4th Sunday in Ordinary Time https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/012824.cfm Discerning the Spirits When I was a child attending this church on Sundays with my family, I always looked up at the high altar in the sanctuary. I wondered what the heck the big stone things were on the corners up there. Were they gargoyles? Sphynxes? I couldn’t tell from where we sat in the middle of the church. Do you know what they are? [pause] Angels! There are little baby faces faced at a diagonal angle. The rest of their figures are wings with no bodies. Whoever designed this church really liked angels. I’m going to give you fifteen seconds to take a look and see how many you notice [pause]. I am quite sure that if I don’t tell you right now how many angels there are, you will spend the rest of my homily trying to count them and won’t hear a thing I say, so let me tell you. By my count, there are 50 angels: eight are on the high altar and the tabernacle, including two inside the tabernacle ...
These posts are the collected homilies of Deacon Ned Berghausen, permanent deacon of the Catholic Archdiocese of Louisville, assigned to St. Agnes Catholic Church. The title "Foot Washer" refers to the Last Supper (John 13:1-20) in which Jesus washed the feet of the apostles and challenged them, "“Do you realize what I have done for you? If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet. I have given you a model to follow."