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!