I'm back !

My new book is coming along!
When I decided that I actually would jump in and get a book published, I decided that the quickest way to do it was to EDIT a book that I have ALREADY written! For the last four years I have been writing out my homilies, and so I have over a hundred that are usable.
The challenge for me was to make it interesting, and personal.
So I decided to weave two themes together:
One, an autobiography of my life as a homilist, showing how significant moments in my life have affected my style of preaching;
Second, to illustrate for the reader the process by which a homily is written and developed.
In this way, I found a target audience for the book: people at the beginning of a ministry of preaching, in whatever form, and people who are interested in the quality (or lack of same) in Catholic and other churches.
Stay tuned!

Happy New Year!

Yes, we survived the end of the Mayan calendar. Our civil calendar  year 2013 has caught up with the  Catholic Church's new year which began with Advent.  Our Orthodox brethren wait for January 14 to celebrate by the old Julian calendar.  Now, we wait for the Lunar New Year in February 10, which begins the Year of the Snake.
But we missed the Muslim year 1434 which began already on November 15, Ras as-Sanah, not to be confused with  Jewish New Year 5773, Rosh Hashana, which began on September 16.
If this sounds like trivia to you, consider that in different parts of Jerusalem they have to be aware of five of these calendars (plus the fact that some use Daylight Saving time, and others do not!)

But enough trivia. Happy New Year to all.
I started this blog last year as an experiment. A couple months ago I got stuck, and as happens with procrastination, the longer I delayed the harder it got to return. Soooo....
My single New Year's resolution is to restart this blog.
I have a clearer focus this time: one, I will share my weekly homilies, which is a feature many people liked. Two, I will share poems on an occasional basis, as the spirit moves. Third, I will share my reflections on a topic which has always occupied my interest, but now more so than ever: the relationship between religion and science. I think of this as an ongoing class, and hopefully a discussion.

So stay tuned.

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Epiphany 2013

Homily

for Epiphany  January  2013

Where is God? In heaven? In your heart? Here in church? Everywhere?

(Note: I really DO ask the question, and ask people in church to answer it !! )

This is a very important question, which most people ask many times during their life. We truly believe that God became human, we celebrate it at Christmas, we profess it at Mass every week, yet we often struggle to recognize God present in our everyday lives.

Today, in Epiphany, this second great feast of the Christmas season, the Church gives us a guide to help us answer this question.

We are coming to the end of the Christmas season, and what a season it is!

Even people who don't go to church, who don't believe in God, get into the Christmas spirit for a few weeks, smiling at strangers, showing charity toward the poor and needy, being generous and kind. Christmas truly celebrates the birth of a child in our world, and most of us are carried along by that joy and happiness.

The feast of Christmas shows God's presence in our world in a very clear and striking way. It reminds us that sharing, that giving and receiving love, is indeed the most powerful force in our world.

But, as adults, we know that Christmas cannot go on forever. So for that reason the church gives us other feasts to help us understand better the mystery of God become human.

Even though we celebrate the birth of a child, we know that the child's life began much earlier. When?

People answer, Conception, the Annunciation)

Correct, the Church gives us the feast of the Annunciation to remind us that this great mystery began long before Christmas. Mary received the Word of God in her womb and the Great Mystery took place. And then what happened??  NOTHING.  Nothing special. What did Mary do the next day? She got up, cleaned the house, fixed a meal, washed dishes -- did the chores. Her daily routine. Nothing special.

Oh, yes, she went to visit her cousin Elizabeth. Was that special? Did Mary sit on a throne and wait for Elizabeth to wait on her and sing her praises? No. She did housework.

For every joyful, festive Christmas day there were nine months of waiting. Working. Routine. Morning sickness. Pain. Fatigue. And not only that -- Mary also suffered in unusual ways. She was an unwed mother, a shame and embarrassment to everyone. She was not to give birth at home, surrounded by family, but alone, in a stable. Yes, she certainly suffered.

Think of it -- for every Christmas day there are nine months of hard preparation. God gives us this example so that we can understand the routine and painful times of life. When this happens in our own lives, we can feel not only the pain and suffering, the routine and the loneliness, but we can also feel the Word of God growing inside us, as the Word grew within Mary. If we feel only the suffering, we are lost; but if we feel God's Word growing and developing inside us,we will be ready when the wonderful moment of birth and new life arrives.

So what about today's feast? What do we celebrate today? What are these Magi doing? Why did they leave their homes? What were they following?  A star?  Yes.

But think about it. Who else saw that star?  Everyone. It was not a secret. Anyone could have followed that star. But only a few did. And they persevered, and arrived, and presented their gifts.

So this feast gives us a third way of appreciating God's appearing in the world as human -- the Incarnation. God appears not only in secret and in ordinary ways, as with Mary. God appears not only as a sudden burst of light and joy, as in Bethlehem. God also draws us from afar, like the Magi, following a star. Each one of us has a star. Each one of us has that pearl of great price, that treasure more valuable than anything else on earth. If we follow, if we are faithful, we will find God, not in a palace, but in a stable. And we will offer, freely, the gifts we have to give.

Notice that the Magi had problems. They needed help. They got lost. The heavenly star was not enough; they asked for directions. They trusted evil people like Herod. But through their faithfulness and purity of heart, they found God made human.

These three feasts -- the Annunciation,  Christmas, and Epiphany -- show us three different ways in which we experience the miracle of the Incarnation. May God's Holy Spirit guide us as we recognize and accept God's love entering our hearts.

Morning on Lake Michigan

Poem sunrise

Below the brightening sky lies
that blue-gray layer
hugging the horizon,
the undercurrent of the world,
seeming to block out all hope
of sunrise.

Suddenly it comes--
that sliver of the Sun God
peeking red over the horizon,
surveying its realm,
assuring
once more for the trillionth time
that all will be well.

Red, orange, yellow, white it climbs
up the ladder of clouds.
Day has begun.

A different blog site

Dear Friends:

Rather than give you my own writing this week, I'd like to introduce you to another blog which I find fascinating. It's called vox nova, and it is a Catholic blog dedicated to respectful and thoughtful discussion of current issues. Amazingly, it draws from both "liberal" and "conservative" readers, who as far as humanly possible, treat each other with respect.

You can find it by googling "vox nova", but I suggest you paste this URL into your browser so you go directly to an article (and responses) I found fascinating.

http://vox-nova.com/2012/05/10/why-i-am-annoyed-with-both-president-obama-and-cardinal-dolan-on-the-same-day-on-the-same-issue/

And remember, when you read my own blog,   www.thebodaciousword.blogspot.com  ,  PLEASE say something !!!

Tim

Labor Day homily

In the summer of 2008, I was transferred to our four-parish cluster in Northern Mississippi. By late October, I felt it was my responsibility to inform our parishioners about their Catholic tradition in light of the upcoming presidential election. As part of my homily, I read the seven points from the US Bishops' document "Faithful Citizenship":  life and dignity of the human person, call to family, community, and participation, rights and responsibilities, option for the poor and vulnerable, dignity of work and rights of workers, solidarity,  respect for God's creation.

After the Mass, one man came up to me and angrily stated: "I never thought I would hear the Democratic party platform read from the pulpit!" Others complained to the pastor, who in turn advised me that the homily was not the place for such announcements.

As I prepared my homily for Labor Day this year, I picked up a copy of my favorite encyclical of Pope John Paul's: "Laborem Exercens" (On Human Work) and wistfully thought that if I were to return to that same congregation and begin reading from the beloved Pope's teaching, I would get the same reaction. It's too easy for us to pick and choose among church teachings.

Yet the Church is truly catholic -- vast and varied. This struck me as I selected readings for the Labor Day mass. The Lectionary offers two options for each reading, and they could not be more different.

The first reading offers two versions of the creation story from Genesis. One gives mankind "dominion" over creation. The command is to "fill the earth and subdue it." The other simply states that man(kind) was placed in the garden "to cultivate and care for it." Wow! What different attitudes toward creation!

The choices for the second reading suggest that Paul did not theologize much about work. He saw it as a simple necessity of life: "one unwilling to work, should not eat."  Obviously a statement with social implications.

In the Gospel readings, we see the greatest contrast of all. In the first, Jesus tells his followers to trust in God's providence, and "do not worry about tomorrow." In the second option, we have the parable of the talents, where the third servant, who had done nothing wrong except bury his talent, had his talent taken away, and was thrown outside "where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth." This is a parable even Ayn Rand could approve of.

With such a disparity of teachings in scripture, it is necessary for the Church to amplify and clarify what the tradition is communicating to us, and since 1891, there has been a regular stream of encyclicals and other statements to do just this. It is also true that "the social justice teaching of the Church is its best-kept secret." One of the difficulties is that this area does not lend itself to black-and-white absolute statements. Even at the beginning of his pontificate, while the Soviet Union was still alive and well, Pope John Paul saw the need of a path distinct from communism and capitalism, since both of them were materialistic in nature. Middle paths do not generate the same moral fervor as extreme ones, so the Church's stand on economic issues has always received a tepid response.

My enthusiasm for "Laborem Exercens" comes from the Pope's insistence on the spiritual value of human work. In my own words, this makes mankind a "sacrament" to creation, to continue to transform it and help bring it to perfection. He consistently returns to this theme, to avoid the temptation to look at work, and the economy in general, as materialistic realities, governed by mechanical laws.

John Paul puts great emphasis on the respect for the human person. He claims that every worker is a free subject, an agent, not a passive object. With this in mind, he can confidently state that work which does not involve the creativity and free will of the worker cannot be considered worthy of human beings. He goes on to endorse labor unions and associations, and also worker participation in the management of enterprises. He makes the bald statement that "labor has priority over capital." I would be interested in knowing what percentage of Catholics would endorse that view.

In the larger economic sense, he reminds us that in the Catholic tradition, the right to property is not absolute -- it is conditioned by the need to promote the common good. This statement alone would get the Pope tossed out of a lot of churches. Several years later, the US bishops would state that "the economy exists for people, not people for the economy." Such shocking statements can come and go without making much of an impact on society. Moral indignation over economic injustices has ebbed since the 1980's. Will it return?

Hello!  I decided to begin this blog both as a motivation for me to keep writing, and also as a way to share my writing with others. As for WHAT I would write about, I left that up to whatever inspiration I received.
I didn't anticipate that the next thing I would write would be a homily. I offered to celebrate a Sunday mass while I was visiting Our Lady of Guadalupe in Houston, and this homily is the result.

When I looked at the readings for this Sunday, I was struck by the infamous second reading where Paul, among other things, tells wives to be submissive to their husbands. This passage is so offensive to some people that the bishops gave us the option of skipping over it completely. I don't choose to do that. We have been given the scriptures, and we need to accept them and be confronted by them as they are. By that I do not mean only literally, but in the fullness of their meaning.
I developed this homily for a very specific congregation, most of whom are very traditional and do not question the literal meaning of the text. In a ten minute homily, it was not possible or advisable to do so. But it brought up a lot of questions for me, which I will have to respond to at another time. So here it is.
Please -- respond to the blog!  I've been told that is the main reason to have one -- to have interaction with people. It's going to be fun.