Fr. Brendan McGuire - Podcasts that Break open the Word of God

The scriptures are a collection of defining moments for the Jewish and the Christian people. They have been put together for the most defining moments of our history. The Gospels are collection of defining moments of Jesus' life. And today's Gospel is a bevy of collective and of defining moments. We have multitude of them, not only just for Jesus, but for others. (Read more…) 

Here is my homily for Palm Sunday of the Lord's Passion. Please feel free to share this with others. 

Many prayers for all of us as we enter the holiest week of our church year.

God Bless, 

Fr. Brendan

Today, more than ever, we need to be people who are willing to show up, to show up and not save people, not to rescue them, but to be present to them in the midst their suffering. Whether it be from a divorce or whether it be from a rejection of their family, or whether they are immigrants and they feel no longer welcomed, or whether they feel left out on the sides of society. Our job is to show up, to show the loving presence of God to them. (Read more…)

Here is my homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent. Please feel free to share this with others.

All of us have made mistakes. We have all done something that was wrong, whether a little thing when we were a child or something older. We will always remember how we were treated in that moment of shame, that moment of being caught. That moment can shame us and maim us, or it can transform us into something much better, something more profound. (Read more…)

Here is my homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent. Please feel free to share this with others.

Our lives have become so busy and even about the good things, we can be so busy, we miss God speaking to us at these liminal moments where God is trying to say something different than what we want to hear. It might be saying something challenging that we do not want to hear. It is those moments when we are called to pause like Moses and approach it and take courage to lean in and to move closer to this space. (Read more…)

Here is my homily for the third Sunday of Lent. Please feel free to share this with others.

Sometimes the darkness in our lives can be in fact our friend, because it allows us to focus only on what we need to focus on.Today we have this reading, this classic reading of the man born blind in his blindness. Here is the irony. Here is a man who is born blind, who cannot see, and yet he sees Jesus for who he really is and calls him the son of God. The Pharisees and the scribes can see, but they do not see Jesus for who he really is. (Read more…)

Here is my homily for the Fourth Sunday of Lent for the Second Scrutiny. Due to the Scrutinies, this is a bonus homily for this week. Please feel free to share this with others.

Sometimes we find it hard to accept that God would forgive us for our mistakes. Sometimes when we hurt somebody who we really love and we know we have hurt them and we ask for forgiveness from the Lord, we ask in a sense why did I do that? And we want almost to be punished a little bit because we know we were wrong. So we find it hard to sometime accept. But hopefully we will finally accept God’s forgiveness for us. (Read more…)

Here is my homily for the Fourth Sunday of Lent. Please feel free to share this with others.

We are called to take the living waters, take the bread of life that we receive from here, and to share it with those who so desperately need that fresh living water. You and I might be the only person this week who offers it to them. If you get an inkling to be kind and gentle and not judgmental to someone in any of those categories, then this is your moment.  (Read more…)

Here is my homily for the third Sunday of Lent. This homily was given at the First Scrutiny for our OCIA candidates for this year. Please feel free to share this with others.

“Who do people say that I am?” The apostles first say, you are Elijah or John the Baptist, or one of the other prophets. But then he asks them, he says, “Who do you say that I am?” And Peter, the one who confesses says, “You are the son of the living God. You are the Messiah.” Jesus must say, yes, finally he gets it. He must be delighted after all these three years. So he takes him up a mountain with his two closest apostles, James and John, and reveals himself to them. He assures them that he is the son of God. (Read more…)

Here is my homily for the Second Sunday of Lent. Our own Lenten journey has begun and our Parish Lenten Retreat is now available for replay on Livestream (watch videos).

How we refocus ourselves this Lent is not about our will. It is not us trying to will ourselves back and pushing away the devil in some dramatic fashion. Just come back to who we are. Come back to the fact that we are children of God and that God is our father. (Read more…)

Here is my homily for the First Sunday of Lent. Our own Lenten journey has begun. I hope you can join us this year. Please feel free to share with others.

What we do today is put ashes on our forehead. Not to have a badge of honor that says, “Look at me. I am one of the Catholic ones.” We put ashes on our forehead to remind us to say, “I am a sinner. I am a hypocrite.”But we do not stay there. We do this at the beginning of this Lenten journey. Then the rest of this Lenten journey, we focus on turning back to the Lord, (Read more…) 

Here is my homily for Ash Wednesday. Our own Lenten jpurney has begun. I hope you can join us this year. Please feel free to share with others.