Ordinary Time 26 - We Need A Savior

 

Homily for Ordinary Time 26

September 27, 2026

Christ The Savior

 

            How many of us doomscroll? There is something very addicting about all the influx of bad news we constantly read. But at the same time, it’s a symptom of a culture that’s seriously diseased. A sample of national news shows headlines such as, “Man Steals Firetruck While Firefighters Put Out Blaze At His House” and “AI Researcher Quits, Over Fears That It Will Take Over the World.” I wish these were satire, but they’re not – and these are some of the milder headlines!

            Most people would agree that there’s something seriously wrong with this world. But what’s the cure? Is it more politics, more money, more laws? Well, to look at the cure, we have to look at the heart of the matter: the human heart.

            Most of the problems in the world are fundamentally spiritual problems, because they are a lack of love, a lack of God. For example, Mother Teresa once said, “God did not create poverty – we create poverty because we do not share with one another.” If we truly loved one another, if we truly loved God, then there would be peace.

            But this is difficult, because it involves a conversion of heart. Alexander Solzhenitsyn once said, “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.” But if we all have evil in our hearts, then changing the human heart is humanly impossible…but not for God.

            This is precisely why we need a Savior – one who will take on our human nature with all of its brokenness, but with none of the evil in His Sacred Heart. St. Paul’s beautiful hymn in the second reading speaks about Christ setting aside His glory and taking on all the weaknesses of our human nature.

            Really, when we look at the Cross, we see all the effects of human brokenness coalescing in one moment in history. We see every hatred, every rejection of God. We see physical suffering and death. We see abandonment and loneliness. We see abuse and sadness. All of the evil things we’ve ever done, all of the evils that have been done to us – and to every human throughout history – were unleashed upon this Divine Man Jesus Christ.

            But Good Friday isn’t the end of the story. We know that three days later, He rose again, showing that God’s love is more powerful than our hate; that God’s life is more powerful than our death; that God’s holiness is more powerful than our sin.

            So what we need, then, to heal this world, is for God’s love and life and holiness to come into this world – and it begins with us. St. Francis of Assisi once said, “Sanctify yourself, and you will sanctify society.” It begins with us – have we been so transformed by God’s grace that we can become outposts of His love and light in a very dark world?

            Let’s be honest – many of us here are not convinced that we need a Savior. But I can testify that everyone – saint and sinner alike – is in need of Him. Maybe life is working okay, but that’s because we’re striving to keep all the pieces together, and it’s stressful to keep it all going. Maybe life isn’t working well – our marriage might be on the rocks, we’re stressed about our kids and their problems, we’re struggling with our health or finances – and we need some glimmer of hope. Maybe we’re conscious that we’ve made some serious mistakes and wonder if there’s forgiveness. Maybe we’re good people but want to know if there’s more to life than just getting by.

            For all of us, no matter where we are, we need a savior. At the very least, there is one thing that can never be overcome on our own: death. Death is guaranteed for us all, and it’s a frightening thing. We all need a Savior who can rescue us from death being the great curtain-drop on our existence: and Jesus Christ alone, who is Lord of all, has that power to overcome death, by His death and Resurrection.

            So what does that look like to acknowledge Jesus as our Savior? It starts with four things. First, when is the last time you have been to Confession? If it’s been over a month, I encourage you to go. I’ll make myself available after Mass this weekend. We first have to remove the walls that are blocking God’s grace from reaching our hearts. Second, make a resolution to attend Mass weekly. God’s grace is actually made incarnate in the Eucharist, which is Christ’s Body and Blood – not a sign or symbol, but truly the Savior here upon this altar. Third, start a life of daily prayer. Not a quick Our Father before bed, but really seeking Him. Fifteen minutes at least – maybe the Rosary, or reading the Bible. And fourth, we seek to live for Christ, trying to please Him with our thoughts, words, and deeds, living according to what He teaches us in the Bible and in the Catholic Church.

            One time, a little girl once wanted to learn about the geography of the United States, so her father found a map of the country in a magazine. He ripped it up into small pieces and said, “This will be a puzzle – when you put the pieces back together, you will learn where the states belong.” The girl went away to work on the puzzle and came back only a short time later with the map completely taped together correctly. The father was amazed and asked how she completed it so quickly. She replied, “On the back side of the map was a picture of Jesus, and when I put him back then our country came together.”

            A sentimental story, to be sure, but one that reveals a profound truth: only when our world returns to God will we find the peace our society desperately needs. And our world will only return to God when we – you and I – decide to return to Him with our whole hearts, seeking to love Him and do His will.

            Do you want to change the world? Pursue holiness. Saints are the only ones who make lasting change in this broken world – and saints are made by turning to the Only One Who can save us: Jesus Christ our Lord.

Ordinary Time 25 - Meaning of Life

Ordinary Time 25

September 20, 2026

Meaning of Life

 

            Have you ever had the experience of God speaking to you? A lot of Catholics don’t understand how that works, so let me give a brief explanation. Many times we go to prayer and we will have a thought that is not in our usual “thought voice”. You know how your inner monologue sounds? Sometimes we will have a thought that is stronger, more persistent, or in a different “thought voice” than the one that usually runs in our head. Sometimes that’s accompanied by a strong emotion like inexplicable peace or a strong desire. This is how God usually speaks to people: not that we’re “hearing voices” but that the Holy Spirit will inspire us to think a certain thing that comes in a different thought-voice or doesn’t seem to match up with our usual train of thought.

            So, that’s a background to a story I’m about to tell you. Last spring, one day I had a very intense conversation with a student – I’ll call him Billy – at the school where I teach. It was a conversation about his faith and kind of a come-to-Jesus moment. He shed some tears, and made some resolutions to follow Jesus more closely – it was very inspiring. That night, I woke up from a dead sleep in the middle of the night, with the strong thought running through my head – “You have to pray for Billy!”

            Well, I knew it was from the Lord, but I was very comfortable in my bed, so I hemmed and hawed for a moment before reluctantly rolling out of bed and stumbling down to the chapel in our rectory. As soon as I walked in, I heard God say the following strong, mentally loud words (in my mind, not my ears): “I am preparing him.” That was it. I kept asking God what He was preparing Billy for, but I felt nothing more – which is how I knew it was from God, not from myself. So after ten minutes of prayer I went back to bed.

            The next day I told Billy about this experience. He got very excited and wondered, “What is God preparing me for?” I don’t know, and neither did he. Fast-forward a few months, and I’m with Billy at Camp Veritas. He wanted to skip one of the talks, so he and I sat on a park bench and talked about a lot of topics but at one point I asked him, “If you knew you were going to die in one year, what would you do?” He thought for a moment and said, “I’d probably pray a lot more, get closer to God.” So I asked him point-blank – “Tomorrow isn’t guaranteed. Why not do that now?” He got the point and we had another great conversation about his faith.

            A week later, he sends me this email, “Fr. Joseph, I’m sitting on my bed on a cruise in Bermuda and it just hit me – you said God is preparing me, you asked me about living for one more year…I think something’s going to happen to me this year! I’m going to die!” I wrote back and tried to calm him down – no, I don’t think he’s going to die. He wrote back a few hours later and said, “I just went jet-skiing and had a ton of fun, so I’m fine now. Thanks.” Ha! Classic overreaction – but it brought up a great question in his mind: if you were going to die in a year, what would you do differently?

            As we prepare to breathe our last, our life will flash before our eyes. What will we regret? What will we wish we did differently? What will we be most grateful for? Will we wish we spent more time at the office? Will we wish we played more sports? Will we wish we could get a few more hours of screen time in?

            I’ve worked with plenty of dying people, and none of them have ever wished for these things. Rather, their regrets were about love: I wish I had spent more time with my kids. I wish I was more generous with my money. I wish I had loved God more and prepared my soul to meet Him. We will never regret prayer, generosity, sacrificing for others.

            What is the meaning of life? To enjoy it? To have “success” (defined by the world as making money and living the American Dream)? St. Paul is clear about the meaning of life in our Scriptures today. “To me, life is Christ, and death is gain.” The meaning of life is to know, love, and serve God, so we can be eternally happy with Him in Heaven. Let’s break into that.

            First, the meaning of life is not about us. We are meant to live for the glory and praise of God our Creator. On a plane flight back from Italy this summer, I had nine hours to kill so I ended up watching three hours of nature documentaries (I mean, it was one of the few clean movies that wasn’t a Disney cartoon). But it struck me after three hours that the lives of all these different birds and beasts were really very similar. All they did was find food, build shelter, and mate. That’s it. That is the entirety of their lives. Food, shelter, reproduce. Sadly, I think that’s also the meaning of life for many human beings too. Find food – we spend forty-plus hours at our jobs to make enough money to put food on the table, and then do it again the next day. We build our shelters – our homes – and then fill them with every possession and convenience known to mankind. And then we focus on our mate – just trying to navigate through the rocky and difficult marriages that most of us have, and drive our kids to soccer practices so that the next generation can get a scholarship to college. And to distract ourselves from the emptiness of that existence, we try to fill those quiet moments with entertainment on our little devices so we don’t have to think about the futility of our lives. As Henry David Thoreau said, “The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation.” How many times have you asked someone how they’re doing and they respond, “Same stuff, different day”?

            Maybe it’s because we know that we are made to live for more. What sets us apart from the animals is that we have a spiritual soul which can never be satisfied by earthly goods. We need to live for something greater than food, shelter, and keeping the human race going – our hearts long for more. Pope St. John Paul II once said, “Man can only find himself in a sincere gift of himself.” Our life is a gift meant to be given away. We all give ourselves to a cause bigger than us: maybe we dedicate our lives to following a sports team, or to politics, or to eliminating injustice, or to saving the environment. But the only cause that endures for eternity, the only truly noble and transcendent reason to live and die, is for God.

            We were made for an eternity with God! Look at any superhero movie – the whole plot is to keep everyone alive from the aliens or robots or evil villain who are trying to destroy the world. The desire for self-preservation runs pretty deep in our hearts, and it points to a deeper reality: we don’t want to die. We want to live forever. This desire points to its fulfillment: there is an everlasting life that we are created to enjoy – but it’s not here on this earth which is rife with suffering, sorrow, and brokenness. But this everlasting life is not something we can achieve through science, medicine, or strength of will. As they say, “death is the great equalizer.” But we know someone who has already conquered death – Jesus Christ, Who after entering into the mystery of death, destroyed it from within by rising again three days later. So our heart’s cry for an eternity of happiness is not just wishful-thinking – it is meant to be fulfilled in God Who longs to grant it to us!

            Paradoxically, those who discovered truly the meaning of life were those who were willing to lay their lives down for Christ. We call these the martyrs – those whose love for God was so intense that they were willing to shed their blood for Him. Since the beginning of the Church, there have been hundreds of thousands of people ready, even eager, to shed their blood for Christ. Their witness makes us ponder: is God worth giving up one’s life?

            I think of the example of St. Xi Zhuzi, who was not even baptized when he gave up his life for God. He was a Chinese teenager around the turn of the century. The few Christian families he knew in the village lived so differently from the rest – with joy, love, purity of heart. He found this very attractive, and asked to be instructed in the Faith. But his parents found out and gave him an ultimatum: worship the family ancestors, or be disowned from the family. He chose the Lord, and was kicked out of home at seventeen. He was adopted by a Catholic family, but soon his family found out where he was and sent for him to come home. His journey was intercepted by the anti-Catholic Boxer rebels, who asked him if he was a Catholic. He replied yes, and they began to torture him. But as he was dying, he cried out, “Let every piece of my flesh, let every drop of my blood profess that I am a Christian!” Is this not the greatest meaning of life: to proclaim that every breath in our lungs, every beat of our heart, is for Jesus Christ? May this be the purpose of our lives too!

            (And after St. Xi’s death, his family was so moved by his witness that they became Christians, too).

            I cannot tell you what to live for – that is a personal decision in your own heart. But if you’ve felt the restlessness and emptiness of modern life and are hungering for something more, perhaps it’s time to look to God. That starts right now with an invitation – just as God speaks to us in our thoughts, make a silent prayer asking God to reveal Himself to you. As you seek Him, remember that He has been seeking you first.

Ordinary Time 24 - Forgiven

 

Ordinary Time 24

September 13, 2026

Forgiven

 

            One of the best ways to forgive is to do something kind for the one who offended you. Bl. Mariano Mullerat was a doctor and the mayor of his small town in Spain during the Spanish Civil War in the early part of the 20^th Century. Despite the growing anti-Catholic sentiment of the rebels, Mariano was a very public Catholic – organizing religious processions for his town, giving free medical care for the poor, and publicly correcting those who denied the truths of Catholicism in his city. He knew that this would get him in trouble among the rebels who supported President Franco’s anti-Catholic ideology, and one day armed militiamen showed up at his house and ordered him into a truck with four other fervent Catholics.

            On the short ride, Mariano encouraged the other men to forgive their captors, which they were able to do. When they finally disembarked, Mariano noticed that one of the guards had a gangrenous wound on his leg. The former doctor asked for permission to treat it, which he did right there in the field, only moments before his execution for his Catholic Faith! Imagine that – giving medical care to the very person who is going to shoot you! And yet, that is what forgiveness entails – not a feeling, not necessarily a friendship restored, but doing good for one’s enemies.

            After all, we were enemies of God, and He forgave us. Does that sound extreme? Listen to the words of St. Paul in Romans: “While we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son.” God is so perfect that He deserves all of our love, all of our obedience, all of our lives. So when we sin, even if it is a small sin, it is a huge injustice to the King Who deserves everything.

            Once there was a large ship that crashed and sunk off of the Irish coast. The weather was fine and the captain was known to be a careful and safe man, so everyone wondered why the ship had crashed. They sent divers to examine the wreckage to see what went wrong, and among other things, a diver came up with the compass on the ship. They took the compass to the lab to see if perhaps it was defective and that caused the captain to take it off-course. They found that prior to the crash, a sailor had tried to clean the compass with a pocketknife, and a miniscule bit of steel from the pocketknife broke off in the compass itself – and just that little bit of metal was enough to throw the compass off enough to destroy an entire ship and lose dozens of lives.

            Likewise, one small sin is enough to merit eternal separation from God. St. Paul also teaches us in Romans that “the wages of sin are death”. Cancer begins with one cell – wars begin with one shot – and an eternity of doom begins with one sin.

            But here precisely is the love of God – that while we all were trapped in sin, God loved us too much to leave us there. St. Paul writes, “God proves His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” We owed a debt we could not pay! So God provided someone who could pay the debt in our place.

            Many of the princes in the Renaissance had a member of their court called a “whipping boy”. When the prince would misbehave, the whipping boy would be whipped in his stead. Hopefully by seeing the suffering of the other boy, the prince would amend his ways. But we have seen quite the opposite – it was not the slave who was beaten for the prince’s sin, but the King who was killed for the servant’s sin! How could we remain ungrateful when we consider the Cross and the forgiveness that was purchased upon it?

            But there are some sitting here who still believe that they are not really sinners. I hear it all the time, people telling me, “Oh Father, I’m a good person.” Even if we have not fallen into serious sin, this too is part of the mercy of God! A saint who saw a condemned criminal on the way to his execution, and everyone was jeering and mocking this public sinner. But the saint spoke up and said, “If this man had received the same graces that I received, he would be more faithful than I! And if I had not received the graces I did, I would be in his place!” St. Augustine writes, “There is no sin that I could not commit due to my frailty; and if I have not committed all sin, it is because God in His mercy has kept me in the good.”

            Without the superabundance of God’s grace, all of us would be estranged from Him – all of us would owe Him that huge amount that the man in the Gospels owed. The literal translation of the Greek refers to more than a lifetime’s worth of money – about six billion dollars in today’s currency. Upon forgiving that debt, what should our response be? Two things.

            The clear one from the Gospel is the obligation to forgive others. Forgiveness is not a feeling, but a choice. It does not mean that we want to be friends with the person, but that I release them from my anger and from the desire for revenge. Forgiveness is not a one-time thing, but one that we must do any time the anger rises in our hearts. Like any virtue, forgiveness does become easier the more we do it.

            Forgiveness doesn’t mean that what the other person did wasn’t important or hurtful. It may have been completely wrong and even evil, but forgiveness removes the bitter poison of resentment from our own hearts. Just as Christ forgave us from the Cross even when we weren’t sorry, so we extend that mercy to others in imitation of Him.

            But there is another response, too. If a King were to literally forgive us a six billion dollar debt, wouldn’t we offer our life to him in gratitude? Such mercy demands that we must live for Him. He hasn’t rescued us so that we continue sinning, going back to our old ways. St. Paul tells us, “We have been purchased, at a price.” The price wasn’t six billion dollars but something more precious – the very Blood of God Himself. The Author of Life died on our behalf. Such a free gift of grace and mercy demands nothing less than a life lived completely for Him.

Ordinary Time 23 - Helping Others To Salvation

 

Ordinary Time 23

September 6, 2026

Helping Others To Salvation

 

            When I was a teen, some friends and I were watching a local soccer game together. The game started getting a little chippy, as tempers were beginning to flare, before an all-out brawl began on the field. Of course as teen boys we were excited and began to cheer, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” One of our teachers came up to us and said, “Guys, what are you doing? Why are you encouraging others to sin?” It really made me think – oh wow, he was right. Why am I rooting people on when they’re doing something evil?

            The truth is, as our Scriptures make clear, we are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. We can’t be hands-off when it comes to another person’s spiritual well-being. In fact, if it’s true as St. Paul says that “love is the fulfillment of the law” and love is defined as willing the good of the other, then the greatest act of love is to will someone’s greatest good: their eternal salvation and sanctification. So let’s talk about how to avoid participating in another’s evil and how to assist others in their path to Heaven.

            Our Catechism gives us some clear ways in which we sometimes participate in another person’s evil: if we praise an evil act, if we encourage or command it, if we keep someone’s evil deeds a secret when we have a duty to reveal it, if we enable it in some way, or if we don’t speak up when we ought to.

            This has real-world consequences. Sometimes people will joke around about bad things they’ve done – we cannot join in that laughter. Sometimes people don’t want to snitch on a friend’s evil, but remaining silent means we wordlessly approve. One that has hit most of us hard is when a child or grandchild gets married outside of the Church. As tough as it is, we can’t congratulate them or give a gift, lest we approve of a life-choice that is objectively sinful. In that case, we ought to have a kind conversation with our loved one, explaining why our conscience will not allow us to celebrate an invalid and sinful marriage – it’s tough, but this is one of the ways in which Our Lord tells us we must choose Him even over our closest family.

            Moral theology gives us three different types of cooperation in evil. First, there is formal cooperation which means that we intend the evil that is done. For example, someone who drives the getaway car for the bank robbery is still guilty of theft, even if they didn’t actually steal the money, since they had the same intention as the robbers.

            Secondly, there is proximate material cooperation in evil, where someone may not intend the evil deed, but enables it anyway. So a liquor store clerk who sees the same alcoholic drunk man coming in every day to get his bottle of whiskey cooperates in evil since he knows he is enabling the man to get drunk, even if the clerk doesn’t intend the drunkenness himself. This is sinful, less so than intending the evil, but the person is still knowingly enabling the evil.

            Finally, there is remote material cooperation in evil which means that we are so far removed from the evil that it is morally neutral. A good example is paying our taxes, some of which are used for immoral government programs – but we cannot control that, and our refusal to pay taxes wouldn’t change the immoral allocation of money. Growing up, my parents would never buy General Mills Cereal because that company donated to Planned Parenthood, an abortion provider – but there are dozens, even hundreds, of companies that donate to immoral causes, so to boycott them all would literally mean we can’t buy anything. (I did go a little crazy on the Golden Grahams when I went off to college and could actually eat them!). Remote cooperation, where we are so far removed from the evil done that it’s not possible for us to seriously impact it, is morally acceptable.

            But enough about how to cooperate in someone’s evil – how can we also cooperate in their holiness? There are several ways: prayer, evangelization, and fraternal correction.

            Of course prayer comes first, because it is ultimately God alone who causes any virtue or holiness to grow in a soul. Listen to what St. Ignatius of Antioch says: “When God wants to have mercy on someone, He inspires someone else to pray for him, and He helps in this prayer. Pray without ceasing on behalf of other men… For cannot he that falls rise again?” Who is God inspiring you to pray for, that He may shower His mercy upon them?

            Once prayer has prepared the soil, we evangelize – live as authentic Christians, and invite others to do the same. In the second century after Christ, a young Greek man named Justin was a perennial seeker of truth – he studied every philosopher up to his day, and found them incomplete. Yes, the philosophers could tell him that God existed, but not who He was or what God wanted for his life. He had heard about the Christians, mostly because they were persecuted and often died for their faith – he admired their courage, but didn’t know what they believed. One day he was pondering these things on the seashore when an old man walked up to him and asked what was troubling him. Justin started pouring out his heart – he had dabbled in every Greek philosopher but couldn’t find the answers to his questions. The elderly man said, “Yes, we cannot know God by human reason alone. But He has revealed Himself, first to the Jews in the Old Covenant, and finally through Jesus Christ.” Justin was intrigued and asked the man to hear more about this Jesus. He introduced him to the Christian community who began showing him the Scriptures, which converted his heart completely – he finally found what he had been looking for! St. Justin became a martyr himself, and the first great teacher of the Faith – but he was converted through both the witness of the martyrs, and the invitation of a friendly man.

            Finally, as Jesus bears witness, a word of correction, given in love, can be enough to change a soul’s direction. We know St. Monica as the mother of St. Augustine and a holy mother and wife, but in her teen years, Monica used to sneak into her parents’ basement to sneak some wine – to the point that she was on her way to becoming an alcoholic. One day, one of her family’s servants caught her, and reproached her for being a drunkard. The word of correction struck its target – Monica realized that she needed to give up the habit! It was only that servant’s loving, but difficult, word that put her on the path to holiness.

            Giving a word of fraternal correction is difficult, but Jesus gives us the play-by-play: Go to your brother (meaning that we should already have a close relationship with the person), and go privately. If he doesn’t listen, we recruit others who perhaps have greater influence. I know, for example, that my non-Catholic brother will not listen to me about Christ – we don’t have the greatest relationship. So I am constantly praying that God raises up the right person whom he will listen to. I know many parents want to preach the Lord to their grown kids who have abandoned the Faith, but perhaps they are not the ones to speak to their hearts, so pray that others may be raised up to speak about Christ to them.

            Although each person is free to make their own choices, we do have an influence on others’ souls. Let us make the resolution to assist one another to Heaven, for to love our neighbor truly is to desire their eternal salvation!

Ordinary Time 22 - Life In the Technological Age

 

Homily for Ordinary Time 22

August 29, 2026

Life in the Technological Age

 

            St. Paul tells us in the second reading, “Do not conform yourself to this age.” But what age are we living in that we cannot conform ourselves to? I think it’s safe to say that we live in an unprecedented age: the technological age. Technology has completely reshaped the way we think, interact, and deal with the world. We have to live in the twenty-first century, but we are not to be conformed to this age. So how are we supposed to live in the technological age without adopting its errors?

            Thankfully, Pope Leo XIV recently put out an encyclical letter about the proper use of technology, called “Magnifica Humanitas” – Magnificent Humanity. He gives us some good guidance in applying our Catholic faith to the use of technology. Let’s dive in to see what points he makes.

            The first point is that technology is a powerful tool, that can be used for good or evil. Like any powerful tool, we have to be careful about who can access it. We don’t give chainsaws to toddlers – not because chainsaws are bad, but because we have to be careful with something so powerful. Likewise, technology is not some harmless thing – it is an immensely powerful tool, and it requires a truly Christian cosmology (worldview), along with virtue and self-control, to use it well, lest we become a slave to it.

            Technology can become a way of seeing the universe. The Scriptures contrast two different buildings – the Tower of Babel and the City of God. In the Tower of Babel, man wants to make a name for himself by building a city according to his own designs. In contrast, at the end of time, the New Jerusalem descends from God as a gift to mankind. Technology is all about creating the world according to our own whims and desires, while the traditional Christian understanding is that we receive the world as a gift from God, even with its faults and sorrows. The faults are not bugs, but features (to use the tech lingo) because without sorrows, there is no need for love or compassion. Technology seeks, in the words of the famous scientist Francis Bacon, “the relief of man’s estate” – to eliminate all problems with the world and with humanity itself. It’s the difference between creating the world in our image, and receiving the world as a gift. We must be careful not to fall into the former.

            One of Pope Leo’s great warnings is that technology can never reduce the human person as a “project to be optimized.” We are more than an algorithm; our value is more than likes and clicks. I recently read an article about a man who had a fight with his girlfriend. She said that they didn’t spend enough time together; he thought that they did. So his response? He made an Excel spreadsheet to track how many hours they spent together over the course of a month. Oh buddy, you’re in for one rocky relationship if that’s how you respond to your girlfriend’s needs! But isn’t that the reality of how we live our lives? We track our steps, count our calories, meet our quotas at work, and obsess over our GPA. We even have apps to track our prayer time. But aren’t we more than accumulated numbers?

            Pope Benedict XVI put it best when he said, “In the Nazi concentration camps, they cancelled faces and history, transforming man into a number, reducing him into a cog in an enormous machine. In our modern era, man must be interpreted by a computer, and this is only possible if translated into numbers. The Beast is a number (666) and transforms into numbers. God, however, has a name and calls by name. He is a person and looks for the person.” We must be careful with technology so that it doesn’t reduce us to a set of data points, but respects us and others as human persons, with dignity independent of our production.

            We must evaluate all technology with the question: does it help us become more human? Or does it replace humanity? This past Holy Thursday, I wanted to lead a few parishioners in an ancient tradition to visit seven local churches after the evening Mass. So I turned to AI and asked it, “What route should I take to visit the most churches between 8:30pm and 11pm?” And it spit out a very good itinerary. That use of technology helped us have a profoundly spiritual evening. But many times we use technology to replace real encounters with persons. Recently one of our teens told me that he had twenty-three hours of screen time one day. I asked him what kept him online for that long, and he told me that he was lonely and bored when he was going to bed so he asked a friend if they could Facetime each other while they slept, so they kept the cameras on all night so he wouldn’t have to sleep alone! At that point, just have a sleepover…or what if we used that natural human loneliness and boredom to turn to God in prayer?

            Which brings us to the next point: silence, boredom, and loneliness are spaces where God wants to move. Philosopher Blasé Paschal once wrote, “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” The universe is awash in content – I read a statistic that all of the content (pictures, songs, written words) that was created from the beginning of the world until 2008 is now produced every single day – but how much of it is worthwhile? 402 million terabytes of content is produced daily – but is it worth it? A teen was telling me that they spend 13 hours on TikTok, watching approximately 2,000 videos. I asked them how many of those videos they remembered. The answer = zero. The Evil One uses technology to distract us from silence, loneliness, and boredom, which means that God has no space to enter. St. Patrick was converted through boredom – he was a slave sent to work as a shepherd for six years. In the cold and lonely mountains of Ireland, he spent his days and nights in prayer, coming out of that trial as a holy man. Imagine if he had a smartphone to fill his time – who would he have become?

            Of course, part of his conversion was the natural beauty – and the raw suffering – of the Irish landscape. And this, too, must be considered as we look at technology: human beings have a bodily dimension that must interact with the physical stuff of the world in order to thrive. The world is sacramental – it is the way through which God reveals Himself. St. Augustine calls it the “Book of Nature” – if you observe and interact with the physical world, you will encounter God. But how the digital world draws us away from reality! This past summer I hiked Mount Katahdin, the highest peak in Maine. It was a stunning view – 360 panorama, you can see over 200 miles in every direction. And there we were, exhausted but overjoyed, and I saw some other hikers scrolling on their phones through their Instagram or email. What a loss!

            This alienation from our bodily-ness takes a darker turn through the transhumanism movement, which seeks to help people to live forever through technological means. Some have advocated for downloading one’s consciousness onto a hard drive so that when the body dies, the “person” stays alive. Others have worked for an integration between technology and the human person to supersede the limitations of the flesh. Sounds like science-fiction, but there are entire companies such as Neuralink which are working on these technologies. But our bodily dimension is essential to what it means to be human – including bodily suffering and death, which itself is redeemed by Christ.

            There are many more elements of technology that we could talk about. Tech addiction is one of them – all things, including technology, must be used in moderation. St. Carlo Acutis loved playing video games (as a child of the ‘90s) but he limited himself to one hour per week, knowing how addictive they could be. Christ came for freedom – so if you find yourself a slave to your device, take the steps necessary to break the chains! We could talk about technology and work – work is a gift from God so that we develop our talents, glorify Him, and serve our brothers and sisters. Technology is good when it helps us work better, but it should never seek to eliminate work entirely or make the human person obsolete. There are so many other dimensions of technology that must be informed by our Catholic Faith, that we cannot get into today.

            But to sum up: Technology is not a good thing, nor is it an evil thing. It is a neutral but powerful thing that can be used for good or ill. It can only be wielded properly by those who understand their Catholic Faith deeply, and who have enough self-control to not become its slave. Jesus reproaches Peter, “You are thinking, not as God does, but as human beings do.” We must see technology, not as Zuckerberg or Musk would want us to see it, but as Christ wants us to see it. To re-quote St. Paul, “Do not conform yourself to this technological age, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may know what is the will of God: what is good, pleasing, and perfect.”

Ordinary Time 21 - Divine Institution of the Church

 

Homily for Ordinary Time 21

August 22, 2026

The Divine Institution of the Church

 

            In 1939, Pope Pius XI was growing older. Knowing that he would soon pass away and he wanted his tomb to be in the crypt of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, workmen began digging out a new niche in the crypt when a pickaxe struck something unexpected – air. The space behind the crypt of the world-famous Basilica was empty! Upon Pius XI’s passing, the next pope Pius XII authorized a secret excavation of the area beneath St. Peter’s.

            Archeologists found second-century houses, tombs, and streets, and then something unexpected: a small marble monument over a marble box. The inscription on the monument read, in Greek: “Peter is within”!

            They began to excavate fervently, and found the box to contain human skeletons – one of which was wrapped in purple and gold cloth, containing the remains of a large man who died in his 60s or 70s. The results were sent to several non-Catholic scholars, who all verified that these were indeed the remains of Simon Peter – found about two stories beneath the high altar in his Basilica. Indeed, the Church has been built upon the Rock of St. Peter – even his bones!

            But it was not Peter or the other Apostles who themselves built the Catholic Church. It was Christ alone who built the Church, which He makes clear in two ways in the Scriptures. When Peter makes his famous profession that Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of God”, Jesus tells him that it is not flesh and blood that revealed it to him, but the Heavenly Father. He’s saying that what Peter is articulating – and all the teachings His Church will teach throughout the ages – are ultimately not from man, but from God.

            Jesus then says, “I will build My Church.” Not, “Peter, you have to gather a bunch of like-minded individuals to come and follow me” or “Ya know, it’d be a lot easier to be a disciple if you all just incorporated yourselves into a 501-c3 and planned weekly get-togethers.” No – this is Christ’s Church, not Peter’s Church or Pope Leo’s Church or Fr. Joseph’s church. That means the Church must be faithful to Christ, not the whims of this passing world.

            It’s odd, the mailing lists that Catholic priests sometimes end up on. Every now and then I’ll get a spam email or a mailing about “Church planting”. Church planting is a Protestant idea about going into a certain area and starting a church – usually starting out as a bible study in someone’s house, planning some sort of worship service, then renting a theater or storefront to hold that service, and finally building a worship center. I’m sure that some of our Catholic parishes started in a similar manner, but we’d never call it “planting a church” – because our church isn’t started by a man, but by God Himself!

            But not only do we have a divine institution of the Catholic Church, we will see the divine culmination, too. Jesus says to Simon, “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church (petros in Greek means “rock”).” But Simon is quite anything but a solid rock at this point in his life – the very next scene in the Gospel, which we will read next weekend, is Peter telling Jesus, “No! Don’t go to the Cross!” And we know the story – he denies Christ three times in that most critical moment during His Passion.

            But we also know the end of the story – with the infusion of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, Peter becomes that rock – the first Pope, the bold evangelist, the proud leader of this misfit band. Likewise, when Christ sets up this Church, He makes a promise that He will make it His glorious and perfect Bride – but we don’t see that yet. We see the Church full of imperfect people, sinful priests, scandals and lousy homilies. Fine – but don’t forget what the Church will become, because Christ promised that He would never abandon It, but that He would cleanse Her by His Precious Blood and present Her without spot or wrinkle at the end of time.

            So – I am Catholic because this is the Church that Christ founded. But you may ask – how do we know which Church is the true one? We know because we remain connected to the Rock of Simon Peter – the Papacy.

            I have a dear friend who is a devout Baptist. About two weeks before my ordination to the priesthood, he invited me to go hiking. I can’t turn down a hiking trip – ever – so I agreed, and we got up to beautiful view and sat down for a snack, when he pulled out his bible and said to me, “I think you’re making a terrible mistake by becoming a priest.” I thought to myself, “Oh geez, here it goes…” and I briefly entertained the thought of pushing him off the cliff (just kidding). He tried to explain, “The Baptist Church is the true church because it traces its lineage back to John the Baptist, and we just went underground for fifteen centuries before we resurfaced.” Factually that’s not true – the Baptists were an offshoot of the Anglicans – but it brings up core issue: we can’t trace the True Church back to Christ unless we go through the line of Peter. We believe in one, holy, catholic, and Apostolic Church – the visible sign of oneness of the Church is whether or not you’re visibly united to the Pope.

            We’ve recently been seeing the problems of churches separated from the divine institution of the papacy. For example, in the last month, the Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church just published a document calling Russia’s war against Ukraine to be a “holy war” and saying that Russians have an obligation to fight. Well, when you don’t have the guarantee that Heaven will protect your Church from teaching error, you get all kinds of mistaken notions about Christianity. Kirill may be the most egregious example, but just look at any Protestant Youtube channel and you’ll see every teaching under the sun. Tens of thousands of different Protestant denominations, all claiming the same Bible but with different interpretations – how can this be the will of God? Error and division are from Satan, but Christ promised that Satan would not prevail against His Church.

            Hence, He has safeguarded His Church by giving us the Pope, and providing the Holy Spirit to protect the Pope from leading us astray. This Church was founded by Christ, and will be brought to fulfillment by Christ in beauty and majesty in Heaven. At the end of the day, the Church built on the Rock of Peter is Christ’s Church – the one I want to belong to until my last breath.

Ordinary Time 19 - Desolation

 

Ordinary Time 19

August 9, 2026

Faith In Desolation

 

            In the last century, a woman once wrote to her spiritual advisor, “In my soul I feel just that terrible pain of loss—of God not wanting me—of God not being God—of God not really existing.” Who was this woman? An unbeliever? A skeptic? No – it was Mother Teresa, perhaps the holiest woman of the twentieth century. When these words to her spiritual director were published after her death, many people came forward and said, “See! She was a hypocrite! She didn’t even believe in God!” But on the contrary, it showed the depths of her holiness, because she continued to love God with the darkest, coldest, most raw faith.

            There are times in our spiritual lives where we feel close to God. Maybe it is the birth of a child, admiring a beautiful work of art, the peace we feel in Adoration, the beauty of nature. Spiritual writers call this consolation – the feeling of God’s presence. I hope all of you have experienced consolation in your spiritual lives – they are favors from the goodness of God.

            But most of us do not live our lives in constant consolation – rather, spiritual writers such as St. Ignatius of Loyola speak about desolation as well – a feeling of being distant from God, empty, bored, lacking motivation to pray. Have you ever felt that as well? I certainly have. And it’s not a bad thing at all – but we have to understand how to keep our faith in desolation.

            Elijah certainly faced this in our first reading. We have to understand the context of this small passage. Elijah was the only prophet faithful to the Lord in all of Israel when most of the nation had begun to worship the false god of Ba’al. The evil King threatened to kill Elijah for being faithful, so Elijah fled to Mount Sinai – the very place of the Covenant which Israel had been so unfaithful to. But Elijah was in dire straits – right before this scene, Elijah actually prays for death, when he says, “Lord, I’m alone, I’m being hunted down, and no one is converting at my preaching. Please take my life.” And God tells him to go up Mount Sinai (also known as Mount Horeb, as in today’s reading) and wait for the Lord to show up. And He shows up…in a tiny whispering sound, and basically tells Elijah to get back to work!

             It may have been disappointing for Elijah, who wanted some consolation, something to make himself feel better. Maybe God could have showed up in the fire, the earthquake, to show the prophet He was with him. But God didn’t do that. He showed up in silence, didn’t console him, and told him to be faithful to his task.

            And that’s often how God works – we turn to Him for comfort, and feel only emptiness. We want relief from our difficult task of caring for our kids or our parents, but it seems like the burdens keep piling up. We find it a struggle to pray, as if we’re just going through the motions.

            Is He absent in times of desolation? Not at all. He allows it so that we grow in holiness, in perseverance, in humility. God wants us to seek Him, and not just seek good feelings and comfort. Faith is not feelings – even if you don’t feel close to God, by choosing to remain faithful to Him purifies and strengthens our faith. It becomes something we choose. Likewise, when we don’t feel like we want to pray, to do it anyway makes our love costly…and real. A true friend of Christ is friends with Him when He gives consolation, but is no less faithful when He chooses to hide Himself.

            No saint is ever made without desolation. Listen to the words of St. Faustina: “A darkness began to invade my soul, growing thicker and thicker... I found no consolation in prayer ... Often during the entire Mass, I did nothing but struggle with [distractions].” A lack of faith? Nope – an opportunity to purify and strengthen her love for Christ, for now she is loving Him without receiving anything in return.

            In times of desolation we must do as Peter did – keep his eyes fixed on Jesus Christ. There was a very priest from Naples who was a contemporary with Padre Pio named Servant of God Fr. Dolindo Ruotolo who wrote a famous novena (nine days of prayer) called the Surrender Novena. Daily, he would repeat the prayer, “O Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything!” It sums up the perfect attitude in times of desolation: complete trust and surrender. And Fr. Dolindo had to live out that trust – he wrote several books that his superiors criticized unjustly, and for decades they forbade him from writing and preaching. He was misunderstood, crippled by arthritis and a stroke. It would have been natural for him to ask God for a sense of His presence and love. But he continually surrendered everything to God, even a natural desire for God’s consolation. This complete surrender made his good friend St. Padre Pio say, “The whole of paradise is in his soul.”

            So when we are tempted to say, in the midst of the storm, “God, are You with us or not?” – this is the time to persevere. That may mean walking in blind trust. Our faith is not the same as feelings. God hides His consolation so that we seek Him with greater fervor, whether we feel close to Him or not. So keep your eyes fixed on Christ, choose to stay faithful to your prayer life and striving for virtue even when our motivation is lost. Because the darker your spiritual life seems here, the brighter will be the vision of God for eternity.

Ordinary Time 18 - More Than Conquerors

 

Ordinary Time 18

August 2, 2026

More Than Conquerors

 

            No matter how bad your life gets, just remember – you’re not Blessed Margaret of Castello. Born blind, lame, hunchback, and with dwarfism, her high-society parents were ashamed to show her in public, so they kept her locked in a room in their castle, attended by a kindly maid. When she was twenty years old, they took her to a shrine in a distant city to pray for a cure, but when the cure didn’t happen, the parents abandoned the girl there – but thankfully the townspeople took her in and began to care for her. For her part, she spent her days in prayer and good works – visiting prisoners, taking care of the dying, teaching children their catechism.

            She died at the young age of 33, and the whole town came to her funeral. They begged the priest to have her buried inside the church itself, because they believed her to be a saint. But the priest refused, until a sick girl came up and touched Margaret’s coffin during the funeral and was instantly cured. So she was buried in the church, and she has the gift of incorruptibility – her body has not decayed, even though she died over seven hundred years ago.

            So, as bad as life may be, just remember – you’re not Blessed Margaret of Castello, who was disabled, ended up poor and abandoned by her own family, died young.

            But was it such a tragedy? Wasn’t God glorified by making this poor disabled child into a saint? Did He not do miracles through her, and lead many other souls to God simply by her humility and prayerfulness? Is she not rejoicing with Him forever in Heaven? What man views as a tragedy, God sees as a heroic triumph.

            St. Paul offers us one of the most powerful words in Scripture, that I wish to see engraved upon all of your hearts: Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Trial or distress, hunger or danger? No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly – not because we’re strong, but because of Him Who loved us.

            I suppose it matters what we expect “conquering” to look like. There has been a theme in American Christianity often called “the Prosperity Gospel” which means that God wants us to have the good things of earth – health, wealth, success – and that we just have to have enough faith to claim those good things.

            I don’t recall Jesus ever making anyone rich, or promising anyone that all our dreams will come true. So that can’t be what Paul means when he says that we conquer overwhelmingly. Rather, Jesus often blesses His friends with crosses, sicknesses, deprivation. But from an eternal perspective, we can laugh at the misfortunes that befall us, and use it all for our profit.

            I love how St. John Chrysostom puts it: “What are we to fear? Death? 'Life to me means Christ, and death is gain.' Exile? 'The earth and its fullness belong to the Lord.' Confiscation of goods? We brought nothing into this world, and we shall surely take nothing from it. I have only contempt for the world's threats, I find its blessings laughable. I have no fear of poverty, no desire for wealth. I am not afraid of death nor do I long to live, except for your good.” And he knew what it was to be weak – he was exiled twice by the Empress for calling out corruption in the court, suffered poor health, and lost many friends over it.

            But can’t Christ redeem it all? Of course – and this is what makes us conquerors. For example, is our health poor? What a gift – to participate in the Cross, to offer it all up and use it as a precious gift to save souls. Christ conquers even our poor health by turning it into a spiritual benefit.

            Do we have financial troubles? Good! God is using this to detach our soul from these passing earthly realities, so we trust in Him alone. Have we had trauma in our life? God has brought us through so we have a powerful witness and testimony, and so we could develop compassion for others.

            We are not just “survivors” of our circumstances, but rather victors over this life because we have already inherited a better kingdom. Our journey is just to go home to claim that Kingdom. And Paul says that nothing can take away that Kingdom – nothing, of course, except sin, which is our decision not to claim the kingdom we’ve been promised. But no other circumstance – can take away such a gift.

            One day two fellow Christians greeted each other on the street. One said, “How are you doing?” The other one responded, “Not bad, under the circumstances.” To which the other one rebuked, “And what is a Christian doing under the circumstances?”

            Engrave that Bible verse on your heart: Nothing will separate us from the love of Christ, because in all things we conquer overwhelmingly because of Him Who loved us.

Ordinary Time 17 - Risky Business

 

Ordinary Time 17

July 26, 2027

Risky Business

 

            Back in 2010, computer programmer Laszlo Hanyecz used a new currency to pay for two pizzas – 10,000 Bitcoin, a new cryptocurrency that was slowly catching on. Although those pizzas were delicious, if he had kept those Bitcoin instead of spending them on pizza, they’d be worth $1.1 Billion today!

            The key to good investing is to know when to spend and when to save, and what types of things we should invest in. Anyone remember the Beanie Baby craze of the late 1990s, when people bought those trendy little stuffed animals in the hopes that they would make millions in resale? They’re all sitting at the backs of closets right now, gathering dust, worth only pennies.

            There is a similar risk in Jesus’ investment strategy outlined in today’s Gospel. What if the man sold everything he had to buy the pearl, but it turned out to be a fake? What if the man sold everything to buy the field, but it turns out that the treasure buried within was counterfeit? Investors will tell you never to put all your eggs in one basket, but that diversification is the key to financial success. And unfortunately a lot of Christians take that advice to heart, when it comes to their pursuit of the Kingdom of God.

            In these parables, the Kingdom of God means two things – really, two sides of the same coin. It means that we allow Christ to be king of every aspect of our life – our thoughts, our words, or internet browsing, our private thoughts, our goals and dreams, our relationships, the jokes we laugh at, the media we consume. We allow Christ to be King of every aspect of our life. But while we imperfectly acknowledge Christ as King here, the idea of the Kingdom also points to Heaven, where Christ will be perfectly the King over our lives and our eternity.

            But many Christians want to play it safe. Yes, they want to acknowledge Christ as King and pursue Heaven, but they also think, “Well, Heaven isn’t a sure thing. I’ve never seen it; I’ve never been there. So I will try to pursue happiness here, and make Christ only a part of my life, and not the center.”

            I do admit that it is hard to live for a Heaven that we cannot see. It is risky – what if it’s not true? What if, after death, there is nothing? Yet I believe that there are two reasons why we can believe in Heaven – which should make us want to live for Heaven.

            First, because our hearts desire it. CS Lewis once said, “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.” Have you ever experienced what I call “Christmas Afternoon Syndrome”? When we were younger, for twenty-five days we were all excited to get that new thing – the iPad, the bike, the Beanie Baby. And then Christmas morning comes, and we get it – yes! But then Christmas afternoon comes, and we feel – “Ugh, I thought that would have made me happier.”

            No matter how much happiness we experience on this earth, it’s temporary, while our hearts yearn for permanent. I remember reading an interview with the baseball great Cal Ripken Jr., who is a Hall-of-Famer and has a World Series ring. The reporter was asking him, “How does it feel to be retired?” He replied, “I hate it. Every year since I was five years old, I had a next season to look forward to. Now there are no more next seasons. I don’t know what to do with my life.” If our happiness is only based on the things of this world, we will feel this “what now?” moment when the pleasure wears off, the friends go home, and we’re left with ourselves.

            But we also believe in Heaven because Jesus revealed it to us. It says in Scripture that “no eye can see, no ear can hear, nor has the mind of man ever understood” what God has prepared for those who love Him. I’ve never been to Heaven, but I know the Man Who came down from Heaven, and when He says “follow Me”, I know that He is leading me back to where He came from – to that place where we belong.

            The asking price to invest in everlasting life is nothing short of everything. If we hope to live in the Kingdom where God is all-in-all, we train ourselves by living for Him here and now. We can’t hedge our bets and say, “Well, I’ve given God an hour a week. That’s enough.” A few dollars weren’t enough to purchase the pearl or the treasure in the field – it took every bit of a man’s fortune, but the payoff was so much greater. An hour a week isn’t enough to learn how to live in the Kingdom – only our entire lives will do.

            So here is my challenge. What aspect of your life have you not surrendered to Christ’s Kingship? Do we recreate for His glory? Do we use our phones in a manner that pleases Him? Are our friendships, our work, our marriage lived for Him? Today, let’s make the commitment to give that aspect of our life to His Kingship, that we may find ourselves living for Him now so we can live with Him for eternity.

            Back in the early 500s in Persia, a Christian nobleman named James Intercisius served as a military officer for the non-Christian Zoroastrian king of Persia. The king was quite tolerant with the Christians and allowed them to build churches and bury their dead, which was forbidden in Zoroastrianism. But soon the Christians became bold against the king and started tearing down the pagan temples, sometimes even celebrating Masses on the formerly-pagan altars. This turned the King against the Christians, and he began a severe persecution of them.

            His military leader James, to save his skin, sided with the king and abandoned his faith, often carrying out the King’s commands to capture and torture Christians. But when the King died and another was named, James’ family begged him to return to the faith of his fathers and believe in Christ. This intervention woke James up – how could he prefer his position and his riches to the everlasting joys of Christ in Heaven? He returned to his faith – just in time to be arrested by the new king for his Christian faith. He ended up being tortured, while his family watched – but that was too much for his family to bear, and they begged him now to abandon his faith to save his life. This time, James held firm, preferring to die for Christ than to live with all the riches of the kingdom. He is now St. James Intercisius, who lived for a Kingdom he could not see.

            Investors may say that we shouldn’t take risks with our money, but Christ says that Heaven is worth the risk. Do we really believe that living forever with Christ is greater than all the passing pleasures this world can offer us?

Ordinary Time 16 - Weeding the Soul

 

Homily for Ordinary Time 16

July 19, 2026

Weeding the Soul

 

            If you have a garden, weeding is a necessary but unpleasant task. If you have a soul, weeding out our vices is another necessary but difficult task. And there are a good number of similarities between weeding your garden and weeding your soul.

            First, what are the weeds? It can be understood on several levels: first, Jesus is making the point that the Church will be full of both saints and sinners until the end of time. In this understanding, it’s Jesus Who does the weeding. As St. Augustine said, “The church is not a hotel for saints, but a hospital for sinners” – which is good, because we are all sinners, so we are welcome here – not to remain sinners, but to be healed to become saints!

            But there is another interpretation – these weeds are also our vices. All of us have both virtues and vices in our soul. Virtues are those good character traits that make us like Christ, and vices are those habitual sins which make us quite unlike him. In this case, we cooperate with Christ in rooting out these vices!

            Our Catholic tradition gives us seven main vices, often called the Seven Deadly Sins. They are: Pride, Wrath (which is unjustified and uncontrollable anger), Greed, Envy, Sloth (which is laziness, particularly laziness in the spiritual life), Gluttony, and Lust. All of our other sinful habits fall under these categories. These are the weeds which choke out the good fruit of virtue in our soul. So how do we root them out? The same way we weed a garden.

            First, we focus on the big ones first, but without neglecting the little ones which can grow into big ones. We have a weed called mugwort which grows in every nice patch of flowers around here, but also gets to be six feet tall! It’s my crusade to rid this campus of this noxious weed. Likewise with the soul, examine your heart to see which is the most prevalent of your vices. Some people have a temper; others are tempted to lust; others struggle with pride. Last month, a young teen came to me in great distress and exclaimed, “Father, today was the worst day of my life!” I asked him why and he said, “Because I got braces!” Yeah, you and every other teenager in history – it was a struggle with the sin of vanity! Let us focus on the biggest one that we see in our life – as Thomas a Kempis said in the famous book, Imitation of Christ, “If you eliminate one vice every year, in short order you will be perfect!”

            But it’s far easier to root out a weed when it is small, when the roots are shallow. So it is with us – we must make sure not to overlook our small sins, lest they take root and become much harder to overcome. It is truly dangerous in the spiritual life to say, “Oh, it’s not a big deal that I gossiped once…that I indulged an impure thought…that I took something small from the store.” Every weed was once a seed…and every addiction, bad habit, or vice was once a seemingly-small and insignificant deed. Cut it off as soon as you see it cropping up in your life!

            Weeds can be frustrating, though. We have a weed called bittersweet on our campus and it’s utterly tenacious. I will cut the vine right down the ground – and it will put up four new shoots for every one that I cut. I have to be diligent and cut it continuously before it dies. Likewise, we must be persistent in overcoming vices. It’s not enough to come to Confession just once; we must come frequently. It’s not enough to overcome temptation once; we must fight it until we die. A young seminarian once asked a Bishop, “When will I be free of temptations of the flesh?” The wise bishop responded, “About five minutes after you’re dead!” All the saints know that they were still capable of sin – one time a person said to St. John Vianney, “You’re so good at hearing Confessions!” And the holy priest replied, “If I am a good Confessor, it is because I am first a great sinner.”

            One thing I’ve noticed when I’ve weeded is that the hole in the dirt left by the weed is actually perfect for more weeds to grow, unless we fill it with something good. As the old saying goes, “Nature abhors a vacuum” – and so does the soul. St. Paul tells us that “we reap what we sow” – if we fill our life with good things, prayer, sacramentals, uplifting thoughts, good deeds, we will have a much easier time to become saints. I love how St. Padre Pio would always, I mean always, carry around a Rosary with him, even sleeping with it. He would call it “his weapon” – the best thing to fight against the Evil One and his own vices. One day a man came to him and boasted, “Padre Pio, I prayed four Rosaries today!” The holy priest responded, “That’s wonderful! I have prayed 32!” His life was so filled with a love for Our Lady and Our Lord that there was no space for vices to take root.

            Finally, weeding is easier when we enlist help! My dad used to pay us a dollar if we filled up a bucket with weeds – it went quickly when all five kids were helping! Likewise, we can quickly eliminate the bad habits and sins in the garden of our soul if we enlist the help of the saints, Our Lady, and Jesus Himself. This isn’t something we just grit our teeth and try hard, but rather, we simply allow Jesus to do the work Himself. It’s not by accident that Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene after the Resurrection as a gardener – it is He Who can take out the weeds of our vices and replace them with the fruits of holiness!

            I challenge you, today, to consider what vices you need to work on – and to commit yourself to using the tools Christ has given us to root them out of your life. No matter who you are, we all have vices we need to root out – even the saints. I think, for example, of St. Fortunatus. He worked for the kings and queens of what is now modern-day France back in the 500s, but his job was somewhat unique – he was the official court flatterer. He wrote poems and songs to praise the nobles, using his tongue to butter up and flatter the king. But after a while, he realized that, although it paid the bills, it’s not what his gifts of music and song was meant to be for – it was only his pride and greed that made him such a fawning sycophant. He left the court and became a bishop, and started writing poems and hymns about the Lord – many of which are still sung in the Church today. In order to become a saint, he had to overcome his vice of pride and greed – and, in giving that up, found the treasure of Heaven!

            All of us have the weeds of vices in our soul. But with the Lord’s help, and diligent effort, we can make genuine progress in the garden of holiness, that we may bear the fruit of virtue for the Lord!

Ordinary Time 15 - The Fruits of Virtue

 

Ordinary Time 15

July 12, 2026

The Cardinal and Theological Fruits

 

            Jesus gives this beautiful parable about the sower who is sowing grains of wheat. But obviously in such a parable, everything is a symbol of something else, as Jesus Himself explains it: the sower are the Apostles, the seed is the Word of God, the four locations of sowing seed are the four different types of souls who receive the Word of God…but there is one element of the parable that Jesus does not explain – what is the fruit that a good person bears thirty or sixty or a hundredfold?

            The fruit is virtue. Virtues are the good moral habits that make us like Christ (or, as the Catechism puts it, “The habitual disposition to do good”). It’s not just an individual action – anybody can be generous once. Rather, a virtue is so ingrained in us that it becomes part of our character, and it becomes even easy to do good, even when it takes sacrifice. This takes both prayer and practice. God can infuse virtue in is when we pray for it, but usually He gives us opportunities to practice virtue when we are challenged in patience, courage, purity, etc.

            But what kind of virtues ought we strive for? Tradition gives us seven main virtues – three that deal with God (the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity) and four that deal with our relationships in this world (the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude). Let’s look briefly at each one.

            First, at our Baptism, each one of us has received faith, hope, and charity. Faith allows us to believe that God exists, to trust Him, and to believe everything He has revealed in Scripture and Tradition. Hope gives us firm assurance that He will be faithful to His promises, especially the promise of everlasting life. Charity means that we love God above all things and that we love others for the sake of God.

            But the cardinal virtues are a little more confusing, so let’s break these down. First, temperance. This virtue teaches us to love God’s gifts rightly – to enjoy them in their proper place. I am reminded of the story of St. Charles Borromeo, the sixteenth-century Italian bishop, who had a great fondness for shooting pool. One day he was playing, when a friend asked him, “What would you do if you knew you were going to die in an hour? Would you run to the chapel, or find a priest for Confession?” He replied, “I would continue playing pool. I began this game with the intention of glorifying God, so why should I stop, even if I enjoy it?”

            There was a heresy in the early middle ages called Albigensianism which believed that all pleasure was evil – that to be a saint, we have to deny ourselves every kind of pleasure. Nope – not at all. Jesus’ first miracle was to make wine at a feast – clearly, God created good things, and we ought to enjoy them! But there is also a mirror-image error called Hedonism which believes that pleasure is the highest good. Also an error. The midpoint is the virtue of temperance – we enjoy God’s gifts rightly, in the way He intended, in balance. So we ought to feast on Thanksgiving and fast during Lent. We ought to enjoy alcohol in moderation – after all, St. Thomas Aquinas once said, “Drink to the point of hilarity, but no further” – in other words, enjoy a drink which can loosen us up and make us laugh, but not so much that we lose our reason. We ought to enjoy rest and recreation, but must not shirk our duties out of laziness. We ought to enjoy sexual pleasure, but only within marriage and open to life. We can all acknowledge that when we misuse God’s gifts, we are harmed – overeating leads to a stomachache, overindulgence in alcohol leads to a hangover, or sexual relations outside of marriage leads to unplanned pregnancy, broken hearts, and addictions. Hence, temperance is necessary for us to experience freedom!

            The next virtue is justice, which means that we give everyone what we owe them. We owe our parents respect and care (and if you’re under 18, you owe them obedience), we owe our country our loyalty, we owe God worship, we owe our neighbor the basic necessities of life. A lot of things we think we’re doing because we’re kind, but it’s actually just plain justice.

            For example, in years past I’ve spoken about the need to dress well for Mass, as we recognize we’re not going to the beach but the very presence of Almighty God. Inevitably someone says, “Oh but Father, we’re just lucky that they’re coming to Mass,” as if we’re doing a favor to God. My friend, our attendance at Mass is actually an act of justice – it is what we owe our Creator as His creatures. God is not “lucky” that we’re here – rather, we owe Him worship, and in His benevolence He is kind to give us so many graces and blessings in the Eucharist and in the Scripture readings. Or we can be that way to our fellow people, too. How many of us have held the door open for others and then had a kind of smug, “Yeah, I’m a good person” feeling? Eh, we’re only doing what we ought to do, since we owe it to our neighbors to treat them with respect. Jesus has a pithy quote in one of the Gospels for this attitude, when He says, “These servants ought to say, ‘We are unprofitable servants, we have only done what was required of us.’”

            Of course, we also ought to exceed justice by practicing mercy. Mercy is giving people what they are not due. Back in 2021, a Rhode Island woman named Lisa Hull awoke to phone ringing to give her the news that no mother wanted to hear: her son had been killed in a tragic automobile accident. Devastated, she was tempted to anger at the other driver, but as a woman of deep faith, brought it to prayer. The Lord opened her heart to realize that the other driver must’ve been suffering from extreme guilt and shame – and she alone had the power to release him from that by publicly forgiving him. But could she do that? She went back and forth, but finally decided to call him and tell him that she forgave him – it was truly an accident, he wasn’t drunk or anything – and this call brought so much mercy into his life. He attended the funeral and burial, and he found peace because of the mercy shown from the mother. So, while justice is critical, we are called to go above it through practicing mercy.

            The third cardinal virtue is fortitude – the courage to do what’s right despite difficulty. Aquinas distinguishes between two types of good things we desire: what he calls concupiscible goods and irascible goods. Big words, I know – but simple concepts. Concupiscible goods are things which are good and easy. So, at the end of a long day, we desire sleep – that is good for us, and it’s easy to do – just lay down on a comfortable bed. But some good things take effort – working out, for example, or having a prayer life, or standing up for a kid who’s bullied in school. These “irascible goods” are those which take fortitude – the strength to pursue the good despite difficulty. These are good things, but they are difficult.

            One of the most devout Catholic athletes is Hall of Fame catcher Mike Piazza. But his road to stardom was one that required great fortitude. He was drafted in the 62^nd round, and only because his father was friends with the Dodgers’ coach. No one expected him to make the majors. But he knew that God had given him the talent – so he needed the fortitude to persevere, work hard – and not just for his own ego, but to glorify God and to give him a platform to speak about Christ to the public. In fact, when he was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2016, he said in his speech, “My Catholic faith [is] the greatest gift, which has had a profound impact on my career and has given me patience, compassion and hope. Pope Benedict the XVI said, ‘One who has hope, lives differently.’” It wasn’t so he could be rich and famous, but so that Christ’s Name could be praised in this professional athlete, that Piazza had to tap into that virtue of fortitude in order to overcome the odds and make the majors. And look at his witness to Christ now!

            Finally, the last of the cardinal virtues is prudence, which Aquinas calls the “charioteer of the virtues” because it drives the rest of them. Prudence is knowing what virtue to exercise in each given situation. For example, let’s say you want to make a small sacrifice for God by giving up dessert for a week. But a friend invites you to his birthday and offers you some cake. Is it more virtuous to take the cake, or keep the fast? Prudence helps you decide. I need to rely on prudence all the time – for example, I often have kids at my school tell me, “Father, can you talk to Johnny, he’s picked up vaping and we’re concerned about him.” I have to discern whether or not to talk to him, when to do it, and what words to say. That’s the virtue of prudence – discovering when and how to live out the other virtues.

            This beautiful parable of the sower and the seed is incomplete without considering what this fruit is that a healthy Christian can expect – the fruit is a life overflowing with virtues. Aristotle said that “virtue is excellence in being human.” One might say that it is the excellence of the Christian life, as well – replete with the human virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude, as well as the divine virtues of faith, hope, and charity.

Ordinary Time 12 - Don't Fear the Haters

 

Homily for Ordinary Time 12

June 21, 2026

Don’t Worry About the Haters

 

            I don’t care how old you are or what season of life you’re in, peer pressure can be a real struggle. Maybe it’s just bad memories from our middle school days, but we’re all hardwired to follow the herd, go along, fit in. We are social creatures, and no one wants to be ostracized.

            But what do we do when the peer pressure is harmful? When it goes against truth? When it goes against love?

            St. Thomas More was the chancellor of England under King Henry VIII during the 1500s – the second-in-command in the entire empire, and the King’s good friend. The King wanted to get divorced and remarried, but knew this was impossible in the Catholic Faith. So in anger, the King declared himself to be the head of the Church of England, starting the Anglican Church (in America they’re known as Episcopalians, like St. Peter’s Church on the Green). He forced every nobleman and clergyman in his realm to swear an oath acknowledging the King, not the Pope, as the leader of the Church, and most had no problem signing. But Sir Thomas More refused, knowing he could never abandon the Church that Christ founded.

            In the fantastic play “Man for All Seasons” about More’s life, we see the Duke of Norfolk trying to argue with Thomas More about this issue. The Duke says, “Oh confound all this. I'm not a scholar, I don't know whether the marriage was lawful or not, but Thomas, look at these names! Why can't you do as I did and [sign this oath], for fellowship!”

            And Thomas responds, "And when we die, and you are sent to heaven for doing your conscience, and I am sent to hell for not doing mine, will you come with me, for fellowship?"

            Throughout history, we’ve had lots of saints who stood up to the status quo. I think of St. Oscar Romero, the heroic bishop of El Salvador, who preached boldly against the government’s oppression of the poor and human rights abuses – and ended up assassinated for his boldness. I think of St. Maria of Paris, who hid Jews in her tiny apartment during the Nazi regime and lost her life for such charity. We’ve had literally millions of heroic saints stand up against the zeitgeist (the “spirit of the age”) to live boldly for Christ, no matter what the personal cost or how many people are against them.

            And we’d like to think we’d do the same, right? But do we really? I’d just like to mention one opportunity we have today to stand up for truth and authentic love against the mistaken notions of the world.

            June is, of course, “Pride Month”. We see it everywhere, including on the rainbow flag flying over Monroe’s Town Hall. While we ought to be respectful and kind to all people, including our brothers and sisters who struggle with same-sex attraction, the Pride movement is about more than just respect – it’s about approval of a lifestyle that is gravely immoral. Our Lord has taught, in both the Old and the New Testaments, and through His Church, that the only proper use of sexuality is between a man and a woman in a sacramental marriage and open to life. Thus, those who identify as LGBT are encouraged to live lives of chastity, prayer, and friendship. In fact, there is a wonderful Catholic outreach to those of same-sex attraction called Courage – the international director happens to be the pastor of St. Theresa’s Church in Trumbull, Fr. Brian Gannon. This outreach gives support to those who want to live pure and holy lives while struggling with the cross of same-sex attraction.

            But this whole idea of chastity is opposed to the Pride movement, which is an ideology of accepting an objectively disordered view of marriage and sexual relations. This is why no good Catholic can fly the Pride flag or otherwise support the Pride movement. I know in many companies and at schools, people are encouraged and even pressured to support the Pride movement – otherwise they become labeled as a bigot or a hater.

            But it is not bigotry to accept what God has revealed about the nature of marriage. It is not hatred to desire that someone avoid grave mortal sin. In fact, nothing could be more loving than to help our brothers and sisters become saints, even if they carry the very challenging cross of same-sex attraction.

            So – are we bold enough to stand up for truth and love on this issue? Are we willing to lose friends, have family members shun us, or suffer consequences at our job? In today’s Scripture readings, Christ is bluntly clear that to follow Him means that we will be hated. He was rejected; so will we be. And this issue of celebrating Pride may be one of the clearest ways in which Christ’s words are ringing true in today’s society.

            But do not be afraid. You and God equal a majority. People often say, “Oh, I want to be on the right side of history.” But truthfully, as a Christian, we should prefer to be on the right side of eternity – because this LGBT ideology, like the thousands of false ideologies before it, will end up on the trash heap of history. The Word of the Lord alone will endure forever.

            So don’t be afraid to stand alone if you stand with Christ on His Word.