Search

Results

Homily themes

07 Sep 2014 - Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A

Scripture has harsh words for the stubborn sinner this weekend. The one who refuses to turn from wickedness, the Book of Ezekiel says, dies of their guilt while the psalm recalls a time hearts hardened against God, and the gospel outlines a course of action against the recalcitrant that ends in expulsion from the community. At the same time the readings send forth a call to inclusion, not exclusion. “Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving.” It is the presence of Jesus among those gathered, not separated, that makes prayer work. And love informs all, “for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.”

Authors Joel Schorn

inclusion

Restricted
Fractured Iraq struggles for unity government

17 Aug 2014 - Preaching the News for Sunday

“May the nations be glad and exult because you rule the peoples in equity,” the psalmist prays this Sunday. Iraq is struggling to form a new and equitable government that can bring the divided nation together to face radical Islamic insurgents in the north. Iraq's president on Monday asked Haider al-Abadi, the Shi'ite coalition's nominee for prime minister, to form such a government. The U.S. quickly signaled support for a “new and inclusive Iraqi government.” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged Iraq's new leaders on Tuesday to form an inclusive government and said the U.S. is prepared to offer significant additional aid in the fight against Islamic State militants. "Without any question, we are prepared to consider additional political, economic, and security options as Iraq starts to build a new government," Kerry said. He added that the assistance would be "very much calculated to try to help stabilize the security situation, expand economic development, and strengthen democratic institutions." The move was initially resisted by former Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who rejected calls to drop his bid for a third term as prime minister. But by midweek, al-Maliki’s defiant fight to retain power in Iraq appeared to collapse after his former backers in Iran, the military, and his own party all signaled that he could no longer expect their support. The Obama administration believes new leadership is needed in Iraq, not only to face the immediate crisis of the rise of the Islamist militants but also to restore the confidence of the Iraqi people in democracy. Kerry said a new government should move quickly to resolve numerous initiatives that have stalled under al-Maliki's premiership, including a long-delayed oil law and constitutional reforms. Meanwhile, in California U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced that another 130 U.S. troops arrived in northern Iraq on Tuesday on a temporary mission to assess the scope of the humanitarian crisis facing thousands of displaced Iraqi civilians trapped on Sinjar Mountain. Homily hint: Inclusion is at the heart of the gospel, and also the key to Iraq’s political future. Those who believe in a God of inclusion and tolerance must be stronger in love than those who espouse hatred and intolerance. Source: Articles by Matthew Lee for Associated Press, Tim Arango for The New York Times, and Reuters

reconciliation inclusion iraq

Restricted
A nonviolent way to address terrorist radicalization

22 Feb 2015 - Preaching the News for Sunday

The big covenant with Noah described in this Sunday’s reading from Leviticus is all-inclusive; humans as well as creatures of all kinds are included. A new White House strategy stressing education and inclusion is designed to counter the radicalization of young people by terrorist groups. “Community intervention teams” of religious and business leaders offer a nonviolent alternative to law enforcement in the effort to respond to concerns of radicalization. Homily hint: With so much violent, us-vs-them rhetoric in the air, it is refreshing to hear of an effort to stem terrorism that begins with education and inclusion. Learn more about the program and see if members of your faith community would like to form their own pilot group! For more information on outreach efforts to stem terrorist recruitment, see: Minnesota tries softer approach in battling Islamic State; Local Communities Key Part Of Plan To Prevent Extremist Recruitment

inclusion Education terrorism

Restricted
Pope on wealth: not a capital offense

27 Sep 2015 - Preaching the News for Sunday

The Letter of James offers one of the strongest warnings to the wealthy ever launched: “Come now, you rich, weep and wail over your impending miseries. Your wealth has rotted away . . . your gold and silver have corroded.” Pope Francis launched his first visit to the United States with a characteristic gesture of humility on Tuesday and sent a conciliatory message to the world's wealthiest nation about his frequent criticism of capitalism. The pontiff has often taken aim at capitalism, but on the plane bringing him from Cuba he said it would be wrong to presume that his concerns about economic injustice make him a leftist. Francis said his teachings on economic fairness and climate change are "all in the social doctrine of the church.” Homily hint: Pope Francis’ critique, and the church’s critique, is not of wealth per se but of an economy of exclusion rather than inclusion. Pope Francis is asking us to share our good fortune with those who struggle to survive. Surely this is a message that touches our hearts. Let it also touch our pocketbooks. For more on Pope Francis’ message of inclusion, see: Pope starts U.S. trip with tone of conciliation; Pope Francis to Congress: ‘Purify’ capitalism, embrace immigrants

Wealth inclusion economic justice

Restricted
Homily stories

03 May 2009 - Fourth Sunday of Easter; Good Shepherd Sunday, Cycle B

I remember how badly it stung. The kids in the neighborhood were choosing up sides for a pickup game of touch football, and I was odd man out. Rejected. Told to sit on the sidelines. I slunk on home and read comic books—taking solace in reading about the rejection that Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne experienced. Little did the world know whom they were rejecting in Clark and Bruce—and me. And I remember another time being out in the street gathering for a game when an older kid who was creative took charge. Again we had one too many players. Again someone was going to be left out. This time it was another of the younger kids—my buddy Jeffrey. But then the older kid said, “Hey, don’t leave. You can be the official hiker for both teams.” And so began a tradition on our block where no one was left out of the game. No one was rejected. Perhaps it was because he knew he would be the "stone the builders rejected” that made Jesus so passionate about inclusion—seeing himself as the good shepherd who would not rest until the lost sheep was brought back into the fold. How does your family measure up on keeping everyone included? Who gets lost in your household? What creative measures can you take so that no one is left out, no one feels rejected?

Authors Tom McGrath

rejection inclusion

Restricted
Defining Catholic identity

Short essays about observed trends in Roman Catholic life - Pastoral trends

Much emphasis falls today on Catholic identity and seeking out a Catholic distinctiveness. But all too often we turn boundaries into bludgeons. Catholic is something that seems uniform, something that seems tied to traditions and ways of being that can be separated from non-Catholic Christianity. But how much of what non-Catholic Christians do or think is truly “not” Catholic? Is something that originates within Protestantism something the church should avoid—even if, in fact, it reflects values and understandings found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church? To do so seems to be a contradiction of the Catholic genius—Catholicism means universal and embracing of that which is or can be in communion, after all. Catholicism is not a remnant religion—claiming only distinctive characteristics that no other Christian tradition has. This inclusiveness is, in fact, what makes Catholicism distinctive. One can confuse Catholic identity with a focus on an inheritance from medieval or baroque European Catholicism, or uniform liturgical worship as the current liturgical texts for the Roman Rite legislated. But Catholicism is more than European: Most growth today is in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. And its liturgical worship is hardly uniform: Well more than a dozen rites other than the Roman Rite are recognized, and in many dioceses in the United States one may find parishes “of Anglican use,” using the Anglo-Catholic Book of Common Prayer. In Africa, various bishops’ conferences, with Roman approval, have issued adaptations of the Roman Rite that involve prayers to ancestors and hosts of other innovations that speak to the community of faith in a profoundly sacramental, storytelling, sacred way. In this they are all distinctively Catholic.

Authors Bryan Froehle

catholic identity inclusion inclusiveness

Restricted
Homily stories

22 Apr 2018 - Fourth Sunday of Easter; Good Shepherd Sunday, Cycle B

I remember how badly it stung. The kids in the neighborhood were choosing up sides for a pickup game of touch football, and I was odd man out. Rejected. Told to sit on the sidelines. I slunk on home and read comic books—taking solace in reading about the rejection that Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne experienced. Little did the world know whom they were rejecting in Clark and Bruce—and me. And I remember another time being out in the street gathering for a game when an older kid who was creative took charge. Again we had one too many players. Again someone was going to be left out. This time it was another of the younger kids—my buddy Jeffrey. But then the older kid said, “Hey, don’t leave. You can be the official hiker for both teams.” And so began a tradition on our block where no one was left out of the game. No one was rejected. Perhaps it was because he knew he would be the "stone the builders rejected” that made Jesus so passionate about inclusion—seeing himself as the good shepherd who would not rest until the lost sheep was brought back into the fold.

Authors Tom McGrath

inclusion rejection lost sheep

Restricted
Exploring the word

28 Apr 2019 - Solemnity of the Second Sunday of Easter; Divine Mercy Sunday, Cycle C

The story of Peter’s shadow captivates our attention like a childhood fairy tale. Imagine a healing power so magnificent and penetrating that it can be communicated in a holy person’s passing shadow! There is scarcely any intentionality involved in such a miracle—it happens automatically because of the mere presence of the holy one, if only for a moment. The hyper-effectiveness of the apostles’ ministry seems to surpass what Jesus accomplished in his own earthly mission. This beats even the remarkable story of the hemorrhaging woman healed by grasping the hem of Jesus’ clothes. In Peter’s case, even this minimal contact was not essential for the “power to go out of him.” In the ministry of Jesus, too, not all the cures were 100 percent guaranteed. When he passed through Nazareth, we are told he could scarcely perform a mighty deed there because of people’s lack of faith. On another occasion, Jesus only achieved a partial cure of a blind man who could “see people walking around looking like trees” and had to lay hands on him a second time. The way Luke tells the story of the early church, however, the apostles never had a bad miracle day. When the people brought their sick and possessed ones before the apostles, the word is simply that “they were all cured.” The mantra of Acts is that all along the way “great numbers of men and women were added” to the community of faith. No one seems to be lost to the intimidation of local religious leaders or the threat of accusation by Rome. No one is reported to be put off by “harsh sayings” or the absence of a master plan to overthrow the present system. Whatever imperfections existed in the first gospel tour of Jesus appear to have been ironed out of the apostles’ ministry. How could this church possibly lose? The ideal church Scholars often speculate that the portrait of the early church presented by the Acts of the Apostles is a highly idealized version of the facts. Yes, and deliberately! First of all, it was written after Luke wrote his gospel, which places it roughly between 80-90 C.E., after the majority of the participants are gone. As a second-generation Christian, Luke didn’t have the “eyewitness” hang-up: He didn’t feel obliged to report only what he saw but also what he heard, with a few literary embellishments. Also, his story doesn’t pretend to be a witness to the past but rather to the lived faith of the church. In the narrative he is telling, symbol is greater than fact, and the truth of eternity trumps mere history. Luke consciously parallels his story of the church with his already-in-print version of the gospel. Both stories begin with the overshadowing of the Spirit, followed by mighty deeds punctuated with frequent prayer and characterized by the spirit of joy. The first story takes the divine word from Galilee to Jerusalem, and the second conveys the message from Jerusalem to Rome. Each is a journey of faith that is fearlessly undertaken at great cost. The first martyr, Stephen, dies with the identical words of Jesus on his lips, as if to underscore how perfectly the Christian community carries forward the spirit of its Master. If Luke’s idealism offends our loyalty to the strict journalistic approach of our times (which itself should be taken with large doses of salt!), then we shouldn’t read further to the Johannine writings produced a decade later. The gospel of John is 90 percent free of the Synoptic story line, more consciously theological than historical. And the Book of Revelation produces a portrait of the cosmic Christ so glorious and unearthly that, if taken literally, would explain why no one recognized Jesus after the Resurrection. Perfect attendance In the theological and ecclesial journey between Mark’s first gospel account and the Johannine tradition, we see the gradual movement toward idealism in the stories of Jesus, the church, and creation itself (in Revelation). Perhaps all this talk of the Kingdom really got into the imagination of the community! In Luke’s gospel, Jesus is the good shepherd who will go after the one-hundredth sheep to make the fold complete; and in John, Jesus will not lose even one who has been given to him, he insists—always excepting the “son of perdition.” In the roll call of the reign of God, it seems, there will be perfect attendance. This is why Jesus comes back for Thomas, the one disciple who was absent during his first visit behind locked doors. Thomas is habitually a questioner—we call him a doubter, but perhaps he was simply a deeper thinker than the rest of his bumbling community. In the history of the church, a lot of questioners are left on the roadside when no one sees fit to come back around to satisfy their need for more information. Obviously Thomas did not accept the groupthink that led the others to stay huddled in the upper room night and day. Jesus understood that Thomas needed more than a second-hand report of Resurrection to engage his faith. Clearly, the return of Jesus to the locked room was specifically for the purpose of giving Thomas what he needed to get on board. Applying the word The ideal community The image of the ideal community has not changed in 2,000 years. The perfect community remains the one that refuses to exclude anyone or leave any member behind on the journey of faith. We can’t set our sights on outliving the traditionalists or schismatizing the progressives. We can’t settle for a church that carries the 99 along and leaves the skeptical one in the dust. Thomas is necessary to us, as he was necessary to Jesus—worth another trip around, even a show-and-tell of wounds. It may seem like a waste of time to go back for the unconvinced, but not a waste of eternity, certainly. The ideal community remains the one with perfect attendance, all 100 sheep present and accounted for. Maybe if we were less exclusive about who is strictly necessary or worth retaining in our midst, we might find a more powerful demonstration of the Spirit among us. Whose shadow, now missing from our number, might yet be cast on the world to heal us all? Related scripture links Jesus and the hemorrhaging woman: Mark 5:25-34; Matt. 9:20-22; Luke 8:43-48 Blockage in Nazareth: Mark 6:5-6; Matt. 13:58 Two-step healing: Mark 8:22-26 Good shepherd: Matt. 18:12-14; Luke 15:1-7; John 10:1-16 Will not lose those given to him: John 10:27-29, 17:6-24 Thomas the skeptic: John 11:16, 14:5

Authors Alice Camille

peter's shadow doubting thomas Good Shepherd inclusion inclusiveness Community

Restricted
Homily stories

01 Sep 2019 - Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C

It was planned to be a party for a child turning 5 and all her kindergarten friends to remember forever. The theme was “The Circus.” During a school day lunch period a clown arrived with invitations that looked like the program of a circus. The children grabbed them with the instructions to look for their name. Lucas found his name under a picture of a lion tamer. Emma’s was under a trapeze artist’s and William’s under the ring master’s. Children pointed and laughed and squealed even if they couldn’t read the date and time—except for three empty-handed children. Their expressions went from expectation to confusion to tears. The teacher called the mother, sure there was a mistake and were told her child doesn’t play with Mohammed, Pedro, or Ashanti. Word got around. Many parents were appalled, saying they would not take their children either if all were not welcome. Others defended the mother’s right to choose. No matter what, the deed was done. Still, the school had to act. A new rule was created. No invitations distributed on school property. It was a tacit statement that while the school cannot tell you what to do on your own time, the classroom will be where everybody is welcome, reflecting the gospel. The theme of the next class party was “We are all one family.” Polish sausage, tamales, fried chicken, pasta, and couscous were served. Games were played. All the children laughed. Everyone had a good time. Everyone.

Authors Father Dominic Grassi

inclusion welcome

Restricted
Homily stories

25 Apr 2021 - Fourth Sunday of Easter; Good Shepherd Sunday, Cycle B

I remember how badly it stung. The kids in the neighborhood were choosing up sides for a pickup game of touch football, and I was odd man out. Rejected. Told to sit on the sidelines. I slunk on home and read comic books—taking solace in reading about the rejection that Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne experienced. Little did the world know whom they were rejecting in Clark and Bruce—and me. And I remember another time being out in the street gathering for a game when an older kid who was creative took charge. Again we had one too many players. Again someone was going to be left out. This time it was another of the younger kids—my buddy Jeffrey. But then the older kid said, “Hey, don’t leave. You can be the official hiker for both teams.” And so began a tradition on our block where no one was left out of the game. No one was rejected. Perhaps it was because he knew he would be the "stone the builders rejected” that made Jesus so passionate about inclusion—seeing himself as the good shepherd who would not rest until the lost sheep was brought back into the fold. How does your family measure up on keeping everyone included? What creative measures can you take so that no one is left out, no one feels rejected?

Authors Tom McGrath

inclusion rejection

Restricted

← Previous 1 2 Next →