Feel free to make yourself at home. This little enterprise will be a place for posting some of my homilies — both rough drafts and final versions, most delivered from the pulpit of Our Lady Queen of Martyrs Catholic Church, in Forest Hills, New York.

Since I’m new at this — I was ordained a Permanent Deacon on May 19, 2007 — this is a learning exercise for me. And, maybe, for you, too. I’ll be learning how to preach. And you’ll be learning how painful the process can be; here you’ll have a front row seat for all my pratfalls, flubs, blunders and boo-boos. Plus the occasional miracle — a good and meaty little sermon.

I have the (perhaps naive) hope that I can make preaching matter, and turn a sadly neglected kind of liturgy into something people actually want to hear. (I know, I’m naive. But as I said: I’m new at this.)

I hope you like reading these as much as I do writing them and delivering them. And I hope that this effort will reap the fruits of the beautiful prayer said over me at my ordination:

“Receive the gospel of Christ, whose herald you have become.
Believe what you read,
Teach what you believe,
and practice what you teach.”