Powerlessness

DIOCESE OF SACRAMENTO | 2022

When Russian President Putin invaded Ukraine, no one was surprised. He had prepared for that invasion for months. And very little was done to dissuade or deter him!

Lord Acton once said: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely…”

Edmund Burke, the Great British statesman, observed: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Albert Einstein, after the Holocaust of World War II, said: “The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”

What is so utterly tragic about the current war in Ukraine is that the rich and the powerful of the world are profiting from it. The financial markets continue to climb – Oil prices continue to rise – The military industrial complex gets richer – And oligarchs control the politics everywhere!

Light is Not Faith

BUILDING ON THE WORD | 2007

When thousands of people are killed in war, when greed and selfishness characterize our culture, we do not stop believing that God is present. Instead we hope that God is active in a way that we cannot yet perceive. All of these evils that are present in our world do not lead us to despair but to action. We give our energies towards building a more peaceful and just world. When someone we love is struck with cancer, when our marriage ends, when someone we trust betrays us, we continue to hope that God will still save us. We look forward to a future in which God’s action and love will become clear.

Other people will look at the blessings of life and the heartbreaks of life and interpret them differently. It is only with the gift of faith and our willingness to accept it that we can see God’s action among us. This morning we are surrounded by God’s light, the same light that illumined the disciples on the mount of the transfiguration. Let us open our eyes, not to be blinded, but to see—to see God’s presence here among us and in the events of our world and then to live as Christ’s disciples in the joy and in the hope that only faith can bring

RELATED HOMILIES

• A Step Towards Truth – March 7, 2004
• The Ordinary and the Transcendent– February 24, 2013
• The Gate of Heaven – February 21, 2016
• Looking Closer, Looking Beyond – March 10, 2019

Awake, Never Miss a Scene!

SINGLE HUMANITY | 2019

In the transfiguration our attention is drawn to the description of what happens, the face of Jesus that changes and his clothes dazzlingly bright. Here’s the question that comes to mind: What newness does this experience bring to Jesus? I shout, nothing! Nothing really. Yet, it’s not to say it’s an un important. Indeed, it is! It’s not the transfiguration confers him something he didn’t have before; rather he reflects who he already is -son of God. It’s a revelation for disciples; it’s like a flip on the curtain that gives them a glimpse of another face of the man, apparently ordinary, that have been following.

It’s not just a show to admire; it’s a promise. That’s the destination where he’s leading whoever is following him.  And that’s the meaning of our Lenten pilgrimage; we prepare ourselves to share in the new life of Easter. So, this revelation is an encouragement, as well as an assurance: you are on the right path, keeping walking!

The World We See Is Not All There Is

BC CATHOLIC | 2022

Many people “live as enemies of the cross of Christ,” St. Paul says. “Their minds are set on earthly things.”

However, along with their materialism, they often have a deep-seated suspicion that life is more than what we can see. Accordingly, they try in various ways to “get behind the scenes.”

“Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers,” says the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Dare to Be Free

by Timothy Radcliffe O.P.. | 2022
Dominican Friars of England & Wales, Scotland

Yet they do not travel to Jerusalem alone. They walk with the Lord and each other. Our journey is also towards the shared freedom and joy of the Kingdom, for which we struggle now. Embracing freedom is costly, as the people of Ukraine are showing us, refusing to submit to tyranny. Their freedom is ultimately inseparable from our own. If we support the cause of freedom, even though it is but a tiny foretaste of what is promised, it will be costly for us too. Let us weigh the cost and set out.

RELATED HOMILIES:

• Fuel for the Fire (2019)
• Our Homeland is in Heaven (2013)
• The Power of Prayer (2010)
• Fear and Trembling Transformed (2007)
• Citizens of Heaven (2004)

Good News in a Suffering World

HOMILIES – YEAR C 

Jesus promised his followers that they would have to suffer, indeed, that they would have to die, at least to their pervasive and irrepressible self-interest. Certainly, no one lives wrapped in cotton wool. But he also relied on them to build a better world based on the common dignity of every person because profoundly loved by God. And he assured them that God would work with them. A few more duplicates of herself would be good news in a suffering world.

In today’s Gospel, the transfigured Christ was shown talking with Moses and Elijah. They were talking about his passing which he was to accomplish in Jerusalem – a euphemism, if ever there was one, for his tortured death there. But Jerusalem was also the place from where he passed to the Father – the place where he was raised by the Father to a new mode of living (that we, for lack of something better, call risen life).

Who We Are When We Follow Christ

CHRIST IN THE DESERT MONASTERY | 2016

This Second Sunday of Lent always has an account of the Transfiguration of Christ in the Gospel and the Great Promise to Abraham in the first reading from the Book of Genesis.  These are immensely important stories in our Christian tradition and we need to give our attention to them with a bit of depth to understand who we are when we follow Jesus Christ.

The Gospel from Saint Luke gives an account of the Transfiguration.  It was such a strange experience even for those who were present that Peter begins to talk about making tents!  And the Gospel tells us that Peter did not know what he was saying.  It was clearly such a strong and unusual experience that other Gospels even speak of Peter sort of being out of his mind!…

My sisters and brothers, we are heirs of the promise to Abraham and we are witnesses to the accounts of the Baptism and the Transfiguration.  God promises us that we also will be transformed (transfigured).  Let us listen to Him!

For God the Extraordinary and the Ordinary are Not Opposed

DIOCESE OF KNOXVILLE | 2016

We can say that Lent is an extraordinary time lived in an ordinary season. We fast, we pray, we do works of charity – all while we also go about the ordinary rhythm of our lives.  We still go to work, we still go to school, we visit with one another, we pay bills…  The ordinary rhythm of life continues on even while we make the extraordinary journey of Lent….

For God the extraordinary and the ordinary are not opposed. The same ought to be true for us.  We can be awakened, our eyes can be opened to see the extraordinary in the ordinary if we allow ourselves to be “taken up” by Christ.  Just as Christ took the three disciples up the mountain to pray, just as God took Abram outside to gaze at the heavens, we need to allow Christ to take us and pull us away from our own selfishness and draw us into his own life.  If we allow this to happen then we can participate in a greater reality, our eyes will be opened and we will begin to see as Christ sees.  We also can be transfigured.

Dark Clouds Over Lent

DOMINE, DA NIHI HANC AQUAM! | 2019

Heaven Doesn’t Require Our Imagination

KUALA LUMPUR | 2022

God and the Devil, Heaven and Hell: these used to be the common themes found in almost everything ranging from cartoons to fiction novels, artistic masterpieces to the Sunday pulpit, as if these two themes are ingrained in the fabric of society. Nearly every human being holds some sort of belief system regarding heaven, hell, or both – you either believe in it, are ambivalent to it or scoff at it. A scathing judgment came from Stephen Hawking who argued that a belief that heaven or an afterlife awaits us, is a “fairy story” for people afraid of death. Perhaps you can recall these words from John Lennon’s song “Imagine”: “Imagine there’s no heaven; it’s easy if you try. No hell below us–above us only sky.” The song argues that if you can imagine away these unpleasant realities, we could create utopia on earth.

RELATED HOMILIES

• Contemplation of an Infinite Glory (2013)
• Sacred Bodies – (2016)
• We are On Our Way Home…But Not Yet– (2010)

Transfigurations

SUNDAY WEB SITE | 1997

Although we rarely pay attention to it, a great paradox haunts our practices of Lent. We go through these six weeks every year fairly easily; yet if we stopped to reflect seriously on what’s going on, it would be a shock. To our liberated American souls, it might even seem like an earthquake.

Just look at the imagery and themes of the period. Lent starts with ashes and a warning: “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” It prods to repentance: there is something wrong with us and the world. I am not O.K.; neither are you. We are insufficient. This life is not enough. Each of the six weeks brings a profound admission of our inadequacy.

This is not easy stuff for a world given to excuses and plea-bargaining. The most we admit to is making a mistake or perhaps behavioral problems. But to admit that we are in profound trouble? Why? We all know there is nothing so terribly wrong with us.

What would it take for us to be awakened to the power of God in our lives right now?

ST. LOUIS REVIEW | 2022

Have you ever thought about what it takes to remain faithful to God? I don’t mean just the obvious things like don’t kill, don’t steal and don’t lie. I mean things like loving our enemies and doing good to those who hate us. I mean seeing every other person as a sister or brother and not as an object or someone less. What might it take for us to be faithful to those ways that God asks us to live?

The Gospel reading for the second Sunday of Lent is always about Jesus’ Transfiguration on the mountaintop. He takes Peter, James and John with Him and shows them the glory of God. They experience Jesus as the fullness of the law and the prophets, as He is accompanied by Moses and Elijah. They are so overcome by glory and power that they fall to their knees and hide their faces. They stammer and don’t quite know what to do with such a strong experience of God’s wonder and might. Yet when they are given a chance to be faithful to Jesus when things get tough, they denied Him. They walked with Him and listened to His teachings; they witnessed His miracles and shared fellowship with Him. You’d think that that would be enough for them to be faithful to Him until the end. But it wasn’t.