This was my sermon a week ago, given at St. Joan of Arc Parish.  It served to "kick-off" the "Christ the King Bowl".  The purpose of the bowl was to bring guys together for fraternity and prayer.

JMJ

The starvation bunker under block 13 was certainly a very dismal place. Block 13 was a barrack in the prison camp of Auschwitz, and the starvation bunker was the place of execution for "select prisoners" who were condemned to be an example to all the rest. Indeed, most of the men who were sentenced to this bunker were just the example the Nazis wanted them to be. They often died fighting each other after having gone insane with hunger and thirst. In at least one instance, however, the result was quite different. This was the case of Fr. Maximilian Kolbe.

Here's my sermon for the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome.

Most people, if they have the chance to visit the city of Rome, assume that St. Peter’s Basilica is Rome’s cathedral.    I guess that’s an easy enough mistake to make, since St. Peter’s is by far the biggest church in the city and the Pope himself lives right next door.  But, in making such a guess, most people are wrong.  The true cathedral of Rome not St. Peter’s, rather it’s the church whose founding we celebrate today, the “Arch-basilica of the Holy Savior and of St. John at the Lateran”, or—the shorter form of the name—the Basilica of St. John Lateran.