Homily Notes
Notes from daily Mass…
19 November 2025, the Morning Mass, Wednesday of the 33rd Week of Ordinary Time
“Behold, we have left everything…” -Matthew 19:27
In our reading through Luke we skipped an important story, the story of Jesus’s encounter with the “rich young ruler” (Luke 18:18-30). Some version of this story is found in each of the Synoptic Gospels; it’s an important story.
I don’t, however, really want to talk about that story. Rather, I just want to draw your attention to Peter’s response to what he saw. After a brief Q & A about theology, Jesus tells the rich young man that he lacked one thing, that he should sell all that he has and give it to the poor and then follow. Seeing this exchange betwixt the two obviously astounded Peter.
Astounded by the challenge, astounded by the fact the young man walked away, Peter asks Jesus, “Then who can be saved?” But then Peter declares that he in fact has given up his possessions. “Behold, we have left our homes and followed you,” Peter tells Jesus. To which Jesus promises him “manifold more…and in the age to come eternal life” (Luke 18:28-30).
Now it’s Peter’s declaration that I want to underline, him telling Jesus what he’d given up for the sake of the kingdom; that’s what astounds me. In Luke, it’s “homes,” but in Matthew’s account and Mark’s it’s “everything.” “Behold, we have left everything and followed you. What shall we have?” Peter says (Matthew 19:27; cf. Mark 10:28). It’s the idea that a disciple of Jesus should give up everything, that’s what astounds me. How does one do that?
Conventional interpretations limiting the demand for everything to the religious—that is, to monks and nuns and certain clergy—I have never found persuasive. Jesus is talking to his disciples, including people like you and me. All Christians in some regard are called to give up everything. But again, how?
Now we don’t have time to get into it, but the tradition is clear. Not all Christians are called to embrace material poverty; not every Christian is called to live like Saint Francis of Assisi. Each Christian, however, is called to offer his or her possessions for God’s use. That is, each Christian is called to use his or her wealth for the building up of God’s kingdom, which involves quite a bit of sharing and quite a bit of frugality instead of luxury.
Again, the tradition is clear on this point. Christians are called to see all their possessions as God’s possessions; the assumption is that Christians will be so attuned to God’s will that they’ll know how to use their possessions for the kingdom. That basically is how Christians should give everything.
But Jesus’s demand that we give everything isn’t just about possessions and wealth. It’s also about life. And this is really what I want to talk about, for what I’ve been reflecting on are these readings from yesterday and today about the martyrs of 2 Maccabees, about Eleazar and that mother and her seven sons.
Eleazar was an old man; today’s story is about a family, a mother and her sons. Not monks or professed religious of any kind, but ordinary people, they gave their lives, embraced martyrdom, rather than assimilate to Seleucid cultural domination, forsaking the observance of Torah. These stories of martyrdom, of the giving away of one’s life, deepen our understanding of what everything means. They remind us that what God is asking us to sacrifice is not just our stuff but also our lives.
This is why martyrdom remains at the heart of Christian discipleship, why, although one should not foolishly seek martyrdom, one should at least be willing to be a martyr, if, that is, one wants to follow Jesus at all in the way he’s calling us, having given everything.
That’s how to give God everything: by using our material possessions to build up his kingdom and by being willing to offer even our lives if necessary for the kingdom of God. That’s why I think, alongside these readings of Luke about giving up possessions, we’ve also come across these old stories of martyrdom. Because when God calls us to give him everything, he’s not just talking about money; rather, he means everything. Even our lives.
In Revelation it says that those who conquer are those who “loved not their lives even unto death” (Revelation 12:11). Jesus said that “whoever loses his life will preserve it” (Luke 17:33). Now I could go on, and I’m sure I could be clearer, but I simply want to leave us with the somewhat disturbing idea that God wants everything from us.
Many of us complain about the length of the Mass or the homily; we can barely give God an hour of our time. Most of us, let’s just be honest, do not give what we should to God’s poor or God’s Church. Most of us don’t give what we should do to our neighbors or even our families. Most of us give God far less than everything.
Or at least that’s how I feel about myself, and maybe you do too. And maybe you and I being honest about it is the beginning of really following Christ.
18 November 2025, Private Mass, Saint Rose Philippine Duchesne, Virgin
“This is why God has allowed you to have more…for you to distribute to those in need.” -Saint John Chrysostom
What does a Christian look like?
I mean, by what deeds may we assess whether a person is a genuine Christian and not merely claiming to be one? Now we should, of course, admit that it can indeed be difficult publicly to call oneself a Christian; even that sometimes has its dangers. But that’s not as difficult as living the teachings of Christ. That’s something else, another level—to be a Christian in deed and in word.
We have been following Luke. Luke has been painting for us a picture of genuine Christian discipleship. A true follower of Christ is humble, thankful, persistent in prayer, faithful, detached from the world. Yesterday, in the story of the blind beggar, healed by Jesus, we learn that a Christian ought to long for Christ by faith, that a Christian ought to desire the Lord with a kind of desperation (Luke 18:35-43).
Today, in the story of Zaccheus, we learn another lesson. Or, rather, we re-learn a lesson, a difficult lesson, maybe one of the hardest lessons Jesus means to teach us, which may be why we keep bumping into it. It’s about our possessions.
To understand this story, you need to understand the story of the rich young ruler found in Luke 18:18-30.
The young man in that story was basically good. He was wealthy and respectable, and on top of that, he knew his theology well, had all the right answers. But that wasn’t enough. “One thing you still lack,” Jesus said to him. “Sell all that you have and distribute it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”
But that’s where the rich young man failed the test. “But when he heard this he became sad, for he was very rich,” Luke writes. Which is the last we ever hear of him.
Zacchaeus, however, responds differently. He is the opposite of the rich young ruler. He’s man of little moral and physical stature; Luke means to portray him as an unlikely hero. Remember, Luke’s Gospel constantly highlights the underdog, the hated, the overlooked, the lowly; and that’s exactly what this little “tax collector” is. The rich young ruler should have been the hero, not this guy.
But this guy gets it. Zacchaeus welcomes Jesus, and not just in word but deed. That is, Zacchaeus welcomes Jesus by the conversion of his life. That is, Zacchaeus changes. And, of course, what exactly changes is how he relates to the poor.
“Behold, Lord,” he says, “the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have defrauded any one anything, I restore it fourfold.” Now, we don’t need to get into the Greek of the thing, but we should be clear that Zacchaeus here is talking about a new way of life, not just a one-time act of restitution but about living henceforward justly. The change Zacchaeus makes, having encountered Jesus, is that he will no longer cheat people; now he will be a friend to the poor and not a predator, an adversary, or indifferent. And that’s how salvation comes to his house.
As I said, it’s a difficult lesson. Still is. Here is where we get into all sorts of arguments, justifications, all those “Yes, but…” rationalizations we employ to let ourselves off the hook. And we don’t have time to get into it. All I can say is that the tradition is there for you to explore—the tradition of charity and justice, and that the truth of that tradition is a moral burden placed upon each of us, and that our souls may very well be at stake.
Because: “And I tell you,” Jesus says, “make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they [the poor] may receive you into the eternal habitations” (Luke 16:9). Or, as Saint John Chrysostom put it: “This is why God has allowed you to have more: not for you to waste on prostitutes, drink, fancy food, expensive clothes, and all other kinds of indolence, but for you to distribute to those in need.”
Anyway, you’ll want to study this tradition of charity and justice, especially if you’re a person of wealth. For God may have given you more for a reason; and as with Zacchaeus, your salvation may be wrapped up in finding out why.
17 November 2025, the Evening Mass, Saint Elizabeth of Hungary
“That is why it is written ‘Short prayer penetrates heaven.’” -The Cloud of Unknowing
Today we hear of a miracle, the healing of a blind man who was begging just outside Jericho. The condition of the man, his circumstances, should pull on your heart. You should feel for him.
He cannot see. He can only hear the crowd. Something is going on, but he can’t tell what; “he inquired what was happening,” Luke writes (Luke 18:36).
This blind beggar is vulnerable, someone easy to ignore, someone most would consider insignificant; at best, he’s a man in the way. Or at least that’s how most people around him likely thought of him. Like the children who had just earlier drawn near to Jesus, he too is “rebuked” (Luke 18:15; 18:39). The people following Jesus don’t fully understand yet the inclusive breadth of his love.
But their rebuke doesn’t matter. What matters is the blind man’s longing, his faith. His desire cuts through the noise. The moment he learns that it’s the Lord walking by he cries out, “Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me!” Rebuked, he only cries out “all the more” (Luke 18:37-39).
Because of his desperation and faith, his love and his longing, he will not be quiet. He will not be rebuked. He will not cease pleading and praying. This is the lesson that Luke is trying to get across. The blind man is an icon of faith and prayer.
Earlier Jesus’s disciples asked, “Then who can be saved?” (Luke 18:26) Here, in the blind man’s pleading and in his receiving the gift of sight, Jesus begins to answer their question. The one who is saved is the one who understands he or she needs to pray and plead just like this blind man does.
The first lesson here, of course, is about having faith in Jesus. The blind man knew that it was Jesus he was begging to heal him. There was no point in begging someone else. Only Jesus could heal him. “There is no salvation through anyone else, nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved” (Acts 4:12). This is the theological point of the story.
The spiritual point, however, is about longing, faith, desperation, and desire. Such are the necessary elements of real prayer. Such is the spiritual invitation: To pray like that blind man prayed.
The anonymous spiritual master known only as a the “Cloud writer” talks about this.
When it comes to the words of prayer, it says in The Cloud of Unknowing, the “fewer the better.” The writer is not talking about liturgical prayer but only personal prayer, likening good personal prayer to the cries of a person suddenly frightened by fire or death. Such a person doesn’t waste time asking for help with a “spate of words” but rather with “one little word” like “Help!” or “Fire!” Such a little word “stirs and pierces the ears of the hearers more quickly,” the writer says. And that’s exactly what good prayer is like. It’s prayer that is focused, urgent, full of desire. “Short prayer penetrates heaven,” the writer says. Prayer just like the blind man.
Which is the invitation for us. Are our prayers full of longing and desire? Do we pray with desperation? Do we pray like the stakes are high, like everything depends on it? Or rather do we pray with the same sort of hope that we have when, say, buying a lottery ticket, with an “It would be nice” sort of half-hope? You see what I mean? How desperate are our prayers?
14 November 2025, the Morning Mass, Friday of the 32nd Week in Ordinary Time
“Begin heaven.” -to Gabrielle Bossis
Gabrielle Bossis was a nurse and a mystic. A remarkable woman, her book He and I is one of those sorts of books that can change your life. You should read it.
The book basically is her spiritual journal, but more. It’s more really a record of her conversation with the Lord, the Lord’s words to her as she lived her ordinary life. It’s like the Dialogue of Catherine of Siena but in 20th century France. It is a record of the Lord’s words as they came to her on the street, the train, places like that. Again, you may want to read it.
Anyway, of all the words in He and I that have stopped me in my tracks over the years, these words—”Begin heaven”—have struck with me the most. For they remind of the simple truth that to be a Christian, to live the Christian life, to be saint, I only need to begin today, to start now. I don’t need to wait for the conditions or the circumstances to be just right before living as Jesus teaches. I can start now. I can begin heaven.
I have thought about these words, thinking today about this passage from Luke. This week the lessons from the Gospel of Luke have been all about humility and gratitude and charity; today the lesson is this: Get started now!
Jesus is talking about the coming of the kingdom of God, “the day the Son of Man is revealed” (Luke 17:30). However, beyond that announcement, that the kingdom is in some manner at hand, there is not much the followers of Jesus need to know or worry about. I mean, Jesus said we know neither the day nor the hour—“nobody knows it,” in fact (Mark 13:32).
Rather, what the followers of Jesus need to focus on—instead of seeking exact apocalyptic information—is living like Christians. They should focus on their own discipleship and holiness and not some eschatological when.
That is, Jesus doesn’t give Christians inside information; rather, he gives them the tasks of discipleship. He gives them work to do, an ethic. “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:27). “In the same way, everyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33). That’s what Jesus has been telling his disciples. He’s been telling them to live the Christian life now, begin heaven now.
Hence the warning: “Remember the wife of Lot” (Luke 17:32). The problem, you see, is that Lot’s wife looked back upon the world, back on her possessions. She is like the rich young man whom we meet in the next chapter, an image of the failed disciple, of the disciple who heard Jesus’s invitation but who couldn’t let go of his or her possessions, who couldn’t begin heaven now (Luke 18:23). Because, perhaps, the lure of the world’s glamour was just too much.
And so, these are the questions: Are you ready to begin heaven? What’s holding you back? What possessions have you not let go? What in the world is keeping you from beginning heaven now?
13 November 2025, the Evening Mass, Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, Virgin
What made him a Christian was the love that Christians had shown him.
I’m talking about one of my favorite saints, the Egyptian monk named Pachomius. He really is the father of what is called coenobitic monasticism, communal monasticism. Whereas Saint Antony of Egypt, for instance, is the father of hermits, eremitic monasticism, Saint Pachomius is the father of community monasticism—think monks in monasteries. Saint Benedict, Saint Augustine, etcetera: all of it begins with Saint Pachomius.
But the Christian story of Saint Pachomius begins with a small act of charity.
The young Pachomius was drafted into the army to fight the Persians. Drafted is too nice of a way to put it, really. Rather, he was taken against his will to fight in a war like some sort of enslaved soldier; that is, he was shackled and caged and carried off to battle.
One night in prison, in Thebes, a group of people brought the imprisoned soldiers some food, “bread and victuals.” Seeing this, Pachomius asked, “Why are these people so good to us when they do not know us?”
To which a man answered: “They are Christians, and they treat us with love for the sake of the God of heaven.”
And this small kindness moved Pachomius. The story continues that Pachomius stepped aside to the corner of the cell and quietly prayed,
“My Lord Jesus Christ, God of all the saints, may your goodness quickly come upon me, deliver me from this affliction and I will serve humankind all the days of my life.”
And so, when Pachomius was released from conscription, the rest of his story began; and, you could argue, the entire story of Christian monasticism. From that small act of kindness, so much was born.
Now today is not the feast day of Saint Pachomius. Today is the Memorial of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini. But the grace is the same.
Mother Cabrini was the first American citizen to be canonized. An Italian-born nun and later founder of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, she was encouraged to go to America, following a wave of Italian migration, to serve immigrants in the New World. She died of malaria in Chicago in 1917. She gave her life for others.
That is, Mother Cabrini gave her life doing exactly what those anonymous Egyptian Christians did feeding detained pagans in Thebes centuries earlier. She was practicing corporal and spiritual works of mercy, and all while surrounded by anti-immigrant scorn and racism. Yet, she was the Christian. She was the one faithful to the teachings of Jesus.
Now how this applies today is sadly too controversial a question for too many Catholics. Here is where the fighting begins, the justifications, the “Yes, but…” Nonetheless, Christians should be where the detained and imprisoned are—feeding them, offering kindness, the sacraments of Christ. This simply is what Christ’s sheep do; goats do otherwise.
Jesus said the “kingdom of God is among you” (Luke 17:21). At present there are no big signs, no big movements, that signify the kingdom. And heaven help us if we are ever so foolish to think that the kingdom comes as some sort of political triumph.
No, it comes in those small acts of charity, in the work and witness of those willing to do the Christian thing no matter what, even if that means we must “suffer greatly and be rejected by this generation” (Luke 17:25). For those are the Christian seeds that will grow—as the life of Pachomius shows.
And so, in 2025, Christian: Where are you?
12 November 2025, the Evening Mass, Saint Josaphat, Bishop and Martyr
“Ingratitude is the soul’s enemy…” -St. Bernard of Clairvaux
You’ll remember that yesterday’s reading from Luke ended harshly. You remember those words from the Lord: “So you also, when you have done all that is commanded you, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty’” (Luke 17:10).
To understand these harsh words, we must remember attitude of some of the Pharisees, how they took too much pride in their status and education, spiritually overconfident. “We are descendants of Abraham,” they boast (John 8:33). Jesus doesn’t want his disciples to boast. That’s why he tells them it’s better to call yourselves unworthy servants.
And then comes this story about ten lepers. Luke tells us they are on their way to Jerusalem, perhaps an allusion to Calvary, to that sacrifice that will ultimately utterly undercut all pride, all arrogance, all sin.
The miracle is straightforward. The ten lepers are cleansed. The moral, however, is that the one who turned back to Jesus, falling at his feet and offering him thanks, is the one who was “saved.” The others were physically healed, but only the one who turned to Jesus, thanking him and praising God in the same breath, was saved. The lesson here is first theological; it tells us something about who Jesus is.
But the other lesson is moral. Again, it’s helpful to remember the foil of the Pharisees, always at work in Luke, the contrast they offer the disciples of Jesus. The followers of Jesus are to operate from an awareness that everything is a gift, that nothing is owed. They are to act in every instance knowing that every good gift is “from above, coming down from the Father of lights” (James 1:17).
That is, the Christian should always be thankful.
Hence Saint Bernard’s simple but sage warning that ingratitude is the soul’s enemy. Reconstrued as good advice, the way we can put it is this: Christian, never forget to practice thankfulness. Sometimes it will indeed be difficult to be grateful; it will require great effort. Still, no matter what, practice thankfulness.
Sometimes we will want to forget what God or others have done to help us or bless us or get us where we are; but nonetheless, we mustn’t fool ourselves into welcoming that pride that dares us to think God is in anyway indebted to us. For that truly is an attitude dangerous to the soul.
And, of course, one of the ways we Catholics practice thankfulness—the most important way, in fact—is by participating in the Eucharist. It is the act of gratitude. So, it’s good that you go to Mass as often as you can. It can make you a thankful person.
Meditating on the Sursum corda, Saint Augustine asked a simple question: “What should we give thanks for?” His answer was equally simple, and beautiful: “Because we have our heart up above, and unless he had lifted it up, we would be lying on the ground” (Sermon 229.3).
I think about that line from time to time, especially when it’s hard for me to give thanks. Because it reminds me that no matter how heavy my heart may be on any given day, at least I can stand before an altar somewhere and lift up my heart to heaven.
If I only I turn back to Jesus and give him thanks, Samaritan though I am.
11 November 2025, Private Mass, Saint Martin of Tours
“God formed man to be imperishable…” -Wisdom 2:23
Today is Veterans Day, what used to be known as Armistice Day, commemorating the end of the Great War—on the Western Front at least—on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the year 1918.
It’s also the Feast of Saint Martin of Tours.
Himself a veteran of the Roman army, serving in the Imperial Guard, as a Christian convert, he was apparently a bit obnoxious. A rough-edged monk and a bishop, he was known to go around destroying pagan shrines. Not a few priests and bishops disliked him very much.
But he was also revered in his own lifetime. Saint Paulinus of Nola was supposedly healed by Saint Martin of an eye infection. Miracles and tales of miracles collected around him.
A later bishop of Tours, an interesting man by the name of Brictio, didn’t seem to care much for Saint Martin either; Brictio, for example, thought he was senile. However, that did not prevent him from building a little church over Saint Martin’s tomb, and so the cult and the fame of Saint Martin of Tours began.
The story about Saint Martin that everyone knows comes from the Life of Martin by Sulpicius Severus. It’s the story of how, at the gate of Amiens, Martin cut his cloak in half to give to a beggar. It’s a story that has been re-presented countless times in art and literature, and re-interpreted.
In Michel Mollat’s The Poor in the Middle Ages he argues that stories like the one about Saint Martin, better than any laws or edicts, helped moralize and re-order society in the habits of Christian charity. The way Mollat put it:
It is a sublimation of poverty, in which the needy beggar stands for Christ himself. It is also an invitation to charity addressed to those who, as men who own horses and are armed with swords, possess wealth, power and strength. (24)
That is, to put it simply, Saint Martin served as an example of conversion, and not simply of a soldier but of society. Or to put it another way, he served as an icon for the conversion of the energy of violence into gracefulness of prayer and charity.
Which is really today’s simple lesson, that our violence (even our arguably ethical violence, like the violence of the soldier) is ultimately meant to be converted to charity.
“God formed man to be imperishable,” the lesson from Wisdom begins. Well, how do we think such imperishability comes about but through the charity that comes by way of Christ, in the charity given in both spiritual and corporal mercies?
And so, here we discover the veteran’s moral opportunity: To do good now in Christ, in prayer and for his poor. Which is our moral opportunity as well.
10 November 2025, the Morning Mass, Saint Leo the Great, Pope and Doctor
Perhaps we more readily notice today’s feast because the saint we celebrate bears the same name as the current pope. Today, the Successor of Peter is named, as you know, Leo XIV. Today’s saint was the first Leo.
Pope Saint Leo the Great, he’s called; he was pope in the fifth century. He is one of only two popes called such. Saint Gregory the Great is the other one, yet some have called Saint John Paul II that too. But time will have to tell.
The historian Eamon Duffy calls him “the most remarkable pope of the early church.” One of the reasons I think he’s called “the Great” is just because he was so busy.
In the fifth century Rome was not what it had been; it had been sacked a generation earlier, and the emperor had packed up to Constantinople. The city was a shell of itself, and vulnerable.
Thus, Leo bore the burden of Rome, its political and material care as well as its spiritual care. Rightly people often lament the papacy’s involvement in the political machinations of European history, yet we forget that for centuries the Church was the only game in town, the only entity capable of governing, capable of stifling, at least somewhat, the advent of total chaos. But that’s another story.
When Attila the Hun threatened Rome, Pope Leo the Great somehow prevented it. He wasn’t as successful, a few years later, with Gaiseric the Vandal; although, he was able to persuade him merely to loot Rome instead of burning it to the ground.
On the religious front, theologically and ecclesiastically, like the centuries preceding it, the fifth century was entangled in controversy. The arguments beginning in fourth-century Egypt had never really ended; rather, they were twisted and torn into even more complex theological conundrums.
We don’t need to get into the details of these arguments, of course, but suffice it to say that Saint Leo the Great was involved as you’d expect a bishop of Rome would be, to the delight of some and the tolerance of others. Eutyches, Nestorius, the Councils of Ephesus and the Council of Chalcedon, Leo’s Tome: Today’s saint was a champion of orthodoxy, truly (as he was declared in the 18th century) a doctor of the Church.
Yet what strikes me today as I meditate upon this fifth century pope, the first of fourteen Leos, is the integrated character of his ministry—and I can only presume also the character of the man. That is, today we’d call Pope Leo the Great a “world leader,” but as such a leader, and unlike so many leaders today, he did not divide himself into politician in this instance and priest in that instance.
Rather, he saw himself as the Successor of Peter. That’s what informed both his political decisions and his theological ones. Again, the way Eamon Duffy puts it, Leo “hammered home the identity of the papacy with Peter.” Duffy continues, “Leo’s sense of this identity was almost mystical.”
Now aside from the ecclesiastical and ecumenical arguments to be made either for or against this “mystical” identification of the papacy with Peter, the point I simply want to make is that what made Leo’s voice so powerful—and what has over the centuries made the papal voice so powerful—was that he never spoke solely as a politician, never making calculations that were solely political or solely economic or otherwise.
That is, his view of things and his action were born of a broader view of creation and redemption and the divine mission of the Church. Without being too idealistic or hagiographic, I do think it’s possible to say this. That is, the papal voice is different precisely because at its best it’s not lured into the short-termism of the political. Leo XIV is not up for re-election.
If you were to read Laudato si’, for instance, in my opinion it’s the most comprehensive thing written on the environment in this century, maybe the last one too. And that’s simply because Pope Francis worked from his understanding of creation; he spoke also from his understanding of the human person and human cultures.
That is, he didn’t comment on the environment from a national perspective or a commercial perspective nor was he maneuvering to please his constituents, plotting to remain in office. Instead, he spoke more universally, more holistically, and in a manner that was more just and better suited to caring for the environment—because he was speaking not with the narrowness of either the political or business class but with the moral comprehensiveness of the papacy.
But, of course, most people haven’t read Laudato Si’, not even very many Catholics.
I remember watching CNN, years ago now, when Benedict XVI’s Caritas in veritate came out. It hadn’t been two hours, it hadn’t even been translated into English, and James Carville even admitted to having not read a word of it, yet that didn’t prevent him from dismissing it with a belittling grin. Nothing for anyone serious to concern themselves about, was the clear message, just a pope saying something “religious.”
You see what I’m getting at? Today we celebrate Pope the Leo the Great, one of the truly great papal voices in this age of Christ. And today there is another Leo, a pope who intentionally named himself thus.
And so, as interested as we are in what today’s Leo will say, how will we listen? Will we listen to him like he’s a politician or like he’s the Successor of Peter?
7 November 2025, the Morning Mass, Friday of the 31st Week in Ordinary Time
“My God, here is all—take all: but convert my parish.”
-St. John Vianney
It’s a beautiful prayer, this prayer that Saint John Vianney prayed for his parish. The patron saint of parish priests, this prayer of his shows me what the heart of a pastor should be. It reminds me that my job isn’t just a job, but that my heart—if it’s a true pastor’s heart—should burn for my people’s conversion. It reminds me that I should pray like this.
But I’ll admit it’s a frightening prayer. He prayed, “My God, I consent to suffer all that You may wish, for all my life…for a hundred years…and the most bitter suffering, but convert them…” Do I really want to pray like that? Do I really want to suffer for my flock? Let’s just settle for a successful capital campaign, steady growth, a good school. How about that? Suffer for my people? Offer up everything for my parish’s conversion? Do I really want to ask God for that? You see what I mean? That’s some scary praying right there.
But I think I should. Or I should at least begin to pray to pray like that. And maybe you should too. Maybe that’s a good way to think about the people around us, a good way to relate to them. Maybe we should desire their conversion. Maybe we should even be willing to suffer for their conversion? What do you think of that?
Maybe bearing witness to the people around us isn’t first about teaching them a bunch of stuff, correcting them or scolding them, or even enlightening them. Rather, maybe it’s first about loving them so much that we’re willing to suffer for them or even to lay our lives down for them.
Maybe that’s what’s off about all the social media apologists on YouTube and X: It’s impossible to offer oneself as a sacrifice through a screen. Maybe what’s wrong with so much of that sort of evangelism today is that there’s no room for suffering. Maybe that’s why celebrity evangelists and influencer-apologists seem a thousand miles away from what we see in the prayers of saints like Vianney.
And Saint Paul. I am meditating on the line from Romans about the grace God had given him “to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in performing the priestly service of the Gospel of God, so that the offering up of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:16).
It’s a prayer like Saint John Vianney’s prayer. Saint Paul sees his apostolic and priestly calling to be for the sanctification of others. He too is praying not for any sort of success, only sanctification. Again, I just think it’s important to be able to tell the difference between success and sanctification in my ministry and yours. There is a difference.
Anyway, both you and I are called to be instruments in the hands for God, useful for the conversion of everyone around us. But that means we must become instruments like Christ; that means our lives and our work must be cruciform. That is, we must be open to suffering before we open our mouths. For that’s what real Christianity looks like. That’s what the Church whispers to us on a Friday, that we must take up our cross and follow.
And so may we suffer for one another, for our sanctification together.
6 November 2025, the Morning Mass, Thursday of the 31st Week in Ordinary Time
“Strange calculation…And yet this, my child, is how the books are kept with God.”
-Charles Péguy, The Portal of the Mystery of Hope
Péguy, that French poet who has molded my soul more than I can describe, talks about these two parables in his long poem on hope, these stories from Luke 15 about the one lost sheep and the one lost coin.
He says, as you may know, that hope is a little girl. It’s a metaphor that gives us a sense of vulnerability and the expectancy of hope. It’s a beautiful poem; as I said, it shaped me profoundly.
Hope is also surprising. That’s why Péguy talks about these parables from Luke in his poem. God’s mercy is surprising; it is surprising that God would forgive sinners at all, especially notorious ones. Yet, that’s exactly what God does. He forgives even the worst. It’s mercy and not merit; that’s the secret. That is “how the books are kept with God.”
“God’s saints come out of two different schools,” Péguy writes. “The school of the righteous and the school of the sinner.”
“But,” Péguy writes later in the poem, “it’s from an impure soul that she makes a pure soul and that’s the most beautiful secret in the whole garden of the world.” It is beautiful that “for each soul saved” God rings the “eternal Easter bells. And he says: I told you so.”
What Péguy is talking about, and what I am trying to say through him, is perhaps the deepest truth of God and the Scripture, and that is the truth of God’s mercy. It is indeed a strange calculation. It hardly makes sense.
I think of the beginning of the story about Noah. It says that God got so fed up with his people that he was sorry he had ever made them (Genesis 6:6). However, he did not in fact wipe humans out, for what follows is the story of the flood, that great symbol of baptism and salvation.
I think also of Jacob. He was a bit of a clueless patriarch. We never really see him praying; he’s spiritually unimpressive. In fact, God basically has to knock him out, grab him and say, “I am with you and will keep you wherever you go” (Genesis 28:15). It has nothing to do with Jacob; it’s all God’s doing. Again, Jacob was hardly worth saving, but he saved him anyway.
And then I think of the Lord, his prayer the night before his crucifixion. It’s recorded in John 17. There Jesus is utterly abandoned; Judas is, even as Jesus is praying, betraying him. Yet what does Jesus pray? “Father, I desire that they also…may be with me where I am” (John 17:24). Astonishingly, he’s praying that those who have abandoned him would be with him. Even then, God desires to be with them—even the weak, even sinners.
You see what I’m getting at? We see here something of the nature of God, that his nature is mercy.
So, what does that say about your doubts about God’s love for you? What does that say about your idea that God could not possibly love you after all your sinning? What does that say about your scrupulosity and despair?
Clearly, there is no moment in your life in which God does not desperately want you with him.
So, what are you waiting for? Allow yourself to be found.
5 November 2025, the Morning Mass, Wednesday of the 31st Week in Ordinary Time
“Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another…” -Romans 13:8
In the simplest terms, this is the Christian ethic: Owe no one anything except love. To rescue this idea from vacuous sentimentality, however, we must step back to grasp more broadly what Saint Paul is saying here. His exhortation is not cute or kind and mushy. Rather, he’s steeling believers to be a different sort of people, radically different, not conformed to the world. He’s steeling them to love like God.
Romans 13 might be the most misinterpreted passage in the whole of the New Testament, especially in America. “Let every person be subject to governing authorities,” the chapter begins (Romans 13:1). In the mouths of politicians and preachers and maybe even your uncle, this verse is repeatedly employed to be some sort of biblical proof that Christians should always support the government.
For centuries partisans and politicos and pundits have pointed to this verse to suggest that whatever government is in place is the ordained agent of God, and that therefore Christians should be happy to be proud supporters of whatever government is in place. Christians, so the argument goes, should therefore happily obey laws, fight wars, detain and kill others—even if doing so violates the clear norms and laws of Christian morality. Why? Well, Saint Paul said so, so many say; I mean, let every person be subject. That’s clear, isn’t it?
Not exactly.
Remember that Saint Paul was writing in a time when it was inconceivable that the Roman empire would ever be Christian much less ruled by Christians. The Roman empire was completely pagan, ruled by forces at best providentially ordered by God, not ordained by God. Christians relate to the empire exactly the way Jesus did, that is, from a position of powerlessness and radical subordination.
Constantine still centuries away, Saint Paul could not have imagined Christians taking over the empire. He did, however, know that the empire crucified Christians. He knew that Jesus was led like lamb to the slaughter. He knew Jesus called Christians to follow him.
One should always read Chapter 12 with Chapter 13. It helps one understand what Saint Paul is saying. Again, writing to Christians and not necessarily Roman citizens, Saint Paul tells them “never avenge yourselves” (Romans 12:19). Vengeance is God’s business, not the Christian’s. Rather, he says that Christians should feed their enemies when they’re hungry, that they should never repay “evil for evil,” and that they should not be “over come by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:17, 21).
And then Chapter 13 begins with Saint Paul’s exhortation to “be subject” to “governing authorities.” Such authorities are indeed providentially ordered by God; yet they, and not Christians (again, remember 12:19) execute God’s wrath. Also, again, remember, Saint Paul couldn’t fathom Christians being the same as the “authorities.” From his perspective, the only possible Christian task is to let the government providentially do whatever it does, to pay taxes, and show it whatever respect or honor it’s due. Peaceably.
That’s what Saint Paul means by saying Christians should owe no one anything except love. It’s strange therefore that this text should be used, as it has for centuries, to justify so many Christians’ betrayal of the teachings of Christ. It’s strange that so many Christians should read into this passage almost exactly what it does not say.
Now, of course, this is only the beginning of the discussion. By no means, from the Catholic viewpoint, is this the end of it. Obviously, to get smart on this one would need to continue reading the Fathers, especially Saint Augustine. And more. I would also recommend, by John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus, a book that has profoundly shaped me and my understanding of the tradition from Saint Paul to Saint Augustine. But that, of course, is work to be done beyond this homily.
Today, just simply try to owe no one anything except love.
4 November 2025, Private Mass, St. Charles Borromeo
“See how the Lord in his love shows us the way of life”
-The Rule of Saint Benedict
The way Saint Benedict puts it in the prologue of the Rule is that when the believer discerns the call of God, which is like a son hearing the loving voice of his father, the believer will run toward him, leaving behind the “sloth of disobedience” to embrace the “labor of obedience.” Eagerly, the believer will take up battle for the “true king, Christ the Lord” and “follow him to glory.”
Saint Benedict is clear, however, that it is God’s call and grace which make Christian life possible. That’s why prayer must attend the beginning of a Christian’s work, Saint Benedict insists. Nonetheless, he says, Christians will never get to the kingdom “unless we run there by doing good deeds.” Faith and works are inseparable.
We have moved into a new part of Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans. We have concluded his passionate plea for the people of God, his argument that God would show “mercy upon all,” both Christians and Israel (Romans 9-11). Remember the broad argument of the letter thus far: All have sinned and deserve judgment; Abraham’s faith in God is like believers’ faith in Christ; when a person believes in Jesus, the Spirit is poured into him and he is adopted a son, in the Son, and can call upon God the Father; this is the reality of baptism, the reality of sharing in Christ’s death and resurrection.
This then is the theological reality behind Saint Paul’s invitation that we “present our bodies as a living sacrifice” and that we be transformed by the renewal of our minds, not conformed to the world (Romans 12:1-2). We can do this because we have faith in Jesus and because we live in him by baptism. This is the faith that precedes the works of Christians.
This is why I have been thinking of Saint Benedict today, because he is doing the same thing in the Rule that Saint Paul does in this letter, reminding us that theology does indeed go before praxis.
“Let your love be sincere,” Saint Paul writes (Romans 12:9). Use the gifts God has given you to serve the theological reality that claims you. That is, you are a Christian; you live in Christ. You belong to the body of Christ, the Church, a community of brothers and sisters. And so, use your gifts to serve the reality of the body of Christ. Don’t use your gifts to tear the body of Christ apart or damage it.
Here we open a whole new area for consideration, Christian ethics. For the Christian, there can be only Christian ethics. That is, how does that fact that you’re a Christian determine your actions, your work, your behavior? The reality of Christ must inform all of it, all that you do. Because again, remember what Saint Paul said at the beginning of the chapter: “Do not be conformed to this world” (Romans 12:2). Here we see how Christians began to find themselves at odds with the world.
Are you at odds with the world?
3 November 2025, the Evening Mass, St. Martin de Porres
“The gifts and call of God are irrevocable.” -Romans 11:29
Saint Paul here is talking about Israel, about how God has neither abandoned nor rejected his chosen people. Just because in Christ the promises of the covenant have been extended to the Gentiles—or better put, to anyone who has faith Jesus—that does not mean God rejects the Jews. That possibility Saint Paul considers utterly impossible. Rather, he writes, the drama ends with God showing “mercy upon all” (Romans 11:31).
To think God would go back on the promise he made to his people is nonsense. God will save all his people. Exactly how is God’s business. I recall here what Von Balthasar said once, that “God is the author of the problem and to him alone belongs its resolution.” This, I believe, is correct.
Beyond the original meaning of the text, I keep thinking of the comfort, the strength there is in the idea that God’s gifts and God’s call are “irrevocable.” The call of God is irrevocable. That’s a very comforting idea for me.
I mean, think about it: What father or husband hasn’t doubted his vocation at times or at least wondered if he was really up to it? What mother, knee-deep in laundry and loud kids, hasn’t at times thought of herself as a failure? What spouse hasn’t wondered whether they had made a mistake? What priest or nun or monk hasn’t wondered the same? Is my vocation a mistake? When things get rough, sometimes we ask ourselves questions like this?
Yet, the answer: “The gifts and call of God are irrevocable.” You see what I’m saying? God did not make a mistake calling you to be a wife and a mother. He didn’t make a mistake calling you to be a husband and a father. He didn’t make a mistake calling you to be a priest. Yes, he knew very well you’d mess it up a thousand times, but he also made all the grace you’ll ever need available in this thing called the Church, his body. God knew what he was doing when he called you. God did not make a mistake. That’s the truth to remember today.
The Church celebrates today Saint Martin de Porres, a beautiful saint from Peru. He was canonized by Pope Saint John XXIII in 1962. His vocation was surrounded by all kinds of doubt. I’m sure he must’ve had moments of doubt just like the rest of us. His father was Spanish; his mother was African. The racism and prejudice he endured you can barely imagine.
But nonetheless he loved, he healed, he served. It was against the law for a person of African descent to make a profession in a religious order, but God’s call and Saint Martin’s faith simply surpassed such stupid racism. Because the gifts of God and the call of God are irrevocable. Just as irrevocable as they are for you.