Maybe it’s crossed your mind that it’s a race to either the vaccine or the virus and only time will tell which one will get to us first. Of course, like you, I pray – on my hands and knees – that I get to the vaccine before the virus gets to me. We find…
NOTE: Parents, this is a homily you should definitely listen to and talk about with your young ones. It’s also longer than usual. This week we celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr.: a pastor and a civil rights leader who is also a saint. He is a saint because he stood up for justice and equality…
It will come as no surprise to many of you that I have been a bleeding-heart liberal from my earliest days. A teenage rebellion, I am sure against my tastefully conservative Republican mom and dad. A straight A student, I rebelled in hippy dippy ways. I skipped school to protest the Vietnam war. I served…
After being ordained as a priest for eight years, I was assigned as the Executive Director of Catholic Charities for the Catholic Diocese of Arlington, Virginia. I was in my thirties at the time and going into the new position I felt alarmingly unprepared. From the moment I received the assignment I wondered about the sanity…
Or listen to audio only. Today in the book of Genesis, the very first book of the Bible, we hear the story about the very first day of creation. It is a story of beginnings. That is what Genesis means. In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a…
Wednesday this week was a history making day. One that will live in infamy. Depending on your generation, you can probably answer one or more of these questions: Where were you on December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor Day? Where were you on November 22, 1963 when President Kennedy was assassinated? Where were you on September…
Epiphany used to be quite a big deal in the church. It still is, of course, but now it’s often eclipsed by Christmas. Yet Epiphany was around long before Christmas, it turns out. It was the third great feast day of the church after Easter and Pentecost. If Easter celebrates Jesus’ resurrection and Pentecost the…
Read more “God became like us, so that we might become like God.”
It’s January 3rd, so Christmas is over, right? Wrong! Christmas is more than a day, Christmas is a season. It’s the shortest season of the church year — it lasts twelve days! A dozen days of Christmas. It begins Christmas Eve and ends on January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany when the Magi show…
A couple of years ago, I read in The Times that the skies lit up over New York City. “There was a boom and a hum and smoke and the sky turned fluorescent blue.” Twitter like mindedly lit up with eerie lights. “It was spectacular”, a deputy inspector in the 114thPrecinct said. “You could see it a…
A Christmas homily for both young and old. Some Christmas pageants have plastic baby dolls stand in for Jesus. But the liveliest of Christmas pageants have a real live baby! (As we did in our live zoom version with baby Ryan this year!) And when that live Baby Jesus makes his dramatic debut — all…
In our first reading today, Paul says something really bold. He’s talking about the good news of Jesus, and he says “according to my gospel.” My gospel. I couldn’t believe it, because usually we say it’s Jesus’ gospel, or God’s gospel, but Paul said “my gospel.” I found that surprising. “Gospel” is an old word that means “good…
My family has been on a bit of an emotional rollercoaster the past couple of weeks. There was a pregnancy that became compromised, and it was a scary thing as the mother was put on bedrest in the hospital. There was eventually an emergency C-section, and all the things that could have gone wrong somehow didn’t. When…
If you have an Advent calendar, today you can open window number 13! What’s behind it? A toy? A piece of candy? Or maybe a character from the Christmas story? Christmas is just twelve days away! We are all on our way to Bethlehem! I want to share with you an ABC map of how…
Christmas is a comin’ and Mary sings: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.His mercy is for…
I want to start this morning by showing you this cup. What do you think makes this cup useful? Is it the sides or the way it is decorated? No it is the empty space right! This cup is useful because of what it can contain. It is useful because it is ready to accept…
I love words and I recently discovered a new one, a japanese expression called “yohaku.” It means the unpainted part of a painting. It is why a comb is useful, it is not the prongs but the holes between the prongs. It is why a cup is useful, it is what it can contain. It…
Updated November 28. One of my favorite Christmas carols is one that Ryan introduced to me a few years back at a Christmas Comfort service: Come Darkness, Come Light – written and performed by Mary Chapin Carpenter. It’s really more of an Advent, than a Christmas Carol. It deeply echoes this solstice season we are…
For email posts, click here to watch. Today is the first Sunday of Advent. Advent means “coming.” These are the four Sundays, the 24 days we wait expectantly for Christmas. Waiting for Jesus to be born in Bethlehem. Waiting for Christ to come again. In Advent the days are shorter and the nights are longer.…
Read more Good Night Dark. Hello Light. (A Children’s Homily)
Christmas is a comin’ and Mary sings: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.His mercy is for…
The word toleration is often misunderstood. Often the word is applied to people who “enjoy hanging out with different types of people.” In truth, this is wrong; the idea of toleration and enjoyment rarely go together. It was John Locke, the great English political theorist, who wrote the famous treatise called “A Letter Concerning Toleration.”…
Read more Tolerance & Politics: An Ethical Reflection from Ian Markham
For email posts, click here to watch “This Old House.” For those of you who may not know me, I am Janie Piemonte, the new parish administrator, and a member of Emmanuel’s congregation. Wow! These past few weeks you have seen some amazing videos highlighting our worship, our music, and adult spiritual formation. Today I am…
For email posts, click here to watch online. Early in the pandemic I saw a comic which read: “I Finished Netflix!” I laughed out loud because at the time I didn’t have a subscription to Netflix. Now I do. Since signing up, my friend Erin recommended that I check out the Netflix series TURИ. Reluctantly, I tuned in one day…
