A ten-day vacation
He told the story himself, from the pulpit, two and a half years after it happened.
On January 31, 2015, I retired as pastor of a parish in Brooklyn. I came down to Vero Beach that afternoon for a ten day vacation. The following morning, Sunday February 1, 2015, while I’m here sitting in the pews for the 7:30 am Mass, Fr. Jim announced that two days prior, our pastor, Fr. Murphy, fell and broke his leg. Soo, I offered my services to Holy Cross parish for the ten days I intended to be here… and I’ve been here ever since! Thank you God.
17th Sunday in Ordinary Time · July 30, 2017
He stayed nearly ten years. In that same homily he said he could not begin to describe “the enormous joy, the incredible blessing that has been mine.” He was preaching on Romans 8:28 — that God brings good out of everything — and offered his own arrival as the proof. Breaking your leg is not good, he said. But do you see what God did?
Brooklyn
He grew up in Bay Ridge and spent forty-five years a priest of the Diocese of Brooklyn before he ever set foot in a Vero Beach pew.
What he preached about
Four things turn up again and again across 162 homilies.
That God’s love is not earned
It happened to him on an Easter morning when he was still a seminarian, and he was still describing it from the altar decades later.
All of a sudden, like a bolt of lightning, a wave of grace washed over me. For the first time in my life I really knew that, despite all my sins, God loved me. God loved me a lot! … The tyranny was broken and I understood that God’s love is pure grace, pure gift — unearned — undeserved — unconditional. You can’t do anything to get it, because God already gave it!
Easter Sunday · April 16, 2017
That a homily should be worth listening to
He learned it from teenagers, and never forgot it. In Brooklyn he ran a “Homily Hot-line”; in Florida he wrote his homilies out and let them be posted.
When I was in Brooklyn, I taught a religion course to High School Seniors. One of the many lessons I learned from that was that not only did they complain that homilies were too long and too boring, but also they complained that homilies didn’t speak to them.
Fifth Sunday of Easter · April 29, 2018
That Easter is allowed to be funny
He opened Easter with a joke on purpose, and had a historical defence ready for anyone who objected.
Did you know that in the old days, priests were expected to tell jokes on Easter? It’s true! Priests were expected to tell jokes on Easter to help people laugh because on Easter, Jesus had the last laugh! What looked like terrible defeat, was actually total victory!
Easter Sunday · April 1, 2018
His mother
Every Mother’s Day he sang the same old song from the altar — M-O-T-H-E-R, one line per letter. By 2017 he was singing it to a mother already gone.
My mom knows that I can’t sing but she also knows that I sing from the heart, and isn’t that what Mother’s Day is all about? … Think about your mother, whether she’s still living or whether she’s with my mom in heaven.
Fifth Sunday of Easter · May 14, 2017
Five years, written down
Almost everything that survives comes from his Florida decade — the Brooklyn years were preached and gone.
The recordings are almost all from 2020 and 2021, when Mass was livestreamed and someone thought to keep the audio. It is the only reason his voice survives at all.
He had already preached his own December
He died on the twelfth of December, in Advent, in the weeks when everyone else is celebrating. Eight years earlier, at a funeral three days before Christmas, he had stood up and said exactly what that feels like — and then answered it.
Some years ago, an aunt of mine, with whom I was very close, my closest aunt, she died on December 22 and the same thought ran through my mind: “What a terrible time of the year to have to deal with death, and grieving and mourning and all that goes with that.” And then, it had to be the grace of God; but almost like a lightning bolt, it hit me and I said: “Wait a second, Christmas celebrates that because Jesus came, our sins are forgiven and our inheritance is restored.” Our inheritance as God’s children is heaven.
Funeral homily · December 21, 2016
Three Easters running he ended the same way. He would tell the congregation that “Happy Easter” was not really what they meant, and then he would ask them to turn to the person beside them and say the other thing instead.
I’ll see you in heaven…