Saturday, July 12, 2008, at the Catholic Pastoral Center, Diocese of Springfield in Illinois.

You need an explanation of the parables of Jesus ... if you want to make them safe and domesticated and toothless. Jesus probably did not provide explanations; somebody in the early Church considered this necessary. Jesus intended his parables to have teeth -- to keep gnawing at us as we consider how we enter into the kingdom of God.

Saturday, July 12, 2008, at the Catholic Pastoral Center, Diocese of Springfield in Illinois.

Saturday, July 12, 2008, at the Catholic Pastoral Center, Diocese of Springfield in Illinois.

Saturday, July 12, 2008, at the Catholic Pastoral Center, Diocese of Springfield in Illinois.

You need to decide whether the homilist is conscious. After a week spent at Catholic HEART Workcamp, I was suffering from severe sleep deprivation. I seem to recall talking about CREATURELINESS. Believe me, I was feeling like a creature, not a creator.

This was the homily given on the occasion of my silver jubilee. This homily is unusual because I am interrupted by people explaining to me how funny it was for me to say "You don't know one another ... and it's a good thing." They didn't let me complete my thought -- it's a good thing (for me, at least) that all these people from across nearly 51 years can come together for something very meaningful. It was especially good for me.

Since Easter was the earliest we'll ever see it, we have before us twenty-six weeks of Ordinary Time, and that means six months of a more or less continuous reading from the Gospel of Matthew. Today's passage is the conclusion of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. Does the exhortation to "build your house on rock" contradict St. Paul's teaching that salvation is a free gift?

We were baptized into "the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." The communitarian being of God Himself helps us to understand why it is absolutely necessary for us to live our lives in relationship.

See the Vigil of Pentecost for references to harrowing experiences (does even St. Paul have the right to be the one talking about "labor pains" on the weekend of Mother's Day?). Going through crises may perhaps purify our sense of what really matters in life. We may be more responsive to the Holy Spirit.