The Ambo: Homilies for the Faithful

In light of this being the first Sunday of the new year, we will depart from the gospel readings today, which I addressed a few weeks ago in my homily on the Newtown shootings, and focus our sermon on our attitudes for the new year. We’re all making our New Year’s resolutions, we’ve had a chance to review the old year, and we are still with hope that we can improve in 2013. I’m reminded what the late Erma Bombeck, said, however, about New Year’s resolutions….”there is nothing so deceiving that the first four hours of a diet.” I’m sure you’ve noticed that each year almost all the major news magazines put out an issue with special pictorial sections recalling people & events that made news during the previous year. Many magazines also include articles by experts predicting what they expect to see happening in the years ahead. Some even go so far as to make predictions covering 10, 20, or more years in the future. In the past, a few of these predictions have proven amazingly...

The Simon & Garfunkel album, “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme,” was released in 1966.  I’ve thought during this past week about a song from that album which I had not thought of in a long time.  It’s the last song on the album, their rendition of “Silent Night.” It starts with a simple rendering of this Christmas lullaby singing in beautiful harmony “all is calm, all is bright”, but by the second verse there was a fade-in of a broadcaster’s voice doing a news report.  It was actual news of the day which spoke of the turmoil of the times with references to the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. It also included mention of the trial of Richard Speck, a mass murderer of eight student nurses in Chicago.The words of “Silent Night” and the news of the day made for a haunting irony, and it came back to me as I heard the news of the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School.  Twenty children and eight adult lives lost to evil and madness. From whe...

In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a city of Judah,and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the voice of your greeting came to my ears, the babe in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”(Luke 1:39-45) There are two annunciations that Luke is recording in his first Chapter, and they both correspond finally to one purpose of God. Here the two streams flow briefly together and their relationship becomes explicit. Elizabeth is first to realize that Mary’s coming child is none other than the messiah; and her own unbor...