ManLookingAtStars.jpg

Current homilies

You can find a recording (with images) of my latest homilies here. There are also written forms of some of my older homilies below.

With broken fingers. On Christmas.

I was on Prince Street, and it was 4:45 in the morning.  Dark, of course. It’s a good time to be walking the streets of our city. It’s quiet. You can walk down the middle of the street without fear of being run over by an Uber or a delivery man on a silent bicycle.

Read More
JAMES MAYZIKComment
The smell of holiness.

Did you ever notice that every family has a particular smell to it?  When you visit their home, are invited into the apartment, the first thing that hits you is the smell of them. It's hard to describe the particular smells of a particular family, the only thing you can say is, it smells like, like, well, like the Mayziks, or the Tituses (which of course includes the smell of Murphy the dog). 

Read More
JAMES MAYZIKComment
Rejoice.

AN ADVENT STORY.

When you are young and healthy and the future lays before you like a golden road of adventure and opportunity, you don't think much about obstacles or potential problems or calamities that might come your way. You are hopeful when you're young, you are hope-filled, time seems endless and you feel immortal, and there is so much to do with your life at times you just don't even know where to begin.

Read More
JAMES MAYZIKComment
I nothing lack, and I am His and He is mine forever.

 It was Thursday, and traffic was down, the streets relatively clear--everywhere but on Brian’s route.  Brian’s bus traveled a route right through the center of the island, and on Thursday that route was jammed with cars and trucks and taxis as far as the eye could see.   It was the stupid parade, every year the stupid parade was a massive headache for Brian, who drove that giant, articulated, double bus on the M7 route. 

Read More
JAMES MAYZIKComment
At the end of the world, I will be complete.

One of the most dazzling meteor showers in decades is occurring above our heads as I speak: the Leonids, over a thousand meteors an hour can be seen in the clear night sky---meaning you’ll have to leave the city’s light pollution if you want to experience what the end of the world might look like. 

Read More
JAMES MAYZIK Comment
God sneezed.

I was alone in an elevator the other day in midtown, and it had a video screen tuned to a news channel, I guess to entertain passengers during those awkward moments when you are in that confined space with strangers.

Read More
JAMES MAYZIK Comment
Like shining from shook foil.

We’re almost three weeks into autumn, but you’d never know it living in Manhattan. Up in Connecticut at the university where I used to live and teach the leaves are pretty much at peak: flaming yellows, reds and oranges, whole trees looking—from a distance—as though they were on fire, flaming wildly on the horizon. 

Read More
JAMES MAYZIKComment
Break the rules.

So the school year is about to begin!  This coming week all the kids at schools in Manhattan will once again be spending their days inside a building that was designed to help them learn, filled with lots of people who want to help them grow up, teaching them practical information about themselves and about the world. 

Read More
JAMES MAYZIKComment
To leap above the mud that is man.

There was an article in the New York Times yesterday, written by a parishioner of a Catholic parish in Atlanta.  Last Sunday he received national media attention when he stood up in the middle of the homily, as the priest was speaking about the sexual abuse report from Pennsylvania, saying that the Church had to change. 

Read More
JAMES MAYZIKComment
We have lost our way.

I got home Wednesday night from a short vacation with my sister and her family in a remote mountain lodge in Vermont.  We were blessed--and I do mean blessed-- to be without any phone or internet service. 

Read More
JAMES MAYZIKComment
Love is the boss.

The other day I turned on my phone and started to dial and didn’t realize that I had actually answered an incoming call—which I don’t usually do if I don’t recognize the number.

Read More
JAMES MAYZIKComment