Feast of the Holy Family • Year A
St. Augustine said that “we make our times” … if our times are good or bad it is because we have made them so. No place is this more true than our family times. These are perhaps the most important and yet the most difficult of all the times of our lives.
Christmas • Year A
When Jesus was born, the only things he had going for him were his family and his Divinity. Oddly enough, his being God was little help in his human adventure. He had decided not to make much of his “being God” and thus throughout his earthly life he was treated like any other poor human. We are told that he “emptied himself” so that he could have the full experience of being human, the bad parts as well as the good parts. One of the good parts was in having a family. Jesus chose to be a member of a human family.
First Sunday of Advent • Year A
Humans – at least the Chosen People – had had plenty of warnings. For centuries prophets had promised that a Messiah, a Savior, was coming and that humans had best prepare for his coming. But over the years people forgot. They became busy about other things: getting through each day, going to work, having fun, studying for exams, getting married, having children, going to doctors. And after a while the only Savior that made any sense to them was someone who could make their daily life easier.
Solemnity of Christ the King • Year C
It was the end of the beginning … the end of that first phase of the story of human destiny. It had begun with such great hope … God making humans in his own image because he wanted to have someone else to love and to have that someone freely love him in return. But things went bad quickly. Humans envied God more than loved him. They tried to be God and consequently lost the grand possibility of being with God for all eternity. They became wanderers, forever blocked from that heaven that was their only possible home.
Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time • Year C
Jesus was in the last year of his life and his battle with the leaders of the people, the Pharisees, was soon to end. They would have him executed and that would be that. Now in the last months of his life Jesus was concerned lest his followers continue to believe that the proud life-style of the Pharisees was to be the Christian Ideal. To make his point he told the crowds a story, an event that was not unfamiliar to any of them who had ever visited the central place of prayer in Israel … the great temple in Jerusalem.
Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time • Year C
Perhaps he had just learned that Judas, his business manager, was making a deal to sell him to his enemies for 30 pieces of silver. Perhaps he perceived that some of his followers were already thinking about how they could become rich in his service: devout in church but devious in business.
Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time • Year C
The proud pay no attention to the warnings of friends because they don’t think friends have any worthwhile knowledge to communicate. They pay no attention to divine threats because they are firmly convinced that they are the only divinity of any importance. They become trapped in their self-created heaven. Jesus made it plain that God will have no sympathy for such bloated spirits. He said to the listening crowds words like these: When the proud come to the gate of heaven so ‘filled with themselves,’ God will simply say, ‘Go away! I do not know you!’
Saints Peter and Paul • Year C
The secret of the success of both apostles was in their capacity to love. Peter was chosen to be head of the Church not because of his degrees but because he “loved much.” Paul became a powerful advocate for Christ not because of his scholarship but because through his love for Christ his listeners were able to believe that they too were included in Christ’s love.
Third Sunday of Lent • Year C
The rules that control our destiny are simple: “We must love God above all and our neighbor as ourselves.” If we just try to do that at every “now” that is given to us, we need not worry about what will happen to us at the end of our time. Christ has promised that, when we plunge over the great Falls of Death, he will catch us on the other side. Just as our virtuous loving in this life has drawn us towards God, so in eternity that same love will “glue” us to God forever.