What happened to my Sunday homily?

Funny that you should ask.

Last Friday, in the midst of a busy few days, I quickly worked up a homily for the Feast of the Holy Family. The truth is, at this time of year, most of my energy goes into crafting a good Christmas homily, and after that, I'm running on fumes. I don't mean my physical energy; I mean that there's not much left of the "creative juices" (whatever that means!).

So, I looked up the readings at the U.S. bishops' website and saw a reading from Sirach and another from Colossians -- oh, it's one of those talking about women "submitting," what do I do with that? That always get misunderstood, yet I don't want to do a homily about that. Hmm...

Anyway, I wrapped it up, printed it out, and didn't give it any more thought till just before Mass on Saturday evening. In the course of getting things organized before Holy Mass, I was setting the ribbon in the lectionary (the book of Scripture readings for Mass). Hm? A reading from Genesis? Hebrews?

Well, what do the books in the pews have? Uh oh. I look again at my homily? Will this even work?

Hmmm...no.

So I worked up something while I was listening to the readings at Mass. Something about the various figures -- Abraham, Sarah, Simeon and Anna, Mary and Joseph -- all having reasons they could say, "not I" or "not now." Yet they were ready to respond to God's invitation.

How did this happen?

The feast has three sets of readings, designated years "A," "B" and "C." This is "Year B." The book was right; but the bishops' website was muddled. Grr.