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Boy, is he ready to read

02 Aug 2015 - Preaching the News for Sunday

This Sunday’s first reading narrates how the hungry Israelite community in the desert marveled when their prayers were answered by manna from heaven. Matthew Flores, a 12-year-old boy in a Salt Lake City suburb, was so hungry to learn he asked his mailman to leave extra junk mail for him to read. When the mailman learned he had no books or money, he posted the story online and, like manna from heaven, books rained down on the boy’s address from around the world. Now the mailman and boy are teaming up to distribute the overflow of books arriving to other children who need books. Homily hint: This great story became possible because the mailman was paying attention to those he encountered on his daily rounds. Pay attention to those you encounter today—you will find a world of need waiting to be attended to. To contribute to the book distribution, send books to: Matthew Flores, c/o Sandy Post Office, 8850 S 700 E, Sandy, UT 84070. For more on the boy hungry to read, see: Boy Who Couldn’t Afford Books Asks Mailman For Junk Mail To Read

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Homily stories

19 Jul 2009 - Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

There is a tyranny of technology that we all are facing. The very inventions that were created to save time, make life easier, and assist us at the workplace have instead turned on us and made our lives more complex by making us more accessible. Cell phones allow us to be just a call away from an emergency message. Beepers can locate us when all else fails. E-mail and voice mail communicate important messages instantly. Caller I.D. lets us know who has been trying to reach us. And all this is good. But it also means that we can never get away from our work. We can never leave our responsibilities behind unless we turn off every device. And when we do that, we have to make an excuse for doing so. People expect us to be available. Jesus attempts to get away with his disciples to rest. But it does not work. The people keep coming to him. Jesus responds as a shepherd would. A shepherd can never take time off. If he did it could endanger the sheep. In this story we are to identify with Jesus. We are to bring Christ’s healing and love wherever and whenever it is needed. We cannot turn on or turn off being Christian. When the need is there, we’re expected to respond. It is no easy task to always be the Christian we’re called to be. But there is no other way to respond once we hear the call.

Authors Father Dominic Grassi

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Homily stories

18 Jan 2009 - Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

It is fashionable for some people to complain about all of the messages that they receive and how busy they are. Usually they bring it on themselves. They have their home phones and work phones and cell phones. Then there are answering machines and pagers and voice mail and e-mail. All of them need to be checked regularly for messages that just might need a quick response. Movie theaters, restaurants, hospitals, and churches ask people to please turn off their electronic devices, but they can still be heard ringing and beeping at inappropriate times. There is no arguing how useful these machines have become. So it seems that we are forced to take the interruptions, the lack of privacy, the inability to get away from things along with the good and valuable capacity to respond when necessary. In the same way, despite the challenge and commitment involved we are all called to respond to God. God invites us to follow the faith and not necessarily our own direction in life. In so many ways—through others, alone in prayer, or caught in the flow of life—we can listen and hear God inviting us to come and see what we need to do. And our response, like Eli, over and over again needs to be: “Here I am. I am listening.”

Authors Father Dominic Grassi

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