Homilies

Homily for the 6th Sunday in Ordinal Time, February 11, 2024

To better appreciate this page of the gospel of Mark, I was thinking of the emotions which, most certainly, would grip the heart of a person with an irresistible passion for gardening and who, one morning, wakes up to the horrific sight of her garden in a mess: the gorgeous flowers whacked, plants mercilessly uprooted and trampled upon. In the beginning, before original sin devastated everything, God’s creation was like a most beautiful garden. In this passage about the healing of a leper (Mark 1:40-45), we should understand the verbs used by the evangelist Mark t

Homilies

Homily for the 5th Sunday in Ordinal Time, February 4, 2024

The older we are the more evidence we accumulate to agree with Job and his assessment of life: So, I have been assigned months of misery, and troubled nights have been allotted to me. Job 7:3  In painful situations stretched out over the years, one might feel pushed inexorably towards bitterness, cynicism, even near the brink of despair.   Job, this iconic Old Testament figure of composure and dignified reaction to misfortunes and tragedies, proposes unconditional trust in God as the correct remedy to fend off bitterness, cynicism, and despair.&nb

Homilies

Homily for the 4th Sunday in Ordinal Time, January 28, 2024

A prophet like me (Moses) will the Lord, your God, raise up for you from among your own kin; to him you shall listen. Deuteronomy 18:18 God has kept this promise by sending us THE Prophet, his only begotten Son Jesus Christ in human flesh. This event must become a mighty reason for rejoicing and celebrating. If God were to speak to us without the “screen” of his human flesh, we would die of fright. 'Let us not again hear the voice of the LORD, our God, nor see this great fire anymore, lest we die.' Deuteronomy 18:16 Today’s gospel passage (Mark 1:21-28) describ

Homilies

Homily for the 3rd Sunday in Ordinal Time, January 21, 2024

What is the message we should glean from the very familiar tale of the prophet Jonah? God loves and cares for everyone in the world and he wants everyone to be saved and come to the knowledge of truth because all are meant to be his children forever. Instead, Jonah was convinced that only the Israelites, the chosen people of God, were to be saved because only they were the objects of God’s care and love. So, as the story goes, he was dead set against even entertaining the idea of preaching repentance to Israel’s sworn enemies, the Ninevites.  After being sp

Homilies

Homily for the 2nd Sunday in Ordinal Time, January 14, 2024

So, they went and saw where Jesus was staying, and they stayed with him that day. John 1:39 That must have been the best time of their whole life, the time spent “hanging out” with Jesus. This is the ideal picture of discipleship which the gospel of John has to offer, and it pairs up with the other fascinating picture offered by the 1st reading of young Samuel opening to the Lord and to the Lord’s voice. “Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.” 1 Samuel 3:9 If we were to reshape our life by modeling it after these two pictures, psychologists, psychiatrists,

Homilies

Homily for the Epiphany of the Lord, January 6, 2024

The solemnity of the Epiphany was one of the first feasts celebrated by the Church, much sooner than Christmas.   The reason for its importance lies in the fact that this feast is about the contemplation of the mystery kept hidden for generations and millennia and finally revealed fully in Jesus, the Son of God made flesh.  It is the mystery of the Father’s wish to save everyone.  It is the mystery of the Father’s wish to have everyone become a child of his and, eventually, to be forever in his loving embrace, at HOME, in heaven. 

Homilies

Homily for the Third Sunday in Advent, December 17, 2023

There is one among you whom you do not recognize. John 1:26 I find this sentence by John the Baptist quite unsettling because it refers to our beloved Lord Jesus Christ. This is Gaudete Sunday; the priest wears pink vestments as an invitation to ease and to rejoice. But how can we rejoice after John the Baptist mentions our inability to recognize Christ among us? If we do not have a way of recognizing him, how can we possibly force a smile on our faces and go about our tasks as if everything was all right? Troubled by this statement, I could come up with only o

Homilies

Homily for the Second Sunday in Advent, December 10, 2023

Working with the Holy Spirit we continue to build up the glory to which we are destined as Body of Christ, so that, at the end of time, we may be as glorious as Jesus Christ, our Head, is. As you might recall, last Sunday we were invited by Jesus to work on our glorification through watchfulness to be heartened by signs of his presence among us and in us; and, thus, to face boldly and redress any situation hindering such glorification. Today, we are invited to rediscover the crucial virtue of humility in the pursuit of eternal glory by considering concrete example

Homilies

Homily for the First Sunday in Advent, December 3, 2023

To live this Advent Season and the rest of our life on earth in a spiritually profitable fashion, we ought to exercise true vigilance by living 24/7 focused on finding clear signs of Christ’s loving presence in our midst. The more signs we find of Jesus’ presence the more we will be able to tackle even the most daunting challenges and trials of life with Christian confidence and JOY. You have heard countless times that, during Advent, we are preparing for “the coming of Christ.” However, as it is commonly understood by most people, this thought would be a cause o

Homilies

Homily for the Solemnity of Christ the King of the Universe, November 26, 2023

We are closing this liturgical year with the celebration of the solemnity of Christ the King of the Universe. Today’s readings prove beyond any doubt that, out of love for us, Jesus Christ gave up his royal status to share in our lowly human predicament so that we could inherit his Kingdom. This solemnity is full of surprises, to indicate that the life of a true believer must be a life where surprises become the rule rather than the exception. The first surprise is the fact that, in Jesus, God decides to shepherd us personally.  I am sure that the prophet Ez