Deep Calls to Deep Roc Homily (a) – 4th SUN ORD (A) 2017
Sermon on the Mount: Who made up the crowd Jesus saw before going up the mountain? Wounded people came to him then drawn by the promise of healing. Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people. So his fame […]
Roc Homily (d) – 3rd SUN Ord Time (A) 2017
I concluded my homily last Sunday with this: “I now fully support the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. I believe that all in this country should receive the same insurance as Senators and members of the House of Representatives. So, take away the first and bring on the second.” Here is the audio version […]
Roc Homily (c) – “Silence” and the Call of the Disciples…
Last night, I viewed the movie, “Silence.” It touched me in many ways and led me to reflect on the Call of the Disciples in last Sunday’s gospel. First, a bit of exegesis on the call. Matthew 4:15f “Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee […]
Roc Homily (b) – 3rd Sunday Ordinary Time (A) 2017
The significance of the sea in Matthew. A lot happens by the sea, on the sea, or in the sea in Matthew’s gospel. Sunday’s gospel referred to the sea three times. Unusual, eh? Two main themes stand out: Both Matthew and the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament, present the sea as the symbol of everything that is opposed to […]
Roc Homily (a) – 3rd Sunday Ordinary Time (A) 2017
The Prayer for Christian Unity also serves to highlight our divisions. I understand that there are somewhere around 25,000 different Christian Churches in the US. NOT denominations, churches, and each one claiming absolute truth. Our remembrance of the 44th anniversary of Roe v. Wade also brought up deep divisions in our country around “Who is truly […]
Roc Homily (e) – 2nd Sunday Ordinary Time (A) 2017
Here’s my first attempt at dealing with the meaning of “atonement.” The Oxford-English Dictionary defines “atone” as “making reparation for a wrong or injury.” However, the medieval Latin word, adunamentum, means “unity” from an obsolete verb meaning “to unite.” So, what sounded as a hip dealing with this concept in the 1970’s as “at-one-ment” is actually true […]
Roc Homily (d) – 2nd Sunday Ordinary Time (A) 2017
A few folks asked, “What’s all this about paying a debt?” Here’s a shot at it before launching into John Calvin… Theologians throughout the ages have grappled with “Why did this happen? Why did Jesus die? What does it mean he died for our sins?” This piece from Isaiah, read on Good Friday, seems to […]
Roc Homily (c) 2nd Sunday Ordinary Time (A) 2017
St. Thomas Aquinas on Atonement… St. Thomas Aquinas considers the atonement in the Summa Theologiae into what is now the standard Catholic understanding of atonement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisfaction_theory_of_atonement For Aquinas, the main obstacle to human salvation lies in sinful human nature, which damns human beings unless it is repaired or restored by the atonement. In his section on […]
Roc Homily (2) – 2nd Sunday Ordinary Time (A) 2017
1. ATONEMENT: St. Anselm and his theory of atonement Thanks to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisfaction_theory_of_atonement St. Anselm of Canterbury first articulated the satisfaction view in his Cur Deus Homo? as a modification to the ransom theory that was postulated at the time. The then-current ransom theory of atonement held that Jesus’ death paid a ransom to Satan, allowing God to rescue those under Satan’s bondage. […]
Roc Homily – 2nd Sunday Ordinary Time (A) 2017
“Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29) One of the first occurrences in Leviticus of the Greek, ‘amnos (one of 3 terms in Greek that means ‘lamb’), happens in 14:1. This passage describes an elaborate ceremony in which the priest ritualizes the return of a leper who has been made […]
Deep Calls to Deep 