We are Broken; God's Mercy is Greater

The 1st Sunday of Lent hits you pretty hard with the sinfulness of man, leading off with Genesis 3 and Psalm 51. In some circles, St. Paul gets critiqued as being negative, dour, or moralistic, but his 5th chapter of Romans that we hear right after that is the definition of good news. The gift is not like the transgression; the "physics" of sin are not like the dynamic of grace. Truly, there is a wideness in God's mercy. 

There are definitely a lot of personal stories in this one. This week I was thinking about how when you have a retreat day or a witness talk, you don't get convicted by hearing the theology of sin, you get it from hearing a person's stories and having that resonate with your own brokenness. So, we still have to be nerdy with Romans 5 a bit, but theres some big stories in there too. 

2 Homilies: Lessons from Septuagesima. Waiting for the Beatitudes.

So, here's two homilies. The first up is from just yesterday, about these last few days before Lent. 

The other one is actually from January 29, the start of Catholic Schools Week, but I started showing Covid symptoms that night and was a salted slug the next 10 days and never posted it.