Category Archives: Musings

Resolutions and habits

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In what has become a New Year’s Day “tradition”, I again offer this post for your consideration.

Unless you happen to be like my muse, Calvin, in the comic strip, I suspect you are about to make some New Year’s resolutions. How did you do on last year’s resolutions? About the same as the rest of us? One ad hominem wisdom saying defines “insanity” this way: to keep doing the same thing and expect a different result. Perhaps 2022 is a time to consider changing the way resolutions are considered, made, and hopefully, kept. Continue reading →

Part Time Believers

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Today’s gospel is the Prologue from the Gospel of John. In part, it reads: 

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” … “What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”… “…to those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God, to those who believe in his name.” (John 1:1, 4-5, 12)

It is a glorious and amazing passage which promises the “power to become children of God, to those who believe in his name.” Here in the shadow of our celebration of the Feast of the Holy Family, it speaks to the everlasting Holy Family of God in eternal life. Here in this life it asks that we clothe ourselves in the Word of God so that we focus our life on the will of God in the here and now, to become witnesses to the love and embrace of God that all might “believe in his name.”

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Joy Complete

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Today we celebrate the Feast of St. John the Evangelist. In the midst of the Christmas season today’s gospel seems out of place. It recounts Mary Magdalene’s experience of Easter morning when she reports to Peter and the other apostles: “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we do not know where they put him.” In that scene she is the first witness to the Resurrection, the first evangelist proclaiming the Good News to those who would be charged with carrying that news to the end of the earth. The scene is as foundational to evangelization as can be.

Evangelization, bringing the “Good News” to the people of the world is something that has always been wrapped up in promise. From the very beginning, even as Adam and Eve were being expelled from the Garden of Eden, there was the promise of a son who would come to restore. In a certain sense, the entire Old Testament has the echo of the promise, given through the prophets, that the promise holds and God is faithful to His word. In that light, the Christmas Nativity gospel can be thought of as “Hope has arrived.”

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Here we come a-wassailing

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I am sure many (if not all) are familiar with the Christmas carol that begins, “Here we come a-wassailing / among the leaves so green.” If not there is a video below to remind you – or introduce you to the song. But what is a “wassail” and how does one go about “wassailing”? Our friends at Merriam-Webster have the answer to those questions!

To wassail is to sing carols (popular songs or ballads of religious joy) from house to house at Christmas; the verb is usually used in the phrase “go wassailing.” As a noun, wassail can refer to (among other things) a hot drink that is made with wine, beer, or cider, as well as spices, sugar, and usually baked apples. Wassail is traditionally served in a large bowl especially at Christmastime.

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Remembering Fr. Joe Nangle OFM

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My friend, mentor and Franciscan brother, Joe Nangle OFM passed away on December 14th. His funeral was today. Joe requested that I give the homily – and so, here it is….

Funeral Homily for Fr Joseph Nangle OFM

I first encountered Fr. Joe while he was celebrating Mass in a small-town church in Loudoun County – seating capacity 89. What I remember most clearly is him coming down from the altar to stand among the people and to proclaim the gospel as though it was a story – “Hey, did you hear….?” It was clear that this was a story being passed onto each one of us with the expectation that we would share the story, the good news of Jesus Christ. We were to be people who heard the gospel, gossipped it over the back yard fence, lived the gospel and became People of the Word. In the same way as Fr. Joe had in the course of his own life become vir evangelii – a man of the Good News, the Gospel. That was 40 years ago.

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Genealogy of Hope

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The gospel for today is St. Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus. It is Matthew’s way of showing how Jesus fulfills the Old Testament storyline and takes up the first 17 verses of the gospel – and since Matthew’s gospel is almost always the first book of the New Testament, one could say it is the first 17 verses of the entire New Testament! … and I am sure most people skip it and move on to the Nativity and Infancy narratives.

Genealogies in the Old Testament are always working to communicate multiple layers of information to readers. Genealogies obviously trace family trees, but they also help us follow priestly and royal lines through Israel’s story. You can see each of these types of genealogies in the first nine chapters of Chronicles. In fact, there’s little doubt that the author of Matthew had the book of Chronicles and its genealogies in mind when he wrote his own Gospel account and began it with a genealogy.

Okay… But why does this genealogy matter?

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Guadalupe and Linguistics

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Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Today it is common to find villages, towns, cities, and even districts in Mexico, Central and South America named “Guadalupe.”  But in the year 1531 there was no such place in Mexico. So, I have always wondered why the appearance of the Blessed Virgin Mary is referred to as “Our Lady of Guadalupe.” It is an interesting story of linguistic misunderstanding.

Guadalupe is the name of an area, a city, a river, and a Marian shrine in Spain. The word itself comes from a mixture of  Arabic and Latin roots. Remember that Spain was occupied in part and whole by an Islamic regime from 720 CE until 1492 CE, hence many words have Arabic origin. The Arabic wadi (seasonal river bed) became the Spanish “quadi” having the same meaning. “Quadi” seems to have been combined with the Latin lupus (wolf) to come up with Guadalupe.

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