32nd Week of Ordinary Time 2025 - Friday - Beauty of the Natural World and Vigilance for the Coming of Christ

 

In the 5^th century, the great Doctor of the Church Saint Augustine wrote about how the beauty of creation points to the one who created them. “Question the beauty of the earth, question the beauty of the sea, question the beauty of the air, amply spread around everywhere, question the beauty of the sky, question the serried ranks of the stars, question the sun making the day glorious with its bright beams, question the moon tempering the darkness of the following night with its shining rays, question the animals that move in the waters, that amble about on dry land, that fly in the air; their souls hidden, their bodies evident; the visible bodies needing to be controlled, the invisible souls controlling them; question all these things. They all answer you, 'Here we are, look ; we're beautiful.' Their beauty is their confession. Who made these beautiful changeable things, if not one who is beautiful and unchangeable?”

It is good to behold the beauty of the world, but everything beautiful in this world points beyond itself.

Both our first reading and psalm speak too of how examining creation points to the existence and glory of the creator. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.” The reading from Wisdom suggests that you have to be a fool to study the works of creation and not to come to the belief in God.

Before we pat ourselves on the back for being more enlightened than the fool who disbelieves in God, Wisdom also admits how easily it is to be distracted by the things of creation: “They are distracted by what they see, because the things seen are fair.” We know how easily it is to become distracted and wrapped up with earthly things that we neglect heavenly things.

Jesus gives the same warning in the Gospel: “They were eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, building…” and were consequently unprepared for the coming of the Son of Man.

None of those things is sinful in itself — but people became so absorbed in everyday life that they lost sight of the coming judgment and God’s presence.

This warning of the Lord is important for all of us. At all times, we must be spiritually ready, detached, and alert — not lulled into complacency—by our earthly endeavors.

The Alleluia verse commanded this: “Stand erect and raise your heads, because your redemption is at hand.” Christians must constantly lift our eyes from earthly things, to ensure that our efforts are being dedicated to the things of God: infusing our minds with the light of God’s wisdom through study of our faith and reading of the scriptures, sufficient prayer and meditation, and intentional acts of charity for the good of others.

We do well to examine how we use our time, to ensure that the ordinary is not keeping us from seeking and pursuing the extraordinary, the natural is not keeping us from seeking the supernatural, that earthly beauty is not keeping us from seeking the source of that beauty—for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

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 Trusting in the God who reveals His glory through all creation and calls us to lift our eyes toward our redemption, we bring our prayers before Him.

 For the Church throughout the world: that she remain faithful in pointing humanity to God and to be vigilant and ready for the coming of the Son of Man.

 For our world, so often distracted by material pursuits: that hearts may be turned away from what is passing and lifted toward what is eternal.

 For all who are burdened by illness, anxiety, or distraction: that Christ may raise their heads, strengthen their hope, and make His nearness known to them.

 For those who cannot see God’s goodness because of suffering or hardship: that the Lord may illuminate their lives with signs of His love and care. Let us pray to the Lord.

 During this month of November, we continue to pray for all of the faithful departed:  that having sought the face of God in this life, they may behold the fullness of His beauty in the life to come. Let us pray to the Lord.

 Heavenly Father, source of all beauty and author of all creation, hear our prayers, guide our hearts, and keep us ever ready for the coming of your Son. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

November 12 2025 - St. Josaphat (School Mass) - Martyrdom and Truth

 

The month of November began with the great feast of All Saints. There are many types of saints canonized over the centuries. Saints who were Holy Popes, priests, and deacons; saints who were married or widowed; saints who were religious brothers and sisters who remained unmarried and consecrated themselves to Jesus for their whole of life; saints whose names and stories we know, and saints whose names we will only learn in heaven.

A very special group of saints is known as the martyrs. The word martyr comes from the Greek word for witness. The martyrs witness, they testify, they tell the world about Jesus, not only through their preaching and teaching, but to the point of death.

Today, the Church honors the martyr St. Josephat, a Catholic bishop who was killed by a mob of people who hated the Pope. St. Josephat witnessed to the truth that Jesus created the Church and organized it to have a spiritual leader, the pope, who governs the Church in faithfulness to Jesus. Not everyone believes this, but this was the will of Jesus. For defending this truth, Josephat was killed.

Christians like Josephat are worthy of our praise and imitation: Christians who are willing to stand up for the truth, even when it brings them the hatred of the world.

In his most famous sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” Here Jesus makes a promise. If you are willing to suffer for preaching and seeking the truth that comes from God, your reward will be heaven.

The martyrs, like St. Josephat are counted among the blessed ones of heaven because they were willing to be persecuted, hated, mocked, arrested, tortured, and killed for the sake of what was right—the truth proclaimed by Jesus and His Catholic Church.

Josephat didn’t water down the truth. He taught it with clarity. He didn’t hide the truth. He taught it boldly. And he did so because He loved the Truth—He loved Jesus and His Church and wanted to gather everyone into the unity of the Church, as Jesus prayed for, as we heard in the Gospel today, “I pray that they may be one”.

Through the intercession of St. Josephat and all of the holy martyrs, may each of us have the wisdom to seek the highest truth, the truth revealed by the Most High God, and the courage to witness to it, for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

31st Week in Ordinary Time 2025 - Friday - Cunning Missionary Disciples

Early on in the pontificate of Pope Francis, God rest his soul, the pontiff began to focus his teaching on a particular aspect of our faith—that all Christians are called to be missionary disciples. We find the phrase already in one of his first apostolic exhortations back in 2013—Evangelium Gaudium—“On the Proclamation of the Gospel in the World Today”. 

The entire people of God are called to proclaim the Gospel. Evangelization is the task of the Church—she is an agent of evangelization. “In all the baptized, from first to last,” he wrote, “the sanctifying power of the Spirit is at work, impelling us to evangelization… In virtue of their baptism, all the members of the People of God have become missionary disciples.” And we live out that identity of being missionary disciples in our faithfulness to Jesus in whatever part of the world or society we find ourselves. 

In the first reading today, St. Paul talks about his particular calling to be an Apostle to the Gentiles. Paul describes how God has called him to bring the Gospel to places where it has never been brought before. 

And there is an important dimension of missionary discipleship as well. Each one of us is called to bring the Gospel to places where it has not currently taken root. And where might that be?

We must certainly ensure that we are bringing the Gospel to our own minds and hearts. We are to be faithful to Jesus in every dimension of our lives. Christ is to be the center of our professional life, our leisure time, how we use our minds, how we use our words, how we use our bodies. We are to develop skills to be used in God’s service. 

But also in our relationships—with family, friends, and strangers. Recognize where the Gospel could be stronger in those relationships—where the peace of Jesus, the kindness of Jesus, the charity, and self-sacrifice of Jesus is to be imitated and lived out. 

In the Gospel, the Lord tells a parable about cleverness. The worldly are often very clever in pursuing their ends and their goals. Well, Christians need to be clever too in working for God. We are to exercise ingenuity, creativity, and cunning in our missionary discipleship. 

We need to be more clever in organizing charitable activity than head coaches in organizing victory for their franchises. We need to be more diligent in disciplining our minds and hearts than professional athletes in training their bodies. We need to be more clever than Wall Street bankers, in storing up treasure, not on earth, but in heaven. We need to be more dedicated to the Gospel, than world-class musicians and artists are in developing and pursuing their art.

We aren’t to just give God our leftovers, but our very best. Just as God made each of us unique, there are places and people to whom God is calling us uniquely to bear the Gospel. And we are to do so with courage and fortitude and patience and wisdom like that which St. Paul and so many of the saints show us for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

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That all Christians may endeavor to put their time, talent, treasure, creativity and energy into serving the mission of the Church. Let us pray to the Lord.

That our young people may be blessed to be raised in faith filled homes, that they may be protected from the evils of our culture, and be granted a firm knowledge of their vocation to holiness. Let us pray to the Lord.

That Christ the Good Shepherd will draw close to all who suffer, the sick, the needy, victims of injustice, and the dying.

We pray in a special way during this month of November for all the faithful departed, all deceased members and benefactors of our parish, our deceased family members and friends, deceased clergy and religious, those who fought and died for our freedom and for X. for whom this mass is offered.

O God, you know that our life in this present age is subject to suffering and need, hear the prayers of those who cry to you and receive the prayers of those who believe in you. Through Christ our Lord.

31st Week in Ordinary Time 2025 - Wednesday (school mass) - "Love God"

 

Yesterday, I was able to visit a number of the classrooms, and I spoke about one of my favorite subjects and activities: prayer—different types of prayer, different ways to pray, when we should pray, why we pray, and we even talked about the five-finger method of prayer, how our fingers can remind us for whom to pray.

We talked about the sort of prayer that asks God for help—help for those closest to us, help for our teachers, help for those in charge, our leaders, prayer for the week, the suffering and the sick, and prayer for ourselves.

We talked about the sort of prayer which asks God for mercy when we’ve sin. “Lord, have mercy on me a sinner.”

We talked about the importance of offering prayers of thanksgiving: thanking God for the gift of life, thanking God for the shelter, food, and health, thanking God for the beauty of creation, thanking God for Jesus dying on the cross for us and the gift of our salvation, and the church, and the sacraments.

Lastly, we talked about the sort of prayer that most of us probably don’t do enough—the sort of prayer that simply tells God, “I love you.” “I love you, Lord”.

The more we love God, and express our love for God in our words and actions, the happier we will be. The saints show us this over and over. Their joy is great because their love for God is great.

Some people do not love God at all—they love money, and fame, and pleasure, and power, but they do not love God—and deep down, they are miserable for it. Some people love God only a little, and that’s a start—they know about him a little, but God makes little difference in their life—and they go from pursuit to pursuit, relationship to relationship, chasing happiness, but never really finding it, because they don’t believe God is the source of happiness. But Christians are taught by Jesus to love God with our whole heart mind soul and strength. Love for God is to be the driving force of our lives, the motive behind all our actions.

It is the reason I became a priest, it’s the reason I am here right now.

And daily, many times a day, we need to reconnect with the love of God, to call it to mind, to remind ourselves that love is to be the reason for my decisions, my choice of words, how I treat people, what I do with my time and my body.

As Jesus makes himself present at Mass today under the appearance of bread and wine, express your love for Him. “Jesus, I love you. Lead me and guide me.” For the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

November 2 2025 - All Souls' Day - Grief and Hope

 A number of years ago, during my first parish assignment at St. Columbkille, in Parma, All Souls Day fell on the first Friday of November. On first Fridays we had the practice of bringing Holy Communion to our homebound parishioners, as some of our Eucharistic ministers do here. And so my first communion call that day was to a woman named Josephine, and elderly woman with a thick polish accent to whom I had been bringing Communion for several years.  

Prior to administering Holy Communion I asked her a question I didn’t always ask during my communion calls. I asked her if she had any particular intentions that she would like to voice as she received Holy Communion that day. And she replied that since today is the Feast of All Souls she would like to pray and offer her Communion for her father who was arrested and killed in the Concentration Camp at Auschwitz during World War II.  After we prayed, and she received Holy Communion, she asked if I would like to see a picture of her father.  I said I would.

She went into the bedroom and brought out a rectangular photograph of very thin man, dressed in a prison outfit, in three poses: a profile looking to the right, one where he was looking up and to the left, and the middle one, he was looking directly at the camera with a haunted expression on his face. I thought of the horrors he witnessed in that Concentration Camp—they seemed reflected in his eyes--and I had to sit down.  

Josephine then said, Father, I try to think of good memories, but so often I am overwhelmed with sadness.  Why do we always remember the hurtful things?

After a moment, I said, I think it’s important not to forget our loved ones, as hurtful as their memories are, so that we can pray for them, and to pray that terrible things like war and genocide never happen again.

She said, “All Souls Day is always a very sad day for me, but it is also the anniversary of our coming to this country and escaping those horrors.”  How providential, I thought! Because that’s what All Souls is all about. On All Souls’ Day we pray that our loved ones arrive at their heavenly homeland. 

Today can be a sad day; to remember the faithful departed whom we loved in this life can evoke strong emotions.  And  sometimes we think of those we’ve encounter on life’s path—and those memories are not always sweet. So, today don’t only pray for those who were good to us in this life, but also those who may have hurt us—they need our prayers too. No matter who they were in life, how they acted, who they loved or hurt, we pray for all of the souls in purgatory today, that they may be open to all of the purification they need in order to enter eternal life with God.

Today is also a day of hope. All Souls Day reminds us to pray, but also it is a reminder that we hope to be reunited with our loved ones in the new and eternal life of the resurrection. That word hope was mentioned in the opening prayer: “Listen kindly to our prayers, O Lord, and, as our faith in your Son, raised from the dead, is deepened, so may our hope of resurrection for your departed servants also find new strength.” The preface for the Eucharistic prayer will also speak of the hope of resurrection.  In the face of sadness, it is so vital for us to renew our hope in the promises of Christ—that those who die with Him as Lord shall be raised with Him in the resurrection to come.

We also acknowledge today the power of our prayers.  Our prayers are powerful and effective in helping those in purgatory make their way to God and to prepare for the resurrection. When are overwhelmed with grief for our loved ones the best thing to do is to turn to God in prayer for their souls and to renew our hope in the resurrection. As Saint Thomas Aquinas said that the greatest act of love we can perform on behalf of the dead is to pray for them.  

May perpetual light shine upon our departed loved ones. And as we continue the celebration of the Mass for the repose of the faithful departed, we do so, not as a mere remembrance, but as a powerfully effective way of loving them and helping them, a duty that all Christians share, for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

November 1 2025 - All Saints (PSR Mass) - The saint God made us to be

 

Dear ones. Happy Feast of All Saints. In school or by a family member, you may have been asked, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” If I asked every individual here, I bet I’d hear a whole host of answers. Some of you might say that when you grow up, you want to be a professional athlete or a teacher, a doctor or nurse or veterinarian, an actor or musician or artist, perhaps a soldier or police officer or fire fighter. At different times in my life I too considered different professions: there was a time I wanted to be an archaeologist and uncover ancient cities, later I wanted to be a mathematician. It wasn’t until I was a little older, in college, that I discerned that God was calling me to be a priest.

Well, no matter the profession, I bet every single one of us could answer that question, “when I grow up, I want to be happy. I want to do something that makes me happy.” No one wants to grow up to be unhappy or bored.

Well, what if I told you that being happy in life, being fulfilled, is not simply the result of your job or profession. Being happy isn’t based on the amount of money you make, the amount of power or responsibility you have, it’s not based on how popular or famous you become.

The key to happiness is to discover and pursue the reason God made you. Why are you here. Why do you exist? Why were you born, not 700 years ago, not 200 years ago, but now?

And the answer to those questions is partially hidden—it takes a while to figure out what we should be doing with our time, with our abilities. But the answer is also partially known. As Christians, we know what we should be doing with our time. We should be trying to become like the people we celebrate today. The saints. Because we, like them, are made by God, to become as holy as we possibly can.

If you want to be happy, if you want to be fulfilled, you should do everything you can to be a saint. That doesn’t mean you can’t be a musician or a doctor or a construction worker. St. Cecilia was a musician. Saints Cosmos and Damien were doctors. St. Francis of Assisi was a builder, he built a chapel for God, St. Luke was an artist. St. Sebastian was an athlete. St. John Bosco was a juggler and magician. St. Catherine was a philosopher. St. Elizabeth Ann Seton was a teacher. There were Saints who were simply moms and dad who loved their kids. And saints who were politicians, even kings and queens of nations.

But choosing to be a saint is more important than choosing your profession. It’s more important than where you live, what language you speak, where you go to school. There have been saints that have done very well in school, and saints that had a very difficult time with their studies.  But what was most important is that they aimed at being saints, no matter what they did. Whether they were plowing their fields like st. Isidore, or engaging in priestly duties like St. John Vianney, or a missionary like St. Paul, a website designer like St. Carlo Acutis.

Seeking to become a saint is the most important thing we can do in this life. For in the Gospel today, did Jesus say blessed are you when you win trophies for your athletic accomplishments? No. Did he say, blessed are you when you are well-known in your professional field? No. Did he say, blessed are you if you have more friends, more money than other people? No.

What did he say? Blessed are you when you are merciful, blessed are you when you are pure of heart. Blessed are you when you seek to be righteous so much that you hunger and thirst for it.

One of the great tragedies of our time is that there are many people who do not consider their call to be a saint. There are a great number of people who have turned their backs on God and will fail to become the person God made them to be. And because they have turned their backs on God they are miserable and causing great problems in the world, for their family and countries.

Don’t be like them. Don’t get so swept up by the world that you begin to forget about God, about why God made you.

We celebrate the saints because they are our heroes in the faith, but they also show us what all humans are capable of when they trust in God, when they say yes to God with every ounce of their being. God made us not to be selfish, lazy, or fearful. He made us to have generous hearts, active hearts, courageous hearts in knowing, loving, and serving Him in this life, so that we can be happy with Him for eternity.

The Saints challenges us to aim higher—to aim higher than spiritual mediocrity, and the idiotic examples of celebrities.

God made us to be saints. And today, we ask the saints of heaven to help us become like them, to love Jesus more than anyone or anything. We look to their example, and seek their prayers, that we may become the saints that God made us to be for the glory of God and salvation of souls.