New Year’s Day - 2025

The beginning is a time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct, said the Princess Irulan, in her biography of Muad’Dib; a small miscalculation at the outset, any deviation from the plan no matter how subtle, will cause you to miss your mark by a wide margin.

Today is a day for beginnings, for taking a single step that establishes the trajectory of countless miles.

The consideration of this cautionary note may deter you from your end or, get you to a place you never intended to be. Therefore, great care must be taken at the beginning…be mindful of your aim.

 Today is a day of resolutions.

 Doing is being, Ray Bradbury said:

To have done is not enough

You cannot lay about, and lie about the things you might just do someday

But do, to win the game

Great things are accomplished (and by great I mean great in any sphere: socially, professionally, personally, spiritually, privately), great things are arrived at, built, discovered by slinging together a series of small-regular and consistent steps.

 It is by the steady application of effort that we learn to do, and then we can do just about anything…we can walk through fire, we can walk on the face of the moon.

 Resolve to do something this year; be resolute in your determination, see your target and steady your aim…getting there is less important than going.

 If life is a river, it is a confluence of contradictions; the journey is necessary if you wish to arrive at your destination; the process is more important than the goal.

 Be mindful.

 The archer is not only concerned with the object of her aim but with the drawing of her bow, with the tension in the string, with her distance to the target and the currents in the wind.

 Prepare yourself to understand these variables, attenuate yourself to them…they are always changing.

 Make 2025 a year in which hope for the future of America and her promise does not seem absurd, extend that hope to the entire world…365 days from now, hope may be all there is.

 Compassion and accountability, charity and honesty, integrity and humility…justice:

 Call for these; demonstrate your desire for them through the life you lead, and listen for those in need of them…they are crying in the wilderness.

 Today is the first day, it is a day for unity and common purpose.

 Today is a day of beginnings, a day for resolutions, a day for reflection and for joy.

 Today we stand on the fulcrum of a lever, we are poised between past and future, looking forward toward our hopes as we consider the sum of our failures: war and famine, disease and ruin, all the result of our collective strivings, while we run our foolish errands…let each thing fall into its proper place as you move toward your desired end.

A Homily – The Solemnity of Mary (Year C), A Holy Day of Obligation

First Reading – Numbers 6:22-27 ©

Responsorial Psalm – Psalm 66(67):2-3,5,6,8 ©

Second Reading – Galatians 4:4-7 ©

Gospel Acclamation – Hebrews 1:1-2

The Gospel According to Luke 2:16-21 ©

 

(NJB)

 

Listen!

 God may be the creator the universe, but God is not a lord; it is incumbent on us to free the divine name from these earthly titles.

 God is not a god of tribes and nations, or even worlds; the divine spirit is God of all creation.

 Know this:

 God’s blessing is meant for all God’s children, share yours with the poor and needy and follow the spirit along the way.

 Look for God in the face of everyone you encounter, treat each person you meet as if they were God themselves, because God dwells within them.

 Consider the words of the psalmist, who was, when asking God to bless all peoples and nations, to have pity on the outcast and show mercy to the lost, echoing God’s own promise.

 Be mindful.

 God is not confined to one place or one time or one confession of faith. God is the God of everyone, whether they know God or not.

 Praise God, ask for God’s blessing, not just four yourself, but for everyone.

 Consider the teaching of the apostle and reflect on the reality that Jesus’ death was a political murder. If you wish to see what he endured on the cross as a sacrifice, which means to make something holy, you must understand the meaning of redemption. Jesus was not purchasing anything for himself, or for us, when he was killed, he was not paying a debt that was owed to an outsider, but a debt of conscience he owed to himself, the same debt we owe to ourselves.

 He was showing us the way.

 When Jesus went to his death he was acting from the spirit of compassion, taking the Sanhedrin’s wrath, and that of the Romans, and bringing it on himself rather than seeing it visited on his followers and family, his disciples and their families.

 His sacrifice was not a magical feat, neither was it is a mystical event; Jesus was acting as a faithful son of God, exercising ordinary compassion in extraordinary circumstances. He was doing what he had been doing everyday throughout the course of his ministry; he was teaching, he was healing, he was protecting his people until the end.

 Be mindful.

 God’s spirit is with us; the spirit is with us in the memory of Jesus that we carry, we demonstrate the everlasting fecundity of the divine spirit through the loving service we provide to each other.

 Know this:

 God’s spirit animates all of us, we are all God’s children, all of us are heirs to God’s promise, Christian and non-Christian alike.

 God speaks to everyone; God speaks in the secret chamber of our hearts.  When God speaks God calls us to walk humbly, and show mercy in the interest of justice.

 Consider the Gospel reading for today, there is a lot packed into this short passage; before we begin to explicate its meaning we must understand that, the apostle Luke never met Jesus. He was not one of the disciples, he was a protégé of Paul, and Paul had never met Jesus either.

 Luke and Paul, travelled broadly and met many of those who had followed Jesus. Paul even met with James, the bishop of Jerusalem, who was Jesus’ brother, but they never met Jesus himself, and everything they knew about him was hearsay.

 The Gospel of Luke bears Luke’s name but it was not written by Luke. None of the Gospels were written by individuals, each one of them is an exercises in collective development. The writing of the Gospels took place over generations, as the communities who authored them did their best to narrate their understanding of the life and mission of Jesus in terms their audience would understand.

 The Gospel of Luke says that Joseph and Mary, together with baby Jesus, were visited by three shepherds. This is presented in distinction to Matthew’s Gospel which says that the holy family was visited by three Magi, who were “wise men,” and kings.

 The Gospel of Mark, the earliest Gospel to be written, and that of John (the latest) do not treat the subject of Jesus’ birth at all.

 The respective communities of Matthew and Luke were each writing to very different constituencies, as such, they tailored the narrative of the birth of Jesus to suit them, each in their way creating different fictions that was pleasing to the people to whom they were preaching.

 This is the essence of propaganda; to understand the Gospels, this must be understood first-of-all. They contain some legitimate historical data, but sifting facts from fiction is difficult. The reader should bear in mind that the myths surrounding Jesus are the product of artifice, they did not develop organically over the course of centuries and millennia, they were forced into place to suit the particular interests of particular peoples.

 The Gospels speak to some truths that are universal, and relate some true events, but they cannot be relied on as a true account of anything, theological arguments must not be built on the idea such-and-such events actually took place as narrated in the text.

 The Gospels are, as I have said, propaganda, which is not to say that they are bad, but it is to say that they must be seen for what they are in order to be understood correctly. Because the Gospels are propaganda, they are less reliable as a tool to teach us about Jesus and more appropriately used to teach us about the diverse Near Eastern and Mediterranean communities that formed the early church.

 Always be mindful of this when reading the sacred text, they are the product of the human imagination, nothing more and nothing less. There is no divine revelation here, only the revelation of human minds in their ever-so-faltering attempt to grasp the nature of the divine.

 

First Reading – Numbers 6:22-27 ©

They are to Call Down My Name on the Sons of Israel, and I Will Bless Them

The Lord spoke to Moses and said, ‘Say this to Aaron and his sons:

“This is how you are to bless the sons of Israel. You shall say to them:

May the Lord bless you and keep you.

May the Lord let his face shine on you and be gracious to you.

May the Lord uncover his face to you and bring you peace.”

This is how they are to call down my name on the sons of Israel, and I will bless them.’

 

Responsorial Psalm – Psalm 66(67):2-3,5,6,8 ©

O God, be gracious and bless us.

 

O God, be gracious and bless us

  and let your face shed its light upon us.

So will your ways be known upon earth

  and all nations learn your saving help.

 

O God, be gracious and bless us.

 

Let the nations be glad and exult

  for you rule the world with justice.

With fairness you rule the peoples,

  you guide the nations on earth.

 

O God, be gracious and bless us.

 

Let the peoples praise you, O God;

  let all the peoples praise you.

May God still give us his blessing

  till the ends of the earth revere him.

 

O God, be gracious and bless us.

 

Second Reading – Galatians 4:4-7 ©

God Sent His Son, Born of a Woman

When the appointed time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born a subject of the Law, to redeem the subjects of the Law and to enable us to be adopted as sons. The proof that you are sons is that God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts: the Spirit that cries, ‘Abba, Father’, and it is this that makes you a son, you are not a slave any more; and if God has made you son, then he has made you heir.

 

Gospel Acclamation – Hebrews 1:1-2

Alleluia, alleluia!

At various times in the past and in various different ways, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets; but in our own time, the last days, he has spoken to us through his Son.

Alleluia!

 

The Gospel According to Luke 2:16-21 ©

The Shepherds Hurried to Bethlehem and Found the Baby Lying in the Manger

The shepherds hurried away to Bethlehem and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in the manger. When they saw the child they repeated what they had been told about him, and everyone who heard it was astonished at what the shepherds had to say. As for Mary, she treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart. And the shepherds went back glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen; it was exactly as they had been told.

  When the eighth day came and the child was to be circumcised, they gave him the name Jesus, the name the angel had given him before his conception.

 

A Homily – The Solemnity of Mary (Year C), A Holy Day of Obligation

New Year’s Eve - 2024

 When the music’s over…turn out the lights.[1]

 

everything has its time,

every-thing comes to end

such is the nature of things

 

passing from the perpetual

actuality of the now, cresting

the concrescent wave

the sum of all that is

moving into the past

the eternal reality that endures

 

from the smallest grain of sand to the largest galaxy

from the tiniest ambition of a flea to the fantasies of dynasties

everything has its moment…and then those moments are gone…done

and all of us along with them, freed from our desires.

 

We mark the end of things on this final-day of the year as if life itself were coming to an end.

We dance the dance of ritual anticipation looking forward to our death, looking and backward at all that we have been; we herald our continuance with horns upon our heads, blowing pipes and cheering the expectation of rebirth…we celebrate the jubilee for the coming new year.

 

we come to the hard stop

and then we start anew

 

When the music’s over…we turn out the lights

flicker for a moment before we are renewed

 

I look back on the year and see the end of many things and people:

 

friends of mine, so many people

some who inspired me, some who reviled me

the vast number of whom knew nothing of me

but were nonetheless in relationship to me

as links together in the great chain of being

Jimmy Carter, Rickey Henderson, Shelley Duval, Quincey Jones…ordinary people leading ordinary lives, attending school, shopping for food, dancing at prayer, the victims of war and crime, accidents and indifference.

they met the hard stop…and continue, so shall we all,

become something new…therefore

drink a cup of good cheer, eat trifles and screw

ring the bell and drop the ball, this is the end

the end is here

            turn out the lights and shut the door

awaken tomorrow to a new world

---

[1] The Doors, The Doors, Soul Kitchen, 1967, Elektra Records

Alfred North Whitehead - Mathematician, Natural Theologian, Philosopher and Physicist

I discovered the work of Alfred North Whitehead when I was a graduate student at Saint John’s University, School of Theology, in Collegeville, Minnesota.

I had heard of him before, some of my undergraduate professors had attempted to direct me to his work, or more importantly, to the school of thought that he founded. Though, it was at St. John’s where I actually discovered Whitehead and his Process Theology. It was not until then that I came to understand how his perception of the world had been influencing me throughout my life.

Whitehead’s influence came in part through the writing of philosophers and theologians who had taken up his work in continuation of the process tradition, but his influence also manifested itself through osmosis, from the general principles which he articulated that I had absorbed unconsciously through pop culture.

Because I found that the cosmologies of Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus and other mind/body dualists such as Descartes and Kant completely inadequate to the task of resolving key tensions between what the church prays and hopes for, in terms of the salvation of the world, and what it considers possible in regard to its view of the nature and structure of reality…a cosmology entirely reliant on false predicates; because I could not rely on these fundamentally flawed systems of reason, I needed something new to build my arguments on.

Even modern interpreters of those dualistic traditions could not escape the fallacies that thousands of years of enculturation had layered into their cosmologies: not Kierkegaard, not Neitchze, neither Wittgenstein, nor Foucault.

Even though the so-called enlightenment philosophers who grappled with scientific theory, making new discoveries in physics and mathematics, even they could not escape the morass they were in; neither the Copernican nor the Newtonian revolution were not sufficient to the task of reworking those ancient cosmological assumptions.

Through his work in physics and mathematics Whitehead provided philosophers and theologians like me with a means of escaping the classical (or quasi-classical) world view, while also providing the best analysis and explanation of the work that had been produced by the aforementioned luminaries which I have ever encountered.

There is no better explainer of enlightenment thinkers than Whitehead.

Isaac Newton brought us a revolution in physics, but his work was still steeped in the Neo-Platonic structures that had not changed since the 3^rd century CE. Whitehead provided a framework for stepping away from Newton and Plotinus, Aristotle and Plato, whose influence was still at work in the twentieth century in such schools of thought as logical positivism, dialectical materialism, and of course…the theology of the church.

Whitehead’s school of thought, his process-thinking, provided me with exactly what I was looking for, an alternate cosmology within which I could contemplate the theological questions I was grappling with. He provided me with the tools of discernment that I desperately needed and continue to rely on as my work matures.

I found Whitehead’s thinking to be dense, it needed explication, and there were many authors that had been students of his, who were busy at the work of doing so. However, Whitehead’s students oftentimes carried their conclusions to very different ends than their teacher did.

From my own studies of Whitehead I developed a theology of relationality that is a principle feature of my work on the doctrine of universal salvation.

This theology says that all humans are concrescent beings. Each and every one of us is a unique society of interests; and yet, at the most fundamental level those interests are relational. Our relationality is not merely something that is discerned in time and space, our relationships are intrinsic elements of self-hood. In fact, relationality is so fundamental to human existence that it is proper to say that our relationships with each other, are constitutive elements of our being.

We are ontologically relational.

Whitehead’s work illuminated the reality that our relationships are so fundamental to who we are that they influence us no matter how far removed we are from one another in time and space, whether we know each other or not, our relationships to one another exist as determinants in the fabric of our being.

Coming to the knowledge of this provided me with the framework for articulating the notion that the salvation of any-one-person is not complete, that it cannot be complete, without the salvation of every-other-person; discovering this in Whitehead was uplifting, and for that I will ever be grateful.

A Homily – The First Sunday of Christmas (Year C)

First Reading - 1 Samuel 1:20-22,24-28 ©

Responsorial Psalm - Psalm 83(84):2-3,5-6,9-10 ©

Second Reading - 1 John 3:1-2,21-24 ©

Gospel Acclamation – Acts 16:14

The Gospel of the Day - Luke 2:41-52 ©

 

(NJB)

 

Listen!

 If you regard the reading from Samuel as narrative that extoling the virtue of giving thanks to God for the good things we receive in this life, and go no further than to accept the piety of Hannah as a woman intent on keeping her promises, then you would be reading this passage well.

 If you go further, by accepting the notion that God, the creator of the universe, that God actually granted her prayer when she became pregnant with Samuel, then you would be mistaken; God does not intervene in the lives of human beings; God does not work miracles like magic in the wombs of barren women.

 If you accept the notion that Hannah was being pious when she made sacrifices at the temple as a thanksgiving for what she perceived was God’s answer to her prayers than you would be compounding your mistakes, for there is nothing pious in the act of animal sacrifice, God does not desire it, and unless the food you offer is distributed to the poor, then nothing good comes from it.

 Be mindful.

 There is wisdom in the writings of Ecclesiasticus…there is also falsehood, they are both present in the same reading.

 Honor your father and mother, but do not expect a reward for it, neither from heaven or even from them, for there are no guarantees in this life.

 Honor you mother and father, your sister and brothers, your cousins, your aunts and uncles, your nieces and nephews, honor them all. Honor your teachers and your classmates, your co-workers and your employers, honor the stranger who comes into your midst…honor them.

 To honor people is good in its own right; you honor yourself in doing so, and through the service you give to everyone, both near and far from you, through that service you also serve and honor the living God who dwells within them.

 Do this without thought of reward to yourself, because you will not be rewarded in this life, and the reward you will receive in the life to come is the same for everyone.

 Know this.

 The divine spirit does not desire that you be afraid. Do not fear God; there is no blessing in it. Fear is not a blessing, it is the seed bed of anger on the path to sin and darkness. Rather trust in God, have faith and confidence in God’s love and in God’s word.

 Remember God’s servant Job…remember that the sun will burn you as readily as it will warm you; scorch the earth as easily as it feeds the crops. Remember that God sends the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike.

 If you find yourself asking:

 Where is the house of the God?

 It is not a palace or a temple. God does not dwell in Zion, for God is everywhere, speaking in the heart of every person as if in God’s own temple. God is not a king, neither is God a lord, nor a Great God among lesser gods or the ruler of many gods.

 The divine spirit is infinite and beyond our comprehension; God is present in all places at all times; there is no place where God is not. The divine spirit embraces everyone.

 Look into your own heart, and into the heart of your neighbor, you will see the face of God peering back at you, and it is there that true worship takes place…happy are they who see the spirit of God.

 The divine spirit is loving, compassionate and wise. God created all of us with the capacity for these qualities. However, God also created us in freedom and we are capable of much more; we have a capacity for goodness, as well as its opposite and it is easy to fall into darkness.

 Know this.

 God has chosen you as God has chosen everyone; we are all God’s children, it is for each of us to accept the divine mission and follow Jesus along the way; peace will follow when we do, and God is patient…God will wait for us.

 Be loving and compassionate, humble and just…be merciful, showing good will toward all of your sisters and brothers. Serve god through the service you give to humanity.

 A life of faith requires support and nourishment, we need it from those closest to us. It is not absolutely necessary, but it is most helpful. You may practice your faith in isolation, but it is more difficult. The life of faith is not meant to be lived in a vacuum, it is meant to be lived through relationships and in community.

 Consider the teaching of the apostle; live a life of prayer; yes, do everything for God’s sake (to the extent that you are able, but do nothing in God’s name. Do what you do in your own name; take responsibility for your actions, both good and bad, whether they were well intentioned or ill, whether you have succeeded or failed.

 If you are living and working for God, in whatever industry you find yourself in, in whatever capacity, at whatever calling has come to you; if you keep to the way before you, then you will be living and working on behalf of your neighbor, your sisters and brothers, all of your fellow human beings. You will be working for the benefit of all people, now and in all generations to come.

 If your work does not allow to you to do this…abandon it.

 Remember.

 When you are preaching and speaking to others about the faith, you are speaking to the children of God. There is nothing you can do to affect their salvation. There salvation, as yours, has already been accomplished by God.

 Love is its own reward, do not seek anything else in return; love simply, accept it as you find it in the spirit with which it is given.

 Nothing good comes from believing in a name, it is only in loving, and in the act of caring that good things come through us and to us. Faith is not belief in a particular doctrine, or article of dogma, to have faith is to trust in God…trust and be discerning.

 Beware of false prophets, go, look to everyone around you, especially those who claim to be “true believers.” Look to yourself. We are all imperfect, and we all possess false (errant) understandings of who God is. Each of us in our own way confounds our knowledge of the truth with our hopes and desires for ourselves. Therefore we must trust God while being mindful that the divine spirit is beyond each and every proposition we generate.

 The purpose of the church is to foster trust in God, to nurture faith, in the image of God that was present in Jesus, the same image that is present in you. Trust God and forgive, accept forgiveness and allow yourself to love…to be loved, you are worthy of it, as is everyone, and you no-more than anyone.

 God dwells within the obedient and the disobedient, the faithful and the unfaithful alike. God lives in all people, God knows you and God knows them, God knows us, even as we know ourselves…God knows us better.

 Consider the Gospel reading for today:

 The narrative is a myth; it does not give us any reliable information about who Jesus was, or his relationship with his parents, even though it purports to do so. It does tell us something about what the author of Luke wanted us to believe about Jesus, namely, that his parents were faithful and observant Jews. He wants us to believe that they went to Jerusalem for the Passover as the law required, that they were counted and dutifully made the required offerings at the temple.

 The authors of Luke were trying to tell us that Jesus was wise beyond his years, that he was capable of self-direction, that he had a sense of mission and purpose for his life, even as a child. They also wanted us to believe that Jesus understood at this early age, long before his adult ministry began, that he was, in a unique way, a child of God. Luke wants us to understand that his submission to the authority of his parents was voluntary.

 The unfortunate thing is that instead of informing us about who Jesus is, it muddies our understanding by mythologizing him, instead the reading only tells us what the authors of Luke wanted us to believe, what their followers hoped was true.

 Though they could not foresee this, these writings would come divide the Christian community from itself and precipitate centuries of bloody conflict over the question of Jesus’ divinity, his humanity, and the relationship between the two.

 I contend that the man who was Jesus of Nazareth, Joshua son of Joseph, would have been aghast at these developments. Jesus spent his life and went to his death as a champion of justice, as an advocate for mercy, as a healer and a humble advocate for the poor, hungry, the homeless, the sick, the widow and the orphan.

 Luke’s narrative is therefore a cautionary tale, reminding us of the necessity to cleave to the truth at all times, to separate our hopes, our desires, and most importantly our fears, from the values we wish to convey to our posterity

 Then and only then do we honor God, then and only then do we show the reality of our faith.

 

First Reading – 1 Samuel 1:20-22,24-28 ©

This is the Child I Prayed For: He is Made Over to the Lord.

Hannah conceived and gave birth to a son, and called him Samuel ‘since’ she said ‘I asked the Lord for him.’

When a year had gone by, the husband Elkanah went up again with all his family to offer the annual sacrifice to the Lord and to fulfil his vow. Hannah, however, did not go up, having said to her husband, ‘Not before the child is weaned. Then I will bring him and present him before the Lord and he shall stay there for ever.’

When she had weaned him, she took him up with her together with a three-year-old bull, an ephah of flour and a skin of wine, and she brought him to the temple of the Lord at Shiloh; and the child was with them. They slaughtered the bull and the child’s mother came to Eli. She said, ‘If you please, my lord. As you live, my lord, I am the woman who stood here beside you, praying to the Lord. This is the child I prayed for, and the Lord granted me what I asked him. Now I make him over to the Lord for the whole of his life. He is made over to the Lord.’

 

Alternative Responsorial Psalm – Psalm 83(84):2-3,5-6,9-10 ©

They are happy who dwell in your house, O Lord.

How lovely is your dwelling place,

  Lord, God of hosts.

My soul is longing and yearning,

  is yearning for the courts of the Lord.

My heart and my soul ring out their joy

  to God, the living God.

They are happy who dwell in your house, O Lord.

They are happy, who dwell in your house,

  for ever singing your praise.

They are happy, whose strength is in you,

  in whose hearts are the roads to Zion.

They are happy who dwell in your house, O Lord.

O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer,

  give ear, O God of Jacob.

Turn your eyes, O God, our shield,

  look on the face of your anointed.

They are happy who dwell in your house, O Lord.

 

Second reading – 1 John 3:1-2,21-24 ©

We are Called God's children, and That is What We Are

Think of the love that the Father has lavished on us, by letting us be called God’s children; and that is what we are.

Because the world refused to acknowledge him, therefore it does not acknowledge us.

My dear people, we are already the children of God but what we are to be in the future has not yet been revealed; all we know is, that when it is revealed we shall be like him because we shall see him as he really is.

My dear people, if we cannot be condemned by our own conscience, we need not be afraid in God’s presence, and whatever we ask him, we shall receive, because we keep his commandments and live the kind of life that he wants.

His commandments are these: that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and that we love one another as he told us to.

Whoever keeps his commandments lives in God and God lives in him.

We know that he lives in us by the Spirit that he has given us.

 

Gospel Acclamation – Acts 16:14

Alleluia, alleluia!

Open our heart, O Lord, to accept the words of your Son.

Alleluia!

 

The Gospel According to Luke – 2:41-52 ©

Mary Stored Up All These Things in Her Heart

Every year the parents of Jesus used to go to Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover. When he was twelve years old, they went up for the feast as usual. When they were on their way home after the feast, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem without his parents knowing it. They assumed he was with the caravan, and it was only after a day’s journey that they went to look for him among their relations and acquaintances. When they failed to find him they went back to Jerusalem looking for him everywhere.

  Three days later, they found him in the Temple, sitting among the doctors, listening to them, and asking them questions; and all those who heard him were astounded at his intelligence and his replies. They were overcome when they saw him, and his mother said to him, ‘My child, why have, you done this to us? See how worried your father and I have been, looking for you.’ ‘Why were you looking for me?’ he replied ‘Did you not know that I must be busy with my Father’s affairs?’ But they did not understand what he meant.

  He then went down with them and came to Nazareth and lived under their authority. His mother stored up all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom, in stature, and in favour with God and men.

 

A Homily – The First Sunday of Christmas (Year C)