The Ambo: Homilies for the Faithful

June 22, 2014--The Feast of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi) Today the church universal celebrates and underscores one of the three great mysteries. The first is the nature of God as three in one, a trinity. The second is the incarnation, the Word became flesh and lived for a while among us as Jesus Christ. The third is the mystery of the Eucharist, that by the words of blessing of our priest, bread and wine become transformed in substance, not in form, into the body and blood of Christ. A lot of times, when we think of the word “mystery”, we are really thinking that there is no answer, or its some kind of dodge. Something like we just heard of in Washington by the IRS, “ I don’t know how those 7 pc systems all crashed at the same time, and the e-mails were all destroyed….it’s a mystery! Well, that’s not it at all…the New Testament writers gave the name “mystery” to revealed truths that surpass the powers of natural reason. Mystery in its strict...

Mashed Potato Love 2/23/2014 7th Sunday in Ordinary Time (note: today, the homily lasted about two minutes. following the homily, Deacon Rick, dressed in a chefs hat and apron, gave a live demonstration about love and unity using potatoes and his grandmother's cooking. It loses a lot in the translation, but areas in yellow are an attempt to describe what was going on) The original idea for this homily came from pastor Juan Carlos Ortiz, who preached a sermon on unity using the illustration of mashed potatoes. I have expanded the idea greatly, but wanted to give credit to my brother Juan Carlos Ortiz.  Today our readings have the theme of love and unity. In the first reading from the Book of Leviticus we read: “You shall not bear hatred for your brother or sister in your heart. Take no revenge and cherish no grudge against any of your people. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Right there, in the book of Leviticus, we see a standard of love, tolerance, ...

     This talk is going to appear in longer form in the Coming Home Ministry newsletter, the one that Marcus Grody produces, so I won’t go into near the detail here. Most preachers have a watch; they normally give me a calendar, so I will try to be brief in the two hours I was given this afternoon.      How did I get, as the Parable of the Prodigal Son teaches—actually, it’s really, the parable of the Prodigal Father—whose love is extravagantly, irresponsibly, unceasingly, compellingly Prodigal in every regard—to the house of my Father, and return to Catholicism?      I was baptized and confirmed in a nominally Catholic home. My dad’s career in the U.S. military and in the diplomatic service led us overseas among many moves as our 6-child family grew up, spending years in Panama, Cuba, and Colombia. Despite a Jesuit education into high school, by the time we returned to Washington, D.C. in the late 196...