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 the gates of Hell 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.