Last year I preached a homily about a student who was burdened by her past but nervous to go to confession. The priest who was hearing the student’s confession early on a Sunday morning brought an enormous piece of chocolate cake and some ice cream to the confessional, and when things got hard for the […]

I hadn’t been to the Abbey of Genesee, a Trappist monastery in Western New York State, in about two years. It was my longest time away since returning to the East Coast.  The Abbey had been a spiritual home to me for decades.  I am not sure that I would presently be a Christian, humanly speaking, […]

I have been blessed with a free and solitary week at a cabin on the Massachusetts coastline.  My purpose for coming was to give myself “alone” time to try to get back into writing my book and back into feeling like myself.  It has been a hard and tumultuous year for me.  A concussion and […]

  This is a song I wrote a few years ago to celebrate a coffee shop that functioned as the living room of our little town.  The lyrics are posted under the video on YouTube.  Now that The Barge is closed and the corporate coffee chain that took over the space has also failed, I […]

Everything in Iceland is in the middle of nowhere.  One realizes as soon as one is outside the mild urban hum of Reykjavik that there are just not very many people or very many towns in Iceland.  A settlement the size of the small town where I live– a place with a college, a movie […]

Easter 6 Homily: John 14:15-21 Jesus said to his disciples: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows him. But you […]

HOMILY: THIRTY-THIRD SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, Year C Luke 21:5-19 I don’t care how young you were when you first read Harry Potter: You quickly figured out two things:  (1) Harry would ultimately survive and be OK and (2) He would eventually kill Voldemort.  Right?  But even though you knew both those things, you didn’t just say, […]

How St. Ignatius of Loyola’s Principle and Foundation can help you understand your relationship with money and possessions

At the Christian school we could get ourselves whacked three times with a paddle if we were caught with cassette tapes of secular music.  We could also get paddled if we said mean things about someone or if we sassed a teacher.  Heck, we could seemingly get paddled for just about anything.  Some kids, like […]

Text:  Luke 22 and 23 I don’t usually write out my homilies.  Today, I did.  Well, some of it. We have read these long passages from the Gospel of Luke that seek to give an orderly account of what happened at the arrest, trial, crucifixion, death, and burial of Jesus.  What becomes clear is that, […]