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Book: Lovely in Eyes Not His: Homilies for an Imaging Christ Author: Walter J. Burghardt, S.J. Paulist Press, NY pp. 218 Excerpt from Introduction: My main title, "Lovely in Eyes Not His", is borrowed from Gerard Manley Hopkins, the Jesuit whose poetry was symbolic of his agonizing effort to grow into an image of the Christ who never did his own will but always the will of his Father, even unto crucifixion. For years these lines of a sonnet that bears no title but begins "As kingfishers catch fire" have captured for me, more lyrically than any others, the Christian struggle to express our human imaging of the divine. I am persuaded that in the last analysis, my homilies have this as their primary thrust: to help Christians recognize their dignity, their likeness to Christ, and move them to live its awesome responsibilities from dawn to darkness, from childhood to final cross. Hence my subtitle: Homilies for an Imagining Christ. Excerpt from Book: Today I want to picture Pentecost not as peace, not as pardon, but as power. To make sense of this, let me entertain you with power on three levels: power in the world, power in the Spirit, power in you. First, power in the world. Power, at its simplest, is the ability to do something, to act, to accomplish. There is sheer physical power, corporeal power: You can rock and roll, jog along the canal, lift a finger or bat an eye, make music or thunder with your voice. There is mental power: you can think, shape an idea, paint pictures in your phantasm, remember (perhaps) where you were last night. There is power that is free will: you can say yes or no. There is political power. A President Reagan can rain hell on Libya or veto a budget bill, pressure nations to act against terrorism or congressmen for aid to Angola. . . . There is economic power. If you think it's love that makes the world go around, you've never tried money. America's day doesn't end with love making; it ends wit the Dow Jones averages. There is social power. The society that surrounds you can be your salvation: strengthen you when weak, inspire you when leaden, remove the dread loneliness that makes living unlivable. But society can enslave you as well. Peer pressure is beer pressure, drug pressure, sex pressure. . . . There is computer power. It lifts men to the moon and teenagers into ecstasy. It flies planes and fights wars. It plumbs the planet Uranus and my inflamed ileum. It sends the world's weather to a common network and balances the checkbooks of every bank. And the there is the power in the Spirit Table of Contents: Advent 1. Shopping for Christ 2. Experience the Joy of Salvation Lent 3. Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more 4. If you knew the gift of God 5. Can these bones live? Easter 6. Alive to God in Christ Jesus 7. If you had looked into his eyes 8. Christian sheep? 9. Shake the spirit loose! Ordinary Time 10. Is there life after Christmas? 11. Do whatever he tells you 12. I have no need of you? 13. Not hide yourself from your own flesh 14. A kingdom for the shrewd 15. Cut it off? 16. Hold a baby to your ear 17. Tell the next generation 18. Grow into your feathers 19. The case of the invincible widow 20. Do this and you shall live 21. End in fire, end in ice? Medley 22. I and thou! Not mine and think Baccalaureate Sermon 23. The other, the Others, and you Baccalaureate Sermon 24. A new coke in your life? University Mass of the Holy Spirit 25. His love in two more ways Wedding homily 26. Let love be genuine Wedding homily 27. This is my commandment Wedding homily 28. Without love I am nothing Wedding homily 29. When two covenants wed Wedding homily 30. Our hearts are restless Homily for a Mass of the Resurrection 31. Unless a grain of wheat dies Celebration of Beatification of Diego De San Vitores, S.J. 32. A priest for every moment Feast of St. Francis de Sales 33. Middleman for Christ. Feast of St. Barnabas |