Category Archives: Religion

Our Bodies Through Time

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One of the exhibits at the “Deep Time” exhibit, currently at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, is called “Your body through time: Your body is the result of more than 3.7 billion years of evolution.”

So we didn’t just come from Mommy and Daddy, our favorite human way to say it; 3.7 billion years has been at work bringing us to where we are, and we’re not the only ones. A vast tree of created beings has come to be in deep time.  

The Book of Genesis says in its creation story we come from “the dust of the earth”. All of us. The story we know now is much more complex, and we still don’t know it all .  

I’m sure the young children and an adult viewing the exhibit in the photo above went away, like me, wondering at the mystery it presented. “ Too wonderful for me, this knowledge, too high, beyond my reach.” (Psalm 139)

The same can said of St. Paul’s words to the Colossians read today in our liturgy: 

“In Jesus Christ, everything in heaven and on earth has been created, things visible and invisible.” (Colossians 1,12-20) 

Yet, this knowledge tells us who we are and what we are to do. We need to keep it in mind.

Colossians and Deep Time

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We begin reading the Letter to the Colossians today in our liturgy. Paul never visited this church near Ephesus. Commentators don’t agree about the situation Paul addresses in the letter. It’s not about problems of human behavior and morality as the letters to the Corinthians are. The Colossians have faith in Christ; they love for one another. But some of them here are trying to figure out the cosmos. What’s this world beyond our human world all about? 

Don’t leave Jesus Christ out of that larger world, Paul says. He speaks to the Colossians about the Cosmic Christ. 

“Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and for him.He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the Body, the Church.He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he himself might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things for him, making peace by the Blood of his cross through him, whether those on earth or those in heaven.”  (Colossians 1, 15-20)

Last week after a family wedding in southern New Jersey, I went with a cousin of mine to the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, to see an exhibit called “Deep Time” about the 4.5 billion years it took the universe to arrive at where it is now. It’s a wonderful exhibit, but it was really hard to take it all in. No matter how clever the presentations, our minds find it hard to grasp what happened in 4.5 billion years.. 

It hasn’t been 4.5 billion years without troubles, either. The exhibit made clear that our earth was almost destroyed a number of times, and it offers a strong warning about what might happen as our climate changes now.

The exhibit was about what we know from science; there was no reference to religious knowledge here. But maybe Paul’s letter to the Colossians is a timely message our age needs to hear. Jesus Christ was not just Jesus of Nazareth, rejected by his own people in a little corner of the Middle East long ago. He was not just a teacher who tells us how to get along with one other.

“Jesus is the image of the invisible God…in him were created all things in heaven and on earth.” “He holds all things together” for 4.5 billion years and beyond.. He brings peace through the blood of his cross. He lives and reigns with Father and the Holy Spirit, now and forever.  

Like the Colossians, we need to hear this, today.  

Visiting Gregory the Great; September 3

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Church of St. Gregory the Great, lower left, off Via di San Gregorio (google maps)

Readings for the 22nd Week of the Year

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SEPTEMBER 2  Mon Weekday

1 Thes 4:13-18/Lk 4:16-30 

3 Tue Saint Gregory the Great, Pope and Doctor of the Church

Memorial 1 Thes 5:1-6, 9-11/Lk 4:31-37 

4 Wed Weekday

Col 1:1-8/Lk 4:38-44 

5 Thu Weekday

Col 1:9-14/Lk 5:1-11 

6 Fri Weekday

Col 1:15-20/Lk 5:33-39 

7 Sat Weekday[BVM]

Col 1:21-23/Lk 6:1-5 

8 SUN TWENTY-THIRD SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

Wis 9:13-18b/ Phlm 9-10, 12-17/Lk 14:25-33 

We begin reading from the Letter to the Colossians this week, a letter Paul wrote from prison to a community he never visited. “Christ is the image of the invisible God,” that beautiful hymn begins the letter. 

We also begin to read from Luke’s gospel. Jesus goes first to Nazareth, then to Capernaum. He was not successful in his own hometown.

Gregory the Great, the greatest of the popes to me, is celebrated on Tuesday. 

22nd Sunday C: Come Up Higher

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For this week’s homily please watch the video below.

From a Wedding to “Deep Time”

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From a family wedding last weekend where the bride and groom gave us a love story, a cousin of mine took me to Washington, DC, to visit the “Deep Time” exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. It’s been a panoramic few days.

The wedding itself, in the words of our Irish visitors, was “grand.” Young kids and old people, two big families and their friends were there. They were all at the Mass in church and then ate and danced through the night and then most came back the next day for a splendid brunch in a garden filled with flowers and a new litter of dogs. A celebration.

It lasted almost as long as the Marriage Feast of Cana, I think. The words used about that feast could be said for this one:

”But you shall be called ‘ My delight’ and your land ‘espoused’

for the Lord delights in you and makes your land his spouse.” (Isaiah 62)

The land stretched out at the “Deep Time” exhibit, which takes you back 4.5 billion years to the origin of our earth

Deep Time Exhibit, Smithsonian

The exhibit itself is an attempt to foster the broad thinking we need to face the future by understanding the past. It’s hard to think big. That applies to both the world of science as well as the world of religion, but we need big thinking today.

One wonderful presentation at the exhibit asks you to see how you are connected with 4.5 billion years ago. We just didn’t happen. 

And doesn’t it go beyond that? Science only goes so far.

Readings for the 21st Week of the Year

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AUGUST 26 Mon Weekday

1 Thes 1:1-5, 8b-10/Mt 23:13-22 

27 Tue Saint Monica Memorial

1 Thes 2:1-8/Mt 23:23-26 

28 Wed Saint Augustine, Bishop and Doctor of the Church

Memorial 1 Thes 2:9-13/Mt 23:27-32

29 Thu The Passion of Saint John the Baptist

Memorial 1 Thes 3:7-13 (428)/Mk 6:17-29)

30 Fri Weekday

1 Thes 4:1-8/Mt 25:1-13 

31 Sat Weekday 1 Thes 4:9-11/Mt 25:14-30

SEPTEMBER 1 

WENTY-SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

Sir 3:17-18, 20, 28-29/Heb 12:18-1

21st Sunday of the Year. c: The Narrow Gate

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For this week’s homily, please play the video below.

A Family Wedding

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I’m in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, today for a family wedding. My cousin Christine Gaddis is marrying Kevin Mahoney in Christ Our Light Church at 2 PM. Here’s my homily.

Christine and Kevin, thanks for giving us a love story today. We need love stories today. There’s so much violence in life, so much political and economic uncertainty. We need love stories.

You chose your first reading from a beautiful love story, the Book of Ruth:. 

But Ruth said, “Do not press me to go back and abandon you!

Wherever you go I will go,

wherever you lodge I will lodge.

Your people shall be my people

and your God, my God.

Where you die I will die,

and there be buried.

May the LORD do thus to me, and more, if even death separates me from you!”  (Ruth 1, 1-17)

In the present arrangement of our bible, the Book of Ruth is squeezed in between the Book of Judges and the Book of Kings, two books describing difficult times in Jewish history. The Book of Judges describes a period when everyone’s looking out for themselves, everyone’s on their own.  The Book of Kings describes a time when kings were fighting for control over people and politics ruled the day.   

I imagine the original compilers of our Bible saying to one another “We need a love story to break up the concentration of me, me, me. We need a love story that says life’s not about controlling others. So they put a love story, the Book of Ruth, where it is. 

That may be it. 

However it is, we can’t help being moved by the language of love, the forever language, the daring language, the godlike language that we hear today.   

And here you are two lawyers, who know the cautious language of law and deal so much with the careful steps we need for an orderly society–  here you are saying to one another, “I take you for better or worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do us part. 

The language of Ruth, the language of love, the language of God. 

Love is the language of God. We’re made in the image of God. Whether we know it or not, we aspire to be like God. And you recognize that as you come to make your vows to one another here, where the signs of God are so strong, where God who inspires you to make this commitment of love is present.  

We ask God’s blessing for you.

You come too with your family and friends. We’re here to share your happiness, we promise you our support and our prayers, and we thank you for giving us a love story today.