Homily – 4th Sunday of Lent – March 19th, 2023

Apparently, in the Early Church, you could not be welcomed into the Church, through baptism, unless you were guided into the spiritual insights of the story of the Samaritan woman at the well (last Sunday’s gospel), the story of the man born blind (today’s gospel), and the story of the raising of Lazarus (next Sunday’s gospel).  Sponsors or mentors guided you into these stories, guided you out of these stories, and helped you to apply these stories to your own life. 

Isn’t ...

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Reflection – Embracing Blindness

Jesus’ disciples asked, “who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?’  I hear some variation on this question almost every week in the hospital. “What did I do to deserve this?’ ‘Why are we being punished?” “What should I have done differently?”  When bad things happen, most of us look for something that will make life seem fair and, perhaps even more important, predictable.  We want to be able to see what is coming so that ...

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Reflection – Who is my neighbour?

When Jesus replied to a religious student asking, “Who is my neighbor?” the story of the Good Samaritan was given to all of us.  In today’s gospel from John, another story about a Samaritan is told.   What do these stories tell us about our faith and how does our faith guide us?

A letter from Archbishop Valery Vienneau back in December of 2014 states, “the dwindling number of practicing Catholics forces us to reconsider our priorities as Christian communities whose primary ...

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Homily – 2nd Sunday of Lent – March 5th, 2023

For all their goodness, intelligence, and enthusiasm, many in the younger generation lack patience. For the most part, they see little or no value in “delayed gratification.” In time they will learn, what we all had to learn, that some things really are worth waiting for. Learning this lesson will be particularly painful and frustrating for the generation who grew up in a world of fast food, high-speed internet, and smart phones. With the invention of the credit card in ...

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Reflection – Listen! Do You Want to Know a Secret?

For the weeks leading up to Lent, those of us at St. Elizabeth of the Trinity have been listening to Fr. Phil remind us what Jesus was trying to tell us through his Sermon on the Mount: that we are to be light, salt and blessing to the world; in fact, that we are light, salt and blessing.  Then as we entered  Lent we heard that our temptation is not to believe or live that.  This Sunday, the story of ...

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Homily – 1st Sunday of Lent – February 26th, 2023

We spent the last four weeks on the mountain listening to Jesus deliver what we traditionally call the “Sermon on the Mount.” If you recall, it all began with Jesus ascending the mountain not to look down on us, but to get us to look up. He ascended the mountain to tell us the truth about who we are from God’s perspective. We are blessedness, salt and light, and we are challenged to let the blessedness, salt and light work in our ...

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Homily – Ash Wednesday – February 22nd, 2023

One of the most powerful rituals I ever experienced was not one of the Church’s sacraments nor did it happen in a church building. It was a ritual I experienced on a Men’s Rite of Passage Retreat. One entire day of the retreat was dedicated to the topic of grief and how we experience it or, to our own detriment, avoid it. The ritual involved lots and lots of ashes. We laid in them, we knelt in them, we poured them over ...

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Reflection – The Angels Among Us

As our Church enters into the desert period of its Liturgical year, I feel as though the world around me is entering into its fourth full, 365-days-a-year-tour through its own Lenten wilderness.  Much of what I thought I knew, or took for granted, has been turned upside-down, sometimes in good ways but also in bad ways.

During Lent, Christians know there is a journey ahead, but we also know we are headed into a certain celebration of life, light, and resurrection. ...

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Homily – 7th Sunday in Ordinary Time – February 19th, 2023

I remember, when my mother was still alive, she wouldn’t let us get away with anything. She was as they say, “honest as the day is long.” One time, when I was 17 years old, she was a passenger with me as I stopped to gas up the car. That was when you could drive all week on $20 dollars-worth of gas and still have money to spare. I did my best, on that particular fill up, to stop the ...

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Reflection – May We See the Sacredness in Each Other

This week’s readings are the most challenging yet. With so much going on in the world today and so many of us having problems with our spirituality, it makes you wonder what is next.

The statement in the first reading makes you realize that we are holy because we were created in the image of God. This holiness that is given to us in baptism, is our gift that carries us through life with a caring heart.

A caring heart doesn’t discriminate ...

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