Tag: Loyalty

Sacraments of loyalty, marriage and Eucharist: homily for the twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time

Homily for the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

Are there any Bears fans here?  I have a question for you: if I reached into my wallet, how much money would I have to offer to get you to root for the Vikings?  I know what you’re thinking: “You keep your wallet where it is, Father, because there ain’t enough money in the world to make me a Vikings fan.” Fair enough.  I am a Notre Dame fan, and you could fill up the collection plate with hundred dollar bills, but you’d never get me to root for USC or Michigan. 

Triumph of Faith over Idolatry, Jean-Baptistre Théodon, Church of the Gesù, Rome

In both cases, the reason why is loyalty.  Each of today’s readings is about loyalty, though much more important types of loyalty than what we show our sports teams.  When the first reading takes place, Joshua and the Israelites have spent their lifetime conquering the Promised Land after the death of Moses; here Joshua is an old man and he is putting a choice to the people.  They’ve arrived, the land is theirs, and he tells them: Now you have to decide whom to serve.  The God of our fathers Abraham and Moses got us here, and he has given us his law.  Other nations have other gods, maybe with laws that aren’t so demanding.  You are free to make a choice.  You can serve whichever god you wish, Joshua says, but “as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”  

And the people agree to serve the Lord.  But if you continuing reading in the book of Joshua, you’ll see that Joshua asks the people a second time.  Are you sure?  Because if you agree to serve the Lord, then God will hold you to his law.  You are free, but your choice is binding.  

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What is wisdom? Homily for the twenty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (C).

I’m back to my day job in Rome, so this week I’m posting a homily from 2016, given the day after my ordination to the diaconate.

Ordination to the diaconate 2016, St. Ignatius Church, Boston, MA

Today’s Gospel reading is perhaps the single most unfortunate passage in Scripture to have to preach about to a congregation consisting mostly of family members, so we’re going to work our way up to it by starting with the Old Testament.

The Old Testament reading is from the Book of Wisdom.  You’ll be happy to know that I took an entire course on the Biblical wisdom tradition and have prepared a brief 45-minute summary as an introduction to the homily.  We can skip all that, however, if you will consider for a moment the question of what it means to be wise.  

To understand what wisdom is, it can be helpful, first, to think about what it is not.  Wisdom is not the same thing as being clever; we probably know people who are clever manipulators, for example, but not really wise.  Wisdom is not the same as knowledge, as knowing lots of facts.  Teachers know that there’s a difference between a student who memorizes what he hears and then regurgitates it, and a student who actually thinks about what she’s learning.  Wisdom is not the same thing as being educated.  If you’ve been in school as long as I have, you realize that there are some very foolish people with PhDs.  And we all probably know people who didn’t receive much education who nonetheless we’d consider wise because they had a sense for people, a sense for what was right and wrong, a sense for what really matters in life. 

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