We Can’t Shy Away

Homily for Friday of the 14th Week in Ordinary Time In our readings for yesterday morning, we heard Jesus inviting His apostles to participate in the greatest mission of Christian discipleship – going out and bringing the message of the Gospel to the world, of calling the world to repentance and conversion. But in yesterday’s…

Urgency of Mission

Homily for Thursday of the 14th Week in Ordinary Time In our Gospel today, Jesus invites His disciples to participate in the greatest mission of Christian discipleship – to evangelize and bring people to an encounter with the Good News of salvation, calling them to repentance and belief in the Gospel. He gives them some…

The Devil is Real

Homily for Tuesday of the 14th Week in Ordinary Time The Devil is real. He is not some idea or a concept that was invented to explain all of the bad things that happen in the world. Satan is very much present around us; he is active in our world today. And he has all…

Our Doubts and Questions

Homily for the Feast of St. Thomas the Apostle St. Thomas always seems to get a bad rap. The first thing that people always think about when Thomas comes to mind is that he doubted that the Lord appeared to the disciples in the Upper Room in the days after the Resurrection. Sure, he had…

In Need of Love and Mercy

Homily for Friday of the 13th Week in Ordinary Time In today’s Gospel, we hear the call of St. Matthew. Matthew was an educated man and a tax-collector for the Roman government and so would have likely been well-versed in Aramaic, Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. As the second Person of the Trinity, there is no…

A Place for the Lord

Homily for Memorial of St. Irenaeus When I first read this Gospel yesterday in preparing for this morning, I was kind of left scratching my head and thinking, “What is Jesus saying here?” I actually had to go to a Scripture commentary to understand this more and try to figure out what Jesus meant by…

We Are All Lepers

Homily for Friday of the 12th Week in Ordinary Time The leper in today’s Gospel is someone that I think we can relate to in a couple of different ways. First, in a very real sense this year, as someone with leprosy, he knew what it meant to practice social distancing, or physical distancing, or…

Enter through the Narrow Gate

Homily for Tuesday of the 12th Week in Ordinary Time Looking at our current culture, it is pretty obvious just how accurate this Gospel reading is for our time. There are definitely many roads leading to destruction and the road to heaven and life is getting even more narrow as time goes on. It is…

St. Aloysius Gonzaga

Homily for the Memorial of St. Aloysius Gonzaga It has often been said that the greatest saints of a particular age are those who were most counter-cultural to their time, those who weren’t afraid to stand against what the culture was selling. Throughout the history of the Church we have seen how the Lord raises…

Our Priorities

Homily for Friday of the 11th Week in Ordinary Time Yesterday, I was scrolling through Instagram, which is something that I find myself doing too much of from time to time, and I saw this one video of a protestant pastor sharing something with a group of young people from his church that really struck…