Homilies

First, I want to wish all of you a very blessed and merry Christmas. It’s always a joy to be able to come together as a parish family and celebrate this great solemnity. Let’s ask the Holy Spirit to work in our hearts on this day where we commemorate the birth of our Savior. + […]

When I was in seminary, many fun community events marked the passing of each year. At the beginning of the school year, we had a field day style event which we called the Pontifical Olympics. Later on in the Fall was the Mud Bowl, an aptly named flag football game which pitted the older seminarians

“Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?”  It’s hard for me to imagine this question coming from John the Baptist.  So let’s put in in context: John is in prison. This is some time—probably several years after the Baptism of Jesus. He witnessed the descent of the Holy

There were a slew of really good animated Disney movies in the 90s and early 2000s, and one of my favorites from that era is “The Emperor’s New Groove.” Beyond its quirky sense of humor and great voice acting, I love this movie because at its core, it is a story about the Emperor’s change

As we embark upon the season of Advent, where we prepare our hearts for the coming of Christ, I’m imagining a stable worker named Samuel, who without knowing it, was preparing himself for the first coming of Christ.  Samuel lived in the city of David, also known as Bethlehem. His earliest memories were of watching

As a society we tend to put celebrities on a pedestal, treating them as larger than life. And to a certain extent this makes sense. They are recognized by millions of people and their faces are found on huge movie screens and billboards. So quite literally, images of them are larger than life. I find

As we come to the end of the Church’s liturgical year we hear certain Scripture passages that might cause us to ask “This is the Good News?”  The Gospel passage that we just heard is part of a “discourse,” or a speech, in which Jesus speaks of what we would call the End Times.  This

I really enjoy wedding receptions. And as a former wedding DJ, I got to see quite a few of them in my time. One of my favorite moments in wedding receptions was always the Father Daughter Dance. There is something so touching about seeing the love between a dad and his little girl as he

In 2007, I ran my first half marathon. The whole experience was pretty intense, as I had never run more than maybe a couple miles before starting to train for that race. But I stuck to a training program by Hal Higdon that gradually prepared me to run the full 13.1 mile race. I will

Let’s begin by inviting the Holy Spirit to work in our hearts.  + Come, Holy Spirit. + Today, I want to compare two men: an author and a priest. The author is someone known all over the world for his fiction and nonfiction books. In his autobiography, he talks about the various different factors that