Fritz Bauerschmidt

I don't often have occasion to discuss Gospel non-violence, so I'm grateful to the folks at Forging Ploughshares for taking the time to talk with me.

27th Sunday in Ordinary Time Readings: Hab 1:2-3; 2:2-4; 2 Tim 1:6-8, 13-14; Lk 17:5-10 “Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and clamorous discord.”...

"Even our efforts are given us by God
so that we might be caught up
in the great work of God,
so that God might labor
in us & through us—
we who on our own
are mere unprofitable servants,
but who through faith
can shine with the fire of the Spirit."
homileticdiakonia.blogspot.com/2025/10/27th...

26th Sunday in Ordinary Time Readings:  Amos 6:1a, 4-7; 1 Tim 6:11-16; Lk 16:19-31 Where did the rich man go wrong? How did he end up in torment? It doesn’t seem to be s...

Lazarus & Dives, w/assist from Murdoch:
"the parable is not a prediction,
but a warning and an invitation—
an invitation to imagine...
what it might be like to be someone else,
to break out of the confines of our ego,
to be saved from our separation."
homileticdiakonia.blogspot.com/2025/09/26th...

Exaltation of the Holy Cross Readings:  Num 21:4b-9; Phil 2:6-11; Jn 3:13-17 I don’t think couples  generally get married because they want to suffer. They get married b...

The unique occasion of preaching at the convalidation of the marriage of close friends on the Feast the the Exaltation of the Cross provides me the opportunity to reflect on what the Cross tells us about marriage and what marriage tells us about the Cross.

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time Readings:  Wisdom 9:13-18b; Philemon 9-10, 12-17; Lk 14:25-33 What should we make of the words of our Lord in today’s Gospel? His examples o...

This weekend's homily (with 10% more math!):
"being Jesus’s disciple... is an invitation to live a life
that hurls us beyond the limited horizon
that the world offers us....
It is an invitation that makes us ask,
'what would happen if we kept going?'”

The Queenship of Mary Readings:  Is 9:1-6; Rv 11:19a; 12:1-6a, 10ab; Lk 1:26-38 A couple of years ago a new faculty colleague at Loyola, who came from a backgroun...

At the Cathedral we're celebrating our patronal feast this weekend:
"We who acclaim
the handmaid of Nazareth
as Queen of Heaven
are just strange enough,
just weird enough,
to believe in the peace of Christ
that passes all human understanding."

20th Sunday in Ordinary Time Readings: Jer 38:4-6, 8-10; Heb 12:1-4; Lk 12:49-53 At the Basilica on Friday, at the celebration of the patronal solemnity of the Assumpti...

This weekend's homily, with JH Newman, Clemens Non Papa, and Bedlam:
"He is with us in our chaos and disorder;
he is with us in our yearning
for God’s fire to set ablaze
our hearts and our world.
He is daily born
into the bedlam of our lives
whether we can feel him there or not."

16th Sunday in Ordinary Time Readings:  Gn 18:1-10a; Col 1:24-28; Lk 10:38-42 The story of Abraham  and his visitation by the Lord in the form of three mysterious travel...

This Sunday's homily:
"God calls us to radical hospitality,
for in receiving the stranger
we receive the God who receives us."

14th Sunday in Ordinary Time Readings:  Is 66:10-14c; Gal 6:14-18; Lk 10:1-12, 17-20   When I was a college student, a fraternity at my university used to hold  an annua...

Homily for this evening at Corpus Christi:
"Success is not part of the assignment—
Jesus is coming whether we succeed or fail—
but faithfulness is."

Corpus Christi Readings: Gen 14:18-20; 1 Cor 11:23-26; Lk 9:11b-17 Let’s talk about Melchizedek. We don’t talk about Melchizedek very often, partly because...

This weekend's homily:
"We say we believe that Christ’s body broken
and his blood poured out for the life of the world
are truly here under sacramental signs;
can we not also believe
that his kingdom of justice & peace
is present even now as we partake of his feast?"

“Remove yourself, remove, I repeat, yourself from yourself; you just get in your own way” (Augustine, Sermon 169.11).

The Papacy and the Hinterlands Our increased access to papal personality does not give us increased insight into the papal future.

A bit by me on how we don't know anything about what kind of Pope Leo will be, and why that's not really a bad thing.

"Students are badly prepared for the workplace when education in the school is treated as though it itself were an apprenticeship in the workplace." --Alasdair MacIntyre, Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity, 173.

Easter 6 Readings: Acts 15:1-2, 22-29; Rev 21:10-14, 22-23; Jn 14:23-29 In today’s gospel,  Jesus tells his disciples to “keep his word” as a sign of...

Sunday's homily at both CMOQ & CC on the Council of Jerusalem and the Spirit as Advocate:
"it seems that the Spirit
not only can be at work within processes
of legalistic bureaucratic compromise,
but this is actually the Spirit’s special skill set."

“O what wonderful good news! He who for our sake became like us in order to make us his brothers and sisters, now presents to his true Father his own humanity in order to draw all his kindred up after him.” —Gregory of Nyssa, Oratio 1 in resurrectionem

Easter 5 Readings: Acts 14:21-27; Rev 21:1-5a; Jn 13:31-33a, 34-35 Christianity did not arrive in the world as a philosophy or an ethical code,  but ...

Today's homily, on love and loneliness, featuring Dorothy Day and Pope Leo:
"The Catholic tradition expects the tribe
to gather weekly,
on the day of Christ’s resurrection,
to celebrate the Eucharist...
to bear with our unbearable neighbor
for at least one hour."

MAGA and the American Pope Seven things to know about Pope Leo XIV.

I'm dubious about a lot of the political tea-leaf-reading going on about Pope Leo, but this one strikes me as pretty smart:

Read Pope Leo XIV's first homily as pope During his homily, delivered in Italian, Leo XIV said that Christians must serve a world that is often hostile to their beliefs.

If my parish got a new pastor and this was his homily on his first Sunday, I would be happy and hopeful:

Easter 2 Readings: Acts 5:12-16; Rev 1:9-11a, 12-13, 17-19; John 20:19-31 Resurrection, if it means anything at all, means Jesus being raised from hi...

Today's homily is on forgiveness in El Paso, couples preparing to marry, and Pope Francis's final words to the world. In other words, it's on resurrection:

Pope Francis and the Power of the Symbolic - The Living Church Pope Francis masterfully used symbolism to capture the imagination, and often his lack of clarity conveyed a unfiltered authenticity. But such a leadership style had drawbacks.

I wrote a little thing for the Episcopalians on Pope Francis:

"I can understand people who do not keep Good Friday at all; they are indeed very ungrateful, but I know what they mean; I understand them. But I do not understand at all, I do not at all see what men mean who do profess to keep it, yet do not sorrow, or at least try to sorrow." -John Henry Newman

Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord 4-12-25 YouTube video by Cathedral of Mary Our Queen

Video of tonight's homily: www.youtube.com/live/g4YFNFo...

Palm Sunday Readings: Lk 19:28-40; Is 50:4-7; Ph 2:6-11; Lk 22:14—23:56 We like our leaders strong. We like them strong because  we want them to protec...

For Palm Sunday:
"Alas for us Christians
if we turn our backs on this mystery,
preferring the ruler of this world,
with his blustering power and his empty show,
to the true king who comes in the Lord’s name."

Lent 5 Readings:  Ez 37:12-14; Rm 8:8-11; Jn 11:1-45 “Jesus wept.” Lazarus has died,  but it is not the thought  of Lazarus in the tomb that wakens...

Homily for the Third Scrutiny:
"He weeps because he is truly human—
like us in all things but sin—
and the truly human thing
to do in the face of death
is to weep together."

Lent 4 Readings:  1 Sm 16:1b, 6-7, 10-13a; Eph 5:8-14; Jn 9:1-41 In today’s Gospel we have two sorts of blindness. There is the blindness that Jesu...

For tomorrow's Scrutiny of our catechumens:
"we have hope to see as God sees,
to see as the saints see:
a clarity that pierces through the fog of sin
to reveal a world saturated with the colors of grace."

“Strictly speaking time does not exist (except within the limits of the present), yet we have to submit to it…. We are really bound by unreal chains. Time which is unreal casts over all things including ourselves a veil of unreality.” —Simone Weil, Gravity & Grace

Homily: On Perishing as They Did - Fr. Joshua Whitfield Redeeming the Heart and Way of the Catholic Preacher

Today’s homily on perishing just as they did.

“What if the stakes are as high as Jesus said they were?”
fatherjoshuawhitfield.com/homily-on-pe...

Lent 2 Readings:  Genesis 15:5-12, 17-18; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 9:28b-36 I was in Los Angeles the past few days and for most of the time that ...

Sunday homily:
"illness and uncertainty and mourning are real
and we should not pretend that they are not.
But God is more real.
The love of Jesus is more real.
The power of the Spirit is more real."

“God has given abundantly to all the basic needs of life, not as a private possession, not restricted by law, not divided by boundaries, but as common to all, amply and in rich measure.” —Gregory Nazianzen Oratio 14

Commie.

Lent 1 Readings:  Deuteronomy 26:4-10; Romans 10:8-13; Luke 4:1-13 Temptation is often a subtle thing. If it works the way the devil intends, you m...

This weekend's homily:
"No drama.
No devil with horns....
Just fleeting thoughts
like water dripping on a stone,
tiny temptations that gradually
wear away your soul...
And the worst part is,
living this diminished life won’t even bother you;
it will seem natural and normal."