Woe Betide You (6th Sunday of Ordinary Time-C)

(Because of a covid scare, I was not able to deliver the homily this weekend at the Iglesia San Francisco in Cuenca, but it was all ready to go! So here is a sit-down-at-the-dining-room-table version. In this unusual format, it went longer than a "real" homily in church...sorry!)

"Woe betide you!" was Sister Michael Mary's preferred way to control her classroom full of third-graders. She also offered plenty of "God bless you's" along the way. Her teaching method was not unlike that of Jesus as we see in today's gospel passage. Yet Jesus was doing so much more! He was throwing a wrench into the social order of his time...and the ripple effects of that wrench wash up on our shores to this very day...even the shores of Sister Michael Mary and her third-graders!