A little on Luke, a little on Isaiah, a little from both of them on John the Baptist.  Audio here.  ..read more

FYI, I fumbled the ball as I crossed the goal line; the last part was supposed to be "...the God who is Love itself, being made lovable to us." And today I stumbled across this marvelous two-line poem by Michael Longley (see attached picture) posted on Twitter by @EmilyKath319 which seemed like the perfect summary of the concept "so that as we recognize in Him God made visible, we may be caught up through Him in love of things invisible." Merry Christmas, one and all.  ..read more

For at least several decades, there has been a well-circulated depiction of the Church's season of Advent as having two clear and distinct parts and, more challenging for priests and parishes, that the focuses of those two parts are to be kept separate. "The first 3 weeks of Advent are all about our anticipating the Second Coming of Jesus, and then only in the final week do we switch over and think about remember His birth in Bethlehem." So yeah, I wanted to preach on my reflection that this is, yes, built on some things that are true, but can be taken to extremes by some thinkers and liturgis ..read more

I give the same homily whenever it's the first year that I preach on Easter in a parish. Every once in awhile we have to stop and ask why we're even here, doing this, believing that...Why? Every once in a while it's good to step back and ask the core questions again. Even to let ourselves doubt and wrestle with that ..read more

Here's two weeks worth of Sunday homilies. I've switch away from Internet Archive and its embedded players, at least for now. Sorry about that; maybe I can find a format with more controls like skips and playback speed. (Let me know if you've got suggestions.) I'm going to start going backward now and repairing or re-hosting previous audio on here. Homily for 11/10/24, 32nd Sunday, Year B: Letter to the Hebrews and Temple Worship Homily for 11/17/24, 33rd Sunday, Year B: Gems in Eucharistic Prayer IV ..read more

We, very reasonably, have some questions about Abraham almost sacrificing Isaac. Unsurprisingly, we also have some questions about the Father letting the Son die (and for realsies, not just "almost" like Isaac). The early Church saw the parallels and the author of the Letter to the Hebrew wrote on it in chapter 11. If we are going to wrestle with sacrifices of Isaac or Jesus or both, we would do well to let Hebrews 11 be our lens. We will see through it a path that not only shows that God (and Abraham) are not monsters, but that the Isaac story sheds light on both the extremity of The Father's ..read more

Sunday's homily. First part about the readings and the second part about the multiple propositions on the Nebraska ballot this November ..read more

It can be confusing for people when they hear that 1) the Jews were expecting their Messiah to be a second King David, a glorious, nation-saving warrior, and so they looked for those things in Jesus, but also that 2) this captured-and-crucified Jesus is the Messiah, the long-promised savior, fulfilling all the Old Testament prophecies. These two ideas together seem to say that either the Jews didn't read their own books, or that the early Church had to fudge on what the Scriptures said and wrench the prophecies to fit Jesus' very-non-warlord career and the fact that he died.  And yes, the ..read more

This might not be the smoothest of deliveries, but it had more structure and hopefully avoid a potential place of confusion. To be clear: I love Jacob Neusner and I think A Rabbi Speaks With Jesus is a true monument and milestone in Jewish-Christian dialogue. And ultimately, his critiques make sense and it's reasonable that Neusner doesn't find Jesus compelling. Which is just fine... because the Christian argument was never where Jesus as a rabbi can convince you to rethink things. It's whether God raising Jesus from the dead is enough reason to trust what Jesus is telling you to rethink ..read more

Hi there. As the title says, these aren't homilies. These are the audio files of the 75-to-90-minute adult education classes I lead on Monday nights. They used to call this stuff "RCIA" but now they're call it OCIA (Order of Christian Initiation for Adults); it's the parish-level class for people either looking to become Catholic or at least checking out the Catholic Faith. Also, plenty of current Catholics attend as well as a kind of review for what we didn't pay attention to in classes when growing up.? These are here right now while I try to figure out how to get them up on the parish websi ..read more