Fr. Rick Spicer

We are presented today with another one of Jesus’ puzzling and disturbing parables. He praises the steward, not for being dishonest, but for his prudence. The steward is looking out for his future and so must we, that is, our ultimate future, which is ours to squander by the choices we make each day. Once again, I have a story to share, based on one written by the Russian novelist, Leo Tolstoy.

Once there was a farmer named Pahom.  As a young man, he took over the family farm and was very successful.  Soon he bought the neighbor’s farm, and then other neighboring farms, until he owned thousands of acres of land.  He continued to buy land until he was the largest landowner in the area.

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25th Sunday of Ordinary TimeRead More »

Recently I ran across a story that could be a modern day version of the parable we just heard, entitled, “Somebody’s Son,” by Richard Pennell. It opens with a runaway teenager, named David, sitting by the side of a road, writing a letter to his mother. Expressing the hope that his old fashioned father will forgive him for leaving home, he writes,

“Dear mother, in a few days I’ll be passing our property. If Dad will take me back, ask him to tie a white cloth on the apple tree in the field next to our house.”

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24th Sunday of Ordinary TimeRead More »

I will never forget the last afternoon of my first vacation as a priest in San Francisco. I stopped at Old St. Mary’s Church in Chinatown and browsed through their bookstore before leaving the city to meet some friends east of Oakland for dinner. I had never driven on the Embarcadero before and I missed the onramp to the Bay Bridge, so I took the next exit and pulled over to study the map to find my way back when the big earthquake hit.

My guardian angel was certainly keeping an eye on me because if I hadn’t stopped at Old St. Mary’s or missed that exit, I would have been on the bay bridge at the wrong moment.  By the way, the name of the book I purchased was Sin Reconsidered.

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21st Sunday of Ordinary TimeRead More »

Mass was beginning one Sunday morning in a small Latin American town when a band of revolutionaries, armed with machine guns, stormed their way into the chapel. The priest and the congregation were terrified. The men dragged the priest outside to be executed. The leader came back inside and demanded, “Anyone else who believes in this God stuff, come forward!”  Everyone was petrified. There was a long silence.

Finally, one man came forward and said to the leader, “I love Jesus.” He was then roughly tossed to the soldiers and taken outside. A few others stepped forward and said the same thing. They too were marched outside. Each time someone was taken outside, machine guns were heard. When no more people stepped forward, the leader told them to leave. “You have no right to be here!” He then herded them out of the chapel where they were astonished to see the priest and the others standing there, unhurt and very much alive.

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20th Sunday in Ordinary TimeRead More »

“Gird your loins and light your lamps and be like servants who await their master’s return from a wedding, ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival.” Jesus’ advice to his disciples alludes to the first Passover,mentioned in the first reading, when the Israelites were cautioned to be ready on moment’s notice to leave Egypt for the Promised Land. Luke and his peers honestly anticipated the return of Christ in their lifetime, thus he was urging them to be prepared when he did.

Twenty centuries later, his followers still await the coming of Christ. Countless self-proclaimed prophets have made predictions of when he would return even though Jesus cautioned that no one knows the moment when that would happen. Those of us gathered here are not likely to witness such an awesome encounter, known as the rapture or the parousia. Instead, we will experience the coming of Christ in a personal way, namely at the moment of death when we take our last breath. And when we do, will we be ready to begin our journey to the Promised Land of heaven?

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19th Sunday of Ordinary TimeRead More »