Gospel, Homily and Coffee

What is the goal of marriage? Kind of an odd question, but still relevant to married couples, to all people, and to this gospel.  The goal of marriage is, well it is the goal to everything.  The goal of marriage, to priesthood and religious life, to life for everyone, is holiness. In Church language, we call this the Universal call to Holiness. Every human person has this call, this capacity to be holy. It is the human Vocation to be holy.   Now, holiness is not being a super pious, do gooder, necessarily. Holiness means to be and live the person God created us to be. God created us as good, and holiness means expressing that goodness, within the context of our own lives. Let’s do some simple school physics. Think of some kind of wind-up toy. We crank it up and a spring inside gets tighter and tighter. This tightness in the spring is its potential energy. It stays potential as long as the spring is locked. When the spring gets unlocked, or triggered open, tha...

The Dark Night: Stanzas of the Soul One dark night, fired with love’s urgent longings — ah, the sheer grace! — I went out unseen, my house being now all stilled. In darkness, and secure, by the secret ladder, disguised, — ah, the sheer grace! — in darkness and concealment, my house being now all stilled. On that glad night, in secret, for no one saw me, nor did I look at anything, with no other light or guide than the one that burned in my heart. This guided me more surely than the light of noon to where he was awaiting me — him I knew so well — there in a place where no one appeared. O guiding night! O night more lovely than the dawn! O night that has united the Lover with his beloved, transforming the beloved in her Lover. Upon my flowering breast which I kept wholly for him alone, there he lay sleeping, and I caressing him there in a breeze from the fanning cedars. When the breeze blew from the turret, as I parted his hair, it wounded my neck with its gentle hand, suspending all my ...

How do the Disciples go from hiding in fear to Disciples devoted to a communal life, breaking bread together and praying; living with and doing great wonders and signs that amazed everyone? Love conquers all fear. The resurrection signifies, makes real, God’s infinite love for us, for all. Those disciples, despite hearing from Mary Magdalene that the Lord had risen, still were scared. They knew the Jewish leaders used the Romans to kill their leader, their friend; and feared they were next. Leaders had to get rid of this threat to their way of life, their way of understanding God, their way of power; this threat to the social order. So their fear kept them locked away. They would not go out and do great things. And I wonder too, if they also were not a little fearful of Jesus? He is Risen, but they had fled him and Peter had denied him. He is Risen..but was he risen to accuse them? To Punish them? To take his Vengeance for their actions? They don’t know. I bet all of us, if we pa...

The Gospel today ends in an apparent victory. Victory for those who use violence, those whose ego is more important; victory for those who lie, betray, and deny. Victory for those who are selfish. Victory of death and sin. How easy for us to give in, to assume death and sin win as well in our world. We see the absolute horror of Russians killing innocents and torturing Ukrainians. We once again in our own country face the evil of children being slaughtered with weapons of destruction. 39 people were killed along the border in a horrible fire. People killed in tornados in the south, flooding in California; people dying of cold and exposure here in our city; the young mother murdered in the north valleys.   Family members ill with and dying of cancers. People we care for descending into dementia. Hearts still being broken, disappointments, betrayals. We could think that there is no cause of joy or hope. We could let it win. We could stop trying, stop caring. But we know...

Henry Ossawa Tanner,  Resurrection of Lazarus , 1896, Public Domain.  Photo Courtesy of Wikimedia, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Henry_Ossawa_Tanner,_Resurrection_of_Lazarus.jpg A woman dies unexpectedly of heart issues. She was in her late 60’s to early 70’s; she was always at mass, always positive, always nice. Her husband was non-Catholic, did not attend mass with her and I had never met him before. We finally met a few days after her death; when asked how he was handling all of this, he replied with a cliché…”I know she is in a better place.” So I asked him “Does that make you feel better?” He broke down and said no. Then we really began to talk. A teenager, along with many others, was having fun in the desert. He and several kids were in the bed of a pick up riding in the sand and sage. The driver hits a bump, this teenager falls out of the back and under the truck, killed by it. What a waste. The funeral was full of kids from the High School, so many tea...

One of the enjoyable activities around here is when we take a guest who has never been here before up to Tahoe and the Sierra up the mountain. It’s really enjoyable hearing their oohs and aahs at the mountains (or shrieks of terror as we go up Mt. Rose Hwy). Then there are those views of the lake itself. They are snapping photos, just awestruck. It’s enjoyable too because we can forget just how wonderful those mountains are, the Lake. When we write papers or articles, or announcements for the mass; when we write, we clearly make some errors, but then we can find them, or at least the obvious ones. But after writing and reading and re-reading several times, we know what we have written, or wish to have written. But it takes fresh eyes to catch the incomplete thoughts, the typos, the grammar errors. How many of us have been searching for something; like our glasses, our keys, our cell phones… we tear apart the house, can’t find them. Then we put our hands on the top of our heads, th...

Can we remember our first encounter, our first exposure, awareness of Jesus? What was it? When was it? How did it come about?  My first remembrance was trying to comprehend how Jesus fit inside a tabernacle, and then later how he could be in our tabernacle and all other tabernacles. The questioning/searching has never stopped. Those of us baptized as infants or small children, will have been raised/immersed in our Catholic - Christian faith. Our first encounter or first exposure to Jesus probably came through family or church.  Those who were older when baptized; teens, adults, more mature adults may have a different encounter story. It could have happened through an encounter with a friend; through an invitation to come to mass or adoration or some other devotion; maybe it was an experience of a funeral or wedding, or maybe Jesus came and gobsmacked them….  In any way, at any age, that initial encounter of Jesus becomes an invitation; and that invitation becomes a re...