OLS - Reno Homilies

  One of our challenges when it comes to Jesus Christ, to our Faith and to our discipleship comes from our vision. Not literally how we see with our eyes, but how expansive we see with our minds and hearts. How much of the whole do we experience. We can isolate Jesus to a Gospel passage, a pericope, and get too focussed on that event, and do not see or understand the connection to a bigger plan. Or we see Jesus in one way, but do not see the whole. A possible sign in our lives of this is when we only call upon Jesus as we need something: getting good grades; when we or someone we love is sick; job. Not that this is bad, but if this is our only approach to Jesus, then we are losing out on so much more. Or another, we approach Jesus as a moral law giver: we use him to determine how bad we are, or others; and we put too much energy into judgment. There is so much more to Jesus. Consider today’s passage: Jesus deals with unclean spirits, and he teaches with authority.  We as Catho...

People can use words or phrases that can scare us, intentionally or unintentionally. I am not talking words like spiders, or pineapple on pizza, as scary as those may be. Apocalypse is one such word or its adjective, apocalyptic. We hear it and we think violence, chaos, death, destruction and the like. Apocalypse scares us. There is some truth to that, but it is not the whole truth. The book of Revelation is apocalyptic literature; and we can read it on the surface and find all kinds of violence and death but that would be to read it improperly. Apocalypse does not signify the literal end of the world and its destruction. Apocalypse is about how our world, as we live it and experience it, changes. I attended and presided over an apocalyptic moment on Saturday. A woman and man’s lives were radically changed. They married each other. It was not violent, nor too chaotic, and it was beautiful; but it was apocalyptic. They willingly changed the trajectory of their lives. They chose to live...

How would we explain Reno, Sparks, Northern Nevada to someone who has never been here? People assume it is like Las Vegas; tons of casinos, hot, flat, dry. How would we explain our part of paradise? What do the ads do? They show enticing photos of the Sierra and Tahoe; Balloon Races, skiing, the nicer golf courses, the finer restaurants. Why? They want people to come and see Northern Nevada; come and see the difference. How would we explain the Catholic faith and how we believe in Jesus Christ to those who do not know? Would we try? Would we buy them “Catholicism for dummies” or “The Catechism of the Catholic Church” and tell them go ahead and read it, hoping they will find the answer there. (Ironically, that is how some RCIA groups operate.) Several years ago there was a book about RCIA written called “The Parish is the curriculum.” A reminder that the RCIA is the Rite of Christian Initiation; it is the “process” by which adults become Catholic. The premise of the book is that in RCI...

Why? Many kids go through that phase in which they ask WHY? Why is the sky blue? Why do I need to take a bath? Why do dogs and cats not get along? Why is there night and day? And the kids can persist with the “whys” trying to grasp something. I think it is part of our humanity; to ask Why; we want to know and grasp our world and why things are the way they are. It is something that needs to be supported and affirmed, never stopped. It is part of critical thinking. When I was in Vocations the poor seminarians who drove with me had to endure my interrogations. I would ask them about what they learned and I pushed them to explain the “Why” of “What” they learned. We adults can get lazy in our critical thinking, not using our thought process, not using critical thinking. Look at all the crazy conspiracy theories out there! Look at how much people react to others, which anger and hate? So little understanding. We just take an easy route, and this is what we get. Yet, when our world, our liv...