Trinity 17, 2024

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Do you want to be the donkey, or the master? Turned in on ourselves, we don’t merely want to be the master of one donkey. We would like to own a thousand donkeys, a thousand beasts of burden to do my work – a valet to prepare my clothing, an army of lawyers to solve my problems. But in the language of today’s parable, we are not the master. We are the donkey, the one in the pit.

“Which of you,” Jesus addresses the Pharisees at their Sabbath dinner, “Which of you, having a donkey or an ox that has fallen into a pit, will not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day?” We are the donkey fallen into a pit. Look at your life! We’re in a pit of problems, sins of our own and the world’s corruption pushing us down. To adapt the story of Sisyphus, we try and try and try to climb out, but just as we reach the top, slide back down again. ...

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The Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity 2024

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“Dear God.” With these words many prayers begin. But when the desired outcome is achieved, God is no longer so dear. He was a means to an end.

Many people treat each other like that. Relationships are transactional. So long as one gets something valuable from the relationship, he’ll maintain the pretext of friendship. It’s painful to learn someone was never truly your friend.

What about the ten lepers in today’s Gospel? They cry out to Jesus in their need. When the need is met, they skedaddle....

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Invocabit 2024

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You’re a sinner, it’s true. David says in Ps. 51, “Surely I was sinful from birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” Confessing this entails the danger of acceptance. Why change? Why even try?

In today’s Gospel, the Lord Jesus shows us how to fight sin. But that would not be enough, if we were left to our own strength….

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The Epiphany of Our Lord 2023

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In the days of Herod the king, men asked, “Where is He who has been born king of the Jews?”

A dangerous question! Herod was notoriously paranoid, and notoriously ruthless. He eliminated anyone he perceived a threat. This included several sons. To call Herod “troubled” at this news is a masterclass in understatement…

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So That Our Joy May Be Complete

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All the stuff we buy ends up eventually discarded. There’s no joy there. Our own bodies return to the dust. The things we think will make us happy are only temporary. But to be joined to the communion of Jesus and His Church – there is life, and light, and joy. Which is why John wants us to join not his church, but Christ’s Church. Being part of that one, holy, catholic and apostolic church is to enter into communion with the One who is Life. That’s our only path to joy. That’s why John, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, writes his Gospel and letters: “And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.”

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Misericordias Domini: The Third Sunday after Easter 2019

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“The hireling,” Jesus says, “does not own the sheep.” But the Good Shepherd—the true and perfect shepherd—sees the sheep as belonging to Him. “I know My sheep, and am known by My own.”

The sheep, Jesus says, are His – His own. Here Jesus expresses more than mere ownership. This hymnbook is mine; it has my name on it. But more is happening here than just possession. I suppose that’s at the heart of what we call sin – seeing possessions, positions, and even other people as ours, such that we are masters, and everyone else is there to serve us.

But not so with Jesus. When He calls the sheep His own, two realities are coalescing in that one little phrase “My own”: The first is creation, and the second is incarnation.

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Catechetical Sermon on the Second Article of the Creed

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In the hour of darkness—when your career is collapsing; when your marriage is on the ropes; when you come face to face with the ugliness of your sin; when the stench of death cannot be sanitized by the wretched sterility of hospital antiseptic—when in the hour of darkness you despair, you don’t need a concept or a philosophy. A platitude won’t help. An ethic is worst of all, for the accuser gleefully reminds us that we have failed.

The supposed comfort of a nebulous better place I find revolting. Who are you to say there is a better place, and that my loved one is in it, or that I will go there? How do you know?

Leave me alone, incompetent comforter! I need a Lord, a real redeemer who is actually mine, who is coming for me!

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Annunciation 2019

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What happened in Mary’s womb was not a miracle to grab the world’s attention, like some juggler or illusionist. The world-altering event takes place in secret. It happens through God’s Word to one woman, without an audience.

But it is world-altering in the same category as when God first said, “Let there be light.” To God’s fallen creation God Himself enters.

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The Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity 2018

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“What do you think about the Christ?” Jesus asks; “Whose Son is He?” They said to Him, “The Son of David.” David was the great King of Israel to whom was promised a son who would be an everlasting king. But the father is greater than the son. So how, Jesus asks, can David’s son also be David’s Lord?

Those interrogating Jesus cannot answer. The climax of the Gospel reveals the answer: When unbelieving Thomas is confronted with the risen Jesus, who still bears scars on His hands and side, he confesses, “My Lord and my God!” That’s who Jesus is: God in the flesh. True God, begotten of the Father from all eternity, and also true man, born of the virgin Mary. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

But why? Because He yet loves this world whose love has grown cold. The Bridegroom bears the hatred and animosity of His bride, yet He loves her to the end, to the Telos, to the completion of what it means to be human. For the God who is love made us also to love.

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