27 September 2026 - homily for the 26th Sunday in Ordinary time Cycle A - Ezekiel 18:25-28

Our journey of faith can have joys and struggles, accomplishments and failures, We can take a wrong turn on our path through life at times. We can cause our loved ones pain and hurt. As disciples of Christ, we are called to live by the values of our faith and to love God and love our neighbor, but sometimes we miss the mark. We have God’s grace that helps us meet our challenges, but we stumble sometimes in our human weaknesses. 

The Israelites often complained to God about things. They complained a lot to God about their seemingly endless journey through the desert to the promised land in their Exodus journey. In our reading today from Ezekiel, the Jews look out at the world, and the do not think the ways of the Lord are very fair. They do not think it is fair that God punishes the virtuous man who falls into sin, but then is merciful to the wicked man who repents. The Israelites think they have their act together and know what is best. However, they don’t see things the way God sees things. God in his forgiveness offers us a chance to repent and to change our ways. Those who repent and turn to God can have life, no matter what their sinful past may have been. 

I want to tell you a story about a man named Luke Fesch. A man named Jacques Fesch grew up in Belgium, living a life of luxury with his father’s wealth. He traveled extensively. He raced horses and sailboats and sports cars. He never held a job for very long. At the age of 24, he had fathered two children, neither of whom he supported. He had defected from the army and quit the jobs he’d been given. In the hopes of changing Fesch’s ways, his father cut off his financial support. With his life a mess, he decided to steal enough money to sail to the South Pacific. In 1954, a robbery went bad. While being pursued by the police, Fesch shot and killed an officer. He was sentenced to death and sent to prison. He was executed in France on October 1, 1957. But that is not the entire story. 

Fesch was executed because he represented a danger to social stability. And he was executed because most people believed a man who killed a police officer could never change his life. His murder had to be met with justice. An eye for an eye, right? The Catholic Church teaches that the death penalty is wrong, but there are exceptions in rare occasions. In situations of absolute necessity, taking a life might be just. If a killer cannot be contained or controlled or reformed, it would be just for the state to take his life to protect society. According to St John Paul II, think of a country with no law and order, with no stability at all, where keeping someone in prison would be feasible. But that was not the situation in France when Jacques Fesch was put to death. That is not the situation in modern America today. An execution is an act of violence. That is not the way of God. It is the way of man. Violence does not solve problems. It goes against Christ telling us to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us. It was wrong for Jacques Fesch to kill that police officer. But it also was wrong for the country of France to put Jacques Fesch to death. St John Paul II famously stated that in many ways, we live in a modern culture of death, not a culture of life. 

When Jacques Fesch arrived at the prison, he mocked the Catholic faith and mocked his Catholic lawyer. But his lawyer prayed for Fesch. He visited him regularly and cared for him. In the love of his lawyer, Jacques Fesch encountered the love of Christ. He repented for his sins and rejoiced in God’s mercy. The love and mercy of God that he found in his Catholic transformed his life. He became a witness of his faith to others. His fellow prisoners and his guards said that in prison he committed his life to the virtue of charity. 

In 1987, Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, the Archbishop of Paris, opened an official investigation into his life. He was granted the title Servant of God in 1993 when his cause was officially opened in Rome. Jacques Fesch, who killed a police officer in cold blood, may one day be proclaimed a saint because of the conversion of his heart. The Catholic faith that he found renewed his life.

When we serve our brothers in prison or serve a meal to a person living on the streets or serve as a missionary in an inner-city neighborhood torn apart by poverty or violence or gang warfare, it is not some romanticized or quaint act of kindness. We serve God and serve our neighbor on the most basic level. We trust in the power of the Lord to transform people and to save lives. 

25 September 2026 - homily for Friday of the 25th week of Ordinary Time - Louis and Zelie Martin - Ecclesiastes 3:1-11

Louis Martin was born into a military family in Bordeaux region of France. As a young man, he desired to join a Catholic religious community, but was not admitted because he could not speak Latin and thus could not study theology.  He trained to become a watchmaker and moved to the Normandy region of France where he met Zélie Guérin, a lace maker. Zélie also had tried to enter the convent as a nun, but was turned down. They married in 1858.  They raised a family in a very loving Catholic home. Zélie died of breast cancer in 1877. After his wife’s death, he moved his family to the town of Lisieux to be closer to extended family members so that they could help him raise his five daughters. Zélie and Louis Martin nurtured their own holiness and faith and the faith and holiness of their daughters, all of whom became nuns. Their youngest daughter was Therese of Lisieux, one of the most beloved saints in the Catholic faith and a Doctor of the Church. Louis and Zélie were canonized by Pope Francis in 2015. I had the great opportunity to visit the city of Lisieux and to visit the places associated with this family, including the basilica of St Therese where Louis and Zelie Martin are buried. May we unite our prayers with their prayers today. 

Our first reading today from Ecclesiastes in Greek is a part of the Wisdom tradition in the Hebrew scriptures. In this reading, a wise person reflects on different times in his life: times of death and birth, times of killing and healing, times of weeping and laughing. There are times and seasons in the way nature functions. There are times and season in our lives. While each time and season may seem to happen randomly, the underlying significance of this reading today is that there is a divine purpose for everything that happens in our lives. We are reminded of the sovereignty of God, the creator and ruler of heaven and earth. There are so many things that are beyond our human control of things. We may have a smart phone in our pockets that is more powerful than the computers that put the man on the moon. We may have advanced technology that many of our us could not have imagined as children. But there are many elements of our existence that are beyond our control. We cannot conquer time. God appoints each moment. Our lives here on earth are a mixture of joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, harmony and struggle, of life and death. Each season has an appropriate time in the cycle of life. Nothing stays the same.  

25 September 2026 - prayers of the faithful for Friday of the 24th week of ordinary time

Lord Jesus - You speak to us through nature and the changing of the seasons. 

Christ Jesus - Through you, all things become new. 

Lord Jesus - You are the rock of salvation. 

Priest: With faith, hope, and love, we present our prayers to our heavenly Father:

1. We pray that we may discern God’s will for our lives and cooperate with God more fully. 

2. For a renewal of faith in our daily lives. 

3. For a freedom of spirit for all Christians to live out their faith without fear or persecution. 

4. That the sick, the grieving, and the afflicted 

5. For families in trouble or crisis. May they receive the help they need. May God keep them safe. 

6. That our political leaders may promote the common good of society. 

7. For faithful departed. For their entry into eternal life. 

8. For the prayers we hold in the silence of our hearts today. 

Priest: We present our prayers through your son Jesus Christ, our Lord forever and ever. AMEN. 

24 September 2026 - prayers of the faithful for Thursday of the 25th week of ordinary time

Lord Jesus - you bring us God’s truth. 

Christ Jesus - you are the beloved son of the Father. 

Lord Jesus - you call us to wisdom. 

Priest: With faith, hope, and love, we present our prayers to our heavenly Father: 

1. That we in the Church may recognize God's presence in both the extraordinary and ordinary events of our lives

2. That we be more attentive to Christ to ways he calls us to live out our faith. 

3. For the courage to live out the spiritual and corporal works of mercy. 

4. For greater civility in public discourses. 

5. That we in the Church may welcome all who hunger for meaning and purpose. 

6. That we may all follow the Gospel of life in our words and our actions from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death. 

7. For the prayers we hold in the silence of our hearts.

Priest: We make our prayers through your son Jesus Christ, our Lord forever and ever. AMEN.  

24 September 2026 - homily for Thursday of the 25th week in Ordinary Time - St Rose of Viterbo - Ecclesiastes 1:2-11

St Rose of Viterbo was a prophetic young girl who inspired her homeland to stand with the Vatican in a dispute with an emperor. Frederick II was emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in the 13th century. He was in conflict with the pope, who excommunicated him. In response, Frederick attacked the papal states, conquering the region of Viterbo, Italy. Rose was born in Viterbo and lived there with her poor parents during this conflict. When she was 8 years old, she fell ill, receiving a vision from Mary in her sickness, who told her that she was to give her life to pursuing holiness just as St. Francis of Assisi did. Mary told Rose that she was to take the habit of the Franciscans, but that she was not to live in a convent but to stay at home and set an example for her community in word and in action. When she was 12, she began preaching in the streets against Emperor Frederick’s occupation of Italy, in an effort to incite the city to overthrow the regime. For two years, she continued to speak in public about the occupation. As her popularity grew, authorities called for her execution, but the city’s magistrate sent her and her family into exile instead. When the emperor died in 1250, the Vatican’s forces won the day and Rose and her parents moved back to Viterbo. Rose sought entrance into the local convent, but was denied because she did not have a dowry. She continued to live with her parents, leading a life of prayer and service, but she died at the age of 17. Six years later, due to her popularity, her body was transferred to the chapel of the convent she once tried to enter. The church burned down in 1357, but her body was preserved and was carried through the city in a procession every year. That tradition continues today with an annual festival in Viterbo that features dozens of men carrying a giant platform through the city on Sept. 3, the night before her feast day.

“Vanity of vanities, all things are vanity,” says Quoheleth, the author of Ecclesiastes.  If life is nothing but a vanity, why should we have faith?  Quoheleth looked out at his world; he saw that not every act of goodness was rewarded. He saw that evil sometimes went unpunished. We can be tempted to give up on the world and to give up on God, to live a self-centered life, to live for today and to forget about the consequences of tomorrow. 

Quoheleth looked at the ancient world in which he lived, and saw that it was essentially a changeless world.  The environment, culture, and lifestyles essentially remained the same from generation to generation.  Was there nothing we could do for things to change? Perhaps the author of Ecclesiastes is trying to challenge us to a more profound spiritual quest.  We will never be able to master the world, to explain the mysteries of life, to justify our existence. We are faced with a choice: to either become self-centered and cynical, or to reach out to God.  By turning to God, we do not turn our backs on the world. By following a life of faith, we will look at the world differently. Through the eyes of our faith, we trust in the power of God, we turn to God as the master of the world, the one who can explain the mysteries of life and justify our existence. Through our eyes of faith, through our faith in God, we hold that life does hold meaning and purpose, that it is not a vanity. 

     

23 September 2026 - homily for Wednesday of the 25th week in Ordinary time - St Padre Pio - Proverbs 30:5-9 - Luke 9:1-6

The saint we celebrate today could be very blunt and direct with people, telling them what he saw as the truth without worrying about offering them. Yet, he is one of our most beloved saints in the modern world.  Padre Pio was born to a poor family of farmers in southern Italy in the late 19th century.  On two different occasions, his father worked in the United States to provide financial support his for family.  At the age of 15, he entered the Franciscan Capuchin religious order.  After he served in WWI, he lived in the Capuchin friary in San Giovanni Rotondo in the province of Foggia in southern Italy. One day after Mass at the friary, he had a vision of Jesus, which produced the stigmata on his hands, feet, and side. Many questioned the authenticity of his stigmata. For a while, he was not allowed to celebrate Mass publicly or to hear confessions. He was also known to bi-locate on different occasions. 

When he was allowed to hear confession again, busloads of pilgrims would arrive as he became famous in Italy and throughout the world. He would be able to see into the hearts of people who came to him for confession in a very profound way. He saw Jesus in the poor and in the suffering. Many of the sick believed they received healing through the intercession of Padre Pio. Those who came to his Mass were deeply edified. Out of the many donations he received, Padre Pio founded a major medical center to care for the sick in southern Italy, where good medical care was scarce. The hospital features dedicated programs and units for children, including a pediatric oncology department and accommodations for parents and family members. Padre Pio died in 1968. His canonization in 2002 by Pope John Paul II was attended by a crowd of more 300,000. To this day, the story of Padre Pio touches the hearts of many of the faithful.  

The author of Proverbs tells the Lord that he wants neither poverty nor riches, that he only asks that the Lord provide him with the food that he needs each day. Then in the Gospel from Luke, we hear about Jesus sending out his disciples on their journey as missionaries. He tells them to travel lightly, to not take a sack, or food, or money, or an extra tunic; they will find their needs fulfilled as they go on their journey. Those are two very minimalist, humble attitudes in our Scripture readings today. 

This message is so much different from what our culture tells us, that we need that new car or new piece of technology or whatever is new and popular on the market. The cell phone that we bought just a year ago, that seemed so stylish, can become out of date very quickly. It is so easy for us to forget that the things of this world are just temporary compared to what really matters. We need to constantly ask ourselves: how are we striving toward those values and those things in life that are part of God's eternal kingdom? 

23 September 2026 - prayers of the faithful for Wednesday of the 25th week in Ordinary Time

Lord Jesus - you bring healing into our lives. 

Christ Jesus - you proclaim the kingdom of God. 

Lord Jesus - you send us out to be missionaries. 

Priest: Let us now offer our prayers, mindful of God’s mercy for us and for all people.

1. For Pope Leo XIV, Bishop Kopacz, and all bishops. May their voices be heard in their calls for peace and justice.

2. For all those reaching out for reconciliation and forgiveness. May they experience the healing power of God’ s love in their lives.

Lord, hear us.
3. For our faith community. May we be willing to accept the tests of discipleship and take up our crosses daily with Christ.

4. For the sick of our parish and of our families. For all who have asked for our prayers. 

5. We pray for those who have died recently. May they be welcomed into the eternal kingdom.

6. For the prayers we hold in the silence of our hearts. 

Priest: Receive our prayers of petition, O Gracious God, so that all people may live their lives in peace. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.