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Year C
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What follows is cast
as a homily for
June
6, 2004
, Trinity Sunday and its scriptures for
Year C. As we make the move from Easter season
back to Ordinary Time, we encounter the Sundays
named for the Trinity and for the Body and
Blood of Christ. This year’s scriptures
for Trinity Sunday bring a first reading from
a genre we don’t hear enough, the wisdom
poetry (Proverbs 8:22–31). The direction
of the effort below at mystagogical preaching
takes this return to Ordinary Time and the
June 1 feast of St. Justin to revisit —
summer or not — how we do Sunday Eucharist
and why it matters. This preaching could
well continue next Sunday to emphasize even
more how Eucharist is first a deed of the
baptized assembly; if we are to celebrate
the Sunday called the Body and Blood of
Christ, we should do it reflecting on how
that Sunday deed is to grow ever stronger
in this assembly. As we stand at the beginning
of the summer, there should be no expectation
that our summer Sunday gatherings will be
less beautiful, less intense.
Gabe Huck
Last Sunday we celebrated Pentecost, the fiftieth
and last day of the Easter season. Last Monday
the church found itself back in what is called
Ordinary Time, the time when we count the
Sundays one by one from now until Advent comes
in December. We ease back into this long,
steady time with two Sundays that have special
names: Today is called Trinity Sunday and
next Sunday is called The Body and Blood of
Christ. Though these are not ancient feasts
in the church, these two Sundays still bring
wonderful scriptures and poetry and ask us
to begin these six months of counted Sundays
affirming how much we baptized people need
our Sunday assembly all year round.
Now here’s one more name and one more
day on the calendar. Last Tuesday, the first
day of June, the church marked the feast of
a philosopher and martyr named Justin. This
Justin was born in
Palestine
and died in far-off
Rome
, just like Saint Peter a century before him.
He was baptized into the Christian community
at a time when the elders of the community
probably still remembered knowing one or the
other of the disciples who had known Jesus.
After he was baptized a Christian, Justin
kept in touch with his learned friends, even
though they thought the followers of Jesus
were some very strange fringe cult. Unlike
most Christians, Justin had the formal education
to carry on a dialogue with these people.
In doing so, he wrote down one of the earliest
descriptions we have of just what happened
when the Christians came together on the first
day the week.
Justin’s philosopher friends, who were
not Christians, imagined these gatherings
to be full of all kinds of foolishness. Justin
tried to tell them exactly what went on — and
because of this, nineteen centuries later
we can know what happened in second-century
Rome when baptized people gathered every Sunday.
What Justin wrote about this is very brief.
Listen to it now and think of those times
and of our times. Justin begins with two sentences
summing up what Christians do:
“Those who have more come to the aid
of those who lack, and we are constantly together.
Over all that we receive we bless the Maker
of all things through his Son Jesus Christ
and through the Holy Spirit.”
Then Justin describes the Lord’s Day
gathering:
On
the day called Sunday there is a meeting in
one place of those who live in cities or the
country, and the memoirs of the apostles or
the writings of the prophets are read as long
as time permits. Then we all stand up together
and offer prayers.
When
we have finished the prayer, bread is brought,
and wine and water, and the president similarly
sends up prayers and thanksgivings to the
best of his ability, and the congregation
assents, saying the Amen.
The
distribution of the consecrated elements and
reception by each one takes place and [these
elements] are sent to the absent by the deacons.
Those
who prosper, and who so wish, contribute,
each one as much as each chooses to. What
is collected is deposited with the president,
and he takes care of orphans and widows, and
those who are in want on account of sickness
or any other cause, and those who are in prison,
and the strangers who are sojourners among
us; in short, he is the protector of all those
in need.
We
all hold this common gathering on Sunday,
since it is the first day, on which God, transforming
darkness and matter, made the universe, and
Jesus Christ our Savior rose from the dead
on the same day.
We hear in Justin’s description much
that makes us feel in a beautiful continuity
with our ancestors in faith. It is Sunday
when we gather, then and now. We come together
in one place, then and now. Then and now we
read and listen to scripture, what in Justin’s
day was called the “memoirs of the apostles” and “the
writings of the prophets.” Then and
now, when this is finished, we all stand up
together and offer prayers. What is happening
here? This public reading of what we call
scripture is the foundation on which we build
our lives, as individuals but even more as
a local church. The hearing and the pondering
and the active reflecting on those scriptures — by
all of us
— is sustenance for us. With the scriptures
still echoing in our ears, we pour out our
prayers. This is no mumbled “let us
pray to the Lord”; it is a vital part
of what baptized people are charged to do.
We are to stay aware of the hurt and trouble
of the whole world, the hurt and trouble of
the church, and we are to raise all this noisily
to God in prayer.
Then and now, when these prayers for the world
and the church are finished, bread and wine
are brought. In Justin’s time the prayer
to be prayed over those gifts, praising God,
thanking God, was not written down. The presider,
or “president” as Justin says,
would speak the prayer by heart, improvising
along well-established lines. But much in
that prayer would sound so familiar to us
today: praising God with the angels, calling
the Holy Spirit to come upon the assembly
and the gifts of bread and wine, remembering
all the wonders God has done, and especially
God’s love outpoured in Jesus, through
whom we give to God all thanks, all praise,
all glory.
Then and now the words of the presider are
affirmed and confirmed, approved and acclaimed
by all present in the word we still use: Amen!
Amen is what we send out strongly and fully
to seal all that has been prayed around the
table and our bread and wine. Amen was the
word in Justin’s day, and Amen it is
today. And that prayer and that Amen are for
Justin no magic mumbling but they are those
few moments of each week, each life, that
make clear what every bit of baptized life
is about. “Over all that we receive,” Justin
says, “we bless the Maker of all things
through his Son Jesus Christ and through the
Holy Spirit.” And there is our Trinity
we name today. We bless the Maker through
Jesus and the Spirit. That describes not only
the eucharistic prayer but what we try to
do with our lives.
Then and now, the bread and wine over which
all present have prayed are distributed to
everyone and are later taken to the sick.
That’s all Justin says but what more
is needed to describe our communion rite?
Today we pray the Lord’s Prayer and
exchange the peace. They probably did something
like that also. Justin doesn’t say that
the bread was broken, but it had to be; two
generations before Justin the whole gathering
on Sunday was being called “the breaking
of the bread.” What Justin does say
is that each one shares in the bread and the
wine, consecrated now by the prayer and its
Amen. Each one shares. Each one takes a bit
of bread, a sip of wine. Then and now this
meager banquet, as Paul will tell us next
Sunday, is how we proclaim the death of the
Lord until Christ comes. We hunger and we
thirst for this morsel of bread and taste
of wine, become for us the Body and Blood
of our Lord Jesus Christ.
What should all this Sunday work of ours be
doing? Justin modestly explains that it should
be changing things, the effort of a few nonconformists
to make a new kind of world. At the Sunday
gathering this is manifest in ongoing efforts
to redistribute the wealth. All contribute
what they can, and Justin claims that the
church sees to it that this is used to care
for orphans and widows, the poor, the sick,
prisoners, and those who are parted from their
homes. But Justin uses the word “protector” rather
than
“provider.” The church is to protect
all of these people. What else should we expect?
In Justin’s report, what we hear about
our ancestors in the faith is the bond between
what they were doing with their lives and
what they were doing together on Sundays.
We have some things to learn from our ancestors,
pioneers in this faith. Have we this morning
listened well to the scriptures? Do we wonder
a bit at that Proverbs poem about someone
called Wisdom who was helping God create,
who was God’s delight, and who played
like a child on the earth, loving to be with
the human race? Do we let poetry like that
tell us about the Holy Trinity? And in a few
moments what sort of intense attention to
the world’s troubles will we bring to
the prayer of the faithful? When we are summoned
to lift up our hearts, how will the praise
and thanksgiving reflect the way we live day
by day, the way we decide what matters in
this world? How hungry are we, individually
and even more as a church, for the holy communion?
So we begin these weeks and months that are
not part of any named season, but every one
of these Sundays is for us to assemble and
do our work. That is what Justin did until
they came and arrested him for it and cut
off his head. He was asking for it. So are
we.
Copyright
© Gabe Huck. Used by permission.
Originally written for Celebration,
the worship and preaching resource
of the National Catholic Reporter
(visit their Web site at www.celebrationpublications.org)
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The
following is an example of how catechesis
from and for the liturgy may be done in the
Sunday homily. This is written as a homily
for the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, June
29, which comes on a Sunday in 2003. It attempts
an unfolding of the prayers of intercession.
Gabe
Huck
Peter and Paul, an odd couple if ever there
was one. Peter, the rough and sometimes bumbling
fisherman. Paul, the scholar and writer and
tireless traveler. They might have led quiet
lives along the eastern shores of the Mediterranean.
Instead they believed the gospel and ended
up in the heart of the empire, Rome, calling
themselves apostles of the Lord Jesus.
As their stories are told in the book of Acts,
Peter and Paul were no strangers to prisons.
The charge against them was often what we
today call “disturbing the peace.” One
time in Macedonia, in the city of Philippi,
Paul and his companion, Silas, were arrested,
beaten, put in prison and shackled on the
charge of “disturbing our city.” Maybe
you have heard the spiritual that begins: “Paul
and Silas bound in jail / got nobody for to
go their bail. / Keep your eyes on the prize,
hold on, hold on.” And hold on they
did. Here’s what Acts says happened
next: “About
midnight
, . . . Paul and Silas were praying and singing
hymns to God as the prisoners listened” (Acts
16:25). Suddenly
an earthquake opened all the doors and ripped
the chains from the walls.
Today we read about a time when Peter was
thrown into prison and double-chained to the
wall; a soldier slept on his right, another
on his left, and there were more guards outside.
But elsewhere in town, we are told,
“prayer by the church was fervently
being made to God on his behalf” (Acts
12:5). No earthquake this time, but an angel
brings Peter out of prison and back to the
praying church.
The chains fall, the doors open — when?
When Paul and Silas are praying and singing.
When Peter is sound asleep, in what might
have been his last night alive, but his Christian
community, across town, is wide awake and
praying fervently for his deliverance. What
we see at work here isn’t some extraordinary
event in the early church’s life. That
is, maybe the earthquake was extraordinary,
and maybe the escape-assisting angel was extraordinary,
but what wasn’t extraordinary at all
was this: There was loud prayer going on.
So from the beginning, prayers silent and
aloud, prayers spoken and sung, prayers alone
and prayers in common, were being woven into
the daily and nightly life of baptized people.
They had heard all those stories of Jesus
praying, and they had the psalms from the
Hebrew Bible that seem to have been part of
the vocabulary of Christians from the very
start. Deep in our church’s way of living
the gospel of Jesus is this habit of whispering
or chanting or crying out to God about all
that is amiss, all that is wrong, all that
is painful and unjust and desperate.
How do we learn to do this? Sometimes we begin
to learn this way of praying, this way of
lifting up to God all the sick and the dying,
the lonely and the poor, from our parents.
We kneel down by our bed at night and we pray
for everybody. We say, “God bless Grandma
and Grandpa and Uncle Ed.” God bless
this one and that one. These are not simply
children’s prayers, they are the church
taking its responsibility to bring all the
world’s needs before the Lord. Sometimes
we learn at the household table, at the prayer
before or after the evening meal, when we
speak out the prayers we have.
And when we assemble on the Lord’s Day
we do this all together. First, we read from
the scriptures, we sing psalms and alleluias,
we share a homily and creed. But then, before
we come to the table with bread and wine,
we make the prayer of the faithful, the intercessions.
This is how we learn week by week how to pray.
This assembly, all of us, having kept our
ears open to the scriptures and preaching,
having opened our mouths to sing songs and
psalms, we now have the need and the words
to do what baptized people are charged to
do. We gather into our hearts and words the
world’s sadness and troubles, all that
is breaking apart, all the grief and need
and terror. Who else will do this?
We are not here to look out for ourselves
but to clamor before God for those who are
powerless, silenced, abused, worked to death,
scared to death, hopeless, mad. We have our
lists of the sick and the dying, the dead
and the mourning, but also our lists of the
imprisoned and unemployed, the developmentally
disabled and the morally disabled.
We are here to clamor also for those who have
great power in state or church or science
or corporation or media. We clamor to God
not with some mild neutrality. We clamor that
they be granted enough compassion to quit
hurting others. We clamor that they stumble
on enough wisdom to work for the common good.
We clamor that the goods of the earth be shared
and shared alike, that the wealth we are pouring
into nuclear and chemical swords be put instead
into the work of educating and healing all
over the world. We clamor for the earth itself,
its beauty and sustaining goodness quickly
being lost because we cannot restrain our
greed.
The society presumes we’ll look out
for number one, help the poor a bit when we
can without too much inconvenience to ourselves,
keep our noses to some grindstone, and leave
the running of the world to those who manage
the nations, the corporations, and the armies.
Isn’t it so? Occasionally we’ll
be offered some sad case — an abused
child, a society murder, a bought politician — and
we’ll follow along like a soap opera,
thinking we are seeing reality.
But in the intercessions we are training our
eyes to work in an entirely different way.
The eyes of the baptized are open eyes. Every
day. The open eyes of the baptized are fixed
where the gospel would have us look. And what
we see prompts us to cry out to the Lord,
even those of us who are so privileged by
the current system of distribution. We look
at the world with eyes open and our gaze is
gospel-directed, and so we come face to face
with the immensity of need and pain and waste.
The gospel makes us do this and not despair.
The gospel makes us do this, and instead of
despair it tells us to cry out, to intercede,
to make a loud clamor before the Lord.
For us, it is as if we are here to do this
shouting, to wake up the Lord. “Arise,
Lord, why are you sleeping?” says one
of the psalms. That’s us, making bold
as Peter would do, as the passionate preaching
Paul might do. That’s our line in this
drama: Arise, Lord, why are you sleeping?
Those in fact are the prayers we make just
before we approach the altar with bread and
wine, those prayers that have us responding
with “Lord, hear our prayer,” or “Lord,
have mercy,” or the like. If they seem
to fall dead from our lips, then we are failing
to do one of the basic charges of our baptism.
We have let the world go. We have abandoned
the great world and all its sadness when indeed
we were baptized to love it and to shout out
to God, to wake God up, to clamor on until
God takes notice of the sick, the poor, the
oppressed, the prisoners, the dying, the earth
itself.
These prayers of intercession are a litany-like
flow when we name what we have seen all around
us, in the parish, the town, the city, the
whole world. We name it. We don’t tell
God how to fix it, we don’t parade our
own precious solutions. We just name it and
in naming it we renew our gospel seeing, our
commission to keep our eyes fixed where healing
and justice and peace and sharing and care
and restraint are lacking and so needed. Praying
together these intercessions on Sunday, we
are rehearsing not simply the bedside or tableside
prayers of the week to come, but we are rehearsing
how to spend our time and energy through the
days. We do this interceding, this rehearsing,
as a church, all of us caught up in one prayer,
the body of Christ at prayer. There’s
no way to do it alone, no way to wake God,
no way to get Got to remember what is needed
here except we do it together, the church,
the body of Christ. For it is Christ who intercedes
with our voice and we with the voice of Christ.
So we stand attentively during these prayers
of intercession, and we give our attention
to them, and those responsible try hard to
shape the words, and when we can, we raise
them up into chant and song so that we are
caught up into the rhythm of the litany that
is the church clamoring before God, getting
God’s attention. In us the whole world
is here to cry out just as the church was
crying out for imprisoned Peter, and Paul
and Silas were crying out. The prison walls
won’t hold against such prayer.
Copyright © Gabe
Huck. Used by permission.
Originally written for Celebration,
the worship and preaching resource
of the National Catholic Reporter
(visit their Web site at www.celebrationpublications.org) |
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What follows
is a homily for Sunday, November
9, 2003. In the Roman Catholic calendar,
the Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary
Time is replaced by the feast of
the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica
in Rome. This attempt at a
mystagogical reflection, then, centers
on the house of the church.
Gabe
Huck
Last Sunday and
today, when we should be in the home
stretch of our year-long reading of
the gospel of Mark, we have been diverted.
It happens that in 2003 both November
2, which is All Souls Day, and today,
November 9, fall on Sundays. All
Souls Day, like All Saints Day on
November 1, is the time when the gathered
church prays and sings about the communion
of saints, the bond we have with all
who have gone before us. The scripture
readings and the songs of those first
two days of November bring us before
the mystery of death. All through
November we are conscious that, as
the song says, “we are walking
in the footsteps of those who’ve
gone before.” And so we, the
church, attend with care to the burial
of the dead, and we proclaim each
November as we do each Sunday of the
year that in Jesus death is defeated,
and we strive each year to thwart
the unjust ways of death in this unjust
world.
But today, November 9, why today are
we not doing the readings and the
songs of this third-to-last Sunday
of Ordinary Time in 2003? The answer
is very strange, very political, very
human. Today is an anniversary that
none of us would ever remember because
the event happened more than 1,700
years ago. How many of us here know
the anniversary date and the year
of dedication of this building? But
the Roman church, perhaps wishing
to tug a little on those bonds that
make us Catholic, wants the whole
Catholic tribe to keep the anniversary
of the cathedral in Rome. And the
cathedral in Rome is not Saint Peter’s
Basilica in the Vatican. It is the
Church of Saint John Lateran. It is
the oldest of the four basilicas in
Rome and stands on the site of an
ancient palace belonging to the Laterani
family. It was dedicated by Pope Sylvester
I in the year 324, and ever since
then has been the cathedral of Rome,
therefore the cathedral of the bishop
of Rome (now usually called the pope).
Now we should be aware that there
were Christians before there were
special buildings where they met for
Eucharist and prayer. The followers
of Jesus continued to pray in the
temple in Jerusalem and continued
to attend synagogues outside Jerusalem,
and they gathered in one another’s
homes for the breaking of bread on
the Lord’s Day. Getting land
and building a big hall wasn’t
a priority. Owning property and buildings
was from the start a two-edged sword.
One edge was how their buildings could
be places of artistry in wood and
stone and glass; they could be houses
for the church, places of peace and
sanctuary and strength. But there
has always been that other edge: we
quarrel about our buildings, about
the shape and the furniture and the
art. And we get entangled in maintaining
our own properties instead of caring
for the world, serving ourselves instead
of serving the world.
By the fifth century it was clear
that Christians were going to have
their buildings. It had a lot to do
with other changes in relationships
among the baptized, early egalitarian
models giving way to hierarchies learned
from the Roman civil government. Adaptation
is necessary, imitation is often dangerous.
But what happened, happened, and so
all these hundreds of years later,
here we are, a church gathered on
November 9 and thinking about this
place, the building where we meet.
Here — this floor, this roof
above us, these walls and windows — here
is a place that is a house for the
church, our house. In our house some
vital transactions take place. Here
we confess our sins and praise the
goodness of God. Here we gather around
couples ready to commit themselves
to each other. Here we keep the oils
for anointing the sick and the catechumens
and the newly baptized. Here we bring
the bodies of those who have died
so that we can together commend our
dead to the love of God. And here,
Easter by Easter, the catechumens
are baptized and confirmed and taken
to the holy table. Here, Sunday by
Sunday we come together and together
give attention to God’s word,
together pray for every needy one
in the world, together give thanks
to God over bread and wine and share
alike in the holy communion. All these
deeds done publicly, and many devotions
done privately, will, little by little,
make this place dear to us. But this
is far more than tender sentiment.
It is strength to do our work, strength
to do Eucharist and baptism, hard
deeds in this world.
That’s not new. Near the baptizing
place in that old Roman cathedral
of Saint John, we would find, still
today, a Latin inscription that was
carved when they began using this
pool for baptisms. The scholar Aidan
Kavanagh has given the text a poetic
translation that begins:
Here is born in Spirit-soaked fertility
a brood destined for another City,
begotten by God’s blowing
and borne upon this torrent
by the Church their virgin mother.
What is this “spirit-soaked
fertility”? And who is this “brood
destined for another City”?
Perhaps we have experienced this ourselves
at the great Vigil between Holy Saturday
and Easter Sunday when, after long
hours in reading and reflection, we
approach our font to baptize those
who have come to us through the catechumenate.
Spirit-soaked fertility indeed! What
birth happens at our font? From what
lovemaking come these newborn, whether
infants or adults? Who is this virgin
and mother Church? Look around, you
will see. And those who are born here,
and that is all of us from one baptism
pool or another, we are the “brood
destined for another City,” a
city not made by hand but somehow
a city we are helping to fashion day
by gracious day in this earthly city.
The inscription on the wall of the
baptistery in
Rome
’s old cathedral continues:
This spring is life that floods
the world,
the wounds of Christ its awesome
source.
Sinner, here scour sin away down
to innocence,
for they know no enmity who are
by
one font, one Spirit, one faith,
made one.
Sinner, shudder not at sin’s
kind and number,
for those born here are holy.
Jesus was baptized by John in the
Jordan. In the New Testament we read
of other baptisms in other rivers.
For some Christians, the nearest river
is still the best place for baptism.
There’s something about flowing
water! We heard Ezekiel today: “Water
[was] flowing out from beneath the
threshold of the temple . . . Wherever
the river flows, every sort of living
creature that can multiply shall live”
(Ezekiel 47:1, 9). Everything will
live where the river goes! When Christians
moved indoors, they brought the river
with them. Somewhere in our gathering
place we have water to baptize, water
to sign us in remembrance of baptism.
This is the river the poet sees as
flowing from the side of Christ, “the
wounds of Christ its awesome source.” In
our indoor churches we had centuries
when the river nearly dried up, barely
a trickle by a dry font. Christians
then could easily forget that they
were born in these waters, and that
in these waters where we come as sinners
our sin is scoured “down to
innocence.” But of late we give
more attention to the river, the font
that is the river for us, and we can
tell ourselves that here in this watery
womb, here in this watery tomb, is
both death and life, life born out
of death. Perhaps the terror of baptism
is too much for us, and we busy ourselves
with camera angles and social niceties,
missing the death, missing the birth.
How can this house of ours compel
our attention to the waters that both
drown and bring life?
Besides the font with its water, the
only other essential furnishing of
this house of the church is the table.
Churches don’t need pews, benches,
or chairs. These were late additions
in our history, coming when the assembled
people had become little more than
an audience watching the doings of
the ordained. Churches don’t
need candlesticks. They don’t
need stations or stained glass or
pamphlet racks. They don’t need
the pulpit or ambo because the book
of the scriptures can be held by the
reader and proclaimed to the assembly.
But our room does need the table with
its bread and its wine.
Again, history shows us how the household
breaking bread and sharing a common
cup on the Lord’s Day evolved
into silent congregations watching
as the table was placed against the
wall, the words were whispered in
a strange language, no one shared
the cup and few shared the bread of
life. But in these generations right
now we come to know again the table,
a human-sized furnishing that we can
surround, a center to our assembly,
a well-made table that calls us to
gather around in great reverence for
the deeds to be done here. As we gather,
the presider approaches this table
and greets it with a deep bow and
with a kiss, a kiss given on behalf
of all the assembly for the table
itself has been for us a presence
of the Lord Jesus. So that intimate
human deed, the kiss, becomes our
greeting of this table and also our
farewell when we take our leave.
If we would know better who we are,
we Christians, begin here at the table —
before it is prepared even, before
it holds the bread and wine that will,
with thanksgiving, become for us the
body and blood of Christ. Begin at
the table and ask: What sort of people,
what kind of tribe, what “brood,” would
place in its midst a simple table?
Do you wish to know who we are? Well,
look at this —
we tell each other and we tell the
world who we are with nothing more
than a table and ourselves gathered
there, attentive, needy, and ever
proclaiming the praise of God and
giving God thanks before coming forward
to dine at this table from bread broken
for us and a cup poured out for us.
And in our tradition, this room needs
also a place where the holy bread
is kept as food for the dying, as
food for those who are sick and cannot
be in the assembly on Sunday.
So the font with water, the table
with bread and wine. What else is
the feast of the dedication of Rome’s
cathedral about? We heard it in the
gospel: “[Jesus] was speaking
about the temple of his body” (John
2:21). The inscription at the baptistery
calls us by one of our names, sinners.
Sinners, the body of Christ. Yes,
both are what we are, and we — the
sinners, the body of Christ — are
what this room needs. We are the church,
not this room or that big room in
Rome. The room in Rome is a house
for the church. So is this, a dear
house indeed, but we who come here
to do Eucharist, to baptize, to pray,
to anoint, to confess, to marry, to
bid farewell, to bless — we
are Christ’s body, the church.
Copyright © Gabe
Huck. Used by permission.
Originally written for Celebration,
the worship and preaching resource
of the National Catholic Reporter
(visit their Web site at www.celebrationpublications.org). |
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These homilies
may be copied and adapted for your own use;
however, they may not be commercially published
without permission of the author.
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