23 October 2026 - St John of Capistrano - homily for Friday of the 29th week in Ordinary Time ACTS RETREAT - Ephesians 4:1-6

Today is the feast day of St John of Capistrano. We probably are familiar with him by his Spanish name, as mission San Juan Capistrano in Orange County, California was named after him by the Franciscan missionaries who brought God’s word to the native people of California. The Spanish missionaries usually named missions and areas after the saint on the date of the feast day on which they arrived in that location. St John of Capistrano was born in 1386 in the kingdom of Naples in Italy.  He was imprisoned during a war with a neighboring town. He entered the Franciscan community as a friar in Perugia after his release. After being ordained to the priesthood, he brought his gifts of preaching to countries all over Europe – throughout  Italy, Germany, Bohemia, Austria, Hungary, Poland, and Russia.  Through his preaching, John of Capistrano tried to unify the Christians throughout the European realm. He also wrote religious tracts against different heresies of that era. He died in 1456 at the age of 70. 

We have been hearing from St Paul’s letters to the Galatians and the Ephesians these past several weeks.  Today, in his letter to the Ephesians, St Paul writes how he is a prisoner of the Lord. He is writing this while he is actually imprisoned in Rome. Writing this message behind bars, it gives weight to his message to the Ephesians to be worthy of the calling to live a Christian life that they received through their baptism. He exhorts them to be patient, gentle, and humble. We can imagine St Paul praying that he himself would be follow those same virtues in his challenging life circumstances. He calls the Ephesians to live in unity as one Body and one Spirit, of which those virtues would help to achieve these goals. We can think of the ways our faith and God’s love can set us from free from all that keeps us down. 

We welcome all of you to this first Mass of our ACTS retreat. The Mass and the Eucharist are central to our Catholic faith and to our relationship with Christ, so Mass has a very important role in our ACTS retreat. As we hear St Paul tell the Ephesians to be patient and humble, as we start this ACTS retreat, it is important to be patient and humble and open to how God is speaking to us through this retreat. It is always good to enter a retreat time with openness to how God is going to speak to us through this retreat, that it may be in a way that might surprise us. God will certainly speak to us in this retreat in the midst of the reality of our lives, through the talks and devotions and conversations and prayers and experiences we will have in this retreat. May our hearts and our minds be open. May we not have expectations as to what this retreat is going to be. The team and I look forward to journeying with all of you this weekend.