Poor Thomas gets a very bad rap for having doubted his fellow apostles' proclamation of the Lord's Resurrection. Yet, in the end, he is the true hero of John's Gospel with his simple, profound, and altogether perfect profession of faith: "My Lord and my God!" It too a bit for him to get there, but that profession of faith is the capstone of John's Gospel. 

Homily shared with the Saint Francis Catholic Community in Cuenca, EC. 

John's account of the First Day of the Week particularly highlights the fact that the first to find Jesus' tomb empty was Mary of Magdala; she is also the first to encounter the Risen Jesus and proclaim his resurrection to the other. The immensity of what she experienced when Jesus called her by name is all the more grand by the darkness that preceded that moment of resurrection grace! 

Easter morning homily shared with the Saint Francis Catholic Community in Cuenca, Ecuador.

Hearing once again the devastating story of Jesus' passion and death (Gospel of John), the simple question of "Why?" comes to the fore. Why did Jesus have to suffer like this to save us? Let us see if we can approach an answer...

Homily shared with the Saint Francis Catholic Community in Cuenca, Ecuador. 

Memory is the key to understanding tonight's mysteries. We remember the Passover and in the remembering, it becomes present to us. We remember Jesus' breaking of the bread and passing of the cup and he becomes present to us, flesh and blood. We remember Jesus' washing of the feet of his apostles and in the remembering he is washing our feet. 

Homily for the Mass of the Lord's Supper, Holy Thursday, shared with the Saint Francis Catholic Community in Cuenca, Ecuador. 

Grief is a most weird experience. It has its own timtable and agenda, coming and going in waves of all sizes. Grief maoy be weird because death, too, is a most strange experience. She who was alive one minute is dead the next: the disjunction between the two realities is confounding in a deeply troubling way. Jesus' encounter with the sisters of dead Lazarus, his great friend, reveals him as one who knows well the strange and weird experiences of both death and grief. He weeps with them and is shaken to his core by the reality. But his calling forth of Lazarus from his tomb is so much more than just another miracle among miracles; in John's gospel is is a SIGN that points to a mystery much deeper: God is creator and mastor of life! Death has no power! 

Homily shared with the Saint Francis Catholic Community in Cuenca, Ecuador.

Jesus' encounter with the beggar born blind in John's Gospel reminds us that there are a variety of "blindnesses" among us. There is the physical blindness of the beggar himself, then there is the economic and social poverty that is the consequence of that disability, and then there is spiritual poverty of being known for all time as a sinner, someone punished by God for some great sin. The beggar knows well all three. Beyond that, there is a blindness in this story that has nothing to do with physical eyes, but a terrible, dark blindness of the heart manifest in those who interrogate the blind man after his healing...and so sadly...even his parents who all but disown him...even after his healing! 

Homily shared with the Saint Francis Catholic Community in Cuenca, Ecuador.

Miracles in the gospels come in two types: those that bend the laws of nature and those that bend the laws of society, culture, and in the end, the human heart. Today's reading from John's gospel is of the second type: a miracle of the heart that leads a Samaritan woman of rather dubious repute to life as a kind of neo-apostle proclaiming Jesus as the messiah to her neighbors. All this because Jesus chose to break through all manner of social, cultural, and religious taboos to speak to her and touch her heart...a miracle indeed! 

Homily shared with the Saint Francis Catholic Community in Cuenca, Ecuador. 

The "real world" is not always so easy to live in. It is one that is marked by all the afflictions mentioned in the story of the expulsion of Adam and Eve even into our own age. It would be easy to say with some existentialist philosophers of the 20th century, that there is nothing more than the life we know here...and death...so just buck up and accept it. Jesus and his disciples had just had a big dose of the "real world" as he shared with them the terrible things that were going to come to pass in Jerusalem shortly, but a few days later, Jesus lets Peter, James, and John experience the profound rebuttle to those existenialist philosophers: he lets them see, hear, and know the presence of God in himself...and in the "real world" beyond. What the Jesuit poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins put so beautifully in words: "The world is charged with the grandeur of God." 

(By the way, this homily was interrupted by a happy little dog ambling down the center aisle, smiling at the preacher, and ambling on...thus the odd interruption mid-way through!)

Homily shared with the Saint Francis Catholic Community in Cuenca, Ecuador. 

The story of Adam and Eve's original sin is a sin of hubris: striving to become gods themselves by knowing what God knows. The consequenses of that sin reverberate to the present day. God's response to our human inclination to make ourselves gods is to come to humanity, God in flesh here with us, so we don't need to be gods. Jesus' fundamental temptation in the desert, then? To shortcut his humanity and not really be fully human anong us. 

Homily shared with the Saint Francis Catholic Community in Cuenca, Ecuador. 

The decision of a young priest to "sprinkle" ashes over the crown of the faithfuls' heads rather than smudge a cross on their forehead was met with some annoyance. Who, according to today's Gospel passage was "right"? 

Homily shared with the Saint Francis Catholic Community in Cuenca, Ecuador.