Category: Homily

Homilies for Sundays and Special Feast Days

  • Is Your Eye Evil?

    God doesn’t operate within a merit economy where everyone gets exactly what’s due them. God operates within a grace economy, where everyone receives not only what’s due, but more. The question was never whether the landowner was fair. The question is: is your eye evil because he is good?

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  • Compassion, Love, and Mercy

    The debt forgiven was billions; the debt refused was thousands. Jesus’s parable isn’t only about an ungrateful servant — it’s about compassion received and compassion withheld. Failures in compassion are, in the end, failures in gratitude. And the torturers we’re handed over to wear our own face.

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  • Sin and Punishment

    Punishment purchases compliance at the cost of resentment. It cannot bring about metanoia. Before we confront someone’s wrong, we have to ask: does it need to be said? Does it need to be said by me? Does it need to be said now? Correction, rightly practiced, seeks conversion, not vengeance.

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  • The Fundamental Option

    Give in to the voice that says you’re too weak, not good enough, settle for the easier way — or take up your cross and go through your fears into the life of the Spirit. Karl Rahner called it the fundamental option. For all of us, the choice is the same: death or life. Choose life.

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  • Living with Uncertainty

    Peter confesses, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” — but did he even understand what he was saying? Between Shebna and Eliakim, between Pan and Yahweh, between the good popes and the self-serving ones, Scripture keeps handing us dichotomy rather than clarity. Growth doesn’t come from certainty, but from the willingness to sit with what we don’t fully understand.

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  • God Practices DEI

    There are no winners without losers — that’s how human exclusivity works. But that’s not how God sees it. The Canaanite woman, an outsider in every category, receives what Peter, the insider, was just found wanting in: great faith, rewarded without regard to status, nationality, or standing.

    Homily

  • It Is I

    We expect God to fix what’s wrong. But our Scriptures show us that we encounter the power of God not in the solution, but in the difficulty itself — not in the wind, earthquake, or fire, but in a still, small voice; not calming the storm from a distance, but walking through it and saying, “Come. Do not be afraid. It is I.”

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  • Eucharist as Trust

    Took, blessed, broke, gave — the four eucharistic words. Jesus took not the disciples’ abundance, but their poverty, and blessed what was there rather than complaining about what wasn’t. Eucharist as trust: giving from our little, believing God will make it enough.

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  • Meek and Humble of Heart

    The Greek word Jesus uses for “meek” — praus — is the word for a tamed horse: strength controlled and directed, not weakness. Zechariah’s king, the Father’s little ones, and Christ’s easy yoke all point to the same radical truth: let go, trust God.

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  • Recognition and Hospitality

    What keeps us from opening our hearts to others? Fear — fear of not living up to expectations. But baptism has already put that old, anxious self to death. The freedom we live in now bears two fruits: discernment and hospitality. Even a cup of cold water, attentively given, carries immense value.

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  • Antidote to Fear

    “Fear no one,” Jesus tells the Twelve. Not a promise of immunity from harm or pain — but the assurance that we’re never truly alone. The Father is involved in every sparrow’s fall, and the same Word who suffered on the cross is one with our suffering still.

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  • The Responsible Christian

    “Responsibility” — responsibility begins with the inability to turn a blind eye to others’ pain and sorrow. A Christian is not compassionate because they feel like they’re supposed to be, but because, like Jesus, they cannot do otherwise.

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  • Eat You All Up

    “I love you so much, I could just eat you all up.” If you’ve ever had that experience, then today’s feast of the Body and Blood of Christ should make perfect sense to you.

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  • The Trinity and You

    “It is the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, echoing the love of God the Father, drawing us into the communion of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of love and unending life.”

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