Abram is told to offer a sacrifice of animals he has to stay with the carcasses when birds of prey threaten and finally goes through a terrifying darkness before he hears God promise him and his descendants they will inherit the land.

All this is to say that paying attention to what life is telling us is not easy. It demands attention and perseverance in tough times. But most all, before anything else, making good judgments about God’s presence and what God offers us in this life demands faith. Real trust in the very God who wants to protect us.

Solemnity of John the Baptist’s Birth

~ Retired Bill ~ Leave a comment

Scripture Readings for June 24, 2025

Isaiah 49:1-6, Psalm 139: 1-3, 13-15, Acts 13:22-26, Luke 1:57-66, 80

Today, if you aren’t already aware, is the Solemnity of St. John the Baptist. The feast is made a Solemnity in order to give greater emphasis to the importance of John the Baptist.

The importance of John the Baptist is an interesting contradiction. In the course of the history of salvation he could be considered an “also ran.” Jesus is the key figure. He is the one who changes everything and his followers, the 12 Apostles, the Evangelists, Mary, and all the other disciples carry the story forward. John the Baptist is the last of what was left behind. He was a prophet calling out for the Messiah, he too was looking for someone.

So what makes the Baptist so important? We know that as the Gospel story develops he will be the one to Baptize Jesus. He will be the one to point him out to others. It is entirely likely that it is his words, his challenge that were key to the spiritual transformation of Jesus. But that is not the topic of today’s readings. Today we hear about his birth and his naming. He is called John instead of a name from his family heritage. It was a very unusual thing to do. But that unusual naming said something. John in Hebrew means, “the Lord has shown favor.” Isn’t that exactly what Elizabeth was expressing, having given birth to a first born in her old age? Isn’t it exactly what the Angel told Zachariah he was to name his son? Didn’t we all feel exactly that way when we saw our first child born. What else could a new child represent but the favor, the blessing of God.

But the truth is we don’t know. We never know when a child is born what will happen over the years. That’s exactly what everybody was thinking about this child named John, “What then will this child be?” Wouldn’t we all like to know what life will bring for our children, for ourselves? What’s more, it doesn’t get any easier as life goes along. No matter how favored we are by God, no matter how loved, sometimes we wonder if what we are doing is worthwhile. That’s what Isaiah is naming in the first reading, …God has called us since birth, protected us and given us the task of demonstrating His love of us all. Yet to quote Isaiah, “I thought I had toiled in vain, and for nothing, uselessly, spent my strength.”

John the Baptist is the poster child for doing what you think is right but not being “the one.” I think John represents all of us who can’t be sure if what we are doing is making a difference but we do it anyway. Luke in the Acts of the Apostles records the stance John the Baptist took, “What do you suppose that I am? I am not he. Behold, one is coming after me; I am not worthy to unfasten the sandals of his feet.” There it is. I have my part to play, but I’m not the big cheese and don’t expect me to be.

That’s why I think John the Baptist can be a model for us and our lives. Each of us has a role to play, we each point to Jesus in our own way. By living a faith filled life we make a statement about the value of faith in Jesus. But it’s not always easy for us to see how very important that role is. At times we can be discouraged and uncertain. Unlike John the Baptist, we’re not going to be able to unfasten the sandals on Jesus’ feet. Perhaps on this Solemnity that celebrates the unique importance of John the Baptist, what we should remember is the meaning of John’s name, the Lord has shown favor. We know that’s what God is about, grace and blessings. Like John, it is our job to pass it on by how we live. Whether we can always see the value of what we do or not, we are part of spreading God’s salvation to the ends of the earth.

Tuesday, Fourth Week of Easter

~ Retired Bill ~ Leave a comment

Scripture Readings for May 13, 2025

Acts 11:19-26, Ps 87:1-7, John 10:22-30

Christ is Risen, Truly Risen, Alleluia

We continue to celebrate Jesus’ Resurrection from the dead. We have been hearing in Acts about the early days of the Church and how it spread beyond Jerusalem. Today’s reading marks a significant turn of events because belief in Jesus moves beyond the Jewish community and he is accepted by Greeks as well. In other words, people significantly different from the original believing Jews recognized Jesus in their lives.

Let’s remember that for many people who met Jesus personally they didn’t accept who he was. Jews who had a great tradition of being rescued by God, who were awaiting a Messiah, didn’t recognize Jesus as the promised Messiah. Jesus was doing all sorts of good things but his actions challenged some and confused others. We now know that his works were sometimes interpreted as the actions of demons or a prelude to political takeover. His death on the cross seemed to end the issue.

In today’s Gospel, we have religiously devoted people who simply don’t recognize Jesus regardless of what he is doing and they want some kind of blunt statement, some proof of who he is. Yet in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles, Jews who believed in Jesus and fled Jerusalem because of the persecutions find people in other countries, who never met Jesus, who had no tradition of a coming Messiah and yet they can accept the story of Jesus, the Risen One, and believe he is the Son of God.

I think that is really hopeful for us. Because we are in the same situation. We are never going to meet Jesus the person who lived in Nazareth and traveled the Judean countryside. Yet we also know that throughout history people have come to recognize Jesus, the Risen One, in their lives and to believe in him.

I want us to recognize that faith means different things for different people. In fact, faith often means different things for each us over the course of our lives. Our faith changes as we grow older, it changes when we are confronted with different situations in our lives. So I want to raise a question for each of us. What does our faith look like? Is our faith only about keeping all the rules? Is our faith just about saying our prayers, coming to a Mass or attending a religious service? Is our faith limited to what we have been told is God’s will? Is our faith more personal? I want to suggest that today’s readings are about a more personal faith that recognizes Jesus, the Risen One, as someone active in our lives.

I am reacting to the part of John’s Gospel today in which Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice, I know them and they know me.”  That is a statement of personal recognition, up close personal knowing. This is when you know a person because of a relationship that has revealed all sorts of little things, opinions, fears and desires about the other person to you and you to the other person. The Greeks in Antioch discovered this relationship with the Risen Jesus and so have other Christians for centuries.

What I want to suggest is that we can still hear and experience Jesus, the Risen One and recognize him. It may be in situations in our life, it may be in conversation with others, it may be in prayer or devotion, it may be in moments that take us out of ourselves, it may be by being totally wrapped up in an experience, but we should know that belief in Jesus can be very concrete, personal and involving. Just as Greeks came to know Jesus, the Risen One, from Jews who ran away from Jerusalem, we can come closer to Jesus when we talk about our faith with each other. Let’s be open to what happens each day and be willing to share those experiences with faithful friends. Maybe all the amazing things that happened in the early days of the Church happened simply because people were willing to share their experiences of God with each other.  Remember Christ is Risen, Truly Risen, Alleluia!

Thursday, Second Week of Easter

~ Retired Bill ~ 2 Comments

Scripture Readings for May 1, 2025

 Acts 5:27-33, Ps 34:2, 9, 17-18, 19-20, John 3:31-36

There are several things going on in the readings today. So I think it’s important to focus in on one. The Psalm says, “the Lord is close to the brokenhearted; those who are crushed in spirit he saves.” If we hear nothing else today, that is worth taking deeply into ourselves and savoring.

Too often our lives are cluttered with activities, obligations … and things we really want to do. Here is a gift of peace that could change us when we are frightened and brighten our days when the pressure of those schedules and other’s demands overwhelm us. “Those who are crushed in spirit he saves.”

This, to me, is the heart of prayer. No doubt at some point you have read or heard about a study that is run by some scientist who is trying to find out if prayer is effective. They are trying to measure one person’s or a group’s prayer to see if it changes some outcome for someone else. The results are often inconclusive, because it is the wrong question. Prayer is an expression of our relationship with God and no doubt there are changes but they are in us. We who were sad or frightened or heartbroken have been changed. That is the reality of prayer. It is as John’s Gospel says, “He does not ration the gift of his Spirit.”

So we can be confident that no matter how disheartened or frightened we may feel, God’s Spirit can lift us out of it if we are open to it. We need to believe in God’s presence right here, right now. That’s what believing in Jesus means. God is available to us in the midst of today’s life, in the current moment and whatever is happening for us.

We also have to recognize that this uncertainty, not being sure what Jesus can do, is not new. In the reading from John, the testimony of John the Baptist is saying, Jesus, the one from heaven, tells people what he has seen and heard but “no one accepts his testimony.” Lots of people didn’t believe it when Jesus was standing right in front of them.

Now, thousands of years later with the advantage of Church history, generations of saints and our own life of faith, it can still be difficult to accept that God is here for us and will give us what we need to overcome hard times. Today’s Psalm is really quite explicit, “many are the troubles of the just man, but out of them all, the Lord delivers him.” It doesn’t say many are the troubles of bad people, but many are the troubles of the just, and I would add, holy people. There really isn’t any question that bad things happen to good people. The only question is, will we believe, especially when we are “brokenhearted and crushed in spirit” that God can make a difference?

Well … Jesus is Risen, He is truly risen. Alleluia!

That should be our answer.

Wednesday, Second Week of Easter

~ Retired Bill ~ Leave a comment

Scripture Readings for April 30, 2025

Acts 5:17-26, Ps 34:2-9, John 3:16-21

Today’s readings are all about escaping the fear and judgments that keep us from being ourselves, good and holy people.

We begin with Luke’s story in the Acts of the Apostles that tells of the Apostles being put in prison because the authorities were jealous of all the good things they were doing. That same night an Angel comes, let’s them out and tells them to go to the Temple and preach about the good life that Jesus has brought.

Our Psalm acts as a perfect summary and interpreter of God’s action in similar situations in life. The response is simply, “The Lord hears the cry of the poor.” Followed by “I sought the LORD, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears.” No wonder the psalmist blesses and glorifies the Lord throughout these verses. Our fears and the judgments of some people can be a jail that imprisons us. Only a sense that we are loved and not judged can set us free.

Love and empowering non-judgment are exactly what Jesus is explaining to Nicodemus in John’s Gospel. You may well have heard this line quoted in television ads for various Christian groups. It is the core of the Christian message: “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” This is almost a repeat of the verse that precedes it, “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” This is followed by a pretty simple statement of how people can choose Jesus and light or evil and darkness. This statement about believing in Jesus or not, seems to be at odds with the prior verse that says the Son didn’t come to condemn the world.

 Yet the Psalm says, “Look to him that you may be radiant with joy, and your faces may not blush with shame. When the poor one called out, the LORD heard, and from all his distress he saved him.” Also when the temple guards go to get the Apostles out of prison to face the judgment of the Sanhedrin, the Apostles are gone. They are gone even though the doors are still locked and prison guards still on duty. There’s no logical way they could have gotten out. However, they did.

 I don’t want to dismiss this as an obvious miracle that God performed a long time ago. I believe this incident is meant to send us a message now. No matter the prison we’re in, not matter whether we’ve chosen the light or the dark at this point. Situations and attitudes can change with no logical explanation. Sometimes there is no logical explanation for what God does. Why? Because I’m not sure God looks at the light and dark of this world the way we often do. I think God simply loves us and acts out of that love.

Tuesday, Second Week of Easter

~ Retired Bill ~ Leave a comment

Scripture Readings for April 29, 2025

Acts 4:32-37, Psalm 93:1-2, 5, John 3:7-15

Happy Easter. Jesus is risen. He is truly risen!

So as you know, it is the Easter season. We are celebrating this amazing event that no one really understands. Jesus died and yet we believe he rose from the dead and lives with us still today. We may have become so used to the idea in our religious selves that we have forgotten how absolutely outrageous that claim can sound. Someone died and yet is alive in a real way 2,000 years later.

Perhaps we are like Nicodemus trying to understand what Jesus is trying to do with us. For me that is why I have always been drawn to the part of this reading that talks about the wind and how we don’t know where it comes from or where it goes. I think that is also true of how our lives work. Don’t we think, at times, how did I get here? In the same way, don’t we often wonder, what’s next? These common experiences expose a real vulnerability and hopefully humility that is part of human life. Too often we try to cover that vulnerability with behavior meant to hide it, or deny it or worse avoid it.

We need to accept our inability to control or comprehend every facet of our life so we can accept the loving care of God and follow where God leads. Wherever that might be. So Jesus is telling Nicodemus, and us, to look to God. To look up like the Israelites did in the desert. Looking up at the serpent in order to be healed. Facing, in other words, those things that frighten us. We can only overcome what we are willing to look at and tackle head on. In our case, it is Jesus on the cross who is lifted up. So we can see that giving ourselves totally to the challenges in our lives is the way to go. Giving ourselves totally to the people in our lives is the answer. That inherently means that we are not alone. Like the ideal description in the Acts of the Apostles we too can contribute to the good of the whole community but then also receive what we need from others. Which, of course, brings us back to where we started. In order to receive the gifts, the care and love from others we have to admit we need it. We have to admit that like Nicodemus we aren’t entirely sure of everything. We aren’t in total control of what happens in our lives. We need the help of others, we need the help of God to find our way, and only then will we be born again.

Monday, Second Week of Easter

~ Retired Bill ~ Leave a comment

Scripture Readings for April 28, 2025

Acts 4: 23-31, Psalm 2:1-4, 7-9, John 3:1-8

Today let’s talk about the Holy Spirit. We live in the time of the Spirit. Easter represents that change from Jesus, a person of history, to Jesus, our Savior. Easter is the basis of our faith. Jesus, a living human being died and rose to new life. Since that happened, each generation, beginning with the disciples has had to figure out what Easter means for them.  Jesus is no longer physically with us but amazingly he is still present.  As Jesus promised we were not left alone. The Holy Spirit, Jesus’ Spirit if you will, is part of our lives in a way so intimate and personal that I suspect many of us don’t always recognize the Spirit’s presence with us. That is what our readings are about today: the amazing presence and life giving support of the Holy Spirit.

The first reading presents exactly what we need to know. Peter and John had been threatened by the Pharisees. So the first thing they did was go to the community and the first thing the community did was pray for the Spirit to strengthen them to do what needed to be done. What may not be obvious in this sequence is that the Holy Spirit was part of their understanding before they made that first move. Jesus says it best in the Gospel, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless one is born from above, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.” Peter and John and the community of faithful wouldn’t have known what to do unless they had already been “born from above.”  We might say they had been converted, or had faith, they already believed in the power of God to be part of what was happening around them.

In the Gospel, Jesus is trying to get Nicodemus to look at life so he can see how much more is at hand. He is saying there is something more to this life than the physical world taken at face value. There is more to everything.

Unless we move beyond the immediate physical world and all its limitations we won’t see the Kingdom of God either. I don’t mean going to heaven after we’ve died. I mean the Kingdom that can be created right here, right now. That Kingdom, that reality is only accessible through the Spirit, God’s Spirit, Jesus’ Spirit.

I think Jesus is talking about the possibility of overcoming life’s limitations, the things that threaten us. We all know and can think of examples: how about overcoming the fear that keeps us from taking on something new, overcoming hatred that separates people, overcoming ego that makes us righteous, overcoming ambition that keeps us from being generous? Wouldn’t that be a birth to new life? That way of living is beyond the physical it is the realm of the spirit. There is more to life than the physical but we have to be open to it. Jesus again, put it this way, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless one is born of water and Spirit he cannot enter the Kingdom of God.” We have to be willing to see the possibility, to have faith that the Holy Spirit can be a real factor in our lives.

Acts tries to tell us how real and concrete the action of the Spirit can be. It says, “As they prayed, the place where they were gathered shook” And the result of their prayer? “They were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to proclaim the word of God fearlessly.” It says, fearlessly … wouldn’t we love to be without fear?  This is the Easter season, death has been vanquished, new life is everywhere. We should ask ourselves if Easter is going to have any effect on us? Perhaps, it is time for us to acknowledge our own need to be shaken up?

Thursday, Octave of Easter

~ Retired Bill ~ Leave a comment

Scripture Readings for April 24, 2025

Acts 3: 11-26, Psalm 8:2ab, 5-9, Luke 24 35-48

          Happy Easter! Jesus is Risen, have you seen him yet?

          Are you surprised by some of the Gospel stories about the Resurrection? I often find them a little confusing. I mean if you were God, and Jesus had risen from the dead don’t you think you would have handled it more dramatically? Wouldn’t there be flourishes and huge signs of the divine presence coming to demonstrate the victory over death? Jesus, the son of God has just been brutally killed by the Romans and the whole point is to show how God’s power is stronger than death and the travails of earthly living. And what happens? Do we have bursts of radiance or sparkling hallo’s or dramatic appearances before thousands? No, essentially we have an empty tomb.

          On Tuesday, in John’s Gospel after Peter and another disciple have left after seeing an empty tomb, Mary Magdalene, alone in the Garden, mistakes Jesus for the gardener. Yesterday, in Luke’s Gospel, immediately before what we read today. Two everyday disciples who are disheartened walk with him all the way to the next town without recognizing him until they eat together at night. Today, his disciples are all gathered together but Jesus has to show them the wounds in his hands and feet and eat some fish in front of them before they accept that this is Jesus the one they have been with for 3 years.

          How come nobody recognizes him? I would like to suggest to you that they don’t see him because nobody including Peter and Mary Magdalene knew what to look for. What Peter and Mary were looking for was the body of a dead man. The disciples going to Emmaus were downtrodden because of his death and were leaving because they thought it was all over. In today’s Gospel, even though the disciples are all gathered together hearing about Jesus’ appearances to others they’re not expecting him. In a very real sense, none of them knew what to look for. Nobody had ever risen from the dead. The risen Jesus is something so new they didn’t know what it was.

          In Acts Peter explains what has happened to the Jews. Peter recounts how God has promised salvation since the time of Abraham. He talks of Moses and Samuel and all the prophets. The Jews are the children of the prophets and with whom God made his covenant of salvation. And they missed it. They couldn’t see Jesus in their midst. They missed it even though it was part of their very own history. The very substance of their lives produced the Savior and they couldn’t see him. They didn’t know what to look for. They were waiting for fancy and powerful, they got something totally new, totally different and unexpected.

          Let’s remember for a moment that the Gospels were written at least 40 years after Jesus died. The Gospel writers are trying to tell Christians who never met Jesus what it means to see him, to have faith, as the first witnesses did. They’re not trying to report history. I think what they are saying is, don’t expect an obvious, convincing demonstration of divine power with recognizable bells and whistles. Look for him instead in the everyday course of life and expect to be surprised. He will be there if we are looking for the one who is alive in the Scriptures, the one who is with us when we gather and celebrate his presence in Eucharist. If we’re sailing through life confident of what to expect then we’ll miss him even if he’s standing right in front us. If we’re gathered with others worried and frightened about the world around us then we’re likely to miss his presence among us.

          Today 2,000 years later, Jesus has become part of our scriptures in much the same way he was available to the Jews of his time. The question remains, do we know what to look for? Will we keep looking? Even though each of these Gospel stories recount how people didn’t recognize Jesus at first. Jesus makes himself known in each encounter. It was however a reality they could not have expected.