While on retreat years ago some priests and I saw the movie, Babette’s Feast, based on a short story by a Danish author, Karen Blixen. Driven from her home by bloody uprisings in Paris, Babette Hersant comes to a remote fishing village along Denmark’s northern coast. For 14 years she works as a maid and cook without complaint for two pious Lutheran sisters, who lived strict lives of prayer, good works, and asceticism. The sisters and the members of their village church have an austere view of God’s creation: they believe that we should “cleanse our tongues of all taste and purify them of all delight, preserving them for the higher things of praise and thanksgiving.”

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20th Sunday of Ordinary TimeRead More »

Years ago, I read about a man who survived one of the most brutal settings of WWII as a prisoner of war in Thailand on the banks of the Kwa Noi River. If you ever saw the movie, Bridge Over the River Kwai, then you may recognize his story. Ernest Gordon worked on what was known as the infamous “railway of death,” which the Japanese were building to advance their drive into India and Burma.

Over 12,000 allied prisoners died of starvation or brutality building that railway. Toiling from dawn to dusk, they worked bareheaded and barefooted in temperatures as high as 120 degrees in the sun. Men staggered to their assignments burning with fever. If they dropped in their tracks, their comrades left them behind to be picked up at day’s end to be carried back to the camp.

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17th Sunday of Ordinary TimeRead More »

What is the mission of the church today? Some say it is to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” Others say it is to preserve truth, while others say the mission is to gather people together. The mission of the church seems to be a vague and multi-faceted reality.  We can lose focus on the church’s mission by reducing it to any one aspect.

The opening line of today’s gospel provides a reminder of the fundamental nature of the mission of the church today; summoning his disciples, Jesus sent them out, giving them authority over unclean spirits.

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15th Sunday of Ordinary TimeRead More »

Those of us who are old enough to recall the days before Vatican II changed our liturgies may recall that from time to time we would hear a sermon instead of a homily.  A sermon could be whatever the preacher wanted to talk about while a homily has to be a reflection on the readings or the Mass. All homilies are sermons but not all sermons are homilies.

One sermon I recall from my childhood days in Lakewood was delivered on a hot muggy Sunday morning.  After reading the gospel, the pastor simply said, “If you think it is hot in here, just remember that it is hotter in hell.”  

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13th Sunday of Ordinary TimeRead More »

What goes through your mind when you step up to receive communion and hear the words, “Body of Christ” or “Blood of Christ?” Do you take those words literally or do you think instead that piece of bread is only a symbol of Jesus’ body? 

Today’s feast is meant to help us treasure the wonderful sacrament that Christ left us in the Eucharist as a reminder of the covenant we have entered into. St. John Paul II noted, “The Eucharist is the Church’s most precious possession in her journey through history.”

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Corpus ChristiRead More »