Ordinary Time 29 - Christian Friendship

 

Homily for Ordinary Time 29

October 19, 2025

Christian Friendship

 

            A young college student named Francis ended up being assigned an interesting roommate: an older man, an ex-soldier, named Ignatius, who had just gone through a major conversion to Christ. Francis was a party animal who wanted nothing of Ignatius’ religiosity, but despite their differences, the two became close friends and ended up rooming together for three years. They got along well except for one annoying habit: every single day, Ignatius would say to his friend, “Francis, what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?”

            Day after day, Ignatius would say this, and Francis grew rather annoyed. He told him to mind his own business, that he wasn’t all that religious and that this question was really bothersome: “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?” But Ignatius never stopped – year after year.

            It began to wear down his younger friend. Finally, in the third year of college, Francis broke down and realized that Ignatius was right – it was meaningless to pursue all the parties, the girls, the success without even a thought to his own soul. He finally said, “Ignatius, you’re right. I’ve been wasting my life without Christ. What must I do?” Ignatius told him about a new group he was founding, called the Company of Jesus, and Francis agreed to join. We now know them as St. Ignatius of Loyola and St. Francis Xavier, two of the first six Jesuits. It was friendship that led Francis to become a saint!

            All of us need friends – and our readings are all about that. In the first reading, Moses is given a task by God to help Israel win the battle, by raising his hands aloft. But he couldn’t do that without Aaron and Hur to help him when he grew tired. In the second reading, Paul is writing to his friend and protégé Timothy, who is a close collaborator in Paul’s work. Neither Paul nor Moses were a “lone ranger” – they knew that they needed others to accomplish God’s tasks.

            We too need Christian friends, but we are sometimes afraid to admit it. A 2020 study found that 28% of young men say they have zero close friends. So many are turning to technology – a Pew Research Study from 2024 revealed that 67% of young adults have interacted with an AI “companion” (a website where you can have a “conversation” with a computer that responds like a real person) and 23% prefer digital relationships to human relationships. But our hearts yearn for real, authentic, healthy friendships – all of us!

            But what makes a Christian friendship unique? Aristotle identifies three levels of friendship. First is friendship of utility – I’m friends with this person because they can do something for me. Maybe they can help my career, or they’re one of the “cool kids,” or they just take away my loneliness. But fundamentally this is based on using another person, not love. A second type of friendship is friendship of pleasure – I’m friends with this person because we like to do fun stuff together. This would be our fishing buddies, sports teammates, coworkers with whom we like to share a drink. Nothing wrong with these friendships, but they’re pretty shallow and they don’t require a whole lot of commitment. But Aristotle mentions a third, deeper kind of friendship – what he calls friendship of virtue, where we have a common goal of becoming a virtuous, holy person and pursuing Christ together. This is a deep, lasting friendship based on the only enduring bond: the love of Jesus Christ.

            So how do we find those kinds of friendships? A wise priest once gave some profound dating advice that we can apply to friendships: “Start running after Jesus, and once you’ve been running after Him for a while, look around and see who’s running with you. That’s who you should date.” That’s also who you should become friends with – people who are pursuing Christ, who make you a better person. One day I opened a Dove chocolate to find the inside message to be quite profound: “Your vibe attracts your tribe.” If you pursue Christ, you will find Christ-centered friendships.

            But then, of course, we have to actually go out and seek friendships, instead of waiting for them to come to us. My mom had a great saying: “The phone works both ways” – in other words, instead of waiting for someone else to take the initiative in a friendship, maybe I need to go out and get to know fellow Christians – through Walking With Purpose, our men’s groups, Youth Encounters, etc. I know everyone thinks they’re an introvert, but really we’re just all stuck in our middle-school mindset where we’re afraid of rejection. And that’s where Christ can help us – if we realize that we are profoundly, passionately loved by Him, then we can take risks in relationships because we are grounded in our identity in Christ. No matter whether I fit into this group or develop this friendship, my deeper friendship with Christ is unshakeable.

            But there’s the key – our deepest friendship must be with Christ. But let me ask – do you have only a friendship of utility with Him? I often bring food to Cardinal Kung because you win the hearts of teenagers through their stomachs. So I had a plate of cookies one day and this sixth-grader named Kenny asked if he could have one. I gave him one and he replied, “Gee, Fr. Joseph, you’re very easy to manipulate!” Kids say the darndest things…but don’t we often treat God like that, just a Divine Vending Machine? “What do I want today – healing, a job, help on a test…” and we put in our three Hail Mary’s and think that we will get what we want. But apart from asking God from stuff, we don’t ever spend time with Him.

            This is a friendship of utility, and it is not the point of the Gospel! Jesus talks about how God wants to give us good things if we persevere in prayer, but then He says these words which have always haunted me: “When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?” In other words, are we merely using God to get what we want, or will we have a living faith that seeks Him for His sake, loves Him, and trusts that He gives us what we truly need?

            We develop that kind of friendship with Christ in a similar manner as our other friends. We spend time with Him – prayer, the Sacraments. We listen to Him – He speaks through His Word in the Bible. We begin to adopt His values. We try to please Him in our thoughts, words, and deeds.

            So, pursue Christian friendships – we deeply desire them, and they will make us happier and holier. And most fundamentally, pursue a friendship with Christ. Then our faith becomes less about a set of doctrines and rules, and more about a love affair with a God Who calls us “friends”.

Ordinary Time 28 - The Cure Of A Soul

 

Homily for Ordinary Time 28

October 12, 2025

The Cure of the Soul

 

            One of the great conversion stories in Christianity is the conversion of St. Francis of Assisi. He started out his life as a playboy, a party animal, and one who wanted fame and fortune as a knight. But his knightly career came to a halt when he was captured in battle and imprisoned for a year. This got him thinking – what is the purpose of my life? Am I truly happy pursuing the things of this world? What if, instead, I lived for God?

            When he was finally released, he began to pray, make sacrifices, and live in poverty so as to depend on God alone. But there was still one thing he hadn’t given to God – he was repulsed and disgusted at the sight of leprosy, which is a disfiguring disease of the skin where the sufferer begins to look so completely deformed that they look monstrous. Francis would be literally nauseated if he had to pass by one of those poor sufferers – but he knew that these poor souls were Jesus in disguise – and he would not be able to be a saint unless he was able to love Jesus in the distressing disguise of the poor.

            So one day on his journeys, Francis came across a beggar who was particularly hideously disfigured from this disease. He knew it was now-or-never – he had to be “all-in” for Christ. So he dismounted his horse, came up to the man who was begging, and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Instantly, the man was cured of his disease – but more importantly, St. Francis was cured of his repulsion to the sick. Francis’ first biographer, St. Bonaventure (who knew the saint personally), later wrote of this incident: “I don’t know what I should admire: such a cure, or such a kiss.” A man cured of leprosy, and a saint cured of selfishness – both acts of God!

            Naaman experienced both in the first reading. Naaman was a military general from Syria, which meant he was a pagan – he worshipped the Syrian gods. He had come to the Jewish prophet Elisha because he had heard rumors of his miracles – he came and was healed of his disease. But more importantly, he was healed of his idolatry. Greater than the physical miracle was the spiritual conversion, when he could declare, “Now I know there is no God except the God of Israel!”

            This same conversion happens to the Samaritan in the Gospel. Samaritans were dirty half-breeds, which is why the Jews hated them – they were half-Jewish, half-Babylonians, who didn’t worship God in the Temple in Jerusalem but instead worshipped God on a mountain called Mount Gerazim. They denied most of the Old Testament and only accepted the first five books, called the Torah. Basically, they had a corrupted relationship with God.

            So when the Samaritan receives his physical healing, he was also instantly converted to a right relationship with God when he comes back to worship Jesus Christ. Yes, he has gratitude, but more importantly, he has faith – and that is a more important miracle than a physical healing.

            Consider all the good things He has given us – He gave us life, family and friends, health, gifts and talents, this beautiful natural world. When we had turned our back on him through sin, He so desperately wanted to be with us that He took the punishment for all our sins and died in our stead. And now He passionately wants a personal relationship with us that lasts into eternity. How good is our God!

            And yet all these good things are meant for one thing only: for our holiness, that we may live in union with God. These blessings from God are not ends in themselves, but means to the end of loving God more perfectly. God desires primarily the spiritual health of the soul!

            This is important to remember when we are faced with suffering, too. Let’s be honest – how many of us turn to God more when we’re suffering than when we’re happy? And this is why God often does not answer our prayers for healing, or financial help, or fixing broken relationships – because perhaps those things we want would cause us to forget about God, or we wanted them just for our own ego or comfort. Consider – what would we do with that good health if God gave it to us? Would we use our strength to serve Him and do good to others, or do we want it just so we can be comfortable and resume our usual hobbies? What would we do with that financial success that we so desperately want – would we use it for generosity to others, or for self-indulgent purchases? Would our health or financial security make us think that we were in charge of our destiny, and we’d lose our desperate dependence upon God? God desires our souls to be cured of the disease of selfishness, sin, egoism, addictions…and suffering is often His bitter, but effective, medicine.

            But why? Because we live in a broken world – due to Original Sin, that brokenness that has been passed down from generation to generation. We intuit that there is something wrong with the universe and that we were made for more than this! But despite this mess, God is bringing something beautiful out of it: to make us like Christ. When we endure suffering with patience and joy, we are made more like Christ. When we feed the hungry and shelter the homeless, we are made more like Christ. When we struggle against our own sinful temptations, we are made more like Christ. When we trust God despite our struggles at work, we are made more like Christ. When we are lonely but use that as an opportunity to develop a friendship with God, we are made more like Christ. Every brokenness, illness, loneliness, fear, setback, disappointment, insult, or death can be an opportunity to become more like Christ – even if our problems don’t go away, our souls are made holy through grace.

            A perfect example of this is St. Dymphna, the patron saint of those with mental illness. Dymphna was the daughter of King Damon of Ireland in the 7^th Century. Damon was a loving Christian man, but when his wife died, he began to be so overwhelmed with grief that he started to lose his mind. In his insane grief, he decided to kill his daughter because she reminded him so much of his lost wife. Dymphna, hearing of this, decided to flee the country, so she sailed to Belgium where she settled in a small town called Geel (no relation to me!). Being a princess, she was fabulously wealthy, so once in her new country she founded the first-ever hospital for those with mental illness, in honor of her beloved father who struggled with it. So many people flocked to this hospital that even the townspeople had to welcome patients into their homes – which became a tradition even to this day! Even now, hundreds upon hundreds of people with severe mental illness live with families in the Belgian town of Geel, where they are treated with charity and respect as one of the family, and given the opportunity to live normal and healthy lives. From Dymphna’s mother’s tragic death and her father’s mental illness and her own exile to a new land, God has brought great good to the world…and made her a saint!

            Our readings today feature two great miracles – a physical healing, but more than that, the cure of a soul. When we experience the blessings of this world, they are meant to lead to our holiness as we experience the goodness of God and a foretaste of Heaven. But when we instead encounter suffering, this too is a blessing from God, for it helps us become like Christ and reminds us that we were made for a better world: Heaven!

Ordinary Time 27 - Increase Our Faith

 

Homily for Ordinary Time 27

October 5, 2025

Increase Our Faith

 

            People will say to me all the time, “I love my faith.” What do they mean by that? Do they mean that they love hearing “Ave Maria” at funerals and getting ashes on Ash Wednesday and lighting a candle at church? Signs and symbols, sentiment and rituals, are not the same as faith.

            Rather, according to the Catechism, there are three elements of faith. First, faith means believing that God exists. This is something that we take for granted, but how do we know? St. Thomas Aquinas gave us five proofs for God’s existence, but I’d like to share two of them with you.

            First, consider anything material that exists – this church building, your clothes, the donut you ate for breakfast. Everything was caused by something else – this roof came from trees, which came from seeds, which came from other trees, all the way back. Nothing material simply exists without being caused by something outside of itself. But the entire universe is a material thing – hence, it needs to have a cause outside of itself. We call God, then, the Uncaused Cause. But wait – who caused God to exist? The answer is that causality requires time – there was a time when this roof didn’t exist, and even when those timbers and logs didn’t exist, but they do exist now, and someday they may stop existing. But outside of time, there is no before or after, no beginning or end, so speaking about “causing” outside of time doesn’t make sense. God dwells in the eternal “now” – so there was not a time when He did not exist, because time itself does not exist in eternity. Thus, God is the Uncaused Cause.

            A second clear argument is very simple: anything that has a design needs a designer. If I see a painting, I can assume there is an artist, even if I don’t see the artist herself. The universe clearly has a very specific design – for example, our DNA acts as a computer code, containing upon the amino acids information that tells our cells what to do. But information that is intelligible (aka, able to be understood) requires an intelligence to both inscribe it there and for another intelligence to decode it. It is our human intelligences that decoded much of our DNA to understand the genetic code, which means that there must be an Intelligence at least as smart as ours to have written it there in the first place.

            A very brilliant man named Avery Dulles was converted through this argument. He was an atheist in law school in Harvard when one day he went for a walk along the Charles River, just as the trees were in their spring bloom. It struck him that all the trees knew when to bloom, and they did it in unison and at the same time every year. How would they know when to do it? It was as if some vast intelligence had programmed these insentient trees to have a genetic knowledge…who could this vast intelligence be except God? He began to believe, converted to Catholicism, and became a Jesuit priest and a Cardinal.

            The second element of faith, according to the Catechism, is that after we believe that God exists, we believe in His promises. Many people lose their Faith in God because they don’t understand what He promised…and what He didn’t. Did He promise that life would be easy? Did He promise that if we prayed, all our problems would go away? Nothing of the sort. However, He did promise that all things work for good for those who love Him. He promised that He would be with us always, until the end of the age. He promised that those who believe in Him will have eternal life.

            As Pastor Rick Warren likes to say, “God cares more about your character than your comfort.” He wants you to be holy and filled with Heavenly joys, not necessarily happy with earthly pleasures. Bl. Alexandra da Costa was a Portuguese young woman who tragically fell out of a second-story window and became paralyzed. She prayed and prayed that God would heal her, even promising that she would become a missionary if God would let her walk again. But to her prayers, God was seemingly silent. However, gradually, she began to realize that her mission was to offer her sufferings to God as a living sacrifice – and she began to find joy in the Cross. God began to grant her miracles – she consumed nothing but the Holy Eucharist for the final 13 years of her life, and God gave her the gift of healing others, even though she herself was never healed. But now she’s a saint in Heaven, where I am confident she can walk again! So God had a different plan for her life than she wanted, but He was faithful to what He promised – all things work for good! He would never abandon! Everlasting life comes to those with faith!

            Finally, the third aspect of faith is to believe everything that God has revealed. We can never be “Cafeteria Catholics” who pick-and-choose what to believe based upon our own preferences. Our Catholic Faith is much like Jenga – all of the parts fit together into a coherent whole, and removing one part would weaken the rest, and pretty soon the whole tower will fall down. Likewise, if a person disagrees with one part of our Catholic Faith, their entire faith is weakened, and it may soon crumble, because all pieces fit together into what theologians call the “economy of salvation” – the comprehensive plan of what God has revealed.

            For example, we believe that the Eucharist is the Body and Blood of the Lord, given to us as spiritual food – which leads us into the belief in the soul – but what kind of soul do we have? One in the image and likeness of God – but what is God like? He is a Trinity, which is a life-giving community of love – and He created marriage and the family to be the perfect image of the Trinity – which is why the moral teachings of faithfulness to our spouse and openness to life are related to the Trinity – but the moral teachings of the Church are directed to our belief about everlasting life…and so forth. The “economy of salvation” is the giant web of our Catholic Faith and how all doctrines and teachings of God’s revelation are interconnected, and we can’t doubt one item without weakening or even destroying our faith as a whole.

            So, how do we increase our faith? Faith is a living thing, and like all living things, it needs to be fed. If it’s fed, it grows; if it withers, it dies. That’s why Jesus concludes with this parable about these servants who only do what’s required of them – when we just do what we have to do, the bare minimum obligation of going to Mass weekly and Confessing annually – if that’s it, then we are “unprofitable servants,” in Jesus’ terms. Our faith will never grow. It’s like if we only ate oatmeal at every meal – it might keep us alive but it wouldn’t lead to our flourishing. Yes, weekly Mass is the bare-minimum to keep your faith from dying, but if we desire, like the Apostles, “Lord, increase our faith!”, then we need to feed it more, and feed it a variety of spiritual food – daily reading the Bible, going on retreats, frequent Confession, spiritual reading, fellowship with other fervent Catholics. Do we really want our faith to be increased? If so, feed it!

            My friends, it is faith that saves us – the first person in Heaven, according to the Bible, was the good thief crucified with Christ, who had no good works but only a last-ditch Hail-Mary-pass act of faith – and it was enough to be promised paradise. As Pope Leo the Great said: “If we are steadfast in our faith in Christ and in our love for Him, we will win the victory He has won, and receive what He has promised.”

Ordinary Time 26 - Outrageous

 

Homily for Ordinary Time 26

September 28, 2025

Outrageous

 

            So much that passes for news is actually just outrage, usually over the smallest stuff – what this politician said on Twitter, what scandal that celebrity has fallen into. Our principal at Cardinal Kung jokingly calls it “pearl-clutching” – “Gasp, I can’t believe that person did that!”

            But anger and outrage can actually be quite virtuous and positive, if we’re angry about the right things. In Catholic theology, our emotions are actually called “passions” and St. Thomas Aquinas lists eleven basic passions, such as desire, fear, and anger. But he says that passions are morally neutral in themselves – whether or not they are justified depends upon the object of our passion. If we are afraid of our shadow, we’d say that fear is not good. But if we’re afraid of the bear in our backyard, that fear is quite justified!

            So, likewise, anger and outrage should occur when we see a real injustice in front of us (not an imagined injustice like getting cut off in traffic). In the first reading, God is complaining that the Israelite leaders are complacent and apathetic when a real threat was attacking their people: due to Israel’s sinfulness, God was allowing the nation of Assyria to march upon Israel and take them into captivity, which did occur about twenty years after the prophet Amos penned those words. But the leaders were unconcerned about this brewing threat to their people, because they were living comfortable lives with plenty of food, and couldn’t be bothered with the sufferings of the “little people”. Likewise in the Gospels, this rich man should have been outraged at the sufferings of this poor man Lazarus, but was complacent and ignored this problem.

            As long as we live in this fallen world, evil and injustice will be with us – and we should never grow complacent with it! We should be angry that over a million unborn children are killed each year in abortion. We should be angry that there is an epidemic of drug addiction in our culture. We should be angry that man-made famines and wars are causing untold suffering in many places in our world.

            But that justified outrage must then lead us to action. As Edmund Burke famously said, “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is that good men do nothing.” This is where our media-outrage-machine stops short – they proffer outrage but then don’t move on to action. God does not merely want us to wring our hands and say, “Oh, what a shame,” and then move on to Candy Crush. But what can we do?

            First, we can pray. Prayer has the power to move mountains. Back in the 400s, the barbarian Attila the Hun was rampaging his way across the crumbling Roman Empire. The last man standing in his way was a little old weak Pope, Leo the Great. Knowing that he was the last chance to save the city of Rome, Leo went out by himself to meet the mighty conqueror – his only weapon was prayer, as he and the entire city were praying to be saved. Leo met Attila on the road just outside the city, and no one knows what conversation passed in between the two – but in the end, Attila turned away and left the city untouched. Leo was victorious, not with weapons and armies, but with prayer.

            Some politicians will have us believe that prayer is ineffective in the face of tragedy. But prayer is incredibly effective – it can change hearts, move mountains, heal the sick, and bring Christ into a time of pain. But it is true that prayer isn’t meant to be a substitute for action. There is a beautiful quote attributed to Mother Teresa: “I used to pray that God would feed the hungry, or do this or that, but now I pray that he will guide me to do whatever I'm supposed to do, what I can do. I used to pray for answers, but now I'm praying for strength. I used to believe that prayer changes things, but now I know that prayer changes us and we change things.”

            So prayer then must move us to do what we can. Not all of us are called to end world hunger in Malawi or solve the injustices of the world, but all of us can and should do our part. We may be grieved about abortion – but how many of us have ever gone to pray in front of Planned Parenthood in Bridgeport, which our parish is doing next Sunday? We may tsk-tsk when we pass by a drug addict beneath a bridge, but would we ever take five minutes to meet him and hear his story? We may wring our hands about how young people aren’t going to church, but have we volunteered to teach religious education?

            A dear friend of mine, a priest in Baltimore, got one of the worst assignments as pastor of the Basilica of the Assumption in one of the worst neighborhoods in town. Homeless people would sleep in the back pews of his church, and gunshots would ring out at all hours of the night. He knew that his city needed Jesus Christ – but how to bring Him to them? Around the same time he was assigned there, he met a young man named Colin who felt God calling him to serve the poor, but he didn’t know how. Together, with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Fr. James and Colin were led to start a twofold ministry called “Source of All Hope”. They found passionate young Catholics who would give up a year of their life to do two things: adore our Eucharistic Lord in the Basilica (Adoration is now 24/7 in one of the roughest ‘hoods in the city) and then take Jesus to the streets by loving and serving the homeless. Now, dozens of young adults give up a summer or a year of their lives to serve as missionaries, dedicated to loving Jesus in the Eucharist and loving Jesus in the poor. Has it ended poverty and homelessness? No. But has it changed lives, one at a time? Absolutely. Fr. James could have wrung his hands and said, “Oh, what a shame this city has come to.” Instead, he was motivated by love to do something about it.

            The world and the media get outraged about a lot. Most of it is silly, but some of it actually matters. As a Christian, we ought to be outraged by the real injustices and offenses against human dignity that are so prevalent in our world. But what if our outrage leads us to actually do something about it? That would be outrageous!

Triumph of the Cross

 

Feast of the Triumph of the Cross

September 14, 2025

The Meaning of the Cross

 

            Today’s Feast celebrates the day that the Cross of Christ was found. After Jesus’ death, the Romans threw His cross into a giant pit with hundreds of other crosses, and then filled in the pit with dirt. When Christianity became legal under Emperor Constantine in 313 AD, Constantine’s mother, St. Helen, traveled to Jerusalem to search for relics of Christ’s Passion. Her excavations uncovered the pit, but no one knew which was the Cross of Christ until they found a man with leprosy and had him touch each beam of wood. When he touched one specific cross, he was miraculously cured, showing this was the Cross of Christ. Today’s feast celebrates that great finding.

            But more than a dusty relic from the past, the Cross of Jesus Christ is the very cornerstone of our Faith. Without the Cross, there is no Savior, no mercy, no Eucharist. Without the Cross, Heaven remains closed, our lives remain meaningless, we die in our sin. The Cross is the meeting-place between God and humanity; between His love and our misery; a stark visual of the horror of sin and the unfathomable depths of mercy.

            Today I want to mention four effects of the Cross, and why it is truly the central piece of Christianity.

            First, the Cross paid back the debt that we owed God, but could not pay. The story goes that a dying man saw the devil holding a list of all his sins. What a list it was – listing each sin in lurid, graphic detail! The devil said, “Ah, what good deeds can undo all of this? Where are your virtues? You are mine forever!” But the man, a believer in Christ, replied, “Ah, you have shown me only one side of the page – the side with the debts. But turn the page over and you will see the credits – the Cross of Christ, which more than paid for all my sins.” At the mention of the Cross, the Evil One vanished.

            Something similar actually happened to a saint. St. Genesius, a Roman actor who had a conversion on his deathbed, had a vision of an angel holding a book of his sins. What a tremendous book it was! But as he was baptized, he saw the angel erasing the sins, as the water of baptism, given cleansing power through the Cross, was able to erase all the evil he had done!

            Firefighters out West will often prevent forest fires by actually burning part of the ground in a controlled way. They say that “fire cannot come where fire has already been.” A perfect analogy of the Cross – God’s judgment cannot come where His judgment has already been. And since God has seen it fit to enact His punishment upon His Son, then those who live in the shadow of the Cross have confidence that His punishment will not fall upon us, but only mercy!

            Second, the Cross showed us the depths of God’s love for us. One time several drunk college students were stumbling across their campus when they came across the chapel. One student, seeing the cross on the top, cried out, “Look, O mathematicians, at God’s plus sign!” This comment lodged in the mind of one of the other students, who was troubled by it for days. God’s plus sign – God plus us – the unity between two variables – God and us together. He was converted when he realized that the Cross is indeed the plus sign of God – it is the meeting place of the vertical (reaching out to God) and the horizontal (our humanity). There, the two lines converge, and there, God and humanity converge.

            In every ancient world religion, priests spent centuries spilling animal blood in the hope of appeasing Almighty God. But at the Cross, God spills His own Blood, in the hopes of winning our hearts and purchasing our salvation. Can there be any greater love? If you wonder if God loves you, if your life has any value, if you are precious in His sight, look at the Cross and behold a God who would rather die than spend eternity without you.

            Third, the Cross teaches us how to love. The world says that love is shaped like a heart; Jesus shows us that love is shaped like the Cross. He says we must love one another as He has loved us. So when we’re struggling to love our difficult spouse, the Cross is our answer. When our child is getting on our last nerve, we take strength in the Cross. When we are at our wits end taking care of our elderly parents, we see that Christ loved to the end and beyond. Not only is the Cross our example, the Cross is our strength – Crucified Lord, make my heart like unto Thine!

            Finally, the Cross redeems suffering and death. We can run from it, take medicine to avoid it, or try to mask it with pleasures, but all of us will encounter suffering and death. The Cross, however, has the power to redeem it and sanctify it. When we unite our sufferings to those of the Cross, we become privileged to participate in Christ’s saving action, and our sufferings become acts of love. Many great saints were made by embracing suffering!

            For a recent example, consider Bl. Benedetta Porro. She was an Italian saint born in the 1930s, who seemed destined for suffering. She contracted polio at only three months old, had recurring bronchitis, and was crippled. As a teen, she began to lose her hearing, and was soon diagnosed with a rare disease where she would lose all five senses and become paralyzed. You’d think that someone like this would give up, retreat to her room and watch TV all day, and maybe grow bitter and angry at fate, but not Benedetta. She was a voracious reader, enrolled in medical school (although unable to finish due to her illness), kept up many correspondences with people, and took several pilgrimages to holy sites. Even as her illness got so progressively bad that she was unable to move and could only move one hand, she kept her spirit of joy and peace.

            Toward the end of her life she said, “I do not lack hope. I know that at the end of the road, Jesus is waiting for me … I have discovered that God exists, that He is love, faithfulness, joy, certitude, to the end of the ages. My days are not easy. They are hard. But sweet because Jesus is with me.” This incredible hope is only possible because of the Cross – her sufferings could be offered to Jesus as a sweet gift of love, since she was following a Savior who suffered first out of love for her.

            My friends, the Cross is everything. I hope that the Cross hangs in your homes and your bedrooms; that you perhaps wear a Cross around your neck; and that you look upon it often. For there, upon the Cross, hangs our Love, our Hope, and our Salvation.

Ordinary Time 23 - Modern-Day Slavery

 

Ordinary Time 23

September 7, 2025

Modern-Day Slavery

 

            Today’s second reading is from one of the shortest books in the Bible: Paul’s letter to Philemon. Philemon was a Christian man who had a slave named Onesimus. Onesimus ran away and encountered Paul, and through him became a baptized Christian. Paul is then sending Onesimus back to Philemon, but this time asking that Onesimus be treated like a brother, not a slave.

            The Church has always been against slavery. Yes, it’s true that at times churchmen held slaves (such as the Jesuit priests in southern Maryland, who held 300 slaves on their tobacco plantation), but that was against the direct prohibition of the Vatican. In fact, all the way back in 1537, Pope Paul III declared that it was immoral to enslave another human being. There are even two religious orders whose entire mission was to rescue slaves: the Trinitarians and Mercedarians. They would beg to raise money to purchase slaves and then set them free, and there were even occasions where these brothers and priests would actually exchange places with the slaves!

            Sadly, slavery still exists in today’s world – and quite often, we enable it without even knowing it. First, physical slavery still exists. All of us purchase goods made in sweatshops and through slavery. The US Department of Labor puts out a document annually detailing which countries and products are made as a result of slavery – it’s worth a read, and sobering in its content. We know about companies such as Forever 21 and Adidas which use garments made in sweatshops, but a lot of the food we eat too: some coffees from Brazil, rice from India, or sugar from the Dominican Republic. It’s hard in today’s world to avoid these things, as everything is so global, but as far as we are able we should be aware, make our voices heard in objection to these things, and put our dollars where our beliefs are.

            More concerning is the reality of human trafficking, which is still immensely prevalent. The UN detects, on average, about 51,000 victims of human trafficking worldwide each year, the majority of which are used for sins of lust. It’s a tragedy that we must pray to end.

            But there is one major way that we might actually participate in human trafficking. If someone regularly views lustful content on the internet, there is a very good chance that they might be seeing someone who is a victim of trafficking. My friends, the sin of lustful content must stop among Christians. Every human being has dignity and deserves to be treated with love, not used for pleasure. John Paul II had a brilliant insight when he said that the problem with lustful content is not that it shows too much, but that it shows too little, since it shows only the body but not the person. It reduces a person to nothing more than a body, thereby making them an object.

            But of course lustful content also leads to another kind of slavery: spiritual slavery, which is far more common than physical slavery in today’s world. Oh how many of us struggle with real addictions! Whether it be to lust, or to our phones, or to drugs or alcohol, or to online gaming, or anything else that hampers our freedom in Christ! This is why in today’s Gospel, Jesus commands us to give up anything that hinders us from following Him in freedom: whether it be possessions that consume our time and energy, family members or friends who lead us into sin, any hobby that prevents us from giving time to Christ, anything. We can only truly follow Him in complete freedom – using the things of this earth rightly and in their proper context.

            So how can we find this complete freedom in Christ? Again, the tools are simple: Confession (which is available after Mass today), the Eucharist, the Rosary, the Scriptures. But the first step is that we have to want it – not just, “Oh, yes, I’d like to be free of my addiction if it’s not too hard.” No, rather we should say, “I will do whatever it takes to have freedom in Christ.” Jesus Christ is stronger than any spiritual slavery. His Cross is the key that unlocks our chains. We might want to even meet with a priest to pray some prayers called Deliverance Prayers, which are powerful prayers that any priest can pray, which ask God to deliver you from any chains of Satan that may hold you bound. A layperson can pray certain deliverance prayers yourself – just Google “Catholic Deliverance Prayers” or “The St. Michael Center for Spiritual Renewal” to find some excellent ones that you can pray on your own.

            But if you find yourself in spiritual slavery, do not despair – God can even make you a saint. There was a wonderful story of St. Mark Tianxiang – I’ve told it before, but it was several years ago, so please forgive it if you’ve heard it before. He was a devout Catholic doctor in China before the Communist revolution. He had a reputation as a compassionate man, always ready to offer his services for free to the poor. But he began to have a stomach ailment, so he prescribed himself opium…and quickly became an addict.

            He would go to Confession weekly, but kept falling back into the addiction again and again. Eventually his parish priest refused him Absolution because he thought that Mark wasn’t truly sorry. Rather than leave the Church in a huff, he attended Mass for thirty years without receiving Communion, praying all the while that God would make him a saint.

            When the anti-Catholic Boxer Rebellion occurred in China, Mark was arrested with his whole family for their Catholic Faith. While in prison, he had no chance to obtain the drugs – so he began to experience a great freedom! He was finally martyred for his faith, giving the ultimate witness. It’s comforting to know that someone who struggled for thirty years as a drug addict can become a saint!

            My friends, St. Paul tells us that “it is for freedom that Christ set us free.” Our Lord created men and women to be free – so let us do our part to help end the physical slavery in today’s world, and also overcome spiritual slaveries through the power of God’s grace.

Ordinary Time 22 - Lessons of a Humble God

 

Ordinary Time 22

August 30, 2025

Humility and Love

 

            Have you ever heard the phrase, “Do as I say, not as I do”? Maybe we’ve said that ourselves. And we might be tempted to think that Jesus was thinking in that vein when He tells us to choose the lowest place. Easy for You to say, Jesus – You’re the King of the Universe, and You tell us to humble ourselves?

            But, as in all things, Jesus speaks with integrity. He instructs us to humble ourselves because He humbled Himself first – and infinitely moreso! We speak of Jesus’ kenosis – a Greek word meaning “self-emptying”. He laid aside His glory to be born in a dirty cave, in a feeding trough for animals. Even though He gave the Jewish Law to Moses, He still submitted to it and followed it perfectly. Although John’s baptism was for sinners, the Perfect One consented to be baptized. He even took on the appearance of a slave when He washed the feet of His Disciples. But His kenosis, His self-emptying, was not complete until He died the death of a criminal.

            If we see the doctor drinking the bitter medicine, we are unafraid to drink it ourselves. If we see Christ humbling Himself first, then we gain courage to do the same. Humility makes us able to accept a humble God. After all, as St. Padre Pio said, “Humility and purity are the wings that carry us to God and make us almost divine.”

            But the second half of the Gospel is also something that Jesus has already done, when He instructs us to hold banquets where we invite those who are blind, lame, and cannot repay. Because He has set a banquet feast for us – Heaven, which in Scripture is called the Banquet Feast of the Lamb, which is open to us who are blind, lame, and cannot repay. CS Lewis in his famous book “Mere Christianity”, says the following: “Everything you have, your power of thinking or of moving, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already. So that when we talk of a man doing anything for God or giving anything to God, it is like a small child going to his father and saying, ‘Daddy, give me five dollars to buy you a birthday present.’ Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child’s present. It is all very nice and proper, but only a fool would think that the father is five dollars richer on the transaction. When a man has made this discovery God can really get to work. It is after this that real life begins.”

            We literally can’t give God anything that isn’t His already. Our very lives are gifts from Him to begin with. So we are those lame beggars who can’t repay – and that’s the beginning of our humility. We needn’t despair of our inability to repay, though – as St. Bernard says, “Where everything is given, nothing is lacking.” All God asks of us is to give back to Him everything He’s already given us – and in exchange, He gives us His very self!

            Humility, then, is necessary to welcome the Humble One. See how humbly He comes in the Second Reading. We see this stark contrast between two mountains: Mount Sinai, where Moses received the 10 Commandments and where God officially adopted the Jews as His Chosen People. This was a terrifying encounter with God: thunder, darkness, storm, blazing fire, earthquake. It was so terrifying that the people of Israel asked God never to speak directly to them again. And in the Old Testament, it was necessary to instill fear in the people, so that they would be afraid to offend Him and break the Covenant. But this is contrasted with another mountain: Mount Zion, which literally is the mountain on which Jerusalem was built, but is a symbol of Heaven. And encountering God here is a much more consoling image: surrounded by angels and the saints, drawing close to Jesus our Friend, as one already redeemed by His Blood. He does not wish to instill fear, but love.

            What a contrast to how the world views power! Machiavelli once wrote, “It is better to be feared than loved” – and how many dictators and tyrants throughout history lived that out! But by contrast, St. John Bosco said, “Get them to love you and they’ll follow you anywhere” – and this is the method preferred by God. He could certainly force us to obey Him, but He would prefer to entice us to love Him instead, by becoming small and humble and vulnerable.

            Consider how many times Jesus in the Eucharist is received unworthily by those who don’t care, who are in mortal sin, or who purposely want to mock Him – yet He remains here and suffers such abuse because He wants to draw us to Himself through love. We have a particularly devout young soul named Andre at the school where I teach, who has such a burning love for the Eucharist that he gets up early to serve our optional before-school Mass – at only eleven years old. One day I was celebrating a funeral here at St. Jude’s, and was so disheartened by the way everyone was receiving Communion – coming up as if they were receiving a snack, greeting other people in line, talking all the way up to Communion. My heart was breaking and I prayed as I distributed, “Lord, why do you stay with us in the Eucharist? You are treated so poorly.” I felt the Lord say clearly to my soul, “I stay because I love to be received by souls like Andre.” Would He say the same about you?

            The Lord became humble in the Eucharist so that He could lift up the humble. A Father can only lift up a small child – he doesn’t usually lift up a grown adult! So, to be united to the Divinely Humble One, we too must become little – not worrying about our own ego or what others think of us, not trying to get attention, allowing others to shine as long as we do our best, not thinking ourselves better than others. Chesterton once said, “Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly” – we too can soar up to the highest Heaven if we are not weighed down by our ego.

            Pride says, “I want to be loved, so I’m going to get it myself – by being praised, by winning every contest, by being the top dog, by being the center of attention.” Humility says, “I want love, so I’m going to turn to God and allow Him to quench my insatiable thirst for love.” One grasps desperately, one receives gratefully.

            St. Augustine said, “It was pride that made angels into devils, and it is humility that makes men like the angels.” Humility – we are who we are before God, and nothing more – just beggars, really, receiving all things from Him – this Humility is the only way to draw near to a God Who humbled Himself first.