January 23: Opening the Stained Glass Ceiling

On this joyous day, we celebrated Eucharist and among us
was Fr.Roy Bourgeois, Maryknoll priest. Fr. Roy Bourgeois is calling for the ordination
of women priests in the Roman Catholic Church. On this day we gave thanks for the
ordination of women priests as a matter of justice,
and pray that the Vatican sees the Light and recognizes the "sensus fidelum"
---that the People of God want women priests.
The reading from Corinthians says it well:
For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body,
whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons,
and we were all given to drink of one Spirit.

Jimmy Carter also says it well:
Today, when religious institutions exclude women from their hierarchies and rituals, the inevitable implication is that females are inferior. "The Elders" are right that religious groups should stand up for a simple ethical principle: any person’s human rights should be sacred, and not depend on something as earthly as their genitals.

January 9, 2010: Epiphany and Baptism

At our Eucharist, we celebrated the Nativity, the Epiphany, and the Theophany all in one. We were reminded in our shared homily that the in breaking of G-O-D into time is sometimes brilliant LIGHT, but just as often, beholding life in a soft LIGHT, even sometimes slightly out of focus. And too that the rupture, the parting of the clouds over our brother Jesus in the Jordan was most astonishing in saying "This is my Beloved." That this in breaking heralds for all of us if we but claim it that we too are called "Beloved" by the Holy. Yes, astonishing!

James Joyce wrote that the epiphany was the sudden "revelation of the whatness of a thing," the moment when "the soul of the commonest object ... seems to us radiant."
Yes, we, as our brother Jesus has shown, are all radiant to the Holy in our common humanity.

And now, sisters and brothers, as radiant beloved people let us turn our Light and Love to the needs of others in our world as Howard Thurman reminds us:
The Work of Christmas?
When the song of angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the wise men and wise women are back home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild nations,
To bring peace to all,
To make music in the heart.
Howard Thurman (adapted)