Homily: 9.28.08

Fr. Dan Ruff, S.J. – 6:30 p.m. Mass – 9.28.08 Pastor – Old St. Joseph’s Church 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time , Year A It’s hard to believe that it’s been twelve years since the film Jerry Maguire appeared in theatres where it enjoyed both critical and commercial success.  Cameron Crowe wrote and directed the original script, which combined comedy, drama, and romance.  Tom Cruise’s portrayal of the title character won him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor; and Cuba Gooding, Jr. received not only a nomination but the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.  The...

From the Pastor: 9.28.08

FROM THE PASTOR, SEPT. 28, 2008 Living a Christ-like life has always been challenging; living a Christ-like life in our contemporary Western “culture” can seem almost impossible. In a fascinating book entitled The Shattered Lantern, Fr. Ronald Rolheiser – one of the great Catholic spiritual writers of our day – helps us to understand this as he explores what he calls the problem of “unbelief among believers.” It is not so much that contemporary people deny God’s existence, suggests Fr. Rolheiser. Rather, we are de facto atheists or...

From the Pastor: 9.21.08

FROM THE PASTOR, SEPTEMBER 21, 2008 Did it ever strike you as odd that when a person is sick and under a doctor’s care, we refer to that person as a “patient?” It strikes your pastor as odd because I, for one, am not at all. “Patient,” that is, when I am a patient. I don’t do pain and limitation well; I tend to whine and grumble. I also tend to feel guilty or responsible, as if somehow, by sheer will power, I should be able to override the pain or the other symptoms of illness. The word “patient” comes from the Latin, patior,...

Homily: 9.14.08

Fr. Dan Ruff, S.J. – Pastor Old St. Joseph’s Church – 11:30 a.m., 6:30 p.m. Sunday 9.14.08 – Exaltation of the Holy Cross How many people know what an oxymoron is?  I should have known it would be a lot of you in this highly educated parish…  Even though oxymoron sounds like it should be an exotic illness, or maybe, a laundry product, it is, in fact, a figure of speech that joins together two seemingly opposite ideas, often for ironic effect.  For instance, a mother with small children might describe her household as “organized chaos.”  Other common...

From the Pastor: 9.14.08

FROM THE PASTOR: 9.14.2008 As you all know by now, I spent the last eight years “pastoring” the campus faith community at Loyola College in MD where I served as Director of Campus Ministry.  One of the things which worried me frequently during those years was that about three-quarters of our resident Catholic student population seemed almost completely indifferent to their Church. Most of these young women and men (who made up 79% of our total student population) had spent eight to twelve years in Catholic grade schools and high schools, and most had attended...

From the Pastor: 9.7.08

FROM THE PASTOR: 09.07.2008 Preaching is a strange and wondrous thing. We tend to remember it, especially if it is notably wonderful (or terrible!); but we also tend to remember it because it is the part of the mass that most clearly varies each time we gather, following, as it does, the cycle of lectionary readings and the liturgical feasts and seasons. The late, great Jesuit preacher, Walter Burghardt, went so far as to call preaching  “an art and a craft,” and I fully agree with him as far as that goes. But preaching is also much more than that; it is, in...