April 28 2024 at St Elizabeth Seton and St Peter Churches in Naples, FL

Acts of the Apostles 9: 26-31 + Psalm 22 + 1 John 3: 18-24 + John 15: 1-8

Not long ago I was reading an article that stopped me at the end of a sentence. I had to put the book down for a while and think about what I just read. “The Catholic religion is a hard one to live in but an easy one to die in.” The writer went on to say that we have to be careful as a church not to turn that saying around. We can fail the Gospel by making the practice of our faith too easy, by sugar coating everything with talk of love, love, love like the Beatles’ song or a Hallmark greeting card. It is about love alright, but when you listen to today’s Gospel, you begin to see that it is about what we might call, “Tough Love.” 

That business about pruning a vine is tough. It’s real, and there is no way or reason to soften it up. Wine can mark an occasion one of great joy and celebration, and a true disciple of Jesus Christ becomes just that for others, a source of joy and celebration. But we cannot be that if we do not allow the vinedresser to prune us. Without being cut, without the hardship of sacrifice and service, without following the Way of the Cross in our lives it is likely that we will become spiritually unproductive, shallow, and just simply pious without any real passion.

When I was leaving the seminary at ordination time, my confessor and mentor for several years advised me to find someone to take his place who had suffered if I really wanted to grow in my faith and spirituality. I have learned the wisdom of that advise. There is just something about being knocked around, about falling down, or suffering some insult or injury that can make a person truly noble, wise, and holy. I think that is why so many of saints had periods of suffering and sadness. It’s not that holiness means being miserable and sad. Those kinds of people could never be a source of real joy and celebration. On the contrary, people who have suffered, who have known pain are really the ones who know and have something to celebrate.

Five weeks ago, we celebrated the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. It was not until he suffered surrendering his will to the Father’s Will, not until he died abandoned and in disgrace did he become for all of us a source of joy and celebration. Before that he was, to those around him, a wise rabbi who was condemned by the very ones he taught, healed, and wanted to lead to the Father. 

My friends, we follow one who called himself the “vine,” and was himself pruned by the vine grower. Our unity with Christ Jesus must lead us into the mystery of loving service, of sacrifice, and even into the mystery of some pain, suffering, and sadness. Without it, we will have no share in the Resurrection. When we finally surrender to the Father’s will as Jesus did the night before he died, the Father will be glorified, and then we shall know why we are here, not just in this church, but why we are here on this earth and in this life. Every now and then, it might be a good idea to ask that question and remember the answer: for the glory and the honor of God. This is a hard religion to live in, but an easy one to die in if we can just remember why.

April 21, 2024 10:00 a.m. Sunday at St. Elizabeth Seton

St Peter Churches in Naples, FL

Acts of the Apostles 4: 8-12 + Psalm 118 + 1 John 3: 1-12 + John 10: 11-18

Not often I stop and ask myself why I am doing something. That question came to me on Holy Saturday afternoon, twenty-two days ago. If you remember, it was an absolutely glorious day without a cloud in the sky. There was a very light breeze just enough to make the palm trees swish around with that sound I find rather pleasant. A flower bed needed to be dug up, there were dry clothes in the dryer and dirty dishes in the sink. I’m sitting at a desk with this Gospel text open wondering why I’m doing this, and I decided that I don’t ask that question often enough. It must be the same for you. I don’t think we ever ask that question often enough. If we did, I suspect we might do a few things differently or maybe not all.

In that reading we just heard from Act of the Apostles, Peter answers the question about why he is doing something, and he learned the answer from the man who called him away from fishing for fish. He did that for pay. With this Gospel today, Jesus contrasts a good shepherd with one who works for pay rather than for love of the sheep. That’s not necessarily bad except that the one who works for pay may not be much good if danger comes along. He may well be more interested in taking care of “number one” than any of those sheep that probably belong to someone else.

This weekend an invitation is extended to us all suggesting that we give some thought to why we do things: for that matter, why we do anything. Why we are here? first of all, why we use the time we have left in this life the way we do.? There is an attitude that all of us, especially those of us retired, might be find challenging by what we hear today. That attitude is about “deserving.” I can’t count the times I have heard people say to me, “Oh Father, after more than 55 years, you deserve your rest.” 

My reflection on this Gospel lately is that I’ll have eternity for that rest, which seems like a very long time. Right now, the one who is deserving is God, not me or you. What we deserve is sometimes frightening if I think about it seriously. What God deserves is our attention not just in this church. What God deserves is way more than most of us have been willing to provide.

The shepherd working for pay is concerned about what he’s going to get out of it. The shepherd who works for love gets nothing but love in return which is far more valuable. When we start deciding what to do in this life and the question of what we are going to get out of it comes along, it’s time to ask that question, Why?” with God in mind. It might be time to stand alongside Peter and search our hearts until we can explain why it is that we do what we do. 

We can believe a lot about Jesus, but the real invitation and real choice we have is to believe in him, through him and with him which will surely lead us to become identified with him by loving whom he loves and allowing him to work through us. The Jesuit-trained priests who taught me in High School, and many of the Sisters before them always insisted that the letters: AMDG be written at the top of my assignments. It was then, and still is, a very good reason for doing something: For the Honor and Glory of God. If what I’m doing does not somehow very clearly glorify God, I need to stop doing it and do something else that will.

April 14, 2024 at Saint Peter and Saint William Churches in Naples, FL

Acts of the Apostles 3: 13-5, 17-19 + Psalm 4 + 1 John 2: 1-5 + Luke 24: 35-48

The risen Christ is among us here gathered in his name and proclaiming the Word of God in this assembly This gives voice to that presence. He asks us a question, not just those disciples in the past. He also gives us a command just as he did those other disciples.

“Why are you troubled? Why do questions arise in your hearts?” he asks us. At the time for those disciples it may have seemed like a very silly question. Why in the world would they not be troubled and filled with questions when the very person who had lifted their hopes, shown them great signs and wonders, had been brutally killed and buried was now suddenly in their midst? They were not imagining this. He was real. The scars of his torture and death were visible. He ate with them. They are not imagining things.

Christ stood there among them facing those who abandoned him, and I believe he stood there with a smile on his face and his arms outstretched. His wounds were on full display making it perfectly clear that no evil, no suffering, no disaster can overpower the goodness of God. It took them a long time to understand that. They were slow, and so are we. Too many are still troubled, and asking the wrong question. We hear it all the time: “Why doesn’t God do something?” This Gospel rephrases the question: “Why don’t you do something?” 

When they finally got it right through the help of the Holy Spirit, those disciples did do something, and we are here as a people of hope, faith, and charity because they did do something.

Then comes a command to take on a new vision of life, to believe and act with the sure knowledge that love is the only lasting power, that love disturbs the violent more than any great weapon. When we really believe that the only way to peace is loving forgiveness, there will be peace. If we could get that right there would never be another violent act of revenge like we see today in Gaza or the Ukraine. 

It was out of ignorance that Jesus Christ was put to death. He said so himself at the time: “They know not what they do” asking for their forgiveness. We are not ignorant. We do know what we are doing, and what we fail to do. During these fifty days leading to our Pentecost we would do well and pass these days profitably with the hope and the prayer that we will finally understand and believe in the depths of our hearts what the cross reveals: that the violence, oppression, and hatred will fail every time an innocent person stands up in the face of it. Moving through life, we can either cling to a dismal and hopeless view of life and complain because God does not  fix things; or, like the disciples, we can allow ourselves to be confused enough for the Holy Spirit to open our minds to understand new ways. 

April 7, 2024 at St Peter, St William, St Agnes Churches in Naples, FL

Acts 4: 32-35 + Psalm 118 + 1 John 5: 1-6 + John 20: 19-31

We had the privilege of welcoming guests here last Sunday, and just as we did at home, or perhaps still do, we moved over and squeezed a little closer together. Most of those guests are gone now back to whatever it is they do while we are here, and we have to hope that somehow what they experienced here will make them want to return because we need them.

Easter is not just about what happened to Jesus. It is about what is happening to us because of it. In fact, what happened to Jesus is meaningless if nothing happens to us. Easter is a powerful reminder that our short lives here are a time of preparation for eternity not for anything else. We are not here to keep the economy going by our shopping. We are not here to consume all we can get our hands on out of this earth’s resources leaving the next generation with debt, mountains of trash, and dirty air. Easter is about us and about what has happened to us because of what has happened to Jesus Christ.

Consequently, Easter is more than a Sunday in the spring. It is a lift-style and a life-long commitment to be, maintain, and preserve the presence of Christ in this world. The Mercy of God which we remember today is not just for us to receive. It is an undeserved gift to be passed on to anyone else who may not deserve it either. The way that underserved gift is passed on is through forgiveness which is the only way we will ever possibly know and experience the peace that the risen Christ gives us. There is no peace gained from war, conquest, or some imagined victory. All that can do is create resentment which eventually boils up again destroying the illusion of peace. Merciful forgiveness is the only path to peace, and that is exactly what John’s Gospel reveals to us today.

Jesus who had been abandoned, denied, misunderstood, and left to die alone among thieves with a crowd mocking him came to them, stood in their midst, and in one remarkable act of mercy forgiving them and leaving them his peace and an assures them of his love.  Not only that, he comes again for a late-comer who is not too sure and too solid in his faith.

My friends, Easter means that by the power of Christ even our small and imperfect lives have a share in the glory of God’s redeeming work in human history. We celebrate that today in Word, in Song, and in Ritual, and then by our lives, the mercy we find here and the mercy we share, will bring joyful hope to those who like Thomas are absent and weak in faith. There only hope is those of us in this church, and if there is real mercy, they will not be disappointed.

March 31, 2024 at St Peter & St William Churches in Naples, FL

Acts of the Apostles 10: 34, 37-43 + Psalm 118 + Colossians 3: 1-4 + John 20, 1-9

It is easy to listen to John’s resurrection story and be focused on what happened to Jesus. Our imaginations fueled by artists and poets can draw a lot of hope and great deal of joy from a story that reminds us so graphically that love and goodness will always triumph in the end. At the same time, it is a little more challenging to focus on what happened to the disciples, which might lead us to think about what it means for us.

John begins today’s Gospel as the very beginning of creation: “On the first day of the week” – “while it was still dark” he goes on. Someone faces the darkness and the chaos, sadness and grief with great courage. She is willing to confront these threats and step into that darkness. The tomb has been disturbed because the realm of death has been disrupted, and it did not look like a grave robbery. The burial cloths were all neatly folded up. There is something else going on here. This death was nothing like death as they understood it to be. 

Over and over again, the Gospel writers keep telling us that they did not understand. Yet, they believed. Here is where we begin to confront what the Resurrection means for us. Like those disciples, the Resurrection is the beginning of a pilgrimage that moves us little by little not only into believing, but to understanding better what this means for our lives right now. Jesus comes and says to them, “Peace. Everything is OK.” The message is that no matter what happens to us, the Father will not let defeat and death be the end.

The pilgrimage that begins on Easter leads to Pentecost, not to place but into the very life of God and God’s Holy Spirit where we shall begin to understand as well as believe that we are the very presence of the risen Christ in this world. In John’s Gospel, we do not have to wait fifty days for Pentecost. The Spirit given on Easter transforms us into that presence as one Body in Christ and with the gift of understanding, we have the power to forgive which is the very thing that leads to peace: forgiveness. Without it, there will never be peace.

In just a moment, in the breaking of bread we must acknowledge the presence of the risen Christ who is the source of our hope. We ask for peace. We accept his mission. We pray to be open to the Spirit and all that Spirit may ask of us in this new creation. Part of being a disciple of Jesus Christ is living with this mystery, living with things we do not understand, yet living with hope.

Peace be with you, my dear friends. Peace be with you who doubt, wonder, wait. You are in good company with the disciples of Jesus Christ keep moving on the journey toward understanding.

March 24, 2024 at St Peter and Saint William Catholic Churches s in Naples, FL

Mark 11: 1-10 + Isaiah 50: 4-7 + Psalm 22 + Philippians 2: 6-11 + Mark 14: 1-15:47

Mark begins his report of the Passion with a woman who anoints him, and it will end with more women who come to a tomb to anoint him once more. Women, in Mark’s Gospel, are the only ones who stay and see the death of Jesus. The men are all off hiding somewhere. Among these heroic women is this first one with no name. With a name, she would be identified and defined. With no name, she can represent everyone who follows her example.

By the time Jesus arrives in Bethany for dinner at the home of a leper, there was already a sense so danger. Everyone understood the parable he had told before fleeing Jerusalem. His friends understood that like the murderers in the parable, his death was being plotted. Danger is in the air. The powerful are scheming over how to be rid of him. Yet, one woman gave her all in an extravagant gesture of faith. She broke that expensive jar spilling all the precious ointment over Jesus, all of it.

She does not show up when Jesus was being followed by admiring cowds awed by his power and is words. For her, he was a King to be anoinited as all the Kings before him. She saw a vulnerable man who was about to die. When fickle crowds, confused disciples, and threatened authorities turn on him because he is not the Messiah/King they wanted, she comes to proclaim her faith that God was working through this man who taught that love was the only law of life. With all her riches, she broke the jar and poured out everything in it showing us that wealth is worthless and God is not revealed through human power.

We can learn something important about faith from this woman that Mark puts before us today probably hoping that what she does will become what we do and what she believes will shape our our belief.

She is unafraid to show her faith in a powerless man who has entered Jerusalem like a pauper riding someone else’s ass. She can see the divine in a man who is helpless to defend himself with no one to defend him. She can see a King about to die and believe that selfless service, pouring out all that one has is the best way to honor the real King. 

As I am serving a Maronite Parish this weekend, this homily will not be delivered at Mass

Ezekiel 37: 12-14 + Psalm 130 + Romans 8: 8-11 + John 11: 1-45

I spent much of my life in Oklahoma. Other than oil and gas, cattle and horses, it is wheat country. Wheat and Rice are probably the most fundamental source of nourishment around the world. So, it’s not surprising that the one who will feed us on his body and blood would use the image of a wheat grain to describe his future.

The whole cycle of farming up there in Oklahoma and throughout the wheat belt was fascinating to me, a city boy whose first assignment as a pastor was to a little country town where the entire congregation was farming families except for the Postmaster. At the end of summer, just a little before the first frost, the wheat gets planted, and if it rains, by November, the fields are green as far as you can see. By the first of December, the cattle are turned out to feed on the green wheat. Then, toward the end of February, they cattle are taken off the wheat which then grows for three months until it turns golden in late May and early June when harvest begins. The whole cycle happens because of one thing: rain – water. If it does not rain, there is no food. If it does not rain there is no life.

It is an amazing cycle that gives us both grain and meat. Both have to die for us to have food to live. In my mind, that grain becomes bread that then becomes flesh the food at this altar that gives us life. The whole natural cycle shapes our liturgy in this church. First the water of Baptism that brings us to life, then as we grow up we learn to love and serve those around us, dying to self or selfishness like that wheat grain so that we might be born again.

The church puts these ideas in our head on the last Sunday before Holy Week because we are inevitably headed toward a death on Good Friday and toward our own inevitable death. We know the truth even though it might frighten or make some uneasy. We are born to die, and every day we die a little more moving one day closer to that moment when we shall be planted or buried in the earth.  Only those who die to themselves really ever live a full and fruitful life. The self-centered, leave nothing behind and bear no fruit. Those who die a little each day to selfishness, to pretense, and to sin hold the promise of a new life that is the fruit that springs from their dying. Every time we pass from one stage of life to another something in us dies and something new is born. We taste death in moments of loneliness, rejection, sorrow, disappointment, and failure. Some die before their time living in bitterness, hatred, and solation. We create our own death by the way we live.

What Jesus teaches us is that when we forget ourselves that we are most free and most happy. It is getting out of ourselves, in dedicating ourselves to causes beyond ourselves, that we grow and bear fruit. The world is poorer and more hungry when people put their own personal safety, security and self-advancement first and last. When people are willing to go beyond themselves and die to self-interest the most precious things humanity possesses have been born.

Jesus gave his life. It was not taken from him. He gave it out of love of God and love of us. To love is to accept that one might die another kind of death, before one dies at the end of life. The way of love is the way of the cross which leads to the resurrection. As priest standing countless times at a bedside for someone’s final moment of life, I have come to believe that those who have died to themselves throughout life find the moment of physical death easy. The hour of death becomes an hour of glory. It is by dying that we are born to eternal life.

March 10, 2024 at St Peter and St William Churches in Naples, FL

2 Chronicles 26: 14-16, 19-23 + Psalm 137 + Ephesians 2: 4-10 + John 3: 14-21

Nicodemus is mentioned three times in John’s Gospel and always at night. What we hear today is the one time Nicodemus comes to Jesus. He comes at the risk of being criticized and laughed at. He comes even though he does not understand what Jesus is doing or what Jesus is talking about. But he comes anyway.

There is a lot of Nicodemus behavior in us. We sometimes avoid any public display of our faith cautious and conscious of what others might think or say about us. We get uncomfortable now and then lest someone think we might be serious about our faith or look too pious or holy. We keep quiet when we hear something that is not quite right not wanting to seem as though we take matters of justice seriously. When some judge immigrants or the poor to be lazy or criminals, we say nothing when we could remind those who judge so unjustly that the poor are really God’s favorites.

Yet, to me, what speaks most powerfully about Nicodemus beyond his courage to come at all is that he comes to Jesus even though he does not understand what Jesus is doing or saying. It seems to me that there is something right about that. Instead of throwing up his hands and taking off when he does not understand, he comes anyway. 

All of us from time to time experience and see things we do not understand, wondering why God works in ways that are beyond us. Too often it is a very painful or tragic event that leaves us wondering if there even is a God. Even more often a painful experience drives some away from God rather than being drawn closer.

The two other times Nicodemus is mentioned in the Gospel are closer to the end when he urges his collogues to listen to Jesus and be slow to judge. Then at the end, it is Nicodemus who provides what is needed for the respectful burial of the body of Jesus. Even though he does not understand everything Jesus says and does, and even though he risks the ridicule of others in the Sanhedrin, he stays, he serves, he speaks up.

Nicodemus stands as a model for any of us who struggle to understand the ways of God that are not our ways. Even Jesus struggles with the God’s plan as we shall soon hear in the Passion when it becomes a mighty struggle against what he sees is God’s plan. In the end, he throws himself on the ground surrendering to God’s will and plan. For that, he is raised up on the third day. It would be the same for us if we simply stay and take the risks.

March 3, 2024 at Saint Peter the Apostle in Naples, FL

Exodus 20: 1-17+ Psalm 19 + 1 Corinthians 1: 22-25 + John 2: 13-25

Part of what gets the authorities riled up in wild opposition to Jesus is this talk about the Temple’s destruction. For them, the Temple is not so much a place of sacrificial worship as it is the center of commerce and business. It is the economic engine of its time. Talking about its destruction would be like destroying Wall Street. That is not going to fly with them, and they need to stop that talk and silence this man who keeps saying things like this. You can understand the threat all of this talk means to them. Instead of the Temple sanctifying the city. The city was desecrating the Temple. If those desecrators had been asked what religion was theirs, an honest answer would have been “profit” and another would have been “power.” The most cynical and honest might have said, “none” which is what we hear a lot of these days.

What they did not understand and sometimes we still do not either, is that Jesus is talking about his body not some architectural wonder. Jesus is teaching us that God’s presence cannot be captured in buildings. The Incarnation, our fundamental belief that God has taken human flesh, is the reality here. The Body of Christ is the dwelling place of God, not the Temple, and in these verses of John’s Gospel, Jesus is telling anyone who will listen that they can destroy his body, but it will rise again.

There is plenty of evidence that what this Gospel proclaims with the words of Jesus is still not being understood or accepted. My friends, what makes this church holy is the people who assemble here. It is not that tabernacle, the statues, or the glass. It is you and me, the Body of Christ. The Holy Eucharist in the tabernacle could not be there were it not that we have assembled here. Sharing the Eucharist in Holy Communion makes us one in the Body of Christ. We become what we eat.

My friends, the whole wonder of the Incarnation is that God’s dwelling place is first of all, and perhaps best of all found, honored, and respected in human life. There is a real presence in human life just as truly as any Temple, building, or man-made object. This Gospel invites and challenges us today to examine just how we decide what is sacred and what is profane. It is a felon to deface a church, and people get in an uproar every time one is vandalized. Yet, there is hardly a whisper of concern when one of God’s people dies of hunger or is homeless living in a car or a tent.

My friends, the very rock of our foundation in faith is the Incarnation. God’s desire to live, to love, and to be revealed in human flesh and blood. God speaks to us with the very human voice of Jesus Christ when we are here together. We must listen and learn because we can be the face and the merciful hand of God to anyone looking and longing for God. This season calls us to repent and change how we think, how we see things, and how we treat each other. This third week of Lent offers a chance to check carefully how well our behavior reveals our beliefs.

February 25, 2024 at Saint Peter the Apostle in Naples, FL

Genesis 22: 1-2, 9-13, 15-18 + Psalm 115 + Romans 8: 31-34 + Mark 9: 2-10

The whole purpose for the writing of Mark’s Gospel is the identity of Jesus. Who is this? That is the question Mark wants to answer. For a real true and honest relationship to develop you have to know who a person is. We can work or live beside people for a long time without ever really getting to know them. It is one thing to know about people, and quite a different thing to really know someone. and it usually takes some unexpected surprise or some tragedy for that to happen which is what is unfolding in Mark’s Gospel. They are slowly getting to know Jesus.

Mark pulls out all the stops, so to speak with this story. Because we are hardly familiar with the Old Testament, it is easy to miss the details that would have alerted that early community of Jewish converts he is writing to. The six-day comment that begins this story would immediately remind them of the time Moses spent on Mount Sinai where the cloud of God’s presence covered the mountain for six days before God spoke to Moses. What demons knew at the beginning of Mark’s Gospel and what Jesus heard at his Baptism is now revealed to those disciples. Once again, God speaks to answer the question that drives this Gospel. But knowing about Jesus is not enough. Peter and those with him thought they knew all about the Messiah, but the one they thought was the Messiah kept talking about being handed over and rising from the dead after three days. How could they possibly know what that meant until it happened. Those disciples will eventually let go of what they knew about a Messiah and really come to know Jesus. But that will not happen until the end when the tragedy of his death takes place.

It would be easy to look at this Transfiguration story as a mid-point encouragement for the apostles giving them something to remember when they see Jesus on another hill crucified between two criminals. The transfiguration is far more than that.

A deeper meaning is that even after moments of great glory we have to come down the mountain and continue to listen to the voice of Jesus, and follow him on the way to the cross. Those apostles were struggling to get to know Jesus and I believe that what they learned on that mountain is that things and people are not always as the first appear. They followed Jesus up that mountain without a clue about what was to happen or what they might see.  How could they know that heaven was about to break loose in front of them?

My friends, there is a hidden glory deep in the heart of things. We get a glimpse of it in flowers and sunsets, but it is also there in darkness and shadowy places where we might not want to find ourselves. There is always glory concealed in loss, and there is always glory behind every cross. You can’t see Easter from Good Friday, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Sometimes you do not see the image of God in an enemy or some foreigner, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. If we want to get to know someone, if we want to have a lasting and beautiful relationship with someone, we just have to listen which is exactly what God has had to say.