Foot-washer

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 ...

St. Agnes Catholic Church February 25/26 1st Sunday of Lent https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/022623.cfm Good evening / morning, St. Agnes, and a blessed beginning of Lent. On Martin Luther King weekend, a group of St. Agnes parishioners from the St. Thea Bowman Society visited Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic church, a predominately Black parish on the West End. My six-year-old son EJ was with me. In the lobby were numerous posters of Dr. King in honor of the occasion, but there was also a permanent framed poster on the wall there.  It was titled, “the Fork in the Road” and it shows a man and a woman standing at a crossroads.  On one side is a leafy green pathway reading to Jesus, wreathed in a rainbow and clouds with his arms extended in invitation.  On the other half of the image, is a desolate path, enveloped in storm clouds and lightning.  At the end top is an ominous figure with a death’s-head and horns.  Just like Jesus, his arms are extended in ...