Homilies

Homily for the 21st Sunday in Ordinal Time, August 20th, 2022

The image of a grandiose, endless banquet is the most common image used in Holy Scripture to describe heaven. It is the lavish wedding feast of Christ, the Lamb of God, and his Bride, the Church. It is meant to have all nations and all peoples as wedding guests. And people will come from the east and the west and from the north and the south and will recline at table in the Kingdom of God. Luke 13:29 With hope-filled hearts we should long incessantly for admission into that heavenly banquet hall. Yet, we need to be deeply startled by the warning which Jesu

Homilies

Homily for the 20th Sunday in Ordinal Time, August 13th, 2022

Chances are that today’s gospel passage forces us to toss aside any syrupy picture of Jesus and, consequently, it might take awhile for us to come up with a more accurate one. For starters: we have to accept the fact that the glorified body of Jesus, as he made himself present among his disciples locked in the Upper Room on Easter Day and which was taken up to heaven on Ascension Day was, still is, and will forever be the body of a Jewish man. No blue eyes, no flowing blond locks, no sugary, (bordering on effeminate) features and no weakling affected by a langui

Homilies

Homily for the 19th Sunday in Ordinal Time, August 6th, 2022

He will gird himself, have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them. Luke 12:37 As promised, in heaven, our triumphant and most glorious Lord Jesus will wait on us!  Scholars call this the eschatological reversal. It is God serving his people, or more precisely, Christ serving his Body. Heaven is all about love and service, eternally, with infinite care, without growing tired, without being bored, without fear that something will go wrong. The author, whom we call Luke, wrote his gospel for the grandchildren of those who had physically seen Jesu

Homilies

Homily for the 16th Sunday in Ordinal Time, July 17th, 2022

Whenever life gets to be too heavy, the world proposes its ways to lighten it up and unwind: drugs, alcohol, speed, travels, a change of pace, trying something totally new or extreme or wild and so on. We, of course, have our own ways, tested over time, and in different settings. By now, we know what works for us somewhat and what doesn’t work. However, today we are invited to consider how we can refresh our soul by introducing God into the equation. By looking at what happened in the life of Abraham we might realize that God desires to visit us whenever our da

Homilies

Homily for the 15th Sunday in Ordinal Time, July 10th, 2022

Covid-19 has had a devastating effect on all facets of human interaction: emotional, psychological, moral, economical, and spiritual; all these affected facets have contributed to a slow, general dehumanization of society. To a different degree we have all been impacted by the forced isolation, the restrictions, the contradicting guidelines, and by the way so many aspects of our life have been controlled by others. In this painful context, awareness that especially children, teenagers, and young adults need more sincere, selfless love, accompanied by warm human to

Homilies

Homily for the 14th Sunday in Ordinal Time, July 3rd, 2022

We are given a lot of orders at this Holy Mass: we are ordered to rejoice with Jerusalem (a figure of the Church); to be glad because of her; to pray the Master of the harvest to send laborers for his harvest; to be on our way; to carry nothing extra like money bag, sack, sandals; we are to remain focused on our task; we are also ordered to say to each visited household: “Peace to this household”; we are told to stay in that household; not to move around unless necessary and so on. Why? Why is the Lord giving us so many and so precise, detailed orders? And why all

Homilies

Homily for the 13th Sunday in Ordinal Time, June 26th, 2022

“For freedom Christ set us free; so stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.” (Gal. 5:1) St. Paul writes to us of a type of freedom loftier than the one guaranteed us by the Constitution. It is the freedom for which Christ died and rose from the dead to give us so that we, believers, may not use this to freedom as an opportunity for the flesh. (Gal. 5: 13) Alas, individualism, the haughty child of relativism, has been pushing the irrational impossibility that everyone is entitled to do as he/she pleases, as it is convenient to hi

Homilies

Homily for The Solemnity of Corpus Christi, June 19th, 2022

Last Sunday, St. Paul pointed out (cf. Romans 5: 1-5) that within the Body of Christ we are living in a “truer reality” beyond the reality perceived by our senses. Conventionally, what passes as reality can keep us away from living truly as embodied spirits made for a share in the eternal glory proper of the Holy Trinity. Today, Solemnity of Corpus Christi, we explore deeply the “truer reality” of a God who is totally “engaged” in our lives. This exploration begins by contemplating the mysterious figure of Melchizedek. Melchizedek, king of [Jeru]Salem, app

Homilies

Homily for The Solemnity of the Holy Trinity, June 12th, 2022

The solemnity of the Holy Trinity tackles the principal and hardest mystery of our faith by showing us that God is a Community of love and life. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are in this timeless, everlasting relationship of eternal sharing of love as well as the Source of all life. As mind-blowing as this reality already sounds, through Baptism and full Communion in the Second Person, the Son Jesus, from all eternity, the Holy Trinity has decreed to include all of us in this endless Life-giving and sharing of Love. Today, we are also invited to reflect on

Homilies

Homily for Pentecost, June 5th, 2022

If we, westerners, had been in the Upper Room on the morning of Pentecost Day we would have had a hard time trying to sort things out and decipher God’s message. Not so for the disciples gathered in it with the Blessed Mother. They were all Jews; they must have quickly realized that they were experiencing a powerful theophany with fire and thunderous, driving wind, like the fire of the burning bush (cf. Exodus 3:2) when God revealed to Moses his intention to do something about the sufferings of his people in Egypt and similar to what the Israelites experienced