Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 6, 2025
Sunday Homilies
2025 Jul 6 SUN: FOURTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME Is 66: 10-14c/ Ps 66: 1-3. 4-5. 6-7. 16. 20 (1)/ Gal 6: 14-18/ Lk 10: 1-12. 17-20 Our Scriptures begin today with an image from the prophet Isaiah of the most natural thing in the world: a mother feeding her child with her own milk. It is an image of comfort. And comfort is something that we all need. We turn then to the Gospel and it seems as if there's not much in the way of comfort. These 72 disciples are to go out on Jesus' command to proclaim the Kingdom of God in various towns. And Jesus himself seems to foresee, well, you're going in...
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Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles
Sunday Homilies
2025 Jun 29 SUN: PETER AND PAUL, APS S Vigil: Acts 3: 1-10/ Ps 19: 2-3. 4-5/ Gal 1: 11-20/ Jn 21: 15-19. Day: Acts 12: 1-11/ Ps 34: 2-3.4-5. 6-7. 8-9/ 2 Tm 4: 6-8. 17-18/ Mt 16: 13-19 When we think of Peter and Paul, we think of their leadership in the early Church. They did different things. They both found themselves in Rome, we believe somewhere between the years 64 and 67, and they were martyred while Nero was emperor. They had differing personalities and they did different things. And it is instructive for us to consider how they led the earliest believers in Jesus. We see, of...
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The Body and Blood of Christ, June 22, 2025
Sunday Homilies
2025 Jun 22 SUN: THE BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST S Gn 14: 18-20/ Ps 110: 1. 2. 3. 4/ 1 Cor 11: 23-26/ Optional Sequence Lauda, Sion/ Lk 9: 11b-17 This solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ was instituted in the 13th century. There were people at that time who said, "There needs to be a celebration of the Holy Eucharist which is apart from Holy Thursday." Apparently they had the idea that celebrating the Eucharist on Holy Thursday, the day it was instituted, made things too somber because Jesus' betrayal and arrest and condemnation and crucifixion immediately followed. ...
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The Most Holy Trinity, June 15, 2025
Sunday Homilies
2025 Jun 15 SUN: THE HOLY TRINITY S Prv 8: 22-31/ Ps 8: 4-5. 6-7. 8-9 (2a)/ Rom 5: 1-5/ Jn 16: 12-15 Last evening I spoke about current events and I'm not sure that everybody got the context. And the context is this. There were shootings in the Minneapolis area early yesterday morning. A state representative and her husband were killed. A state senator and his wife were badly injured but it is believed that they will survive. You know I've talked in the past about my sister Kathy. Kathy lives in Minneapolis and teaches at a Catholic school, three blocks from where George Floyd was...
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Pentecost, June 8, 2025
Sunday Homilies
2025 Jun 8 SUN: PENTECOST S Acts 2: 1-11/ Ps 104: 1. 24. 29-30. 31. 34/ 1 Cor 12: 3b-7. 12-13 or Rom 8: 8-17/ Sequence Veni Creator Spiritus/ Jn 20: 19-23 or Jn 14: 15-16. 23b-26 We come today to the conclusion, and you might say the crown, of the season of Easter: Pentecost -- what we also refer to as the Birthday of the Church. And if you were following in Breaking Bread, you may have found it somewhat difficult because of a variety of options for our Scriptures. In fact, there are a variety of options both today on Pentecost itself and also yesterday on the Vigil of Pentecost. Because there...
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Ascension of the Lord (Seventh Sunday of Easter), June 1, 2025
Sunday Homilies
2025 Jun 1 SUN: ASCENSION OF THE LORD S (Seventh Sunday of Easter) Acts 1: 1-11/ Ps 47: 2-3. 6-7. 8-9 (6)/ Heb 9: 24-28; 10: 19-23/ Lk 24: 46-53 As I mentioned last week, I am intending to concentrate through the 15th of June on God the Holy Spirit. And we have another help today in the passage from the letter to the Hebrews. He is asking us to imagine the heavenly sanctuary itself, which of course is beyond imagining. I know it exists. It is the proper place for the blessed Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We are to picture God the Son returning to that heavenly...
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Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 25, 2025
Sunday Homilies
2025 May 25 SUN: SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER Acts 15: 1-2. 22-29/ Ps 67: 2-3. 5. 6. 8 (4)/ Rv 21: 10-14. 22-23/ Jn 14: 23-29 (In the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois, the Ascension of the Lord supersedes the Seventh Sunday of Easter. Therefore, the following second reading and gospel may be substituted today: Rv 22:12-14. 16-17. 20/ Jn 17: 20-26) Given that today is the fifth anniversary of the murder of a man named George Floyd in Minneapolis, we do need to keep in mind all of the ways in which humanity must keep growing. And that includes growing out of cruelty, growing out of race-based...
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Fifth Sunday of Easter, May 18, 2025
Sunday Homilies
2025 May 18 SUN: FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER Acts 14: 21-27/ Ps 145: 8-9. 10-11. 12-13 (see 1)/ Rv 21: 1-5a/ Jn 13: 31-33a. 34-35 The word "love" is sort of tricky. We have to consider that we give two main meanings to the word "love." And one of them really is a starting point, whereas the other is the goal. We use the word "love" to refer to a simple attraction, such as, "I love ice cream." And that's what we're saying, that ice cream is an object which is desirable to us. It doesn't do anything for the ice cream, so it's not relational. The ice cream has its own fate, which does not build it up...
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Fourth Sunday of Easter, May 11, 2025
Sunday Homilies
2025 May 11 SUN: FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER Acts 13: 14. 43-52/ Ps 100: 1-2. 3. 5/ Rv 7: 9. 14b-17/ Jn 10: 27-30 In my junior year of high school at Decatur St. Teresa, I was in a religion course called Social Justice. And in that course I learned about the social teaching of the Catholic Church, which began in 1891 with a writing called Rerum Novarum, that is, "of new things." And in this document, the new things being treated were the changes in society having come about as the result of the Industrial Revolution. And this writing championed the rights of workers so that they might not find...
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Third Sunday of Easter, May 4, 2025
Sunday Homilies
2025 May 4 SUN: THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER Acts 5: 27-32. 40b-41/ Ps 30: 2. 4. 5-6. 11-12. 13 (2a)/ Rv 5: 11-14/ Jn 21: 1-19 Many people look upon the Book of Revelation as a rather forbidding sort of writing, full of things that can cause terror in people's hearts. But today we have an utterly joyful passage from Revelation. We have a description of heaven itself. And there is mention of the creatures of earth, all creatures, on land and in the sea. And in the center of it all is the Lamb that was slain. We need to think about this. The reason for the great joy is that the Lamb, who is Jesus, was...
info_outline2025 Mar 9 SUN: FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT
Dt 26: 4-10/ Ps 91: 1-2. 10-11. 12-13. 14-15/ Rom 10: 8-13/ Lk 4: 1-13
Our Scriptures begin today with an account from Deuteronomy of some of the history of God's chosen people. It refers to slavery and liberation. We move on to St. Paul, and he is telling us that the gifts of salvation and liberation, which come from our God, are not exclusive. He says that everyone, whether Jew or Greek, calling upon the name of the Lord Jesus, will enter into salvation and a great sense of peace in the presence of God. And we see through the Gospel that Jesus has embraced our difficulties to the ultimate degree because he has been subject to temptation. Now as we mentioned at the beginning [of Mass], we might say, well of course he resisted temptation because Jesus is God. Well, we have to understand that Jesus really did embrace our human nature, and as Paul says in Philippians chapter 2, he emptied himself. He did not cling to his identity as the Son of God. He entered into our miseries.
We can recognize something here in the temptations which Jesus is experiencing. You and I are all proud of our identity, and someone could come along and question that identity and say, "If you are so great, do X, Y, or Z. Show who you are." And you and I would tend to take the bait. We'd say, "Yeah, I'll show you." And that's the sort of temptation that Jesus experienced. We have no idea how the consciousness of Jesus as God and human worked itself out. That is perhaps one of the deepest issues of theology. We don't know, but we see that there is a resistance to claiming that glorified identity, and staying with the lowly human identity. And this is a call to ourselves to refrain from glorifying ourselves, instead saying, "I know I am human. I am not God. I am not self-sufficient. I rely upon my God and on the people around me who love me." These are practical thoughts which must occupy us during this season of preparation for celebrating the Easter mystery.