A Year of Podcasting

By Fr. Joel

This weekend marks the one year anniversary of podcasting my homilies. When I saved this one on the hard drive, I realized I already had a homily from the 30th Sunday of Ordinary time. Yes, my very first recorded homily was Oct. 28, 2007. "Down is the Way Up" was the title of my old homily. I notice to my chagrin that I quoted a song from U2 in that homily and I did it again this week. I obviously need to diversify my sources. I almost hesitated to listen to my old homily but then curiosity got the better of me. The delivery was a little awkward but I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the homily.

Lots of mishaps go into the recording of a homily. I had three Masses this weekend and utterly failed to record a live homily. The first Mass I celebrated was at a church where the sound system does not have the capabilities to record homilies. At the second Mass we were celebrating the feast day of St. Jude the Apostle, the parish's patron, and my pastor gave the homily. My last Mass was at the Newman Center, which has a fickle sound system. When I brought my little Creative ZEN home (which my Mom gave me to ensure a steady stream of recorded homilies), there was no homily recorded for the weekend. I sat at my computer and dictated my homily as best as I could remember, trying to make it some like it was given live to a real audience. If you listened closely to some of my old homilies, you might be able to spot some that were not recorded live.

A few weeks ago I finally gave in and decided to submit my homilies as an official "Podcast" in iTunes. I had held out for a year not wanting to get sucked in to the Apple world. Besides, iTunes will only sync with iPods, and you can't record on iPods like you can on my Creative ZEN. Finally I decided that I would get more hits and reach a larger audience, and it might work better than the system I am using. So I created an account, including entering credit card information. A few minutes later, I got a call from my credit card company. Apple had placed a $1 hold on my account, and since I had incorrectly entered my credit expiration date, they made me do it again and placed another $1 hold. That caused my card to be flagged and deactivated. So I called Apple customer service. They told me how to remove my credit card data. Frustrated, I decided to cancel my account. You can't. Once you have created an account in iTunes, there is no way to deactivate it. Even customer service will not cancel your account. Scarry. As far as submitting my podcast to iTunes? I tried twice and both times they sent me an e-mail saying, "There is a problem with your feed. Please fix the problem and try again." Since I don't know what the problem is, I can't fix it, and my podcast is just the same as it ever was. That led to my link at the bottom of my posts explaining:

To subscribe, go to the iTunes menu and click Advanced > Subscribe to Podcast..., and paste this link http://homily.mypodcast.com/rss.xml

Q & A

Do I ever post a written version of my homily?

No. I write my homilies out by hand often using short-hand notes for some of the different parts of the homily. Early on I ran into the problem of constantly leaving my single copy of the homily at one church when I was traveling to another. So I started making photocopies of my notes and putting four copies in my car just in case :-) However, I never type them out on computer, so posting a written version would be more time than posting the audio homilies. If someone would like to transcribe the audio homily, I would be more than happy to post the resulting file. Please contact me if you want to volunteer.

Do I think up my own homilies?

For the most part yes. Now I begin on Tuesday with a homily group of students from the Newman Center. We read the readings together and I listen to their thoughts. I helps me get things going sooner. I often use insights from Fr. Bob Barron, but I am always looking for more good homily resources.

What is coming next?

I am trying to find a good way to link to my homily podcast from the websites of the parishes I serve. Down the road I hope to stop posting homilies on MyPodcast.com and find a service that I can use which will not add extra ads at the beginning of my homilies. Other than that, I just look forward to continuing to serve the New Evangelization by making God's word accessible and available. It is truly His word that saves and converts and I always pray I can be an instrument.

Thanks for listening.

Fr. Joel's homily for Oct. 26

TPA30 - I Believe in Love
Investment experts will tell you that you need to diversify your investments. But what if you knew that one particular investment would do really well? You would invest all your money and reap the rewards. Today Jesus tells us that what really counts is love of God and love of neighbor. Let's invest our effort in love and reap the rewards.
[Readings]
[View Podcast]
To subscribe, go to the iTunes menu and click Advanced > Subscribe to Podcast..., and paste this link http://homily.mypodcast.com/rss.xml

Fr. Benjamin's homily for Oct 26, 2008

"Plastic priest, plastic Christian"

No one would accept an action figure as a priest, even one with real chalice elevating action, because to be a priest requires a man love with the heart of Christ. The same is true of Christians; our actions must be motivated by real love.
MP3 no longer hosted: contact me for a CD.

Podcast | Subscribe

In Paradisum

With a chill in the air every morning and the sun setting later and later, I can't help feeling like the world is getting a little older. That thought makes it easier to notice death nipping at the edges of our earthly life. Of course, it doesn't help that Halloween decorations are in full display with skeletons and various other unpleasant creatures. Every time I go into Walgreens I feel like I should have brought holy water to drive away the hollow shells of ghouls hanging from the rack of masks. This comfort with creepiness in all our stores seems to mask a discomfort with death. Frightening others with images of death allows us to cloak ourselves in the very thing which frightens us, and offers a sense of power against the weakness we feel in the face of death.

In a couple weeks, the Church will celebrate All Soul's Day, our religious response to the humbling power of death. We entrust the souls of those who have died to the mercy of God, and pray that they might have light, peace and rest. In that vein, I have been listening to the traditional funeral chant: In paradisum, deducant te angeli, in tuo adventu suscipiant te martyres et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Jerusalem. Chorus angelorum te suscipiat, et cum Lazaro quondam paupere, eternam habeas requiem.

May the angels lead you into paradise, and may the martyrs greet you at your coming and lead you into the holy city, Jerusalem. May a choir of angels receive you and with Lazarus, who once was poor, may you have eternal rest.

Fr. Benjamin's homily for Oct 19, 2008

"Made in the image of God"

For Jesus, it is not the economy that demands our attention but the Divinity. The coins that bear the image of Caesar are not a pressing question, compared to the people who bear the image of God.
MP3 no longer hosted: contact me for a CD.

Podcast | Subscribe

Fr. Joel's homily for Oct. 19

TPA29 - Dual Citizenship
Today Jesus reminds us to "Repay to Cesar what belongs to Cesar, but to God what belongs to God." This seems to be a balanced idea, much like Dual Citizenship: we are citizens of America and of the Kingdom. But is it really balanced? After all, we belong to God. We owe Cesar his money, but we owe God ourselves.
[Readings]
[View Podcast]
To subscribe, go to the iTunes menu and click Advanced > Subscribe to Podcast..., and paste this link http://homily.mypodcast.com/rss.xml

Podcasts - at last!

Fr. Benjamin

My parish website is now hosting and posting my homilies in MP3 format on its own website. It only took two months to get this together, but I am thrilled with the results. The page even has a handy flash player right on site. My most recent homilies are:
"Weddings are a big deal"
"Harvest time to show the fruits"
"The Vineyard and God's generosity."
I will be posting my Sunday homilies every week on that site. It does have an RSS feed that allows you to use Live Bookmarks to be updated when a new file is posted. Unfortunately the RSS doesn't work as a podcast just yet, but we're still working on it (give it another month!) Happy listening.

Fr. Joel's homily for Oct. 12

TPA28 - Vocation to Love
Jesus reminds us of the great Banquet God has prepared for us, very much like a wedding feast. We are called to be not just spectators, but participants. How we participate in the banquet is called our "vocation", our own unique way of loving as God has loved us.
[Readings]
[View Podcast]
To subscribe, go to the iTunes menu and click Advanced > Subscribe to Podcast..., and paste this link http://homily.mypodcast.com/rss.xml

Fr. Joel's homily for Oct. 5

TPA27 - Respect Life Weekend
The readings today warn us of the violence that emerges if we fail to respect the sacredness of life. God has entrusted each of us with the lives of others and we must learn to respect them as God does.
[Readings]
To subscribe with iTunes, go to the iTunes menu, click Advanced > Subscribe to Podcast..., and paste this link http://homily.mypodcast.com/rss.xml

God and mammon

The recent news from Wall Street seems to have gone from bad to worse. Stocks are down and once-mighty financial institutions now call out to the government or even larger financial institutions for salvation. It is a good reminder to me of how fragile our world is.

I know that in the great Biblical scheme of things this news is not a big deal. We are not dying of starvation or suffering from pestilence or plague. We are not being invaded by foreign armies and our cities are not being burned to the ground. Thinking about this helps to keep rising food prices and falling home values in perspective. I realized this morning that if it weren’t for the news media I wouldn’t even notice what was happening on Wall Street. When I lived in Italy the exchange rate between the dollar and the Euro was a constant reminder of financial markets. Now it is just the price of gas.

Financial people tell us that the best thing to do when our funds are limited is to plan first for necessities, groceries and gasoline, heating, house payments, and clothing. Then, whatever money is left over we spend for extras.

I would suggest we approach life in a similar way, budgeting our time and energy first for the essential things, and then for those things which are secondary. Jesus has a pretty radical opinion of what is essential. He told peasants whose livelihood depended on surviving from one harvest to the next:
“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” – Matthew 6:25-33

Jesus tells us that even what we will eat or drink next is secondary; what is essential is our relationship with God. Making sure that we are putting time and energy in our relationship with God is certainly the best investment we can make. Just to round things off well, we should probably invest some money in that direction, too.

As Jesus says, "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:19-21) A good reminder for troubled times.