Censings

Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year C September 08 2019 – 10:30 AM Saint Cecilia Catholic Community Rev. David Justin Lynch Wisdom 9:13:18B | Psalm 90:3-6;12-14;17 Philemon 9-10;12-17 | Luke 14:25-33              +In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, AMEN. This week, I was asked to make time at today’s Sunday Mass for the commissioning of a Protestant layperson to officiate at weddings and funerals for personal financial gain.   Aside from the fact that we are a Catholic Community whose theological understandings of weddings, funerals, and ministry itself differ from Protestants in many respects, this proposal raises an important question: should ministry be a profit-seeking endeavor? Today’s readings answer precisely why I issued a resounding NO to that request. In the course of my work as a priest, families come to me for baptisms, weddings, quinceañeras, and funerals. The first question...

    LABOR DAY CELEBRATION Saint Cecilia Catholic Community Palm Springs, California September 01, 2019 – 10:30 AM Rev. David Justin Lynch Genesis 23:1-6 | Song of Wisdom 1 Corinthians 3:10-13 | Matthew 25:31-46 + In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, AMEN.        When we think of Labor Day, we commonly think of unionized workers celebrating victories over oppressive employers. Those workers are certainly to be commended for their courage, their vision, and their sacrifices that brought us the forty-hour work week, minimum wage, and other labor protections.   We must never lose sight of our mission as Christians to be ministers of justice, to fight against oppression and degradation of all kinds involving all workers, no matter what they do or where they are.        In the ensuing years since the beginning of the labor movement, the relationship between employers and e...

Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time August 25th, 2019 11:00 AM Saint Anthony’s Cathedral, Detroit, MI Rev. David Justin Lynch Isaiah 66:18-21 | Psalm 117:1-2 Hebrews 12:5-7;11-13 | Luke 13:22-30  + In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, AMEN.            From nineteen sixty-eight to nineteen seventy, I was a student at Greenwich High School in Greenwich, Connecticut, where I grew up. At that school, there was a clique of socially adept people, some intelligent, some not, some talented, some not, and some athletic, some not.  What they had in common was they were popular with other students. Others not part of their group looked to them for leadership. This clique consisted of those who won student elections of all kinds regardless of any objective competence for the task for which they were chosen. They were popular. People liked them. Being liked was important to them and to the people who liked...

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year C August 04, 2019 – 10:30 AM Saint Cecilia Catholic Community, Palm Springs, CA Rev. David Justin Lynch Ecclesiastes 1:2;2:22-23 | Psalm 90:3-6;12-17;17 Colossians 3:1-5;9-11 | Luke 12:13-21        + In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, AMEN. On our recent train trip home from New Orleans to Los Angeles, Deacon Sharon and I were almost eight hours late because our passenger train had to wait for freight trains to pass. The owner of the train tracks, Union Pacific Railroad, placed a higher priority on the substantial revenue generated by their freight trains over the comparatively slim revenue realized from hosting Amtrak passenger trains. Today’s readings are aimed with surgical precision at the cold-hearted people who run Union Pacific, who favor the inanimate freight and the money it generates over human persons riding passenger trains. Union Pacific showed us w...

Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C June 30, 2019 – 10:30 AM Saint Cecilia Catholic Community Rev. David Justin Lynch I Kings 19:16B;19-21 | Psalm 16:1-2;5;7-11 Galatians 5:1;13-18 | Luke 9:51-62        + In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, AMEN.        God works, moves, and speaks in myriad and divers ways, too many to count, and in new variations revealed to us every minute. The vastness of God is too complicated for human comprehension. God speaks unexpectedly, often from the mouths of people we least expect. God is ultimately a mystery. About two weeks ago, we heard Deacon Sharon preach about the Trinity. That, too, is a mystery, more than we as humans have the capacity to imagine.         Yet, the same, mysterious, undefinable God asks, and in fact, demands, our faith, that is, total and unquestioned loyalty. We are expected to put God before all...

SOLEMNITY OF THE ASCENSION June 02, 2019   10:30 AM Saint Cecilia Catholic Community Rev. David Justin Lynch Acts 1:1-11 | Psalm 47:2-3;6-9 Ephesians 1:17-23 | Luke 24:46-53        + In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, AMEN.        When I was a child, the Space Program of the United States Government, known as NASA, an acronym for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, was quite fascinating to me.   I can recall that the first time I watched television in school was the lift-off of Astronaut Alan Shepherd into a suborbital journey that blasted him to the outer edges space and then immediately back down to earth several hundred miles down range from the launch site. I have continued to follow the space program in the news media. It still fascinates me. At the same time that I watched spaceflight in my childhood, I was, of course, an enthusiastic churchgoer...