Praised be Jesus Christ…now and forever.   Two days ago, Father Athanasius, a few seminarians, a few students, and I completed our 5th Annual Penitential Pilgrimage for Sins Against the Holy Eucharist.  We hiked 18 miles from Saint Louis Abbey to the Shrine of Saint Joseph, downtown.  The first year we did it, I swore I’d never do it again.  The second year, I figured I was in better shape than I was the first year.  (I wasn’t).  So the third year, I made arrangements to have someone pick me up half-way through (he didn’t).&n ..read more

           “Stay awake, for you know neither the day nor the hour."  This parable of the bridesmaids is the last of Jesus’ warnings that we should be vigilant.  He will come to us when we least expect it.  In the middle of the night, perhaps—or when we’re tired or grumpy or stressed out or annoyed.  The Bridegroom will come, he says, but not necessarily when we expect him.  And not necessarily in a form we will recognize.              I spent three we ..read more

   Praised be Jesus Christ…now and forever!    If you’ve been watching the news, then you’re probably as depressed as I am.  It just seems like everything is falling apart.  When I start feeling like this, I call to mind something one of our old monks used to tell me:  “Don’t be upset when there’s bad stuff in the news. At least the bad stuff is still newsworthy. Be upset when good things become newsworthy.”  And he was right.  Two days ago, I returned from California, which I’ve always thought of as the epicenter of ..read more

Acts 3:1-10 Peter and John were going up to the temple area for the three o’clock hour of prayer. And a man crippled from birth was carried and placed at the gate of the temple called “the Beautiful Gate” every day to beg for alms from the people who entered the temple. When he saw Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked for alms. But Peter looked intently at him, as did John, and said, “Look at us.” He paid attention to them, expecting to receive something from them. Peter said, “I have neither silver nor gold, but what I do have I give you: in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazo ..read more

In preparation for this homily, I consulted the 21st Century theologian, Charlie Waltz.  You probably haven’t heard of him because he’s an 8th-Grader in our school.   You also probably haven’t heard of him because he isn’t a very good theologian.  He told me that the moral of our readings today is “don’t commit adultery or you're gonna get in trouble." Imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered that Saint Augustine had virtually the same interpretation!         In his commentary on the Gospel of John ..read more

I spent the year before I came to the abbey taking Greek at Saint Louis U. and waiting tables at a fine dining establishment downtown.  For the record, I was, without a doubt, the world’s worst waiter.  I forgot which tables I was assigned, I brought entres before salads and deserts before drinks.   I once spilled an entire tray of margaritas down the back of a patron’s blouse.  And worst of all, no matter how I tried, I couldn’t, for the life of me, remember the difference between Boston clam chowder and New England clam chowder.  N ..read more

    Christmas is a return to our origins. It is possible to feel the “Spirit Christmas”, but only if we have the strength of mind to go back to kindergarten, and pretend that we never left. So I will not apologize, on Christmas morning, for taking you back to the origins of the human race; to those nursery rhymes which came together to form the introduction to the oldest story in the world, a story which begins at a time when the world did not exist at all. Those kindergarten stories have fallen out of vogue in recent years. We don’t like to be caught reading them; it was the s ..read more

Georgia then...   I’m not a fan of children.  It’s no secret.  They creep me out.  They always seem to be watching me, and never have anything constructive to offer about their observances.  They are largely uneducated, they’re selfish, their hygiene is deplorable, and their conversation lacks depth.  I once had a thirty-minute discourse with my two-year-old niece during which her only response—in fact, the only word she used during the entire conversation—was “Fork.”  And little babies are even worse.   ..read more

    Saint Luke, the evangelist, spends more time on Jesus' prayer than any other Gospel writer; and in today's reading, he hones in on the core of that teaching:  a communal declaration of faith, an exhortation to relentless prayer, and the assurance that God will answer.     But it all begins with a request from his followers.  The disciples notice that Jesus has this special way of praying, and they say to him, “Teach us how to pray like that.  Teach us how to pray like you do.”  Jesus’ answer is a seven-stage dialogue of ..read more

Today is “Laetare Sunday.”  On this day, priests wear rose-colored vestments, and our liturgy begins with a Latin introit commanding us to rejoice.  “Laetare!” we sing. Lent is half-way over.   So.  This morning’s sermon starts with a riddle:  What do Gerard Manly Hopkins, Earnest Hemingway, Prostitutes and pink vestments have in common?  To be honest, I don’t know the answer to this riddle.  It’s just that I started writing this sermon four times, kept getting distracted, and then finally, fell asleep.  So what I’ve got here are four ideas with nothin ..read more