September 4, 2022

Homily: Cowardice or Courage?

It’s a bit jaundiced but probably true, what Mark Twain said.
August 7, 2022

Homily: Grown-Up Christianity

Let’s review what we’ve heard these past few weeks. Let’s review what Jesus said.
July 23, 2022

Homily: Peace, Joy, and Defeating the Noonday Demon

Kathleen Norris, the spiritual writer, said it was a “force we ignore at our peril.”[1] She was talking about the spiritual affliction, the wicked thought, the sin called acedia—sometimes called sloth. Which happens to the best of us, many of us (which was Norris’ point).
July 11, 2022

A Reflection at Subiaco: What is the Desire of Our Age?

Subiaco, Italy, 2015 It was the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre who said, “We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another—doubtless very different—St. Benedict.” We exist, rather unknowingly, he said, in a new dark age, and so he invoked a figure from the past, this saint whose beginning we’ve come to see.
July 10, 2022

Homily: The Fear to Go and Do Likewise

I can’t say I feel all that fit to preach today, given how I failed this gospel just a few days ago.
July 3, 2022

Homily: Does Our Witness Bear the Wounds of Jesus?

Paul said the time would come, a time when people would no longer “tolerate sound doctrine” but rather follow their own “desires” and “curiosity,” listening no longer to the truth but instead to “myths.”[1] Jesus too—he didn’t suggest his followers would be all that successful in their preaching either. The “world hates you,” he told his […]