February 14, 2024 at Saint Eugene Catholic Church in Oklahoma City, OK

Joel 2: 12-18 + Psalm 51 + 2 Corinthians 5: 20-6: 2 + Matthew 6: 1-6, 16-18

Prayer, Fasting, Almsgiving: the traditional and common practices we observe in the coming forty days. Prayer and Almsgiving hardly need any commentary. For one thing, we ought to be doing that all the time, not just in Lent. But when it comes to fasting, we’re not very clear about that, and actually have not shown any great enthusiasm for figuring it out much less putting it into practice. We live in a world of plenty. In fact, our world is more than plentiful, it is downright wasteful. There is enough food thrown away in the back of every grocery store to feed a small city for a week. What is not sold is destroyed.

If you have ever tried to explain Catholic regulations on fasting to a Muslim, a Jew, or a Hindu, you would be laughed at. Somehow “one full meal and two lesser ones not equaling it” does not cut it in the eyes of other world religions. Their idea of fasting is closer to what our doctor has in mind when he tells you to fast before coming in for a blood test.

I would like to suggest that this might be the year for us all to rediscover a valuable spiritual life practice and stop playing games with it. Too often we think of fasting as a kind of self-punishment for sin or as a way to earn forgiveness. The problem with that thinking is that it ignores the fact that forgiveness has already been granted. It is not earned. We tend to think that God will love us if we change, but God loves us so that we can change. Fasting, my friends, is about liberation. It is not about suffering.

It is not helpful to think about or practice fasting without prayer and alms giving. In fact, without them, fasting is more like going on a diet.

Here’s an example. A second century mystic writes: “In the day on which you fast you will taste nothing but bread and water; and having added up the price of the food that day which you might have eaten, you will give to a widow, or an orphan, or to someone in want.”

In just a few moments all of us will reach back into the earliest days of our faith tradition and accept a mark that must mean more than tell other that you came to church today. We cannot do this because we always have. To do so for those silly and shallow reasons makes a mockery of what we are about and the sacred season we are beginning. If you accept these ashes, you must accept what it means and what goes with it: Prayer, Fasting, and Alms giving.

If prayer, fasting, and works of justice called, “Alms Giving” form the core of Christian life, they must be so through the whole year. These forty-days are a time of testing, improving, and renewing these practices so essential for Christian life. Friday is for us the day of our salvation. It is now and always has been the day of all days when we fast celebrating our freedom from sin and our freedom for life with Christ. The most simple and consistent observance of Friday is the absence of food until evening, or one meal a day as simple as possible.

We are not a body and a soul, two separate things. We are one reality. What is good for my soul is good of my body and vice versa. Fasting nurtures humility and reminds us that we are dependent on our Creator for all good things. And, fasting is marked by moderation. Like everything else in the spiritual life, it is not about doing it all or doing it right. It is just about doing it in a spirit of faith and love.

In every culture and religion in history, fasting has been an instinctive and essential language in human communication with God. Let us not be the ones who forget the reasons, the rituals, and the words.

February 11, 2024 at Saint Eugene Catholic Church in Oklahoma City, OK

Leviticus 13: 1-2, 44-46 + Psalm 32 + 1 Corinthians 10: 31-11:1 + Mark 1: 40-45

Even though we have moved out of the age of leprosy, we still retain the social attitudes that went with it. We still bring our common fears and we still isolate people who are not like us in one way or another. There might just be a challenge in this Gospel today to name our modern-day lepers and change our attitude from fear and exclusion to understanding and inclusion. This is not easy when public figures and elected officials fan the fires of those fears with sweeping accusations, and horrible condemnations of those we would isolate for no other reason other than our fear.

A very brave man comes out of nowhere in this Gospel to approach Jesus. I always think that even before the leper was healed, Christ had worked a miracle simply by filling that man with enough hope and enough faith to risk coming forward. That’s the first miracle. It is the stirring of hope in someone trapped in a hopeless situation. 

Mark is very specific with this scene when he describes what the man asks, and what the man gets. He does not ask for a cure or healing. He asks to be made clean. It’s as though he is a dirty piece of trash, and that is exactly the way he has been treated. Mark then pushes a little deeper into this moment as he tells us that Jesus was moved with pity. The Greek word that Mark uses to describe this deep emotional response is far stronger than “pity.” It literally means to “move the intestines.” To say it another way, Jesus had a gut reaction to that man’s appeal. That reaction moves Jesus to treat that man with the utmost respect in sharp contrast to the way he had been treated by others before.

The result of that gentle touch and that deep sincere respect from Jesus is more than healing. That man discovered that he was loved and accepted and that no one and nothing could ever take that away. 

There is a real manifestation of God’s power here, but it is not that someone sick recovers, but rather that a person thought to be repulsive, unlovable, and even evil, is in fact, loved, and is the object of God’s mercy and compassion. And that is a greater miracle. Leprosy in our time has been cured by science, but science cannot cure what really troubled that man and still troubles too many others. Jesus did not see an unclean leper but a human soul in desperate need. Let’s be clear about this, these miracles were never intended to draw attention to Jesus which is why he so often asked for silence and kept trying to avoid the crowds who wanted more. He came to teach, he says over and over again. These miracles should awaken our faith in God’s providence, restoring a vision of a world where humanity is united as brothers and sisters in the love of God and one another. Anyone who would be a disciple of Jesus Christ should rise above the fears being stirred up in us and let their own miracles of charity, mercy, forgiveness and justice be proof of our trust in the God who is the real worker of wonders in our midst.

February 4, 2024 St Agnes Catholic Church in Naples, FL

Job 7:1-4, 6-7 + Psalm 147 + 1 Corinthians 9: 16-19 + Mark 1: 29-39

We need to be clear in our thinking about these healing stories that will be told to us all through the first half of Mark’s Gospel. These are not told to provide the divinity and power of Christ. When proclaimed in this Sacred Liturgy, God is speaking to us about one person doing whatever is in their power to ease the suffering of another human being. We do not need to be told about the power and divinity of God’s only Son. We do need to be reminded about the suffering and the needs of others and our power and resources to help them.

Perhaps to make that point more clearly, Mark moves Jesus around in this first Chapter. That first miracle happened in the synagogue. The second happen in someone’s home. Jesus is not just present with his healing power in a place of prayer. He is just as merciful and attentive in the place where we live. To make the universality of his mercy even more clear, after a man is healed, a woman is healed. There is not distinction when it comes to God’s mercy.

I am always struck, and I hope you are too, by the simplicity of this scene. Jesus says nothing. There are no commands. There is no great sweeping gesture. He simply takes her by the hand. To me, it is the simple gesture of friendship, holding hands. He helped her up. That’s all. Jesus did not do this to enhance his attractiveness to people. He did not do this out of duty. He did it because he was interested in people who needed help.

This story and others like it are kept alive for us as they were for countless others before us to awaken faith and trust in the Word of God, to restore in humankind “God’s vision of a world united as brothers and sisters under God’s providing love. “This is why I came” says Jesus. This kind of human compassion put in us by God breaks down stereotypes and defenses that divide, segregate, and marginalize people. The ministry of Jesus is not to restore bodies to health but to restore spirits to wholeness.

We must come here seeking that miracle for ourselves ready to reach out and take a hand, lift someone up, and bring to life the kind of compassion that belongs in real children of God. Only when we want to and decide to share the suffering of another seeking to understand and hear about whatever has pushed them down can we truly experience the power of God that has been entrusted to those of us who eat his flesh and drink his blood. There is someone somewhere down waiting for us to take their hand. There will be more miracles like this one in Peter’s home when friendship and compassion overcome a self-centered, individualistic hearts that look at others as foreigners and outsiders, rather than as brothers and sisters waiting for a hand to touch them.

 St William Catholic Church in Naples, Fl Saturday 4:30pm

Deuteronomy 18: 15-20 + Psalm 95 + 1 Corinthians 7: 32-35 + Mark 1: 21-28

It was a normal Sabbath day, and the folks there in Capernaum went, as always, to the Synagogue to hear a rabbi teach. All of a sudden, right in the middle of the rabbi’s teaching there was a terrible disturbance as someone began to shout at the young rabbi calling him names. You might imagine what that could be like if it were to happen right here! I can imagine it because it happened to me years ago when a man with some mental problems walked in during Sunday Mass shouting as he walked down the aisle toward me. Not realizing for a moment that I was quoting Jesus, I shouted back at him: “Be quiet and sit down.” He didn’t, but two policemen in the congregation jumped up and removed the man, but not without a struggle. Mark tells us that the people in that synagogue were “amazed.” I can tell you, I was more than “amazed.” Mark does not tell us if Jesus continued his teaching, but I can tell you I did not. I was not presiding, only preaching at that Mass. So, I walked back to the priest who was presiding and said: “You may continue. I’m going home.” 

Amazement is what Mark leaves us with. It’s a kind of wonder or surprise. Those people did not have a clue about the identity of Jesus. It’s only the first chapter, and it takes all sixteen chapters to reveal his identity, and even then, as the Gospel ends, no one is quite sure except a Roman Centurion, an unlikely witness. What amazed those people was a new kind of authority, and they seemed to have liked it. People of authority at that time bossed people around and told them what to do. That was not what they experience in Jesus. Authority as exercised by Jesus was service and care. Rather than tell people what to do, he showed people what to do. We should remember that the word “Authority” comes from the root word: “Author.” The Authority of Jesus revealed the “Author” the Father – the God in a new and most welcome way that left the people amazed and astonished.Those people never expected anything like this, and they had no other way to respond. Some were frightened and some were threatened. But, those who followed him suddenly had new hope and some excitement about the future. It could be so for us. With authorities ready and anxious to serve and care rather than enforce rules and order people around, our own future might be a great deal more promising and peaceful, and the reality of God’s presence, providence, and care might give us all some inner peace, making our church more attractive to others leaving us anxious for more to come as it did those people in Capernaum.

January 21, 2024 at St. Peter and St. Elizabeth Seton Catholic Churches in Naples, FL

Jonah 3: 1-5, 10 + Psalm 25 + 1 Corinthians + Mark 1: 14-20

I am not sure where it comes from, perhaps it was our parents or our educational system, but most of us to some degree are what our culture calls, “Control Freaks.” I know some people whose lives are totally directed by their plans, their calendars, and the clock. While they seem to be all neat and orderly, my opinion is that they are dull and not a lot of fun to be around. If anything happens unexpectedly that throws their plans off, they get angry and can’t figure out what to do next. This is not to suggest that a little scheduling and planning is useless, but letting our plans completely take over our lives with a fixation over doing what we think needs to be done might very well keep us from being attentive to God’s work, God’s plan, and God’s invitation to share in that plan.

Imagine what it might have been like if those four, Peter, Andrew, James and John, had been so busy and so focused on their fishing that they just let Jesus walk on by. We would never know their names, nor the church they built that covers the earth. I think Mark tells us about this so that we can see what it takes to be a follower, a disciple, of Jesus Christ. We have to be able to risk something unknown, make a change, even start up a new relationship. Simply put, we can’t fool ourselves into thinking or believing that we’re in control of everything and that our plans are the right plans. The big risk is that while we work at whatever we do all day, we lose sight of the one purpose for which we were made.

When I think about those apostles Jesus called to himself, it seems to me that they were not exactly the best this world had to offer. It would seem that the best and the perfect are not what Jesus looks for. Most of the time, the best and the perfect have spent their lives and all their talents making themselves look good and be successful. That doesn’t leave God much to work with. As it turns out, those four and their companions were not so perfectly suited for what was to come, but they went anyway. They probably signed up thinking they would be headed for glory, power, respect, and admiration. Anything would be better than fishing all night and mending the nets all day. What they got was a huge disappointment. Instead of going for the glory of a palace, they got the cross. After that, they re-grouped in some upper room, and finally, with the help of the Holy Spirit figured out something new discovering why they were made in the first place. It was not to mend nets and catch fish.

We are so like those fishermen and those other ordinary people who join them along the way. We misunderstand things, we betray, and sometimes desert this church and the relationship we have here in Christ. But here we are week after week re-grouping in this room counting on the Holy Spirit to keep us open to the new life to which we have been called.

God has called us to be a little more than we may have thought we were before we really listened to God’s Word. God called those men to do and be a little more than just catch a few fish to feed their families. God has not stopped calling. If you think you have everything under control and want to keep it that way, you may very will miss out on real life telling yourself that you have “the good” life which will end someday. We cannot, for all our planning foresee the future, no matter how furiously we squint. We never know all that we are getting into. Although that may appear to be a regretful limitation, it often proves to be the way to find a hope larger than our limited and puny imaginations. It all  just takes an ability and a willingness to think or try something new.

January 14, 2024 at St Agnes & St William Catholic Churches in Naples, FL

1 Samuel 3: 3-10, 19 + Psalm 40, + 1 Corinthians 6: 13-15 + John 1: 35-42

After hearing Luke and Matthew tell us about Shepherds and Magi, we pick up John’s Gospel today. For those two writers, it is place and family lineage that establishes the identity of Jesus. In this Gospel, it is John the Baptist. There is nothing here about the birth of Christ. What happens before the Baptism of Jesus is of no interest to John. This Gospel is about signs, and the first one will take place at Cana in Chapter Two. In John’s Gospel, the Baptist begins to fade away as Jesus begins to attract some of John’s disciples. Into the scene now steps a man named, Andrew.

I find Andrew to be one of the most fascinating characters in the New Testament. He is always willing to play second fiddle to Peter. He cannot keep the Good News to himself, taking delight in introducing people to Jesus. He is only mentioned three times in the New Testament. One time he brings that boy with five loaves and two fish to Jesus. Another time he and Philip bring to Jesus some Greeks who are asking questions. The third time is today’s reading when he goes to find his brother Simon to meet Jesus. 

That meeting must have been something because John tells us that Jesus looked at Simon. John says the same thing much later when Jesus is on trial and Peter has just denied knowing Jesus for the third time. John tells us that Jesus turned and looked at Peter. I am sure it was the same look of love that saw what was on the inside of Simon, not just what was on the surface. Jesus could see what Simon could become, and I think that’s the way it is when God looks at any of us. God sees not only what we are, but what we can become. 

Today, we hear the very first words Jesus speaks in John’s Gospel. “What are you looking for?” This is not a remark from an annoyed pedestrian suddenly aware that he is being followed. This is the Word of God addressed to every one of us who wants to take Jesus Christ seriously. What are you looking for in this brief life? 

They ask, “Where are you staying?” We might at first think they are asking for his place of residence, but the word translated into “Staying” really means something more like “Where are you rooted?” Today we might say, “Where are you coming from?” With that, there comes an invitation to “Come and See.” This is an invitation to do more than look around. It is an invitation to see what life is really all about, to see what God sees, to see what God desires and has planned. It can also mean to see what God sees when God looks at us and at those around us. It’s about what we can become not just what we are and certainly not what we have been. Just as with Andrew and Simon Peter, what we can become happens because of a relationship.

What is unfolding in this first chapter of John’s Gospel is the mystery and the wonder of a relationship. I think Andrew was looking for a friend and it looks as though he found one because John tells us that he stayed with him that day. It’s time together that creates friendships, and that truth applies to our relationship with Jesus Christ. There is no substitute in friendship for time spent together.

Here we are today, spending time together with the one who looks at us and sees what we can become inviting us and welcoming us into a relationship that will ultimately answer the question, “What are you looking for?”

January 7, 2024 at Saint William And Saint Agnes Churches in Naples, FL

Isaiah 60: 1-6 + Psalm 72, + Ephesians 3: 2-3, 5-8 + Matthew 2: 1-12

We turn to Matthew’s Gospel today, and the whole of this Gospel is structured to illuminate the final command of Jesus and his final promise. “Go out to all the world and spread the Good News. Behold, I am with you until the end of the age.” Those who study Matthew’s Gospel know that he is not writing a history. The stories he tells are very simple and stark without a lot of details. He shows more interest in the star than in Mary and Joseph. Perhaps because a star is a light for all the whole world to see. Joseph is the chief human actor in the nativity story. The birth itself is mentioned only in passing. And with that, Matthew moves on to his vision of a universal all-embracing Kingdom of God.

It’s as though Matthew is writing a screen play, and so today we are still in Act One, but now at scene two. Scene One has two characters: Joseph and Mary. Scene Two as these foreigners and Herod. These visitors are sometimes called “wise.” They stand in stark contrast to Herod who lacks far more than wisdom. It would be hard to count his deficiencies, but courage and openness would be among them. It never ceases to amaze me every time I read this Gospel that Herod and his court did nothing even after his scholars told him what was happening. I don’t know about you, but when I think about this, it sounds like our days and the information we have about climate change. We know about it, but nothing much happens for the same reason.

Herod’s problem was simply that he was too comfortable, self-assured, and too confident in his own power to allow something new, a change, or even be aware of a power greater than his own. In contrast to these strangers we could call “seekers” he sought nothing and therefore he knew nothing.  A theologian described people open to revelation this way: “The person who seeks is the person who knows.”

Herod knew nothing, and content to know nothing, he missed the revelation of Divine Presence and the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. Whereas these strangers were seekers, and because of that, they knew, they saw, they experienced an Epiphany – a Divine Revelation of God’s presence.

It does no good to hear or read this story without beginning to wonder about ourselves and what we know and how we know it. Disciples of Jesus Christ, true believers are always seeking, looking for signs and wonders of God’s presence and work among us. We can learn from Herod’s ignorance that unless we seek, open ourselves to what was before unknown and perhaps unlikely, we will never know anything about God much less come to see God. The world around us, the world in which we live, is often hostile to change, and it leads to a lot fear of the unknown. That fear and that hostility to allow something new is dangerous and becomes an obstacle to knowledge and the discovery of truth. We must be seekers. It will lead us to wisdom and knowledge. Those who are seeking may sometimes end up in the wrong places, but like these strangers, they can leave people like Herod to their own darkness and ignorance. It is always possible to reorient ourselves. Our journey will not end on this earth, but we cannot do better than spend our lifetime seeking.

December 31, 2023 at Saint Agnes & Saint William Catholic Churches in Naples, FL

Sirach 3:2-6, 12-14 + Psalm 128, + Colossian’s 3: 12-21 + Luke 2: 22-49

Luke has a way of balancing things throughout his Gospel and here in chapter two we get a perfect example of that, Mary and Joseph, Anna and Simeon. The men seem to be a lot alike. They listen a lot, and as a result of listening to the Holy Spirit, they find themselves in the Temple that day. Then there are the two women, Mary and Anna. We know nothing about Anna except that she is a widow which would at least tell us that she knew a thing or two about suffering.

We probably should not celebrate the birth of this child and the beginnings of this life without reminding ourselves how it will end. This is precisely why our tradition ends this week of Christmas with this sober reminder. These two women know sorrow. They will end their days as widows.

Sorrow can have one of two effects. It can make us hard, bitter, and resentful, or more understanding, kinder, and more sympathetic. It can take away our faith, or make our faith more solid. Which side of these alternatives happens will depend on what one thinks about God: whether God is a tyrant who sends sorrows with no apparent reason other than His own pleasure, or a loving Father who permits us to be tested to show who we are. To both of these women, God was a loving Father.

Our tradition tells us that Anna was 84 years old. Like sorrow, age can have one of two effects. It can sap one’s strength, take away our heart and leave us grimly resigned to the way things are or it can give us wisdom, humor, and other virtues. Here again how we experience age will depend on how we think of God. If God is remote and distant, we despair. If God is connected with our life and close at hand, we live through aging with hope. It is not hard to see that Anna had not stopped hoping, and she managed to stay like that through constant contact with the source of her strength as she came to the Temple day after day. That is a better description for a “fountain of youth” than anything on the market these days. Both Anna and Simeon shared a similar prayer life, and they both gave thanks to God.

Hours before a new year dawns on us, we can sit here with these holy people: two men wise enough to be found here in the Temple and wise enough to be good listeners, and two women full of hope. Hardened hearts bitter and full of resentment have no place here among us. Kindness and compassion, humor and hope is what belong to us wise enough to be here listening to the Holy Spirit speaking through the Gospels day after day.

Our God is no distant tyrant quick to anger and judgement. Our God is Emmanuel – close to us, no stranger to suffering, and gentle as baby. We can do nothing better than imitate Simeon and Anna and give thanks to God.

December 24 & 25, 2023 at St Peter and St William Churches in Naples, FL

Isaiah 9: 1-6 + Psalm 96, + Titus 2: 11-14 + Luke 2: 1-20

We no longer walk in darkness. We can see, and we can be seen. Even though we might prefer to sleep in heavenly peace and ignore the reality of what is going on around us, while we hum “Joy to the World,” we may not forget the historical context of this birth story. It was a gloomy world with suffering people valued only for their labor and the taxes they had to pay. It is a story of people, refugees, fleeing a dangerous tyrant, people who are homeless, sleeping on the street. This story we tell from the past is not quite over. We can tell it today with the same details as we read it in this Gospel.

In more than 55 years as a priest, I have sat and stood through more Christmas pageants than any of you could ever imagine. One of them that stands out in my mind was in the Cathedral Church in Oklahoma City years ago. There was an elaborate scene painted on a set that went from pillar to pillar across the church in front of the altar. It was worthy of a movie set. When the homeless couple knocked on door marked: “Inn” just in case you didn’t know what it was, an 8-year-old opened the door, scowled at the couple, pointed to the side, and slammed the door. At that point the entire elaborate scenery collapsed.

Later, when reflecting on what inspired that innkeeper’s response, I began to wonder how and why the Innkeeper often seemes to be refusing hospitality when in fact, I have often thought he was just about the nicest person of all. He did the best he could with what was at hand. He saw a need and he responded. I think that this little moment in the story teaches us a lesson we have easily missed for way too long when it comes to believing the Incarnation. There is more to this spectacular moment that changed all creation than just the birth of a baby, shepherds and magi. 

Distracted by gifts, commercials, lights, trees, and Saint Nick, we have missed the truth and the real mystery of this Feast. The proof of that for me came just last week when a reader came to the ambo and started the General Intentions by saying: “May God bring peace to the middle east.” All of a sudden, I got it. It was clear to me that we have not yet grasped the truth of Incarnation. We want God to do what God has already done through the Incarnation, the birth of his son.

God is not going to bring peace. We are. God has already taken on human flesh and through his Son taught us how to make peace by forgiveness. God is not going to feed the hungry or protect the homeless. We are. He taught us how to do that. That Innkeeper got it right. He was responsible for someone he didn’t even know because they were in need and were children of God. What we might experience this Christmas is a deeper and more personal understanding of what has happened to us and all creation because of what we recall and celebrate today. This is not just about the birth of Christ. It is also about who and what we have become because the Word became flesh. We need to go deeper and ask, “Whose flesh?”

Everything is changed, everyone one of us is changed and charged with the Divine power of love. It displaces selfishness, loneliness, and the destructive individualism of this age that isolates from each other. It removes the helplessness we often feel in the face of this world’s destructive condition with the conviction that we can do something. We can care, we can act. We can forgive, and we can love. It’s not complicated. This great feast is about us as much as it is about a baby born in Bethlehem because, that baby ultimately gave us his flesh to eat so that this divine love might be found in us. When that old prophet cried out: “Comfort Ye,” God speaks to us all with a plea to comfort one another inviting us to become like the God who now dwells about us as close as the person beside you.

December 24, 2023 at Saint Agnes & Saint William Catholic Churches in Naples, FL

2 Samuel 7: 1-5, 8-12,  14=16 + Psalm 89, + Romans 16: 25-27 + Luke 1: 26-38

Gabriel is one busy angel. When I began to pay attention to how often and where that angel pops up in our stories this month, I am amazed at how much airline miles must be stacking up. It might well be enough to get us to heaven. And so, Gabriel is at work again, and we have just listened to a familiar passage with a difficult truth.

We must be very careful not to acknowledge the exceptional privilege of Mary and take ourselves off the hook. Visits from angels are for special people we might think, and that’s wrong. Every life is visited by revelations, insights, and calls to commitments. Every one of us knows that. We get too confused by artists’ representation of this scene. There is no reason to think that some figure with wings popped up out of nowhere and started a conversation with Mary. Remember my mantra?

This is not history. This is Theology.

No angel figure showed up in my life calling me to the priesthood, and if you told me an angel had shown up presenting your spouse to you, I would wonder how much eggnog you’ve been drinking. Yet, an open heart and an open mind makes way for all kinds of revelations, insights, and calls to commitment. When these come to us, we can either reluctantly agree and become joyless people, or we turn away in weakness and relief. What a tragedy that would be.

Yet the wonderful thing about this is that God sends another angel, and we all get another opportunity to open our hearts and minds to say, “yes,” accepting God’s will and then marvel at how God’s plan unfolds for us into a life of joy and peace.