Gospel, Homily and Coffee

A long time ago, in a parish far far away, I received an emergency call. Someone was dying and they wanted “last rites”. That phrase “last rites” as opposed to “anointing” alerted me that this was probably someone who was a bit older and had not learned the change in vocabulary. I also did not recognize the name, as they lived out in Stagecoach and I was in Fernley. So I drove there, knocked on the door, and was greeted by the wife, probably late 60’s. It was her husband who was dying, not immediately, but was nonetheless. He too was in his late 60’s. He was awake and alert, so I engaged in a little conversation. Asking them if they went to St. Ann’s in Dayton. “No…” he said. “I was baptized Catholic, but never really went to church. I just know I am supposed to get this when I die.” So I sighed inwardly, and then did the “magic” act, because I knew from experience they would not know the prayers or responses. I tried to do a little explanation of this, but... Then afterwa...

From where do our desires and our actions come from?  Do they truly originate from our inner self, independently or is there another source?  This is not just a purely academic question but has real world effects and also deeply connected with our salvation. Salvation; it is that freedom to choose to do what is good and right. Salvation is the freedom to know what is good and loving, to desire the good and to act on it.  Salvation is about being true to our humanity.  So how does the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the son of God save us? Rene Girard, a French philosopher and many other titles, who died in 2015 in Stanford, took up that question of desires and actions. His writings on this have influenced Catholic Thinkers.  Basically, our desires and our actions originate from the community, the people around us, and we incorporate them in a subconscious and a conscious way. We see the people around us doing something or wanting something, an...

It's amazing how parents can interpret and can know the needs of their babies and kids; especially the babies who have not developed the capacity to speak. They know what the expressions and sounds mean; diaper change, hunger, attention, get me away from this strange guy dressed very weirdly who is pouring water over my head….  I think back to when my nieces and nephews were babies, I would hold them, give them attention, be the fun uncle. but then they do something that I didn’t know what it meant, so I looked to my sibling with terror, and they are like “it's fine, it's just gas.”  That intuition about needs comes with the relationship. Parents spend a lot of time clearly with their children, attentive to them, and they learn to read the signs. There is also a degree of trial and error too, that's part of learning to be a parent.  It works both ways, the child begins to learn how to interpret facial expressions and tones, and knows if Mom and Dad are serious, or ju...

There was this young girl who once wanted to achieve great things in the world. She wanted to travel. She wanted to be a missionary. She wanted to help as many people as possible. She had the driving force and the ego to accomplish this. Yet, to her frustration, she was kept away from this. Eventually she began to see her purpose was not through great and grand ways, but in the quiet little ways that she experienced life. In those gentle acts of patience and humility. Unfortunately she died at an early age due to tuberculosis, but Therese, Saint Therese, became the Little Flower. Think of the people who made the most impact on you as a person. What did they really do? Our maternal grandfather was the most loving of persons. He and my grandmother never had a lot of money. They lived very simply. Yet, he handmade toys for us including homemade bamboo fishing poles. He gave us something so precious, his time and attention; an experience of simply being children. He sat with u...

Those of us of a certain age...what was the first car we drove or owned? And do we still have it?  I learned to drive in a ‘vette, a chevy chevette. The first car that I owned, once in college, was a 1976 Chevy Nova, v-6, no A/C, no electric windows, no airbags, am/fm radio only, and probably 12 mpg.  I have since upgraded. How about our first cell phone? Have we upgraded those as well?  It is a common practice to upgrade, whether it is our car, our technology, our homes, etc. We upgrade. There are safety advantages, convenience, and things simply will not work anymore and we need to get new ones. The poor Nova’s floor rusted out the last year of my graduate school. The majority of us here have learned or are currently learning our faith, learning about God and Jesus, being Catholic as children. We began with a certainly mentality and a certain way of understanding based on our age.  Have we, will we, upgrade our understanding of God, Jesus and our Catholic fa...