Homily: Monday, 32nd Week in Ordinary Time

I have embedded a video of this homily for Monday of the 32nd Week in Ordinary Time. The full text of the homily follows the video.

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Readings: Wis 1:1-7; Ps 139; Lk 17:1-6

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Years ago, when I was just a lad, we lived in a rural area of Connecticut. Our immediate neighbors included a dairy farm – Parker’s Dairy – and a few other homes. One of those neighbors had a large and very old millstone in his backyard. I have no idea why he had it, but it was huge, probably four or five feet in diameter and must have weighed nearly a ton. 

Whenever I read today’s Gospel passage, that’s the stone I think of. I suspect Jesus was speaking about a somewhat smaller millstone, but maybe not. Anyway, my large stone certainly drives home the points He makes. The idea of being tossed into the sea with my head stuck in the center hole of that millstone paints a very vivid picture.

In today’s passage from Luke, we get a bit of a trifecta: Jesus makes three important points about our relationships with each other. 

Jesus first addresses our behavior toward children, indeed toward all who are the most innocent among us. And it’s a warning to all of us: woe to those who lead these little ones to sinfulness. The physical abuse we’ve heard so much about is horrendous, but there are other ways to bring evil to those easily led astray. 


Adults, and yes that includes parents and grandparents, do this through lying, through hypocritical behavior, through selfishness – all means by which we scandalize those whom God loves. Luke uses the Greek word, skandolan, which really means to cause one to stumble or fall. In a sense, then, we become a stumbling block to others, but to very special others, leading them to sin and away from God. 


I suppose it all boils down to an extreme form of vanity, a hardened heart in which one’s own desires blind a person to God’s presence in the other, especially in a child. In our reading from the Book of Wisdom God calls us to “Seek him in simplicity of heart.” [Wis 1:1]

Yes, we are called to be childlike, to turn to our God with simplicity, to be open to God’s love and the Holy Spirit’s movement within us.

Jesus continues by calling for forgiveness, but for a divine forgiveness, one that submerges our own hurts and looks to the other with love.

Back in my Navy days, a chaplain once told me: “The life of a Christian is really marked by a continual struggle to offer and to ask for forgiveness.” He merely echoed Jesus who describes a corrective forgiveness, all part of what the Church calls reconciliation. 

Where true repentance is, forgiveness must follow. Even if a brother or sister wrongs you seven times, but repents each time, you must forgive.

Hard to do, isn’t it? In truth, it’s impossible without God’s help; just as it’s impossible to turn away from sin without God’s help. Indeed, it’s not about judgment and condemnation, and we must always remember that. It’s all about reconciliation, helping others and helping ourselves turn to God, so we can experience His healing and His mercy. 

Today would be a good day to revisit chapter 15 of Luke’s Gospel, and re-read those three parables of loss: the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost sons. We lose ourselves often enough, but we’re never lost to God, brothers and sisters. He knows exactly where we are. How did the psalmist put it in today’s psalm?

"Where can I go from your spirit? From your presence where can I flee? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I sink to the nether world, you are present there" [Ps 139:7-8].

He never ceases calling us, but we don’t have to find Him. We need only respond, and He will come to us wherever we are.

Luke concludes our brief Gospel reading by telling us that the apostles, becoming aware of their own weaknesses, beg Jesus, “Increase our faith” [Lk 17:5]. And like them, our faith today can be severely challenged unless we accept God’s promise that He will be with us until the very end of time. 

Given the attacks our faith suffers today, accepting that promise just might be the most important act of faith we ever make. We see a crumbling world, a world that seems to have lost its way and we want so much to be able to do something.

But God wants us to believe something, to deepen our faith through prayer, to change the world not by scandalizing it, but by the example of loving God and neighbor in all that we do.

It all comes back to love, doesn’t it? For that’s what love is, the simple manifestation of our faith.

The Truth Will Set You Free

Archbishop Vigano

Just a brief post today. My comments will mean nothing in light of what has already been said and will likely be said in the days and weeks to come. Of course I write about Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, former Papal Nuncio to the United States, and his detailed 11-page testimony related to the serial homosexual abuse committed by ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. The archbishop also addresses what he sees as the willful cover-up of McCarrick's crimes by many in the Church's hierarchy. 

I read the document as soon as it was published and was saddened by what the archbishop wrote. I do not know Archbishop Vigano personally, but I have two acquaintances who know him well, and both have stated that he is an honest, honorable and faithful priest to whom we should listen. If what he writes is true he is also a courageous priest. Here's a link to the archbishop's testimony: Archbishop Vigano 

I also know that there are those who are very uncomfortable with the idea of making all of this evil, this corruption and widespread perversion, public. It will damage the Church in ways we can't imagine, they tell us. Perhaps it will, but more importantly, "...you will know the truth and the truth will set you free" [Jn 8:32]. I've always believed that, and one hopes the Church's bishops believe it too. We must demand the truth! And if what Archbishop Vigano has written is substantiated, then I agree with him when he pleads with all those who covered up this depravity to resign. The depravity of McCarick and too many others like him is a horrendous evil, but to cover it up and allow it to continue is even worse. As I remarked in a homily the other day, it is time to begin again as the Church always has when it must root out sin and corruption within its walls.

There are brave bishops out there and here's what just two of them have written about what is happening in the Church today:

Letter to the Faithful by Bishop Robert Morlino, Diocese of Madison

Comments by South African Cardinal Wilfred Napier

Pray for our One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.

Homily: Feast of St. Bernard - Monday, 20th Week in Ordinary Time

Today's homily includes some of the comments I made in an earlier blog posting. But I felt called by the Spirit to address the current news about the Church in a homily. 
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Readings: Ez 24:15-23 • Dt 32:18-21 • Mt 19:16-22
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In recent days more than a few parishioners have come to me, looking for direction and hope in the face of the headlines and all they see happening in the Church. Why they came to me, I can't imagine, for I am the least qualified, the least able...How often do I find myself praying those words of St. Peter:

"Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man" [Lk 5:8]. 

"Depart from me, Lord..."

And then God humbles me, and I realize it's not me, the man, people come to; it's the deacon, God's servant. Calling on the Holy Spirit, I respond as best I can. Sometimes it takes a while to hear the Spirit, and it was actually through today's readings that I gradually came to realize the fulness of what He was telling me.

Turning first to Ezekiel, we find the prophet faced with a personal loss, the sudden, unexpected death of his wife, whom God lovingly refers to as "the delight of your eyes" [Ez 24:16]. Aren't those beautiful words? - "the delight of your eyes" - words that offer a glimpse into the love that must have bound these two. 

I suspect Ezekiel ultimately came to accept his wife's death as a blessing that would spare her from the calamities about to befall God's People. For God tells Ezekiel not to mourn her death openly, that much more sadness is coming, and he must be the example:

"You shall be a sign to them, and they shall know that I am the Lord" [Ez 24:27].

Babylon's long siege of Jerusalem will end, the enemy will overrun its walls, God's sanctuary, the Temple, will be desecrated and destroyed, and many of God's children will be slaughtered, the rest carried off into exile.

Jerusalem and the Temple Destroyed

God gave Ezekiel the task of leading the people as they faced these tragedies. "What does this mean for us?" they ask him.

They're reminded that sin has entered the Temple, just as today sin has desecrated the Church from within. Innocents have suffered and shepherds have turned away. In Ezekiel's Jerusalem priests and kings had turned from God, had forgotten His Law, just as today far too many in God's Church have done the same.

Blessed Pope Paul VI

In 1972, Blessed Pope Paul VI stated prophetically that, "Through some fissure, the smoke of Satan entered into the Temple of God." With this we're reminded of Moses' words in our responsorial.

"You have forgotten God who gave you birth" [Dt 32:18].

Yes, too many have forgotten God; and we are overwhelmed with sadness and moved by righteous anger. It must always be a righteous, not a vengeful, anger. It must be the kind of righteous anger that cleansed the Temple in Jerusalem. And so we, too, turn to our God and ask, "What does this mean for us? What shall we do?"

We must do what the faithful have always done, which is really little different from what Ezekiel told God's People: Continue to turn prayerfully to our merciful God and ask for the strength to begin over again. That's right! We must begin again as the Church has many times over two millennia.

Francis, Repair My House...

St. Bernard, whose memorial we celebrate today, was called to heal the Church in a time of disunity and schism almost 1,000 years ago. Yes, it was a time to begin again.

Our Lord later commanded St. Francis: "Go and repair my house which, as you see, is falling into ruin." It too was a time to begin again.

Yes, the Church has faced ruin before, but Jesus promised: 

"I am with you always, until the end of the age" [Mt 28:20].

Today we are led by another Francis, a man who must carry on with the task of rebirth. We must pray that God gives him and his bishops the will and the strength to cleanse the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.

Sadly, some in the Church will not accept this. They will turn from Christ's Church, forgetting that the Church remains holy despite the sinfulness of its members. In their sadness and their anger, they will turn away even from the Eucharist - "the source and summit of the Christian life" - and reach after so much that offers so very little. Like the rich young man who came to Jesus in our passage from Matthew, they will turn away in sadness, unable to accept the Gospel without compromise.

50 years ago, when Pope Benedict XVI was a young Father Joseph Ratzinger, he too made some prophetic comments in a radio broadcast:

"From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge - a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning.

"But in all of the changes at which one might guess, the Church will find her essence afresh and with full conviction in that which was always at her center: faith in the triune God, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, in the presence of the Spirit until the end of the world.

"The Church will be a more spiritual Church... It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek."

Fr. Ratzinger Speaking About the Church's Future

 [Note: To read the entirety of then Fr. Ratzinger's broadcast, get a copy of his book, Faith and the Future. His remarks on the future of the Church can be found in the last chapter.]

Brothers and sisters, we must become the Church of the meek, a Church of the humble that approaches God in repentance. This is what we are called to do. We, the faithful, are called to "start afresh...from the beginning," and do so in faith, in humility, and in love. We must not, we cannot, accept sin by calling it by another name, and yet we must also forgive the sinner and embrace and console the innocents.

About 20 years ago, as a fairly new deacon, I was asked to speak to a group of seminarians. During the course of my remarks, I told them: 

"The holiest people you will ever encounter are not seated in the sanctuary; they are in the pews of your parish church. They will look to you for truth, for direction, and example, but if you don't provide it, they will rightly turn to God. They will find Him in prayer, in the Sacraments, in Sacred Scripture, and in Sacred Tradition. They will find Him in each other, in the Church, and it is through them that God will keep the Church holy."

That's right, brothers and sisters; through you, God will keep the Church holy.

“Be holy, for I, the LORD your God, am holy” [Lv 19:2].

Pray for our faithful priests and bishops.