Foot-washer

  St. Agnes Catholic Church 30th Sunday of Ordinary Time https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/102724.cfm Good evening / morning, St. Agnes.  I want to begin with a bit of Catholic trivia.  Ancient Greek was the most common language of the Mediterranean region.  It’s the language that the New Testament was written in and our earliest liturgies were prayed in. To this this day, there is one part of our Catholic mass that is still (occasionally) said in Greek.  Do you know what it is? I actually gave you a tip off earlier in the liturgy.  It’s in the penitential rite where we pray, “Lord have mercy,” or in the Greek ‘Kyrie Eleison.’  We hear the Biblical origins of this prayer in today’s Gospel reading.   On it’s surface, the reading today appears to be about another healing of a blind person—the restoration of sight to blind Bartimaeus.  I’d like to suggest that the Gospel actually about prayer.   Bartimaeus repeatedly shouts t...

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 ...