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Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph December 28, 2025
The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph is held out for us today as an example to follow and also reminder to all of us of our call holiness. The Church for a long time now, has been insisting that all people are called to be holy, and the holiness of our families depends on the holiness of each member of the family. And that is true at whatever level the reality of the family is manifest. Even if that is a husband and wife, or a husband and wife and children, grandchildren, or our extended family, or our parish family, or the family of the Church, in our nation, or in the world, or the human family. There are so many different levels at which the reality of family is being manifested.
But it is always true that the holiness of the family depends on the holiness of the members of the family. So, when we desire to have holy families, if we want to respond to God's desire for us to be holy families, then we each have to work on our own holiness. We each need to grow in holiness. How does that happen? How does that happen? We don't make ourselves holy. We don't make ourselves holy. The Catechism teaches us that charity is the soul of holiness. Charity is the soul of holiness. So, it's precisely in growing in charity, growing in divine love, that we grow in holiness. If we are growing in holiness we are growing in charity. If we are growing in charity we are growing in holiness.
How do we measure that? Well, maybe ‘measure’ is the wrong word, but we can certainly each examine our loving, our life in charity. For example, when you think about your relationship with your spouse, or with family members, are all of those relationships characterized by true charity and love? The way we treat people on the street, the way we treat the sick in hospitals, or the homebound. The way we treat people in public places. And so forth. Are all of those relationships characterized by charity? That gives us a good sense of our path of holiness.
But charity itself is a gift from God. Charity is not something that we just sort of generate in our own hearts. Charity is poured out into us, by God himself, beginning with our Baptism, and at our Baptism, we receive the theological virtue of charity, along with faith and hope. And we receive all the gifts of the Holy Spirit. And so forth. But charity, divine love, is a gift that God gives to us. So, then in our question about growing in holiness has to do with growing in charity, then at the base level here, the question is, how do we become more receptive to the gift of God's love? Because we do have a part in it. We don't just naturally become more loving or magically become holy. If I just find the halo that fits right on us and slips it right over the head. No, no, no. We have a part in it, but our part is to be receptive.
So, how do we become more receptive of God's love so that we become holier? Well, practices like prayer and penance, reading scripture, doing good works, serving others, all of these, of course, are very good ways of fertilizing the soil of our soul to become more and more receptive to the love of God - preparing a place for God to come in. You know in Advent we were saying, “Come Holy Jesus, Come Holy Jesus.” We weren't trying to convince Him, but what we were actually trying to do was prepare our hearts to receive Him, to become more receptive.
But this morning, I want to focus on just three ways that we can foster a greater spirit of receptivity in our life. The first is perhaps not completely intuitive, but it is certainly spoken to in the first and second readings, especially. And this is ‘order’ - increasing greater reward in our own interior life, but also in our family life. We need to make ourselves more receptive to the love of God. What do I mean by that? God has a design for family life. And in the context of the family each member of the family has their own part to play. The Lord speaks to us about this order. He speaks about the father, the husband, being placed at the head of the household, and it seems that order really stems from the fatherhood of the father. Not just in a household, but in the universe, right? The order of the universe stems from the Fatherhood of God. And the household, the family, the human family, is simply a microcosm of that greater reality. But St. Paul, writing to the Colossians, also to the Ephesians, the Book of Sirach, all of this speaks about the order, the proper order of a family. How a husband loves his wife; how a wife loves her husband; how the children love and honor and obey the parents, both father and mother. I really encourage you to go back and read the first and second readings, especially you who are raising families these days. It speaks just beautifully on the kind of order that God desires to be in our families. And granted, a lot of families are broken, a lot of families have their own forms of trials and brokenness and all of that, so sometimes we're not able actually to follow every single line of these passages but we do what we can to foster that sense of order in our families and doing that helps the family thrive. Also, families thrive because what we are doing is we're, we are saying is, we want our family to be what God designed it to be. And God designed a family for thriving and for joy. So, that is the first way that we foster this spirit of openness and receptivity to the love of God - we embrace the order that God himself has placed in the family. And so, maybe, that entails a little reflection on each of our hearts. If I am a father, if I am a husband, do I lay down my life for my wife, my children. Or children - how well do I do at obeying my mom and dad? And so on and so forth – wives loving their husbands.
The second point is that going to Confession actually fosters receptivity in our hearts to the love of God. I know of a family, they say that when things are kind of ‘off’ inside the home, when people are, for adding each other's throats, or there's just sort of a general sense that, things are not good, the mom and dad march everyone off to Confession, and they all go to Confession. Mom and Daddy included. And it works wonders; it works wonders. Why is that? The Sacrament of Confession helps us to recognize how much we need God. I came to kind of an embarrassing realization a few weeks ago that I fallen into the pattern sort of thinking like, “All right, after I go to confession and I don't need the mercy of God anymore.” Like, “Okay, I got His mercy, so I don't need it until I sin again.” No! Going to Confession teaches us that we need God's mercy more than ever. We think, you know, if we're growing in holiness, we're getting closer that, you know, there's less of a gap or something like that. We need God more and more and more as life goes on. Not less and less. And going to Confession helps us to grow in humility and gratitude which are two virtues that dispose us to receive the outpouring of God's love and into our heart. And Confession also helps us to recognize, to pinpoint the areas in our lives where we are closed to God so that we can open it, so that we can allow God to open those areas. Making a good Examination of Conscience is a wonderful way of bringing to light those areas where we have closed off our hearts to God. Going to Confession is a wonderful way of beginning - tilling that soil.
The third suggestion, the third area, is receiving Holy Communion. So, if we're trying to figure out how to receive God, better - practice makes perfect, right? The more we practice receiving God with a heart full of love, receiving the body and blood of Jesus with eagerness and with desire the better we get at receiving Him in whatever way He comes to us. So, worthy reception of Holy Communion is good practice for receiving the Lord. It fosters ever greater openness. And just like I was saying with Confession, receiving Holy Communion may to some degree, bring us a sense of satisfaction, but more than that, it should enkindle a greater hunger in us so that we don't go out the doors of the church saying, “Well, I've done that and I am satisfied and know I have enough.” But we say, “I can't wait to receive Him again with even greater love than I received Him today.” So that each time we receive Holy Communion our love for God is increasing and receiving Him just makes us want to receive Him more. And therefore, it prepares our heart to receive, even receiving Communion orients us toward receiving Him. Does that make sense? Receiving the Lord makes us want to receive Him even more.
So, these three things, trying to establish or maintain order in our interior life, and in our family relationships, going to Confession regularly, receiving Holy Communion worthily on a regular basis, with greater and greater love, all of these things are good ways to foster receptivity in our hearts and therefore, to be filled more and more with the love of God, and therefore, to grow in holiness and therefore, to have a holy family.
We are coming to the end of this calendar year; we are about to begin a new calendar year. People are starting to consider what resolutions they might make. These are four things to consider: Studying these first and second readings; striving for greater order; resolving to go to Confession on a regular basis; and asking God for the grace, in receiving Holy Communion, to experience an increased desire to receive Him more and more worthily for the transformation of our hearts, our lives, in holiness.

Thursday, Christmas Day, December 25, 2025
Merry Christmas. The Christmas story, which we know very well - the Annunciation of the good news to Mary that she would become the mother of God; the journey to Bethlehem; the birth of Jesus; Jesus being laid in a manger. We know the story of the angel, the shepherds, the star, and the Magi.
The whole story of Christmas is situated in a much broader story, a greater context and it is important for us to know the Christmas story, of course, but it's also important for us to know the greater context in which these events of our salvation unfolded. And it began, not with the Annunciation, the Archangel Gabriel speaking to Mary, it began really with the beginning, the creation of time, the creation of the world, and all that exists in it. And it extends of course, to us today and beyond us, into tomorrow. When I teach, I like to use a timeline. Some of our high school youth group students here know that I have a timeline - it's on the whiteboard in the library. So, if you'll bear with me, like to make sort of an illustration of a timeline. I don't have a big chalk board here to use but just imagine the timeline sort of extending from this side to that side.
So, it begins, as I said, with the creation of time itself. Before the creation of time, there was only God and God created time, and then He created the world in time. The incredible jewel of creation of His was mankind. He delighted in them – man and woman, male and female – He created them. He saw what He made, He saw that it was very good. But not long after that, sin entered the picture through disobedience. And so, there was a rupture of that initial friendship that God enjoyed with mankind and mankind enjoyed with God. There was a rupture in that relationship through sin. And then ever since that time, God began to unveil, to reveal His plan for reconciling mankind to Him.
So, there was a flood, and then there were covenants. There was a covenant with Noah. And there was a covenant with Abraham. God promised to Abraham that He would make Abraham’s descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky, or the sand on the shore of the sea. Sometime after that, the chosen people were taking into slavery in Egypt. We know that whole story. Years, and years, and years, and years, they toiled in slavery, and at one point God raised up Moses to be the one to deliver the people of God from that slavery. You know the story of how Moses led the people through the Red Sea onto dry ground. The water of the sea parted. And they wandered through desert, but they came to the Promised Land, flowing with milk and honey. Moses didn't get to enter. He saw it from a distance, but he didn't get to enter it.
Then God raised up judges to govern the people, and ultimately God raised up kings. He established a kingdom. We know the story of Saul and David and Solomon, and so many other kings that followed, mostly bad, some good. And this whole series of kings. And then there came times of exile. There was a Syrian exile, and people were driven from the land. There was a Babylonian exile. This was around 586, 587 BC. And that was somewhere around 50 years that they were exiled in Babylon. And during that time, God raised up prophets who continued to speak to God's people of this developing plan of God to reconcile us to Him. And of course, eventually comes the birth of Christ, and in the life and ministry, the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ we have the fulfillment of all of this that God has been revealing from the beginning - from creation, from the fall, and all the covenants, and the kings, the judges, the kings, the prophets, all of that - is a preparation for the entry of Jesus Christ onto the scene, into the scene, unto the scene - however you want to put it. The Savior! Go is preparing for all this, and then Jesus arrives on this scene. And that is this narrow little window where we have the story, the Annunciation, the birth. And then, of course, we know there was the flight to Egypt because Joseph and Mary, and the child Jesus, had to escape the wrath of King Herod. We know that Joseph and Mary and Jesus settled in Nazareth. Jesus grew up there. You know one story of his childhood anyway, where they went to Jerusalem to fulfill the precepts of the law for the feast. And Joseph and Mary started back home, and they realized after a little while that Jesus was not with them. So, they went back to Jerusalem. This is when Jesus was twelve years old. Then comes a period of silence. We don't know anything about the life of Jesus in the family from the time He was twelve to the time He was baptized.
And then He was sent out into the desert for forty days and began His public ministry, teaching, and working miracles, announcing the coming of the Kingdom of God. And of course, we know of His passion, death and resurrection. The source of our life, the source of our hope. After His Resurrection, He appeared for forty days to many, many, many people. They were witnesses of the truth that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. And then after forty days, He ascended into heaven, about ten days later, He sent the Holy Spirit on Pentecost to fill the hearts of those who had gathered in that upper room and were so anxiously awaiting that promise made for the Spirit.
And that, of course, is the birth of the Church. At that point we enter into the era of the Church, the early Church, the apostolic age, the Church fathers, and so forth in so long, long succession of popes, bishops and the and faithful, celebrating the sacraments, bringing the grace of God into the lives of real people, transforming them, giving them healing and hope and light. And that brings us to today.
I remember, as a child, one of my favorite parts of Christmas gatherings and other family gatherings we had was my dad would come out with a projector. We actually had a reel-to-reel projector. We eventually got a camcorder. I know some of you kids don't know what a camcorder is. We have these family videos and family movies. And there's no sound. So, my dad would tell us what was going on and some of them were so old I didn't know who the people were. You know, I was the youngest, but my dad, you know, got married in 1958. So, there were a lot of people, you know, that I didn't know about. And then, of course, I went to the, into the scene came my older brothers and sisters, so I saw, you know, and as a little baby, some kids running around, and “Ah, I can connect with that.” It was fun to watch that. But then there was a point where I was in the video too. As a little baby, a toddler or a young child. And you know, it wasn't this big ego trip. Like I needed to see myself in, you know, not on the screen or something, but it was important to me. It was valuable to me to see that I was in the story. I knew, of course, obviously I was part of this family. But to see that I fit into that whole narrative. That was important.
I say that because that's how we ought to look at this timeline from creation all the way to today and beyond. It's not just something that we observe unfolding in real time or think back on all these events. You know, we can memorize the series of events or study, you know, books of the Law or prophets. It's not just for us to see, but we realize that it's our story, too. How many here are baptized? Just about everyone, I think. You are baptized into the mystery of Jesus Christ and His suffering death and resurrection. So, this whole story of Salvation History becomes yours. In a certain way, from the beginning of your existence, yes, all of creation is part of the story, because God wants to bring all of creation back into friendship with Him so to speak. He wants to heal the wounds of sin and division. But in a very particular way, especially in privileged way, Baptism brings us into this reality. That's where we come onto the ‘screen’ of this story. But not just Baptism.
You noticed that as we're following this story, the appearance of the Christ right here in the middle. Right in front of the altar. We heard in the Gospel: “That the word became flesh.” The eternal word of God, spoken from before time, took on our flesh, our creation. Christmas. The word means “Christ’s Mass”. It's connected to the Mass. The Sacrament of the body and the blood of Christ.
In the Byzantine Catholic tradition, they have an icon where it shows an altar, and the paten is the vessel onto which the bread is placed for Consecration, but instead of bread, this icon shows the baby Jesus. So, picture the baby Jesus right here. But then also, when you when you go to the manger and you ponder the birth of Jesus - it's the same, the same Word made flesh. When you go there, think of the altar. Think of the bread of life given to us.
And after our baptism, of course, we have in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, renewing that grace of Baptism, that we also have this tremendous gift of Jesus Christ, His body and blood in the Eucharist, to strengthen us and heal and draw us deeper and deeper into the heart of God. That's God's intention in this whole story to take your heart into His. And for those two hearts to become one.
That's the gift of Christmas. He's come. All this Advent we say, “Come Lord Jesus. Come Lord Jesus. Come Lord Jesus, we are opening our hearts”, and now we recognize He is here. God with us. God with us at the altar. God giving Himself for us. To us. Christmas is the time we bring out our Nativity scenes. We just ponder this tremendous, wondrous mystery.
Christmas is a wonderful time for us also to ask God for the grace to see in the manger the Bread of Life. And to see on the altar the nourishment we desperately need to sustain us, to raise us up over all the things that weigh us down. The grief and the sadness of life, the struggles, the confusion, the disappointments, the discouragements, all these things. Jesus is the Light who lifts us up. And today, this morning, in this celebration, we can once again open our hearts to receive the greatest gift of Christmas: the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 21, 2025
Most of us have at some point in life been in a situation where we are not sure what to do. Where there was no clear answer to a difficult situation. Maybe some sort of moral dilemma where even after praying, discerning, and reflecting, the path just doesn't seem clear. St. Joseph finds himself in such a situation in today's Gospel.
From Joseph's perspective, it may seem that there is a conflict between the love of God and the love of neighbor because his betrothed, Mary, is pregnant before they have begun to live together. And the Law says something about such situations. The Law would say that a woman in this situation could be even stoned; put to death. Certainly, if her situation became known, she could be publicly ridiculed and shamed. Joseph loves God; he loves the Law of God. He wants to follow the Law; he wants to honor the Law, but he also loves Mary very, very much. He is not willing to expose her to shame. He certainly doesn't want to see her put to death. So, what does he do?
I have a hard time imagining that Joseph actually suspected Mary of adultery. Presumably, Joseph had been able to spend at least a little bit of time with Mary. He would have known very quickly of the purity of her heart, her goodness, her holiness. How could he even imagine that she would commit adultery? I have a hard time accepting that theory or that interpretation of the passage. Other readings suggest that Joseph recognized that something divine must have taken place if Mary was now found with child and that he now had a sense of awe and wonder and unworthiness. He said he would try to divorce Mary quietly. In any case, Joseph reflected on his dilemma and ultimately decides to divorce Mary quietly. And undoubtedly Joseph must have thought that this would be the best path, the most loving path forward.
One of my favorite commentators on this Gospel, Father Simeon, suggests that Joseph was so fatigued by his pondering of this dilemma, that he fell asleep. And it was in that sleep that the light shown, and he knew what to do. It was in this sleep that the angel of the Lord came to him and said, “Do not be afraid, Joseph, to take Mary your wife into your home. The angel explains, “For it is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her womb.” And the angel points to Joseph's involvement, right? Joseph is to be the one to give Jesus his name. So, Joseph, in the midst of this darkness, in the midst of this struggle, confusion, uncertainty, received the light of divine wisdom. And then proceeded immediately to take Mary into his home and to allow God’s plan to unfold.
The same Father Simeon in his commentary on the verse about the appearance of the angel to Joseph writes: “Persevere in darkness, without rebelling, and without lighting some trembling candle and God’s healing light will invade you.“ That sentence lept off the page to me: “Persevere in darkness without rebelling, and without the lightings of a trembling candle and God's healing light will invade.” I think there's so many times in life facing decisions where the answer was not clear, I don’t know if I rebelled all that much against God, but I have certainly lite my own candle. In other words, in the midst of this darkness, I'll say, “Well, Lord you do not seem to be giving me an answer, so I'll make one myself. I’ll light your candle. If you are not going to do it, I will make the light. I will craft my own solution to this situation, this problem.” By God’s grace, I don't know, sometimes it goes okay, but I don't recommend that course of action. “Persevering in darkness without rebelling, and without lighting of a trembling candle and God’s healing light will invade.” Wait patiently for the light of Christ. Wait patiently in silence. Listen. Resist the temptation to light that trembling candle; to rely on your own understanding, your own resources, your own strategy.
What constitutes that darkness in the common circumstances of your life? Just take a moment to ponder that question. Where is the darkness where the light does not shine? It will be different things for different people. For some there may be a real struggle with anger, there might be confusion about your path forward in life. It could be the reality of a serious illness or cancer, or it could be struggles with memory loss. It could be financial problems. It could be relationships that are strained and not being resolved. It could be unforgiveness, remembering past hurts over and over and over again. We all have different things that constitute that darkness. What do we do with that? That is the question.
The whole season of Advent invites us to sit in that darkness waiting for the Lord, begging the Lord to come. I keep saying it is always on the Church’s lips during the season of Advent: “Come Lord Jesus. Come Lord Jesus. Not just to bring consolation and peace to my heart. Calm my darkness! Bring light into this darkness that is in my life.”
As Advent nears its culmination, I think it is a good time for us to re-prepare ourselves with observers, really entering into silence. The quiet, the waiting. In the concrete reality of our darkness, whatever there is in our life. And above all to draw nearer and nearer to Jesus in the Eucharist, the Sacrament of Light. The Sacrament of God’s truth. In the Eucharistic we encounter that God is with us. Instead of lighting that trembling candle, crafting our own solutions to this darkness, let us rather to draw near to Jesus, the light of the world, the Bread of Life, the one for whom our hearts long.
Third Sunday of Advent, December 14, 2025
Everyone wants joy. We are hard-wired with that desire. God made us that way. We desire great joy. Not just sporadically, but deep and abiding joy. My question for you today is this: How do you go about pursuing joy in your life? Or what do you look to to give you joy from day to day? Jesus in the Gospel asks the crowds, three times, basically: “What are you looking for? Why do you go out into the desert? What were you expecting to see?” We can hear almost those same words addressed to us. “What are you looking for? What is it that you think will bring you joy in life? What are you going after, pursuing, in hopes of having deep and abiding happiness in life?”
People, of course, will answer the question in different ways. For some people, it is material or financial prosperity or comfort that they're looking for. If they have that, they can be joyful. For some, it's good health. If only I could be well, then I could be joyful. For others it is having fun. As long as we're having a good time, we are happy. Others may be looking for stability as a source of joy. If the dust would just finally settle, you know, if things would calm down for a while, then there would be happiness. Others are looking for harmony in their family, or even just to see that their children and grandchildren are doing well. That's a criterion for being happy in life. For some it is success in their career, a good crop in farming, a good return on an investment. For others, it might be a good reputation, having a good opinion of other people, or having good relationships with others, to be known as a good person. Others may feel that true happiness will come the more power they have, the greater control they have over things. When things go my way, the way I want them to go, then I can be joyful. But if things don't go the way I want them to go, then I can't be happy. For some, they will be joyful if their political parties are in power. Or their sports team is winning. Others find joy in not having to deal with people. Or if other people would just do what they are supposed to do, then I can be happy; I would find joy. It is not always self-preferential either, for some it is helping others that gives them joy. They find happiness or even just seeing other people happy gives them a sense of joy. All these things, all these things can bring delight to us in our day-to-day life. But every single thing I mentioned can change in an instant. Health can change, a financial situation can change, relationships with other people can change. It can all change in a flash. And then where are we? If our pursuit of joy is tied up in all of these other things, and then the circumstances change, we might do left feeling there is no joy until the circumstances change again. And then ground falls out from under our feet.
Well, true joy cannot be contingent of the circumstances of life. It cannot depend on that. So, others will say, well then, if you can't count on the circumstances of life to make you happy, then you just have to decide that you're going to be joyful. You just have to choose. I'm going to be happy. That is a step in the right direction, but it's still a flawed understanding of joy because we do not generate our own joy. It's like if you're thirsty, you can't fix that on your own. Not to be gross, but swallowing your own saliva, it's not going to be slay your thirst. Right? You just can't do that. And you can't just decide, I'm not thirsty. We can make a choice to go to the kitchen sink with a glass and fill it with water and drink and quench our thirst but even in that case, we have not quenched our own thirst. I didn't make the water. I may have paid for the water meter, but I didn't make the water. I have found the source. I can quench my thirst. And so, it is with joy. We don't generate it on ourselves, but we know where to go to get it.
And now I am getting to a true notion of joy - not dependent on the circumstances of life, not something we create on our own - but we do choose to avail ourselves or not. A joy that can be ours all the time. All the time. Wherever we are and whatever is going on. John the Baptist figures prominently in today's Gospel and last week's Gospel. John always pointed to Christ, always pointed to Jesus. Jesus is the source of our joy. And not just Jesus and His abstract, presence out there, but our nearness to Jesus and His nearness to us, that's the source of joy. Not in St. Matthew's Gospel, but in the Gospel of Luke, we hear that in that beautiful event of the Visitation, Mary goes to visit Elizabeth. And at the moment when the sound of Mary's greeting reaches Elizabeth's ears, John the Batist leaps for joy in her womb. John recognizes the presence of Christ and that brings him joy even as he is not possessing a rational presence yet. He leaps with joy in the presence of the Lord. The presence of the Lord is the source of our joy. So, it's such a relief to know that the circumstances of life do not have to govern the reality of joy in us.
If we're looking to the circumstances of life to determine our experience of joy, we become slaves of those things. We become slaves to them, slaves to work, slaves to money, slaves to power, reputation, to health. God didn't make us to being slaves to those things. He made us for the joy that comes of knowing and loving Him.
I would specify two simple areas in life where we have tremendous opportunities to experience the nearness of the Lord, and to be filled with joy. The first probably comes to us naturally as Catholics: recognizing the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. Here Jesus is not this abstract reality out there. He is unquestioned love, soul, and divinity - the complete presence of Christ is here in this Sacrament. So, whether we are just walking into the building, or coming to adore him when He is exposed on the altar, visiting Him in the Blessed Sacrament chapel or at the Mass, we are receiving Him into our body, into our heart. This is a special, special gift of Jesus. His presence, His real presence, His true presence, and receiving Him with eagerness, recognizing Him in the Sacrament – this should bring us great joy. It really should. That joy is available to us in this Sacrament if we have eyes to see, if we approach with faith and thirst and hunger in our hearts for Jesus. That's the intuitive one.
The second opportunity for us to enjoy the Lord and receive the joy of His presence is not so intuitive. It's the Cross. The reality of the Cross in our life. The exact thing in fact, that we regard as, maybe with the anthesis of joy in our life. The sufferings we endure, the sufferings of ours. The pains, the grief, the trials, the difficulties, - these things that in our human nature we shun. In the eyes of faith, we see the nearness of the Cross of Christ. And so even in the midst of those things, those difficulties, we find that Jesus is so near. So very, very near. No matter what that Cross entails. It takes a lot of faith I think to see the Cross from that perspective. But it is true. I am not lying to you. And in the Eucharist and in the concrete Crosses of our day-to-day life, Jesus is there. He is present.
So, it's a good day this day, this joyful Sunday of Advent to take stock of again that question that I asked in the beginning: What am I pursuing? How am I pursuing joy in my life? What are the decisions that I make day-after-day in which I am going after joy, wanting joy? Where am I looking for it? And then to meet that reality with the truth of the joy that comes from God alone, and the nearness of Christ. Maybe it is an opportunity today to sort of recalibrate, refocus, and redirect that pursuit of joy and like John the Baptist recognizes the nearness of Christ, and leapt for joy, you might just leap a little bit, you might just find something waking up in us. The nearness of Jesus really does bring us the depth and constancy of the joy that we desire so deeply.
Second Week of Advent December 7, 2025 Fr. David Kruse
Friends, it is already the second week of Advent. We have Christmas coming up around the corner. The world has been preparing for Christmas since August. I walked into Costco at the end of August and I was seeing Christmas decorations up already. It's ridiculous. So, our minds definitely have been on Christmas for a while. Look at where are our hearts? That's the big question of Advent.
Where are our hearts during this time? Because the Lord wants you to make space for Him, to remove unnecessary attachments in your life so that He has the open space to come and dwell with you. So, remember one of the great keys of the spiritual life, I might have said this in past homilies, but it is so important for us to remind ourselves of this. One of the great keys of the spiritual life is what are we going to do to meet God and the be relationship to Him? In fact, it's very much, passive if you will, because He always moves first in relationship to His children – all of us. He always is the first mover. He is in other words; he is always present to us by his grace. And literally, he is present to us by the fact that he keeps us in existence every moment of our lives. We remember that. The foundation of all that exists is God himself. Now we have layers above that, layers of things that are in existence, that God has put into place to keep things going. But at the very bottom layer is God Himself, keeping you in existence. So, we are all alive. We are breathing; we are living. What keeps us alive? Well, the laws of biology. Right? All of the systems of the human body interacting properly. What keeps the laws of biology functioning properly? Chemistry. What keeps the laws of chemistry working? The laws of physics? What keeps the laws of physics functioning? You cannot go very much further until you get the bottom layer of existence, and that's what we call God. You can't just say, well, it just keeps going on forever. Philosophically, that is impossible. You cannot have an infinite regression otherwise nothing exists. You have to have some point where there is a foundation – a first place. That first mover, that first place, is God itself.
So, the point is that God is with you, not just spiritually, but literally with you, keeping you with existence at every moment of your life. That's profound! Where is God? I don't feel like I can sense God. He's here! He is keeping you alive! That's just the minimum. As the creator, He knows you by name, but as your Father, He loves you. So, the point is this: the key to the spiritual life is number one, to recognize that in our lives and then what is the work that we do? How do we respond to the fact that God is present? Remember the helicopter analogy? God is present to our hearts like a helicopter. Our hearts are the landing pad. But the landing pad has to be clear of debris. It has to be clear so there is a space for the helicopter to land – for God to land on our hearts. Our job is to create that landing zone. Our job is to remove obstacles so that we can receive a God who loves us who is already present to us. And so He can be with us.
God is with you in a special way. Friends, that is the whole purpose of Advent. That is the purpose of Lent! In Lent we prepare for Easter; in Advent we prepare for Christmas. Both of those pivots during our liturgical life. The entire calendar revolves around Christmas and Easter, the two great mysteries of our faith. God so loved us that He became one of us to rescue us, to be with us, to save us from our sins, so that we can go to heaven and be happy forever with Him. Forever. That's . journey. That is the goal. That is why we're here. And Advent is the time when we stop and reflect on these bigger questions. So, to help us prepare for Christmas properly, and if we haven't been thinking about our spiritual preparation in Advent, it is never too late. Today is a new day, and we start now.
The Church gives us this reading about John the Baptist to help us prepare. So, remember in Scripture, we always have two senses. Two meanings. Scripture is inspired by God. There is always a literal meaning, the historical meaning. What is it that the author is trying to communicate historically? So, there is a historical telling of what happened. In this case, it is about John the Baptist and what he said, and what was happening in the area. And then there is this spiritual meaning. What is it that God is trying to tell us? And how is He speaking to us through these images and words? So, it is historical meaning, spiritual meaning, and in the spiritual meaning there are several deep layers as well.
But here we have a couple of things that I want to leave with you to help with your reflection in these the last two weeks or so. Number one -What is important about the desert? Spiritual speaking. Why did men and women for centuries leave the city and go find a cave in the desert and live there for the rest of their lives? Which is beyond comprehension to me. Imagine living in a dugout hole on the side of a mountain for forty years. What is it though about the desert that is so appealing to the spiritual? Well, if you have been to a desert, what do you find there? Nothing! There is literally almost nothing there. That is the point. You can go into an environment, physically, where it is very sparse and quiet. There is not a lot of movement or features. Geology is just flat. And what that does is it helps us eliminate distractions in our lives. Friends we need go to the desert in our heart and find that quiet space to make room for God. That is the point. We go to the desert. The Saints of God went to the desert. Jesus went to the desert to prepare. We go to the desert, we find the spot in our hearts, and we find a spot in our home. That chair in the corner of my room is my prayer chair. That's where I go to pray. I sit down when it is time to pray and get away distractions around me, I just focus on my relationship with God. That is the desert of our hearts. That is what the Lord said. He said, “Go to the quiet room in your heart and be with your Father. Close the door.” In other words, get rid of the distractions! Our lives are full of distractions. My mind is full of distractions, and I am a priest. I am trained in this, and I feel all my heart oftentimes is so burdened by distractions because there's so much going on in our minds. You can name, I am quite sure, twenty things that you're thinking about right now. It happens, but we have to be intentional to go to that desert place in order to find and make room for God and leave these are distractions behind. Turn off that phone or at least put it on an airplane mode, so that it is not a distraction. And you are dedicated to those five minutes a day. Five minutes. It is not too much to ask. Five minutes a day? One hour a week at Mass; once a month at Confession. That is a great baseline for the spiritual life. Because God now sees that you want to be with Him. And then He continues to be present to you in more special ways. All right, number two, so number one is the desert.
Number two, the word of John Baptist. What does he say? As a side note, remember the 1970’s? Remember in the 1970's the series Jesus of Nazareth? CBS would play it every Easter or for three or four days during Holy week. The Italian director Franco Zeffirelli directed it, and it remains well-known today. It was really a classic. And it has you know, all the scenes of Jesus' life from his birth until his death and resurrection. The scene with John the Baptist – you have seen these images in your mind and you now have a reference point. John the Baptist is in his hair shirt and camel stuff; crazy hair and eating grasshoppers and honey. Can you imagine this character? He is one that is helping to prepare people to receive the Messiah. What does he say? First word out of his mouth, “Repent.” What does that mean? By the way, it was first word of Jesus, too, when He starts His public life. Repent.
What is the word that the Gospel writers actually use in the Greek? Metanoia. It is an imperative, so it is speaking to the person. So, repentance from Jesus' perspective and John the Baptist’s perspective is about changing the way think about the things that keep us away from God. Metanoia - remove the things in your life that are distractions and focus on God. Change the way you think about the questions of life. Are you even asking the big questions of life? Is your mind focused on the question, how do I stand this morning in my relationship with God? That is what going to the desert allows us to do. Focus on these bigger questions. Am I in right relationship with God? How is that relationship going? We have desert, we have repentance, metanoia, and changing our mind, the way we think. And then, lastly, we have St. John telling us to prepare for the kingdom of God.
What is the kingdom of God? The kingdom of God is not place. It's not set of ideas. It is not a political movement. But kingdom of God is a person, Jesus Christ. And so we go to the desert to remove ourselves from distractions; to think about the big questions of life, to change the way we think about, our attachments in our relationship with God, so that our hearts become empty.
Empty of those things so that we can be with God Himself, Jesus Christ. That is it. Simple, not easy, but always simple. So, friends, no better way to prepare for Advent than by taking a few moments every day to think about these things, and then to do what the people did as they were hearing you about this. They were confessing their sins, receiving St. John’s Baptism of repentance. They were coming to join and repenting and confessing sins. We have the Sacrament available to you any time you would like it. To be able to receive God’s mercy and to put things straight in your heart so that God can be more present to you as you repent from your sins, and clear the way for His coming, especially at Christmas.
Friends, may you have a blessed and holy rest of your Advent season and a very blessed Christmas as it comes upon us. God Bless you.

First Sunday of Advent, November 30, 2025
I came upon an interesting poem by the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz and wanted to share a little excerpt from that poem. The poem is called On the Day the World Ends.
On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.
And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.
The season of Advent which is opening up before us now orients us toward the celebration of Christmas in three and a half weeks’ time. Even more, Advent directs us to the Parousia, the second coming of Jesus at the end of the world. But the poem I just read points to yet another reality that Christ is breaking into our present moment in extraordinary ways right now, right in the midst of our ordinary day-to-day lives. One of my favorite scripture commentators wrote: “At the most practical level, our life as Christians is continually being pierced by 1,000 Parousia’s and yet these veiled and intimate comings of the Lord are all leading to and are the dress rehearsal for the great Parousia, at the end of time.”
It's an interesting concept that we are looking forward to Jesus’ return in glory and as Jesus says many times actually in this passage ‘we don't know when that is. It says: “In the days of Noah they didn't know until the flood came, so will it be also at the coming of the Son of Man. You do not know on which day your Lord will come. If the master of the house had known the hour, so too you must be prepared for in an hour you do not expect the Son of Man will come.”
We do not know when the Lord Jesus will come in glory and yet this poem says He's coming now and the intermediate comings of Christ that is breaking into our life right now is good practice for us to be able to recognize Him and receive Him when He comes in glory. So, we won't be caught off guard, so to speak, we will be expecting Him because we've been expecting Him every moment of our life and noticing Him when He's coming to us. Here are two good questions for us regarding the coming of Christ. Do we believe in the possibility of something completely unexpected and completely beyond us suddenly entering the stage of our life and forever changing its course and the course of the world? Do we believe in that? Do we believe that right now the Lord Jesus could come into our life and change it? We often go about our normal day-to-day life with no expectation that anything will be different; with no expectation that the Lord wants to break in and do something extraordinary and so we keep doing just what we do. The second question then is tied to this. Do we believe that every ordinary moment of existence is already infused with great mystery and vitality? In other words, do we realize, do we believe, that the present moment is an extraordinary opportunity to welcome the Lord?
If we are truly Christians, we believe these things. So, then Advent urges us to watch. Saint Paul says, “It is the hour now for you to awake from sleep.” If the Lord could stand in front of us and wave His arms and say “Wake up pay attention! Watch!” He would. That is why I'm here - waving my arms in front of people saying “Watch! Now is the time to wake from sleep. The slumber of the day-to-day routine. The sameness of everything.
Now, Jesus also says: “Two men will be out in the field. One will be taken, and one will be left. Two women will be grinding at the mill. One will be taken, and one will be left.” The coming of Christ coming it happens in the ordinariness of life. When He comes, what makes the difference that one is taken, and one is left? The interior. The interior. One is looking for the coming of the Lord. Ready to welcome the Lord when He arrives. The other is just going through the motions of life with no expectation of the Lord's coming. So, it's not by magic that we become more attentive or watchful or expectant of the Lord's arrival. That's something we need to work on. We have so many opportunities each day to look for the coming of the Lord. Maybe it's in a conversation with your spouse. Is the Lord’s presence in that conversation? Is He breaking in and bringing new understanding of kindness or patience? Maybe it is in an encounter with a stranger, someone in need. Maybe it is in the quiet stillness of prayer that the Lord is going to break in and stir up something. Maybe it is at the grocery store. Maybe it's when you are out for a walk. Maybe it's just when you are going to sleep at night or waking up in the morning with your cup of coffee. Can every moment of our life be imbued with this breaking in of Christ? It can. It can. So, Advent is a great time for us to practice this. There is a lot that has to be done I know between now and Christmas and people have their to-do lists. Lots of stuff to prepare.
But let's set our spiritual itinerary and right at the top let us say, “We are going to watch a little more carefully.” Our eyes are going to be open looking for the coming of the Lord in the ordinary things of day-to-day life because He is coming and in each of those comings, He is preparing us for His glorious coming at the end. Momentarily, the Lord comes to us in quite an extraordinary way that we can see if we approach with the eyes of faith. He comes to us in this Sacrament – the Sacrament of Sacraments! This too then is good practice for us practice in recognizing the Lord as He draws near. May God give all of us the grace this Advent to wake up and be attentive.
Solemnity of Christ the King, November 23, 2025
The story is told of a seminarian, I don't know if it is a true story or not, I do know it is not about me. But the story is told of a seminarian really struggling through his final oral exam just giving the professor wrong after wrong answer after wrong answer after wrong answer. Finally, the professor is so frustrated he says, “Look, I am going to ask you one simple question and if you can answer it correctly, I'll give you a passing grade.” The professor is probably thinking ‘I don't want to have to repeat this course with this kid!’ The question from the professor was “Who was the first king of Israel?” “That is an easy one,” the seminarian says, “His name was Saul.” Just as the professor is reaching out to shake the seminarian’s hand and congratulate him on passing the course, the seminarian added some clarification. “Saul who was later known as Paul.” [laughter] Paul came many, many centuries later.
Saul was indeed the first king of Israel and then of course there was a long line of kings which you can read about in the Books of Samuel and Kings and Chronicles and there were some good kings but they were mostly evil kings who fell into idolatry and all kinds of other problems. But even though Saul was the first king of Israel, it was really his successor David whom God raised up as the model king and despite David's weakness and sinfulness, God said of David “Here is a man after my own heart.” David had the heart of a shepherd. He was not tyrant; he was not full of pride; he was not selfish. He had the heart of the shepherd. He was sinful but he had the heart of a shepherd. This is the divine model of kingliness.
When I was a kid raising sheep for 4H, I had two main jobs in that I had to make sure that the sheep were protected from predators, and I had to make sure they had enough to eat. Those were the two main tasks of a shepherd. Of course, King David was as a shepherd, king, a prefigurement of the Lord Jesus. Remember the prophet Nathan prophesied to David that God would raise up a descendant of his to rule over the Kingdom definitively and his rule would have no end. And we see Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of that prophecy. So, more than any of the other kings, God reveals through Jesus his desire to rule his people with the heart of a shepherd.
So, on this Solemnity of the Lord Jesus Christ King of the Universe the first question is what kind of King is he? He is the kind of King who reigns like a shepherd, governs like a shepherd, has the heart of a shepherd for his sheep, always seeking the good of the sheep, always looking toward the flourishing on his flock. That is the kind of King we serve. That is the kind of King we serve. And Jesus also carried out these two tasks, right? Protecting the flock from predators, from harm and from death. He gave his life on the cross to save his flock from sin and death. He made the ultimate sacrifice of himself, his own life for the good of the sheep, the good of his flock. He also makes sure that they have enough to eat. He feeds them. The Lord Jesus who feeds us his disciples with his whole body and blood. The nourishment which brings us to internal life.
So, that is the first question. What kind of King do we serve? We serve the King with the Lord Jesus who gave his life on the cross to protect us from evil and sin and death and he feeds us with his body and blood.
So, then the second question and last question is how do we respond to having such a good King? How are we to be loyal subjects of this good King, this shepherd King? Our first response is adoration. If you flipped through the hymnal, you would have seen all kinds of hymns that include references to the Lord as King. “Oh, worship the King all Glorious Above. Oh, gratefully sing of his power and his love.” Or “Hail Redeemer King divine. What the King of love my shepherd is.” Or “Come down almighty King.” “All creatures of our God and King.” I didn’t look at every single hymn in the hymnal but there are more than these that talk about Jesus as our King and you know in facing such a King, our first response is to adore - to lay down our lives for this King. To bow before him in adoration and worship acknowledging him as God that we are not God. The Lord his God; the Lord is King. He is worthy of all our praise and our admiration.
Secondly, his Kingship evokes from us for response of love. See, adoration is not just loving God more than anything else. Adoration is in its own class but the Lord's care for us as his beloved flock should evoke from us a response of love. That we would love God above all else and recognize and receive the love the Lord has for us. It also invokes from us a response of service - to serve the Lord in all that we do in our profession, in our family, in everything we do, we ought to serve the Lord, to serve Jesus the King our Lord, our loving shepherd.
And finally, Jesus’ kingship evokes a response by invitation that we might also love others as he loves us which was his commandment anyway. He loves us as a shepherd loves his sheep. He laid down his life for us we lay down our lives for others. As He feeds us who are hungry, we feed others who are hungry and in need. We follow the pattern of our divine King and shepherd. We imitate. So, we adore him, we love him, we serve and we imitate him.
Finally, as a practical means of entering into proper relationship with the Lord Jesus, our King, I encourage you to participate in Eucharistic Adoration. The Eucharist is of course the Lord's primary means of feeding us. He gives himself to us in this sacrament. I know many of you already get here early on a Saturday just to spend some time in adoration as you are able, but if that's not part of your weekly practice to have some time in Eucharistic Adoration, I strongly urge people to take up that practice even if it starts with just a few minutes each week. Or if can stop at the Church when the office is open and just make a quick visit.
Adoring Jesus in the Eucharist, we come to face to face with this King, this shepherd, the one who loves us more than anyone else. And it is in the quiet of that Eucharistic Adoration that the Lord inviting you to make a response. A response of love, a response of service, a response to His invitation. So come to the Lord, adore him. Let us adore Christ the King.
Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time, November 16, 2025
Judgment, Heaven, and Hell - these were the four things in traditionally identified by Church as the Four Last Things. Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell. And everybody gets three out of the four. Everyone gets the first two and one of the second two.
In November, we come toward the end of the Church’s liturgical year and the Church, especially in the apocalyptic Scriptures that are presented to us in Masses celebrating these days, turns to our attention to these Four Last Things. Not to stir up terror in our hearts, or anxiety, but to present them very much for our consideration. The Church always invites us to live in the present moment as it is in the present where God meets us. We don't want to dwell too much on the past that is already gone - it cannot change. We don't want to dwell too much on the future that isn't in existence yet, worrying and fearing, all of that. We are encouraged to live in the present moment where God meets us. God is not ‘The great I was’ or ‘The great I will be.’ He says His name is ‘I am.’ And yet, even though we live in the present moment, we always have an eye toward the end. We always have an eye toward the future in that sense so that the way we live in the present moment is governed by what we are looking at today. And it seems to me that the way we look at the end and the way we consider the last things has an impact on how we live in the present moment.
There are a lot of people who have different thoughts and ideas about the Last Things. For example, there are those who cannot bring themselves to believe that there is a Hell. Well, what is Jesus thinking about that? It does not seem to be a Scriptural point of view. It seems to go against what Jesus Himself says. So, I don’t recommend holding the stance that there is no Hell because if you look at the teachings of Jesus and the long tradition of His teaching through the Church, you see that there has to be if human beings have free will, for the potential of eternal separation from God.
Another thought is that there is a Hell, but that it is empty because God is too nice to send anyone there. Right? That the goodness and mercy of God override human freedom, so that no matter what we do in this life, God will triumph in the end and bring everyone to Heaven. This is problematic also because it dismisses the reality of human life. And it means that it doesn't matter what we do in this life. It would mean that there is no reason to have faith. There's no reason to strive to do what's good. If the exercise of our free will won’t make any difference in the end, then just do whatever they want, because God is so nice. Again, this has not harmonized well with the teachings of Jesus Himself.
A sort of a related perspective on this is that Hell is real but only the very, very worst of the worst could ever go there. So, there is like two souls. Well, again, we know that passage in Scripture where Jesus says, “The road to destruction is wide, and many find it, but the road to life is narrow and those who find it are a few.” We don't need to give a dogmatic interpretation of that to say that, you know, there's just one little dinner party of eight going on in Heaven and the rest of us are lost. But we should pay close attention to what Jesus says and not just set it aside because we would like to think that you have to be really, really, really bad to be separated from the God for all eternity. It is a choice. It is a human choice. We all know that we are capable of making choices, even bad ones.
Another perspective would be that Hell is certainly real and almost everyone goes there. This is towards the other extreme. That only the very, very best of the best go to Heaven. So, there is hardly a glimmer of hope for the rest of us. Or there is a perspective that most people go there thankfully, we're not.
The Church warns against the danger of presumption. Just saying, ‘Oh, well, got it made.” “It is an easy ride in.” But the Church also warns against the opposite extreme, having no hope or having so very, very little hope in Eternal Life. Jesus says, “Do not be terrified.” He does not want us to live our life in anxiousness, fear, and terror about Hell or Heaven. In previous generations, and maybe some of you know this, there was generally a much greater fear of Hell. And I would say that in younger generations today, there isn't very much of that fear and perhaps that's because Hell doesn’t get preached on all that much. I'm guilty of that perhaps. I mean, it's not on purpose.
It goes from one extreme to the other. Absolute terror of Hell versus no concern whatsoever. So, what is a good and healthy approach to this topic of The Last Four Things? I think we all need to have a good healthy awareness of the recognition of our poverty – that we need God; we need God like crazy; we need God. Absolutely. We cannot save ourselves. We cannot forgive our own sins. We cannot hoist ourselves up to Heaven. We are like little children with respect to God. We need God to lift us up and take us to Himself.
But when we look at our poverty, we should not look at our poverty without hope. “Oh, I am miserable worm. There is just hardly anything good about me.” We have such hope in eternal life because in our poverty God loves us. God wants us to be saved. God pours out graces upon us to draw us to Himself. That is our hope. We don’t want to feel discouraged because of our poverty and our need. We look at it always with great hope and confidence in the goodness of God. Not falling into presumption, not falling into this white- knuckled terrifying living of life. But honestly acknowledging our need for God, our poverty, and turning to Him with great hope. I think if we can take that approach and also exercising our free will in such a way to do everything we can to strengthen ourselves in our relationship with God, we might find that we are indeed the on the right path, on the path that leads to eternal life.
Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome, November 9, 2025
Relationships begin to break down when we start to see the other as a means rather than an end. We see this even in international relations, where in the context of wars, one party says to the other, “I want that land. I want your resources.” And then they make efforts to take it, to seize it. We see it on the national scene in which political opponents cannot seem to have the productive dialogue, but rather they say to one another, "I want you to consent to the way I want to do things. I want your vote. You should vote the way I want to vote.” We see it in marriage and family. We see it in our personal relationship of all kinds, asking ourselves, “What good does this relationship really do for me? What do I need out of this?”
People, human beings, become cogs in the great machine that is our vision and our plan for life. Our notion of how things should go. This is dangerous enough for timid relationships but even more dangerous for our relationship with God. In the Gospel today, Jesus goes in the temple, and He is angry. He is infuriated about what He finds there. He finds a spirit of business. He sees the money changers; He sees those animals for sacrifice. These are all there for the purpose of fulfilling the commandment of God to offer sacrifice, right? Animals are necessary. For foreigners, the changing of money would be necessary. But Jesus goes in and drives them all out in the temple area, overturns the table, spills the coins. And He says those famous words, “Stop making my Father's house a marketplace.” “Stop making my Father's house a marketplace.” The Father's house is not a marketplace. It is not meant to be a place of business, a place of transaction. The Father’s house should be a place of encounter. It should be in place of rest. A place of enjoyment of being with God in love and union. The Father's house should have the feeling of home. Not a marketplace where there is bartering, selling, and buying, a spirit of business, just things to get done, transactions to accomplish.
“My Father's house.” What does that mean to us? I profess I was not really all that good about visiting my parents when they were still alive and not even really all that good about calling them on a regular basis, and I regret that. But I think about the times that I went to their home, my childhood home and what my attitude was as I went to that place, I don't remember ever thinking that I could ‘check this off the box’, I visited my folks - I did my duty as a son. I mean, there were things that I needed to do about the house, so there wasn’t in a sense, you know, there was work involved. But at the same time, this was their home and very much a sense that I was just there to be together with them. That we were there to enjoy each other's company and to enjoy the dynamics of this family that God had put together. To experience love, to experience goodness of one another. That is what I think about when those words, “My Father's house.”
Today is the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome. It is not just a marking of an anniversary of the event in which this magnificent Cathedral/Basilica was dedicated. It really is a feast day of the Church. It is a day in which we really celebrate the gift that the Church is. Not just that church, but ‘the’ Church. So, we read all these Scriptures today - from Ezekiel and First Corinthians, and the Gospel of John - and our eyes are turned not exactly to the reality of the temple, but the reality of the Church, which is the new temple reality. The temple prefigured the Church, the place of encountering God, the place of entering into Communion with God, the place of being at rest in the Father's presence, being loved by God, and opening our hearts to receive the mercy and goodness of God.
We are thinking about this Church as the Father's house - a place where we can be together with God and with our brothers and sisters, who are part of the family. It is not a marketplace. This isn't a place for business. We don't come here to accomplish anything per se. We don't come to Church so that we can check this off of our list for this week.
We don't want to treat God like that. To treat God as a means rather than an end - to come the Church and say, “Well, I need to get something from God.” God gives us so much when we go to Mass. And yes, we bring our intentions; we bring all the desires of our hearts when we gather here each Sunday. But really it is about God. It is not so much about us. What a gift the Church is to provide a place and a community to experience being in the Father's house, and the rest and the joy that that is, that that entails. Just to be with God. To set aside for a moment our drive for production, and efficiency, and to accomplish things. Being efficient and accomplishing things is not bad, right? Things have got to get done. This is America, right? But to be able to set aside the drive for a moment and just be with God. Just be with God. What a gift that is.
The Church is also a school. The Church is a school of a sort in which we lovely learn how to be at peace and at rest and enjoy the presence of the Father in the Father's house. But we are learning how to stay in this place interiorly, even as we go out into the world. Out into the marketplace, if you will. Out into the place where there is so much that wants to tear our hearts out of this place, that place of rest, that place of being with the Father but we need to be in the Father's house, even if not physically here, the soul is, as we've heard in readings, “the dwelling place of God.”
So, in that sense, we carry the Father’s house with us. Our soul is the place where we have the indwelling of the Holy Trinity so the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit make their home in us. And how different things would be if we always operated out of that place of being with the Father through His Son, in the Spirit. Operating out of that place of rest and peace, and the enjoyment of His love and mercy which is present.
It is good for all of us to examine our hearts and to ask ourselves about why we bring ourselves to Mass each Sunday or even during the week for those who come more frequently? Do we sometimes come to Church with the intention of accomplishing something, getting something? Checking something off the list? Sometimes there might be something of that. The Lord invites us to refocus, to recenter our attention on the real reason we are here - to be with Him in the Father's house. To enjoy that presence of God, growing in union with Him and to learn how to take this experience out there.

The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, Sunday, November 2, 2025
No matter how many funeral vigils I have presided over, I always like when I go to lead the Rosary to have in my hand a printed copy of the prayers because I always feel that I am just going to forget the words of the Lord's Prayer or the Hail Mary’s - even though I have prayed these prayers, thousands and thousands of times. And I think if I called on anyone here to stand up and recite the Nicene Creed, solo [laughter] there might be some difficulty with that. We know the prayers, yet sometimes we forget the words of the prayer under pressure or something like that. Even the Apostles Creed, a little bit shorter than the Nicene Creed, you might have trouble reciting that by heart in front of the crowd.
But I wonder if sometimes that the reason for this phenomenon is that so often we just sort of race through the prayers. We're not always taking much time to consider the words that we are saying. And at the end of the Apostles Creed, we say the words: I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting.” As you well know the beginning of November is all Saints Day, and on the 2nd, we have All Souls Day, so perhaps as we hear those final words of the Creed, our attention is drawn in particular to the phrase “the Communion of Saints”. And what comes to mind when we consider The Communion of Saints? The first thing we think about is the whole host of souls - angels and Saints - in Heaven praising God for the Trinity, enjoying perfect peace and the light, happiness, satisfaction in the arms of the Holy Trinity.
We all know people who lived good and holy lives here on earth. Perhaps we think of them as people who probably didn't sin much. Or people who were chosen by God and given specific special graces to accomplish certain things, maybe miracle workers, people who went out and preached and baptized thousands and thousands. Whole hosts of extraordinary people in that Communion. I wager that is what we think about when we hear the phrase "Communion of Saints."
But if that's all that we think about when we consider the Communion of Saints, then our notion is too small. Much too small because those Heavenly Hosts are part of the Communion of Saints, they are not the only members. If you look at the Catechism - you can fact check me: Items 946 to 962 if you would like. I encourage you to read that section anyway.
Describing this phrase from the Apostles Creed, it says, “Where we profess belief in the Communion of Saints, it is really a further explanation of the words right before that = the Holy Catholic Church: I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of the Saints…” The Catechism is saying that the Communion of Saints is the Church. The Communion of Saints is not just some body of souls over there that we look at from a distance and admire. We are part of the Communion of Saints. And while we may squirm if someone ever described us as saints, or we may look at our neighbor in the pew, and say, “Saint?” [laughter], we are part of the community of Saints. The Saints are not only those who achieve moral perfection – the only exception there is the Blessed Mother who was without sin in this life - but look at the lives of the Saints. They were not perfect human beings. So, if our notion of ‘saint’ is only someone who has achieved perfection, we ought to broaden our understanding of that word.
Perhaps we can say that the Saints are those who, in a very special way, God is drawing to himself. Indeed, in the words of St. Paul to the Romans - He has poured his love into our hearts. Paul writes: “Hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” How, I ask you, could God, poor out His own self, His own spirit into the soul of a person without that person becoming in some way holy? How does someone who bears the presence of God in their soul, not consider him or herself as Saints? God is accomplishing His purposes, those who have receive the gift of His Holy Spirit, as our will has been formed more and more to the heart of God. That is being worked out in our life day-by-day. To say that we are Saints as I said doesn't mean that we are without sin, but we are engaging in the struggle. We're engaging in God's work of sanctifying us so that our manner of life radiates His goodness and holiness. Works in progress we are, but we are members of the Communion of Saints.
And on All Souls Day, we also recognize in the very particular way that we share communion with those who have gone before us and still await entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven. We recognize that, at the time of death, at the moment of death, not everyone has achieved perfection enjoyed by those Saints in Heaven. There is a purification. There is a purging of imperfections and impurities in the soul. And just as we pray for the members of our families each day, you who have children, probably pray for your children each day, I hope you do. Grandchildren, great grandchildren. If your parents are still alive; you pray for our family members, hopefully you pray for your spouse, if you're married. You pray for those with whom we have some connection, some affection, or affiliation, and we pray also for strangers throughout the world, too.
The members of the Communion of Saints who are undergoing their purification in Purgatory need our prayers. We can help them. We ought to be mindful of them and pray for them each day. Just as we recognize that being members of the Communion of Saints in our imperfections, we need the help of others’ prayers. We need the prayers of the Saints in Heaven; we need the prayers of our brothers and sisters on earth. We need the prayers of the souls in Purgatory, also. But they cannot pray for themselves. They cannot obtain for themselves the help that they need.
So, today, especially but really, every day we ought to remember, lift up those souls, and ask for God's grace. Ask for great outpouring with love and mercy upon those souls and draw them to Himself. When it comes to the Communion of Saints, we can broaden our consideration so we not just thinking about the Saints in Heaven, but also remember the Communion of Saints, the Church Suffering, the souls in the Purgatory, and also remember that we are members of that Communion. So, we are engaged in a journey of transformation and sanctification. Remembering that we are called not only called to be Saints, we are actually Saints in the making, if you will, or on the way.
Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time October 26, 2025 Father Luke Tomson
The Book of Sirach provides a short catechesis on prayer and in particular, the state that one's soul must in in prayer. And we hear that the “Lord hears that the cry of the oppressed, the wail of the orphan, the complaint of the widow, and these prayers we are told, reach the heavens. They pierce the clouds.” Today we hear Christ’s Parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, and the Pharisee was a deeply religious man, and in many ways, he is doing everything right. He fasted like a faithful Jew on Monday and Thursday. He gave ten percent of his income to the Temple. He was not greedy, he was not dishonest, he was not adulterous. There he is in the temple praying. This man was deeply religious.
We have a tax collector. The tax collector, on the other hand, was the Israelite associated with fraudulent practices. You will remember that the Romans occupied first century Palestine and tax collectors were hired in order to levy taxes from people and give those taxes to the Roman authorities. The Jews didn't want the Romans there. So, fellow Jews who were working for the Romans were seen as traitors. At the same time, these tax collectors would often take more than what was their due and the Jews had no recourse. The Romans didn't care. They just wanted their taxes. So, tax collectors were seen as traitors and thieves. They were despised. So, it really puts into respective on that Christ Jesus called a tax collector, St. Matthew, to be an apostle.
So, in the temple, you have now a deeply religious man, and you have essentially a traitor and thief. And this is the Parable: The Pharisee seemed to express his gratitude, but his gratitude quickly turns into judgment. The Pharisee reveals that he knows what is going on in the inner sanctuary of the tax collector’s heart. Meanwhile, the tax collector - what is he doing? He is it acknowledging his sin and he has humbled himself. He is begging the Lord for mercy. And in Christ's admonition, the tax collector, went home justified, not the Pharisee. This Parable as Jesus spoke it must have cause quite a stir amongst the Pharisees and the Scribes. And I think it is meant to invite us now today to further reflection.
Like the Pharisee and the tax collector, we have come to worship Almighty God. We might ask, well, which one are we? Am I the Pharisee or am I the tax collector? I think we could go deeper because the reality is - I'm speaking from my own experience - I don't know you personally, but as I look at my own heart, I think we're a mixture of both: of both the Pharisee and the tax collector. At times, we're really proud of ourselves, but our pride comes at the expense of the other. “At least I'm not like that guy.” But then we find ourselves on our knees begging the Lord to hear us. The Pharisee, the tax collector, but then we cast judgment upon others, purporting to know precisely what their motives are. And then at other times, we find ourselves giving someone a benevolent benefit of the doubt. Again, we are like the Pharisee and the tax collector, a mixture of both.
Casting judgment – our blessed Lord says, "Judge not less you be judged. Condemn not less you be condemned. But the same measure with which you judge will be measured out to you.” These are words that Christ Jesus spoke. Jesus Christ is the God Man; God spoke these words. God became man, and He spoke these words. They are important. They are vital. Our salvation depends on them. Casting judgment always involves putting the other down in order to build ourselves up. So, why do we judge others? Perhaps we're dissolving something within ourselves that we don't want to acknowledge. It's too painful to look at.
How do we overcome this vice of judging others? I think it rests on seeing the world as it truly is. Seeing things from God's perspective. Now, this is a great mystery who are we to say, “I am going to look at these things from God’s perspective.” But let's think for a moment theologically: if God is love, if God created out of love, think of this world, the cosmos, all that is. God so loved the world we hear in the Gospel of John. If you think about how His love permeates all creation, if I can enter into that, and recognize that, then what need would there be for me to put others down in order to build myself up?
At the same mind, what use is there to cast judgment? As I recognize in the presence of God's love, that those things which matter to me once before, that I got so worked up about, begin to fall by the wayside. The more we can see this reality, the more that we can be creative rather than react to what others are doing. Now you get pulled into the debate. We can rest in divine love, being first gentle and generous with ourselves and our own brokenness, we show empathy for others rather than casting judgment. See, each of us is a sinner in desperate need of the mercy of God. We are powerless. We can't even atone for the smallest venial sin.
The Church has actually adopted the prayer of the tax collector and has a marvelous tradition of praying it. It is known as the Jesus prayer. It is a prayer that I have been praying since college. I have found great solace in praying this prayer. It goes like this:
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
In this prayer, we acknowledge our own wounding. Notice that this prayer, we're not acknowledging the sins of others. We’re acknowledging our own. And it's a humble turn toward the living God. The God who can save us from ourselves. It is difficult to pray this prayer and at the same time, judge our neighbor. Could I encourage us to pray the greatest prayer of the tax collector? Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. This is a prayer of people who don't have it all together. This is a prayer for those of us who look into our own souls, and we find a mess. This is a prayer of someone who trusts only in the mercy of God.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
This is prayer of the lowly. It is a prayer when prayed with great humility pierces the clouds. And might I also suggest that it is a prayer that reaches out and touches the very heart of God.
Twenty Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 19, 2025\
Prayer is one of the great mysteries of spiritual life. Sometimes we may think of prayer as very straightforward: I say these words, I kneel down or I go to my place of prayer in my home, or I read the Scriptures. There is always something mysterious also about prayer and especially about the effectiveness of prayer. And there is something in us I think that wants to know how to pray effectively. We want to know that our prayer is doing something. We want to know that our prayer is worthwhile, that we are not just speaking into a void. We are not being unheard. Yet in our experience we find that not every prayer is answered the way we want, or we hope. And sometimes we wonder if our prayers are heard at all. I think I mentioned last Sunday that some of the passages in the Scriptures might lead us to believe that if we just did it ‘right’, that our prayers would always be answered the way we want or we would get what we are asking for. We would obtain what we called for but that's not really what prayer is all about.
The Scriptures are not presented to us as some sort of secret code, that if we crack it, then we open the vaults of Heaven and get every answer we want. There isn’t a key that opens up this treasure chest where God is somehow withholding from us the things that we want. No. But again in today's Gospel, we might tend toward this kind of interpretation. We might think, ‘Ah, perseverance is the secret.” Perseverance is the key. So, if I just keep asking, I will wear God down and He will, in the end, give me what I want.” But this is a rare condition where one of the Gospel writers explicitly states why Jesus tells the Parable. He says: “It is a parable about the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary.” That doesn't say anything about ‘this being the secret to obtaining what we are asking for.’
It is a Parable about the necessity of perseverance, and I will expand it from the necessity of praying always to the necessity for always just persevering in our faith because in a sense, our whole life of faith is a prayer in which we are asking God for Heaven. In our thoughts and words and deeds we should be expressing our desire for eternal life. We are crying to God “I want heaven.” Jesus says, "It's necessary for us to persevere in this to pray always, without becoming weary.” And so, as we hear the words of this Gospel, instead of turning our attention to the judge and trying to break the judge down and trying to get a response from the judge, we turn current attention instead to the widow who represents all of us. And asks the question, how long will we persevere? And are there any conditions to our perseverance? Jesus asks at the end of the Parable: “But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” Will he find faith? Will He find that His disciples got persevered in living the Christian life?
It doesn't take long to recognize that there are many, many challenges to be overcome by perseverance. There are many things that could be obstacles, things that would stand in the way of our persevering until death in living our Catholic faith. Some find it simply difficult to maintain right belief. To actually believe what is taught in the Gospels and taught by the Church. Perhaps evidence of this is the fact that there are thousands and thousands and thousands of different denominations of Christians. But some may struggle to persevere in holding right belief. For example, the Church’s teaching that God is good and only good and loving and confident. People who are struck by terrible tragedies may have some trouble persevering in that belief that God is good and that God hears prayers.
Some have difficulty persevering in right worship. We all know people who used to gather here with us for Mass who are not here who are still living and still living in the area. And people who are not here have their reasons. I mean thousands of reasons for not persevering in worship. Sometimes it is just a busyness. People are so busy, their schedules are so full if it is have for them to carve out time to come to Mass. Or they have been hurt by someone in the Church and do not want to come here. There might be all kinds of different reasons.
What about persevering in right actions? The struggle with sin is a reality. It is hard to persevere. Sometimes people get very discouraged, even to the point of despair over their own weakness, their own sinfulness, and that makes it very difficult to persevere. Sometimes people face persecution or ridicule or opposition because of their faith. They suffer rejection. It is hard to persevere in the face of that. Sometimes it is just the dynamics of being in the Church, struggling with the decisions that are made, the way things are handled. One of the priests of the Diocese was telling me the other day that some time ago, he had to schedule the Confirmation Mass at noon, which was not the normal time that their parish had Mass. And some were so upset; they never came back. People have their limits. Some are lower than others, I guess. Or people are turned away by the scandal. Scandals that have rocked the Church. Behaviors of those in leadership in the Church. It goes on and on. I mean, I can stand here a long time and talk about different things that test our perseverance.
But the question is, will we persevere? And perseverance doesn't always look like starting something and then continuing until it's completion. Sometimes we do weary and it doesn't mean we can’t pick right back up again and keep on persevering. And the fact that there are folks we know that aren't here today and probably haven’t been here in a long time is no cause for discouragement or despair – it is not a condemnation on any of them. We trust in the goodness of God, and that God is working in their life too, in their own journey in this world, this life.
But there's still need for perseverance. Are we able to say, truthfully, there is nothing that would cause me to abandon my practice of my faith. No scandal, no offense from another person, no disagreement with a decision. There is nothing that would shake me from the practice of my faith. When the Son of Man comes will He find that we have persevered? It may seem like I'm preaching to the choir, well, I am preaching to the choir [laughter], but everyone else here, too.
We all struggle in some way to persevere. We all face challenges to our perseverance in faith. So, we are not here patting ourselves on the back, saying, ‘we are the ones persevering.’ Jesus is reminding us of how important it is to press on, to remain faithful. It is an opportunity for us to recognize, to reflect on our struggles and challenges in this disregard. Whether it is a struggle with sin or a struggle with people in this church, or the structure of the Church of a belief, or whatever it is, the struggle in our vocation, the struggle with discouragement.
What is it a temps us to walk away? It is a great opportunity for us to renew our resolve and that resolve is not that we say, “I am going to do it. I can do it!” We have to turn to the God with our whole heart to receive the grace to remain faithful all our days.
Twenty Eighth Sunday In Ordinary Time, October 12, 2025
In 2015, when Bishop Daly just arrived here in the Diocese of Spokane, one of the first things he wanted to do was to appoint a new rector at Bishop White Seminary in Spokane, and he asked all of the priests of the Diocese to make recommendations to him who might be a good fit for that position. And I prayed on it, and I wrote to the Bishop saying that I wanted to do it. Not that I was just dying to have that position or anything like that but there was definitely a part of me that wanted it. And I don't remember how exactly I prayed in those days, but I was probably asking God to make it happen. And it didn't happen. I'm sure I was disappointed about it at the time. I don't remember sulking in my prayer, but I might have. I've done that. We've all done that. Anyway, a few years down the road from then it became abundantly clear to me that it would have been a terrible mistake to put me in that spot. And so, I prayed and thanked God that the answer to my prayers was “no.”
And if you have had that experience, too, you ask God for something, you think it's the right thing, and the answer is “no.” You're disappointed, but then later on down the road, you realize God knew what He was doing. Too often in our prayers, especially when we are petitioning God for something the matter that is of most important to us is whether not we get that thing we were asking for. And then if we don't receive what we're asking for, we don't see any reason to be thankful. I don't remember ever thanking God at the time when the answer given was “no” to what I was asking for.
But is the granting of our petition really the only reason to be thankful? It seems like an approach to prayer and relationship with God that is lacking in maturity if we're only thankful when God gives us what we want. We want to be thankful that God Almighty, the Lord of the universe, loves and cares enough about, to receive our prayer, to hear our prayers, listen to our prayers and to answer them whether the answer is “Yes”, or “Not yet”, or “No, I have a better plan”.
The first reading in the Gospel today seemed to present to us two situations where people get what they want. Naaman in the first reading, follows the instructions of the prophet Elisha, plunges in the Jordan seven times, and he is cleansed of his leprosy, and he gives thanks. And then, of course, the well-known story of the ten lepers crying out to Jesus for healing. They receive healing on their way to the priests and just one comes back with gratitude. These and maybe other passages in the Scriptures may lead us to think that if we just do it fine, we would get the things that we're asking for every time. But the reality is, God is always working for our the good, no matter what the answers to our prayers might be. God is always working for our good, and not for our destruction.
You may know the story of Blessed Solanas Casey; he was a Capuchin Franciscan in the 20th century. I think he spent most of his life in Detroit and there are many interesting things about Solanas Casey. One of the things that he used to say was, “Thank God ahead of time.” Thank God ahead of time. And I don't think that that was just some little quirky think like, "Oh, if you say a prayer, and then add a little thanks to it, and you will get what you wanted.” God does not come to be manipulated in such a way. But he probably realized that we should be thankful to God, no matter what the answer to our prayers is. Be thankful that God does hear us and the answer us knowing that God is always working for our good.
It makes me think again of my niece, Aleana. I know I have shared about her before. When she was about age ten, she had a cancer, very serious cancer, a rare cancer and of course we prayed and prayed and prayed. We begged God to heal her, and she died. So, to look back on that and to just suggest that we should have been thankful to God instead of being disappointed seems like a little insensitive or crass or does not quite seem right. I am still trying to process through that even after all those years. But, even in the situation like that, families are invited to trust in God. That God always acts for our good and He does answer our prayers in ways that sometimes don't make sense to us. But in the end, it turns out that He was acting for our good. It is hard to accept.
In both the first reading and the Gospel, the Word tells us that there is a higher value than just the healing that is granted. There's a higher value and that is faith and the relationship with God. At the end of the account in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus says to the ex-leper, “Your faith has saved you.” Your faith has saved you. Interesting, how when these lepers approached Jesus, they had faith that He would heal them and Jesus doesn't say, “Be healed.” He does not lay His hands on them and heal them in that moment. He tells them, “Go show yourselves to the priests.” Going and showing yourself to the priests would be the action that taken by someone who has been cleansed. So, if they were cleansed, they would go to the priests who declares them clean and therefore fit for entrance into worship. But these ten, without even being cleansed yet, follow Jesus' instruction to go show themselves to the priest. So, they step out in faith; they have faith, and that's the moral to the story.
It's about faith. It's about having faith in God, trusting in God and in this particular case, yes, they are cleansed. What is most important is that they have an experience of God’s goodness and they grow in their faith and love of God. Likewise, in the story of Naaman, you might think that the most important verse in that passage is, “His flesh became again like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean of his leprosy.” But the most important verse in this passage is where Naaman says, "I will no longer offer holocaust for a sacrifice to any other God, except the Lord.” He comes to believe in the true and living God. That is what the scene is all about. That is what this passage is about.
I pray that all of us have the grace in our prayers when we are asking God for graces, blessings, asking God for particular things, that we would we be grateful, that we would thank God ahead of time simply for hearing us and answering our prayers – whatever the answer might be. And that we would realize that whatever the answer is, it is meant to lead us not farther from God, but closer, always closer.
Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 5, 2025
When we get to the end, and when we come in from spending our life working in the Lord's vineyard, we will not be entitled to take our place at the Lord's table. We will depend completely and solely on God's mercy. We may say, “We are unprofitable servants, we have done what we were obliged to do.” The Gospel shows us that that we are entitled to nothing. We are entitled to nothing. We should not think that we are something special simply because we did our job. “We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.” Actually, I am not sure that I can honestly say that. How have I done what I was obliged to do? I can think of many times I have fallen short. Many times, I have deliberately chosen not to do what I ought to do. So how can I stand before the Lord and say, “I've done all that I was obliged to do?” When we get to that moment, we will rely on God's mercy. And His mercy alone.
But what are we obliged to do as disciples of Jesus? Many of us learned early on what the obligations of Catholic religion were. We sum these up in the Precepts of the Catholic Church, right? Go to Mass every Sunday and Holy Days; fast and abstain on prescribed days; go to Confession at least annually; receive Communion at least annually during the Easter season; and offer material support to the Church. These are the Precepts of the Church, they represent a minimum for a Catholic life, maintaining, sustaining a spiritual life.
It reminds me a little bit of learning to do things when we were kids. Our parents teach us: “Here is how we make pancakes,” or “Here is how you fix a flat tire on a bicycle." “Here is how you write a check.” “Here is you write a letter.” “Here is how you run a lawnmower.” Maybe we were sort of taught: “Here is how you do religion. You go to church on Sundays, you say your prayers every day, you give a little money to the church and to the poor.” You try to be a good, honest, and kind person. I am not here to say that that is wrong, but I say, it's a good start. That is not the apex of living a Christian life, saying, "Well, I did the bare minimum.”
Are there not other obligations in the Christian life? Think about the teachings of the Lord Jesus. He said: “Forgive. Take up your cross. Deny yourself.” He said: “Love one another as I have loved you. Turn the other cheek.” Give to the poor. Set your hand to the plow, do not look back. Go and make disciples.” Are these not obligations of the Christian life? Jesus said, “If you want to be my disciple, do these things.” Can we really say we do all those things? I look at my own life and say, ‘well, I will give it a shot, I hope it is my best shot,’ but I've fallen short a lot.
The trouble is when we don't allow our faith to permeate all the areas of our life. We allow God into some parts and in other parts we say, ‘Thank you, but I'm going to maintain control here. I want to be in charge.’ The Apostles come to Jesus, and they say, “Increase our faith.” Increase our faith. Faith ought to be the guiding force of our life. It is the lens through which we see everything, through which we perceive the world around us, the events that happen in the circumstances of life. And it is not just one part of among many other parts.
Faith is central; faith permeates everything. When we look at relationships, how would we relate with other people? Does our faith always guide us in those relationships? Maybe it is someone who has harmed us or hurt us or offended us. Someone who we disagree with. When I look at that person do I say to myself, “My faith governs the way that I engage with that person,” or do I allow my emotions to guide me instead? What about the way to make decisions at work, or in my business dealings? Does my faith come into play there? What do I spend my money on? Does my faith impact that? Yes. How do I spend my time? Raising the children, watching grandkids, does my faith come into that? Or sometimes do you say, “Well, I kind of have to have to set my faith aside when the grandkids come over.” Or when I am at a family reunion. It is unfortunate that religion falls into that category of ‘things that we are not supposed to talk about.” I can go on about for a long time with that, I suppose. What about the way I suffer? The way I deal with new trials in life? Does my faith provide the firm bedrock for dealing with those trials? What about the media we consume? The way we vote? Politics? Does faith permeate all of that? Or is faith allowed in some parts, but not all parts of our life? Do we carry on our life according to a well-formed conscience, bathed in a life of faith?
There was a seminarian some time ago who was smart, athletic, devout, relatable, seemed like he had everything going for him and people would say, "Oh, he is just going to make a great priest!” Well, after Christmas break one year, he didn't come back to the seminary and the other seminarians asked one of the priests in charge, “What happened to so and so? He left the seminary. What happened?” The priest responded, "He never made the interior move.” He never made the interior move. You can do all the studies, ace the courses, do all these sorts of things. We can say all kinds of prayers. But what about the interior move? There has to be that interior move. I think about our young people, teens, younger, in our parish, we teach them how many persons are in the Holy Trinity. We teach them how many sacraments there are in the Church. We catechize; we give them all kinds and the teachings of the church, but I ask myself, will them make the interior move before they go off to college and are on their own and will have to decide whether they pursue a life of faith? I consider number of people who are interested in becoming Catholic, joining the church. Beyond being convinced by the truth of the Church's teaching or feeling a sense of community or fellowship, are they making the interior move in such a way that will sustain them in the practice of a faith until the end of their life?
The same question can be asked for all of us, even if we been Catholic for many, many long years - have we made the interior move? Are we making the interior move? Are we embracing that life of ongoing conversion, opening up every dimension of our life to our faith allowing our relationships with God into every place?
We don’t do a perfect job in all of that. None of us is perfect. And you know, I'm not here to discourage you or you know to give a depressing kind of homily. No. There is good news in today's words, right? The Lord speaks to you through prophet in the first reading. “The vision still has its time.” Our journey is not over yet. It is not too late. We have until our last breath to give ourselves completely over to God. Well, why wait? Why wait until the last breath? Why not do it today? Invite Our Lord into those different parts of our life where we have not invited Him or we can identify some sort of resistance to Him. The Lord says there is still time. His vision of our holiness, our growth in our relationship with Him; our growth in virtue, goodness, there is still time.
Saint Paul writes to Timothy: “I remind you to stir into flame the gift of God that you have through the imposition of my hands.” Well, there is our answer, isn’t it? “Stir into flame, allow the Lord to stir into flame the gifts He has given to us. The gift of the Holy Spirit dwelling in our soul.” Let us not sort of keep that flame over here, but let the Lord pour the gas on it, you know, let it burn, let it erupt in us in a great, higher love for Him.
The Eucharist can accomplish all of this in us when we receive this Sacrament orderly. When we receive this Sacrament knowing what we are doing, attentive to what we are doing. Not with a sense of entitlement. But with humility, with reverence, with focus, humbly recognizing the body and blood of the Lord. Conforming ourselves, conforming our eyes to His plan for us. This Sacrament has the power to change our whole life and transform.
We don't want to get to the end and merely say, “We are unprofitable servants. We have done what we were obliged to do.” We want to meet the Lord face to face and say, “Lord, I lived my life in friendship with you. I spent my life; my life burned with the fire of faith.”

Twenty Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 28, 2025
People want to say that because God loves them, they are assured of eternal life in heaven. I disagree. Jesus disagrees. To be honest, never, not once in the Gospels or anywhere else in Divine Revelation is it stated that the fact of God’s love for us guarantees that we will enter into eternal life. The love of God for us, the mercy of God toward us, the goodness of God is the basis of our hope for eternal life. But on its own, it doesn't guarantee that we enter into everlasting happiness.
We've been working our way through the Gospel of St. Luke this whole liturgical year and St. Luke very much wants his reader or his audience to know the infinite love and mercy of God. So many of his parables of Jesus, so much what we hear in Luke is him communicating this fact: That God's love is unconditional, it is unlimited, it is available. But Luke’s message is not that the fact that God loves you means that you will automatically go to heaven. No, the fact of God’s love demands a response. When we come face to face with that divine love, when we are, we convinced that the love of God, as the Scriptures reveal it is true and real, that elicits from us a response of love – that is how it is supposed to work anyway. Right?
When we're face to face with someone who loves us infinitely, we can’t just say, “Well, that's just great! I guess our relationship is really good.” You who are married out there know that that's not how it goes. You can't just say, “Well, my spouse loves me and so our marriage is healthy and strong.” When you realize that your spouse loves you, that elicits a response to you. You say, "Wow, this person loves me so much that makes me want to love them better, too.” And so it is in our relationship as the Church, with the Lord Jesus. We think of the Church as His bride. But God has that kind of relationship with to show ys His love. He wants to elicit a response of love from us.
And if you look at the Gospels, I mean for the last several Sundays, and we look at Luke, you see I think, that there this communication of the infinite love of God and there's also this other side of the coin, if you want to put it that way, that the Lord wants something from us. As I said last Sunday, it is not that He wants to extract some sort of productivity from us. He doesn't just want to see what we can do with the talents that we have been given. He wants to live our lives as a response to His love. To live our lives as an expression of our love for Him.
And that love needs to be expressed in so many different ways. In today's Gospel we see that the Lord wants us to express that love in our care of those who are in need, those who are suffering, those who are poor, those who are abandoned or rejected. If we love God, we are supposed to care for those brothers and sisters of ours. Our care for them is an expression of the love we have for God. I spoke last Sunday about a stewardship, right? Not just what do we do with the time, talent and treasure God has entrusted to us – what about the grace of Baptism and all the wonderful graces that we have received? Our good stewardship is not just a duty incumbent upon us. It is actually an expression our love for God when we see how God loves us. I know we can be a steward of these good gifts as an expression of my love for God.
Other things like our own personal prayer life, not just a duty – ‘oh, well, time to sit down and do my prayers today’ – but we pray out of love for God and as an expression of our desires to be a deeper friendship with God and open our heart's more to the outpouring of His grace. Participation in the life of the parish, building up the life of the parish each in our own way that is part of the light of this church.
Evangelization is another element ins our expression that God’s love elicits from us. Pope St. Paul VI almost fifty years ago wrote in an encyclical, “That the person who has been evangelized goes on to evangelize others. Here lies the test of truth, the touchstone of evangelization. It is unthinkable that a person should accept the Word and give himself to the Kingdom without becoming a person who bears witness to it and proclaims it in turn.” It is the same dynamic. It just doesn't make sense to receive so much from God and not to have something well up from within us wanting to give back something in love. And not just this little category, this little category, this little category. It is like all the all the dimensions and aspects of our lives - in all of that, we can make it an expression of our love for God in the face of the love God grants which is so pure and strong and powerful, and immeasurable.
You may remember the traditional hymn, “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” usually sung in Lent. The final stanza of that hymn has these lyrics:
Were the whole Realm of Nature mine,
That were a Present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my Soul, my Life, my All.
You know, if I possess everything in the world and offer that to God, that would not be enough. God wants me. He wants you. He wants your whole heart. You might say, “God gives us infinite love, and I cannot give infinite love back to God?” He is not demanding that. He doesn’t demand perfection; He invites a totality and gift from us. He wants us to go completely to Him; to hold nothing back.
You know, I think there's a danger when we get into this. You might look at other people and say, "Well, gosh, they go to Mass every day. They go to Adoration. They're doing this and that.” And you say, “It is all I am able to do is come to Mass on Sunday.” So, don't think of that another person say, "Oh, they must be so much holier than I, they must belong to God so much more than I do because they do all of these other things.” That is useless thinking. They might inspire you. But the question is, am I, in the circumstances of my life making the return to God that He wants me to give. Am I loving God in all that I can with all my heart and mind and soul and strength with the circumstances that is yours - working full time, raising a family, busy, busy, busy with all kinds of things. Do you love God above all? Are you loving God in the way you should? All of us can admit to the fact that we can do more to love God. We can love God more completely in the way we live. And that's all God wants from us. He wants us to serve Him with love. He's trying to elicit this response of love from us.
A couple of Sundays ago, it was the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, so we didn't hear the Gospel passage from Luke that day, we heard the Gospel of John. But the Gospel of Luke that day had we heard it would have been the Parable of the Lost Sheep, the Parable of the Lost Coin and the parable of the Prodigal Son. You remember the older son in the Parable. He did his duty; he remained in his father's house. He did everything he was supposed to do, but he resented his father because he had the attitude of a slave for his master. He didn't have the attitude of the love of the son. God doesn't want to have a slavish attitude. He wants us to realize the profundity of His love for us and to love Him with our whole heart in return.
It's so important every day - maybe the first thing in the morning – to reflect on God’s love for us. Reflect on the God’s infinite mercy, His goodness toward us. Because that sets the course for the rest of the day. When we have love at the beginning of our day, it awakeners something in us - this desire to live our day as a response to that love, to live our day as an expression of our love for Him.
We ask God for the grace this day, not only to live in the truth of His love for us but to find it in ourselves in everything we do and say and think, to make ourselves an offering in love to Him holding nothing back of giving Him all.
Twenty Fifth Sunday In Ordinary Time, September 22, 2025
The words spoken by the rich man to the dishonest steward at least in part will be spoken to each one of us. “Prepare a full account of your stewardship.” When we think about preparing an account of our stewardship, we ask ourselves a basic question: “What good have I done with the gifts that God has entrusted to me?” That is the basic question. What good have I done with the gifts that God has entrusted to me? And very often, we look at this question under the three headings of time, talent and treasure and say,” How have I spent my time, this gift of time, that God has given me? How have I used the talents and skills and abilities that God has given to me? Have I used them for the building up the Kingdom of God including my neighbor? Or do I tend to keep them to myself? And the question of treasure – all the material gifts that we have because of God’s goodness to us, His generosity, how will we use those for the building up of the Kingdom including our neighbor especially the neighborhood we live in.
Truly, these are good questions to look at. How do we use the time, and talent and treasure God has given us to do something good? Believe it or not, stewardship is not just an economic matter. Think about the Parable of the Talents, you remember there was a master who was going away and he entrusted one of his servants with five talents, another with two talents and another with one. And then when he returned, he expected them to have grown those talents that he had given them. But it is not just about what those servants could produce. In the end, the master doesn't just say, “Very fine, I will bank those five, those extra two, and you all can go on your way.” The master instead says, “Well done, good and faithful servant, come and share your master's joy." So, the moral there is that good stewardship does not just lead to an increase for economic terms. It is not that God is just looking for us to produce something but rather the good stewardship leads to a share in the life and the joy of God. Entering into the master's joy, you can picture the servant being brought into the home, sitting at the same table with the master, having a great feast. That is the result of what good stewardship. not just the multiplication of what has been given.
The other moral of this story in that Parable and today’s Parable is that poor stewardship leads to separation from the master. I believe in the Parable of the Talents, the servant that parable and given one talent has simply taken that one talent and buried it was sent out into the darkness where there was wailing and grinding of teeth. In today’s Gospel Parable, the rich man said to the steward, “You can no longer be my steward” because he's been exposed for being dishonest, and he was being removed.
So, it is not just that God is interested in getting a return of His investment in us. He has something more than that in mind when he gives us gifts. God gives us gifts so that we have something to give! He gives us gifts so that we have something to give. And in giving, our hearts are expanded in the saving love of God, and we expand in charity. So, when God gives gifts to us and not just time, talent and treasure, whatever gifts Gad has given to us, they are intended for the purpose of actually calling us to Himself because He gives the gifts so that we can give and we grow in love and our growth in love brings us closer to Him. It makes us more and more like Him.
So, if you go back to the original question, “What good have I done with the gifts God has entrusted to me,” we realize God has entrusted these great gifts for the purpose of saving us, for the purpose of increasing our hearts in charity and drawing us to Himself.
And so, it is good to examine our stewardship in terms of time, and talent, and treasure, but what about the grace of our Baptism? How can the steward in that gift? The gift of divine life poured into our soul? How attentive have we been to that gift? What about the grace of every Holy Communion? How can we steward it? What about the gift of the Sacrament of Penance, Reconciliation, Confession? How operative is that gift meditated on in our life? How have we stewarded that gift? Are we using the gifts that God has given to make provision for eternal life? There's a good question to ask.
Are we making provision for eternal life? How effective are we day in and day out over the course of a week to these matters that pertain to eternal life? Well, sometimes we think about them and sometimes we don’t. Isn't that honest truth? Yes. I heard ‘Yes.’ [laughter] Thank you. It is true, we are not always the best steward. We always have room to open the door of our heart. I am not saying that everyone has to be at church all day every day. We don't usually have the availability for that. But we can always open the doors of our hearts more widely to Christ.
And this is where in the reality of ‘community’ comes in. The Lord Jesus in His great, perfect wisdom, designed the Christian life to be lived in the context of community, not for each of us to be Lone Rangers, trying to do it on our own. I find that I become a better steward when my journey of faith is shared with others. I find that I do more poorly when I try to do it on my own; when I don't, when I don't share anything of my own spiritual journey with others. So, the parish community is actually designed to be a place where we obtain support that we need for being good stewards and walking in the path with Christ more faithfully. It's not just meant to be a place where we gather to worship and pray and come to the Lord, though it is all of those things. We have to see the Church as that. But there's also the dynamic of a community in which we find support for living the Christian life.
Even this dishonest steward in the parable, what happens when he gets canned? “What am I going to do?” He starts making connections with people. He realizes he is going to need to lean on these people for help when he can’t be in the rich man’s household anymore. I am not saying that we should follow that example per se, but connection is important. How do we invest and engage in the life of the parish?
Are there people in the parish who know what the spiritual journey is like? Not mine but all of ours. We ask ourselves that question, is there anyone who can share in the walk with me? Is there someone who can help me be accountable in terms of stewardship, in terms of my resolutions that I have made? Or is my spiritual life mostly just a private thing that I am doing individually? We would love to see the parish become more and more of place where this spiritual journey can be shared so that we can support one another on this walk. Of course, with God’s grace first and foremost.
“Prepare a full account of your stewardship.” For us today we are asked to look at the reality of stewardship in our life asking the question: “How do I use the time, talent and treasure God has given to me but also, the other gifts, His wonderful graces. The graces of Baptism, the graces of Holy Communion, the grace of Marriage for those who are married, the grace of Confession. How am I stewarding these skills, these graces? Am I making provision for eternal life? And am I am engaging in the life of the parish community?” Maybe each one of us has a role in building up the parish community so it becomes more and more a place where the journey of faith is shared.
Exultation of the Cross, Sunday, September 14, 2025
For hundreds of years now the body of scientific knowledge has been expanding, and expanding, and expanding and the modern mind likes to tell itself that it knows a lot. And we like to tell ourselves that we have a good idea of what to expect in a lot of cases. We understand laws of physics and so forth and we develop expectations, sometimes rightly, about what is going to happen. For example, if you are driving along the highway and you see a car coming in the opposite direction you have quite a bit of confidence that car is going to stay in its lane and not come over. Or if you do drop a stone, you don't expect it halfway to the ground to change directions. There are a lot of things that we expect; that we predict. There are a lot of things that we don't know. Well, people make predictions, but we don't necessarily put much stock in them. Speaking of stocks, maybe the stock market would be an example. It goes up and down and we sort of know not how. Or the weather. Even when we have predictions of what the weather will be like, no one really bets all their money on the weather forecast. So, we acknowledge that there are things we cannot predict but all the same we tend to make predictions or have expectations about how things are going to go.
This is the Vigil Mass for the feast of Exultation of the Cross. When you look at the Cross of Christ, I think you have to admit that things don't always go as predicted or as expected and the Cross is perhaps a prime example of the way that the Lord brings about these reversals of the way we expect things to go. I mean the cross was not like the stock market or weather. The cross had a very definite expected outcome: Death through a horrible process of torture and agony. No one, no one was waiting outside of Jesus’ tomb expecting that the stone would be rolled back. There were guards that were posted there but they were not expecting this stone to be rolled back. None of Jesus’ disciples were waiting there anticipating Resurrection. No one, no one expected it. They thought ‘we know how this goes. This is the end of it.’ But it wasn't because God’s logic is different. God brings about these reversals in situations like this. The most glorious is the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
But see then we gather not just to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and that glorious reversal of what was expected but we also acknowledge that we are incorporated into Christ; we are joined to Him. We are ‘marked’ with His Cross. Probably just about everyone here marked themselves with the cross as they came in or at least at the beginning of Mass when we started - the sign of the cross. We mark ourselves with that - not only as a reminder of our baptism – you are baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit - but we are saying we want that same dynamic to mark our lives. We want to experience the reversal of the Cross in our life in a real way, and everyone experiences the Cross in different ways.
I have heard it said this way: “Can you think about something in your life, some aspect of your life, that if you could, you would change it right now. You would get rid of it right now or you would change it; reverse it; put it away, whatever.” Everyone has something in their life that they look at with that kind of attitude. “If I could be free of that in a second, I would.” That is the Cross. That is the Cross. That is the thing in your life that in some way relates to this and when you cross yourself maybe we don't think of it as much as we should but when we cross ourselves we should be reminding ourselves that God knows about that cross in our life and He is using it for a grand reversal. It doesn't mean He is going to take it away. He didn't take the Cross away from Jesus. Jesus prayed. The Father did not take it away. That is not the kind of reversal that God always has in mind.
But instead, the Father sees a way through the Cross. He sees a path that leads through the Cross to the Resurrection and not just the Cross of Jesus, but He sees that cross that you are carrying and He knows how you feel about it. That you don't always want to carry it, and He hears, He knows that longing to just be freed of it; to be rid of it. And maybe for some He will lift that cross off the shoulder, but I suspect that for most, His intention is to lead us forward on the path that leads through that cross to the Resurrection.
This is a wonderful feast day in the Church. The Cross of Jesus Christ is so very present in our life as Catholics whether we're making the sign of the cross or you probably have a crucifix in your home or you have a crucifix on your rosary that is in your pocket. There is a crucifix at church all around us and Catholics we are met with the Cross. We exalt the Holy Cross. We celebrate that it is the means by which we were set free from sin, but today it is also a good opportunity for us to look at the cross and how it is manifest in our own life. What is our attitude toward it? And do we expect that it is always going to be that way? Sometimes that is our prediction - nothing is going to change. It has been like this for such a long time what are the chances that God is going to do something different with this?’ But today’s feast day announces to us loud and clear that the Father is in the business of reversing the shame of the Cross, the agony of the Cross, and transforming it into glory. Not only for Jesus but also for you and for me.
Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 7, 2025
If you have you ever seen the musical Fiddler on the Roof you may remember a playful scene where the husband, Tevye, keeps asking Golde, his wife, "Do you love me?” And in her first response is, “Do I what?” The lyrics are quite humorous, and fun to watch if you have the time. But I thought of that song a few months ago when in the Gospel at a weekday Mass where we heard the story of Jesus, appearing to the disciples after the Resurrection and asking Peter three times, “Do you love me?” Reflecting on today’s Gospel, I can hear the Lord asking that a question again. “Do you love me?” And I would just wonder if that might be the question that is the basis of our judgment when we meet Jesus face-to-face at the end of our journey here on earth.
We know all, all, have to give an account of our life. And there is very little doubt that what is laid out in that account will give a clear indication of what we valued in life, what we loved. And there Jesus will stand saying, "Do you love me? Or perhaps, “Have you loved me,” or “How have you loved me?” What poverty it would be to have look Jesus in the eye and say, "I love you, Lord, but not as much as I love this other thing, or not as much as I loved I myself.” In today's Gospel, Jesus demands to be our first love. Not the second or the third or somewhere down the line. He demands to be our first love and in strikingly strong language, He tells us that people come to Him without “hating father and mother, spouse, children, brothers, and sisters, and even their own wife, they cannot be his disciples.” Although we can get over that hurdle of the word ‘hate’ by assuming that Jesus used the word rhetorically, it's still a very strong statement. He didn't stumble over that word or accidentally use it. He chose it making a strong point. We should have a strong aversion loving anything more than we love Jesus or putting anything ahead of Him or before Him in our life. We should hate anything that gets in the way of our putting Jesus of absolutely first.
It might be good to make it distinction here. It's not always the ‘thing’ that is the problem. So, for example, if I have an inordinate love of rich food or my favorite music, and I prefer that or I seek that more than I see friendship with Christ, it is not the food and the music that are a problem. It's not their fault, right? It's my disordered attachment to those things. That's the problem. That's what I should hate. I should hate my disordered attachment to those things because that's what gets in the way of my putting Christ first. Likewise, if a person put children or grandchildren before Jesus, before we ask for person to start ‘hating’ them, you would ask that person to put their attachments in proper order. God first, and then others. St. Benedict said, “Christ is the center of all Christian life. The bond with Him takes precedence over all other bonds – familial, social. We can prefer nothing to Christ.” I thought that distinction was fairly obvious, but I just wanted to make that clear – not to hate a particular thing, but rather out attachment to that thing or that relationship.
So when it comes to these things that get in the way of our putting Jesus first in our life, I don't think we are merely talking about the occasional things that pop up - situations happen, like you are having a bad day and you go to the bank and you snap a little bit of the teller, instead of being patient and kind and loving as Jesus would have you be. That kind of thing may be an obstacle in the spiritual life, but it's not the kind of thing that you look at that you really need to worry about. It happened once. Rather, what we want to look at are the patterns in our life, patterns in our life that point to a mis prioritization of our desires and love. I will give you a few examples. Having a casual attitude about the Sunday Mass obligation. Another is being in an irregular relationship. Perhaps having a marital relationship with someone without the Church blessing on their union. Or being always geared for money; always money, money, money. Or having a complete, or nearly complete lack of self-denial. Always saying ‘yes’ to every urge, every impulse, every desire that we can experience and never saying ‘no.’ Maybe it is a strong habit of self-preference where it always comes back to me, how I think about things and what I want. It could be the use of contraceptives or pornography, or turning to self-gratification, anything else that is contrary to God's design for human sexuality. It could be using other people for our own gain or advantage. It could be the habit of speaking ill of others. It could be a disproportionate interest in sports or other things. So, I think it could be a number of other things, obviously. But I don’t need to point out all of these things, just in the sense that, you know, there's a connection to sin there, but that they are all indicators - that these are patterns in our life. They're all indicators of something being out of order in our heart. They are indicators of places where the Lord is inviting us to look to Him first instead of something else. And Jesus is not in this Gospel saying, “If you don't think that you have what it takes, you should walk away now.” He's not saying, “Look, I am only taking the strongest of the strong. If you don't make the cut, might as well go home.” But I think He is telling us out we have to be serious about these things. We have to take a hard look at our life, make our good examination, and not just once, but on a regular basis to see how we are putting Christ first and what are those areas where we are not.
It is interesting in the Gospel the two examples or illustrations that Jesus gives about constructing a tower or the king marching into battle. He uses the phrase, "…first sit down. Which of you wishing to construct a tower do not first to sit down to calculate the cost. Or what king marching into battle would not first sit down and decide…” What is that “sitting down?” For us, perhaps it's our daily prayer. Because sitting down and not just rattling off a few Hail Mary’s but really taking a look at this issue in our life, the cost of discipleship. Taking stock of these different things in our life that are vying for our heart, grasping for our attention and our devotion, maybe recognizing that we don't always put Jesus first in absolutely everything. But then crying out to God asking for the grace to put Him first. And towards the end of the gospel, the king marches into battle finds that he doesn’t have the strength overcome his enemy. “While he is still far away, he will send a delegation to ask for peace terms.”
Perhaps that represents our crying out to God and asking for the grace to put him first. We might recognize, “I know I need to put you first Lord but help me. I am not walking away from being your disciple. I need your help Lord to put things in proper order in my life.” In those times of prayer where we have sat down and considered, maybe you will hear the voice of the Lord “Do you love me?” Perhaps he doesn’t sing but do you love me? Do you love you with your whole heart? Do you love me more than anything else? Will you put me first in your life? Will you be my disciple?
Twenty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 31, 2025
Sometimes I will be in the middle of talking to someone, and I come to the sudden realization that I've been talking way too much about myself. So, I like to say in that situation, “Well, enough about me, what do you think about me?” [laughter] Jesus gives us a good teaching about humility in today's Gospel, including those of famous words, “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” It is interesting to me that today's teaching of humility comes right on the heels of last Sunday’s exhortation to strive to enter through the narrow gate.
On my first consideration of the two topics side by side it seemed like there was a bit of a contradiction, perhaps. When I hear strive, “Strive to enter through the narrow gate for many will attempt to enter, but will not be strong enough,” my thought is ‘Hey, I’ve got it work hard to prove to God that I am worthy enough, that I am strong enough.’ That I qualify for eternal life, basically. Striving as the overall feeling or sense of becoming bigger, and stronger and greater, not so much of this sense of becoming smaller, weaker, or lower. But when Jesus spoke of being strong enough to enter through the narrow gate, He was talking about being strong in the things that matter to God. Not strong in self-reliance, self-sufficiency, self-determination, self-righteousness, the esteem of other people. Most of us come into the world with plenty of that to start out with we don’t have to strive to increase those. Rather, the striving is not so much about building ourselves up in those kinds of things, as clearing our heart of those.
Clearing our heart of self-reliance, and self-sufficiency, self-focus, self-righteousness, and dependence on the esteem of other people and all the rest. The result of striving is not that we get to the point where we can look at ourselves and say, "Yeah, we are pretty good.” The result is not that we become great in that sense, but that we become little or perhaps, that we acknowledge that and even embrace our littleness for what it is, the capacity of God.
I have told you before about what Jesus said to St. Angela of Foligno. He said, “You will make to yourself a capacity, and I will make myself a torrent.” In other words, you make space in your heart for me, and I will fill it to overflowing. That is what we want. That is what we strive for - to empty ourselves of all these different kinds of attachments, especially to self - to make love in space for God to come in and to fill us. There is no contradiction in the end between humility and striving – unless we are striving for the wrong thing. But if we are striving in the spiritual life and growing in our humility, and we are coming to an ever-clearer realization of our own limitations, our own inability to save ourselves and our absolute dependence on God for everything. Everything.
Striving doesn't lead to rejecting and alienating us in our littleness. It leads to accepting and embracing that poverty as the very arena where God wants to come in and accomplish His purposes in us. Striving for humility may seem like an uphill battle. I can't say this of everyone, but I can say this about myself, but as we get older, we tend to get a little more set in our own ways, and we become less tolerant of anything that doesn't fit with our own ways. We can become more attached to our own agendas, our own ways instead of becoming free of those, and detached. Also, our culture highly values self-sufficiency and self-reliance. And it is practically in our DNA inherent in all of human nature and pride comes right along with it. It's all too easy for us to always be asserting ourselves and inserting ourselves and certain situations, maybe from where we don’t belong or elevating ourselves over other people. It might especially be an uphill battle for those who struggle with perfectionism where perhaps the goal is to say, “I'm good. I have got it made. Thanks Lord, I appreciate you, but no need for your call here. I've made it to perfection.” I have probably shared this before but a priest said to me, "Isn’t it a shame when you've got perfectionism, but you don't have the skill to back up?” So true, so true.
We can't just expect that humility is going plop into our lap. It's not in our nature for that to happen. We have to work on it. We have to open our hearts to the grace of God to help us grow in humility. I don't know who it was that said this, but I thought it is a good saying: “Humility is not about thinking less of yourself in terms of like hating yourself, rejecting yourself and all of that but thinking of yourself, less. Not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less. So, in thinking of other people, one of the ways we have, one of the pieces of wisdom we have from the Saints, is that the way to grow in virtue is to combat the opposing vice and the way to combat vices is to practice the golden virtues. It is not just a matter of going before the Lord and saying, “Lord, help me to grow in humility.” We also want to practice combatting pride. Combating that movement in ourselves that exalts ourselves and elevates ourselves.
What if we got in the practice each day of waking up in the morning and saying “Who would come to me today? How can I do some good for them? Who am I likely to meet today and how can I build them up? How can I help? How can I acknowledge, or will I acknowledge in the other the good that I see? Becoming more outward oriented is part of growing in humility. We are not always thinking first of ourselves but of God and of others. And I think one of the best ways we grow in humility is by receiving Holy Communion worthily and attentively. This great Sacrament in which God Himself has become so humble, He is intrinsically humble, but He humbles Himself to feed us with His whole body and blood, the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Receiving that Sacrament of such immense humility must also help us to grow in humility ourselves. In the end, Jesus' words are true that “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 24, 2025
My dad's older brother George was a Jesuit priest for about ten years and then he not only left the priesthood he actually left the church altogether and began calling himself an atheist. I think for the rest of his life he seemed to harbor some resentment toward the Church. When I was ordained to the priesthood, he sent me a card that I thought was a little snarky. I don't remember every word that he wrote in the card, but I remember that he wrote “Enjoy your new avocation.” In other words, “Have fun with your new hobby.” I took offense. Here I had just finished five years of seminary, laid down my life on the floor of the Cathedral offering myself for Christ and His church and Uncle George was treating it like I was taking up skeet shooting or pottery or something. May he rest in peace.
After eighteen years in the priesthood, I still think his jab was a little rude, but I realize that it is not impossible for the priesthood to become something of a pastime. A priest can begin to treat his ministry like a job, a career or something apart from who he is, and the life God has given him. To tell you the truth, the same can be said about all of us as Christians. Our discipleship can become something of a hobby; something we tend to when we have time; something we truly want to be present in our life and yet something that is in some way distinct from our identity. It can become something auxiliary to us; something on top of who we are. We can come to think of the practice of our faith as something very important to us but not of the essence of who we are, something absolutely necessary.
In the Gospel someone asked Jesus, “Lord will only a few people be saved?” Who knows what made the person ask this question? Maybe the person thought he was already part of the ‘in crowd’ - one of those who would be saved, and he was asking for other people. Perhaps he was looking out to the rest of the world saying, “What do you think about those people over there? Do you think they are going to make it?” A lot of people even today even in the Catholic Church have something of a preoccupation with the question of whether someone else is going to be saved and don’t get me wrong, we care very, very, very much about the salvation of other people. But none of us will ever have enough information to make that judgment from where we stand so I think there are better ways to spend our time.
Maybe this person in the Gospel was honestly just asking, “Lord what are my odds for getting into heaven? What are the odds that I could be saved?” And if the answer comes along ‘very few’ or if the Lord responded and said ‘Don’t count on it’ or something like that, the person would take a fresh look at his life, I am sure. Jesus does answer the question. He doesn't say, “Oh, I assure you that those others over there? They are out of luck.” He doesn't point to the others at all. So perhaps that is not what the person was asking a question about. And Jesus doesn't say to them, “You've got it made. You are in. Don't worry.” He answers with a commandment, an exhortation. An imperative: “Strive! Strive.” He says, “Strive to enter through the narrow gate for many I tell you will attempt to enter but will not be strong enough.”
Striving whether in the in the priesthood or in the Christian life can't be a part time thing, can it? If we are striving for something we don’t just strive when we have time for it – we are constantly committed. We are going after something. We are searching for it. Striving speaks of something serious; something weighty. It is not something to be terrified of. Jesus isn't threatening with these words, but it would seem based on what He is saying here that salvation is not cheap.
Salvation is a ‘free’ gift. Perhaps we could say it is free but not cheap. It costs us something to receive the gift that is freely given. That may seem counterintuitive. It costs us something to receive the gift that is freely given. The gift of the gift does not depend on us – it doesn’t depend on our work, on our performance. The gift is freely given but from our perspective it takes something in order to receive it. And that is the striving. That is the striving to enter through the narrow gate. It is the opening of our hearts each day. It is the eager pursuit of friendship with God. It is the Christian life. It is the fullest living possible of the life of discipleship; it involves a commitment to prayer; the faithful service of our neighbor; the heartfelt worship of God consistently; it means death to sin; persevering in the struggle against sin. All the things that constitute the Christian life. They demand something of us. All of this demands something of us. Salvation is not cheap. We must strive and strive and strive.
Maybe there are some places in our life, some ways in which our Christian life, our spiritual life is sort of off to the side or we make some distinction between our spiritual life and the rest of life. It may be in the context of family, career, social life, leisure time. We tend sometimes to compartmentalize. We will say “I will tend to my faith now. But now I want to do something else.” It's not a question of making room, of making space in our life for God. It is not how everything in our life relates back to our life of faith, our relationship with God, because there isn’t any part of our life that God doesn’t want. He wants the whole thing. He wants the whole thing.
Strive! That is a powerful word. A powerful exhortation from the Lord in today's Gospel. It is spoken to each and every one of us. Maybe some of us are saying, “Lord, what am I supposed to do? What do you want me to do? How am I supposed to be spending my days and weeks?” Maybe sometimes we are saying, “Well, surely Lord you are not asking for something more from me?” I don’t know. I have a hard time looking at a crucifix and saying that. “Lord, surely you are not asking more of me?” He wants all. He wants all. How can we do it? Today the answer to that question is ‘strive.’ Give yourself to this journey of the Christian life. Do not hold anything back but ‘be
all in.’
Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 17, 2025
The Lord Jesus says in today's Gospel, “I have come to set the world on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing.” What does He mean? “I have come to set the earth on fire.” Isn’t that a strange thing to say? An interesting turn of phrase - “I have come to set the earth on fire.” I found a helpful footnote for this passage in the Didache Bible. It reads: "God offers us His love, mercy and salvation, and ardently desires that we accept and respond to these gifts. Although these gifts are offered freely and generously not all are willing to receive them. And thus, divisions will occur even within families, further evidence that Christ is a sign of contradiction.” It goes on to say, “In Scripture, fire symbolizes God's presence. His love. His judgment. divine purification and the power of the Holy Spirit to effect change within us. In this passage, the Word carries all of these meanings in various degrees” and then it references paragraph 696 of the Catechism.
So, fire, fire is God's presence, God's love, His judgment, divine purification, and the power of the Holy Spirit to effect change within us. This is the fire that Jesus came to set on the earth, and that He wishes were already blazing there. Now, of course, Jesus says these things before His passion and death and resurrection. So perhaps we can say, in this day and age, in the age of the Church, the fire is already on the earth, but I suspect He would still say that He would like to see it blazing a little bit more fully. But why does He not already see this fire blazing on the earth? It's not because of some failure on His part. It's not that He couldn't, as the Son of God, accomplish what He came to accomplish in setting His fire ablaze in the world. It is because our hearts are not completely, fully open, receiving this, this fire. And that can be for a number of different reasons - maybe it is neglect on our part, neglect of spiritual things, not prioritizing our relationship with God. Maybe it's just the reality of sin in our life, the struggle with sin. Trying to overcome these things that get in the way of the fuller version of a life of God in our soul. Maybe it's fear. We look at a figure like Jeremiah, who belonged completely to the Lord and say, ‘well, he was passed into a cistern and only by the grace of God rescued from death from that cistern.’ Or even the Lord Jesus Himself, who belonged absolutely to the Father and always did the Father's will. Look at what He suffered. Maybe we look at the prospect of really fully opening our hearts to the gift of the fire of God, and we say, that might cost me something. That could be painful. I might suffer because of that. Jesus Himself says, "It can bring division to families.” We don't want that. We shrink away from the prospect of division coming into our family. Or what persecution? What ridicule might we suffer if we truly, totally belong to God and allowed the fire of God's presence and love, His Holy Spirit, to govern us?
The responsorial psalm this past Wednesday had the refrain: “Blessed be God, who filled my soul with fire.” It's funny how after celebrating Mass year after year, I don’t remember ever hearing that refrain before, but it's wonderful. “Blessed be God who filled my soul with fire.” What if we could pray that every day? “Blessed be God, who filled my soul with fire.” I suspect we don't all wake up in the morning with that sentiment. “Blessed be God, who filled my soul with fire.” We don’t always feel that zeal, or that ardor, that sort of energy for the Lord. We're not always just falling over with the joy of Lord.
When I was in the seminary, I went through this hospital ministry training program, and at the end of that five-week period or whatever it was, the criticism that the supervisor leveled at me was ‘you are too even keeled.’ I thought that was a good thing! [laughter]. "No, you're just not expressive enough. Sometimes when you go into the hospital room with a patient, you have to do cry with them or whatever.”
Well, anyway, the point of what Jesus is saying is not that we have to publicly, outwardly full of energy, but the fire has to burn within at least. He's not saying you're going to put on some other kind of personality, that's not the way you are. But the fire must burn within. The fire must burn within. The fire, God's presence, His love, His judgment, divine purification, and the power of the Holy Spirit to affect change to within us.
So, just three simple reflections on today's Gospel. First is that we should remind ourselves each day we have already been given the gift of this fire. Any person who is Baptized has received the gift of the Holy Spirit. When we were baptized, God formed this gift, this gift of His fire, His presence, His life, into our soul. So, we already had it. It is a fact. So, that's a good thing to remind yourself of first thing in the morning – “I am baptized. I received the gift of the God in my soul.” Secondly, we can ask the Lord in His goodness to stir up this flame within us, to increase our ardor, increase our zeal, increase our love, increase our openness to receiving in greater and greater measure, the life of God. That our love for God would increase each day, and that it would truly become more and more the motivating and animating factor of our life especially in receiving Holy Communion. This gift of Jesus to us really should awaken something within us; awaken the response of love, pure and fuller love. So, we remind ourselves we have already received the gift, asking the Lord to stir up this gift, and then thirdly, flame, by its very nature, spreads when it is shared. Think about Easter, when we all stand individually holding our little tapers and the flame spreads from one, from the Easter Candle and spreads through the whole church until the church illuminated by that light. This is how this fire also spreads. We share our faith, we share with others about the impact of the fire of God in our own life, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the presence of God, His love and mercy, His judgment, divine purification and all the rest. What difference has that made in our life? And if we can share that, then the fire really begins to blaze more and more.
So, that’s three simple things. Remember you received the gift, asking the Lord to stir that flame more and more especially in the Eucharist, and then also sharing that flame. Jesus said, “I have come to set the earth on fire. How I wish it were already blazing.” And if we do these three simple things, then we are going to get closer and closer and closer to seeing that fire really spraying to the earth and enkindling the hearts of all peoples with divine love and the power of the Holy Spirit.
Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 10, 2025
Much earlier in my life, well before my seminary days, I briefly entertained the idea of becoming a professional musician, a concert pianist playing the piano for an audience. And looking back at that now, I find the idea amusing not just because I don't have that level of skill, but also because I can't imagine myself lasting very long as a concert pianist before I would have a nervous breakdown. There's a big difference between playing for enjoyment alone, or with a small group of friends, and playing for a crowd of strangers who have paid money to hear a flawless performance.
We behave differently when someone is watching our every move. When we have a ‘performance mentality,” we have to show the critics how good we are. Now, there's a flip side of the coin as well, as the old saying goes, “when the cat is away, the mice will play.” If we aren't aware of the presence of the critic or the one of who can deal out the consequences, we might try to get away with things. I remember, as a child, sometimes my folks would be out for the afternoon or the evening, and I was home alone. I would certainly try to get away with things that I wasn't supposed to do when they were not home. Watching TV- I wasn’t supposed to do that at home alone or getting into the sweets and things like that. I am not proud of that; I wish I had been virtuous enough to behave while they were gone the same way I behaved when they were home. Sometimes we try to get away with things and this isn't just for children either. There's a reason that buildings have surveillance cameras. We behave differently when someone is watching what we are doing.
In the Gospel today, we have the two different servants. The one who faithfully distributes the food at the proper time – the servant who is faithful to what his master has asked him to do. And the other servant who, while the master is delayed in returning, begins to beat the servants, and even drinking and get drunk because he senses that the master won't be coming anytime soon. Or maybe I can get away with some things.
I wonder if this principle applies to our spiritual life. The two principles actually. The performance mentality on the one had where we feel that we are on stage and God is the critic sitting in the back row, taking notes, demanding a flawless performance. So, we're scrambling, we're trying to do our best, trying to show God how good we are, and that we're good enough. Or the other extreme, not being aware that God is with us at all times and therefore, perhaps we're not as diligent in this struggle against sin. The lesson in today's Gospel is not that we should lean toward one or the other. Jesus does not encourage us to live in a life terrified of wrath of the Father; terrified that are not going to be good enough; terrified that we will be horribly punished if we choose badly or make some mistake. What father, among any of you, would delight in seeing his children terrified of making a mistake. No.
Of course, the Lord doesn't recommend the other extreme either. While the cat’s away, the mice will play. In the spiritual life, so to speak, the cat is never away. But the Lord God is not a cat waiting to pounce on a mouse. The Lord God is not the divine critic waiting for His children to slip up. God is a loving Father, who looks upon us as children with a great desire that we would flourish as human beings and we that we can grow in charity, grow in holiness, grow in goodness, grow in virtue.
And so, what we want to strive for is not that we would always be on alert that God is watching and criticizing us. We should always be alert that God our Father is looking upon us and looking for us to make a response of love. That our thoughts and words and deeds could be good, not out of fear, or certainly not merely out of fear. But that our thoughts and our deeds and our actions, our deeds and our words will be good as an expression of our love for our Father. Our true love for God, our desire to be glorify God; our desire to please the Lord in everything.
Perhaps today with this Gospel, we have an opportunity to reflect on the many areas of our spiritual life where we might, so to speak, try to get away with things because we are not aware of God's loving gaze upon us. How might our behavior change if we were more aware throughout the day of God's loving presence with us, God's loving gaze upon us. We might reflect on how it is that we even approach that question currently? Do we think of God as the Divine Critic, or as one who looks at us with a longing love.
The other conversation is that we have been entrusted with a stewardship that is ongoing, it is constant, steady.”Much will be much will be required if the person entrusted with much and still more demanded of the person entrusted with the more”. It's not just in certain times when we pray, when we are at Mass, when we're thinking about God, not just in those moments are we called to be good stewards, but at all times. May God give us the grace to be more of His eye upon us, not to stir up fear, but rather to awaken in us a deeper desire to live with the glory of God who loves us so much.
Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 3, 2025 Father David Kruse
We enjoy so many more freedoms than any other place in the world. I am talking about personal freedom. What does it mean to have the ability to make our own decisions, our own choices? What do we do with this? Because the culture is telling us something very powerful about our freedom.
About 100 years ago in France, just outside of Paris, there was a young philosopher who developed a theory. And his theory was this: “That my radical freedom as an individual comes before who I am.” And he said it this way: “Existence, my existence, my freedom, my existence, precedes my essence.” My existence, my freedom comes before my identity, what is meant by this, in his philosophy, in the book that he wrote, is that “I determine what I become; I am so radically free, that is one thing over my existence about being a human being, I am so radically free that I determine who I become. I create my own identity. Who are you to tell me what I should do and what I shouldn’t do? I get to decide that. There is no one that's going to tell me how to live my life. I determine how I am going to live my life and who I am going to become in the process.” And that radical philosophy was developed by a man by the name of Jean Paul Sarte.
And that philosophy, friends, has become the dominant influence in our culture. Do you know what he said was an obstacle to his philosophy of radical freedom? Existence precedes essence. I determine my own identity. I determine who I am going to become. Do you know who he said was the greatest obstacle? It wasn’t the state. It wasn’t a political establishment, and it wasn't even the Church. It was God Himself. God was the primary obstacle to living out my freedom. Because he said, “If God exists, I can’t be free. But I am free, so therefore God doesn’t exist.” That is how he reasoned things. By the way, if you haven’t figured it out by now, he was really wrong.
But I illustrate this point because the philosophy that underpins pretty much all of Western culture these days has become the main way of thinking, especially in younger generations, and we see crop up in the last five to ten years, especially with all of the identity movements. “I identify as a cat, and so you treat me as a cat because I have determined that's who I am.” Or “I am a boy, and I have determined that I am a girl; or I am a girl and have determined I am a boy.” I dictate my own identity. I am able to decide who I am. What I decide is what I become.” That's a direct line from Sarte.
So, what does Scripture say? What does the Biblical world view say about our freedom. We are free, for sure. But God has chosen us first. We haven't chosen our own identity first. He's chosen us. At a certain point in time, He has willed you into existence. At the very moment of your conception, He created your soul, an immaterial soul that cannot be created through natural biology. God intervened in your creation, and He keeps you in existence. Did you realize that if God for one single second, a split second, were to stop thinking about you, you cease to exist.
So, think about this. What keeps all of us alive? The laws of biology, right? What keeps the laws of biology working? All the laws of chemistry. What keeps the laws of chemistry working? The laws of physics. What keeps the laws of physics working? We have pretty much reached the bottom end of it. That's when we call God. God holds all of this up. And even if we were to discover some other layer of reality that keeps the laws of physics working, it cannot go on forever.
So, in philosophy we say you cannot have an infinitely regression. An infinite cause of things without a first cause, otherwise, nothing exists. You have to have a first cause at some point, and we call that ‘Person” the Three Persons. We call that which keeps everything else in existence – keeps the laws of physics in existence, which keeps the laws of chemistry in existence, which keeps the laws of biology, which keeps you in existence. That is done by God. So, if He were to stop thinking about you, if you were to figuratively take His hands away, you would cease to exist. That is how much God knows you.
He's always with you. He's chosen you first and has given you an identity. You are His beloved sons and daughters. You are his beloved children. We are His beloved children. That's our identity, and He has given us freedom with this identity to use. And here is the key because Sarte would say our freedom is freedom from anything that can possess us. Freedom from anything that might infringe on our freedom. “Freedom from” is what Sarte would say, and we would say, ‘Freedom for.” God has given us freedom so that we will make decisions that lead us to live a life the way He wants us to live and therefore find happiness.
So, our freedom is meant to be used for something: Toward the salvation of our soul. For Heaven. For walking on a path through this life that leads us home to Heaven. That is what freedom is meant to be used for, and God gives us boundaries, and He gives us rules – the Ten Commandments. He gives us the Church as a good Mother, not as a bad Mother, but as a good mother, to help us choose well.
I leave you with this image. GK Chesterton wrote a famous book called Orthodoxy and, in his book, he gave an image to really reinforce this point about God, and about why He gives us the Commandments, why He gives us a law, why He gives us miracles. GK Chesterton said that there was an island out in the middle of the rough seas, out of the middle of the ocean, raging seas all around this island, and on the side is a big hill, and on the top of this hill was a grassy knoll. There was a wall that surrounded it. Surrounded the grassy knoll. And on the grassy knoll were a group of children, and they were playing, and they were having great times, and they were running around and throwing the ball and being free as children are free, right? So, one day, somebody came and said, "Why are you putting a wall around these children? That is so oppressive. Tear down that wall!” And they tore down the wall. And a short while later, they came back, and they found all the children huddled in the center of the grassy knoll out of fear for being able to run freely and fall over the side of the hill.
The idea, friends, is that God gives us boundaries – He builds a wall saying this is how I want human beings to act. Don't steal, don’t lie. Don't covet, don't kill, etcetera. Worship your Creator, this is the way I want you to witness, and this is the wall I give you. And within that boundary, play! Be completely free, be yourself, and you are free to do whatever you want within these boundaries. And these boundaries are there to keep you safe.
So, friends, I have all of this with you because it actually is related to our readings, not just today, but everything in the Gospels. If we get this point right, and we realize, hey, I am meant for something. I have freedom. Yeah, I can say, I am free to choose whatever I want in my life. But you are meant to use this gift for something wonderful, and that is to live a life where we are chained toward Heaven, and we are walking toward Heaven. And we are meant to use these gifts that we have of our identity as God’s beloved children. The gift of freedom that we have to choose well that leads to happiness - for one thing friends and for one thing only - so that you make it home. That's it. So that we make it home and there everything will be fixed. We will have eternal happiness and all of this, these difficult years of that we have experienced so many of us have experienced will be just distant memories.
Friends, that is where our treasure is meant to be, and our sights, the sight of our mind and the sight of our heart, is meant to focus on, not just when we come to Mass, not just when we're here praying, but every single day of our lives. Make God your primary focus, use your freedom well, and all will fall into place.
Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 27, 2025
In the way of praying, we all pray asking God to give us different things. We may be asking God to give us healing. We may be asking God to send employment our way. We might be asking God to give us protection from fire or good test results, or for peace in our family, or consolation in time of grief and loss. We might be asking God to help us in a situation of material need. But also, non-material needs. We ask for wisdom. We ask God to give us courage, patience; we ask God to give us forgiveness, and so many other things.
Perhaps this dynamic deepens and develops a little bit when we find ourselves asking God to give others things more than we ask for ourselves. “Lord, bring peace to those nations that are at war. Give protection and safety to persecuted Christians. Help those who are alone, or in hospitals or nursing homes, those who are homebound, those who are suffering. We pray that God will grant to others what they need.”
But then the dynamic of prayer also deepens when we realize prayer is not just about getting something, but that we go to prayer with the intention of giving something to God. We pray in order to give God praise or to give adoration, to give God glory, to give God thanks. We offer to God in our prayer, our devotion, our actions, offering of love. We offer obedience. We offer our works, our joys, our sufferings each day. We offer with our whole heart and sometimes we pray, and we do not ask for a single thing, but simply go to offer to God our heart, to present ourselves to God as a gift. A gift in response to what God has already given to us in an expression of our love to Him and in our gratitude.
The Lord God has a desire for us in prayer that is deeper even than that of forgiving. At the end of today's Gospel, Jesus says, “If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?" So, you say, well, you can say, I am not asking to get the Holy Spirit. But the gift of the Holy Spirit is orientated toward something that is right up on par with God’s desire for us and that is union. God is the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit works within us to draw us into deeper and deeper union with God. Closeness to God, conformity to the Lord Jesus in thoughts, in word and deed. The Lord draws us into prayer, not just to give us something or to receive something from us, He draws us into prayer to bind us to Himself, to conform our minds and our hearts to Him, to His mind, to His heart, to His will.
So, the more we pray, the less the getting and the giving matters and the more and more what matters is our conformity to Him. Our desire for God’s will for our life and the whole world – the lives of all people. So, we can ask the question, why pray in an abstract kind of way and sort of get an abstract answer but it also has to come home to us in a vision, where we ask the question of ourselves, why do we pray, why do I pray? Why am I praying right now when I go and sit in the chapel or when I am out walking and praying. Why am I praying? Am I stuck on just asking God for things? I am always asking if I can get this or that. You know, it’s not a bad thing, but my idea is that Lord wants something more.
If I find that when I am always praying asking God for something, might I begin to turn toward offering God something in my heart even more than I ask to receive something? And even beyond those dynamics of asking for and offering, in the hungry reality of my prayer, I realize that God really desires for me union through prayer. The conformity of my will to His.
Some years ago in a homily, I mentioned that the purpose of prayer is not to change God's mind so that He will give us what we need or want, usually ‘want.’ But rather that our hearts would be changed through prayer in order to be able to accept joyfully and gratefully whatever it is that God wills for us. How much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit? How much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him? We want the gift of the Holy Spirit. We want the transformation of our hearts according to the heart of Christ. We want greater and greater conformity to the Lord Jesus, greater and greater conformity to the will of God.
Today in the celebration of Baptism, the majority of you who are here were baptized remember that when we were baptized in our Masses, we receive this gift of the Holy Spirit and it is the beginning of transformation according to the image of Christ. And as we momentarily move into baptism of Silas, we pray for that outpouring of the Holy Spirit on him. Recognizing that what God is doing in him, bringing him new life, drawing him to Himself, God is also doing in each one of us. He wants to do to each one of us. Very much through our prayers each day.
May we have the grace to pray, not just for the things that we need, and not just even to offer ourselves to God but to also to recognize that the Lord is goodness and love is really drawing us into union with Himself.
Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 20, 2025
This well-known Gospel passage is not primarily about choosing how you spend your time, whether in prayer or work or some other activity. Jesus is not pitting prayer against work. Sometimes this message has been used to argue that Jesus is promoting the contemplative life over a life of action. But then the Martha’s in this room always object. They say, “If we just sat around praying all day, nothing would ever get done.’ And okay, they have a point. And although prayer and contemplation are certainly essential to the Christian life, Jesus did indeed send His disciples out into the world to work, to work for the building of the kingdom of God, and Jesus Himself worked. So, prayer and work or action do not mean to be considered as enemies.
Maybe the question is not about how we spend our time exactly. Maybe ‘choosing the better part’ is not necessarily choosing contemplation over action or choosing action over contemplation. Maybe that better part is available to us no matter whether we are working or praying or doing some other activity. And actually, I think we know this intuitively. If we're in the midst of a time of prayer, we know that we can choose to go along with moments of daydreaming or distraction, or we can choose the better part and bring ourselves back to focusing on the Lord. We know that if we're in the midst of a time of work or activity, we can choose to be present and mindful of God, which is the better part, or we can choose in some way to set it aside and say, ‘God, I'm going to do this my own way.’ Kind of like taking the Lord and putting Him on a shelf for a little bit. ‘I love you, Lord, but right now I have to take care of this other thing. So, you just be over there. And if you would be quiet, I wouldn't mind.”
Jesus says in John 15, "Abide in me, and I in you.” Abide in me, and I in you. Choosing the better part means that no matter what we're doing, whether praying or working or doing some other activity, we abide in Jesus. We remain in Him. We live from that place of the union with Him. It means we don't set Jesus aside in any way, but remain in Him, abide in Him, and be present to Him.
In the Gospel, Mary is fully present to Jesus. And I think the fact that she is not working in that moment is not really the point. It is not a critical part of this account. She is present. She is sitting at the feet of Jesus listening to him. Her sister, Martha, is busy with the serving but apparently, while she is working, she's not focusing on serving out of love - love for Jesus and love for her sister. She seems to be focused on herself, and she is focused on the unfairness of having to do all the work herself without having any help from her sister.
How might the conversation have gone differently had Martha remained present to Jesus in her heart even while she was working? She was mindful that she was doing this work out of love. I suspect things may have gone differently. To abide in Jesus, to remain in Jesus, is to choose the better part. And it requires a lot of practice because we know, I think, the temptation, when we have other things to do is to set Jesus aside and we create this division between our spiritual life and the rest of life. But Jesus actually wants us to remain in Him no matter what we are doing. And there are many ways we can work on that. We can take up maybe different devotions that can be prayed while we're working or doing other things. We can have sacred music playing in the background or something while we're doing other things. We can just simply try to remind ourselves more and more frequently that the Lord is with us, the unseen guest in every conversation, or at every meal, in every place we go, that He is there, He is present. Even just remembering that He is present helps us to be present to Him. And of course, this Sacraments are a tremendous gift in helping us to abide in Jesus to remain in Him. The sacrament of Reconciliation, Confession, helps us to return to Him perhaps after we have wandered a bit. After we recognize we haven't always been abiding in Him. Of course, the gift of the Holy Eucharist is Jesus' gift of abiding with us in which He invites us also to abide in Him in a special way. Even spending time with Him in Adoration, whether the host is exposed on the altar or reposed in the Tabernacle or receiving Jesus in the Eucharist, there is that beautiful intimate invitation: “Abide in me, and I abide in you.”
It is good to reflect on how in the living of our mission of life, we abide in the Lord. For where are those places in life where we tend towards setting Jesus aside? Have we created somehow a dichotomy in our mind or in our living between spiritual life and the rest of life? Can we bring those together and abiding in Jesus, choose the better part.
Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 13, 2025
There are a lot of people who move to this area with the explicit intention of getting away from having neighbors. There's nothing wrong with enjoying solitude. Peace and quiet is “A-okay.” You know we don't have to always be caught up in a flurry of activity with a bunch of other people. But if the attitude is “I just don't want to have to deal with other people,” it is not very compatible with being a Christian. And we have to guard against that kind of movement of the heart. For the Commandment is to love our neighbor, not despise or avoid them, and love of neighbor is non-negotiable. It is not ‘take or leave it,’ or ‘if you can, fit it in and that's great.’ Love of neighbor is an indispensable part of the Christian life. Like the scholar of the Law in today’s Gospel, Christian’s today are still asking themselves the question: "Who is my neighbor? For whom am I responsible? For whom am I supposed to care?”
We tend, I think, sometimes to sort of draw a circle in the ground around us, and properly speaking, keep the neighbors on the inside of that circle because everyone outside of the circle is not my problem. Or not my concern. So, I will take care of the people that are inside my circle, but the others, they are not welcome. It is interesting because people take a different approach to this separation. Some will say, “Well, inside of that circle of course are my family, my children, my brothers and sisters, my grandchildren, my parents, perhaps. Of course, I have the responsibility to take care of them; they are certainly my neighbor – I will associate with them and I don’t mind associating with them. But I am not going to talk to that person banging on the street or who has the cardboard sign. I am not going to go out and associate with people that aren't close to me or who I don't know, a stranger. I am not responsible, I can't be responsible for everyone, after all. You can't be expected to care for everyone in the world.” And then there are others who approach it this way. They say: “Well, I will be happy to send the check to Zimbabwe, send the check to Feed the Hungry. I will be happy to donate to a mission that is providing healthcare for those in can't afford it in Third World countries and all of that. But I am not going to talk to my brother-in-law! That guy, he crossed me one too many times. Or the woman across the street, or someone whose politics oppose mine. Or ‘fill in’ the blank.”
We tend to think of ‘neighbor’ as someone we have a particular affiliation with - family, coworker, a physical neighbor, someone who has common interests, even if we don't know them, they are ‘on our team’, so to speak. Maybe we think of the neighbor as someone who's easy to be around, someone we are comfortable with, someone who doesn't ask too much of us. But the parable in the Gospel today does not indicate that there was any prior connection for affiliation between the Samaritan and the robber’s victim. They were strangers. They were strangers. And yet, the Samaritan cared. So, the Lord Jesus invites us to expand our circle. Maybe not to draw that circle quite so solidly or firmly in the ground around us. It has something to do with the way that we perceive other people.
Look at the way the Samaritan perceived the robber's victim. By the way, the robber's victim represents us. The robber's victim does not principally represent that someone we are called to serve. We are the robbers' victim. We are the ones who are broken, and wounded, and sinful, and poor, and weak, lying on the side of the road. And the good Samaritan is Jesus who comes to our help. Not because of our deserving it or earning it, but out of complete compassion and love for us. Jesus comes. He is the Samaritan. He yields and strengthens and saves us. So, He must look at us as being worth saving. And that's how we're invited to look at others.
The Commandment is: Love your neighbor as yourself. That does not mean love your neighbor the same amount, so to speak, as you love yourself. It is something deeper than that. It speaks of a certain kind of union that we have with other people. Certainly, we are united in the body of Christ – we are all baptized, we have a certain connection to one another. We belong to one another; we belong to the same body. But even beyond that, we belong to the human family. So, I look upon every other person then, as somehow, even if in a small way, I look upon every other person as an extension of myself. And so, when I encounter a neighbor, when I encounter another human being, I care for them as I would care for myself. We belong to each other. Even if we are total strangers, we belong to each other. We have responsibility for each other. That's a new way of looking at things, perhaps. But it seems to be the way that the Samaritan looks upon the robber's victim. The priest and the Levite see the robber's victim and cross to the other side: “Not my problem. I do not know that person. I better not get involved here.” But the Samaritan sees the wounded man and perhaps part of all of this is the recognition that we're not just supposed to look out and see who is my neighbor, but realize that other people are also looking to us and asking the question, “Is that my neighbor?” “Is that person going to treat me the way the good Samaritan treated the robber's victim?”
So today, we might ask for the grace to see everyone who crosses our path as a neighbor that we might have a greater sense of care and responsibility for each other, not pushing others away, ignoring others, but ask that God with soften the hardness of our hearts that we might follow the example of Jesus the Good Samaritan, and lay down our life for others, so that they may live.
Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 6, 2025
I find myself as time goes on loving the Church more and more. It's not because of all of the beautiful structures, the beautiful churches I've seen, or because of the beautiful music, liturgy, and the tradition of the Church, but for the love of God that inspires all of those, and so much else. And also, just coming to know the people of God, not only in their gratefulness, but in every, in all of the moments of life - their devotion, their faithfulness, their perseverance, also their dreams and struggles and the weaknesses, all that goes together to make a Christian life. I have a priest friend who jokingly says, "I love the faith. It's the faithful I can't stand."
And sometimes people do want to just have that relationship with God with no regard for the Church. There are many who regard the Church with sort of an attitude of tolerance at best. They put up with these other people, but the main thing is just that they have their own relationship with God. There are some who despise the Church, perhaps out of misunderstanding, perhaps out of a sense of self-righteousness. A judgment that everyone else in the Church is somehow off base. Some despise the structures or the hierarchy of the Church and the leaders. Some despise their fellow lay people. They don't like this or that thing about the Church. Sometimes people stand in judgment of the Church or reject Her for the imperfections of Her members.
But we have got to love the Church. We've got to love the Church. Because we cannot despise what Jesus loves so dearly. Jesus has taken the Church to Himself, united the Church to Himself. The Church is His Body; the Church is his Bride. The Church is His Beloved. So, we must love the Church - warts and all. We must love the Church.
I mentioned a couple of Sundays ago when we see Jerusalem mentioned in Scriptures, especially in the Old Testament, Jerusalem is a prefigurement of the Church. So, what if we read again todays first reading with that in mind?
“Rejoice with the Church and be glad because of her, all you who love her; exalt, exalt, with her, all you who were mourning over her!” What if I regard the Church really as a beloved mother who nourishes us like a mother nourishes her child? Comforts her child. As nurslings, you shall be carried her arms and fondled in her lap; as a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; in the Church, you shall find your comfort.”
Do we rejoice in the Church? How do we love the Church? Do we regard the Church truly as our mother? The trouble, I think, with standing judgment of the Church or despising the Church, or just tolerating the church, or we being leery of the Church - I'm not saying we should be uncritical - but if we have this attitude toward the Church, it's very easy then to stay at the margin of the Church. To stay at the edge, kind of looking in and saying “Well, I really don’t want to be fully associated with those sinners.” No. Or if I don't want to be associated with those who don't think the same way and so forth and so on. We can easily put ourselves at the edge of the Church instead of making us the heart of the Church. And we want to be in the heart of the Church and to share the mission of the Church.
In the Gospel we hear about these seventy-two whom Jesus sends in ahead of Him to prepare His way to announce His coming. They must have something more than a personal relationship to Jesus to be able to go at out and to announce Jesus, and to get people, to help them to prepare their hearts, to receive Him, that they would love them too. They came back rejoicing. They're participating in the mission of Jesus to save the world. If we are not in the heart of the Church, if we find ourselves on the periphery of the margin of the Church, we are not very likely to participate in that mission. Going out and preparing the way for the Lord and preaching the Gospel and making Him known.
We have to love the Church. We have to love the Church and be in the heart of the Church. What is our attitude today toward the Church, to Her structures, Her traditions, Her members, Her leaders? Do we struggle with the temptation to be at the edge or the margin or are we ready to really be in the heart of the Church to recognize that we each have some sort of role in the announcement of the Gospel. Jesus says, “The harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few.” The harvest truly is abundant today - right now in our neighborhood, in our towns, in our county. The harvest is rich, the harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few.
God give us the grace today to love the Church more and more; loving Christ and His Church, His body, and may we have the grace to recognize that we, like the seventy-two, are sent into the world to bring all people to Christ.
Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, June 30, 2025
Summary:
We hear different things about the weaknesses of these saints, and that's fine. It is good to mention that, too, I guess, but it seems like the message that is communicated then is: “Well, if these great Saints have a past as sinners, then there is hope for all of us, too. Maybe we are not disqualified from Heaven because we are still broken and weak and sinful.”
But that isn’t the question. There is no question of whether we qualified to be disciples of Jesus. Everyone is qualified to be a disciple of Jesus. The question is are we open to God? Are we open? Before God there are only two ways we can be. There are only two ways – open or closed. So, you see in the lives of Saint Peter and Saint Paul perhaps not just a onetime changing from closed to open. Even though Saint Paul’s conversion was a profoundly transformative event, we also see in it an ongoing journey of conversion. Saint Peter didn’t just get it right one time and keep on getting it right. As we all do, these things stumble – they have to struggle to become more and more open to God and less and less closed.
This is the journey of conversion. This is the description of pretty much all the Saints. They are open to God. Open to God. And for those who underwent conversion over the course of their lives, it was a journey of becoming more and more open. I think in our own human experience it is fairly easy for us to identify these certain moments whether we are open to God or are closed. For example, even in our thought life. How do I think of my neighbor? Am I open to God in that, or am I closed to God in that? How do I think of my family? Maybe some of the members of my family that I am in a struggle with? How do I think of public figures? How do I think of the Church? How do I think of myself even? Am I open to God in the way I think of myself? How do I think of God?
In our words, how do we speak of our neighbor? How do we speak of our family members? How do we speak of public figures? What is our conversation like? It doesn't mean we are always explicitly speaking about God, we need to have conversations about other things as well, obviously. But in any conversations, are we open God? Is the conversation open to God or is it closed? In our deeds, again, are we open to God? We know whether we are serving God or serving ourselves. We know whether we are open or closed.
I think this is actually something of a useful tool for us to stow in our spiritual toolbox. Just a simple question. Am I open or closed? What if in the course of a conversation that little question flickered through our mind? Do I come open to God in this? Even in the privacy of our home, in the quiet of prayer, perhaps, or thinking about different things, the thought comes mind - am I open to God right now, or am I closed. Could I be more open?
Honestly, we all have to answer the question about openness and or being closed. I am saying that sometimes we are open and sometimes we're closed. None of us is perfectly open all the time. I don't think any of us is all the way closed all the time, either. Here you are, celebrating Mass – that is an example of openness. It is one thing to have a life of prayer, to do good works and to love your families and serve God the way that you love those around you. So, there's clearly openness. But we want to become more and more open to praying each day:
Jesus, I open my heart to you. Help me to open my heart, teach me to open my heart. Give me the grace to open my heart. Help me to receive whatever it is that you wish to pour out to me. Help me not to be closed, help me not to be stuck inside my own thoughts and reasoning, my own understanding. Help me not to be closed in on myself and what I want and my agendas. But help me to be open to you O God.
Just this simple question: Am I open or am I closed can help us so much in our spiritual life. And through the intersession of Saints.
The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, June 22, 2025
Summary:
I am sure I have shared before about what a central role the Eucharist played in my vocation to priesthood, but also just in my own spiritual development as a young person. Jesus in the Eucharist captured my heart from the time I was just a little boy. The truth of Jesus' real presence in this Holy Sacrament entrusted itself on my soul in such a way that I simply accepted it as an undeniable fact. And I can’t really think of a time that ever fully doubted the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist and by God's grace, I hope to remain faithful all the days of my life.
But also, I found that through the Eucharist, God is always with me. You know, God is present everywhere, we know that by faith. But He is present in a very specific and special way in the Sacrament of Eucharist. And when I encounter Jesus in the Eucharist, I experience His abiding presence. He has made a promise to never abandon us. His promise “I am with you always.” And there's a sense there that He is always available to me. I can run to Him whenever I need him for whatever I want.
People ask me, don't you get lowly as a priest? I very seldom feel alone. I have the capacity for solitude, but I very seldom feel lonely. And even if those feelings creep up, I go straight to the Lord and I know that He is present, and He is there to give me His company and much consolation. The Sacrament of the Eucharist is the Sacrament of Divine love. In the Eucharist we have the very love of God Incarnate and meditating on that Mystery, receiving that Mystery in Holy Communion, reminds me of what I am called to as well. What we are all called to do - imitate the very love of Jesus Christ Himself, and in that Sacrament always pouring out the love of His heart for me, for all of us.
I can say there's a lot of different effects that the Eucharist has had on my life. One of them is that is ongoing is that I find I have a deeper desire to receive the Sacrament worthily. So, one of my greatest anxieties as a priest has been surrounding my participation in unworthy Holy Communions. Obviously, I distribute a lot of hosts. I mean, if I celebrated 10,000 Masses, I don't know how many Holy Communions I have given. And I worry sometimes, what will be my burden and responsibility for other people to receive Holy Communion worthily or not. Aside from situations where grave public scandal would result from my giving Communion to someone, I sort of settled on the reality or truth that the responsibility for ascertaining one’s worthiness to receive Holy Communion lies with the recipient, and not with me. I am not Padre Pio – I don’t read your soul. I learned recently that in the Coptic tradition, the priest, after washing his hands before the Eucharistic prayer, shakes his fingers out in front of the people to signify that he is not responsible for any unworthy Communions. The responsibility is yours to receive Holy Communion worthily. This is not to say, you just open up the flood gates and give Communion out willy nilly. No. The Sacrament is celebrated and received on God's terms, not on ours so we all have to have the humility to submit ourselves to what God has revealed concerning the Sacrament – through the Scriptures and through Tradition. We are supposed to conform ourselves to Christ, not expect Him to conform Himself to our plans.
In this sacred life, today, with a special feast, perhaps we can simply ask the Lord to help us place Him more and more at the center, especially to place His Eucharistic presence more solidly, more totally, at the center of our life so that when we receive the Eucharistic it is folded into the fabric of our being, and we couldn't imagine living without that. Lord Jesus, help us to open our hearts to You and to receive You with total love and to allow You to accomplish Your purposes in our life.
List of Services
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Holy Trinity Sunday, June 15, 2025
Summary:
All these years, priests, including me, have been approaching the pulpit on Trinity Sunday to take a swing and giving some explanation of the mystery of the Trinity. We swing and we swing, and we swing, and we always strike out. And no, three strikes and one out is not another analogy for the Trinity. But it's kind of a project that's doomed from the start. The Church does not provide Trinity Sunday for us so that the clergy can bring the faithful one step closer to figuring out the mystery of the Trinity. The clergy themselves don't have it figured out. So not much help in that process or attaining that goal. There is certainly much we can say about God, but we're deluding ourselves if we think that we're getting God figured out. God is God. God is not to be figured out. And that's what I want to talk about today. No shamrocks for you.
God is dynamic. God is living. God is constantly wanting to reveal more of Himself to us and to bring us into friendship with Him, into relationship with Him. As I said, the written word only goes so far. But in the person of Jesus Christ, we have the opportunity to know God fully. The more we grow in our relationship with Jesus, the more He reveals to us of the face and the heart of the Father. St. Paul writes, "No one knows what lies at the depths of God, but the Spirit of God.” We don't know what lies at the depths of God, but the Spirit will show us by bringing us into ever growing relationship with the Son, Jesus Christ.
So, Trinity Sunday is a great opportunity, I mean, we can continue to use our minds to try to understand more and more, but it's a good opportunity for us to be reminded. We have not grasped completely the mystery of God, but the Spirit urges us to keep seeking God's face. We want to know as we are fully known in heaven, as St. Paul says. So, we renew our resolve to seek the face of God in prayer, and in our growing relationship with Him, always being opened to allowing God to reveal to us His mystery, His heart.
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Pentecost Sunday, June 8 2025
Summary:
There's kind of a three-legged stool that could describe the Christian life where there are the foundational elements of the Christian life, especially as Catholics. The first leg is receiving the Sacraments - especially Holy Eucharist - and going to Confession also on a regular basis. The second leg of that is personal prayer. Daily, personal prayer. And the third leg of the stool is a life of virtue putting the above God into practice in our interactions with our families, our neighbors, and everyone we meet. The Sacraments, personal prayer, and virtue or charity. And I think if we are doing those three things, if those for three items or aspects are strong in our life, we have a strong foundation of life in the Spirit. We are going to Mass, participating in the worship of God. We are going to Confession on a regular basis, receiving that grace of God's mercy and forgiveness of our sins, and strengthening against future sins or what we must overcome - sinful habits. We are doing that.
So, on Pentecost, maybe something we can do then is pray “Come Holy Spirit, help me. Help me when I am doing these things. When I go to Mass; when I go to Confession; when I am in personal prayer, when I am doing good deeds for others. Help me to have my heart in the right place so that I am opening that heart to a new outpouring of Divine Love.”
The Holy Spirit has all kinds of fruits in our lives. All kinds of fruits. In some, it brings the fruit of courage and boldness to go on when things seem impossible. The Holy Spirit bears the fruit of humility in our life. The Holy Spirit bears the fruit of peace in our life. The Holy Spirit brings a healing. The Holy Spirit brings patience; the Holy Spirit brings all kinds of different gifts and bears all kinds of different fruits. It is like rain that falls on all kinds of different fruit trees. That same rain produces more oranges, apples, pomegranates, and almonds. That same rain produces zucchinis, the pumpkins, and all kinds of different foods but it is the same rain. The same Holy Spirit falls into our hearts which produces all kinds of different fruits in us but not if we are closed.
So, every day, not just on Pentecost Sunday, we ask God to open our hearts so that we can receive a gift of the Holy Spirit and bear the fruits of the Spirit in great abundance for our sanctification and for the sanctification of the Church and our world.
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Ascension Sunday, June 1, 2025
Summary:
The Ascension of Jesus seems very much like a departure. A going away. It is where it looks like Jesus is receding into this distant background and in a way becoming absent. The first thing I would like to say is that the good Lord can never be absent. He can never be absent. Look to Psalm 139, for example, that says, "If I ascend to the heavens, you are there; if I lie down among the dead, you are there; If I take the wings of dawn and dwell beyond the sea, even there your hand guides me, your right hand holds me fast.” There is no place where God is not. So, objectively speaking, there is no time or place where God can be absent. And secondly, I want to point out that the Ascension is always connected with the gift of the Holy Spirit.
It is kind of an interesting, mysterious thing how we can be absolutely convinced intellectually that God is with us, that God is present, that God is never, ever, ever absent. And yet at the same time, subjectively feel, that He is not present at all, that he has withdrawn, or at least that He is silent. But God certainly is not the one at fault in that dynamic, is He? So, then if the Ascension is not about absence, but presence, my question is, how can we, as disciples of Jesus Christ, more continuously have the experience that God is with us, and that God is present to us and near to us?
There may be a variety of answers to that question - I just want to propose one and that is that by entering into worship more continuously, by entering into worship, we open ourselves to a more consistent experience of God with us.
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Sixth Sunday in Easter, May 25, 2025
Summary:
When I teach, I often say that Jesus parting gift to the world was not the Bible. He didn't go to His apostles before His ascension and hand them each copy of a bible and say, "Read this, this is going to guide you from here on out.” No, Jesus’ parting gift to the world was the Church. The Church. And the New Testament would later be a gift to the Church. But there was a time when the Church existed, and the New Testament did not. In the early days of the Church, there were no Gospels to read. There were no letters of St. Paul. There was no Book of Revelation or any letters of John or Peter, or any of the others that make up the New Testament today. There was a time when the Church lived, but there were no New Testament writings. They had the Old Testament still, of course, but their teachings of Jesus had not been committed to writing yet. So, when the question arose about how to live the Christian life, what could they do? They couldn't consult a New Testament that didn't exist.
But we have an example of this very situation in the first reading in the Acts of the Apostles, where some people went down to Antioch from Judea, and they were teaching that basically, if you wanted to be a disciple of Jesus, you have to accept and live by all of the Mosaic law as well. And this was a big dispute in the early Church. Basically, to become a disciple of Jesus, could you go straight from being a Gentile, or did you have to become a Jew first and then a Christian? And so, Paul and Barnabas go up to Jerusalem, to consult the apostles and the elders about this question. And of course, then the apostles and the elders send this letter back to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas, and they read it in the community. Amazingly, we have the text of this letter in which the bottom line is, as they say, ‘No, you don't have to accept all of the Mosaic Law.” Just follow these four principles with regard to that: abstain from meat sacrificed to idols, abstain from blood, abstain from meats of strangled animals, and abstain from unlawful marriage, and that will be fine.’ All of the Mosaic Law kind of condensed into these four little principles.
Again, our efforts as a parish at evangelization rest very much on our ability to articulate what makes our Church unique, special. All of this, all of that study, all that learning, all that understanding, helps us to keep His Word, to remain in His Word, to receive the Father's love, and to receive the gift of their Holy Spirit, making their dwelling Father, Son, and Holy Spirit within us. Pray that God give us an ever-deeper gratitude for the gift of our Church, the gift of that Word, that helps us to be effective in proclaiming that Word to the world.
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Fifth Sunday in Easter, May 18, 2025
Summary:
Wouldn't it be glorious if we as Catholics were known once again in today's world as we were in the early years for our love? If I overheard someone in the store talking about our parish, and they said, “How those Catholics love one another,” I would be absolutely elated! Ah, yes, we are on the right track. “How they love one another.” I do believe that in our parish we do more than just tolerate one another. Although, I think some parishioners do have this attitude toward other parishioners just sort of putting up with them. But I sincerely hope that by the grace of God, we can overcome whatever it is that would keep us at the level of mere coexistence. There are definitely people in our parish who model Christian lov3 very well, but I wonder if overall, our parish might be better described as friendly and loving. Friendly is good, of course. It is certainly a step up from tolerating each other or merely coexistence. But it's not yet where the Lord calls us to be - we need to move that needle away from just coexistence, beyond friendship to true Christian love.
What is that love like? The love of spouses? The love of spouses is a love that entails mutual self-gift. It is a man and a woman who give themselves completely to each other. And in that Sacrament, we have in a very powerful way, a visible manifestation of the love of Christ for the Church. But that's how He commands us to love, not just married people, but all people, whatever their vocation and whatever their circumstances in life. He calls us to love. He calls us to make us gift of self, a sincere and total gift of self, and in that giving of self, we find our deepest satisfaction and deepest happiness and deepest peace. That is how Jesus loves the Church. In a total, unrestricted, unreserved gift of self. “As I have loved you, as I have loved you,” my bride would say, "So you also should love one another in giving of yourselves for one another, laying down their lives in service, in humility, and in generosity.”
What is it that keeps the community merely at the level of friendly instead of going to the level of to the truly embodying Christian love? It is the failure to give the complete gift of self. It is the keeping of one’s heart closed to some degree. Perhaps we close our hearts because we are afraid. Maybe we have opened our hearts in the past, and we got burned, we got stung, we got betrayed. So, we don't want to open our heart anymore. We don't want to suffer that anymore. Maybe it's a general distrust of people. I mean it could be a lot of different things. Maybe it's just an overconcern for our own agenda and the things that we want, and we fear that opening hearts to others might bring too many demands on us that are significant. But Jesus says, “As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.” Is Jesus' heart in any way closed to us? Does He pull back anything of Himself from us? No. Not one bit.
In the sacred Sacrament of the Eucharist, we have a sublime opportunity to contemplate the love of God. And we will never plume the depths of that reality, that mystery. If we are contemplating the love of God, we will always find something new. If we say, “Oh, the love of God, I already thought about that. I already understand that.” No, we keep coming, especially in the Eucharist, this mystery of divine love, that we might believe, but also that we might, in imitation of that mystery of divine gift, of divine love, be better equipped to fulfill the Lord's command.
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Good Shepard Sunday, May 11, 2025
Summary:
- My greatest desire is that we as a community would glorify God; that we would glorify God in the manner of our life and in the way that we worship.
• I want to see the quality of our liturgical celebrations, especially the Mass, always improve. Always improve. This means that not only lectors and musicians, and altar servers, and priests, and sacristans and everyone who plays a particular role like that prepares diligently for the Mass, but that all of us, all of us together, enter really wholeheartedly, not partially or with any degree of apathy or anything like that, not half heartedly, that we would all enter wholeheartedly into each celebration of the sacred mysteries.
• But all of us ought to be saints in the making. Saints in the making in dealing and addressing the areas of sin in our life that need conversion and certainly availing ourselves of this sacrament of Reconciliation, Confession to purify our hearts so that we can glorify God and the Holy Spirit can truly flourish in our community.
• I dream of having a parish where everyone’s heart is on fire for the Lord, and that we're growing in purity of heart.
• My desire that we share life as a community and that our sense of family and mutual belonging is grounded in the lived experience of being loved by God, and being in real relationship with him; a real experiential relationship with God through the Lord Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit.
• I desire that our parish would be a place of healing. Ultimately that healing is what allows us to receive God’s love more fully, more deeply more fruitfully.
• My desire is that our parish be a place where vulnerability is reverenced and where sharing from the heart is normal, actually even comfortable.
• And we are not scared or afraid to open our heart to share what is going on in our life with someone else, because we know that it we will be received with charity, respected. We will not be betrayed or rejected.
• I desire that no one ever goes home from Mass wondering if anyone here actually cares about them.
• I desire that you, even as we are a community, would also become an agent for healing in the broader community around us.
• I would love to see our outreach increase.
• I would love to see that the Catholic Church be a major, major player in the improvement of conditions in our homes and surrounding area.
• I desire that we would proclaim the truth of Jesus Christ as the apostles and the disciples boldly proclaimed it in the early Church as we heard it in the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles.
• I desire that we would proclaim the Gospel with joy as witnesses of their resurrection; that we would demonstrate by our manner of living what it means to be transformed in the grace of God, especially in the Sacraments.
• I envision a vibrant dynamic Catholic community that doesn't limp along for lack of numbers, or lack of involvement, but one that bursting at the seams because not only Catholics want to come back, but more and more individuals who have never experienced life in the Church, see and witness life in the Church and want to be one of participated in it; want to share in it.
• I would love to see our particular parish right here be an agent for that [expansion of the Church] Being out there in the community, being that instrument that the Lord uses to bring more and more people to himself in His church.
• I desire that the same Spirit that animated the early Church would animate all of us. A Spirit that can compel us to go out and proclaim the Gospel, to announce Jesus risen from the dead, to continue celebrating the sacred mysteries, gathering together on the first day of the week, every first week, celebrating the breaking of the bread, receiving Jesus in the Holy Eucharist.
• I desire that that the same Spirit will animate all of us. And if it does, we will continue to see our parish grow.
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Third Sunday in Easter, May 4 2025
Summary: Father Kruse
Why are you here? You know, it's a question that I think we need to remind ourselves of often. Why do we do what we do? Why do we pray? Why do we come Church? Why involve our lives in all of this? Is it that we can have a social circle? That's part of it. Or is it more? What is the goal, in other words, friends, of the spiritual life? What is the goal of engaging in spiritual exercises? And, of course, coming to Church to being the most important. The goal is simply this, to repair what we once had, and what we all once had in our very first parents, which was a relationship that was in perfect communion with God, in union with God. He created us to share His love and His life with us. And we experience that as a human race only at the very beginning of our history.
And so now, we do what we do, we come to Church, we pray at home. We try to live a good life according to the way God wants us to live so that we can grow in that union with God, in that relationship with God. Friends, that is the key to a happy life. Are we going to be perfectly happy in this life? Of course not. Can we be reasonably happy in this life? Yes, of course. Can we experience joy and even peace while we suffer? Can we experience disappointment? Can we experience the brokenness of life? Yes, we can. Anchored in a great hope that one day, when we cross from this life to the next, we will experience perfect happiness. This is why we do what we do. We've got to have that underlying motivation and reason. Otherwise, it's really easy just to stop coming to Church, or to stop praying, like what's the point of it all?
What did winning a soccer game lead to change your life? Nothing. What did winning a basketball game do to improve the world? Nothing. What did the resurrection of Jesus Christ do to change your life and prove the world? Everything, friends!
So, my suggestion to you this week is to help you with this. So last Sunday, Divine Mercy Sunday, we read from John Chapter 20, and that was the reading that described the very first time Jesus appeared to the disciples on Easter Sunday. So, remember, in the upper room, they're hiding from fear of the Jews, and then Jesus appears to them. This is on Sunday after Good Friday. And He appears to them, He says, "Peace be with you." My recommendation is you take that passage of scripture and use it for your prayer time some this week.
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Divine Mercy Sunday, April 27, 2025
Summary:
But Divine Mercy Sunday which we celebrate today, announces to us and the Church and to the whole world that God does not treat us the way we treat other people. Divine Mercy Sunday announces to us that when God sees us in our human misery, whatever that is whatever that is – our addiction, our illness, our doubt, our confusion, our fear, our shame, our discouragement, our depression, our hopelessness, our feelings of abandonment - when God looks at us in our human misery, He suffers with us. He enters into our suffering with us. He doesn’t turn His back. His heart is moved for us. The very Latin word ‘misericordia’ meaning ‘mercy’ joins two words, ‘mercy’ and ‘heart.’ God opens His heart in our misery. He doesn’t reject or turn away from us or abandon us. He suffers with us. God very easily distinguishes between the person we are and the words and deeds and thoughts. He always loves the person. Yes, God hates sin. He doesn't want there to be sin in our life. He loves us. He loves us unconditionally and no matter what. He delights in us because we are His beloved children.
Everything changes in our life when we accept this truth. The deep truth of God’s mercy – the acceptance of us as we are. When He sees us even in our sin, He recognizes our suffering because of it. People come to confession because they are suffering, right? Sin brings suffering. God has mercy on us in our suffering. He will not reject us. He certainly does not withdraw from us in our time of suffering and in our misery that we experience in this life.
So, if there is one thing that we take from Divine Mercy Sunday celebration, I hope it is this: a deeper understanding of how God regards us. A deep appreciation of God’s infinite mercy for us. A deeper understanding of what that means in practical ways as we continue to struggle in this Valley of Tears. But if there is a second thing we can take away, I hope it would be this: that the Lord in His goodness invites us to regard others with mercy just as He regards us with mercy. That the Lord invites us to put on a new perspective when we look at our brothers and sisters. Not just to see their fault, their failing, their weakness, their brokenness, their sinfulness, but to see beyond it, deeper than that – to the person who is suffering and is in need of love. That might bring about a great revolution in our life. If we could look at that person who offends us with compassion.
When we celebrate the Eucharist, we are invited into a deep communion with our Lord, and he may just give us the grace to put on new eyes to receive that new perspective to see the outpouring of mercy from God and share it then with our neighbor.
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Easter Sunday, April 20, 2025
Summary:
Happy Easter! Our Lord Jesus Christ is truly risen. Risen from the dead. He has conquered sin and death and brought us new life. We must rejoice. We must rejoice! ‘Alleluia’ wells up from the deep belly of the Church on this day. So, rejoice. Alleluia.
Easter reminds us that Christ has conquered the grave so there is hope for each and every one of us. So, I encourage you in this Jubilee Easter to set aside these little bits of doubt, big bits of doubts, set aside everything that encumbers or hinders your relationship with God.
Jesus transformed the Cross however so that as it is no longer merely a symbol of death or failure or defeat, but it has become the very path for us to new life. It is a Jubilee. Get ready because the Lord, if you're willing, will come into your heart in a new way. He is going to stir things up in a new way.
We celebrated four baptisms last night. Four people, new to our community, just entering the Church, forgiven of their sins, born to new life. That grace of Baptism is stirred up in each one of us who are Baptized when we receive the body and blood of the Lord. The same life we receive in Baptism, we receive from the altar because it's the very life of Christ Himself. We may need to work on purifying our hearts to receive Him more and more worthily. Maybe if it has been a long time since we went to Confession, it would be good to go to Confession before receiving Holy Communion. For those who receive Holy Communion regularly, let the Lord purify our hearts through this beautiful sacrament of forgiveness. But receiving Holy Communion worthily in a new and divine light, the Easter spirit stirred when you receive Holy Communion. That mystery of the Cross and the resurrection comes into our very body, into our soul, into our life.
List of Services
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Holy Trinity Sunday, June 15, 2025
Summary:
All these years, priests, including me, have been approaching the pulpit on Trinity Sunday to take a swing and giving some explanation of the mystery of the Trinity. We swing and we swing, and we swing, and we always strike out. And no, three strikes and one out is not another analogy for the Trinity. But it's kind of a project that's doomed from the start. The Church does not provide Trinity Sunday for us so that the clergy can bring the faithful one step closer to figuring out the mystery of the Trinity. The clergy themselves don't have it figured out. So not much help in that process or attaining that goal. There is certainly much we can say about God, but we're deluding ourselves if we think that we're getting God figured out. God is God. God is not to be figured out. And that's what I want to talk about today. No shamrocks for you.
God is dynamic. God is living. God is constantly wanting to reveal more of Himself to us and to bring us into friendship with Him, into relationship with Him. As I said, the written word only goes so far. But in the person of Jesus Christ, we have the opportunity to know God fully. The more we grow in our relationship with Jesus, the more He reveals to us of the face and the heart of the Father. St. Paul writes, "No one knows what lies at the depths of God, but the Spirit of God.” We don't know what lies at the depths of God, but the Spirit will show us by bringing us into ever growing relationship with the Son, Jesus Christ.
So, Trinity Sunday is a great opportunity, I mean, we can continue to use our minds to try to understand more and more, but it's a good opportunity for us to be reminded. We have not grasped completely the mystery of God, but the Spirit urges us to keep seeking God's face. We want to know as we are fully known in heaven, as St. Paul says. So, we renew our resolve to seek the face of God in prayer, and in our growing relationship with Him, always being opened to allowing God to reveal to us His mystery, His heart.
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Pentecost Sunday, June 8 2025
Summary:
There's kind of a three-legged stool that could describe the Christian life where there are the foundational elements of the Christian life, especially as Catholics. The first leg is receiving the Sacraments - especially Holy Eucharist - and going to Confession also on a regular basis. The second leg of that is personal prayer. Daily, personal prayer. And the third leg of the stool is a life of virtue putting the above God into practice in our interactions with our families, our neighbors, and everyone we meet. The Sacraments, personal prayer, and virtue or charity. And I think if we are doing those three things, if those for three items or aspects are strong in our life, we have a strong foundation of life in the Spirit. We are going to Mass, participating in the worship of God. We are going to Confession on a regular basis, receiving that grace of God's mercy and forgiveness of our sins, and strengthening against future sins or what we must overcome - sinful habits. We are doing that.
So, on Pentecost, maybe something we can do then is pray “Come Holy Spirit, help me. Help me when I am doing these things. When I go to Mass; when I go to Confession; when I am in personal prayer, when I am doing good deeds for others. Help me to have my heart in the right place so that I am opening that heart to a new outpouring of Divine Love.”
The Holy Spirit has all kinds of fruits in our lives. All kinds of fruits. In some, it brings the fruit of courage and boldness to go on when things seem impossible. The Holy Spirit bears the fruit of humility in our life. The Holy Spirit bears the fruit of peace in our life. The Holy Spirit brings a healing. The Holy Spirit brings patience; the Holy Spirit brings all kinds of different gifts and bears all kinds of different fruits. It is like rain that falls on all kinds of different fruit trees. That same rain produces more oranges, apples, pomegranates, and almonds. That same rain produces zucchinis, the pumpkins, and all kinds of different foods but it is the same rain. The same Holy Spirit falls into our hearts which produces all kinds of different fruits in us but not if we are closed.
So, every day, not just on Pentecost Sunday, we ask God to open our hearts so that we can receive a gift of the Holy Spirit and bear the fruits of the Spirit in great abundance for our sanctification and for the sanctification of the Church and our world.
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Ascension Sunday, June 1, 2025
Summary:
The Ascension of Jesus seems very much like a departure. A going away. It is where it looks like Jesus is receding into this distant background and in a way becoming absent. The first thing I would like to say is that the good Lord can never be absent. He can never be absent. Look to Psalm 139, for example, that says, "If I ascend to the heavens, you are there; if I lie down among the dead, you are there; If I take the wings of dawn and dwell beyond the sea, even there your hand guides me, your right hand holds me fast.” There is no place where God is not. So, objectively speaking, there is no time or place where God can be absent. And secondly, I want to point out that the Ascension is always connected with the gift of the Holy Spirit.
It is kind of an interesting, mysterious thing how we can be absolutely convinced intellectually that God is with us, that God is present, that God is never, ever, ever absent. And yet at the same time, subjectively feel, that He is not present at all, that he has withdrawn, or at least that He is silent. But God certainly is not the one at fault in that dynamic, is He? So, then if the Ascension is not about absence, but presence, my question is, how can we, as disciples of Jesus Christ, more continuously have the experience that God is with us, and that God is present to us and near to us?
There may be a variety of answers to that question - I just want to propose one and that is that by entering into worship more continuously, by entering into worship, we open ourselves to a more consistent experience of God with us.
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Sixth Sunday in Easter, May 25, 2025
Summary:
When I teach, I often say that Jesus parting gift to the world was not the Bible. He didn't go to His apostles before His ascension and hand them each copy of a bible and say, "Read this, this is going to guide you from here on out.” No, Jesus’ parting gift to the world was the Church. The Church. And the New Testament would later be a gift to the Church. But there was a time when the Church existed, and the New Testament did not. In the early days of the Church, there were no Gospels to read. There were no letters of St. Paul. There was no Book of Revelation or any letters of John or Peter, or any of the others that make up the New Testament today. There was a time when the Church lived, but there were no New Testament writings. They had the Old Testament still, of course, but their teachings of Jesus had not been committed to writing yet. So, when the question arose about how to live the Christian life, what could they do? They couldn't consult a New Testament that didn't exist.
But we have an example of this very situation in the first reading in the Acts of the Apostles, where some people went down to Antioch from Judea, and they were teaching that basically, if you wanted to be a disciple of Jesus, you have to accept and live by all of the Mosaic law as well. And this was a big dispute in the early Church. Basically, to become a disciple of Jesus, could you go straight from being a Gentile, or did you have to become a Jew first and then a Christian? And so, Paul and Barnabas go up to Jerusalem, to consult the apostles and the elders about this question. And of course, then the apostles and the elders send this letter back to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas, and they read it in the community. Amazingly, we have the text of this letter in which the bottom line is, as they say, ‘No, you don't have to accept all of the Mosaic Law.” Just follow these four principles with regard to that: abstain from meat sacrificed to idols, abstain from blood, abstain from meats of strangled animals, and abstain from unlawful marriage, and that will be fine.’ All of the Mosaic Law kind of condensed into these four little principles.
Again, our efforts as a parish at evangelization rest very much on our ability to articulate what makes our Church unique, special. All of this, all of that study, all that learning, all that understanding, helps us to keep His Word, to remain in His Word, to receive the Father's love, and to receive the gift of their Holy Spirit, making their dwelling Father, Son, and Holy Spirit within us. Pray that God give us an ever-deeper gratitude for the gift of our Church, the gift of that Word, that helps us to be effective in proclaiming that Word to the world.
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Fifth Sunday in Easter, May 18, 2025
Summary:
Wouldn't it be glorious if we as Catholics were known once again in today's world as we were in the early years for our love? If I overheard someone in the store talking about our parish, and they said, “How those Catholics love one another,” I would be absolutely elated! Ah, yes, we are on the right track. “How they love one another.” I do believe that in our parish we do more than just tolerate one another. Although, I think some parishioners do have this attitude toward other parishioners just sort of putting up with them. But I sincerely hope that by the grace of God, we can overcome whatever it is that would keep us at the level of mere coexistence. There are definitely people in our parish who model Christian lov3 very well, but I wonder if overall, our parish might be better described as friendly and loving. Friendly is good, of course. It is certainly a step up from tolerating each other or merely coexistence. But it's not yet where the Lord calls us to be - we need to move that needle away from just coexistence, beyond friendship to true Christian love.
What is that love like? The love of spouses? The love of spouses is a love that entails mutual self-gift. It is a man and a woman who give themselves completely to each other. And in that Sacrament, we have in a very powerful way, a visible manifestation of the love of Christ for the Church. But that's how He commands us to love, not just married people, but all people, whatever their vocation and whatever their circumstances in life. He calls us to love. He calls us to make us gift of self, a sincere and total gift of self, and in that giving of self, we find our deepest satisfaction and deepest happiness and deepest peace. That is how Jesus loves the Church. In a total, unrestricted, unreserved gift of self. “As I have loved you, as I have loved you,” my bride would say, "So you also should love one another in giving of yourselves for one another, laying down their lives in service, in humility, and in generosity.”
What is it that keeps the community merely at the level of friendly instead of going to the level of to the truly embodying Christian love? It is the failure to give the complete gift of self. It is the keeping of one’s heart closed to some degree. Perhaps we close our hearts because we are afraid. Maybe we have opened our hearts in the past, and we got burned, we got stung, we got betrayed. So, we don't want to open our heart anymore. We don't want to suffer that anymore. Maybe it's a general distrust of people. I mean it could be a lot of different things. Maybe it's just an overconcern for our own agenda and the things that we want, and we fear that opening hearts to others might bring too many demands on us that are significant. But Jesus says, “As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.” Is Jesus' heart in any way closed to us? Does He pull back anything of Himself from us? No. Not one bit.
In the sacred Sacrament of the Eucharist, we have a sublime opportunity to contemplate the love of God. And we will never plume the depths of that reality, that mystery. If we are contemplating the love of God, we will always find something new. If we say, “Oh, the love of God, I already thought about that. I already understand that.” No, we keep coming, especially in the Eucharist, this mystery of divine love, that we might believe, but also that we might, in imitation of that mystery of divine gift, of divine love, be better equipped to fulfill the Lord's command.
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Good Shepard Sunday, May 11, 2025
Summary:
- My greatest desire is that we as a community would glorify God; that we would glorify God in the manner of our life and in the way that we worship.
• I want to see the quality of our liturgical celebrations, especially the Mass, always improve. Always improve. This means that not only lectors and musicians, and altar servers, and priests, and sacristans and everyone who plays a particular role like that prepares diligently for the Mass, but that all of us, all of us together, enter really wholeheartedly, not partially or with any degree of apathy or anything like that, not half heartedly, that we would all enter wholeheartedly into each celebration of the sacred mysteries.
• But all of us ought to be saints in the making. Saints in the making in dealing and addressing the areas of sin in our life that need conversion and certainly availing ourselves of this sacrament of Reconciliation, Confession to purify our hearts so that we can glorify God and the Holy Spirit can truly flourish in our community.
• I dream of having a parish where everyone’s heart is on fire for the Lord, and that we're growing in purity of heart.
• My desire that we share life as a community and that our sense of family and mutual belonging is grounded in the lived experience of being loved by God, and being in real relationship with him; a real experiential relationship with God through the Lord Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit.
• I desire that our parish would be a place of healing. Ultimately that healing is what allows us to receive God’s love more fully, more deeply more fruitfully.
• My desire is that our parish be a place where vulnerability is reverenced and where sharing from the heart is normal, actually even comfortable.
• And we are not scared or afraid to open our heart to share what is going on in our life with someone else, because we know that it we will be received with charity, respected. We will not be betrayed or rejected.
• I desire that no one ever goes home from Mass wondering if anyone here actually cares about them.
• I desire that you, even as we are a community, would also become an agent for healing in the broader community around us.
• I would love to see our outreach increase.
• I would love to see that the Catholic Church be a major, major player in the improvement of conditions in our homes and surrounding area.
• I desire that we would proclaim the truth of Jesus Christ as the apostles and the disciples boldly proclaimed it in the early Church as we heard it in the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles.
• I desire that we would proclaim the Gospel with joy as witnesses of their resurrection; that we would demonstrate by our manner of living what it means to be transformed in the grace of God, especially in the Sacraments.
• I envision a vibrant dynamic Catholic community that doesn't limp along for lack of numbers, or lack of involvement, but one that bursting at the seams because not only Catholics want to come back, but more and more individuals who have never experienced life in the Church, see and witness life in the Church and want to be one of participated in it; want to share in it.
• I would love to see our particular parish right here be an agent for that [expansion of the Church] Being out there in the community, being that instrument that the Lord uses to bring more and more people to himself in His church.
• I desire that the same Spirit that animated the early Church would animate all of us. A Spirit that can compel us to go out and proclaim the Gospel, to announce Jesus risen from the dead, to continue celebrating the sacred mysteries, gathering together on the first day of the week, every first week, celebrating the breaking of the bread, receiving Jesus in the Holy Eucharist.
• I desire that that the same Spirit will animate all of us. And if it does, we will continue to see our parish grow.
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Third Sunday in Easter, May 4 2025
Summary: Father Kruse
Why are you here? You know, it's a question that I think we need to remind ourselves of often. Why do we do what we do? Why do we pray? Why do we come Church? Why involve our lives in all of this? Is it that we can have a social circle? That's part of it. Or is it more? What is the goal, in other words, friends, of the spiritual life? What is the goal of engaging in spiritual exercises? And, of course, coming to Church to being the most important. The goal is simply this, to repair what we once had, and what we all once had in our very first parents, which was a relationship that was in perfect communion with God, in union with God. He created us to share His love and His life with us. And we experience that as a human race only at the very beginning of our history.
And so now, we do what we do, we come to Church, we pray at home. We try to live a good life according to the way God wants us to live so that we can grow in that union with God, in that relationship with God. Friends, that is the key to a happy life. Are we going to be perfectly happy in this life? Of course not. Can we be reasonably happy in this life? Yes, of course. Can we experience joy and even peace while we suffer? Can we experience disappointment? Can we experience the brokenness of life? Yes, we can. Anchored in a great hope that one day, when we cross from this life to the next, we will experience perfect happiness. This is why we do what we do. We've got to have that underlying motivation and reason. Otherwise, it's really easy just to stop coming to Church, or to stop praying, like what's the point of it all?
What did winning a soccer game lead to change your life? Nothing. What did winning a basketball game do to improve the world? Nothing. What did the resurrection of Jesus Christ do to change your life and prove the world? Everything, friends!
So, my suggestion to you this week is to help you with this. So last Sunday, Divine Mercy Sunday, we read from John Chapter 20, and that was the reading that described the very first time Jesus appeared to the disciples on Easter Sunday. So, remember, in the upper room, they're hiding from fear of the Jews, and then Jesus appears to them. This is on Sunday after Good Friday. And He appears to them, He says, "Peace be with you." My recommendation is you take that passage of scripture and use it for your prayer time some this week.
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Divine Mercy Sunday, April 27, 2025
Summary:
But Divine Mercy Sunday which we celebrate today, announces to us and the Church and to the whole world that God does not treat us the way we treat other people. Divine Mercy Sunday announces to us that when God sees us in our human misery, whatever that is whatever that is – our addiction, our illness, our doubt, our confusion, our fear, our shame, our discouragement, our depression, our hopelessness, our feelings of abandonment - when God looks at us in our human misery, He suffers with us. He enters into our suffering with us. He doesn’t turn His back. His heart is moved for us. The very Latin word ‘misericordia’ meaning ‘mercy’ joins two words, ‘mercy’ and ‘heart.’ God opens His heart in our misery. He doesn’t reject or turn away from us or abandon us. He suffers with us. God very easily distinguishes between the person we are and the words and deeds and thoughts. He always loves the person. Yes, God hates sin. He doesn't want there to be sin in our life. He loves us. He loves us unconditionally and no matter what. He delights in us because we are His beloved children.
Everything changes in our life when we accept this truth. The deep truth of God’s mercy – the acceptance of us as we are. When He sees us even in our sin, He recognizes our suffering because of it. People come to confession because they are suffering, right? Sin brings suffering. God has mercy on us in our suffering. He will not reject us. He certainly does not withdraw from us in our time of suffering and in our misery that we experience in this life.
So, if there is one thing that we take from Divine Mercy Sunday celebration, I hope it is this: a deeper understanding of how God regards us. A deep appreciation of God’s infinite mercy for us. A deeper understanding of what that means in practical ways as we continue to struggle in this Valley of Tears. But if there is a second thing we can take away, I hope it would be this: that the Lord in His goodness invites us to regard others with mercy just as He regards us with mercy. That the Lord invites us to put on a new perspective when we look at our brothers and sisters. Not just to see their fault, their failing, their weakness, their brokenness, their sinfulness, but to see beyond it, deeper than that – to the person who is suffering and is in need of love. That might bring about a great revolution in our life. If we could look at that person who offends us with compassion.
When we celebrate the Eucharist, we are invited into a deep communion with our Lord, and he may just give us the grace to put on new eyes to receive that new perspective to see the outpouring of mercy from God and share it then with our neighbor.
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Easter Sunday, April 20, 2025
Summary:
Happy Easter! Our Lord Jesus Christ is truly risen. Risen from the dead. He has conquered sin and death and brought us new life. We must rejoice. We must rejoice! ‘Alleluia’ wells up from the deep belly of the Church on this day. So, rejoice. Alleluia.
Easter reminds us that Christ has conquered the grave so there is hope for each and every one of us. So, I encourage you in this Jubilee Easter to set aside these little bits of doubt, big bits of doubts, set aside everything that encumbers or hinders your relationship with God.
Jesus transformed the Cross however so that as it is no longer merely a symbol of death or failure or defeat, but it has become the very path for us to new life. It is a Jubilee. Get ready because the Lord, if you're willing, will come into your heart in a new way. He is going to stir things up in a new way.
We celebrated four baptisms last night. Four people, new to our community, just entering the Church, forgiven of their sins, born to new life. That grace of Baptism is stirred up in each one of us who are Baptized when we receive the body and blood of the Lord. The same life we receive in Baptism, we receive from the altar because it's the very life of Christ Himself. We may need to work on purifying our hearts to receive Him more and more worthily. Maybe if it has been a long time since we went to Confession, it would be good to go to Confession before receiving Holy Communion. For those who receive Holy Communion regularly, let the Lord purify our hearts through this beautiful sacrament of forgiveness. But receiving Holy Communion worthily in a new and divine light, the Easter spirit stirred when you receive Holy Communion. That mystery of the Cross and the resurrection comes into our very body, into our soul, into our life.
List of Services
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Third Sunday In Advent, December 15, 2024
Summary:
It occurred to me recently that the Lord in a certain sense is aiming at us, not with malicious intent like a cat ready to pounce on his prey but the Lord is very attentive to us and has full intention of drawing near and drawing us closer to Him. In the season of Advent, we are trying to prepare our hearts in a special way, to receive the coming of the Lord and so part of that means turning to the Lord and seeing that the Lord is looking at us. Seeing that the Lord is looking at us with intention, not indifferent or as if the Lord is, you know, going around and every once in a while casts a glance in our direction. But to look to the Lord and to receive the gaze of the Father upon us is very, very important for us and to prepare ourselves to receive Him.
But it just strikes me that sometimes we may be like the cat with their back turned who is surprised to find that it is the object of another's attention. But truly we are always at the center of the Lord's attention. It is so easy in the spiritual life to set aside time for prayer and to enter into the gaze of God, to realize that God is gazing at us in that moment and then walk away from there and forget that we are still receiving the loving and merciful gaze of God. We may think that we have somehow moved out of that loving gaze, but no, that is not what happens. We simply become less aware of that gaze.
To turn, so to speak, to Him and recognize that He is looking at us with infinite, divine, love is something quite beautiful to experience and that is a wonderful way to prepare for the coming of the Lord at Christmas: simply to spend some extra time receiving the loving gaze of the Father through Jesus.
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Second Sunday in Advent, December 8, 2024
Summary:
So, friends what is it about our relationship with God that is the cornerstone and the key to healthy relationship with Him? This is the theme that we read all throughout Advent. We have in Brauch a prophet who is telling the Israelites in the midst of their captivity - here is a city and a nation that was taken captive out of Jerusalem in the year 500 or 600 BC, conquered by the Babylonians who killed a great number of the Israelites, took captive the ones that they wanted to keep and brought them into captivity into Babylon. And then Brauch the prophet is telling them when this is happening in their life that God will bring you back to Jerusalem. How in the world is that going to happen? The city was basically destroyed. God will be faithful and continue to love you and bring you back to Jerusalem. And God will come and dwell with you. Why should they believe that? This great tragedy just occurred in their life why should they believe the prophet that God would do something like that? Why should we believe that God will in fact through His son Jesus Christ come back in glory at the end of time and make all things right? Why should we believe that? Why should we take the words of Scripture that say that? Because of one word friends, trust.
Because we trust that God is faithful to His promises and that He is trustworthy and when we have that trust, friends, here is the thing, this is so important. When we have that trust in God, He brings us His peace of heart, right? Because when we know that God is in control that we do our best to live our lives, that His will and His Providence is always for the good. He always is working in the midst of our freedom and our free will and our ability to make decisions and to choose - in the midst of that without violating that freedom -He is working to bring about good. Which means when people make bad decisions that have consequences either personally or in culture or internationally or globally - when decisions are made that create difficulties and suffering for people and messes, God is still at work in the mess. And when we trust that it brings us peace knowing that we don't have to be in control and do it all ourselves. And we let God be God. That is the best preparation that we can make for Advent, friends, is to build our trust in God.
That is why all of these readings are given to us, and we'll continue to hear them for the next couple of weeks. All of these promises that God had made through the prophets, through Isaiah, through Baruch, through Jeremiah, all of these prophecies and promises that are made to Jerusalem are promises made to us. That He will return; that He is a good God; that He hasn't abandoned His children; that He loves us; that you are beloved, and He delights in you. All of these readings are supposed to remind us that God fulfills His promises because they get fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
So, a lot of ways to prepare for Christmas - a lot of busy ways to prepare but they are also spiritual ways to continue to prepare during Advent. I would challenge you to do this: ask yourself “Where is my faith?” And faith is built on trust in God. And faith and trust go together. Faith is not just an intellectual belief, an intellectual ascent to something that is taught. Faith is a firm trust in God that what He says is true and then we believe that. Where is our faith right now? And as a result, where is our trust in God? And then make the decision to build our trust in God by looking at all the times that He has been faithful and that He never abandons us and that He's always working for the good. Even though He might allow suffering to happen, He only allows it - and all we need to do is take a look at it the Crucifix – to allow something better. We may not see it even in our own lifetimes, but we trust that He can, and He will bring good out of suffering and difficulty.
So, we never give up hope and we never give up our faith and we continue to be available in our hearts to God and He continues to bring us along until we die and then life begins. So, the next time I come around after Christmas, I want to hear how many gifts were given that had skulls in them. I think that's a great idea for a Christmas gift for any of your family members. Not, from you know, obviously not from the cemetery – you can buy them on Amazon, I am sure. I wonder how many skulls will be given as Christmas gifts because that would be wonderful. Let me know and I think that would be very special. It is actually a very strong spiritual reminder, friends, I say that tongue in cheek, of course. It is kind of humorous how some of the Saints did these somewhat extreme things, but it doesn't hurt sometimes to give ourselves a jolt in life so that we can stay on track. Have a most blessed Advent season and God bless you on your journey.
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First Sunday in Advent, December 1, 2024
Summary:
Like the season of Lent leading up to Easter, the season of Advent is a time of preparation for the coming of the Lord. I am proposing that we have a Eucharistic Advent this year. A Eucharistic Advent.
The main principle that is driving the whole idea is a principle that underlies so very much of the spiritual life. And that is: what we receive from God has very much to do with our ability to receive it. There's a principle in philosophy that states: “What is received is received according to the mode of the receiver.” In other words, what we receive from God certainly does depend on God, right? God is the one who gives. But it depends also very, very much on our ability to receive.
So, what I'm proposing with Eucharistic Advent is that we simply work on improving our disposition to receive the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist. Why not others, too, such as Confession. And if you're preparing to receive any of the other Sacraments as well. Or simply working on our disposition to receive from God. Looking at what there is in our life that needs to be cleared out.
So, perhaps this is a good time in these next few weeks, three and a half weeks until Christmas, a good time for us to take inventory of what there is in our hearts that the Lord would like to clear out. Also, we can ask the Lord for the grace, you know, that He might just stir up something in us. Stir up a greater desire for this, the grace of the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist and help us to have the strength to make a concrete decision about how we will exercise our faith more and more completely in this holy season.
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Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, November 24, 2024
Summary:
We may question sometimes whether we can trust Jesus with everything, everything in our life - especially those things that are most dear to us. Maybe we're not fully convinced all the time that Jesus has our best interests at heart especially if there are very important prayer intentions that we lift up to the Lord and the intentions are not granted the way that we see or that we want them to be fulfilled. Maybe we are not always entirely convinced that Jesus keeps His promises.
But whatever our thoughts about Jesus as King may be, we have to realize that He is a different kind of King then the powers in our world, human authorities.
In place of a crown of jewels and precious gems, Jesus takes a crown of thorns. In place of a royal scepter, they placed a reed in His hand; they knelt and mocked Him and He submitted himself to that. Instead of fine robes, He was stripped and hung on a cross. Instead of lording His authority over His subjects and making sure they know who is in charge, He chooses the path of humility. He, Himself said, He came not to be served but to serve and to lay down His life. In place of wealth and riches, He chose poverty. Rather than being self-aggrandizing, who is always focused on the good of the other. Instead of residing in some palace or castle or great mansion, He chooses (well, He does reside in Heaven which is a pretty good place), chooses the human heart -broken, struggling. In place of a royal throne, He chose the cross. In place of lavish banquets, choice food and rich wines, He instead makes Himself food for us - giving Himself to us under the humble appearances of bread and wine.
Jesus Christ is truly a different kind of King and in all of this, He shows us so clearly that He came for our sake. He came for our sake, and He is perfectly worthy of all of our trust, deserving of all of our affection and devotion and yes, our loyal obedience to His Word.
But I'm also reminded today about the fact that in our Baptism we were anointed with the Sacred Chrism. We were anointed priest, prophet, and king. We were anointed to be sharers in the priesthood of Christ, offering the sacrifice of our life to God. In other words, offering to God all our trials, our ills, our struggles, our pains. Offering to God all our successes and victories, all the wonderful and beautiful things in our lives, everything of our lives. Being shares in the priesthood of Christ means we offer, we make of our lives, an offering to God that is pleasing in His sight. We share the prophetic mission of Christ to speak the truth into the world. To speak the Word of God, to announce the truth of the Gospel.
Lord Jesus, be our King, help us to be faithful citizens of your Kingdom. Help us also, Lord, to govern as you govern, with love, humility, patience, every virtue, with mercy, strength - total trust and obedience to God the Father.
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Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, November 17, 2024 Father David Kruse
Summary:
The first judgment, when we die, we stand before the Lord, we render an account of our lives. He judges us. At the particular judgment - at the end of our lives which these readings are supposed to remind us of - we stand before Christ we know that we are saved at that point when He says “Welcome. Welcome home.” That is when we know we're saved. It is at that point that we are assured of salvation. Until then our salvation is somewhat fragile because we can't risk losing it by saying “no” to God.
The second judgment is the one that the Lord is talking about here and will continue to talk about - at the end of the world. And so, He gives us some warnings to help us understand what will happen when all of this takes place. And notice that the Lord is talking about two different events here. He is talking about the end of time when He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. He will gather up those elect and the wicked, He will set aside. There is that event which He says even the Son doesn't know, He, Himself the Son, doesn't know when that will happen. Only the Father knows. So, we have the end of time and then we have another event that He talks about. Notice He says, “This generation will not pass away until these things are fulfilled.” What He is talking about there is a second and separate thing that is coming at the end of time.
He is talking about the final tribulation of the Old Testament and a judgment upon the Jewish people that would take place as a result of their sins. That event was the destruction of Jerusalem that historically took place exactly forty years, a generation, forty years to the year that Our Lord said this. He was talking here around the year 30 A.D, and so forty years later the Romans encircled Jerusalem, 70 AD, they starved the people and then they went in and broke down the walls and slaughtered everybody.
So, friends, over the next weeks we will be doing readings from scripture about the end of time and how to prepare our hearts for the end of time. How to prepare ourselves properly but most importantly just simply to remain vigilant; to live each day to its fullest, to give thanks to God in gratitude for His incredible blessings and to trust Him. To put ourselves into His loving arms knowing that He is with us. He cares for us, and He strengthens us in whatever situation we might find ourselves. He doesn't remove our suffering, remember friends, or our difficulties in life. What He does is He promises to always be there with us helping us get moving. Amen.
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Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, November 10, 2024
Summary:
Jesus is watching how the people put money into the treasury. And He sees many rich people putting in large sums and He observes the poor widow who puts in a couple of coins worth almost nothing and He praises that widow. He says that she actually put in more than all the other contributors because she didn't have any surplus wealth like they did out of which to contribute. She gave all she had out of her poverty. She gave all she had.
I came across a quote by Fulton Sheen: “Never measure your generosity by what give, but rather by what you have left.” Those who were putting large sums of their surplus into the treasury, they had a lot left over and their gift cost them very little. The poor widow had nothing left after she gave the little she had.
You see, this is the beautiful thing. It is not about really economics in this Gospel. It is not really completely about our material possessions and being generous with those. It is really illustrating what kind generosity of the heart we are called to live in. And in giving of ourselves to God more completely we find ourselves not left destitute but left ready to receive Him. There is a beautiful readiness and receptivity about this spiritual poverty that Jesus is encouraging us to have. There's something good in that. The poet and spirit writer Carol Houselander described or illustrated this principle by speaking of a nest, a bird’s nest, that is empty but had all kinds of potential to receive new life.
I was at the Amazing Parish summit a year and half ago in Phoenix. The keynote speaker was Monsignor James Shea who is the president of the University of Mary in Bismarck, North Dakota. He was speaking to a group of pastors and parish leaders, and he said, “Here is the problem with your parish. You hate your poverty.” The problem for us is that we hate our poverty, he said. “We despise it. We can’t stand to be poor.” Not even talking about material poverty - talking about a spiritual poverty. He illustrates the fact that so many of us strive to be self-sufficient.
God is looking for an empty space in your heart into which He can warm Himself. I know I've mentioned before Jesus words to say Saint Angela Foligno. He said to her, “You made yourself a capacity and I will make myself a torrent.” But see, we have to go of so many things. We have to give like that poor widow in order to create the space for God.
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Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time November 3, 2024
Summary:
“How do I know that I really love God?” I can tell myself all day long, I love God, but how do I know that that love is real? How do I know that that love is authentic?
How do we know? Saint Thomas Aquinas said, “Love tends toward union.” Love tends toward union between the one who loved and the beloved. So, the question might be “Am I tending toward union with God and what would that look like?” So, just a few points for our consideration.
How often do we think about God? Do we think about God at various points during the day just pondering the mystery of God? Asking God to help us to understand who He is a little bit better. Asking God to help us to set aside our false notions of God.
Do we pray to God from the heart? And instead of getting caught in the trap of just saying the words of the prayers that are so familiar to us, do we really pray from the heart? How heartily do we desire Holy Communion? Do we really look forward all week to the opportunity to receive Jesus’ Body and Blood Soul and Divinity into us? Do we make really good reception of Holy Communion even staying after Mass to give thank God? Do we feel ourselves drawn into Eucharistic Adoration? Are we drawn to communion with Christ?
Do we notice inside a desire to know Him better? Do we seek Him in Scriptures? Do we want to find Him and how He has revealed Himself in His Word and also how He has revealed Himself to us in His Church?
Is there a desire to know the Lord better? What about sharing the good news about Jesus? When we love someone ardently, we find ourselves eager to talk about that person, to share about that other person with other people who might not know them yet. Do we want to live boldly as disciples? The Scriptures also tell us that we know that we love God by keeping His commandments. Do we have a strong desire to live our lives according to God's plan? Not just following the letter of the law but really embracing God's plan for our life.
Do we rejoice when God is honored? Do we rejoice when we see the growth of the Church and lament when our Lord is dishonored? Do we celebrate the feasts of the Church with great joy? Do we ache when we see our Lord dishonored? When you hear someone using the Lord's name in vain? Is there something of a twinge or some sort of pain inside or does it just go away with the flow?
Finally, what kind of response do we make when we ponder God's love for us, God's infinite love for us? What kind of response do we make with the gift of ourselves? How fully do we make ourselves available to God? Are there parts of us that we hold back from God? Areas in our hearts where we don't quite want to welcome Him in – maybe many places of wounding or shame. Maybe there are places where we're still attached to something - we're afraid the Lord is going to ask us to let go of that, and we don't want to yet. How fully do we give ourselves to God in love? How fully do allow God access to our heart?
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Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 27 2024
Summary;
The story of Bartimaeus, for example, in today’s Gospel is not just the story of this man who encountered Jesus as Jesus was leaving Jericho. The story of Bartimaeus is the story of me and of you as well. We are poor, blind, beggars calling out to Jesus to come and help us.
With the ears of faith, we hear Jesus in the Sacrament asking us, each one: “What do you want me to do for you?” That's a great question for us to ponder when we come to Mass. What is it that we're asking? What kind of grace are we asking Jesus for in the Sacrament? Are we asking for the grace just to keep on going one more day, another week? Are we asking for the grace to carry a heavy burden of illness or depression or despair? Are we asking the Lord to heal a physical infirmity? Are we asking the Lord to set us free from the bondage of a repeated sin and the lure of the temptation to that sin? What are we asking? He is saying to you, “What do you want me to do for you?”
And when we come up and approach the altar and receive Holy Communion, this is the most intimate moment of that experience of encounter with Jesus. This is where Bartimaeus and Jesus, we and Jesus, are face to face. And that's where the healing word, the transforming touch, will come about. Give Him the answer to His question – “What do you want? What do you desire for me to do for you?
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Twenty-Ninth Sunday In Ordinary Time, October 20, 2024
Homily by Fr. David Kruse
Summary:
What is the best piece of advice you have ever been given? What is the one piece of advice or a piece of wisdom that was shared with you that really stuck? The one that you've been able to carry with you. The most important piece of wisdom that you really should carry with you every single day and it should be a primary motivator in your life and it has to do with a Psalm in the Book of Psalms.
Receive your inheritance! Receive your inheritance. Do whatever it takes to keep your inheritance. That's it! It is from Psalm 90 in the Book of Psalms. It is the only Psalm that Moses authored: "Remember the shortness of life; remember your years are numbered. Life passes like a sigh - seventy years or eighty who are strong will live and it all goes and what matters most is eternity.”
Now, the journey of life is all about doing what we need to do – following the Lord, following the Commandments, following God will, which is expressed in the Commandments, in His Church that He has given us and the teachings of His Son. Do whatever it takes to keep your inheritance. It is so important and that helps become a motivator when you don't feel like going to church on Sunday, when you don't feel like being generous to the others in your environment, when you don't feel like following whichever Commandment. So important to get the ‘why’ identified and clarified.
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Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 13, 2024
Summary:
What usually happens in the Gospels when Jesus calls someone and says, “Follow me”. They follow immediately. Remember as Jesus went by and saw Simon and Andrew at their boat. He said, “Follow me.” They left the boat and followed Him immediately. Down the shore a little bit farther, He sees James and John with their father Zebedee in the boat, “Follow me”. They leave their nets; they leave their father in the boat and follow Him immediately. Matthew, at the tax collector’s booth, “Follow me” and he got up and followed Him. That is the typical dynamic we see when Jesus calls but it's not what happens in today's Gospel, is it?
However, this man walks away sad and how sad he must have been because he couldn't part, he couldn't let go of those attachments. He was unable to belong completely to Jesus.
How do we respond when we are faced with a hard teaching from Jesus or His Church. After all the teachings of the Church are the teachings of Jesus. How do we respond when we're faced with this kind of difficult, this very hard teaching, or a challenging invitation.
Therefore, what we need when it comes to these hard teachings - it's not to be convinced - but what we need is greater communion with Him. Greater communion with Him - in mind and heart because if we love Him more and more and His hard teachings are less and less of an obstacle for us; if we love him more and more, we will gladly accept all that He teaches. All that He teaches. And all that He teaches through His Church as well.
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Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 6, 2024
Summary:
So many important matters are being identified merely as examples of partisan politics when they are so much more than that. For example, as Catholics we don't see abortion or gender identity or immigration as matters that simply define a person's political stance. For us they have something to do with the very will of God and God's plan for humanity, His plan for human flourishing. It goes so far that the way people engage with these matters can bring them closer to God and it can also move them away from God. So, these things are very important. We have to take such matters rightly.
Another of those matters is marriage. In today's first reading and in Gospel, these readings focus on the unity and indissolubility, the permanence of marriage, starting with Adam and Eve in the garden and culminating with what Jesus teaches about the divorce in the Gospel of Mark. And one might reasonably ask why is it that the Catholic Church seems to be so hung up on marriage and divorce?
I think the first answer to that question, why does the Church, why is the Church so concerned about it? Is that Jesus seems to be so concerned about it. Also, beyond the consideration of the harm that is done through divorce, I think the main difference is that when it comes to the Sacraments, the external reality has to correspond to the internal reality. The Sacrament is an external sign, right, instituted by Christ to give greater visibility to the external, visible, the audible, the sensible with the reality that is not seen - the invisible – the grace of the Sacrament
The grace of the Sacrament is principally for the benefit of the spouses so that they might remain faithful all their life long. But when it comes to the Sacrament of marriage there's actually another layer here. There's another layer of understanding of how the visible reflects the invisible because it's not just that the vows of the couple reflect the invisible reality of their union, the love of the couple as it becomes visible in the community points to Divine Love. It becomes a visible image of the love of Christ for the Church. As the husband loves his wife, so Christ loves the Church as the wife loves the husband, so the Church loves her spouse Jesus Christ. .
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Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time September 29, 2024
Summary:
What is it about sin that is so serious? Jesus is certainly not a referee sent from the Father to make sure that everyone in this world is playing by the rules and to punish those who break the rules. Rather, we realize that Jesus came into this world to communicate the desire of God that every person would receive the outpouring of the spirit of God. Remember the end of the first reading, Moses is saying, “would that the Lord might bestow His spirit upon them all.” Right? The Lord wants to pour out His life, His spirit into the soul of every human being and if you are baptized, the majority of you are baptized, then you have received this outpouring of the very life of God. The reality of sin is that it inhibits. It squashes the life of the Spirit in us. It gets in the way of our living the life that God calls us to live and actually created us to live so we shouldn't be content with even the smallest thing that inhibits our full life in the Spirit. Sometimes we can easily say, “Well, I'm a pretty good person and I don't do anything really bad.” We should not be content with even the small things that get in the way of our full living of life in the Spirit.
We can ask the Lord for very specific help with overcoming a particular kind of sin in our life. Certainly, we can ask specifically for help to overcome pride or self-reliance - those kinds of things - fear. But, for example when we go to confession and we confess a very particular sin, we are asking for grace from God to address that particular thing and He gives the grace in the Sacrament.
When we approach to receive Holy Communion, there can certainly be very specific burdens or intentions in our hearts and that we can be asking God that through that Communion would He would address those specific areas. We can pray for the help of the Holy Spirit to guide us in specific and particular ways. But sometimes also the grace of God comes in sort of a more general or broad way. For example, when we simply just sit with the Lord in a time of silent adoration, we don't have to be focusing on sins in our lives but just being there in the presence of the Lord is healing. If we are growing in friendship with the Lord, if we are growing in our love and admiration of the Lord Jesus, that's going to have an effect on us. Receiving Holy Communion worthily renews the life of the Spirit in us; helps us with general things as well as specifics.
So, the good Lord knows the different kinds of battles with sin that we fight. He knows exactly the kinds of remedies we need.
So, whatever kind of battle you are fighting, you need to be aware of that. It is also good to take advantage of all the different kinds of remedies that the Lord is offering.
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Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 22, 2024
Summary:
The evangelist St. Mark in this portion of his gospel is not only recounting to us the historical event Jesus journey with the with the disciples from the region of Caesarea Philippi down to Capernaum, he is also in a very real sense describing a present reality for us because we are on the journey with the Lord. That is a great way of describing our walk of faith. We are journeying with the Lord and just as the disciples with Jesus arrived in Capernaum and stopped there, went inside the house so, at 9:00 on a Sunday morning, you have taken a little stop in your journey. You have arrived at the House and now it is time to hear what the Lord has to say to you.
I would suggest today that part of that for all of us is the question that Jesus asks the twelve when they get to the house. “What were you arguing about on the way?” Not that any of you were arguing on the way to church this morning but maybe you were. (laughter). Maybe the question though is something a little bit more profound. What's the, what's the war that's going on? What's the battle that's going on inside as we were walking along the way? Jesus says. “What is going on in you? What war is being fought in your heart? What are the things that are causing turmoil in your life? Or if it's not turmoil, what's going on there?”
Having all of this other stuff going on in life and pouring all of our energy into it without putting Jesus first - that's the danger.
It is not that we don't have to tend to these things or that they're unimportant we have to put Jesus Christ first and then everything else finds its proper place in relation to that fundamental relationship in our life.
That's part of the humility that Jesus describes to His disciples. “If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.” So often we want to say, “Alright Lord Jesus, I love you. I've got to do this thing first and then and then you. Then I'll take care of it, I'll give you some attention. First me and then you.” That is a supreme disorder in life. First Jesus and then everything else. First Jesus and then everything else.
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Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 15, 2024
Summary:
Did you ever watch any of those courtroom drama programs on television? Perhaps you remember Perry Mason? He was probably the original but there are other shows like Law-and-Order things like that. We are familiar with the courtroom scene. I remember seeing one program, I don't remember which one it was, but there was a young attorney, and a more seasoned attorney was kind of sharing wisdom with him. He said, “When you are in the courtroom, don't ever ask a question that you don't know the answer to already.” Maybe Jesus would have made a good attorney in this sense because He is not asking questions in today's Gospel in order to find out information that He doesn't already know.
Keep in mind in the biblical sense knowledge is very deeply connected to love. In fact, it goes so far even in many Old Testament passages just because such and such man who ‘knew his wife’ and she conceived. So, knowledge obviously connotes something very intimate and intimate love. Jesus in wanting to be known by us, by all of His disciples, doesn't want just that we would know about Him - be able to say you know tell stories about what He did and communicate information about the details and data of His life - He wants us to know him deeply and that that knowledge will lead to deeper and deeper love.
Love in turn, leads to action and Jesus makes that very clear as he continues. After Saint Peter makes his confession of faith, “You are the Christ”, Jesus goes on to speak about how He is going to suffer and die and rise. And then He says those famous words” Whoever wishes to come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.” In other words, it is not enough for you to say, “Yes Jesus, I would love to be your disciple. Count me in!” You have got to do something, He says! If you want to be My disciple, if you love Me, you must do something. Deny yourself, take up your request, follow. You have got to take action!
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Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 8, 2024
Summary:
“Then will the eyes of the blind be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared, then will the lame leap like a stag, and then the tongue of the mute will sing. Streams will burst forth in the desert and rivers in the steppe. The burning sands will become pools, and the thirsty ground, springs of water.” I begin this morning with a couple of simple questions, and I invite you to reflect on your own answers to these questions in your mind and heart.
The first question is: Does God do this? Does God still do this? The second question is: Does God do this for you? Or just for other people? Does God do all of this for you? Is this your experience of God?
Does God do these things for you? I think if we're honest we can say, “Well, yes. God is gradually bringing about change in our life. He is leading us on the path of deepening and ongoing conversion.” But sometimes maybe we feel like not much is happening. Maybe we question really deeply whether the Lord is doing anything and maybe we kind of say, “Well, if I could just find the key that opens up this door to healing; if I could just figure out how this whole healing thing works; or if God would just make the decision to take away these obstacles in my life then I would receive most willingly and gladly.” But God is not waiting for us to find the right key to open the door or to rely on our own understanding and wisdom to figure out how do we see this healing. He tells us.
He says through the prophet Isaiah: “Here is your God,
he comes with vindication; with divine recompense he comes to save you.” He comes to save you, not “he waits for you to figure it out and then come.” He comes to save you, and we all need to hear these words spoken to us. They are not spoken out into some void where no one hears them, or everyone assumes they are spoken to someone else. He speaks them to me and to you. He comes to heal our blindness and our deafness and our muteness, our lameness. He comes and yes, God healed many people in Old Testament times. He sent his son; He sent his son.
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Twenty-Second Sunday In Ordinary Time, September 1, 2024
Summary:
Remember that when we come to celebrate the Eucharist we are not only reminded of Jesus’ invitation for us to make a firm decision on our own, we are also reminded that in the context here of the celebration of the Eucharist of the communal dimension of our spiritual life. The communal dimension of our spiritual life. So, Jesus does not only elicit a decision from us personally in our own individual, private relationship with God, He is eliciting a decision from us as the church - as a community bound together by the love of God and especially in the sharing of the Bread of Life.
So, hopefully, we have something of a reputation of being out there and doing good for people.
I think the Lord wants something even more than that. I think the Lord is calling us to be such a dynamic community that is so on fire with the love of God and so putting that love into action that people are knocking down the doors to get in here because they want to be part of that! Jesus in the Eucharist elicits from our community concrete decisions about how we are going to go out and bring Him into the broader community. Bring Him to people who don't yet know Him; bring Him to people who are confused about what is true and what is false. I realize that we don't have a ‘collective mind’. We are still individuals right. Yes, we can make individual decisions to participate in the ‘movement’ and the mobilization of our parish.
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Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 25, 2024
Summary:
In today's Gospel the Lord spells it out perhaps or takes us even one step farther than our realization that the Eucharist demands something of us. He brings us to the point where we have to make a decision. We have to make a decision. See, this, this conversion in our heart doesn't just happen. It doesn't just come about without our engagement with God's grace, so there is a decision.
Can you decide today to make the Eucharist a more central aspect of your life? Can you make a firm resolution today to give your heart more completely than you've ever given it to Jesus in this Sacrament? Can you make a firm resolution also to make more frequent use of the Sacrament of Reconciliation - to go to Confession - perhaps even quarterly or monthly as a way of strengthening and purifying your heart to receive Jesus in the Eucharist. Will you make a decision to allow Eucharistic Adoration to be a part of your spiritual life? Even just dropping in once in a while - maybe once a week? How about fifteen minutes to stop in when the church is open? Is the Lord inviting you to make a firm decision about evangelizing and sharing with others the good news of Jesus in the Eucharist? What is the decision that Jesus is inviting you to make? How is he calling you to be really intentional about your relationship with Him in the Eucharist? More intentional - I am not saying no one is intentional but He's asking more of that from us.
So, if we can be more mindful about being deliberate and intentional, we can ask the Lord for the grace to do that, we are going to see things change in our relationship with the Lord and especially if those decisions are related to Jesus in the Eucharist and how we can allow Jesus in the Eucharist to occupy a more central place in our life, then the results are going to be phenomenal! They may happen very quickly, but they may happen over time but they're going to be great! The fruits that come about when we give ourselves more completely to the Lord in this Sacrament.
Hear Jesus saying those words to you and asking you the question, what will you do? What will your decision be? What is your choice today? We ask God for the grace to hear His voice, to know what it is He's invited us to and to make the decision.
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Twentieth Sunday In Ordinary Time, August 18, 2024
Summary:
I would like to begin today by saying a few words about Excommunication. Maybe you weren't expecting that topic [laughter] but stick with me! I think that Excommunication is actually something little understood by most Catholics because most think that it is kind of this sense of getting booted out of the Church. You are out of the ‘excommunicated’
“excommunicatio,’ but the truer sense of the word is this: It is a removal of oneself from communion with Christ and His Church.
It is relevant for all of us because the same question that is at hand in the matter of Excommunication is at hand for all of us when we come forward or when we are discerning whether to present ourselves for Holy Communion. That question is “If I were to receive Holy Communion, today would I receive Holy Communion worthily?”
Excommunication is not a punitive act of the Church, it is medicinal. The idea is that the person who is excommunicated would so ardently desire to be back in the communion with Christ and the Church that he would do whatever it takes to make that happen.
Perhaps none of us at this point is Excommunicated and yet, the same question is still appropriate: Will I receive Holy Communion worthily? Am I willing to take that hard look at my soul and humbly pursue the the work of making things right, putting things in order, before I approach the altar? The Christian life is a struggle for all of us, or it should be. It should be. And the Holy Eucharist is not the reward for the perfect it's food, it is nourishment for those who need help. But we pray that we may never, ever receive this Sacrament unworthily. This Sacrament that is the Bread of Life. This Sacrament that is the true flesh and the true Blood of Jesus Christ. May He give us the grace, may we beg for the grace this day, to receive Him only worthily.
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Nineteenth Sunday In Ordinary Time, August 11, 2024
Summary:
Jesus at the Last Supper said: “Do this in memory of me.” Do this in memory of me – that is a command that should be taken seriously. It is a solemn command, instruction, given by the Lord to His apostles and through His apostles to all of His disciples: “Do this in memory of me.” It behooves us then to understand what that word this actually means. When He says, “Do this” do what? Do what in memory of Him? Have a simple reenactment? Gather once in a while to think about what He did? Do this in memory of me.
Of course, our Catholic faith teaches us that ‘Do this” means celebrating these mysteries, these sacred mysteries, in an ongoing way. Believe that the bread and wine truly become the Body and Blood of Christ. That the sacrifice of Calvary is made truly present on the altar. Offer this sacrifice to the Father every day for His glory and for the sanctification of His people.
How do we know? There is plenty of evidence in the scriptures to support our belief in the real presence of Christ. The words of Jesus himself: “This is my body. This is the chalice of my blood.” We look to what the first Christians believe. Not only the written text of the Bible that gives us documentary evidence, but we also look at the early writings of the first Christians, the Didache. The writings St. Ignatius of Antioch, Justin, Irenaeus, Clemen, Cyprian, Athanasius, St. Cyril, Hilliary, Basil, Gregory, Ambrose, Augustine, St. John Chrysostom, St. Jerome, St. Leo and all the rest. All the rest. There is a living tradition, there is a living tradition that reaches all the way back to Jesus Himself. As He said to His apostles, “Do this in memory of me,” He equipped them - He ordained them - to keep doing this in memory of Him. He appointed them. He sent them into the world to keep doing what He did – making present His offering on the Cross so that all people of succeeding ages could participate in His life-giving sacrifice and draw their nourishment from His body and blood.
This Apostolic succession is so key to our belief, our well-founded belief, that this is truly the Body and Blood of Christ. i\
It comes also down to the very heart of Jesus. The reality of His love for us that led Him not just to give us a ceremony that we can reenact and something for us to remember but He promised that He would come, that He would be present in this celebration, truly present! That He would come to meet us and to come into our life, into our very body, into our soul. He promised! He loved us that much that He wouldn't leave this 2000-year gap between him and us but He would come into the present taking on the flesh once again if you will. Coming near; coming in. That is the nature of His love for us - an infinite, infinite love.
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No Homily, Aug 4th
Father Kenny' was away on Sunday, August 4th. .
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Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 28, 2024
Summary:
I would like to share with you this morning just a simple illustration of the power of Word and Sacrament in our Christian life. The Word. Starting today and for the next four Sundays we are going to be hearing passages from the Sixth Chapter of St. John's Gospel. As we heard just a moment ago the well-known account of the feeding of the 5,000 but then for the next month or so we are going to be hearing Jesus’ very well-known Bread of Life Discourse. I really encourage you to dig into that passage. Don’t just hear it when you come to Mass but pray with that passage for the next month and not just in an academic sense trying to parse the words or get a literal sense but really enter into this scene and be there with Jesus as He is saying these important truths.
You can enter into this Word, this passage, today. Beginning of John Chapter Six. You can enter in and find that you are the boy or if you're a female imagine that it was a girl in the crowd. But you can enter in and find that that's you and Jesus is saying he wants you as you are with whatever you have to offer whether that's great or small. He loves you as you are. He is not waiting for you to be something different in order to bestow his love and mercy upon you. He sees you and wants you. You can hear Andrew say to you in the power of the Word, “The master has need of you.” And in that moment, all those ideas about what it takes to be worthy of love are burned up in a flaming heat because Jesus is saying to you: “You don't have to be perfect. You don't have to be smart or pretty or tough or fit or whatever in order for me to find you worthy of love. I find you worthy already as you are.”
As I said before really delve into the scriptures; delve into this past this 6th Chapter of St. John's Gospel, but even more basic, ask. Just begin to ask the Lord each day for a Eucharistic Revival and Renewal. If this is new for you to ask for the Lord to keep opening your eyes to the reality that's here, you have been a Catholic all your life going to Mass every Sunday, ask Him to take you even deeper. It is the Lord's work, revival is. It is not ours. We just need to open our hearts to it. Ask and receive. Word and Sacrament are so powerful. So powerful. And we're invited to experience their power to really and truly transform our lives in Jesus Christ the Lord.
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Sixteenth Sunday In Ordinary Time, July 21, 2024
Summary:
The kind of accountability that I am really looking at here is accountability for our spiritual life. Who keeps us accountable in the living of our Christian life as missionary disciples? Do we find ourselves when we gather for Mass or when we come to the Church to visit Jesus, do we find ourselves reporting to the Lord how we are doing? And I am not just talking about missionary activity in terms of you know with whom have we shared the Gospel? With whom have we struck up a conversation about Jesus?
Our whole life as Christians is a missionary life. The Holy Father has spoken about this on many, many, many occasions. We are not merely disciples; we are missionary disciples. Jesus sends us into the world not just to talk to people about our faith but to live the Christian life in such a way that we radiate the truth and the goodness and mercy and love of Jesus Christ.
How many of us then, how many of us have people in our lives who really know what is going on with our walk with the Lord? How many of us share with another soul in this world the difficulties and the joys, the struggles, and the triumphs of our Christian life? If we do not have someone to share like this with, we need to find someone. Even hermits in the desert have spiritual directors that they share with. You who are married - is your spouse someone who knows what is going on in your spiritual journey, in your spiritual life? Is your spouse someone who can say to you, “That kind of language” or “That kind of behavior is not fitting for a Christian.” Do you allow your spouse to say that to you without getting defensive and saying, “Hey, who are you to tell me that!” Give permission to your spouse to keep you accountable in your spiritual life. That also requires sharing a certain vulnerability about our walk with the Lord. And if you are not married, there needs to be someone who can keep you accountable in your spiritual life.
Brothers and sisters, come to the Lord. Find someone, yes, who will help to keep you accountable in your spiritual life, your Christian journey, your Christian mission, but don't forget about coming to the Lord person to person, face to face with Jesus, heart to heart.
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Fifteenth Sunday In Ordinary Time, July 14, 2024
Summary:
I would like to draw out three themes from today’s Gospel. The first one is that the Proclamation of Kingdom of God which is our mission as disciples of Jesus Christ, the Proclamation of Kingdom of God is not only our mission as individuals, but it is a corporate mission. It is the mission of the Church as the Body of Christ. So, Jesus you notice, does not send the twelve out one-by-one, but two-by-two. The work of evangelization, the work of the Proclamation of Kingdom is done in the context of community. And yes, we each have our own mission in this life, but our mission is carried out in the context of the Church. So, it is really very important, very important, to foster an ever-greater sense of community in the Church so that the mission can be ever more efficacious.
Secondly, the effective Proclamation of the Kingdom of God requires utter trust in God and reliance on God's providence.
And the third theme is connected with that. We notice that Jesus first summons the twelve; He draws them to himself; He establishes a good strong relationship with the twelve and then He sends them out. So, the mission and our trust in God, both of those first two themes arise from a real and living and dynamic, vibrant, relationship with the Lord.
We want our relationship with God to be true, real, vibrant, and dynamic. So, how often during the day are we mindful of God? How many times in a day do we turn to the Lord and tell Him that we love him? How frequently are we reconciled with the Lord in the Sacrament of Penance? How frequently do we receive Communion with hearts burning with love? The Lord wants to draw us into an ever more real relationship with Him and that becomes the foundation of the deep, deep, trust that allows so much more to happen in our spiritual lives and in our life in other aspects.
I want to reemphasize the value of Eucharistic Adoration for the purpose of strengthening and making more and more real this relationship with Jesus. Yes, the Lord is everywhere. We can pray at home. But his real presence in the Eucharist is ‘located.’ It is in a specific place. There is something very different about coming to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament then just praying in other places. There is something intensely personal about that encounter.
So, I urge you, carve out a space for Eucharistic Adoration in your life. As you know, the bishops of this country have been promoting this multiple year Eucharistic Revival : “Come and discover Jesus in this sacrament. Come and discover him in the quiet time of adoration. Find his presence. Discover this whole new avenue that opens up in your Christian life by spending time - even just a little time in adoration.”
So, I echo that exhortation of the bishops to you. Discover Jesus in this holy sacrament not only in receiving Him in Holy Communion in the Mass but also outside of the Mass. I know most people come to town at some point during the week. Think about just coming by stopping in or at the very least, as you drive by the Church, make the sign of the cross and make a visit even in transit. Discover Eucharistic Adoration. That is the Lord drawing us to himself as He summoned the twelve, drew the twelve to Himself and then He sent them out.
So, these three themes are very present in today's Gospel: Jesus draws the twelve to himself and that relationship with Him is the foundation of their mission. Their mission is carried out in the context of community. So, how important it is for us to strengthen those bonds in the Parish and thirdly, you have got to trust. Trust Jesus with all our heart and mind and soul and strength.
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Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 7, 2024
Summary:
Up to this point in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus has been revealing His divine identity by working a number of miracles. He has healed many people, He has performed exorcisms, driving demons out. He has even calmed a storm on the seas and raised a dead girl to life. Now, at the beginning of Chapter Six, which we just heard, the tone has changed. The tone of this Gospel is quite sad at the end as Jesus is not able to perform any mighty deeds there. There is a real sadness in that statement. There is a sense that Jesus has come. He is revealing that He wants life transformed by Divine Power. He wants people to experience the power of God in their life, in a real way. He is revealing that things are different when you are a disciple of His.
Any new understanding and depth and knowledge about Jesus is going to come from Him. He is the one who wants to reveal his face to us more completely. He is the one who wants to show us what is in his heart for us. So, all we have to do really is avail ourselves of those opportunities in which the Lord wants to show us His face. And certainly, we do that when we pray. When we have our concentrated time of prayer each day, we can simply say, “Lord, reveal something more of yourself to me. Show me your face. Reveal to me what is in your heart for me, personally.” He will.
The most powerful encounter we can have with the Lord is through the Eucharist and not only receiving Him at Mass but also spending time with Him just being present in His Eucharistic presence. Whether during Exposition, Adoration at the Altar or even in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel right here. And I don’t know, I know some of you have experienced Eucharistic Adoration on a very regular basis but maybe that is not part of the life of many of you here. I encourage you to listen to the Lord’s voice. He is calling you there. You can drop in any time and if the doors are locked, call the parish number and dial ‘9’ for an emergency and it will come to my phone and I will come and let you in! I will arrange for you to come and spend time here if you are willing. There is a time and if you can’t make it when the Church is open, I will come and I will let you in.
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Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, June 30, 2024
Summary:
In today’s Gospel, we have two stories of healing. The story of the healing of the woman of afflicted with hemorrhages sort of sandwiched in between the beginning and end of the story of Jairus’s daughter.
So, this woman for the last twelve years would have had something in a life of isolation, similar to a leper. But here she is. She has heard about Jesus; she draws near and with great courage and boldness she reaches out and just touches His cloak. Now this is a daring thing for her to do because in the understanding of most people present, she would be sort of inflicting, if you will, uncleanness upon Jesus.
Of course, Jesus cannot be made unclean. Rather, he makes the unclean clean.. He is not irritated just like being awoken in the boat. He is not irritated when he says, “Who has touched my cloak?” He doesn't say that like He is put out or something, rather, what's happening here is that He is drawing this woman out from her place of anonymity in the crowd. This woman who is to some degree rejected by the rest; no one wants anything to do with her because if they touch her they become unclean. But Jesus draws her out. He wants to see her. He does not say, “I will just go on my merry way. Power has gone out and you got your physical healing.” He turns around and says, “Who touched me?” He draws her out of the crowd because he wants to see her face to face. He wants her to look at him and to know that He does not reject her; that He loves her. That He is not irritated that she reached out with boldness and courage.
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Saints Peter and Paul, June 29, 2024
Summary:
Almost 2,000 years later we are celebrating these two somewhat unlikely candidates for leaders in the church. Peter, beset by fears and doubts, weakness, he turned and fled. He denied that he knew Jesus three times. Paul, not really characterized for weakness per se but for malice. He was against the Church. Anyone in those days might have looked at Peter or Paul, Simon or Saul and they would have bet money, I bet, that they would not be great figures in the history of the Church. But they said, “yes” to what the Lord asked of them and those ‘yeses’ along the course of their lives of discipleship had a tremendous impact, a tremendous impact on the world and have had a lasting impact for centuries and centuries and centuries.
How is the Lord drawing near to you today and in these days at this point in your life? How is the Holy Spirit beginning to stir? Is there a newness that the Lord is offering you in your relationship with Him? If you already have a strong relationship with the Lord, do you hear Him calling you to go even deeper to greater depth? The Lord is not done with anyone of us yet and it doesn’t matter how many times we may have said ‘no’, the next time we can say ‘yes’; and you might say ‘no’ after that. But we can say ‘yes’ again after that. The Lord calls so persistently, so patiently. He has wonderful plans for the life of each and every one of us every one of us and the simple key to unlocking those plans is our daily ‘yes.’
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Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time June 23, 2024
Summary:
What kind of spiritual insight can we gain from today's Gospel passage? Of course, traditionally anytime you see a boat you think about the Church. The boat is so often a symbol of the Church, and the boat is you know being navigated through stormy waters to the distant shore. Jesus says, “Let us cross to the other side.” So, the ‘Church’ with the disciples in it and with the Lord in it is on this journey to the shores of eternal life ultimately. And of course, in the Gospel this huge storm arises, and the disciples are terrified. These, you know seasoned fishermen, are terrified. Jesus is asleep. Jesus is not terrified. He is in the stern asleep on a cushion and so when they wake Him and sort of accuse Him of being uncaring, first He stills the storm and then his question is, “Why are you terrified? Why are you even afraid at all? Do you not yet have faith?” So, the lesson for the Church, the ‘boat’ of the Church is if you know that Jesus is in the boat with you, have faith, trust in the Lord. Lean on Him. Know that He's going to bring you to safe harbor.
Now Saint Augustin saw in this passage not only the boat as a symbol of the Church but also as a symbol of each one of us on our journey across the stormy waters into eternal life and that Jesus is present.
So, how do we apply that to the Gospel - both the Church as the ship and seeing the ship as ourselves – we acknowledge the presence of Christ there doesn't mean everything is automatically ‘okay’. It certainly doesn't mean there aren't going to be storms. That’ s a good point to note in the Gospel as well. The fact that Jesus is in the boat with them doesn't mean there is no storm. But we have to also be mindful of the fact that Jesus is present. We have to turn to Him in our times of distress. We have to lean on Him. We have to cry out to Him: “Lord, I need you. Keep me grounded in this truth that you are with me and that as long as you are with me, I am assured of safety.” Jesus can be present, and He can be very content to stay asleep on a cushion. But as Saint Augustine would say, when these things arrive, go, and wake Him up! Turn to Him! Turn to Him, call to Him and receive strength through your faith.
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Eleventh Sunday In Ordinary Time, June 16, 2024
Summary:
The only answer to the world’s trouble and confusion is Jesus. There is no politician or there is no statesman or diplomat or economist, or entertainer or scientific genius who can truly bring the world what it needs. Only Jesus can give the world what it truly needs. Bishop Daly in his column in the most recent issue of diocesan magazine, the Inland Catholic, speaks of evangelization as the answer to our troubled world. Evangelization has to do with announcing the Kingdom of God, as Jesus did. He went about proclaiming the Kingdom of God. Announcing: God exists! God is God. God is the Lord; God holds all of creation in his hands and he is actively at work within his creation. He is doing something. He is moving.
Look to the parable of the mustard seed. Jesus says, “When the mustard see is sown in the ground, it is the smallest of all seeds on the earth, but once it is sown, it grows up and becomes one of the largest plants.” It starts small, it starts small. With each one of us, that is where it begins. We don’t have to figure out everything. We don’t have to come up with some ‘master plan of evangelization’. It starts with each one of us acknowledging the Lord as Lord. It starts with each one of us allowing Christ to be absolutely central. Allowing the Lord to be the one who motivates and guides the decisions we make in day-to-day life. To what degree is Jesus the Lord of our life? That is a challenging question. We easily fall into allowing things to be our motivating factors in life. He wants to be our all, in all. The more that becomes the reality in our whole life, the more it begins to spread.
I was visiting a parishioner with the greenhouse the other day and he was showing me this particular plant that he has. It is a fairly tall plant - maybe four or five feet tall - and he mentioned that that particular plant by nature would grow to be about fifteen feet tall, but he said that he was not allowing it to grow that tall by keeping it in a smaller pot. I thought, hmm, that's a really interesting analogy for the life of the Spirit in us and our life of prayer.
How we can place limits on the fruitfulness of the Spirit in our life by perhaps placing limits on our prayer or not necessarily placing limits on our prayer, but not allowing our prayer to expand as the Lord would wish. You know different kinds of prayer produce different kinds of fruit perhaps even to different extents. I think to spend an hour before Jesus in Blessed Sacrament is going to be more fruitful than just going for a walk and looking at nature and thanking God for the beauty of the earth. But what are the ways, what are the ways that we can each expand our capacity for the Spirit? What are the ways that we can cultivate that gift of divine life within us? If we explore those, we'll find that the Lord begins to increase his centrality in our life - his lordship. the Kingdom, if you will. The Kingdom of God will start to conquer us. It is going to take over our hearts if we allow it. And then once it takes over our hearts, it just keeps building and building and building and spreading from there.
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Tenth Sunday In Ordinary Time, June 9, 2024
When you pour syrup on a pancake, it goes all over and spreads over the edges. When you pour syrup on a waffle you might not get syrup into every single square – well I make sure that syrup gets into every single square - but there's a division there. There isn't a movement of the syrup around the waffle. There are compartments so there could be syrup in this one and none in the in the compartment right next to it and I was sort of thinking, well, can’t our hearts kind of be like that?
When we have these areas of wounding - areas of shame -whether it's considering some sin that's been committed in the past or even something that's been done to us. Or you know just something that we're embarrassed or ashamed about, we can build walls around that part of our heart. And perhaps then we also relegate God to some other compartments so that there is no passing from where he is into that place of woundedness where his love is really needed for healing. Building up these barriers because of shame, we kind of say, “Lord, I want you in my heart, but you can't come over into this part. I don't know what you would think. You might reject me. You might abandon me because of this part of me, this experience that I had, this sin. But the reality is, it's precisely his love and his grace that's needed in that place that's all walled off.
And so if prayer is, as I've been saying the last couple of Sundays, the chief strategy together with the Sacraments that God uses to draw us into this daily experience of his love, then in prayer we need to embrace something of a spirit of vulnerability allowing those walls to come tumbling down! Not building them up taller but allowing the grace of God to bring them down. So that, if you will, that syrup can flow over the whole pancake. The grace of God can enter into every part, every dimension of our life and bring healing and integrity and wholeness.
So, the first thing is simply to be honest before God. To be honest about who we are and what we are dealing with and perhaps even about those deep places in our hearts where we experience shame and to invite the Lord in there. I know that that can be difficult, but it isn't as if the Lord doesn't know about those things already. We don't go into prayer to inform the Lord about something, rather, he wants us to invite him into these places, perhaps to the hardest and darkest moments of our lives. Raising a spirit of vulnerability, we allow those walls to come down and for the Lord to enter in and bring restoration and wholeness.
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Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood Christ, June 2, 2024
Summary:
The way we receive Holy Communion affects our daily personal prayer life. The way we receive Holy Communion instructs and informs our personal prayer. If prayer is the primary means in our day-to-day life through which God brings us into his divine love, then we want to learn receive Holy Communion well so that we pray well.
The way we receive Holy Communion affects the way that we pray in our personal prayer life, our daily prayer. How then to receive Holy Communion well so that we pray better?
First, we must receive Holy Communion with humility. There is absolutely nothing that entitles any single one of us to receive Holy Communion. It is pure gift. The God of the Universe comes to dwell in us. Creatures, by God's grace made children and heirs, but we must never lose this disposition of humility when we are receiving the gift of Holy Communion.
Secondly attentiveness. I know as well as the next person how easy it is to be distracted. As we are receiving Holy Communion, we should do our best to set aside all distractions and to focus our complete attention on what we are doing. You have a few moments while you're waiting in your pew for others to come forward or if you're walking down the aisle, focus. Remind yourself of what is happening here. That this truly is the body and blood of Christ that you are about to receive and to have that same disposition each time not just once in a while but every time we receive Holy Communion to be as attentive as we can possibly be.
Third with gratitude we receive this gift of the body and blood of Christ. It is pure gift and we are thankful when we receive Holy Communion not only for the gift of Holy Communion but we're bringing everything of our life into this encounter and we are thanking God for providing for us. We are thanking him for so many great blessings and graces. Our hearts really should overflow with gratitude when we receive Holy Communion.
Fourth, an attitude of reverence. Standing in awe of this great mystery. It is truly a miracle each time we attend Mass and are given this gift of Holy Communion, but to actually really recognize the sacredness of this encounter is very, very important. We know the mechanics of receiving Holy Communion whether directly onto the tongue or in the hand. We know we have to be careful and reverent as we receive and even as we're walking back to our place or even really for the next fifteen or twenty minutes as the Lord is dwelling there. Reverence is very key in a worthy reception of Holy Communion.
And finally, simply that attitude of receptivity; not grasping, not taking but standing before the Lord and saying, “I am here. I present myself. I earned nothing I. I am simply here Lord to receive that which you wish to give me which is your whole self, your body and your blood, your soul, your divinity. I simply receive Lord all that you wish to give.”
Humility, attentiveness, gratitude, reference, receptivity, all of these and others characterize a good and holy reception of Holy Communion. And then back to the point, the original point, practicing receiving Holy Communion in this way helps us to pray because if prayer is a gift, if prayer is what God does in and through us; if prayer is God's way of drawing us to himself, then we want to receive it, receive that gift of prayer similarly as we receive Holy Communion. With humility, with attentiveness, with gratitude, with reverence and the disposition of receptivity.
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Trinity Sunday, May 26, 2024
Theologians use a lot of very technical language to describe the mystery of the most Holy Trinity, a special feast day we celebrate today. They speak of course of one supreme Godhead – one God. Two natures in Christ, the divine and the human. Two processions - the generation of the son, the spiration of the spirit. Three distinct persons - the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Four relations – paternity, filiation, active spiration, passive spiration. That is just the beginning! There is a lot – it is a great mystery and sometimes I think it is too bad that so much is made of our inability to understand the Holy Trinity.
Of course, all of our analogies, all of our explanations, all of our language is going to fall short whether we're talking about a shamrock or water in three forms or fire with its light and its heat or how one person can have three different roles - for example, daughter, and mother and wife. All of those fall terribly short of the reality of God.
We can't fully grasp infinite divine love, but we can begin to grasp. God is a perfect and an unending exchange of love and not only in love, but he draws us into that exchange and by our incorporation into Christ through our Baptism, he scoops us right up into the middle of that inferno of divine love.
That is what we're made for. God created us to be full participants in that exchange of divine love. So, for me, how do I live in that? If that's what we are all called to, how do we spend our days swept up in the love of God, father, son and Holy Spirit. How does that become our reality?
How is it that we live our whole life really being swept up into this love? The primary way that God gives us to enter into that love is prayer. Prayer. Because we pray each day and not just once or twice but of course you know that Saint Paul urges us to pray unceasingly. Pray unceasingly. The next question is then how to pray?
Well, when we pray the first thing to do is simply to make ourselves available to God. Spiritual writers will say, “Prayer for the most part is showing up.” Showing up. So, we go before the Lord and we say, “Lord I'm here. I am open. I am ready. I place myself at your disposal. Give me the gift of your Spirit. Inspire words in me that are worthy of your hearing. Stir up in my heart what intentions you want me to pray for. You Lord, pray in me. I simply make myself available.”
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Pentecost Sunday, May 19, 2024
Summary:
I want you bring to you the story if you haven't heard of this person before, pretty famous now, but the story of a young woman named Immaculee Ilibagiza from Africa. In 1994 Immaculate was a college student at the university from Rwanda and if you might remember your history that was the year that the Rwandan genocide broke out. At the start of the genocide, a friend of hers, a neighbor - because remember there were warring tribes of fighters going around from village to village and from town to town killing their opposition, killing the rival tribe members, it was an ethnic cleansing is what happened - and so a friend of hers told her to come to his house and he hid her in a bathroom. A room that was three feet by four feet and hidden behind a fake wall. Immaculee, as a 24-year-old young woman, stayed in that room three feet by four feet for three months with six other women. Three months! She heard the screams and the cries of the people that she knew including her family members who were butchered. When she came out of that room three months later, over a million Rwandans had been slaughtered and killed! An incredible tragedy and she survived.
So, you would think that someone who went through that kind of experience, traumatic, horrific, experience would be bitter and angry and just tied up in knots in her heart. And yet when she tells her story, friends, this is a woman who has incredible joy and freedom and strength and peace of heart that just radiates from her. Why? And how did that happen? That is the difference that the Holy Spirit makes. That specifically in her prayer during that time she said, “I rediscovered God. I had grown up Catholic.” She was Catholic but as a young person and a teenager didn't really take her faith that seriously as many do and in that extreme experience cried out to God. She actually had a Bible with her, and her rosary and she said they prayed the rosary unceasingly those women that were in there. She said during one of her times of prayer she just finally cried out and said, “God I just read that you're my Father. You are supposed to take care of me! I am your responsibility. Take care of me! Take care of us.This is what you are supposed to do!”
And in those prayers, she discovered, rediscovered, friends, and here's the key point: her identity! Her identity as a child of God, a beloved daughter of God the Father and she was indeed his responsibility, and he did not abandon her. So, friends remember in times of trial - this is so important for us to remember throughout life - God never promised that he would take away difficulties and sufferings from our life. That's really not the prayer that we should pray for. We can and, yes, it's okay and it's good. “Lord, remove this suffering from me.” But more importantly is, “Lord, I offer you this suffering. Please help me to persevere and get through it.” That is what the Lord promises! To be with us in the challenges of our lives and to help us get through it and to learn an important lesson of how dependent we are on God and that any suffering that we can go through has redemptive value.
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Ascension Sunday May 12 2024
Summary:
Jesus makes sure that his disciples get the message that his body, his physical body, is important. Very important. You know things could have gone differently. He could have died at Calvary, been buried in the tomb, resurrected, appeared to the disciples and others for forty days and then died again, been buried and His soul could have gone to heaven. Right? Separation of body and soul. But that is not what happened. He ascended bodily into heaven. He could have ascended at night or when he was by himself; no one else was around to see. Instead, he chose to ascend in the presence of many witnesses who were careful to include this detail in their telling of the story of the life of Jesus and his early Church. So, it's important for us to know that Jesus ascended into heaven. Body and soul - the whole Jesus. Right? He had no intention whatsoever of leaving his body behind and just going into heaven as a disembodied spirit.
There's a reason that God gave us a body and it's not just so that it would be easier for him to tell the difference between us and the angels. There's a reason he gave us a body and I think that the main reason is that it has something to do with our call to be loving. Our greatest calling, our greatest vocation in life, is to love with the very love of God.
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Sixth Sunday In Easter, May 4, 2024
Summary:
The love of God is not principally something abstract; the love of God is something eminently practical for us. We are only here in very practical terms because God is loving us into existence. We are only here, we only exist because God loves us, but beyond that as I said Jesus’ commandment is to love. We don't love unless we are first loved; we can't give if we have not received.
So, love is as I said eminently practical, it's not just some dreamy thing that we become once in a while, or we need to remain in the abstract. No, it takes flesh in our life. It takes flesh in the decisions that we make, in the relationships that we have and what we do with our thoughts, our words, and our actions.
Love is practical not only for the way that we live this life but then also ultimately for eternity. In the end, love is what counts. The empire that we build for ourselves does not matter. It is reduced to dust and ashes. We don't take it with us. But the love of God we have stored up, the love of God that we have given away, all of that is what counts in the final equation.
So, today, a couple of things to ponder. First, when it comes to the love of God your thought is, “Ya, Ya, Ya. I know about that I've got that on the shelf.” I challenge you to rethink that. reevaluate the way you think about the love of God and realize that there is much, much more to get that you think. And secondly a renewed encouragement for you to commit yourselves without exception to a daily time of prayer. Whether that's fifteen minutes or thirty or sixty or however long. enter into that time, turn the coffee mug up and be ready to receive all that the Lord wants to give you. Because it's exactly what he wants to give you in that time that is going to make all the difference in the living out of your day-to-day life.
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Fifth Sunday in Easter, April 27, 2024
Summary:
The main question that comes to my mind is how do I know; how do I know whether I am remaining in Christ like a branch on the vine?
What I would like to propose is that if we look to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, we find that it has four pillars. It gives us a good basis for examining our relationship with God in Christ. You may know that the Catechism is in four main sections.
The first is the Profession of Faith which deals with doctrine and what we believe; the second is called the Celebration of the Christian Mystery so it deals with liturgy and worship; the third is called Life in Christ which deals with morality; and the fourth is called Christian Prayer which, of course, is about our communication with the Lord. I think
if we examine our life in these four areas, we will get a pretty good sense of how securely we are connected to that vine which is Christ.
These are the four pillars: belief, worship, morality, and prayer. So, when it comes to today’s Gospel when Jesus says, “I am the vine and you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit,” We have a little bit more substantial now to ask ourselves, are we, as branches, well connected to the body? We do not reduce that to a question of “Am I a disciple” or “Have I committed a mortal sin.” But here life with Christ has many more facets than those very basic questions.
Now, if we find ourselves not having a perfect connection with the Lord, that is to be expected because none of us is perfect at this point in our life. But it doesn’t mean that such an examination as I have just led us through needs to lead to us heaping shame upon ourselves for not being as well connected to Christ the vine as we could. Rather, I hope that it leads to our being encouraged to seek him. To seek him more and more and to make concrete decisions today that will help us in a very real way to remain in him.
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Fourth Sunday In Easter, April 21, 2024
Good Shepherd Sunday Summary:
What kind of flock is the Good Shepherd trying to cultivate or from the Good Shepherd’s perspective, what does a good flock look like?
The Lord desires actually for his flock to be a dynamic reality. The Lord desires every member of his flock to be really fully engaged and active in the walk of discipleship in this life.
Secondly, Jesus didn't intend his Church to be merely a collection of individually holy people. If each one of us here is a perfect saint. but we have no sense of connection to the body of Christ, the Church, if it is just about our individual, private relationship with God and even if we're doing really well in that relationship, if the horizontal aspect is missing, then we are not perfect saints.
The Lord, of course, is ultimately the one who shapes his flock. We have to rely on God’s grace to become the kind of flock he desires us to be. But he also encourages us; he invites us; he asks us; maybe even demands of us that we do our part. That each member of the flock lives his or her vocation to the full; plays his or her role in the flock to the best of their ability.
It should be normal for us to pray not only as a community during the liturgy, not only privately at home or privately before the Blessed Sacrament or where ever we are but also praying with one another one-on-one or in small groups. It should be normal for us to be offering to pray for other people and really if you think about it, prayer is the very privileged context within which we invite the Good Shepherd to shepherd us. When we pray, we're opening our hearts and minds to God. We are asking the Lord for guidance. We're asking for help. We are asking for grace. We are making ourselves available to receive the help that God wants to give us, and so prayer is really fundamental for any kind of change of culture within our parish community. Prayer is this special venue, if you will, in which we allow ourselves to the shaped into the kind of flock the Good Shepherd wants us to be.
Let us ask the Lord to help us, to shepherd us on this Good Shepherd Sunday and always that we might be faithful; that we might be the dynamic kind of engaged flock and disciples that he wants us to be.
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Third Sunday in Easter, April 14, 2024
Summary:
How does the Church grow? We don't have control over other people. I mean there might be a certain amount of arm twisting that goes on to get your kids and grandkids to come to church or your neighbor or whoever. We don't have control over the decisions that other people make. We can't force anyone to have faith. That is not the way this works. We can have an influence on other people but chiefly our work is to change ourselves. There is a realm where we have control. We can undergo ongoing conversion and it’s not just an individual matter that if we each individually become saints, then our Church family grows. But it also has something to do with our life as a community. If our life as a community is more and more dynamic, if it is more and more joyful, it becomes more attractive to people. People hear about, “Oh, that parish down the street, the people come out of church looking so happy and they live their lives with joy and hope.” It starts to draw people and, of course, we can make intellectual arguments for the faith that may be the way, that maybe the path for some people's conversion, but most people are going to be touched at the heart level and also some people with the mind but most people follow what looks attractive to them, what looks like what will make them happy, what will give them peace.
We are looking first at unceasing prayer. How can we be transformed as a community so that prayer is totally normal for us and not just the prayers that we pray when we come in individually or the liturgical prayer or the rosary that is prayed before Mass, but how does prayer work its way into all aspects of our lives individually and as a community. Last summer you may recall, again, if you have a super good memory, that I suggested we start engaging in these prayer conversations that simply consist of: “Would you pray for me for this intention? Here is something that's burning in my heart. Would you pray for me?” And then the other part of the conversation is: “Is there anything that you would like me to pray for?”
I am going to challenge you this week to have that conversation at least once. Just, “Is there something I can pray for for you and would you pray for me for this intention.” Fair warning! I may ask for a show of hands next Sunday. There would be no shaming; there will be no shaming. But we actually want to do this, right? It is just one little step toward the transformation of our whole parish culture, and we have wonderful parishes in the area, but there is room for growth. We want to fill these gaps even the front pew. We want to be a beacon of light. We want to be able to joyfully share our faith.
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Second Sunday of Easter, April 7th
The wounds of Jesus are not merely signs of his triumph over sin and death; they are not nearly an identifying factor so that these disciples can believe that this is truly Jesus. His wounds teach us something about our own wounds and what it means to experience healing. His wounds didn't go away. They were healed but there was still the mark. There was still the mark in his palms, in his hands, and in his feet and in his side. So, if we're asking for our wounds just to go away and Jesus gently responds to that and says, “That is not how healing works.”
Model of a wound: tThe wound, which is in our heart, the layer of belief that is around that, whether it is identity lies, false beliefs about who we are or judgments about who other people are or groups of people; and then the vows that are formed based on those beliefs, those false beliefs.
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Easter Sunday Homily, March 31, 2024
Summary:
We see in the first reading today Saint Peter really announcing to the people he is speaking to that Jesus is the one that they were expecting. Jesus is the one that they hoped for. He is the promised Messiah. He, by his death and resurrection, has brought to affect this reconciliation of humanity with God. Jesus himself has bridged that gap. He has restored our friendship with God most High.
But the question is how exactly do we today in 2024 obtain that benefit that he brought about so many years ago? What do we do?
Jesus established a Church that would remain upon the earth long after he ascended into heaven and the Church could be the instrument through which the Father would pour out his grace into humanity.
But he gives us the Sacraments as a tremendous gift to the Church so that as we participate in this Sacraments we are made anew.
He is waiting for your “Yes,” not just once at the Baptismal font, not just a second time at your first Confession, or a third time at your First Communion. He is looking for a “Yes” everyday of our life and the Sacraments nourish us so well because in the Sacraments we are not just going through some symbolic ritual we are actually receiving the grace that these rituals signify. That is profound. That is a beautiful, beautiful truth of our Faith that God is offering, he is not forcing Salvation on anyone, he is offering and waiting for a ‘Yes” not just on Easter Sunday, but also on Easter Monday and on Easter Tuesday – everyday of the year he is looking for a ‘Yes.”
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Palm Sunday of the Lord's Passion, March 24, 2024
There might be a number of different emotions stirred up in our hearts when we are presented with the passion of our Lord Jesus. Perhaps grief or sorrow, sadness, maybe even anger or indignation. Perhaps gratitude? There can be all kinds of emotional experiences. Most importantly, the Lord wishes to elicit a response of love. So, we might just take a moment and pay attention to what is going on in our hearts and ask the Lord to help us to respond with love. To allow love to be stirred up in our hearts. A love like the love which he has shown us.
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Fifth Sunday in Lent, March 17, 2024
Summary
We hear Jesus say toward the end of today's Gospel, “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself.” The careless reader might look at that and say, “Ah, he is talking about being lifted up from the earth. The Ascension. And then he'll gather all of his beloved disciples into the joy of the Kingdom of Heaven.” But look at the next line. It says, “He said this indicating the kind of death he would die.” He's talking about being lifted up on the Cross.
He was speaking, however, of that event - of his self-donation, his suffering, his passion, his bearing the weight of the world's sin. He was speaking about the fact that he would invite all of humanity in their sufferings to come to him in that moment of their greatest suffering and to be with him and not just to accompany him at the Cross as if we would come to the Cross and stand there looking but his invitation is drawing everyone to himself. His uniting those who suffer with him on the Cross so that their sufferings and their trials actually participate in his redemption of the world.
This moment is the fulfillment of what you said, “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself.” We don't want to reject that invitation, brothers and sisters, we want to draw near the Lord especially in those most difficult moments and if we do that, we will experience what it means for the seed of the grain of wheat to fall to the ground and die but then to life again.
List of Services
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Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 10, 2024
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Third Sunday in Lent, March 3, 2024
Summary:
Jesus was not at face value cleansing the temple of something that was just literally wrong being done, he was cleansing the temple of the ‘attitude’ that was the misplaced.
I've said for the last couple of Sundays that Lent is like our whole spiritual life in miniature. First, I was talking about the it is an ongoing battle; last time I was talking about the Transfiguration; today we can apply that same principle. During Lent, how do we relate to all the precepts that the Church gives us? Well, the Church tells us about fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday and abstaining from meat on all the Fridays of Lent and Ash Wednesday and then we should do some extra prayer, alms giving and fasting. We can look at all of that in a very legalistic way. As I said on Ash Wednesday, don't get to the end Lent and say, ‘I did it!’. We can look at it in a legalistic way and say I'm just doing what I'm supposed to do, or we can see all of these practices as truly transformative and not as I said last Sunday ‘transactional’.
But see then when we get to the end of Lent, we can say. “Oh, yes, I have embraced all of these things and I've grown my love of God. I've grown in my relationship with him.” But remember that that is just a miniature of what our whole spiritual life ought to be. So, if we approach these teachings, these Laws and practices of Lent from a right perspective then that should help us to approach the Law and the precepts and teachings of the Church from the right perspective in the rest of our life - outside of this season of Lent so that all of the things that we do in obedience to God’s Law are seen as opportunities for true growth in holiness.
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Second Sunday in Lent, February 25, 2024
Summary:
Considering that we celebrate the Feast of the Transfiguration every year on August 6th it is kind of interesting that the Church would prescribe that this account should be proclaimed on another Sunday of the year. It is always on the 2nd Sunday of Lent every year, so it got me to thinking of all the times to present the Transfiguration, why Lent? What does the Transfiguration have to do with the season of Lent? I am going to give three shots at explaining it.
First, with Scripture in context, the account of the Transfiguration in Saint Mark's Gospel appears immediately after Jesus’ first prediction of the passion which he concludes by teaching his disciples that they, too, are going to have to take up their cross and deny themselves if they are really wanting to be his followers.
Second, the Transfiguration gave Peter, James and John a vision that they would be able to hold onto later especially in the times when they would suffer persecution, and rejection, and opposition because of their faith in Jesus.
Third, it is understood that the Transfiguration happens in the context of prayer and that I think shows us why the Transfiguration is fittingly recalled. Prayer, one of the absolute fundamentals, is not about fulfilling an obligation so that we can say, “Ah, I said my prayers today” and feel satisfied with ourselves. No, when Jesus invites us to go up the mountain with him in prayer, he is actually calling us into a very relational and personal encounter in which he would like to help us to know him better and love him better. I have heard it said in different circles recently that prayer is not supposed to be transactional but transformational. Prayer is not the transaction that you check off of your list and say, “Okay, I did that today.” But actually, it is an invitation into this dynamic encounter with the person of Jesus Christ and through him in the Spirit with the Father.
So, why the Transfiguration? Perhaps these three things: a reminder that the journey of Lent is not penance for its own sake but rather the transfigured Jesus shows us the image of what we shall be. We are on a journey into glory. Secondly, that just as the glory of the Transfiguration was a memory that the Apostles could hold onto for difficult times to come, so the joy of the Resurrection celebrated at Easter is something we need to carry with us throughout life especially in very difficult times. And third, that all of this unfolds in prayer. We are invited to discover the greater depths in prayer. We are invited to make our prayers more substantial and relational. You might find other reasons to look at the Transfiguration during Lent, I encourage you to ponder those, too. What does the Transfiguration mean to you? How does it relate? What is its relevance to you right now? Does the encounter with the risen Lord have a transformational effect?
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First Sunday in Lent, February 18, 2024
Summary:
Lent, the season of Lent, is the spiritual life in miniature. It is forty days set aside during the year when we are really invited to go into the desert with Christ. You are invited to engage in these battles that go on within us. Lent is not the only time of year when prayer is called for, or fasting, self-denial. Lent is not the only time when self-restraint is appropriate or almsgiving. Sure, we focus on these things during Lent, but Lent is just our spiritual life in miniature. Perhaps the Church gives us the season of Lent as a great reminder to keep on fighting that fight. I am not saying that you must be in full on battle mode, or the devil is hiding under every rock. No, but we should always be engaged in some way in fighting the fight allowing the Spirit of God to be operative in the day-to-day struggles.
So, engage this Lent. Don’t do some token little observance, some token penance to say, “Ah, I did something for Lent.” As I mentioned on Ash Wednesday, choose something that is truly transformation so that when you arrive at Easter you can say, “I have changed, I have grown, my life is new again.” We are not just preparing for the Celebration of the Resurrection; we are also preparing for the renewal of our Baptismal promises. Right? In Baptism we entered into a covenant greater than Noah. We entered into the covenant that is sealed in the blood of Christ; we were made a new creation so that when we stand there with our candles at Easter and renew the promises of our Baptism, we are inviting the Spirit of God, which we received in our Baptism, to be more and more victorious in our life. So Lent is practice for that. We are engaging in that battle, and we are trying to deny that fallenness in us, that inclination to sin, that when Easter comes it will be glorious and we will truly be made new. I assure you that the reward is well worth the effort.
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Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time February 11, 2024
One way that we are invited to connect with the lepers or relate to them is that worship means something to us and to be deprived of the opportunity to worship because of the disease is a suffering.
But what else? I think we can look at the leper and say that leprosy is symbolic of something else. Leprosy is symbolic of something else. Leprosy symbolizes that which gets in the way of our rightful worship of God. Just like for the leper, as I said, the worst part for him was that he could not go to the temple. He had to be apart from the worshipping community so then in that case the leprosy is not just a terrible disease that he has to suffer. It is the thing that gets in the way of worship. And so, that is the same case for us. Even though we don't have a physical leprosy we can consider that there are things that get in the way of are our worshipping God as we ought to worship God.
Maybe it's sometimes it's just a feeling of feebleness or weakness in our faith. Sometimes it is distractions. Is there anyone here who's not busy? Everyone is busy – busy, busy, busy. So many things we are distracted with, day in and day out. Things that we've got to do, yes, but sometimes just distractions that divert our hearts’ attention. Likewise, attachments to other things. Perhaps it is the pursuit of material wealth or the pursuit of a good reputation and the esteem of other people. Maybe it's the pursuit of our creature comforts. It’s not that having material possessions or having the esteem of other people or having creature comforts is wrong.
The question is how strongly are we attached to those things and can they, in fact, get in the way of the worship that we offer to God each day? Sometimes it's fear. Fear that we would not have enough time for other things. Fear of what others might think of us as we get too “religious.” Maybe it is just our daily struggle with sin. It is good for us to take a moment and identify those things in our lives that just get in the way of our worshiping God with our whole heart and doing everything for the glory of God as Saint Paul says.
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Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, February 4, 2024
The insight that we really gain here is that Satan does all of this to Job for no other reason than to try to drive a wedge between Job and God. Satan does not care a lick about Job; he is not trying to convert Job to satan worship or something like that. He is not interested in Job. All he wants is for Job to turn away from God therefore to deprive God of his beloved Job. That's all that Satan is interested in. That is a good lesson for all of us to learn as well because sometimes we are brought low.
It is not hard for any of us to think of that thing in life that we wish would just go away. A struggle with sin or a struggle economically; or a broken family relationship that you wish was healed; trouble in the workplace, in the neighborhood; fear about what might happen in the world and so forth and so on. It does not take us long to put our finger on something, some area of suffering or trial or difficulty in our life. The lesson of Job is that we don't need to ‘spend’ ourselves trying to figure out how to make that thing go away. How to make suffering go away. We are not going to make it go away by ‘understanding’ it, necessarily. Job is left not understanding why all of this happened. All he can say is, “God is greater than I.”
God does not delight in our suffering. The scripture is clear about that. God does not delight in our suffering. But he sees in our suffering, nonetheless, a way to draw us closer to him. That if we would turn to him in that moment, you experience support for the moments of suffering every day. We would recognize that he is sustaining us and that we are not alone; that he's actually helping us to grow.
Maybe one of the things we should do is zoom out and say what are the larger forces at work here and to make the decision: “I’m not going to allow this to drive me away from God. Rather, I am going to turn back to God with all my heart - I'm going to cling to God in the moment of this suffering especially when it gets the worst, I will not let go of God, I will trust in him that he's going to use this trial that I'm going to bring me closer and closer to him. If we can do that, we will discover that God through our sufferings is inviting us into an encounter with Jesus his son who wants to put the broken pieces together and to restore wholeness.
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Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, January 28, 2024
So, the fact is brothers and sisters, we may live in a representative democracy but first and foremost we live in a Kingdom. We live in a kingdom. We have a king who is the authority to whom we turn. Christ the King whose teaching’s we embrace. But more than that our life of faith is not just to say, “Okay, I can accept all of that. I believe that.” To be a Christian means we live as faithful citizens of that Kingdom. We allow Jesus to govern us. You see Jesus is not the kind of governor, he's not the kind of authoritative figure that we might be used to in the secular world. He is absolutely worthy of trust. He doesn't abuse the power that is his but always uses his power. His power is his love. His power is his mercy. His governing of us is directed not toward his own good or his own pleasure, exactly, but to our good by which he is glorified, yes, but ultimately his concern is not himself but you.
So, we are completely safe in placing ourselves in the Kingdom allowing this king of ours to govern us and rule us. We find in the end that in this miraculous and extraordinary way our freedom actually grows by being faithful subjects of this king. We don't lose our freedom. We don’t end up the losers we end up being, we end up being victorious with our Lord who wants us to flourish as human beings. He wants us to have the fullness of joy, the fullness of life and peace and satisfaction.
So, the question I guess for us is simply, what are the different voices that we listen to in our life? Whom do we consider to be authoritative for us? The Church is not teaching us today that we need not pay attention to anyone else but only Jesus. The Church would teach us that we pay attention to Jesus first and all the rest after that. Do we find ourselves as faithful subjects of the king always wanting to know what he has to say to us? Always walking, always living with open ears and an open heart to receive what he has to give us. That's the kind of life that he desires and again it's not a surrendering of our freedom, but the Lord is engaging our freedom. He doesn't want to squash our hearts, squash our will; he wants to make our heart and our will like his - which is a beautiful thing.
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Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, January 21, 2024
About four years ago in the September of 2019 our Holy Father Pope Francis decreed that the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time each year should be observed as Word of God Sunday. And so, it's a special opportunity for us to reflect on the importance of the Word of God in our life. Certainly, the written Word, the scriptures, the importance of praying with the scriptures and being nourished by the scriptures each day in our walk of faith. But I think there's an invitation also to go a little bit deeper than that and say it's not just about text on the page. We are invited to reflect on what is the Word of God. We think about ‘word’ as something in print or the sound waves that hit our eardrums and we perceive that sound. But the word is actually that which is expressed by the printed text or what is expressed by the sound that is coming to us. The word is not just the sound or the print on the page, it is the content of that and so if you think about it, the ‘word’ is actually prior to the writing or the sound. There is something that exists before it's spoken.
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Second Sunday in Ordinary Time January 14, 2024
Just these three things: hearing the call, growing in holiness, and sharing the good news. They summarize really our Christian life.
These three things, hearing the call, growing in holiness, and sharing the good news - they happen together. They are simultaneous although there is a logical progression from one to the next. It is not that one has to be complete before the next begins. So, we're always in the process of for the call listening for what God wants to say to us. Working on growing and holiness deepening our friendship with Christ, and we have to share the good news.
I propose this three-part overview as something maybe to lend simplicity to your consideration of how you're living the Christian life. Perhaps it can be the basis of an examination at the end of each day. “Did I listen? What was the Lord saying to me today? Did I grow in my Christian life today? What were the opportunities that I had to choose to follow Jesus today? Did I choose to do that, or did I say ‘no’? And thirdly, what opportunities did I have to share my faith? Was I indeed a bridge for someone else or was an obstacle? Did people see how I lived my life today and kind of think about God or something else?
We simply ask for the grace today to be faithful to these three things: hearing the call, growing in holiness, and sharing the good news.
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Epiphany, January 7, 2024
Our celebration of the Epiphany today is not merely the commemoration of the visit of the Magi to the newborn Christ in Bethlehem and sort of the conclusion of the Christmas narrative with the conclusion of the Christmas season. It also really points us to a dynamic in the spiritual life that is key for us to understand. It has to do with to God’s desire to communicate himself and his wondrous deeds to all the world.
The manifestation, the Epiphany, is about the coming together of God's revelation and our perception so that they meet in this place of communication. It is not just that God has revealed himself and he goes unnoticed; nor is it that we are here waiting to perceive and there is nothing to perceive. Our seeking comes together with his revealing into this moment of discovery.
Discovery is what our Christian life is about! Discovering God! Not once. Not twice. Not once a week. But continuously discovering God!
The only question is are our ears open? Are our eyes open to perceive what God is doing? Or God's revelation in each moment in our life sometimes go unnoticed and unheeded.
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Feast of the Holy Family, December 31, 2023
Father David Kruse celebrated the weekend Masses.
The Lord brings us salvation and healing of the heart. The Lord loves you so much there is nothing that you can do that is so bad as it might seem that will ever diminish God’s love for you by name. You are his beloved, no matter what. There is no good that you can do that will ever earn or increase more love for you from God. He loves you unconditionally, infinitely, and that will never change.
Friends, that is what gives us the anchor in our hearts and heals our wounds so that we know that no matter what happens in life, he has us in the palm of his hand, and he loves us no matter what. And that love brings healing, and peace, and salvation. The only thing that we have to do is be available.
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Nativity of Our Lord, December 25, 2023
Well, we have gathered this day, this beautiful morning, to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, our Lord, our Savior, our King, our God, our all. And like any celebration of a birthday, we thank God for the gift of this life. We thank God for all that Jesus did in the course of his relatively short life here on earth. It is a great opportunity for us to turn to Jesus today and tell him how much his presence has meant in our life. But like the celebration of a birthday of a person who has passed away, even today the spirit of Jesus’ celebration of his birthday is more tangible. There is a spirit of joy that permeates Christmas, the spirit of his peace, his goodness. It is a beautiful thing. There is perhaps a little stirring up of this spirit at Christmas that we don't necessarily experience every other day of the year.
Read the entire homily by clicking the download button
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Fourth Sunday Advent, December 24, 2023
Many of the scriptures reveal to us is the importance of humility when it comes to serving God and doing his will. We see actually in the scriptures, contrast given between those who are humble in serving God and those who in their pride say, “I will not serve.” The coming Christmas season, which is practically upon us, gives us so many examples to observe a true humility. We see the example of Jesus himself being born in a stable and being laid in a manger, wrapped in swaddling clothes. We see the example of Mary, but we also see the example of Saint Joseph humbly following the directives of the angels in his dream. We see the humility of the shepherds. We see the humility of Magi prostrating themselves before a baby in a trough.
There are so many examples of humility in the coming season. Surely the Lord is inviting us to embrace humility. Sometime ago a friend was describing at length all the things going on in his life and I mean, at length. And finally, he paused and said, “Well enough about me. What do you think about me?” [Laughter]. Yes, he was joking but it is so easy for us sometimes to place ourselves at the center of the universe. Make ourselves the architect of our own universe, our own existence. There might be different reasons for that - maybe there is a woundedness where we were rejected at some point, and we then feel that we have to really assert ourselves in this world to prove that we are worthy of love. Or maybe it's just the age-old sin of pride and the unwillingness to lower ourselves. Whatever the reason the scriptures are show us clearly that pride is an obstacle to God's will being carried out effectively in our life and bearing abundant fruit.
Read the entire homily by clicking the download button
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Third Sunday in Advent, December 17, 2023
But what we want ultimately to happen is for the actual needs in our life and our discovery of what God desires for us to transform our wants so that we go in pursuit of what it is that God wants for our life which is what we need. Then ultimately when we have what we need we find that we're at peace. We are content. There is a spirit of satisfaction in that. Now, this is just a natural plane, right? There is a kind of natural satisfaction that comes from having our needs met and our wants satisfied but we are not going to stop at just the natural plane. We want to elevate this to the supernatural plane to our relationship with God and all of these dynamics apply in that relationship. So, we want to look at how what we want of our relationship with God compares to what we need in our relationship with God.
Read the entire homily by clicking the download button
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Second Sunday In Advent, December 10, 2023
The Church, in the season of Advent for a long, long time has said that Advent is about all three comings. Right? It is acknowledging the coming of Christ in time as he did 2000 years ago. It is announcing, it is looking forward to his coming in glory at the end of the world but it is also about announcing and being able to recognize his coming now. As he does indeed come to us now.
How to announce his presence, his present coming? I think it is mainly a matter of our living by the Holy Spirit because when we live by the Holy Spirit, we are the evidence, we are the announcement that he is here. When people encounter Christ in us by what they observe in us; when people meet Jesus because of the way that we speak to them, the compassion that we bear in our hearts for them, our patience with them, our generosity with them, our mercy. When they encounter him, they are really seeing that Jesus comes to them today and it's not in a real abstract way - it’s a very concrete way. As they concretely encounter us in our work, in our whatever we do - we go out shopping, shoveling snow for our neighbor -whatever it might be. They are concretely encountering Christ in us and if we are faithful in being the image of Christ then they truly can recognize his coming. And what a gift that is for
them.
That is the first thing. The second point for our reflection is how do we announce the future coming of Christ? I think the main way that we announce his return is with the urgency or the determination with which we live our Christian life. So, we're not casual about it.
Read the entire homily by clicking the download button
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First Sunday in Advent, December 3, 2023
No homily is available for December 3rd.
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Feast of Christ the King, Sunday, November 26, 2023
And so, the lesson of this Gospel is not that we should do an occasional kind of deed for the street person we run into from time to time. Every single one of us is a poor beggar, hungry and suffering in some way. Jesus comes to us in every single person we encounter every day. If we have eyes to see, we can meet Jesus in all of them.
Mother Teresa always would say, “This Jesus we adore in the Eucharist is the same Jesus we meet and serve in the poorest of the poor.” It is the same Jesus. So, every time we come to Mass, every time adore and love Jesus in the Eucharist, we are reminded not to allow this to be the isolated instance in our week when we meet the Lord but to go out from here and meet the same Jesus in the poor, whether they are on the street or in our home. Love, and honor and serve Him in them.
Read the entire homily by clicking the download button
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Thirty-Third Sunday In Ordinary Time, November 19, 2023
Just look at three simple points from the Gospel. The behavior of the master, the behavior of the first two servants and then of the third.
Look at the father - the father trusts his servants. There is an echo of the father in Parable of the Prodigal Son when the father says, “My son, everything I have is yours.” The man entrusts himself to the servant. I encourage you to read the full version. It is not until the later when the father is cast in a negative light as harsh, demanding, master. He entrusts himself to them. He wants what is good for them. He wants them to flourish. He gives them all they need to do well.
In the verse with the second servants, they eagerly receive their gifts and immediately go out. They are industrious about putting that gift into practice. They don’t compare what they have received. The one with two talents doesn’t say, “Why didn’t I get five?” The one with five doesn’t say, “Look, I got five.” They were both happy to receive what they got based on their capacity.
The third servant is afraid of failure. He knows that there is a potential he could come back to his master empty handed, so he does nothing. He has the wrong idea of who his master is. He accuses the master of reaping where he does not sow and gathering where he does not scatter. But when they bring their talents back, the master is precisely gathering where he sows and reaping where he scattered. When he gave the talents, he was sowing the seed to be used in the fruit of his own harvest.
There are three lessons for us. First, know the master; know the heart of the one who entrusts us with such great gifts, especially the gifts of the Spirit. Secondly, be like the first and the second servants – industrious, eager to put into action the gift of the Spirit that we received. Third, avoid the pitfall of the third servant who had the wrong image of the master. He fell into fear and ended up empty handed.
Live by the Sprit that has been given to us and allow God to speak to us and our journey with him to be very fruitful.
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Thirty-Second Sunday In Ordinary TIme November 12, 2023
But the disturbing part is that that when the foolish virgins asked the wise virgins for oil, the wise virgins would say ‘no.’ How Christian is that? How is that an example of generosity? How is that example of service?
Caring for those who are in need, even suffering with those who suffer. But the whole message of the Gospel is charity, isn’t it? So, here Jesus is presenting these virgins as wise who say ‘No, we are not giving you our oil.” What is behind that?
Well, clearly, he's not teaching that we should not have charity for our neighbor; that there's not charity and love and grace to be shared in the Church. But perhaps what he's saying here is if the oil represents the surrender that we have expressed to God in our own life, we cannot burn someone else's oil. When it comes to our final encounter with the Lord at the end of our life, we can't bring someone else in and say, “Well, this person's love will substitute for my own.” I can't use someone else's voice to say, “I love you God”. I can't use someone else's voice to say, “I believe” or “Forgive me, Lord”. I have to say that with my own voice. That surrender that I present at the end of my life has to come from my own heart and no one else’s surrender. And they suffer for that so the wise virgins say we can't no give you our oil.” And even afterwards when the other virgins come back with the oil that they've got from someone else, they knock on the door and the bridegroom says, “I don't know you.” We are not going to pull one over on God. We are not going to trick Jesus into believing that someone else is supplying for us the love that has to come only from us. When we stand before the Lord, he wants to hear our voice say, “I love, I believe, I trust in you.”
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Thirty-First Sunday In Ordinary TIme November 5, 2023
I want to propose the Eucharist - the worthy and fruitful celebration of the Eucharist - as the best remedy for any kind of disintegration that might try to come about in our hearts. I want to recommend the Eucharist as the very medicine of integrity and wholeness because in the Eucharist we receive the body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. But we do not make Jesus part of us as is what happens when we eat any other kind of food. It becomes part of who we are. In the Eucharist we become the one we eat; we become the one we consume. We are transformed into Christ. The more deeply we engage in this mystery, the more we enter into it and the more we become like Christ, the less we are like the Pharisees and scribes.
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Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time October 29, 2023
The definition of love as ‘willing the good of the other’ also helps us to make sense of today’s Gospel which you could say it is not all that hard to understand. But at the same time, it can be very easy to misunderstand, especially if we think of love in modern terms. If we think of love as a feeling or an experience that cannot really be chosen. Some people might say, “Yes, how can God actually command love?” When you think of falling in love with someone, well that can’t actually be chosen. You can’t set out to fall in love with that person. It just happens, right? Or we think of how love that naturally grows in our experience of knowing someone. You say, how can God command love if is not something that we can really control? That is where that definition comes in very handy. “To love is to will the good of another.”
In other words, when Jesus tells us that the two greatest commandments are “to love God with our whole being and to love our neighbor as our self,” he is aiming those directly at the place in us that makes decisions. He is not commanding that we stir up in our hearts some affection, some feeling, some devotion, although loving God in that way is good, too, and loving our neighbor in that way is good. But that is not what he is commanding. The commandment is aimed at our will. That center within us out of which we make concrete decisions and therefore love can certainly be commanded because we have control over our will.
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Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time October 22, 2023
How is Jesus saying, “Repay to Caesar what is due to Caesar and pay to God what is due to God,” a call to conversion? Well, every person Jesus was talking to in this scene would have known that God created man in His own image and likeness. They all would have known that. They would have known that all of us bear the image of God. The likeness to God has been lost through sin. The image of God is that we are rational beings. We are different than other beings in this world as God has given us not only in the body but also a rational soul. In the beginning God created us also in this likeness. God created human beings to shine with holiness, goodness, virtue, and that was lost through sin although the image was never destroyed.
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Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time October 15 2023
I want to suggest one simple thing today and that is if we participate more and more worthily and deeply and fully in the Mystery of the Eucharist, then the change that we want in our heart will happen. If we approach the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ with a desire to be able to surrender to him, he will give us that grace. If we come forward to receive the Body and Blood of the Lord eager to receive his invitation to follow and to give ourselves completely for him, he will make that change happen. He is going to break down those walls that are in our hearts and he will succeed in making us his own.
There is a Eucharistic revival going on in our nation with good reason. Not just because of statistics that show that so few Catholics even believe in the real presence of Christ. The reason is really that we need to discover the reality of this sacrament and its power! It’s power to bring us to the wedding feast!
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Twenty-Seventh Sunday In Ordinary Times October 8, 2023
There are all kinds of different ways that we perceive the Lord knocking at the door. We don't open it. We can be very inhospitable to the Lord as he's trying to break into our lives. He’s taking these initiatives to bring his grace and transformation into our hearts. And it's such a good thing for us to be able to recognize that and not just to walk along saying, “Oh, everything is just right, you know. Me and the Lord we're like this😊 We walk hand in hand every day and everything is perfect.” It is good for us to recognize our failures in that regard, but the point is not that we would then issue condemnation upon ourselves but rather that it would be the impetus for conversion and for making a change in that regard.
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Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time October 1, 2023
Our Lord wants our ‘yes’ to his invitation to be backed up with our whole self. To be well thought out and solidly deliberate. That requires freedom; that requires reflection; that requires a good, solid decision. What the Lord is looking for is what you are going to say in this moment. Even in times when we have said “no”, recognize that the Lord is giving us a space. He is merciful. He is patient. He still gives us the opportunity to turn back to him and live.
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Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 25 2023
Reverand Msgr. Robert Pearson was the celebrant for Mass on September 24th. In his homily, Father Pearson spoke about the second reading where St. Paul is speaking to the Philippians and to us in these words: “I long to depart this life and be with Christ, for that is far better.” St. Paul is anxious for death because death means that he will be in Christ. How different that is than most of us feel. Why do we not have the same desire as St. Paul. One reason maybe that we are not convinced that there is anything meaningful after death. Another reason maybe that we fear leaving our loved ones. Father suggests that to put both these fears behind we need the virtue of hope – placing all our trust in Christ’s promises and not relying on our own strength but upon the Holy Spirit.
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Twenty-Fourth Sunday In Ordinary Time, September 17 2023
Bishop Daly was the celebrant for Mass on September 17th. In his homily, he identified five steps for forgivenss. "On a retreat I attended while I was still a priest, I remember the retreat director gave five important steps in forgiveness. I never forgotten them and I share these when I give a retreat. First, we must recognize that a wrong has been done to us and there is no point in pretending it didn’t happen. The second thing is related to this and is that we must recognize that we have feelings and those feelings are often anger and hurt. Those feelings are not sins, they are natural and healthy and we should not deny them. The third aspect of forgiveness is that we need to talk about it. Hopefully to the one who has hurt us, but if not then to someone else we trust, maybe even in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. The fourth is that we have to make a decision to forgive. Forgiveness is an act of the will; it is not a feeling. It doesn’t mean that there still won’t be hurt or bitterness but healing takes time. Finally, we have to make a decision about the relationship of the person who hurt us. We have three choices: we continue it, we break it off for a while, or we just discontinue it all together. Jesus said ‘to forgive’, he never said ‘be reconciled’. Why? Because it takes two to be reconciled. Sometimes people just won’t forgive us or we find it very difficult to forgive but we have to try. And thus, we have to pray for grace which is a help from God. Unless we forgive, we won’t be able to let go of bitterness and resentment and thus we won’t be able to experience peace and healing. Forgiveness does not mean forget, it means remembering and letting go but it is a holy task and one that only God can make possible."
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Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 10 2023
Jesus addresses the question of sin. What we do when someone in the Church sins against us? He says, “If your brother sins against you?” He is not talking about some random person out there. “If your brother sins against you.” If someone sitting next to you in the pew at Church sins against you, someone who is committed to living the Christian life, if that person sins against you, what should you do and he goes into a four-step progression of dealing with that situation. First, approach the person one-on-one. If that doesn’t work, bring one or two other people along as witnesses. If that doesn’t work bring it to the Church. And if that does work, he basically says that that person basically excommunicated himself, extracted himself from the community of the Church. He says, “Treat him as you would a Gentile or tax collector.” Don’t reject that person but acknowledge that person through his sin has alienated himself from the community of the Church and God.
But let’s backup for a moment here. In saying all that Jesus says in today’s Gospel, he is also implying something not said. He is implying that there are ways of responding or reacting when a brother sins against us that are not appropriate. For example, retaliating – not the Christian way. Or going first and discussing with some other people about what has happened before talking to the offender himself. Not the Christian way. Or sitting back and waiting for the sinner to come and ask for forgiveness, to apologize. That also is not the Christian way. Or simply cutting him off, saying, “You know what, you offended me we just can’t be in a friendly relationship anymore. I am done.” Not the Christian way because the Christian community is a community of love. And none of those responses are a response of love.
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Twenty-Second Sunday In Ordinary Time, September 3 2023
I want to suggest three ways to begin to think as God thinks. The first is to really immerse ourselves in his Word. In the scriptures, he tells us how he thinks. He reveals to us his mind, his heart. All the scriptures are filled with God’s perspective and if become familiar with the Word of God, we too, will start to see things from God’s perspective. Secondly, we pray each day that the light and wisdom and understanding and knowledge that the Holy Spirit gives, might be ours so that we can take on this new perspective. It is not something that we generate, right? If we want God’s perspective on things, we have to receive that from him, not just make it on our own. So, in our prayers we ask, “Lord Jesus pour out the gift of the Holy Spirit from the heart of the Father to fill me.” Thirdly, worthy celebration of the sacraments, reception of the sacraments, especially Confession and the Holy Eucharist. In Confession we can say, “Lord, clear out from my mind and heart those things that are opposed to your plan” and in Holy Communion we say, “Fill me Lord with all that is good, true and beautiful.” In Confession it is, “Lord, let me part ways with the things that are against you” and in Holy Communion, “Fill me Lord, truly transform me. Conform my heart to yours and my mind.”
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Twenty-First Sunday In Ordinary Time, August 27 2023
The Christian life calls us out of a place of comfort and security and complacency. Jesus said very clearly in the Gospel, if you want to be my disciple, you have to take up your cross. He doesn’t say, “Sit in your easy chair and let’s talk about nice things” and pat each other on the back and say how great we are. He says, in fact, you can’t be my disciple unless you take up your cross. And, yet we find ways to compromise so that we can be disciples and still be comfortable. We are called ‘out’ of that.
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Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time August 20 2023
So, the instruction for us is to pray humbly, pray persevering, pray without an ounce of entitlement, pray trustingly, pray with great faith. God hears your prayers, and, in his time, we are assured that the answer will come.
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Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time August 13 2023
Peter has gone out from the boat and in this sort of impetuous motion at first, he fails, falls into doubt, is saved by the Lord, and brings Jesus into the boat. This can be our very dynamic of our experience of fear and reassurance. When we turn to Jesus, when we cry out to Jesus in whatever our fear might be, and we hear his voice reassuring us that we have no need to doubt, we can come back into the community and share that experience and encourage people by that to bring Jesus into their experience of fear so that they can have a greater faith in him. Where they can say with all those in the boat, “Truly, you are the Son of God.”
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Feast of the Transfiguration August 6 2023
You have to hear him saying these words to you: “You are my beloved child with whom I am well pleased.” And when you hear the Father saying those words to you and you can receive that outpouring of his love, then everything changes.
Everything changes. Thoughts, words, deeds, you realize that your very being is a living God of the love of God being poured out. So, I know that each and every one of you have heard the Father saying those words to you, but I hope so. But if you haven’t, I urge you with all my heart, seek to hear those words. Pray every day and listen because I promise you, God the Father is saying those words to you. You don’t have to convince him to say those words to you, he is saying them. But it is not enough just to sit and say, “Okay, I accept that that is true”. We need to hear those words. And when those words penetrate the very depth of our being, when we believe them to be true, that we are the beloved children of God Almighty, when we believe that in our bones, then everything changes, and we can definitely climb that mountain. The more we make those words to take root, allow those words to take root, the more radiant we will become with the very holiness, the very light of God almighty.
List of Services
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Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 30, 2023
No Homily Available for July 30th
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Sixteenth Sunday In Ordinary Time July 23, 2023
So how do we approach this reality of the mixture of good and evil in the world, in the world around us? Do we get frustrated because things do not get fixed the way we want them to get fixed? In the world, in Church or closer to home? But then also what about the mixture of weeds and wheat in our own hearts? How do we approach that? Do we get frustrated that those weeds are still there maybe after a long, long time and struggle? Do we want to take the nuclear option and just say, “Ah! I wish I could just get rid of that thing.” Well, I think the Lord encourages us to work on eliminating any form of evil from our life. He wants us to be strengthened and to grow in holiness, but he also urges us to be patient with ourselves and to know that ultimately it is his work. Our conversion is his work with our cooperation. It is his grace with our saying, “Yes.” Maybe the parable in today’s Gospel gives us the opportunity to reflect on that. What is the reality of the mixture of good and evil in our own hearts? Not just in the world around us, but in our own hearts. So, we ask God this day to have mercy and patience not only with the world around us but even in ourselves on our own journey toward Heaven.
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Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 16, 2023
The primary thing for us as Christians is to live by the Holy Spirit and to follow his promptings. If it is truly the Holy Spirit who is guiding us and prompting us, we don’t have to worry about the outcome. If it is truly God who is asking us to do something, we don’t have to fear, we don’t have to worry, we just need to say ‘yes’. And as Isaiah says in the first reading, on behalf of the Lord, “…my word shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it.” If we allow the Word to take root in our hearts, and then we allow the Lord to send us out, his Word and his Spirit active in us will certainly achieve the end for which he sends it.
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Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 9, 2023
But what if, as you are gathering before Mass or going out after Mass, or if you run into someone that you know and have a conversation in a public place - what if the conversation eventually makes it way to where you can say, “What is going on in your life that I can pray for?” You are not prying. You are not trying to get information about what is going on in this person’s private life so that you can go out and ‘whatever.’ No, you are just saying, “What is it that I can I pray for you? Are there any relatives that need prayers, or do you personally need prayer?”
What if you were having that conversation each day? We would certainly get more comfortable about broaching that topic of spirituality with people.
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Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 2, 2023
Jesus is saying what he says today in the context of that Mission and what he is saying today doesn’t really say much about going out. He talks about the relationship with him that must absolutely be the foundation of any kind of Mission. So, if we shy away from that dynamic Mission, we probably need to drill down deeper and deeper into our union with Christ, our totality of love for him, the conformity of our life to his and our unity and identity with him. But see, we don’t have to achieve perfection in those things before he sends us. These things happen at the same time. The more we grow in our intimate communion with him, the more ready we are and the more he equips us to share with other people what that relationship is all about. The more ardently we love Jesus in the Eucharist, the more willing we are to invite others to come others to come and be part of the worshiping community. The more we experience this absolute unconditional love and acceptance for us in the depths of our souls, the more ready we are to go out and announce that because we want other people to experience that as well.
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Twelfth Sunday In Ordinary Time June 25, 2023
What if this whole community, imagine, this whole community with the beauty and vastness of the gifts that we have been given, every person in the community simply stepped forward and said, “Here is what I can do. Here is my gift. I don’t know how you want to use it, but I know that God has given me this gift for the building up of the community. What do you have in mind.” I think we might see a reversal of the trend of declining Mass attendance. We have half the number of people that were here fifteen years ago. Half! Maybe that is a homily for another day. But still, what do we want for our life in the Church? What is getting in the way of a living a fuller life in the Church? What is the Mission on which the Lord will send us? How willing are we to participate boldly in that Mission? What are the fears that stand in the way? What are the gifts God has given me that I might give an increase in love – the kind of love that will overcome those fears.
These are good questions. I encourage you to ponder them in the days ahead. See how the Lord may be calling you to acknowledge them. See how the Lord may be calling you to help. See how the Lord might be calling you for fuller participation in the Mission.
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Eleventh Sunday In Ordinary Time, June 18, 2023
I think the question to us is how we are going to participate. How fully are we going to participate in this work that is laid out for us in today’s Gospel. Are we looking at this and saying, “Oh, this is great. Jesus called those apostles back then.” No, this applies to us today. It applies to you and to me. Each one – how are we going to respond? What are we going to do? Surely, we can’t sit back and watch TV and say, “Someone else will take care of it.” That is not the life of the Christian disciple, is it? The life of a Christian disciple is not having someone else do – it is about listening. Listening for the voice of the Holy Spirit, urging us, prompting us, calling us. And giving us the courage and strength to respond to that call. Not to be afraid. To say, “Jesus I trust in you and if you are calling me and sending me then I know that you will give me exactly what I need.”
The Gospel ends today with the words, “Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.” Pray that we have the grace on this day to recognize what we have received. Not only the gifts that God has poured out into our lives, but ‘the call.’ That we might have the grace to recognize the call of Jesus today and that we might also have the grace to give what we have received.
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Corpus Christi Sunday, June 11, 2023
When we meditate on the whole life of Jesus, what happens is that we get a truer and truer notion of who God is and what he desires for our life. The Eucharist becomes something of this window, this keyhole if you will, through which we perceive something of God. This whole image of the keyhole - the way we look upon him and the way we look through him to the Father, it all draws us into participation. Participation in this mystery. And though participation in the mystery a sharing in the life of God. There is no better way in this world to be sanctified and to grow nearer to God than through growing our participation in the Eucharist.
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Trinity Sunday, June 4, 2023
What is your image of Heaven? What is your notion of eternal life? Does it have to do with this dynamic relationship that is God. The Father pouring out his love into the heart of his Son. The Son receiving from the Father that outpouring and pouring his love in return. And their love constituting a third person, the Spirit. When I think about entering into that dynamic of love, there is something in my heart that stirs. It resonates. I know that is what God made me for and I know that is what God made you for.
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Pentecost Sunday, May 28, 2023
On this Pentecost Sunday, I urge you to invite the Holy Spirit to come into every dimension of your life. Welcome the Holy Spirit. Surrender to the Holy Spirit. Yield to the Holy Spirit. Have confidence in the Holy Spirit. Trust in the Holy Spirit. Love the Holy Spirit. What would it be like to just go off the deep end into the life of the Holy Spirit? It wouldn’t be a bad thing at all. It would be a good thing.
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Ascension, May 21, 2023 - No Homily Available
No homily is available for Sunday, May 21st.
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Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 14, 2023
Practicing being mindful of the presence of God (using Brother Lawrence as a guide); receiving the sacraments especially the Eucharist and Reconciliation mindfully; exercising the gifts and fruits of the Spirit; and asking for an outpouring of that gift. All of these can help us be more and more mindful that God is truly with us. He has not left us orphans. He comes to us. He abides within us and fills us with all we long for.
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Fifth Sunday of Easter, May 7, 2023
Easter Joy is the result of recognizing all that God has done for us in Jesus Christ and is a two-part dynamic with giving/sharing. We have an opportune moment here to reflect on this two-part dynamic of joy. How well do we receive from God? How well do we find joy in simply receiving the outpouring of God’s graces and gifts in our lives? If I asked you, could you right now write a list of fifty gifts that God has given you? Or a hundred? How aware are you of the pouring out of God’s life in your soul? And the second part is, how well are we giving of those gifts? How completely are we sharing? Are we truly imitating the generosity of Jesus Christ in giving of ourselves and sharing all that we have received? Whether that is material or spiritual or intellectual, how well are we doing in living for others?
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Fourth Sunday of Easter, April 30, 2023
So, Easter, the Eucharist, the Holy Spirit, joy -all of these things are so intimately tied together and connected. But I think it is possible for us to have some Easter joy faithfully return to the Eucharist Sunday after Sunday, to experience the presence of the Holy Spirit and merely to be content and just be in a sort of a holding pattern and be comfortable in our Christian life. But that is not what we were made for. We were not made for comfort, or just contentment, or complacency. At the end of today’s Gospel, Jesus says, “I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.” More abundantly! If we are comfortable in our Christian life, we have to really ask ourselves, are we experiencing abundant life? Are we experiencing life ever more abundantly or are we just staying put?
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Third Sunday of Easter, April 23, 2023
I hope that you do not get tired of me speaking about Easter joy. I still am convinced we have got to hold on, but I think it's very easy also for us to allow a bit of erroneous thinking to slip in when it comes to this notion of holding on to Easter joy as if Easter joy is merely a high point of emotion that we have to somehow hold on to. We all know we're not the manufacturers of our own emotions. Very often our emotions are experienced in response to something that happens outside of us or something you know that goes on in our life or something that we don't really have that much control over. So, holding on to Easter joy isn't some matter of trying to keep stirring up an emotion in our hearts. So, the question I want to ask today then is where does Easter joy come from? Why does Easter make us joyful?
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Second Sunday of Easter, April 16 2023
What was the experience like for those apostles who had fled at the Garden of Gethsemane? Let’s not be so naïve as to think that they went home, kicked off their sandals, poured a night cap and slept like a baby. They agonized, I bet. They must have agonized over the reality that they had run from the Lord. They abandoned him in that Garden. The guards and soldiers showed up, apprehended Jesus and they turned. I bet they didn’t sleep at all. I bet all they could think about was what the Lord was suffering, what he had gone through in those days. Thomas likely knew what crucifixion was like. He knew that was what the crowds wanted for Jesus. So, he could easily imagine the wounds in Jesus hands and in his side. But it is interesting that he seemed stuck on thinking about all that went wrong. The things that he had done wrong. The way that he had abandoned the Lord after all the Lord had done for him and this new life that Jesus was leading him into through the course of the three years they spent together. He was just stuck in that way of thinking. But then when he encounters the Risen Lord, it seems that that thinking melts away. And he sees that wounds that he believes to be gory, and bleeding are not bleeding anymore. They are glorious, in fact. There is no longer blood and water pouring from the side of Jesus, but that hole is still there, and Thomas put his finger right there and, in that moment, he comes to believe. It is incredible how a new perspective on things can make such a difference.
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Easter Sunday, April 9, 2023
We need to keep our eyes and ears attuned to the ways that the Lord is leading from this day forward. This may be the clashing of cymbals and culmination of the Lenten journey but at the same time it is a beginning. I know without a doubt that the Lord in his goodness is inviting each one of you to let today be the beginning of a new chapter. What’s to hold you back from just setting the baggage aside, giving into the Lord? What’s to hold you back from opening your heart, letting him heal the wounds? What’s to hold you back to really allow his grace to strengthen you in your struggle? Whatever you bring to the church today, why not let this be the very moment that you experience newness in your life? That is why Jesus rose from the dead. Not just for a ‘fact.’ He rose because he loves you so much and he wants you to share in his divine life – day in and day out, walking the path of your life with him. So, brothers and sisters, in just a moment when we stand to renew promises of our Baptism give, make a great gift of yourself in that and then when his celebration culminates in his gift to us, open your heart wide to receive the healing, the peace, the joy that is going to make this building shake.
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Palm Sunday, April 2, 2023
I thank you, Jesus, for all you have done for me. I thank you for all you continue to do for me. Stay with me, Lord. Help me to stay with you.
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Fifth Sunday In Lent March 26, 2023
Resurrection is a present reality and Lent is a great season for us to recognize this truth by identifying the ways that we experience the tomb and with Lazarus to hear the Lord calling our name and commanding us to come out of that tomb.
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Fourth Sunday in Lent March 19, 2023
As I mentioned a couple of Sundays ago if we allowed God to tell us the truth of who we are instead of clinging to our understanding, how could our own life be different? If looking at other people and situations in the world, we were able to surrender our own judgment and allow God to show us the truth of those situations, or those people, those persons, how would our experience be different? Everything changes when we surrender our white knuckled grip on our own understanding and begin to invite God to reveal his truth more and more. It is a difficult journey, there is no doubt about it because we find such security and safety so often in our own understanding of things. But God offers us so much more in this life that our limited understanding can really even grasp.
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Third Sunday in Lent March 12, 2023
Lent is a wonderful time to recognize, to be reminded, that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit as the Church is the temple of the Holy Spirit, as the altar is the place where the perfect sacrifice is offered so is the altar of our hearts. We offer to God a sacrifice that we hope will be more and more pleasing. A sacrifice offered in love and humility and purity. So, on this holy day, we draw near the altar of the Lord. To come near the well that offers us living water. We draw near the pierced side of Christ from which flows blood and water washing us and giving us new life and we bring with us the empty vessel of our heart. We bring our hurts, we bring our longing for the Lord knowing that only he can truly satisfy.
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Second Sunday in Lent, March 4 2023
As I said in my homily of Ash Wednesday,” Now is the time.” We heard the word ‘now’ three times in the readings that day. This reading today, the Gospel today, is also about the ‘now’. It is not about “later”. It is not, “Maybe I will get to that some point in my life.” Now is the time that the grace of God is abundantly available to address these places in our lives where we have withheld ourselves. Those painful areas that we don’t want to look at. Maybe it is the sense of pain or guilt long ago. Now is the time, now is the time.
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First Sunday in Lent February 26, 2023
This is the great mystery of the Incarnation. Jesus isn’t just born; he takes on every aspect of our life. He experiences our birth; he experiences our growth and maturation; he experiences our toil; he experiences, he takes our sin upon him. He even goes through the experience of our death and here in the scriptures we see that he takes on our experience of temptation as well. There isn’t any way in which he separates himself from our experience, from our life. And so, in our experience of temptations, again big or small, the key is to realize that our temptations are his and we stand by his side throughout those temptations because that is the path to victory. Because he has already conquered the enemy. He has already conquered sin and death. This Lent we ask for the grace to invite him in, to recognize that the trials and temptations, and sufferings are his. By inviting him in, we experience the power of his victory.
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Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, February 19, 2023
Lent is a tremendous season of grace. I invited you last Sunday to pray each day this past week about how the Holy Spirit might be inviting you to have a deep conversion of the heart. And I invite you to continue doing that these next few days as we look forward to the beginning of Lent. But also let today’s reflection be a part of that. Look specifically at relationships in your life and where it is that the Lord might be really desiring to bring about reconciliation. Aware of where he might be wanting to breathe and move and work his reconciling grace.
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Sixth Sunday In Ordinary Time February 12,2023
What does it mean to be a practicing Catholic? Observance vs conversion. The observance of Lent is aiming at the conversion of heart. So, the question is, where is the Lord calling me? Where is the Lord calling each one of us to undergo a change of heart? Where are the strongholds, where are the areas of resistance within us that need to come tumbling out. What is it in our heart, deep in our hearts that we need to surrender to God? What are the trials that we are undergoing that trouble us interiorly that we need to entrust more and more completely to God? This is where you need to look in preparation for Lent.
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Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
No homily is available for this Mass.
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Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time January 29, 2023
This is the third part of a three-part homily series on vocations. There are three questions: Number one, how available am I, how willing am I to place myself at completely at the service of the Lord? Second, what is it that God really wants to do in me beyond just normal being good? Obeying the law? Following the precepts of the Church? Can I allow my notion of that to stretch and blown up. What God wants to do in me. And the third question, what does God want me to do through me? What is the mission field into which I am sent? What are the gifts that God has given me in equipping me for that mission?
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Third Sunday In Ordinary Time January 22 2023
Father continues his discussion on the meaning of vocation - the call from God. But he focuses this week's homily on God's side.
We have to keep reflecting on our own availability to God – our own willingness to do what God wants us to do. To live the life that God wants us to live but we also have to delve into this notion itself of what it means to live according to God’s call in our life.
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Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, January 15 2023
Examining our degree of availability to God. Do we set conditions? Do we see the challenges in our life to be fully 'availalbe' to God.
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Epiphany, Sunday, January 8, 2023
No homily is available for Sunday, January 8, 2023
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Solemnity of Mary, January 1, 2023
No homily availalbe for Sunday, January 1, 2023
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Fourth Sunday In Advent December 18, 2022
Joseph’s perception of the event needs to be enlightened by the truth and God communicates this truth with him through the instrumentality of the angel in the dream. God teaches Joseph, “This is not what you think it is. This is not a situation of shame that has to be tucked away and hidden and kept from the public view.” In fact, God desires Mary’s story to be known for all future generations. He desires Mary’s situation to become a radiant example of God’s power and glory working in the life of a human being. God takes this situation that is perceived as something so shameful and something that needs to be hidden and turns it into something beautiful. And how many of generations, how many millions of people throughout the ages have been inspired by Mary’s faithfulness and by Joseph’s cooperation with God’s plan.
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Third Sunday In Advent - Three Simple Ways to Find Joy
Today's homily gives three basic points and speaks about our quest for happiness. Three simple little recommendations that will help us find greater joy in life.
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Second Sunday In Advent, Father Kyle Ratuiste, December 4, 2022 Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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First Sunday in Advent, November 27, 2022 Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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Solemnity of Christ the King - Viva Christo Nuestro Rei Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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Thirty Third Sunday in Ordinary Time - Uniting our Sufferings to Christ Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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Thirty Second Sunday In Ordinary Time, November 6, 2022 Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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Thirty First Sunday In Ordinary Time, October 30, 2022 Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
List of Services
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Fourth Sunday in Advent December 18, 2022
Joseph’s perception of the event needs to be enlightened by the truth and God communicates this truth with him through the instrumentality of the angel in the dream. God teaches Joseph, “This is not what you think it is. This is not a situation of shame that has to be tucked away and hidden and kept from the public view.” In fact, God desires Mary’s story to be known for all future generations. He desires Mary’s situation to become a radiant example of God’s power and glory working in the life of a human being. God takes this situation that is perceived as something so shameful and something that needs to be hidden and turns it into something beautiful. And how many of generations, how many millions of people throughout the ages have been inspired by Mary’s faithfulness and by Joseph’s cooperation with God’s plan.
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Third Sunday In Advent - Three Simple Ways to Find Joy
Today's homily gives three basic points and speaks about our quest for happiness. Three simple little recommendations that will help us find greater joy in life.
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Second Sunday In Advent, Father Kyle Ratuiste, December 4, 2022 Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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First Sunday in Advent, November 27, 2022 Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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Solemnity of Christ the King - Viva Christo Nuestro Rei Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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Thirty Third Sunday in Ordinary Time - Uniting our Sufferings to Christ Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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Thirty Second Sunday In Ordinary Time, November 6, 2022 Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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Thirty First Sunday In Ordinary Time, October 30, 2022 Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
List of Services
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Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time: Managing our Fear Through Faith Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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Eighteenth Sunday In Ordinary Times - What Matters to God? Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Deep, Deliberate Prayer Life - Lord, Teach me to Pray Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time - Uniting our Sufferings to Christ Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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Salvifici Doloris: Pope Saint John Paul II Apostolic Letter on Suffering, 1984 Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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Fifteenth Sunday In Ordinary Time: Allegorical Interpretation of the Parable of the Good Samaritan Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time: Reflecting on what one concrete way of responding to Jesus’ call of what mission would look like and making a resolution today to work on that area Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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Thirteenth Sunday In Ordinary Time No Homily Available Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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Corpus Christi Sunday No Homily Available Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity - No Homily Available Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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Pentecost Sunday Unfurl The Sails Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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Sunday, May 29, 2022 Mass was not recorded Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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Sixth Sunday of Easter Greek Word "Logos" Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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Fifth Sunday of Easter Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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Fourth Sunday of Easter Good Shepard Sunday Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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Third Sunday in Easter Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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Divine Mercy Sunday Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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Palm Sunday of the Lord's Passion Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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Fifth Sunday In Lent Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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Fourth Sunday of Lent – The Story of our Relationship with God Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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Third Sunday in Lent - No Homily Available Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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Second Sunday Of Lent How Exodus Applies to Your Life Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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March 6th, 2022, First Sunday in Lent - Go with the Lord into the Desert Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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February 27, 2022, 8th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Sources that you turn to for guidance Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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February 20, 2022, 7th Sunday in Ordinary Time The grace to love without thinking twice about it Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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February 13, 2022, 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time A Christian looks at life through a different lens than the rest of people look Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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February 6, 2022, Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time Falling in Love with the Mass Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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January 30, 2022, Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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January 23, 2022 Third Sunday in Ordinary Time Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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January 16, 2022, Second Sunday in Ordinary Time Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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January 9, 2022, Feast of the Baptism of the Lord Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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January 2, 2022, The Feast of the Epiphany Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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Sunday, December 26, 2021, Feast of the Holy Family Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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December 25, 2022, Christmas Day Mass Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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December 19, 2021, Fourth Sunday of Advent Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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December 12, 2021, Third Sunday of Advent Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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December 8, 2021 Feast Day of the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.
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