Homilies (Page 35)

Our Sunday, We Sinners: Finding and Climbing our Sycamore Tree Wisdom 11:22-12:2; 2 Thessalonians 1:11-2:2; Luke 19:1-10 Tell me about it! Many a persons, including Christians, wage wars against Sacramental Confession, because they say that the priest is just a human being like themselves or because they can talk to God directly or because it is humiliating to expose one’s sins/wrongs to others! Yet, there is no day that passes that one doesn’t either read or watch someone confessing his/her sins, only that it is not called sins, it is called political correctness or reconnecting with one’s fans or political base or it is calledRead More →

Be Like God: Respect for Sinners and Education in the Justification of Sinners Sirach 35:12-14, 16-18; 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18; Luke 18:9-14 What are you doing about sin and sinners? In a foreign land, in the obfuscation of Greek culture, Israel did its best to maintain the wisdom of its ancestors, the teaching of God. The fact that the Israelites living outside Palestine no longer spoke their ancestral language, the Hebrew language, was not a deterrent, Ben Sirach translated the wisdom of Israel for its diaspora or oversea members, so that the wisdom of God will still guide them in a foreign nation. The beliefRead More →

“Faith”: Curing the Human Appetite for War Exodus 17:8-13; 2 Timothy 3:14-4:2; Luke 18:1-8 How does one preach a homily on a reading that shows God taking sides in a war or the story of a God who allows and encourages the extermination of a people – the Amalekites? Could the men or women of today condemning the Arminian genocide, the American-Iraqi war, Turkey-Kurdish slaughter be better than the God of the Bible who seems to pride himself in the Nigerian cattle herdsmen’s and Boko-Haram’s massacre style? Is there even a justification for the death of a sinner or the evil person – evil andRead More →

It only Takes “Thank You,” The Recognition of God’s Presence 2 Kings 5:14-17; 2 Timothy 2:8-13; Luke 17:11-19 Today, many Naamans are unable to reach Elisha for healing, and “Thank You” Jesus is few and far between! Leprosy, the disease of Naaman and the ten lepers of the gospel, goes beyond a skin disease and touches everything that separates us from God and one another. Our leprosy or divorces come in many guises, there are many instances of “us versus them,” cases of separations, animosities and strives. Brothers and sisters turn against one another because of money, poverty, ill-health, prejudices, name it. A lot ofRead More →

No Room for Holier-than-thou Attitude: Faith makes us like unto God, Patient and Understanding Habakuk 1:2-3; 2:2-4; 2 Timothy 1:6-8, 13-14; Luke 17:5-10 I have heard it said before, and I have read it written, that “prayer changes everything, even God himself!” My question is, what does prayer change God into? Moments when we want God changed, and prayers magical, are vividly described in the first reading of today: moments when our prayers are not answered, violence go unpunished, the proud and arrogant get away with dastardly atrocities, and the poor and righteous are trampled upon and dragged in the mud of shame with impunity!Read More →

Bring in Lazarus: Taking Care of the Sin of Omission  Amos 6:1a, 4-7; 1 Timothy 6:11-16; Luke 16:19-31 I have a problem: how do the readings of this Sunday talk to me? I am neither rich nor poor. Even the rich and the poor of our reading, we are not told what their sins are: neither poverty nor riches is the reason for what happened to them. Don’t get me wrong, I know what poverty looks and feels like, not so much wealth. I read theories about how the rich exploit the poor, and I see the churning gap between the possibilities that the richRead More →

Have Your Way Lord, ASTUTE FOR OUR SALVATION Amos 8:4-7; 1 Timothy 2:1-8; Lk 16:1-13 “Pride goes before a fall,” we do say, but this proverbial knowledge has not helped us not to be proud. Obviously, the problem of human beings is not lack of knowledge, but the decision to use knowledge appropriately, to use it for good, is what is lacking. We spend years in schools in pursuit of knowledge, this knowledge becomes a tool for our alienation; that is, we do not even have power and control over what we manufacture with our knowledge. The worker at the brewery ends up an alcoholic.Read More →

Second-Chance, Not Self-Justification Exodus 32:7-11, 13-14; 1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-32  More often than not, we only see and notice the sins of others and not our own! This is the kind of blindness that obstructs God’s multiple graces for conversion from achieving their purposes; we ruin our second chances because we fail to look inwards in order to see and confess our sins. “But when your son returns, who swallowed up your property with prostitutes, for him you slaughter the fattened calf.” What an accusation, was he there to be so sure of the nature of the sins committed? Honestly, if sin is reducedRead More →

Wisdom means Planning with God! Wisdom 9:13-18b; Philemon 9-10, 12-17; Luke 14:25-33  In today’s gospel, Jesus could not possibility be praising the calculus of war, as if the death of anyone leaves him indifferent; neither is God happy when family conflicts ensue nor does he rejoice over those who lose their homes to foreclosure for lack of proper planning. The interest of Jesus is somewhere else, albeit, through the use of parables clothed in the vocabulary of family discord, warfare and architectural designs. The interest of Jesus is to address the reasons for the problems of warfare, industrial complexes and family disagreements. If human calculusRead More →