Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 31, 2025
Sunday Homilies
2025 Aug 31 SUN: TWENTY-SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME Sir 3: 17-18. 20. 28-29/ Ps 68: 4-5. 6-7. 10-11/ Heb 12: 18-19. 22-24a/ Lk 14: 1. 7-14 Wednesday morning, Andy Schwierjohn sent me an email. He had received word of the shooting at the Catholic parish in Minneapolis. He remembered that my sister Kathy is a teacher in a Minneapolis Catholic school. So I turned to the news and it was not my sister's school. In fact, I had spoken with her just a couple days before and I knew that her school was not starting till this week. But Kathy did inform me after this shooting that she has a number of...
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Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 24, 2025
Sunday Homilies
2025 Aug 24 SUN: TWENTY-FIRST SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME Is 66: 18-21/ Ps 117: 1. 2/ Heb 12: 5-7. 11-13/ Lk 13: 22-30 I remember, from about 20 years ago, being at a meeting with a number of non-Catholic Christian pastors and I was explaining to them what the Second Vatican Council had to say about the possible salvation of people who've never heard of Jesus Christ. And Vatican II, in the Constitution on the Church, says that such people, if they are seeking what is true and good, they can be granted entrance into the heavenly kingdom. And I remember one of the pastors objecting to this. He...
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Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 17, 2025
Sunday Homilies
2025 Aug 17 SUN: TWENTIETH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME Jer 38: 4-6. 8-10/ Ps 40: 2. 3. 4. 18 (14b)/ Heb 12: 1-4/ Lk 12: 49-53 We have heard in the book of Jeremiah about the lot of the prophet. People didn't like what Jeremiah was saying, and he was essentially saying, "You had better become more faithful to the Lord, the one God. Otherwise you will be taken captive and carried off to Babylon." People didn't want to hear that -- the princes, it says. So they threw him into a muddy cistern. Well, it is said that the purpose of a prophet is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the...
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Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 10, 2025
Sunday Homilies
[The homilist was away on August 3.] 2025 Aug 10 SUN: NINETEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME Wis 18: 6-9/ Ps 33: 1. 12. 18-19. 20-22 (12b)/ Heb 11: 1-2. 8-19/ Lk 12: 32-48 About 60 years ago, there was a popular song that began "Don't Know Much About History." Well, as we think about that opening line, we must understand that you and I, in fact, must know much about history. There are people who say that history repeats itself. We've heard people say that it doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme -- an interesting thought. And we also heard it said that those who do not know the mistakes of the...
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Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 27, 2025
Sunday Homilies
2025 Jul 27 SUN: SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME Gn 18: 20-32/ Ps 138: 1-2. 2-3. 6-7. 7-8 (3a)/ Col 2: 12-14/ Lk 11: 1-13 We can take the second reading today to provide a foundation for what is being discussed in the first reading and the Gospel. So from St. Paul's letter to the Colossians, we have a statement about the death and resurrection of Jesus and the sacrament of baptism. He says that each of us in our baptism has been joined with the death of Jesus and with his resurrection. So these are gifts. This is a mystery which we are living now. And if we are aware of how great this...
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Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 20, 2025
Sunday Homilies
2025 Jul 20 SUN: SIXTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME Gn 18: 1-10a/ Ps 15: 2-3. 3-4. 5 (1a)/ Col 1: 24-28/ Lk 10: 38-42 We may have been confused last week by some words of St. Paul in this letter to the Colossians, and today he provides us with another puzzle. He says, "In my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ for the sake of His body, the Church." And we have to ask, what could that possibly mean? We understand and we teach consistently that the suffering, the passion of Jesus, His death, His resurrection, these things are sufficient for our salvation, that free...
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Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 13, 2025
Sunday Homilies
2025 Jul 13 SUN: FIFTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME Dt 30: 10-14/ Ps 69: 14. 17. 30-31. 33-34. 36. 37 OR Ps 19: 8. 9. 10. 11/ Col 1: 15-20/ Lk 10: 25-37 We have all heard from teachers and other people that there is no such thing as a dumb question. No such thing as a stupid question. We may find ourselves having to ask quite fundamental questions, for instance, if we're in an unfamiliar situation and we just have to get ourselves oriented. We have a case here of someone who is afraid that he has asked a dumb question. This scholar of the law reminds me of the wealthy man that we also find in...
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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. ...
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.