Homily for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ
June 6, 2021
St. Patrick Cathedral
Fort Worth, Texas
Exodus 24:3-8
Psalm 116:12-13, 15-16, 17-18
Hebrews 9:11-15
Mark 14:12-16, 22-26
The chalice is the central image used in the Gospel of Mark to connote the sacrificial suffering of Jesus. In the tenth chapter of this Gospel, Jesus asks the sons of Zebedee — the Apostles James and John — who have asked to sit at His right and His left: “Can you drink the chalice that I drink or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” The chalice connotes the suffering that Jesus will experience. Yet, even more than symbolizing existential suffering, the chalice specifically signifies the unconditional love by which Christ conquers sin and death in the free and willing sacrifice of His life in obedience to the Truth of the mission entrusted to Him by His Father. The chalice offered to us by Christ is a share in the ability and willingness to love as Jesus loves.
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Homily for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ
June 14, 2020
Saint Patrick Cathedral
Fort Worth, Texas
Deuteronomy 8:2-3, 14b-16a
Psalm 147:12-15, 19-20
1 Corinthians 10:16-17
John 6:51-58
The famous Catholic novelist Flannery O’Connor was once asked why so many of her stories were grotesque and even violent. She responded, “The novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural; and he may well be forced to take ever more violent means to get his vision across to this hostile audience. When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal ways of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock — to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures.”
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Life on the Chrism Trail 