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Funeral, Sacrament-based, Holy Day, Holiday, Special Occasion

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Authors PTW staff

funerals sacrament-based holidays holy days special occasions

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Homily stories

29 Nov 2015 - First Sunday of Advent, Cycle C

I was terrified to start my first year of high school. While I was excited about the prospect of learning, I was afraid to go forward alone. My classmates from grammar school were attending a different high school. I wasn’t sure how I’d make it without the friends I had been with since kindergarten. I was sure my first day of high school would be the end of me. As summer wound up, my mom encouraged me to check out a flyer from the soccer team about tryouts. I was a tough defender in other sports, so I figured I’d probably do well as a sweeper around the goal box. My mom rearranged her schedule so that she could drive me to tryouts and then for practice after I made the team. I spent two weeks running drills with the team before school started. I got to know my teammates and found that a few of us shared the same classes. By the first day of high school, I had a few friends—and even some sports cred. While it was tough to arrive at the end of what I had known for most of my life, it was also necessary in order for the great new adventure to begin. And people like my mom would be with me, giving me strength and encouragement—and car rides—all along the way. As we start this first day of Advent, we remember that we go forth not alone but with our faith community. In this season of hope, we can trust that together we will find strength and encouragement for whatever adventures and challenges lie ahead.

Authors Sister Julie Vieira I.H.M.

beginnings advent encouragement

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The inner word

11 Oct 2015 - Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

Rules have their place. “External rules are clearly intended to impress on minds and hearts what hands are doing,” wrote Alice Camille in a reflection a few years back. Get in the habit of giving, for example, and in time that will help make you a more generous person. But, she also observed, the following of rules is not the sum total of holiness. That was the problem for the man in today’s gospel. He had observed all the commandments from his youth, but he was not prepared for the next step: personal sacrifice. Reflect on that: While following religious rules might cost you something personally, it will not cost you the much greater price of inner conversion and complete surrender to and trust in God.

Rules Commandments

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Homily stories

27 Sep 2015 - Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

In ancient times children were sacrificed to the pagan god Moloch in an area known as the Valley of Hinnom (Ge Hinnom in Hebrew), just south of what became the city of Jerusalem. By the time of Christ, the Greek word Gehenna had become associated with an evil place of fire, stench, and rotting flesh where wormy maggots never die—yuck!—in other words, hell. Definitely not a place you’d want to visit now or anytime in the future. It reminds me of a story my friend Dan tells about driving with his family through Yellowstone National Park at night. As they drove slowly on a narrow road through the menacing glow of bubbling clay, he remembers wondering if they had wandered into hell by mistake. Similar to my own experience at the first sight of Gary, Indiana with its massive pillars of fire-spewing smokestacks and the suffocating smell of sulfur: Surely, I thought, this place is not fit for man nor beast. In Laudato Si', Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment, we are offered ways to avoid creating such hell on earth. Solutions are not simple, but they start within each of us, says the Francis: Christians “realize that their responsibility within creation, and their duty towards nature and the Creator, are an essential part of their faith. . . . The entire material universe speaks of God’s love, his boundless affection for us. Soil, water, mountains: everything is, as it were, a caress of God.” So to avoid the chaos of hell we must show concern and care for all creation, and, in turn, we will achieve inner peace, which, says Francis, comes with a “balanced lifestyle” and the “capacity for wonder.” Wishing all God’s creation inner and outer peace.

Authors Patrice J. Tuohy

Hell Creation Environment

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