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06 Oct 2019 - Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C

Have you ever experienced the disorientation of a fun house hall of mirrors? I remember going to Riverview, the great old amusement park in Chicago, when I was a kid and getting lost in Aladdin’s Castle. It was a dark, seemingly endless maze of trap doors and tilting floors and a hall of mirrors that reflected distorted images. It was great fun for a while, but then I got separated from my buddies, couldn’t get my bearings, and thought I’d never get out. Franciscan Richard Rohr says that for many people, modern life has become a hall of mirrors. We have no external reference point for our lives. Without putting God at the center of our lives and our “cosmos,” we have nothing and no one to set our direction by. In the age of the individual, many people put their own wants at the center of their existence, which Rohr likens to trying to live our lives in a hall of mirrors. And many of us are having trouble trying to find our way out. In Sunday’s first reading, Habakkuk offers a remedy: Wait on the Lord. He says that those who fail to focus on the Lord will inevitably lack integrity. They’re like people looking at themselves in a shattered mirror. Their lives are fragmented and disconnected. It may seem hard to wait—in prayer, meditation, or simple awareness. Yet Habakkuk promises that God “will not disappoint.”

Authors Tom McGrath

fun house hall of mirrors richard rohr

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13 Feb 2022 - Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C

We need to understand our exploration is not an effort to get anywhere. My starting point is that we’re already there. We cannot attain the presence of God because we’re already totally in the presence of God. What’s absent is awareness. —Richard Rohr, O.F.M The one who trusts in themselves is lost. The one who trusts in God can do all things. —Saint Alphonsus Liguori Difficult times are the most providential and the most evangelical, and . . . it is necessary to live in the contemplation and serenity of the cross. —Cardinal Eduardo Pironio

richard rohr Saint Alphonsus Liguori

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Homily stories

17 Nov 2024 - Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

A few years ago, I started praying the Examen every evening before I go to bed. It’s a prayer practice that was pioneered by Saint Ignatius of Loyola in his compilation, The Spiritual Exercises. It involves, among other things, reflecting on the events of your day and noticing where you felt God’s presence and action in order to discern God’s will for you. I am routinely amazed by how much of my day I skim over without much consideration until I take the time to pray the Examen—and then my day feels so much richer and fuller than it did moment by moment. I am also regularly surprised by how much of my day is a surprise. I usually start my day thinking that I have it pretty planned out, but at the end, when I think about it, so much happened that I didn’t expect. Mostly little things, but still meaningful ones. Franciscan priest Richard Rohr wrote, “God comes to you disguised as your life.” That means the big dramatic events, of course, but it’s God in the subtle stirrings of the small stuff that has captured my attention in the Examen. What does tomorrow hold? The Son of Man coming in the clouds? Maybe. All I know is I’m ready to find him in the minutiae of tender branches and sprouting leaves.

Authors Jennifer Tomshack

Saint Ignatius examen richard rohr

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