Today’s Gospel occupies an interesting place in Luke’s Gospel. It’s preceded by this self-effacing admission of good servants: We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we are obliged to do. And it is followed the realization: Behold the Kingdom of God is among you. I believe that this healing of ten lepers both illustrates […]
Abbot Joseph’s Homily for the 26th Sunday
Masochism is that mental and psychological aberration according to which a person voluntarily seeks out pain and suffering and actually derives pleasure and satisfaction thereby. I mention this because today’s parable of Lazarus speaks of the great chasm separating the place of torment from the peaceful and joyous repose with Abraham. The latter explains that […]
Fr. James’ Homily for the 25th Sunday
Jesus had a reputation for keeping bad company—inevitable in a ministry as oriented to the conversion of sinners, as to announcing the Kingdom of God. He probably knew characters like today’s dishonest steward. Is Jesus trying to expose the naiveté of his well-intentioned followers with this outrageous parable? Or is he just taping into the […]
Fr. James’ Homily for the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
The cross on which Christ died may not have looked exactly like our familiar crucifixes. It did indeed have a vertical support and each of the condemned carried his horizontal beam to the place of execution—so the basic configuration we know is an appropriate approximation. But no one who had witnessed that torturous form of […]
Fr. James’ Homily for the 23rd Sunday of the Year
Do you perhaps remember, as you were growing up and setting out on your own path, how threatened your parents felt by some of your choices? Perhaps as a parent of adult children, you today feel challenged or criticized when they do not replicate your own conduct. On a purely mundane level that happens in […]
Abbot Joseph’s Homily for the 21st Sunday
Our faith in the humanity and divinity of Jesus can sometimes run up against vexing questions. An example is Jesus’ foretelling of the end of the world that he concludes by stating: But of that day or hour, no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Surely, if […]
Fr. James’ Homily for the 20th Sunday of the Year
Twentieth Sunday, Year C, 18 August, 2019: Jeremiah 38:4-6, 8-10; Hebrews 12:1-4; Luke 12:49-53 Don’t we know from experience that if we honestly attempt to live the Gospel, we find ourselves at odds with conventional values, expectations and even our own desires? An alternative is flight from my inner conflicts, creating scapegoats and villains, […]
Fr. James’ Homily for the Eighteenth Sunday
Eighteenth Sunday, Year C, 4 August, 2019: Qoheleth 1:2; 2:21-23; Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11; Luke 12:13-21 I believe this Gospel is a very timely. We live in a religious culture that can distort the Gospel into a way of achieving prosperity. Some believe that if we behave and follow the prescribed norms, God will reward […]
Abbot Joseph’s Homily for the 16th Sunday of the Year
The great mystic, Teresa of Avila, used to lament the fact that her soul was like a dirty and unkempt inn wherein she, nevertheless, welcomed her Lord. However, unkempt or not, she welcomed him whose coming and abiding within her would—as he did in the temple—cleanse her of all defilement and transform her! I am […]
Fr. James’ Homily for the 15th Sunday of the Year
The parables suffer from our familiarity with them. That familiarity, however, may be more superficial than intimate. It is important to remember that the priest and the Levite mentioned in today’s Gospel were bound to fulfill their cultic obligations for the good of the people, obligations they couldn’t fulfill should they be defiled by a […]