OLS - Reno Homilies

I recently watched a video and the speaker was saying that even the best person, who loves all and is willing to help so many will stop if they are continually let down by another. Some people we may know make it difficult to be there for them. They accept invitations and then cancel at the last minute repeatedly. They say they want to hang out, but they find other things to do; they accept help from others, but giving that help back… and after a while it gets exhausting. So we stop extending invitations, we don’t give the time as we done previously. It is not that it is a quid pro quo we want, but a little respect, a little fidelity. Nobody likes to feel taken for granted. Years ago during my internship at Stanford hospital as a seminarian, I was called to a room (I have shared this story before, but I find it powerful). A mother was there with her young daughter and the mother was very very upset. I listened to her, and she revealed that they had recently been baptized as Christians...

In seminary there seemed to be three types of students: those hungry and excited for the challenge and learning of theology; those ambivalent about it, just getting through classes; and those who were upset because what they thought they knew was being challenged. This last group of guys tended to have a more difficult time during seminary. One particular man in my class was a convert from Presbyterianism. He had been raised as a biblical literalist; an older fellow for seminary, maybe late 30’s early 40’s. Nice guy. We took our first Scripture class and all the assumptions he had were being destroyed. The profs told him that this was our Catholic understanding and what he thought he knew, he misunderstood. The poor guy was devastated. He ended up taking a year and more off to grasp the situation, and he never was quite the same. One theme I continually raise in homilies is the need to continue to grow in our understanding of God and of our Catholic Faith. The more we understand, the ...

An observation I have made about Europeans and Cultures, of their people, is that they seem to have long memories. When I was in Ireland on a tour they spoke of Oliver Cromwell with a vehemence, as if he was just there attempting to destroy them, not 500 years ago. Or when the former Yugoslavia broke apart and led to the conflicts and ethnic cleansings, they fought over generational conflicts; even the ongoing conflict in Israel-Gaza has it violence continuing through long memories. But not all that is about badness. Some memories are good, of saints and heroes, of community pride. Of course it helps that there are buildings and churches that are hundreds if not thousands of years old that surround them. People also have deep roots in the land, sometimes owned for multiple generations. An observation I have of us in the USA, our memories tend to be much much shorter. Maybe because we are a younger country? Maybe our viewpoint is more directed to a future? We experience things, good and...