Fr. Thom's Homilies

          There is probably no better passage in all of Scripture to demonstrate why we don’t read the Bible – or at least all parts of the Bible – literally .   “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off …if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off …if your eye causes you to sin… pluck it out .”   Were we to take this literally, we would be a church of the blind and the lame!   Now, I don’t want to spend my whole homily on this, but since this is where this passage leaves us, I feel like I have to say something on this.           Jesus is, obviously, using hyperbole here.   That is, He is exaggerating in order to make a point.   But there is always a risk with this kind of approach of getting lost in the hyperbole – of getting distracted by the exaggeration – and forgetting the real message that is being presented.   After all, Jesus isn’t saying these things just to be shocking, much less for comedic value. He really is make a point and a deadly serious one at that !   Listen

          To echo Sister Joan’s remarks before Mass, I would like to welcome all of those who are joining us for this Homecoming weekend, particularly our alumni and especially the members of the class of 1968.   It has been a weekend full of celebration, between the student pep rally on Friday, the various alumni gatherings Friday and Saturday, the Killer Bee 5K and “Bumble Rumble,” the “Taste of Ambrose,” the beautiful weather, and the football game – which we won !   I think it is only fitting that, in a sense, it all culminates here, as we gather as Ambrosians in this setting to give thanks to God for the many ways that St. Ambrose University has been and continues to be a blessing to us.   And so, again, welcome !           I am always struck by just how thick the disciples of Jesus can be at times.   And here I mean specifically “the Twelve.”   Last week in the Gospel (just a chapter before the verses we heard today) Jesus explained to them already once that He would have t

          “ Who do you say that I am? ”   There’s a lot riding on this question – not only for the Apostles, not only for Peter, not only for the world and the Christian faith, but for each of us individually.   How we answer this question will determine so much of how we see ourselves and the world, our sense of purpose and mission in this life, and even what we say, do and think on a day-to-day even moment-to-moment basis.           And there are really only a couple of possible answers to this question.   C.S. Lewis, the great 20 th century writer and Christian apologist, address this nicely, I think, in what is called his famous “trilemma” in his book Mere Christianity .     He first notes that many people try will say, “ I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God.”   This, Lewis says, is “the one thing we must not say.”   He goes on, “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a gre

          There are a lot of beautiful little details in this relatively short passage from Mark’s Gospel.   It goes by so quickly, we might not notice everything.   And so, I’d like to pick out just a couple of details that I think are particularly meaningful and then see if I can apply in some way this great story of “opening” and of healing to our own situation, as individuals and as a Church.           First, notice where Jesus is.   It says he went “into the district of the Decapolis.”   This word “Decapolis” literally means “ten cities,” and was area on the far side of the Sea of Galilee.   More importantly, it was Gentile territory , that is, non-Jewish territory .   What does this tell us?   To use a phrase that has becoming very popular in these past few years: Jesus is “going to the margins” – literally to the margins of Jewish society.   He’s going to those not of the house of Israel primarily, but to “pagans” and “non-believers.”   To borrow some of the language of

          How do we get from the first reading to the Gospel?   By that I mean, how do we get from Moses’ insistence not to add or subtract anything to the law, but to observe all of the statutes of the Lord with the utmost care to Jesus’ chastisement of the Pharisees and scribes for doing, apparently, just that ?   Are these readings juxtaposed simply to demonstrate that the Old (the Law of Moses), as set forth here in Deuteronomy, has been overturned by the New, as set forth by Jesus?     To really understand what is going on here, I think we need to understand something about the law as the Pharisees and scribes would have understood it.   In addition to the Ten Commandments, revealed by God to Moses on Mount Sinai, there were 613 additional laws that were either derived from the Ten Commandments or were otherwise set forth in the Torah (the first five books of the Bible).   These 613 commandments were known as the “Mosaic Law.”   On top of that, there were other ritual cust