Foot-washer

An article from The Tiger , Saint Xavier High School's alumni magazine, Winter 2021. 

      3rd Sunday of Advent (Dec 13, 2020)   https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/121320.cfm      There are two secret donkeys in St. Agnes Church.  Don’t worry.  I am not referring to any parishioners!  Three weeks ago, I preached about Jesus’ spirit animal and told you that there are four animals in the permanent artwork of this church: the sheep with St. Agnes and the dove, and the eagle on the standard of the Roman soldiers on the stations of the cross.  Did you find the fourth?  I would be surprised if you did, as I said they are secret donkeys.  I will show you where they are and I will ask Will to show an image of the artwork for those of you streaming at home.   These animals are in the Nativity scene behind the high altar on what’s called the “apse.”  The stable here is presented as a cave and the Christ-child is lying in his manager at its mouth.  In the shadow of the cave there are the heads of two donkeys both who are as close as possible to the Christ-child—closer even th

  For several years, I have had a robust sense of pride in the American Catholic Church’s ability to maintain unity throughout our history.     Protestants may splinter … and splinter … and splinter again an unending cycle of division.      Not the Catholic Church.     Even in the period leading to the Civil War—a conflict that pitted brother against brother and led so many other denominations to split into north and south (like the Southern Baptists)—we remained one, holy, catholic and apostolic. This emphasis on unity has been immensely reassuring to me when considering the culture wars and other challenges of our day.                 Yet, this summer my perspective was challenged and my pride punctured by two books:  Racial Justice and the Catholic Church,  by Fr. Brian Massingale, SJ and  The History of Black Catholics in America  by Fr. Cyprian Davis, OSB. To summarize—or perhaps grossly simplify in a short space, white American Catholics were united (north and south) in the anteb

  “In every age, no matter how cruel the oppression carried on by those in power, there have been those who struggled for a different world. I believe this is the genius of humankind, the thing that makes us half divine: the fact that some human beings can envision a world that has never existed.”        ~ Anne Braden (1924-2006), Louisville racial justice activist   Anne Braden was a local white advocate in the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and ‘60s.  She and her husband Carl are most famous for purchasing a house in the then exclusively white neighborhood of Shively for a Black couple.  Both Bradens were arrested as “Communists’ for their act and the house was dynamited after irate neighbors shot it up and burned a cross in the front yard. Anne was not deterred and continued the fight for the remaining fifty years of her life, founding a newspaper and several antiracist organizations.      Anne provides an excellent example of what it means to be a white ally in the struggle for

    I am black and beautiful, O daughters of Jerusalem, like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon          --The Song of Songs, 1:5 (trans. from the Greek LXX)   The early Church Fathers believed that the Song of Songs in the Old Testament was a love poem composed by King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba (today’s Ethiopia), who was a beautiful woman with black skin. In their allegorical vision, this couple symbolized Jesus and the Church.     As Fr. Cyprian Davis writes,  “Solomon is a type of Christ, and just as the queen of Sheba came to Solomon to consult him because he was wise, so the Church comes to Christ who is Wisdom himself.  As a result, since the queen of Sheba is black, so must the church be black and beautiful.  Her very blackness is a symbol of her universality; all nations are present in her.”    In America, having black skin carries a heavy burden.  Black men routinely see others cross the street to avoid sharing a sidewalk with them.  Police “stop and frisk”

  The great Catholic Church … is the only place on this Continent where rich and poor, white and black, must drop prejudice at the threshold and go hand in hand to the altar. The Catholic Church alone can break the color line. There could be no greater factor in solving the race problem than that matchless institution whose history for 1900 years is but a continual triumph  over all assailants.     --Daniel Rudd, Black Catholic journalist from Bardstown, Kentucky [consolidated quotes from his newspaper the  American Catholic Tribune ]   One of the beautiful things about being Catholic is our church transcends the divisions of country, nation, and race.  Even on the small scale of our archdiocese, we have members who are rural and urban, English speaking and Spanish.  It comprises those born here and born afar, including priests and religious from India and Africa and Asia.  This Church is a model of a new country, a new society, a new kingdom that breaks down human barriers, united as

  Why should I feel discouraged / Why should the shadows come / Why should my heart feel lonely / And long for heaven and home / When Jesus is my portion / A constant friend is He / His eye is on the sparrow / And I know He watches over me / I sing because I'm happy / I sing because I'm free / His eye is on the sparrow / And I know He watches me “His Eye is On the Sparrow,”  Civilla D. Martin and Charles H. Gabriel    For several years I was a parishioner at a predominately Black Catholic parish in Oklahoma.  Of the many things I loved about this community, the gorgeous music sung by the Gospel choir every Sunday stood out.  They sang a range of songs from Negro spirituals to contemporary hymns more familiar in predominately white parishes.  My favorite is the hymn above, “His Eye is On the Sparrow.”    The house sparrow is one of the most common animals in the world—so familiar and so small that it is easy to ignore.  Yet Jesus assures us in the Gospel passage that this song i

                        Feast of Christ the King Nov 21 & 22, 2020 What is your spirit animal?  Maybe you are familiar with the concept of ‘spirit animals.’  It originally came from the Lakota tradition of spiritual quests in which an animal spirit guide accompanies a teenaged seeker in a coming-of-age ritual.  It has entered into America pop culture.  People choose and animal they identify with or whose qualities they really like.  My spirit animal is a grizzly bear.  The animal for my four-year-old son EJ is a tyrannosaurus rex.     Many people choose a fierce animal—one that might be at home as the name of an NFL team.  A big cat—Lions, Panthers, Bengal Tigers,  Jaguars.  Or a bird of prey—Falcons, Eagles, Seahawks.  You get the idea.     Jesus has a spirit animal, too.  Can you guess what it is?  It is one that we heard in the Gospel today.  And it’s one of the four animals that are depicted in the artwork of this Church.  Do you see it?   That’s right—the lamb.  You see it abo

  29th Sunday in Ordinary Time Oct 17/18, 2020 Somehow, in the great providence of God, our readings for mass today are the famous “render unto Caesar” Gospel passage.  With 17/ 16 days to go in our presidential election, what on earth does God have to say to us about politics and civic engagement in the midst of this chaotic, stressful, and divisive election year?   Much ink has been spilled and many sermons given on Catholics’ faithful citizenship and participation in our democracy.  In my reading and prayer preparation for today, however, I began to feel that “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s,” is not the important part of Jesus’ response, even though those are the words we remember and quote.  The critical words here are from the second half, “render unto God what is God’s.”   How often do we give Caesar more than his due?  How often do we give Caesar what belongs to God?    [Reminder of the First Commandment?] This was the subtle but damning accusation that Jesus made against h

 An incomplete homily for the  Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2020 (September 13). This would have been my first homily, but I abandoned it for being too dark for my inaugural.  The story about my friend and the skull is a bit... much.  Maybe I will find the right audience or work it in some place else.  https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/091320.cfm In the first reading, we hear Joshua Ben Sirach say, “remember death and decay, and cease from sin!”  This is a repeated line in this unfamiliar Wisdom Book of the Hebrew Scriptures.  Elsewhere Sirach writes, “In whatever you do, remember your last days and you will never sin” (7:36).  Saint Benedict, the famous monk, was probably inspired by this line in his Rule.  He poignantly wrote, “Keep death daily before your eyes” (4:47). I know a man who lived as a monk in Rome for several years.   One day several of his monastic brothers were digging in the monastery’s garden when they came upon a human skull. After much discussion an

Homily for the Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time (September 12 & 13, 2020)   How often must I forgive? --I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.       During the pandemic this year, I’ve been quarantined at home with my family, like many of you.  I am married and the father of four young children all four years old or younger.  In one of our rare bits of free time, my wife and I watched the musical  Hamilton,  which was released on TV around the 4 th  of July.      I see this musical as very timely for our current moment in history and for our Gospel reading in which Christ calls us to limitless forgiveness and mercy for our brothers and sisters. Let me describe a climactic scene to you from the musical.   Two men stand ten paces across from each other, each pointing a dueling pistol at the other.  They are in a the midst of a wooded ledge overlooking the Hudson River. It is dawn and the sun is shining on the water and Manhattan on the opposite shore.        The