Ash Wednesday 2026 - Listening, Fasting, Community

Last Week, Holy Father Pope Leo issued a message to the Church for this Lent 2026. 

He said, “Lent is a time in which the Church…invites us to place the mystery of God back in the center of our lives, in order to find renewal in our faith and keep our hearts from being consumed by the anxieties and distractions of daily life.”

Many of us know well how easy it is to lose sight of God. Work, social standing, anxiety over health, money, or relationships, pastimes like sports and video games, can obscure the place that God is meant to have in our lives. And Lent, as the Holy Father says, invites us to place God back at the center.

To do so, the Pope goes on to explain that we do three things: Firstly, listening. Lent is about listening to God, to God’s voice, to the word of God. God is speaking to us in 2026, are we listening? 

We are deluding ourselves if we think it is good to go through the day without listening to God. To quote Jesus himself when he was 40 days in the desert, “man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.” We need to listen to God’s word for guidance, for the wisdom we need to make hard choices, and to hear those personal messages of love that God has for each of us.

Every day during Lent, we need to spend some time to listen to God’s Word, reading a little passage from the Bible, and considering what God is saying to us in our present circumstances, in the concrete details of our life.

[Teachers: try to incorporate the daily mass readings in your lessons. Parents, do the same in the life of the home. Have you read and thought about your scripture passage today?] 

Secondly, in his Lenten message, Pope Leo tells us to fast. Our Lord himself fasted in the desert and taught his disciples to fast. Abstaining from food, helps us to keep our hunger and thirst for righteousness alive. Physical hunger can be a powerful reminder of our need to pray and to seek God. It reminds us, too, of the hunger of the poor, towards whom we should have a special care during the Lenten season.

Lastly, the Pope reminds us that we are in this together, that the members of the Church, the members of the Body of Christ, observe Lent, together. Lent is a season for the whole church, to pray, fast, give alms, to listen to God together. 

During Lent we come to church more often to engage in communal prayer, like for daily mass, for stations of the cross, for holy hours and confessions, because Lent is a shared journey—the shared journey of the Church toward Easter.

During Lent, the whole church, together, prays in a special way for will soon be joining our company—the catechumens preparing for the easter sacraments—who will enter into full communion with the Church at easter. We pray and fast for them, mindful of the good example we are to set for them and the encouragement we are to offer them in pursuing holiness.

This weekend we will offer a Holy Hour for peace in our trouble world from 2pm to 3pm here in Church, a wonderful opportunity to pray together, to seek peace together, to implore God’s healing and justice together. We will also pray the stations of the cross each Friday at 7:30pm—a beloved and time-honored tradition of walking with Jesus as he carried his cross and suffered and died out of love for us. Stations of the cross are a powerful devotion which helps us listen to the voice of God’s love.

In just a few moments we will have ashes imposed on our foreheads. These ashes are a reminder of our mortality and sin, for from dust we were made and because of sin to dust we will return. By reminding us of mortality and sin, they more importantly remind us of our need for salvation, our need for God, our need for Jesus. For each of us facing our mortality sooner or later, recognize that Eternal Life is found in Jesus Christ alone, and we are called to believe in Him, love Him, and follow Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. 

May these ashes, together with our Lenten penances, help us to seek that fullness of life that only comes through intimate union with Jesus Christ for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

30th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2024 - Blind Bartimaeus and Priesthood Sunday

 

Since 2003, the last Sunday of October is designated as Priesthood Sunday— an opportunity for us to reflect upon the role of the ordained priesthood in the life of the Church.  

Today we welcome Tate Johnson, a second year seminarian at Borromeo Seminary here in Cleveland, who will speak to us after communion about his own discernment and formation for the priesthood.

For the homily today, I’d like to consider the role of the priest in light of our Gospel reading---the story of Bartimaeus.  The story offers several meaningful insights relevant to Priesthood Sunday and the priestly vocation and our own call to holiness.

The story begins with blind Bartimaeus crying out to Jesus. In the course of his ministry, the priest encounters countless people who are crying out to Jesus. Many of them, like Bartimaeus, have a hard time seeing Jesus due to the challenging circumstances of their life—a crisis, an illness, a unique encounter with the evils of the world or in their own heart. 

The priest helps people see Jesus. Particularly at Mass, right? The priest has a unique role in the Church to help others see Jesus. Through the celebration of the sacraments—the priest makes Jesus present through the sacramental rituals, particularly in the changing of bread and wine into the Lord’s Body and Blood so we can see Him present in our midst. Also in the homily, hopefully, each week, I help you see Jesus in the concrete details of your life. 

One of my favorite functions in the priestly ministry is to teach OCIA. I’m always pleased to meet those souls hungering, longing to see Jesus. And in those sessions their eyes become more and more attuned to Jesus present in the Catholic Church and come to understand the invitation Jesus makes to them—to come and be changed and transformed. 

Consider another detail in the Bartimeus story. Bartimaeus longs for Jesus, but many in the crowd make it difficult for him—they tell him that he is wasting his time. Similarly, there are many forces in the world today which tell us that we are wasting our time turning to the Lord and seeking to follow Him. The priest has a role in helping members of the Church to take courage in standing up against the worldly forces that seek to silence the Church and to ensure that we never ally ourselves with those terrible powers.

As many of you know, I was appointed by Bishop Malesic as Chaplain for an apostolate called Courage International which helps men and women with same-sex attraction live faithfully the Lord’s call to follow him. Now the world tells them, ah, just give in to your impulses. But, Christians recognize that not every impulse leads to Jesus. Rather, we need to restrain and discipline those impulses that are misaligned. And priests help others break through those wordly voices. Thanks be to God for those priests who tell us the truth and encourage us. 

Next in the story, Bartimaeus runs to Jesus, and Jesus surprisingly asks, “what do you want?” It’s surprising because Jesus already knows what Bartimaeus wants and needs. Jesus can read his heart, he made him. But Jesus asks, and listens. This reflects a very important aspect of priestly ministry. Listening. Before a priest can offer words of advice, or spiritual guidance, or make decisions regarding the life of a parish, he needs to listen. I hope that when you have brought your concerns to me, you have felt listened to. 

You might not have received the answer you liked, I can’t promise that all the time, but I hope that you’ve felt that your concern was taken seriously and it was given the attention it deserved. 

But moreso, we’re not just talking about decisions about clambakes here. The priest takes concerns of the soul with profound seriousness. If you are seeking to follow Jesus more faithfully, more deeply, the priest will listen and pray for you and with you and bring your concerns to the Lord.

Finally, in the story, Jesus heals Bartimaeus.

The ministry of the priest certainly has a healing dimension. Every priest is called to dispense the healing of Jesus Christ primarily in the Sacrament of Confession and the Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick.

The Confessional is a place of the most profound healing, a healing of those wounds we inflict on our relationship with God and our fellow man through sin. Now yes, some of our spiritual wounds can be healed in other ways—our venial sins can be healed through repentance and reception of the Eucharist. But our most serious sins, our grave sins, our mortal sins, can those mortal wounds can be healed only in the Sacrament of Confession. 

When we confess our sins to a priest and receive absolution we know that a profound healing occurs at that moment—we feel lighter, we feel the weight of guilt relieved, we feel peace. And I hope that no one here is depriving themselves of the healing that Jesus is waiting to dispense to you through his priests. I hope that neither pride, nor shame, nor embarrassment is keeping you from crying out like Bartimaeus for healing. If you can ‘t get to confession on Saturday afternoons or Sunday mornings, give me a call, we can schedule something. I’m not too busy to hear your confessions, that’s why I’m here. 

Similarly, with the Sacrament of Anointing. If you are going in for serious surgery, or you’ve gotten a serious diagnosis, or you feel the effects of old age or declining health really taking its toll, all you have to do is call, and say, Father, I’d like to receive the Anointing of the Sick. For through that Sacrament Jesus gives powerful spiritual healing and spiritual strength to bear our afflictions with grace.

Recall, that every priest is also Bartimaeus, with his own blindnesses. So always please be patient with your priests, with the same patience you would want for yourself.

And recall too that every member of the Church has a priestly role, of bringing souls to Jesus, of listening to the afflicted and offering wise counsel and comfort, and seeking as best we can to be instruments of the Lord’s healing. Every soul we encounter is another Bartimaeus, who deep down longs to see the Lord.

May all priests and all the priestly people of God be strengthened in their vocations of service and holiness for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time 2024 - Speak Lord, Your Servant is Listening

 For those of you who attend weekday mass or who reflect upon the weekday scripture readings, this is the second time in a week that we read of the call of Samuel from the first book of Samuel. And it’s such a powerful story. 

First Samuel opens in a dark time in Israel's history. The twelve tribes which had settled in the promised land had ignored the warnings of Moses.

On the precipice of the promised land, God spoke to the Israelites through Moses, commanding his people to “faithfully keep and obey all these orders which I am giving you, so that you and your children after you may prosper forever, doing what is good and right in the eyes of God.” God wants his people to prosper and gives them what they need to prosper. 

And yet after the twelve tribes make their way into the promised Land, the Book of Judges records the troubling statement that instead of doing right in the eyes of God everyone was doing what is "right in his own eyes". That is a way of saying—what?—they had adopted a competing morality—they had given up on the ways of God and were determining for themselves what is right. 

When an individual insists on only doing what is “right in his own eyes” – scripture shows us, over and over, that the result is misery. When a whole nation is doing that, it’s so much worse. This explains a lot of the misery in our world today—when we only do what is right “in our own eyes”—turning our eyes and ears and hearts away from the Lord—failing to raise our children in the ways of the Lord—there is misery on a local, national, and global scale.

And so as a result of their unfaithfulness, the Israelites were living in a very dark time, of their own making. We even see those themes of darkness and blindness in the first reading. Samuel tells us that revelations and visions from God were uncommon and infrequent, as if there was this veil of darkness and faithlessness between God and his people.  Eli’s vision was so weak he couldn’t see, and Samuel is stumbling in darkness, he’s confused, God is calling out to him, and he doesn’t even recognize God’s voice. 

As the story begins, Samuel is so spiritually hard of hearing—his faith is so weak—that he is unable to recognize that it is God—the God of his ancestors—calling out to him. It’s like his faith is so weak, he can’t even fathom that God could be calling to him, he thinks it’s Eli calling to him—he keeps running back to Eli, “Here I am, what do you want?”

Anybody relate to that? In our spiritual infancy, we don’t really pray as we should, we don’t really serve as we should, but as we grow in spiritual maturity, and we begin to put more effort into our spiritual lives, we gradually come to discover God’s presence with us, we come to discover our vocation in Christ.

Like Samuel, we are often a little slow to believe, a little hard of hearing, a little unaccustomed to the sound of the voice of God. But God keeps calling out to us. And as we begin to take more seriously the call to pray, the call to serve, the call to engage in works of charity, the call to repentance, we begin to respond to God with greater and greater willingness to serve.

I bet there are people in this church who have very little idea of what God is calling you to. You are here. That’s wonderful. After all, God is calling you to go to Church every week. There are many people in our world and neighborhood who aren’t doing that. But there’s more to the Christian life than going to church once a week. Of course. God is calling, are we listening? Are we responding with the same willingness and zeal that Samuel eventually develops.

In the Gospel this week, we read from the opening chapter of the Gospel of John. And there are some parallels between our first reading and Gospel. John’s Gospel in fact begins acknowledging that prior to coming of Christ, the world was in darkness, and Christ was born as a light shining in darkness, for the darkness has not overcome the light of God.

And then as we heard today, God is so good, that amidst all of our present darkness, Jesus enters directly into our lives and draws people to himself.

Andrew, the brother of Peter, had been a follower of St. John the Baptist. So immediately you know something about Andrew. Andrew was willing to follow John the Baptist--this wild prophet, who ate locusts and wore camel hair and lived out in the desert. Andrew was willing to go to great lengths to seek God. Andrew was a man of hope. He hoped that the coming of the Messiah was right around the corner and he was doing everything he could to prepare for it. 

And when John pointed Jesus out to him as the Lamb of God, Andrew immediately begins to follow Jesus. And after staying with Jesus he goes to his brother Peter and tells him the Messiah is here. It’s time. 

Those beautiful attitudes that we read about in our scriptures this weekend—pf openness to God and readiness and willingness to serve God and allow God to draw us deeper—are to be cultivated in our lives. The readings challenge us, don’t they? Do I have the courage, like Samuel, to say to God, “speak Lord, your servant is listening”—I am at your complete service, I will go wherever you send me, Here am I, Lord; I come to do your will? Do I have the zeal of Andrew, to speak about Jesus and the importance of following Him to my family?

 God is calling, are we listening? If you don’t hear him, you might need to listen a little harder, because he is speaking, calling us to serve, and to cultivate virtue, and to utilize our spiritual gifts for the sake of the kingdom, to bear the light of Christ amidst the darkness of the world for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

1st Week of Ordinary Time 2024 - Wednesday - Speak Lord, your servant is listening

 As I explained yesterday, from now until Lent we will be reading sequentially through the initial chapters of the Gospel of Mark. We will hear of the Lord’s healings and teachings and miracles and exorcisms.

We will also be reading a lot from the historical books of the Old Testament up until Lent: I & II Samuel, I & II Kings.  

I Samuel opens in a dark time in Israel's history. We even see those themes in today’s reading: revelations and visions from God were uncommon and infrequent, Eli’s vision was so weak he couldn’t see, and Samuel is stumbling in darkness, straining to discern the voice of God.

These dark days in Israel were partially a result of their unfaithfulness. 

Prior to the Conquest of Canaan, the Israelites were commanded by God, “faithfully keep and obey all these orders which I am giving you, so that you and your children after you may prosper for ever, doing what is good and right in the eyes of God.”

And yet at the conclusion of the conquest, the Book of Judges records the troubling statement that everyone was doing what is "right in his own eyes". The Israelites were in direct violation of their covenant obligation to act as God commanded.

When an individual insists on only doing what is “right in his own eyes” – his spiritual blindness brings him misery. When a whole nation is doing that, it’s so much worse. This explains a lot of the misery in our world today, a lot of the darkness—when we only do what is right “in our own eyes”—turning our eyes and ears and hearts away from the Lord—failing to raise our children in the ways of the Lord—there is misery on a global scale.

Anyway, God is so good, that in times of misery and darkness, God raises up prophets, workers, teachers, priests, to bring individuals and nations back to God. And that’s what we find God doing in today’s reading. We read of the call of Samuel, God raising up Samuel who will be sent as a prophet to Israel. Notice, that as the story begins, Samuel is so spiritually hard of hearing that he is unable to recognize that it is God talking to him. Wisely, he learns from Eli to humble himself and surrender to whatever God wishes to tell him. Samuel goes on to play a very important role in the history of Israel; when Samuel spoke, all of Israel listens, but only because Samuel first learned to listen to God.

As I’ve said before, God has chosen us to be his prophets in this dark age. It is a vocation and mission each of us has received at baptism. Like Samuel, this is a call we might only come to realize gradually, but God IS calling us to call the fallen back to wholeness in God. But first we must learn to listen to God, through prayer, through the discernment of truth by meditating on God’s word. May we each respond to God as Samuel did, “speak, Lord, your servant is listening” for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

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That the preaching and teachings of the Pope, Bishops, and clergy may be a source of strength and guidance for the Holy Church.

That those in civic authority may submit their minds and hearts to the rule of Christ, the Prince of Peace and Hope of the nations.

For the liberation of those bound by evil, those committed to sin an error, those oppressed or possessed by evil spirits, and for the conversion of the hardest hearts.

For all the needs of the sick and the suffering, the homebound, those in nursing homes and hospitals, the underemployed and unemployed, immigrants and refugees, victims of natural disaster, war, and terrorism, for all those who grieve the loss of a loved one, and those who will die today, for their comfort, and the consolation of their families.

For all who have died, and for all the poor souls in purgatory, and for X. for whom this Mass is offered.

O God, our refuge and our strength, hear the prayers of your Church, for you yourself are the source of all devotion, and grant, we pray, that what we ask in faith we may truly obtain. Through Christ our Lord.

1st Week in OT 2020 - Wednesday - Prayerful listening that we might hear

Prayer is an integral dimension of the Christian life. We profess our faith in our Creed, we celebrate our faith in the liturgy, we conform our lives to Christ through the moral life, but prayer cultivates the vital, personal relationship with the living God.

Prayer, certainly is as St. John Damascene explains, “the raising of one's mind and heart to God or the requesting of good things from God." We speak to God in prayer using the words of the Psalms, or memorized prayers composed by the saints, or from words that spontaneously arise from the depths of our hearts and minds.

While speaking to God is certainly part of Christian prayer, listening to God is just as necessary.

In the first reading, Samuel is in the temple, but he was not accustomed to listening and identifying the voice of God. It takes an elder, Eli, to help Samuel discern whose voice he was hearing. And that’s wonderful—our prayer veterans should assist the young in developing an ear for God.  But it takes Samuel a few attempts to finally hear God clearly.

Prayer involves listening, developing an ear for God. We cannot hear if we do not listen.
Our daily prayer should consist of speaking and listening, just like our breathing entails exhaling and inhaling. Ah, and when we do--when we listen to God, we begin to hear the sound of living water rushing into our souls. The more we listen for God, the more we will hear. So let us cultivate that often neglected dimension of prayer: simple listening.

And when we develop that habit of prayer, we will also begin to hear God’s voice more clearly directing our moral choices, speaking in our liturgical celebrations, even ringing in our profession of faith. We might even hear him speaking using our own voice, when we comfort someone in pain, or explain the Gospel to those of weak faith. We might even hear Him calling us by name to endeavors we once thought impossible.

St. Paul says, “we do not know how to pray as we ought.” So let us become silent in prayer, with our ears turned toward God, that the Holy Spirit may teach us to pray and fill us with the wisdom and life of God for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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To God the Father Almighty we direct the prayers of our heart for the needs and salvation of humanity and the good of His faithful ones.

For the holy Church of God, that the Lord may graciously watch over her and care for her.

For the peoples of the world, that the Lord may graciously preserve harmony among them.

For all who are oppressed by any kind of need, that the Lord may graciously grant them relief.

For ourselves and our own community, that the Lord may graciously receive us as a sacrifice acceptable to himself.

For our beloved dead, for the poor souls in purgatory, and for X, for whom this Mass is offered.

O God, our refuge and our strength, hear the prayers of your Church, for you yourself are the source of all devotion, and grant, we pray, that what we ask in faith we may truly obtain. Through Christ our Lord.