Fr. Steven Beatty

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It's Mercy or It's Hell. 24th Sunday Ordinary Time

on September 13, 2020

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Work in Progress: 4th Sunday Lent

James Tissot, The Flight of the Prisoners 587 B.C. The Temple was destroyed, the city laid waste, the people exiled to a foreign land. Preachers are always trying to find an analogy to communicate how devastating this was for Israel. Here’s my try: if ISIS succeeded in destroying every Catholic Church in the world, blew up most of our cities, annihilated every last vestige of our government, and if you survived but were forced to live the rest of your life in Syria, it was kind of like that…maybe. Anyway, it was a tragedy that couldn’t be overstated. After the Fall of Adam and Eve, it was the defining tragedy of the Old Testament. It occupies the attention of most of the Prophets and a big chunk of the historical books, even a Psalm or two: “by the Rivers of Babylon we sat and wept…how could I sing the songs of the Lord in a foreign land?… if I forget you, Jerusalem, let my right hand wither.” Anyone can write down what happened. It’s another thing entirely to say why. That’s ...

Keep Looking Up: Epiphany 2017

Only Matthew tells their story, and he tells almost none of it. People are sometimes surprised to learn that the Bible doesn’t actually say most of what they think they know about the Three Kings. Like, for example, that there were three of them. Or that they were Kings. Matthew does say that they came from the East following a star. I just keep thinking about that star. It’s always been fascinating to people. Astronomers have scoured the records and charts to see if they can find some trace of it in a supernova or some other astronomic event. Historians have looked for other reports from that time period that might give a clue. But that sort of thing is less interesting to me — because even pinpointing some supernova that everyone saw just wouldn’t go very far at all in explaining the journey of the Magi. I’ve seen unusual and surprising things in the sky before. None of them ever made me say, “I’d better get a few friends and pack some bags and start walking westbound until I get s...

The Halftime Speech of the New Testament: 20th Sunday OT

Pope Gregory the Great wrote about one of the difficulties in preaching: you’ve got people with very different situations and challenges and you have to address all of them as best you can. Maybe somebody on the left side has become what we call “scrupulous,” obsessing over everything, living in fear that he hasn’t earned God’s mercy. “Bless me Father, for I have sinned. I thought about doing a slow roll through a stop sign. I didn’t do it but I thought about it and now I’ve lost all hope of salvation.” This person needs a sermon about God’s mercy, about relaxing a little and trusting God to make up for your weakness. If you throw fire and brimstone at this guy, you’re going to aggravate his problem. Trouble is, someone across the aisle has the opposite problem. He’s been getting really lax about Christian life. This guy won’t be seen anywhere near a confessional, but if he was, he’d be saying “Bless me Father, for I have... well, ‘sinned’ is such a negative word... but anywa...

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It's Mercy or It's Hell. 24th Sunday Ordinary Time

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