A Homily for the Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time 8/22/2010

Back when I was in college seminary, I had the opportunity to go on a road trip with some buddies of mine.  We were going out to the East coast.  Now, college road trips when you’re in seminary are a lot tamer than regular college road trips.  There’s a lot more praying than partying.  And there’s a lot more churches than bars.  There was still a lot of beer, though.  So we’re getting ready to leave, and I ask my friend who had organized the trip for us, where were going to stay.  And he told me that he didn’t believe in making reservations.  We’d just find places to stay along the way.  And in my head, I’m thinking this is not good.  So we take off on our road trip, and we make it first to Philadelphia.  Now, what we didn’t know was that we were going to be visiting Philadelphia the exact same weekend that they were hosting the National Firefighter’s Association Convention.  Three seminarians and 14,000 firefighters.  We got to the outskirts of Philadelphia and there wasn’t a hotel or motel room available anywhere.  And I wanted to kill my friend.  I felt just like Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem.  There are two things that I very much like knowing every day:  Where I am going to sleep that night.  And secondly, where and what we’re going to have to eat.  They are usually not in that order.  So we drive around for nearly three hours before we finally find a place to stay, and it was like 45 minutes from Philadelphia.  My friend says, “See Kevin, God took good care of us!”  I could have hit him!  And I said, “Yeah, God takes better care of people who make reservations.”

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