Humor in a Homily—Part 2
    
            Do I use humor to make a point about people thinking the grass is always greener for someone else? I once told a joke about how a single lady put an ad in the paper. It said, “Husband Wanted.” She received 300 replies, and they all said the same thing: “You can have mine.”
            We sometimes yearn for somebody else’s life. But the crosses in life that we all have, that God gives us, are the crosses he thinks we can bear. We don’t have to look for other crosses.
            There are some things in life that are funny. People think, “Well, this happened to me, too.” If you get them thinking about ‘us’, then the community grows. Then the ownership of the community falls into place.
            We also see another possible benefit of a humorous story: that which makes a point about faith. We are called not only as disciples but as messengers of the Good News too. Who knows, maybe you tell that story to someone at work and it will connect with him or her, and they’ll come to church or back to church, then you have planted a seed.
            I find joy and honor from meeting couples who are planning to get married. They take a test, and I go over the results of the test with them. They agree with the statement, “We’ll have no conflict as long as we love each other.”
            In the Gospel when Jesus and the Apostles were on the way to Capernaum, he asked them, “What were you arguing about?” When they told Jesus that they were arguing about who is the greatest among them, the Apostles went silent. It makes you think, especially when we’re arguing with the people we love the most and who love us the most.
            It’s a challenge for me to connect people to the word of God. Leaving them laughing is fine, but only if it leaves them thinking more about their faith.
            A parishioner in my former parish assignment told me about this one homily that was given  back in the 1940s. The priest tells the story:. “The temperature was 95 degrees that day, and there was no air conditioning in the church. The priest got up, read the Gospel, shut the book and said, ‘Hell’s worse.’ Then he sat down.”
            No one ever forgot that message!