Ordinary Time 26 - We Need A Savior

 

Homily for Ordinary Time 26

September 27, 2026

Christ The Savior

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ordinary Time 25 - Meaning of Life

Ordinary Time 25

September 20, 2026

Meaning of Life

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ordinary Time 24 - Forgiven

 

Ordinary Time 24

September 13, 2026

Forgiven

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ordinary Time 23 - Helping Others To Salvation

 

Ordinary Time 23

September 6, 2026

Helping Others To Salvation

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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