Category Archive

Those of you who have attended of Holy Wisdom’s Sunday Assembly for any length of time will know that your homilists do not choose which biblical passages will be assigned to us for any given Sunday. Instead, for each Sunday we face a trio of readings identified by the Revised Common Lectionary. The third of these readings, taken from one of the four gospels, carries the most weight. I tell you this to remind you that the choice to speak on this passage from the tenth chapter of Matthew’s gospel was not mine. Faced by the call somehow to unwrap …

The Gospel verses we just heard present an important shift in Matthew’s account of Jesus’ life. Prior to our verses, information focused on how Jesus established his ministry through his teaching and his healing activities. Then, like in a conversation when someone says, “enough about me, how about you?”, the writer’s focus shifts to those who follow and work with Jesus and what they receive as their missionary imperative. In Biblical studies, this section is called the missionary discourse. So, today on the 3rd Sunday of Pentecost, it feels like as good of a time as any to explore some …

A bit of a disclaimer before I begin.  Instead of the traditional, singular focus on the Pentecost story in Acts 2, my focus today will be on the gifts of the spirit proclaimed across all of today’s readings.  And so, I begin. “It was evening on the day Jesus rose from the dead, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear……  Jesus had just been crucified by the state because he had stood with the poor, the sick, the lame, the hungry, the stranger, women, children, sinners …

On Ascension Sunday in 2024 I gave the homily.  It was also Mother’s Day on that Sunday. We have another secular holiday on this Sunday….Syttende mai …. the 17th of May which is for us of Norwegian ancestry a day remember also as Constitution Day. So there are parades, and meals w/lefsa & rommegrot (heart attack in a bowl) made of flour, sugar, and butter!! Delish! But Ascension Sunday is a Sunday with plenty of significance of its own. As Rex noted in the introduction, the absolutely remarkable & mysterious story of Jesus’ ascension is truly a story worthy of …

Today Peter encourages us to imitate Jesus under every trial or form of oppression. While Jesus’ crucifixion will not shield us from trials, his Spirit will accompany us always. Jesus’ Justice is given through the promise he gave, and he is faithful. So it is that our justice is shown in our own fidelity to others.We belong to one another, bound by the love given us!  How do you account for the hope that is in you? Peter’s admonishment that we ought to ‘live above reproach’ was strategic; for doing so may attract followers – and our witness of love …

“Show us God,” Philip says. You can hear Jesus’ exasperation in his answer. On this side of the resurrection, we know that if we have seen Jesus, we have seen God. Yet, even we, when in dire straits, might like to see God come down and wipe out the evil in the world. Those suffering from war, famine, illness might want to see God come and rescue them from their suffering. We are used to hearing this passage at funeral services where it comforts us to know that we have a place with God after death. Yet this passage is …

The vision of the Valley of Dry Bones in today’s Old Testament reading is one that opens with desolation, hopelessness, and the grief and dreadful feeling in the pit of our stomachs that we may feel when encountering the imagery of a desert expanse filled with the long dead, very dry bones of the masses. God gifts Ezekiel this vision in a time of great trouble, in a time when the world feels like it is falling apart. The vision of the Valley of Dry Bones occurs during the Babylonian Exile, a time when the people of Israel witnessed the …

There is so much intensity in the Triduum: the tender Thursday ritual of washing each other’s feet, and the heavy knowing of how that evening unfolded in love and betrayal;Our touching the large cross, and being seized by the harsh reality of Jesus’ Crucifixion; holding the quiet, pondering and praying. All followed the next evening by boundless joy, exhilarating music, fire, singing “Christ broke the chains of the darkness!” Are not our hearts full? For some these following weeks may be a bit melancholic, a letdown as the intensity of catharsis and the joy of Easter gives way to the …

Every morning, I set a timer and sit in my prayer chair for 30 minutes.  It is a half-hour of doing nothing; nothing except attending to the sensation of my breath moving in and out; nothing except noticing that my mind has been wandering down some rabbit-hole of thought or feeling, and then, as gently as I can, returning my attention to the sensation of my breathing.  This happens over and over again until the timer bell rings.  This is an activity–or non-activity–that I have practiced daily for many years now.  It has no purpose other than being present to …

This unexpected meeting between the risen Jesus and the weeping Mary Magdalene may well be the most poignant episode in the whole New Testament or indeed in the whole Bible. Mary was a woman with both a painful past and a gracious, indeed miraculous, transformation. Luke’s gospel (8:2) tells of “Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out.” Mark’s gospel (16:9) assigns this powerful exorcism directly to Jesus himself. Pope Gregory I, in 591 CE argued, perhaps misreading an earlier passage (in Luke 7), that Mary was a reformed prostitute whose sins Jesus had fully forgiven. However we …