Author
Looking Out Through New Eyes (Philemon 9-10, 12-17) Some weeks ago, Mother Teresa was raised to the status of a canonized Saint. And though there are many aspects of her life and spirituality to admire and try to imitate, I pick up on one that comes through in this...
Badgering God (Mt 15: 21-28) Recently I came across an interesting take on this incident of the Canaanite woman not letting Jesus up in an argument. I read their interchange as “badgering God for the future.” From many indications it’s clear that in their time, both...
Formation’s Scratchy Side (Isaiah 66:18-21; Hebrews 12:5-7, 11-13) All of us entering this Vincentian Family have to go through what is known as “formation.” Formation: people being formed, shaped, molded – maybe better, being re-molded, re-shaped, and maybe even...
Past and Present, Living Through One Another (I John 4:7-16) At a Eucharist honoring the deceased members of the Vincentian Family, I picked up on a verse from the first reading (1 John 4:9). It starts out with the question, “How was God’s love shown to us?” It...
“I have seen and so can testify to…” (John 20) So much of the New Testament is about witnessing. “We have seen and testified to…the Eternal life that was revealed to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard.” (1 John 1:1-2) In one way...
The Right Focus (Matthew 6) I came across an interview with a woman violinist who had just completed a concert and gotten rave reviews for it. The interviewer was asking her how she got to be so good, how she developed this great gift of letting the beauty of the...
“You Are Somebody…” (John 15) (Homily at the Farewell Mass for the departing members of the 2015/16 Vincentian Mission Corps, St. Louis) Jesus confides in His disciples today, “I have told you this, that your joy may be complete.” Or to put it another way: “I...
“Wonderful News.” Blessed Are Those… Matthew 5 What if we were to take these Beatitude behaviors and attitudes as descriptions of the way things already are in the world, as if we were hearing Jesus giving a kind of analysis of society as it really is? We’d have...
“What Do I Do, Lord?” Gospel/Vincentian Discernment (Acts 1; John 15) There’s what you might call a woman’s quip about the man supposedly being the one who pursues the woman. It runs, “He chased her and he chased her and he chased her – until she caught him!” You...
St. Louise: Moving Toward Love (Is. 58: Mt. 25) There’s a famous quote attributed to Mark Twain: When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much...
