Gospel, Homily and Coffee

Where’s Waldo? We remember those books; the funny looking dude with glasses, hat and striped shirt hiding in plain sight amid a crowd of others. Our task was to find him, to recognize him amid all the other people. It teaches attention and concentration; and frustration!!!!!!! At times we can all get into a too comfortable position in life and become numb to our world, our reality. We do not truly see what is around us. We all notice the snow on the mountains when it first happens, but by January we become “meh” about it.  We can also get overwhelmed by situations that wear us down, and we become less able to see the positive around us.   We can fall into the trap of thinking God is not here with us. God is not working with us. God is not in our world. We can think this as we get confronted in the news by all the bad news; gun violence again and again; earthquakes, wars, drought, the divisions.  Where's God? This thinking is not sinful, but it is also not help...

Earlier this year the movie “Everything Everywhere all at once” was released. I found it a brilliant movie, and although I do admit a small crush on Michelle Yeoh, it is not because of that. It is a movie about choices in life; and making decisions that impact our lives and those around us.  In this movie, and in other recent movies and shows, there is talk of the multiverse; which comes from a line of thought in Quantum physics that there are infinite universes, all based on choices. If we choose coffee, then that sets us on one path; if we choose tea for breakfast then that sets us along a different path.  It is a fun concept, but can also lead to our heads swimming, and for some neurosis about making choices. We can come to those threshold moments in our lives in which a new direction, a new way of living is presented to us. What will we do? This is not just a new job, new house, or new car; this is also about a fundamental option to live in a different way. For some i...

There have been a lot of funerals of late. Not just here at OLS, but other priests I have talked with said the same thing: lots of funerals. So lots of thoughts and homilies about death, dying and what does this all mean.  Funeral homilies can be “Tricky”. How do we balance that sadness of death and wanting to help make people feel better, and also be true to our deeper faith; a faith in the Resurrection.  Someone remarked to me that I do not talk much about heaven in my funeral homilies. It is true. I used to and the homily would talk of doing whatever the deceased liked to do in this life, but doing it better in heaven: Golfing, fishing, gardening, etc.  In essence, Heaven seemed like a big country club where we all have perfect bodies and enjoy life for all of eternity. Really, Jesus mentions very few times any sense of heaven. He brings up talk of a court a few times, but this was not about describing heaven, rather it was to inspire followers to treat people ...

People’s perceptions can be funny. Many years ago, while in Ohio visiting family, I was with my young nephew. We were fishing. I asked him if he would want to come to Nevada and we could fish there. He responded kind of quickly, “No, there is too much sand.” Now, it took me a second, I am like what? He knew that Nevada was a desert, and he had in his mind the Sahara??? Or he was looking for an easy way out to not come visit with me. My ego wants him to have perceived Nevada wrong. Other perceptions about Nevada… early on my family would ask how often I would go to Las Vegas. I am like never. Why? How far away is it…Once they learned the distance, they learned to stop asking. Or it must be hot there all the time… I reminded them summer can be, but snow and cold in the winter. We all have our perceptions, if not prejudices. It is part of how we are conditioned, and how we internally prepare ourselves. The difficult part is those mis-perceptions and prejudices can keep us fr...

In history, there is the story of Potemkin’s village. The story goes that as the Russian Empress Catherine the Great was going to the Crimea along a river, Grigory Potemkin, the Governor of the area, would cover up the poorest looking villages with a facade and hide all the poor people so that the Empress would not know how bad of a condition the people were in, and he would not get the blame. He did this along the journey, and as they passed through the village, the facade would be torn down, rushed to the next village and set up again and again. One of the most powerful words in our Catholic Theology is the word “And”. Jesus is Divine AND Human; God is one AND three. The Church is holy AND sinful. “And” creates space and openness to experience mystery. This powerful parable Jesus gives to us, I would guess most of us take this on a personal level: how am “I” in my prayer? What is my correct attitude? We would be correct in this.   There is an “And” to this… “ And” we...

I remember very few homilies, even my own, but one I do remember at least partially, was one Fr. Mike gave in the 90’s while Pastor of Our Lady of Wisdom, and while I was an unemployed geologist. He mentioned that he had been approached by someone needing assistance and all Mike had left was $20 in his wallet. Mike considered it, and gave his last $20 to the person. The next day in the mail there was a card from someone he had known, and they wrote that they thought of him and included in the card $20. Parents, your faith and loyalty and perseverance in raising your children is amazing. Decades you work to instill values, virtues, habits into those kids. Repeating lessons, being good examples, hoping that something gets through… And getting frustrated. Yet, one day you watch them, maybe as teens or young adults and they do something that just blows your minds. They live those values. All that work, all that effort, all that patience and anger, finally it comes to fruition. I ...

Earlier this week, The Snows Women Auxiliary and I talked about “Parish”. I gave a broad brush history of what the canons say about Parish; and how parishes worked and existed in our American history.  Many parishes in the Eastern and MidWest, especially in the major cities, formed around specific ethnic communities: Irish, Polish, Italian, German, etc. During the heavy European immigration era of the 1800’s and early 1900’s, parishes helped the immigrants find community and support one another given the Anti-Catholic sentiment in this country. Yet there would also be the reality of an Irish Catholic Church on one side of the street, and a Polish Catholic Church on the other, and they would seldom interact. Even consider our own parish of Our Lady of the Snows. Formed on what used to be toward the edge of Reno and among Italian immigrants and their first generation of children.   Community was important (and still is); protecting that community was important, and in s...