Set Us On Fire, Holy Spirit,  Pentecost Sunday Homily, May 23, 2021  by Fr. John Dear, St. Timothy’s, Morro Bay, Cal.  Pentecost is such a great feast, it’s such a happy day to celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit in the early community, and the coming of the Holy...

Good evening and welcome everyone, and especially, a very happy birthday to our friend and special guest of honor, Dr. Paul Farmer. I went to college at Duke University with Paul in the late 1970s, and I’m happy to be with you all to celebrate Paul’s life and work, and...

Welcome again, dear friends. I’m just back this weekend from speaking in England and Scotland, and I didn’t know it, but if you asked what country is actually on the verge of outlawing nuclear weapons, apparently, it would be Scotland. Every day for the last year, hundreds of activists, church...

(Luke 9:28-36; Jonah 3:1-12) Homily for the feast of St. Therese of Lisieux By Fr. John Dear, S.J. Deacons Conference, Toronto, Canada October, 1, 2005. (Gospel passage: Luke 10:17-24) Dear friends, this is a great text for our weekend together. After all your work, after all you’ve been through in...

A few weeks ago, a Jesuit friend from Ireland came to visit and we spent a few days sightseeing. At the end of his stay we went to Bandelier National Park. It was my first time there, and I was utterly overwhelmed–the beautiful valley, the green trees, the striking cliffs,...

(Matthew 5:19-26) Last weekend, Daniel Berrigan and I spoke to a church gathering on Block Island, Rhode Island about these difficult days of war. A ninety-nine year old woman named Ira stood up and told about her grandson who has been preparing to enter the seminary to become a minister,...

(Acts 2) The Holy Spirit makes all the difference. Only after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, when the terrified disciples were hiding in an attic, when the fire of the Holy Spirit came upon them did they take to the streets as Jesus did, denounce the empire and its...

(Luke 24:46-53) Today we celebrate the ascension of Jesus, the completion of his mission on earth, when he returns home happily to heaven to be with his beloved God, a great moment which we celebrate, a cause for rejoicing, as the first disciples rejoiced. Just before he ascends to heaven,...

(John 14: 23-29) Next week we celebrate the Ascension of Jesus, and the following week, the feast of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit comes upon the apostles and sends them out into the world. In this beautiful Gospel, Jesus says the Holy Spirit will teach us everything! I would like...

(John 10:27-30) The most important, practical, and helpful advice I can give you is to urge you to make Jesus more and more the center of your lives, to turn more and more toward Jesus, to move more and more toward Jesus, to think more and more about Jesus, to...

(John 21:1-19) If I had been the savior of the world, and I had loved and served everyone and announced the good news of God’s reign of love and peace, but then was betrayed, denied, abandoned, arrested, condemned, tortured, and executed, I don’t think I would want to rise and...

(Luke 24:1-12; John 20) Happy Easter everyone! We celebrate the greatest day of the year, the greatest day in history, the day that changes everything for us. I just want to say three little things. First, Jesus has been raised from the dead and rolled away the stone and is...

(John 18:1-19:42) On this solemn Good Friday, I just want to make three little points. First, notice again how Jesus responds to all the terrible things that happen to him. He is betrayed, denied, rejected, abandoned, arrested, tried, condemned, hit, mocked, abused, tortured, and crucified, and yet how does he...

(John 13: 1-15) It’s Passover night, and at this intimate moment with Jesus at the Last Supper, Jesus does this amazing thing. He bends down and washes their feet. Then he asks them: “Do you realize what I have done for you?” I want to offer three little points. First,...

(John 8:1-11) Jesus is teaching in the Temple, and attracts a huge crowd, but the Scribes and the Pharisees are out to get him, so they catch this poor woman and drag her into the Temple and force her to stand in front of the crowd in order to catch...

(Luke 15:1-3, 11-32) This is one of the greatest stories ever told. Jesus is a genius storyteller and he tells this parable because the Pharisees and Scribes were mad at him saying, “This guy eats with sinners.” They were judging him for not being as holy as them; for violating...

(John 4:5:42) I would like to look at this great story from John’s Gospel and see what we can learn from it. The first to notice is that Jesus is in pagan territory, in Samaria, in enemy territory, where he is absolutely not supposed to be, but as usual, Jesus...

(Luke 9:28-26) One way to look at the famous episode of the Transfiguration is to see there the three stages of the spiritual life: going up the mountain with Jesus; being on the mountaintop with Jesus; and going down the mountain with Jesus, and I want to ask you, “Where...

(Luke 4:1-13) The story goes that after Jesus was baptized and heard God call him “My Beloved,” he does something equally extraordinary. Instead of calling attention to himself, he walks off into the desert for forty days to fast and pray. He turns inward, goes into solitude for a time...

(Luke 6: 27-38) The good news is that God loves each one of us infinitely, unconditionally, and completely. We don’t deserve it, we can’t claim credit for it, and we can’t earn it, but we are personally loved, infinitely loved by God. And Jesus wants us to live in that...

(Luke 6:17-26) Today we’re talking blessings and woes, blessings meaning all the gifts and graces that God gives us, and woes, meaning the opposite, all the curses that we take upon ourselves. St. Francis said, for Jesus, everything is upside down. As far as Jesus is concerned, everything the world...

(Luke 5:1-11) Today’s great story about how Jesus calls the fishermen to follow him on the path to discipleship has three great lines which we can reflect about. First, we hear how they’ve been out fishing all night on the Sea of Galilee and they’ve caught nothing, how Jesus borrows...

(Luke 4:21-30; 1 Cor. 13:4-13) The good news today is that God loves us, each one of us, and God calls us to love one another. St. Paul reminds us in this famous reading that love is patient, love is kind, love rejoices in the truth, love never fails. We’re...

(Luke 4:16-22) Today we hear the beginning of the Gospel of Luke, plus part one of the famous two part story of Jesus’ visit to his hometown synagogue. Jesus has just walked through Galilee, proclaiming the reign of God, when he arrives in Nazareth and goes directly to the synagogue...

(John 2:1-11 ) In 1982, just before I entered the Jesuits, I went to Israel and spent several months walking through the Holy Land to learn more about Jesus, and I remember walking the six miles from Nazareth to Cana, which would have been a tiny village in those days,...