Words of the Mouth and Meditations of the Heart

  A sermon for Pentecost 24, or Christ the King Sunday Texts: Jeremiah 23:1-6 , Colossians 1:11-20 , Luke 23:33-43 This is the 26th week after Pentecost, and the last Sunday of the liturgical year. We’re at the equivalent of New Year's Eve, and resolutions for the next year are not inappropriate. This Sunday is also known as Christ the King Sunday, and we have heard about kings and kingdoms in all three readings this morning. The reading that sticks out, that seems out of place, is Christ’s crucifixion in Luke’s Gospel, definitely not a kingley event. We would expect to only read that passage during Holy Week, so it is puzzling why we read it now, just before Advent when we prepare for Christ’s birth into the world and our lives. But that gospel reading also is about his kingship, and his kingdom. Jeremiah starts off describing the kings in his time as shepherds, and for him, those kings have failed the people whom they rule. Rather than keeping the people safe and cared for, the ...

Below is a reflection I offered at a funeral on November 3, 2022, arranged by the Catholic Charities office and attended by volunteers of the Society of Saint Joseph of Arimathea. We celebrated All Saint's Day with a choir of Catholic high school students and laid to rest Willie Fitzpatrick. Willie died several years ago, and his cremains were recently found in a dumpster. They were turned over to the coroner's office, who contacted Catholic Charities to help with find a final resting place for Willie. The funeral, as with all SSJOA funerals, took place at the city's Meadow View cemetery in Valley Station, KY. In the Apostle Paul’s letters to the churches of his day, he addresses faithful Christian members with a Greek word that is translated in some English Bibles as the word “saints”, as we heard in the New Testament reading. It is clear that Paul considers those saints as faithful members of the church wherever they are and whoever they are, rather than people of excepti...