Author: Irina
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Pentecost 2023 – “relaxed” service
Today is someone’s birthday. That someone is the Church! What is a birthday? That’s the beginning of life outside the belly or egg, but not really THE beginning. Before you get “on the outside”, you already exist, act upon others, and others care for you. Yet, a birth defines the moment of starting your life…
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Ascension, 2023
May God “give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation… so that, withthe eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope towhich he has called you” (Ephesians 1:17-18) Ascension makes me wonder why at the end of his earthly time Jesus had to go up into the sky, rather than dissolve…
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Paul on Areopagus
Paul’s Speech on the Areopagus, delivered in Athens, is a dramatic tour de force of the New Testament. With remarkable fluency, Paul thinks on his feet and weaves together his knowledge of philosophy, literature, history, and culture. To appreciate it fully, let’s first travel much further back in time to consider the origins of the…
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Easter 5, 2023: Spiritual Home
At the last supper before his death, Jesus tried to offer a measure of peace to his friends. A traveling teacher without “a place to lay his head” for the past three years seemed to think that a promise of a “house with plenty of room” should be enough to lift his friends’ troubled hearts.…
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Good Shepherd (aka Vocations) Sunday, 2023
The middle Sunday of the Easter season is called the “Good Shepherd Sunday” as this week, we always read Ps 23, “the Lord is my Shepherd,” and John 10 that applies this analogy to Jesus over all of its 42 verses. This year, we read its beginning that presents Jesus, paradoxically, as the shepherd, gatekeeper…
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The Assurance of Thomas 2023
Longer than Lent, Eastertide has its own liturgical progression spanning the 50 days between the resurrection of Jesus and birth of the Church. So, we read Acts instead of the OT, the NT readings are from those attributed to Peter and John, as the presumed Church founders, and the gospel readings progress from Jesus’ appearances…
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Easter 2023
As I was planning what to say today, I reviewed some of my previous homilies. The opening line of “Easter, 2021” read: “It’s been a while since we’ve had a “normal” Easter!” At the time, I was referring to the fire that engulfed Notre Dame (Holy Week 2018), Sri Lanka bombings (Easter 2019), and first…
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Easter Vigil 2023
Those of you who lost friends and family might remember that multitude of tasks that hit you in the early days of each loss, which all seem insurmountable and yet keep you somewhat sane at the same time. I think it was like that for these 8 or so women, whose names the gospels mention…
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Good Friday 2023
Once again, we got through the difficult exercise of recalling, step by step, the details of Jesus’ final hours of life. Oh, why must we keep revisiting this unpleasant story year after year? As it is, this Friday is, frankly, only “good” in a sense of “holy/dedicated” and at all not “pleasant/beneficial”! The worst part…
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Maundy Thursday 2023
Tonight, after the flurry of this busy liturgy is complete, we will go home in silence, leaving our church stripped of adornments, without a blessing or communion. This will represent that sense of perceived absence of God that would have characterized the days when Jesus suffered and died. I imagine that those who gathered at…
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