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Homily stories

01 Mar 2009 - First Sunday of Lent, Cycle B

Dorothy singing “Over the Rainbow” to Toto remains one of the most magical moments recorded on film. It touched something deep within many people’s hearts. In many ways, the only thing more delicate and ethereal than the colors of a rainbow in the still-glistening sky, its darkness being overcome by the bright light of the sun, is the look on a child’s face when he or she sees a rainbow for the first time. What is it about a rainbow that is so special for young and old alike? How do we reconcile our beginning of this season of Lent—what is supposed to be an austere time of introspection, repentance, penance, and forgiveness—with the bright image of the rainbow? It is most unlikely for Jesus to see a rainbow as he prays in the desert. Like Jesus, our 40 days in the Lenten desert will be filled with temptations and wild beasts bent on drawing us away from the task of reconnecting ourselves with God. God promises that God’s loving presence will always be with us. God makes a covenant with us, and the rainbow is a sign of that promise. But when we go searching for rainbows we seldom find them. They seem, rather, to find us, to appear when we least expect them to. This Lent, perhaps it would be better not to spend our time in the desert scanning the horizon. We might be looking in vain for what is already present in our own hearts.

Authors Father Dominic Grassi

Lent temptations promise

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08 Feb 2009 - Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

He drove out many demons, not permitting them to speak because they knew him. In the New Testament, demons, who were servants of Satan, entered in their victims and caused physical, emotional, and spiritual disorders. They enslaved people by forcing them to cooperate with evil. Jesus (and his disciples) had authority over demons because, first, he had overcome the temptations of Satan, and second, he brought the Word of God in which people could have faith and thus be liberated from demonic possession. Why, though, does Jesus silence the demons? Perhaps to discourage people from seeing Jesus only as an exorcist. Much like Saint Paul in the second reading, who did not want to be paid for preaching the gospel, Jesus did not want to set himself up only as a miracle worker. He wanted, and still wants, his hearers to believe in him as the Messiah, albeit a suffering one, and to look at his whole life and mission Homily points Wholeness is the main message of the Bible, and it’s central to the ministry of Jesus. Wholeness comes from our likeness to God, disturbed by sin. Communal sin affects us as much as individual wrongdoing does. Jesus saves us from sin and death and restores us not simply to wholeness, but to fullness of life. Bulletin insert Did Jesus go on retreat? In the gospel today we hear of how Jesus, “rising very early before dawn . . . left and went off to a deserted place, where he prayed.” Other passages in the gospel testify to similar practices. In Matt. 14:13 Jesus “withdrew . . . in a boat to a lonely place apart,” and in Mark 6:32 he takes the disciples with him: “They went away in the boat to a lonely place by themselves.” Later, “after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray” (Matt. 14:23). And in Luke 5:16, Jesus “withdrew to the wilderness and prayed.” The next time you feel the need to go away and pray, remember that even Jesus went on retreats.

Authors Joel Schorn

retreat wholeness Satan temptations jesus

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Homily stories

15 Feb 2026 - Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A

Don’t drink the last root beer in the fridge. That was the cardinal rule in our house. As each of my sisters—and a few cousins—and I learned early on: Invariably, if you drank the last root beer in the fridge, you would find that to be the day when Dad would come home from a hard day’s work and have his sights set on an ice-cold A&W poured into the frosty glass mug he kept at the ready in the freezer. His look of disappointment and disgust when he saw that there was no root beer awaiting him was not something any impressionable young mind could forget. Months would pass between Dad’s root beer cravings, which led to great temptation for us thirsty kids whose desire for root beer occurred more frequently—sometimes two or three times a day. But it didn’t matter. We all knew better than to take the last bottle: No craving was strong enough to blot out the memory of Dad’s pitiful look as he contemplated the selfishness of his offspring. So until the day he died, there was always one bottle of root beer with Dad’s name on it in the back of his fridge and in the refrigerators of each of his grown children.

Authors Patrice J. Tuohy

temptations

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