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17 Dec 2023 - Third Sunday of Advent, Cycle B

“Who are you, Michael? That will be the defining question of your life. And I think you already know the answer, and that's why we're all here.” That is the question sports marketing legend Sonny Vaccaro asks basketball legend Michael Jordan in the movie Air, as Vacarro is trying to get Jordan to sign a shoe deal with Nike. “A shoe is just a shoe until somebody steps into it,” says Sonny, or as Jordan’s mother explains even more presciently, “A shoe is just a shoe until my son steps into.” Jordan personified greatness. Vaccaro knew it, Jordan’s mother knew it, and Jordan himself knew it. “The rest of us just want a chance to touch that greatness,” says Vaccaro. “We need you in these shoes not so you have meaning in your life, but so that we have meaning in ours. Everyone at this table will be forgotten as soon as our time here is up—except for you. You're going to be remembered forever, because some things are eternal. You're Michael Jordan, and your story is going to make us want to fly.” In a similar way, John the Baptist recognized Jesus’ greatness early on. He saw who Jesus was and would become. And John knew his role was to point the way to perfection. Follow John’s lead.

Authors Patrice J. Tuohy

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07 Dec 2025 - Second Sunday of Advent, Cycle A

Christmas is on its way. You can feel it rushing in toward us like a runaway train, uncontrollable and inevitable. It transforms the environment of the church as much as the landscape of the community, not to mention the economic reality of many parishioners. Already folks are taunted by the constant consumer demands to enter into the spirit of the season with each new purchase. Purses are achingly stuffed with receipts for things no one needs. Is this hurtle toward the holidays what we want? Is this momentum that catches us what our hopes are pinned on? God knows we need Christmas, wait on it, and look forward to it every winter like the answer to a prayer at the end of a long, weary year. Christmas will lighten our hearts. It will bring the family back together. It will satisfy our hunger for belonging, warmth, cheer, and a multitude of sugar cookies. For only a few weeks we can be children again, anticipating the impossible good fortune that magically wrapped presents apparently grow on trees. Such is our modern version of the peaceable kingdom, Isaiah’s description of the remarkable hour when wolves and lambs become pals and children need not fear snakes. Whatever elements are necessary for us to experience this blissful harmonic convergence, that’s what we expect from Christmas each year. That’s why we have this peculiar phenomenon of the Christmas shop: stores dedicated to selling Christmas 365 days of the year. We want Christmas to come and don’t want it to end. Yet even when it arrives, a lot of people experience a deflation of hope, a letdown of unmet expectation. Maybe the loved one didn’t come, the hoped-for reconciliation postponed to another year. Maybe the desired gift wasn’t offered or received. Maybe we burned the cookies. When John the Baptist announces the arrival of the kingdom of heaven, he doesn’t offer the cookies casually. Repent is the Baptist’s first word—not a suggestion but a command. If you repent, you get heaven. You get your heart’s desire. If you don’t repent, you get nothing. That’s serious. The psalmist says it another way: Peace follows justice. You can’t have a world at peace unless you first have a just society. Paul says it a third way: You want hope, first you must endure in Christ Jesus. The world we want is in our grasp. The Christmas we anticipate is absolutely doable. But there are prerequisites. To have the Christmas cookie, there are things we must do: Assemble the right ingredients. Follow the instructions. Take the time to bake the results, not too much and not too little. Be patient. Wait. The delight you seek is almost ready. Related scripture links God's promise to David: 2 Sam. 7:8-16 John speaks truth to power: Matt. 14:3-12 Behold the Lamb of God: John 1:29-34 Violence in the kingdom: Matt. 11:12 John must decrease: John 3:22-30 Samson and the pillars: Judg. 16:23-30 Another story of the ax: Matt. 7:15-20 Catechism links Justice: CCC 1905-1917; 1928-1942; 2401-2406 Peace: CCC 2302-2317 Adapted from a previously published Exploring the word.

Authors Alice Camille

john the baptist

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Homily stories

07 Dec 2025 - Second Sunday of Advent, Cycle A

Today, John the Baptist, asks us to think of ourselves as trees. A mighty oak comes to mind or a graceful birch. Apple trees are lovely, and who could deny the splendor of a magnolia tree? Being a tree has a calming effect. I feel myself swaying in the breeze. Life is good. But then I remember that awful ax that lies in wait at the base of every tree. John warns us quite plainly, "Bear good fruit or else." Now the pressure's on. Am I bearing fruit, I wonder. What does that really mean anyway? Are my good deeds that obvious? Is anything I do as life-giving as a one shiny green apple? John won't tolerate halfhearted commitments. It's all or nothing. It seems like such an impossible request. I can feel the ax being swung in my direction. But where I make my mistake is in thinking that the Baptist is asking us to be perfect. That is what the Pharisees or Sadducees might expect of us, but John condemns them. No, John merely asks for our repentance and preparation for God's kingdom. It is a continuous process. Our Baptism is the outward sign of what takes place daily in our relationship with God. We turn away in selfishness or arrogance, and later we acknowledge our sins and prepare ourselves once more for the coming of the Lord. It is our lasting desire to be at one with God that will keep the ax at bay.

Authors Patrice J. Tuohy

john the baptist repentance Preparation

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14 Dec 2025 - Third Sunday of Advent, Cycle A

Consider John the Baptist for a moment: What a résumé! Luke alleges that John’s kinship with Jesus is biological. That alone is worth some bragging rights. “James, the brother of the Lord” certainly uses the genetic tie to his advantage in the church to come. But in the days of John, being kin to Jesus wasn’t yet the trump card it would later be. In the beginning, in fact, Jesus might well have profited from claiming ties to the more celebrated and powerful John. John emerges from the wilderness with a mystery wrapped around him more astonishing than his attire. Was he a graduate of the reclusive Essenes out at Qumran, who awaited a Righteous Teacher to turn around a hopelessly misguided religious leadership? Did he perhaps pen one of the ancient Dead Sea Scrolls we now possess? Whatever his training, John was a master of what we call desert spirituality: austere and solitary, careless of worldly comforts and advantages, fearless in speaking truth to power, uncompromising when delivering God’s sovereign word. John laid his ax at the root of the biggest tree in the land and struck. The tree crashed down on his head, literally. Before the end, however, John had them all jumping through his hoops. He commanded repentance in the name of God and declared the sign to be immersion in the river. Many came out of the cities and towns and lined to take the plunge, and still others to watch the baptisms with increasing anxiety. Believe John or not, you had to reckon with him. Even Jesus would find himself compared with John, suspected to be his ghost, and in today’s gospel felt the need to distinguish himself from his forerunner. When reflecting on all John was and did—a man who made a king tremble with fear and fascination!—we’re not surprised that Jesus names him the greatest man ever born. This is Jesus, remember: He has no reason to win the esteem of crowds by flattering a man they admire. First he exalts John. Then he deflates him—or at least changes the terms of greatness altogether. John is the greatest man ever born in the normal course of things. But because Kingdom values depend on being “born again,” even the lowest member of the new reign will be exalted ahead of John. Being born anew means embracing the Good News that the blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the dead are raised. In other words it means accepting that the rules have changed. Even the great John, in his prison cell, had trouble with that one. If the rules have changed, we can’t march ahead. We’ll have to consent to be led. Related scripture links Possessing our souls in patience: Luke 21:19 [KJV] Other harvest meanings and metaphors: Exod. 34:22; Isa. 9:2; Ps. 126:5-6; Prov. 22:8; Hos. 8:7, 10:12-13; Matt. 9:37-38, 13:36-40; John 4:35-38; 1 Cor. 9:10-11; Heb. 6:7-8; Rev. 14:14-20 The virtue of Christian hope: Rom. 5:1-5, 8:24-25, 12:12, 15:12-13; 1 Cor. 13:13; Heb. 3:12-15, 6:11-12, 11:1 Catechism links Faith and doubt: CCC 26; 142-175; 2087-2089 Adapted from a previously published Exploring the word.

Authors Alice Camille

john the baptist desert spirituality Baptisms

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07 Dec 2025 - Second Sunday of Advent, Cycle A

The baby, Lily, took one look at me and her eyes widened like saucers. Then she smiled at me and would keep on smiling when I anointed her with oil and even when she felt the water on her head as I prayed, “I baptize you in the name of the Father …” She never stopped smiling. When the Baptism was over, the entire family gathered around me for group photos, I felt her grab my pinkie finger and hold on tight. She was still smiling. There was never even one tear shed. I really shouldn’t have been surprised. Her grandparents became parishioners and friends just as I was appointed pastor decades ago. Their three daughters attended the parish school. The family was active in the parish long after I was gone. The youngest was the mother of Lily and now a teacher in the school. I had baptized her when she was her baby’s age. Seven years later she received from me her First Holy Communion. I married her and her husband two years ago. The gifts of her faith shared with her by her parents and nurtured over the years were now taking root in her baby daughter. The season of Advent celebrates the roots of our faith nurtured by John the Baptist and blossoming with Jesus who would be baptized in the Jordan river. Without this, there would be no Christmas to celebrate.

Authors Father Dominic Grassi

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18 Jan 2026 - Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A

Some people like to keep expectations low and goals modest as insurance against disappointment. Even in religion they prefer the buttoned-down and tucked-in approach, wary of God’s untidily passionate embrace. Those offended by high-flying exuberance and over-the-top promises will want to skip this Sunday’s liturgy—or else put your hands over your ears while decidedly unconservative images are scattered about like belated New Year’s confetti. If all you want is a pinch of salvation and a polite portion of blessing, best to avoid the cornucopia being served in the Liturgy of the Word today. You can start by blaming Isaiah. In today’s Servant Song, God brushes aside the notion that such a faithful friend might remain hidden in subservience. God takes this candle from under a bushel and places the servant on a lampstand as “a light to the nations.” If all we’re looking for is a smidgeon of religion to light our way, we might consider that God invites us to be that light ourselves! And not only for our families, or for our own kind. God intends salvation as a universal proposition: Who better to make that known than you and me? Saint Paul is next in line for culpability. When addressing the fractious Corinthians, he doesn’t stop at laying down the law for them. He doesn’t ask them to behave; he calls them to be holy! And his letter isn’t only for them but for “all those everywhere”—presumably us, too, 20 centuries later and just as in need of Paul’s instruction, truth be told. Because Paul is personally broke, he cheerfully offers his readers what’s not his: “grace and peace” from God and Jesus. It’s an astonishing abundance, and if only we would accept it we would find it to be enough to meet all our needs and concerns. Finally, we have to blame John the Baptist—but only collaterally, because it’s God who grants this final extravagance and John who announces it. John insists (perhaps too much) that he’s only an innocent bystander in this salvation episode. He didn’t know Jesus, he tells us twice. He was simply doing his job, preparing the way and sweeping off the littered path of an approaching dignitary. Frankly, John’s as passive as a signpost—and just as culpable for leading people down the path of repentance and grace. But in the end, you see, God’s at the root of these centuries of bold promises and wild dreams of hope. It would all be hyperbole if it weren’t reality: the world’s sin wiped out by a single act of perfect obedience? Who is God kidding, and how are we supposed to believe that? Or: Do we dare? Related scripture links Entertaining angels: Gen. 18-19:29 The One who is to come: Mark 1:7; Matt. 3:11; Luke 3:16; John 1:15 John's first testimony in the womb: Luke 1:44 John's hesitations: Matt. 11:2-3; Luke 7:18-20 Jesus involved with baptizing: John 3:22, 4:1-3 John is not the light: John 1:5-9; but see also John 5:35 Christ consciousness: Gal. 2:20; Phil. 2:5, 21; Rom. 13:14 Catechism links Lamb: CCC 407-409; 536; 608; 711-716; 1137; 1505 Messiah: CCC 436-440; 1286-1287 John the Baptist: CCC 523; 717-720 Adapted from a previously published Exploring the word.

Authors Alice Camille

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18 Jan 2026 - Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A

My quarterly, same-day surgery to replace a stent from my kidney to my bladder was normal—no pain, no anesthetic, just a deep sleep. I woke up in a recovery room. A nurse began checking in on me until it was decided I could get dressed and be driven home. The final test was always an ultrasound reading to assure everything was moving and flowing as it should. A different nurse came in with machinery and started. Lying still, flat on my back, I saw her her standing sideways over me. She was noticeably pregnant. Without thinking I said, “You must have had this same test a number of times recently.” She smiled and said, “You’ve got that right . . . but not in the same location you’re getting.” We both laughed. Without thinking, I told her that I was a Catholic priest and that I didn’t want to intrude in any way, but that it would be my privilege if I could give the child in her womb a blessing. A tear rolled down her cheek. She said, “I can’t think of anything more I would like.” So, I blessed them both. Four months later I was back as scheduled. I asked my prep nurse about her. “Oh, you’re the one. She’s on leave with a healthy baby boy and tells everyone about the blessing.” I will probably never see the child. Like John the Baptist with Jesus, I hope it just might have an effect on his life.

Authors Father Dominic Grassi

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