Homilies (Page 26)

Laetare Sunday or “Happiness Sunday”: Salvation is free-of-charge! 2 Chronicles 36:14-16, 19-23; Ephesians 2:4-10; John 3:14-21 An Irish missionary priest working in Nigeria had a catechist/pastoral agent working with him. He noticed how dedicated, resourceful and pious he was, yet the man was not a communicant/he wasn’t receiving Holy Communion because he had two wives. The first wife’s name was Mercy and the second wife’s name was Grace. After many years of working together, the priest decided to confront his pastoral agent/catechist on the issue of polygyny. He invited him to his office to speak with him. He advised him to be married in church,Read More →

[I wrote two homilies this weekend. Both are below. Kindly make your choice] Gift-of-God Sunday: From Commandments to the Cross/Love/Jesus Exodus 20:1-17; 1 Corinthians 1:22-25; John 2:13-25 A new phenomenon in our days is voluntary migration. The human desire to dwell where there is peace and guarantee of peace. There is no one measure of what constitutes peace, but when people migrate willingly, they choose the reasons for their migration. God proposes the best way to peace—Commandments—and invites us to migrate to the zone of peace—LOVE. The zone of peace is the place of God’s commandments or the zone of the Cross. This Sunday isRead More →

Generosity Sunday: Learning Self-Donation from Jesus’ Free Gift of Salvation Genesis 22:1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18; Romans 8:31b-34; Mark 9:2-10 If you are angry at the needless poverty in the world, the good news is that God too is super angry and outraged at you for allowing that to happen. The human person is God’s agent for the eradication of spiritual and material poverty in the world. Today is Action or Generosity Sunday, God’s call to all and sundry to eliminate poverty through generosity and self-sacrifice! Instead of an attempted infanticide by Abraham, in our first reading, God teaches us a lesson on charity and generosity:Read More →

Conversion Sunday: The Problem of Sinovirus or Sin-virus Genesis 9:8-15; 1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:12-15 With the ongoing lessons of Covid-19, where a tiny and invisible virus brought the human earth to its knees, we now know that the invisible is powerful and can be destructive. The fact that we cannot see something is not an argument for its non-existence. We cannot see viruses with the naked eyes, but they exist nonetheless! Yes, we have manufactured microscopes to help the human eyes to see viruses, yet we have no control over their nefarious and devastating effects on us. We have human knowledge about viruses, butRead More →

Human Dignity Sunday: Not Just a Priest, but also a Prophet Leviticus 13:1-2, 44-46; 1 Corinthians 10:31-11:1; Mark 1:40-45 Outcasts, there are many of them today. We see them on our streets, we watch them on our television sets, and their drowned corpses sometimes feed sea creatures as they flee from their countries in search of human dignity. They are not lepers, we now have treatment for leprosy: “outcasts” are the nobodies of today, the poor, drug addicts, prostitutes, immigrants, peoples of color, victims of war, prisoners of conscience, etc. Our democratic and autocratic regimes settle some of them in camps, condemn some to perpetuallyRead More →

Encouragement Sunday: When working Hard is doing God’s Will Job 7:1-4, 6-7; 1 Corinthians 9:16-19, 22-23; Mark 1:29-39 Our period of Covid-19 syncs with two dimensions of job’s life. On the one hand, we are reminded of the illness that ravaged the life of Job and threatened his life; on the other, the silence of God to his prayer of anguish and complaint also seems to be our lot. This is the situation of many of us, even when we are not infected with Coronavirus, but our normal lifestyles have been taken away from us because of the limitations of Covid-19 restrictions. We all prayRead More →

Liberation Sunday: When Leaders are Liberators, Christians Sing God’s Praises Deuteronomy 18:15-20; 1 Corinthians 7:32-35; Mark 1:21-28 More than anything else, the image and personality of Moses evoke liberation. He is the presence and face of God in the liberation from Egypt and the journey to the Promised Land. Even when Moses plays the role of mediator between the people and God, it is still the image of liberation from God’s punishment due to sin that comes through—a mediator is also a liberator. When Moses gives God’s commandments to the people on Mount Sinai, it is also the charter of rights and means of liberationRead More →

The Sunday of the Word of God: The Urgency of Now and Evangelizing the Evangelizers  Jonah 3:1-5, 10; 1 Corinthians 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20 Today, “urgency” and the “evangelization of evangelizers” characterize the language of our readings. With a sense of radical urgency, our first reading declares, “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed”; our gospel reading corroborates this sense of urgency saying, “   “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.” As for our second reading, time is up: “For the world in its present form is passing away”. For us today, politicalRead More →

Temple Destroyers: Lessons in Mediation and Engagement! 1 Samuel 3:3-10, 19; 1 Corinthians 6:13-15, 17-20; John 1:35-42 Our world needs mediators, those who point out the ways of God to others. These mediators must be credible and exemplary people. This is imperative because our structures are collapsing evident in the bleeding in church membership. The visit of Covid-19 intensifies the emptying of pews, because Christians do not know what to believe and whom to trust. Even their hope in democracy writhes from a recent American beating. Democracy in America has a symbol, the Washington, D.C.’s Capitol! At the moment, that symbol drags in the mud.Read More →