Ordinary Time 29 - What Belongs to God

 

Homily for Ordinary Time 29

October 18, 2026

We Belong To God

 

            We have often held up great saints who lived lives of poverty like St. Francis of Assisi, but we also have saints who had great wealth – and who used it for God. One great example is Bl. Sebastian of Aparicio. During the late 1500s, the Spanish government tried to encourage people to colonize the New World, so they offered free land in Mexico to anyone who could farm it. Sebastian took them up on it and his farm was wildly successful. He would go into the forest and capture wild cattle and then add them to his farm and domesticate them. Since his farm was so prosperous, he built roads throughout the surrounding villages so that he could deliver free grain and meat to the poor in the region. Everyone knew him as the most generous man in the whole country – he would give loans without interest and forgive them if the debtor couldn’t pay. Despite his wealth, he lived a simple and penitential life, freely teaching the poor how to farm better. God didn’t call him to poverty – He called him to use his wealth for others.

             Everything we own, everything we are belongs to God. Sometimes we like to think that we built our own lives by our hard work and effort – “I deserve this nice house, this retirement nest-egg, this healthy body, because of what I’ve done.” But who gave us the gift of being born in America, of having a good education? Who gave us our gifts and talents? Who gave us the breath in our lungs, the blood coursing in our veins? Without His permission, we would not be able to live another second. As St. Therese of Lisieux said, “Everything is grace” – everything in our lives is a free gift from God, on loan to us.

            So let’s look at what aspects of our lives actually belong to God, and what that means.

            First, our money belongs to God. St. John Chrysostom tells us that “[Our money is] not for you to waste on drink, fancy food, expensive clothes, and all the other kinds of indulgence, but for you to distribute to those in need.” Yes, we should increase our income, but only so that we might become more generous. In the Scriptures, God is actually clear about what part of our income should go to the poor or the Church’s work of spreading the Gospel – in the Scriptures there is something called tithing which is giving ten percent of our income to God. I would encourage all of us to incorporate this Biblical practice into our life.

            Second, our time belongs to God. St. Gerard Majella once said, “Consider the shortness of time, the length of eternity and reflect how everything here below comes to an end and passes by.” During the Communist takeover of Vietnam, the government arrested a Catholic priest, Fr. Francis Van Thuan, and imprisoned him for nine years in solitary confinement for the “crime” of being a Catholic priest. In such a brutal situation, Fr. Francis decided to make the most of his time – in part so that he didn’t go crazy from loneliness! He asked his family to send him wine smuggled in bottles marked “medicine” and they smuggled in bread hidden in flashlights, so every day he celebrated a secret Mass, from memory, under the covers of his bed. He resolved not to waste time, so he filled his days with praying the Rosary, exercising, and writing spiritual messages on the few scraps of paper he could obtain. He would then throw those messages out the window to a Christian schoolboy who would be walking home from school, and the boy collected them and brought them to the secret Catholic community to read (they were eventually published into a book). He would know the routines of the guards and would try to befriend them so he could speak to them about Christ. Fr. Van Thuan did not waste a moment of his imprisonment – he used every scrap of time, every suffering, everything for his sanctification and to further the Gospel, so that when he was released after nine years, he was far holier than before. He is now Venerable Van Thuan, on the path to being named a saint. He never wasted a minute – could the same be said about us?

            In addition, our family belongs to God. The purpose of our marriage and our kids is to help them become saints. We often doubt that our family can be holy, but consider the example of St. Basil and St. Emmelia – they had ten children, six of whom became canonized saints, including three bishops, a hermit, and two nuns! We hear this and say, “Oh not my family!” But why not? The family of St. Basil and St. Emmelia were flesh-and-blood like ours – but they had a faith that was the cornerstone of their lives. They lived during the final persecution of Christians in the early church, and to protect their family, the parents moved to the forest where they subsisted on hunting and foraging for a couple years until it was safe to move back into town – but the message was received by their kids: Christ is worth living and suffering for. There’s the key – a family will be made holy when parents are willing to follow Christ even to sacrifice – getting to Mass even while on vacation, being sacrificially generous with their family size and with their possessions, not pressuring their kids to achieve the “American dream” but encouraging them to pursue God’s will for their lives. Your family belongs to God!

            All of our gifts and talents belong to God. They’re not given to us for our ego, but for service to the Lord and to others. The man who crafted our beautiful crucifix and these fine hymn board signs is one such man who uses his incredible gift of craftsmanship for the Lord. He finds joy in doing it, accepts no money for it, and glorifies God with it. What gifts and talents do you have that are meant to glorify Him?

            Our health and strength belong to God. When people used to encourage St. John Vianney to rest, he would respond, “I will rest in Heaven!” Of course, we ought to balance recreation with work, but we do have a mission in this world: to do as much good for as many souls as we can. If He’s given you good health and strength, then use it to serve. As Mother Teresa said, “There should be less talk. Just grab a broom and sweep someone’s house. That speaks loud enough.” If God did not give you good health, then your mission is to suffer well for Him, in patience and self-offering.

            Even our senses and our thoughts belong to God. In the early Church, it was a custom when someone would receive the Precious Blood from the chalice at Mass, they would dip their fingers in the Precious Blood and anoint their eyes and ears and forehead, that Christ may reign in their five senses and their thoughts. St. Paul tells us to “take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ.” Even our interior life belongs to Him.

            When Jesus says in today’s Gospel to “give unto God what belongs to God,” that includes everything about us. Every last aspect of our life; our past, present, and future, belong to God. Do not hesitate to give Him what is His already, so that He may give us the gift of life everlasting with Him!

Ordinary Time 28 - Why Not You?

 

Homily for Ordinary Time 28

October 11, 2026

Called To Holiness

 

            What’s the point of the Christian life? Is it just to be nice to others, pray, and then we die and go to Heaven? Nope, that’s not the goal. The goal of the Christian life is union with God. We’re not supposed to be good people, we are supposed to be saints!

            This past summer, I was in Italy with a few families I know. We’d be eating out at a fine Italian restaurant on the streets of Rome, and I’d be in awe of the delights of the menu – pasta carbonara and truffle sauce, fresh veal, home-baked bread. But sometimes the teens would then ask the waiters, “Do you have any macaroni and cheese?”

            God wants to share an incredible banquet – His very divine life with us, but we refuse it because we are content with the fast food of modern life – distractions, division, empty pursuit of riches and pleasure. And this modern life is slowly, slowly killing us – starving us of love, meaning, and purpose as we continue to consume things that fill our days without filling our souls.

            So God invites us to live for so much more – to live for holiness, in intimate union with Him. But it is only an invitation – He will not force us to accept it. As St. Augustine said, “God created us without us, but will not redeem us without us.”

            Nevertheless, the invitation is there – for all. Mother Teresa once said, “Holiness is not the luxury of the few, but the very simple duty of you and I.” But what is holiness? How do we achieve union with God – are there five easy steps?

            Nope, just two. First, living in union with God requires real prayer. One time in seminary I was having a conversation with a brother seminarian, and he looked at his watch and said, “Ah, sorry, I’ve got to go. The God of the universe has invited me to spend an hour with Him, and I need to get my laundry done first.” What a clashing of the sublime and the mundane – but isn’t it amazing that God is the one who invites? In the midst of our mundane lives of bills and doctors’ appointments, the Creator, the One Who commands the army of angels and who can tell the stars to shine, has actually invited us to be His friend! What is prayer but saying, “Yes, Lord! I’d love to spend some time with You!” And when we make that time, He shares His life. We may make a thousand excuses about how busy we are, much like these men in the Gospel. But I love what St. Francis de Sales said about our excuses, “Every one of us needs half an hour of prayer a day, except when we are busy—then we need an hour.” A baseline would be a good fifteen minutes, at least – read His Word in the Bible, listen to Christian music, or just speak to Christ from your heart.

            And here’s what’s amazing about that invitation – God doesn’t need us to bring anything to Him, as long as we bring ourselves. Usually when we’re invited over someone’s house we bring a dish or a bottle of wine, but here we just show up as we are! What can we really bring to someone who has everything? So don’t wait until you’re perfect to start a relationship with God – bring Him even your weaknesses, and let Him make you strong! “Lord, here I am – I am weak, a sinner, broken – but I bring it all to you.” As Mother Teresa said, “Let me be broken, and every piece belong to God.”

            Once we bring Him ourselves, we can live in union with God by living like Him in our everyday, walking-around life. St. Gregory of Nyssa said, “A Christian is another Christ.” Holiness, then, is letting Him live through us.

            The old story goes that three Bible scholars were discussing the Bible. One said, “Oh, I like the King James Translation, it is easy to read.” Another said, “I prefer the Revised Standard Version, it is most faithful to the Hebrew.” The third was silent for a moment and said, “I prefer my mother’s translation because she translated it into real life by the way she lived.”

            I pray that our hearts are filled with a desire to be holy, because that’s the goal of the Christian life. But wait – there’s one more character in the Gospel story about the feast of God’s love, one who is kicked out without the right wedding garment. What’s that all about?

            I want to make clear what this means because I think many of us are like that man. The man without the wedding garment is the one who may be a “good Catholic” and have been baptized and Confirmed but who does not have personal faith. If we’re here because we want our kids to get Confirmed but not actually follow Jesus daily, then we have missed out on the entire point of the feast of our Faith.

            A few years ago, I sponsored a young man named Patrick for Confirmation. A couple weeks before, I asked if he was excited to get Confirmed, and he said, “Not really.” I was concerned and asked why, and he said, “Because most of my friends getting Confirmed don’t even believe this stuff.” There is a difference between a valid Sacrament and a fruitful Sacrament – we can be a “good Catholic” who donates to the Church and gets all their Sacraments and serve as an usher or lector but not believe any of this, or at least not let our faith penetrate into our heart, mind, or behavior.

            God invites us to so much more – a banquet feast of holiness, which means living in union with Him through prayer and in our daily lives. Don’t pass up this invitation!

            Back in the 1920s, a young Italian girl named Itala Mela was born to atheist parents. Oh, her devout grandmother made sure she received the Sacraments, but apart from that she found church boring. When she was sixteen years old, her younger brother died suddenly, and she became militantly anti-God. How could a good God take her innocent brother, she wondered? She even wrote in her journal, “After his death, nothing” – she had no belief in anything. But that, too, seemed unsatisfying.

            A few years later, her friends, seeing her interior struggle, invited her to church one day. She went with them to the Mass, but sat in the back, unsure of what she believed. From the depths of her heart, she cried out, “God, make Yourself known!” It wasn’t exactly a lightning bolt, but it was enough of an opening for her to begin to explore Catholicism deeper. But she wrestled – she wrote in her journal, “I do not want to deceive myself, because if I say yes to Christianity I will say it with all my heart and change my entire life.”

            Finally, she knew she couldn’t resist the truth of Jesus Christ, so she believed with her whole heart and took as her motto, “Lord, I shall follow You unto the darkness, unto death". It was all for Him! Her parents thought she was crazy, so they paid for her to tour Europe in the hopes she’d leave behind all the religious nonsense. But she used that trip to visit churches and monasteries, cementing her newfound passion for the Lord.

            She remained single her entire life, teaching in a local school. But she would speak with everyone she met about the joy and delight of knowing that God – the Blessed Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit – actually dwells in the soul of a Christian who has faith. People began calling her “Maria of the Holy Trinity.” She believed that God actually wants to dwell in us to make us holy! After contracting an illness in her 50s, she died with great peace, knowing that she was going to be forever united to God, the joy of her soul. She is now Blessed Itala Mela.

            The Christian life is about so much more than just being nice and saying a few prayers. It’s living the very life of Christ here on earth through His grace dwelling in our souls. Why not YOU become a saint?

Ordinary Time 27 - The Rosary

 

Homily for October 4, 2026

Twenty-Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time

The Rosary

 

            If someone wanted to start a vineyard full of grapes, they would have to do two main things: plant the grape vines – and then build the trellis, the wooden structure that supports the vine. Without something to cling to, the grapes would rot on the ground, and the plant would never be able to grow. But with the trellis, the grapevines grow tall and strong, and produce rich fruit.

            Likewise, we human beings cannot grow strong in our spiritual life if we do not have support. Certainly Jesus is the lifeline – He says in John’s Gospel, “I am the Vine, you are the branches. If you remain in Me and I in you, you will bear much fruit.” But even a healthy grapevine needs support for it to grow. The support are the many devotional practices of our Church – the Sacraments, the Bible, lives of the saints – and today we focus on a singular pillar, the Holy Rosary which is the cornerstone of devotion to Mary.

            Why is the Rosary so powerful? Because it is essentially a way of entering into the life of Jesus Christ Himself. What is the central word of the Hail Mary? Let’s pray it together…Jesus! The Hail Mary is all about Jesus, and Mary is the path through which we approach Him. Pope St. John Paul II said, “The Rosary is looking at the life of Christ through the eyes of Mary.” A more recent Catholic quipped, “The Rosary is a bible study on beads.”

            As our lips pray the Hail Mary, our minds meditate on the events in the life of Christ. Each Rosary is divided into five “decades”, sets of ten Hail Mary’s, and we are invited to consider a different event in Christ’s life – starting with when the angel Gabriel told Mary she would be the mother of God at the Annunciation, continuing through His birth, His life and miracles, His passion and death, and His Resurrection. So, the Rosary really combines all three types of prayer: vocal prayer (where we pray pre-written prayers), mental prayer (where we put ourselves in the scenes of Christ’s life and imagine what they would look like), and contemplation (which is giving God loving attention, beyond words). All three are combined – we pray the words with our lips, we meditate on the life of Christ in our mind, and we place ourselves in His presence. What a powerful encounter with Him!

            And I can testify to the power – a friend of mine from college used to struggle with a real addiction to lust, and as much as he wanted to be free, he kept falling back into it. He prayed and prayed, “God, when will I be free?” He felt God say to him, “When you have prayed one Rosary for every time you have committed these sins, you will be free of them.” And he found that to be true – the Rosary obtained for him a gradual but real liberation.

            But one might object – why so repetitive? Isn’t it better to pray spontaneously? Both are good! Every major world religion prays repetitively – the Hindus recite mantras on japamala, strings of beads; while Muslims have a string of 99 beads called the misbaha on which they recite “Allahu akbar”, proclaiming that God is great. Repetition is a way to inscribe in your mind and heart the words you recite, and to calm your mind to open it to the divine. Early Christians had a custom called hesychasm, which was the meditative recitation of a one-breath prayer to calm the mind and put ourselves in God’s presence. Their classic prayer is called the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.” St. Josaphat prayed this so much that he would continue murmuring it in his sleep!

            So reciting Our Fathers and Hail Mary’s can be a way to enter into a deeper union with Christ, as long as we don’t think that they’re just magical incantations. No, we have to intend what we say, and actually think about the mysteries of Christ’s life as we pray them.

            But let’s be honest – we all get distracted, especially while praying the Rosary. So there are actually four things we can meditate on when we pray the Rosary. In addition to the events of Christ’s life, we can think about the words we pray, which come right from Scripture. “Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with Thee” – this is the greeting that the Archangel Gabriel gave to Mary upon telling her she would be the mother of the Savior. “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb” – this comes from Mary’s cousin Elizabeth who rejoiced when Mary came to visit her. We can also think about any intentions we want to offer the Rosary for: the sick, our deceased relatives, our kids, the people in our family who are far from the Lord. Finally, we can think about a virtue associated with each mystery – for example, when we think about the angel Gabriel telling Mary that she would be the mother of the Savior, it took a tremendous amount of trust and faith for her to say “yes”. We can apply that to our own life: do we have trust in God? Are we struggling with it? We can ask him to increase that virtue in our life, and consider how to live it out.

            All of the saints loved the Rosary. St. Padre Pio used to say, “The Rosary is my weapon.” He would demand, “Bring me my weapon!” St. Louis de Montfort once said, “Never will anyone who says his Rosary every day be led astray. This is a statement that I would gladly sign with my blood.”

            And the Rosary saved the faith of an entire country. Back in the 1600s, Oliver Cromwell was given the task of converting all of Ireland to the Anglican Church that had been founded by King Henry VIII. He did that by oppressing Catholics in Ireland – he passed the penal laws, which made it illegal for Catholics to hold property. He outlawed public Masses and hunted down priests to throw them in prison. While those tactics worked on the British, the Irish were tougher fighters – they began crafting “penal Rosaries” – small one-decade Rosaries that they could easily hide in their hands in case they encountered occupying soldiers. They held secret Masses in their homes and were willing to accept poverty and persecution to hold onto their Catholic Faith.

            Frustrated, Cromwell wrote back to the King of England these words, “All is not well with Ireland yet. You gave us the money, you gave us the guns. But let me tell you that every house in Ireland is a house of prayer, and when I bring these fanatical Irish before the muzzles of my guns, they hold up in their hands a string of beads, and they never surrender.”

            We have a more dangerous enemy than Cromwell – the Evil One wants our utter, eternal destruction. But in the face of his temptations, his wiles, and his attacks, we also hold up our string of beads, and never surrender – because we are connected to the Vine, Jesus Christ, and supported by His Blessed Mother through the Holy Rosary.