Month: September 2021

  • God Doesn’t Make Garbage

    Strangely enough, the reward and punishment paradigm has no place in an adult spirituality. The basic problem with it is that, once people get beyond the toddler stage, the pleasure principle isn’t effective—although the success of advertising shows we’re still vulnerable to it. As we mature, we begin to realize that rewards don’t deliver what they promise. Once we attain them, we see them as the temporary tawdry counterfeits for happiness that they most often are. Punishments don’t fare any better.

    Homily

  • Getting Your Own Way

    What are you willing to give to get your own way? How much effort are you willing to expend? What are you willing to pay? to sacrifice? What’s it worth to you?

    Homily

  • Jesus Was a Failure

    “Who do people say that I am?” Listen to the news. Listen to the talking heads. Listen to the preachers. Watch the Jesus documentaries on the Discovery Channel. Fine. “But who do you say that I am?” “You are the Christ.” The Messiah. The anointed king who’ll save us. You’ll make everything better. You’ll supply us with money, power, and prestige. You’ll lighten our burdens, cure our diseases, and bring our dead back to life.

    Homily

  • Can you hear me now?

    Which do you think would be more difficult, to be born sight-impaired or to be born hearing-impaired? I’ve always thought that blindness would be worse: not being able to see the beauty of the world or the faces of my loved ones, and not being able to get around easily without some sort of assistance. That’s what I thought until I started meditating on today’s gospel. “And the people brought to him a deaf man who had a speech impediment.” That’s when I began to understand things somewhat differently.

    Homily