Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B.
AIM: To show by testimony from those involved the harm which abortion inflicts.
Some time ago a doctor-friend of mine asked me: “Why is there so much bitterness in Washington today? It didn’t used to be that way.” He was right. The bitterness is new. I told my friend that what caused the bitterness was the 1973 decision of our Supreme court in Roe v. Wade, overturning laws in every one of our states protecting the unborn. That decision has poisoned our political life. It has divided our people like no other Supreme Court decision since the Dred Scott case of 1857, which said that a black person “whose ancestors were sold as slaves” had no rights under the Constitution.
Continue reading →
Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B. John 1:35-42.
AIM: To challenge the hearers to deeper conversion.
“What are you looking for?” Jesus asks the two disciples of John in the gospel reading we have just heard. This question is Jesus’ first recorded utterance in John’s gospel. Andrew and his friend are not really certain what they are looking for. They may have followed Jesus out of mere curiosity. Asked who they are looking for, they answer with a question of their own: “Where do you stay?” Jesus’ response is hardly less challenging than his original question: “Come and see.”
Continue reading →
Epiphany, Year B. Mt.2:1-12
AIM: To show how Jesus’ roles as king, priest, and sacrifice, prefigured in the Magi’s gifts, are the model for our lives.
Who were these Magi? Where did they come from? We do not know. On the level of history, the story we have just heard is shrouded in mystery. When we move to the spiritual level, however, the mystery falls away. The gifts which the Magi offered tell us a great deal about Mary’s child. The Magi offered him:
gold for a king — incense for a priest — and myrrh for his burial.
Continue reading →
Feast of Mary Mother of God, Year B. Gal. 4:4-7; Lk 2:16-21.
AIM: To help the hearers see that salvation is a free gift, not a reward.
Few words strike such a sensitive nerve today as the term “liberation.” For the last half-century liberation from colonial rule has been the central concern of almost all Third World nations. In our country we have been through black liberation. We are still hearing about women’s liberation. And until recent years there was much talk about something called “liberation theology.”
Continue reading →
My dear Friends,
In my 58th year of priesthood – all I ever wanted from age twelve – I give thanks for a year full of the Lord’s blessings. Four young people who have come to me for spiritual guidance have this year embraced the call to religious life. A young man who entered the Catholic Church under my guidance at Easter 2010 is now a novice with the Brothers of St. John in northern Illinois. Another is now a Jesuit novice. A third is studying for the priesthood in Rome. And a young woman of 22 has just decided to seek admission to the Franciscan Sisters with whom I lived here in St. Louis for 17 years. Witnessing the generous faith of these young people, all under 25, has been thrilling. “This is the Lord’s work, and it is marvelous in our eyes” (Psalm 118:23).
Continue reading →
Christmas Mass during the day. Heb. 1:1-6; Jn 1:1-18.
AIM: To explain the Incarnation and its significance for us.
It’s a strange gospel for Christmas, isn’t it? Where, we ask, are the shepherds, the manger, Mary and Joseph? Where is their child? Instead of these familiar Christmas figures we have heard about abstractions: light and darkness, the Word becoming flesh.
Continue reading →
Christmas, at Dawn. Titus 3:4-7; Lk 2:15-20.
AIM: To instill a sense of wonder and joy at the incarnation.
The world’s great religions, someone has said, are all about the same thing: our search for God. To this general statement there is an important exception. Christianity, and its parent, Judaism, are concerned not with our search for God, but with God’s search for us. At Christmas we celebrate God’s search, and his coming to us, in a special way. The readings at this Mass give us answers to three important questions about God’s coming. They tell us how God comes, when he comes, and why.
Continue reading →
Christmas Midnight. Lk. 2:1-14.
AIM: To help the hearers make room for Jesus Christ.
We have less hard information about Jesus’ birth than most people suppose. We don’t even know the date: December 25th was not selected until the fourth century. Nor do we know exactly where Mary gave birth to her child, save that it was not in what then passed for an inn at Bethlehem.
Continue reading →
Advent 4B. 2 Sam. 7:1-5, 8b-12, 1a, 16; Rom. 16:25-27; Lk 1:26-38.
AIM: To show Mary as the model of trusting faith.
“Unhappy the land that has no heroes,” the German playwright Bertolt Brecht writes in one of his plays. Heroes encourage us. They convince us that life is worth living. Our Catholic heroes are the saints. They do more than encourage us. They also pray for us.
Continue reading →
Advent 3. Is. 61:1-2a,10-11; Thes.5:16-24; John 1:6-8,19-28.
AIM: To help the hearers experience Christian joy.
One of the abiding beauties of childhood is the ability of little children to rejoice at the coming of Christmas. Many people here know a young child who is already in a fever of excitement, which increases each time a package is brought into the house to be put away until the great day. Through children we relive some of the joy we once felt at their age at the coming of Christmas.
Continue reading →
