22 October 2026 - prayers of the faithful for Thursday of the 29th week in Ordinary Time

Lord Jesus - you proclaim the goodness of God’s kingdom. 

Christ Jesus - you lead us to the mysteries of God. 

Lord Jesus - you call us to a life of discipleship. 

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

1. For a fuller life in the Holy Spirit. That God will free us from self-absorption and selfishness to greater fullness in our faith. 

2. For those who are grieving and afflicted. May God give them hope and new opportunities. 

3. For all who are ill. That God will relieve their suffering and bring them comfort. 

4. For all in our OCIA program. That they will take God’s Word to heart and grow in knowledge and intimacy with God. 

5. For farmers and gardeners. For all who work the fields and bring food to our tables. hat God will protect them, that God will grant them a bountiful harvest, allowing them to be fruitful in their labors. 

6. For a greater respect for human life in our words and our actions during Respect Life Month. 

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

Priest: With a sense of thanksgiving and gratitude, we present our prayers through your son Jesus Christ, our Lord forever and ever. AMEN. 

21 October 2026 - prayers of the faithful for Wednesday of the 29th week in Ordinary Time

Lord Jesus - you bring us God’s grace to help us meet our challenges.

Christ Jesus - you form us in the Church as your mystical Body. 

Lord Jesus - you proclaim the riches of God’s kingdom. 

PRIEST: As we continue our journey through the month of October, Respect Life Month, we present our prayers to our heavenly Father. 

1. For legislators and governmental officials. That God will give them wisdom in addressing current challenges and the courage to work for the greater good. 

2. For those who are experiencing the storms of daily life. May they feel Jesus presence with them. 

3. May we share the Word of God and the spirit of the Eucharist with our neighbor in our words and our actions. 

4. For confidence that God’s love accompanies us on our journey. 

5. That God continue to bless our students, teachers, and parents as they continue their journey throughout the school year. 

6. That we in the Church may grow in our awareness of the witness we bring to the world. 

7. 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. 

20 October 2026 - prayers of the faithful for Tuesday of the 29th week in Ordinary Time

Lord Jesus - you bring us God’s message of peace. 

Christ Jesus - you gather us as God’s people. 

Lord Jesus - you ask us to wait in hope. 

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

1. That our experience of God’s love and care sustain us through all of our hardships and sufferings in our lives. 

2. For a spirit of awe and wonder in our daily lives. May we recognize God’s generosity who abundantly blessing in our lives. 

3. That we may freely serve others in spiritual and corporal works of mercy. 

4. That we may all grow in our missionary spirit during this month of world missions. 

5. That our children, youth, and adults grow in their faith through their participation in our parish’s faith formation program. 

6. For those searching for deeper meaning in life. May they find abundant nourishment in God’s Word and in the Eucharist. 

7. For the sick and the afflicted. For healing in body, mind, and spirit. 

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

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

20 October 2026 - St Paul of the Cross - homily for Tuesday of the 29th week in Ordinary Time - Ephesians 2:12-22

We hear Paul address the theme of the unity we have in Christ in his letter to the Ephesians. The Ephesians at one time were without Christ. They were estranged from Israel and were strangers to the covenant with God.  Now, through the new covenant they share with Christ, the wall dividing them from the faith has come down. Now they have found peace and are reconciled with God. Like the Ephesians, we are members of the House of God. However, we live in a world that is still divided in many ways, with violence, war, and terrorism taking hold in different ways. Our faith urges us to work toward peace, to work toward the fulfillment of God’s kingdom. As we have been mentioning, this month of October is a month dedicated to Mary and to praying the rosary, to world missions month, and respect life month. How are we using the spiritual themes of this month in the Catholic Church to work toward unity and peace in our parish, in our diocese, and in our community?

St Paul of the Cross is the saint whose feast day we celebrate today. After serving a solider in Italy in the early 18th century, he turned to a life of prayer and developed a devotion to Christ’s passion. Paul of the Cross saw Christ's love and mercy as rooted in his passion. His preaching on Christ’s passion touched the hearts of many. He founded the Congregation of the Passion in 1720, known popularly as the Passionists. The Passionists added the vow of spreading the memory of Christ’s passion to the people to the traditional vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity. May we find comfort, love, and mercy in Christ’s passion and cross just like St Paul of the Cross. May we see our crosses united with the cross that Christ carried. 

18 October 2026 - homily for the 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time Cycle A - World Mission Sunday - 1 Thessalonians 1:1-5b

“One in Christ, united in mission” is the theme of the World Missions Day which next year will mark the 100th anniversary of its establishment by Pope Pius XI, at the suggestion of the Pontifical Society for the Propagation of the Faith.

The theme of World Mission Day 2026 recalls the motto of the pontificate of Pope Leo XIV: “In Illo uno unum,” which means “In the One, we are one.” There is to be unity of in all believers in faith, based on the unity with Christ with the Father, and the consequent common mission of evangelization that we are all to share. Pope Leo XIV sees World Mission Sunday as a special occasion when the whole Church unites in prayer for missionaries and for the fruitfulness of their apostolic work. Recalling his personal experience as a missionary priest and then missionary bishop in Peru, he stated: “I saw first-hand how faith, prayer and generosity shown on World Mission Sunday can transform entire communities.”

World Mission Sunday is not about specific people or specific places. Instead, it is about taking a moment out of our busy lives to look outward and to think of others, of claiming a share of the responsibility for the care of our brothers and sisters across the globe in sharing our faith with them.  World Mission Sunday is rooted in the understanding that the Church is missionary at its core. We are interconnected as a global Catholic community. Our Catholic faith is not a private possession, but a gift meant to be shared.

This year’s World Mission Sunday takes on a special meaning coming soon after the Beatification Mass of Bishop Fulton Sheen, which took place on September 24 in St Louis. Sheen served as the national director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith from 1950 to 1966. 

Funds collected on World Mission Sunday help sustain over 1,000 mission  dioceses, primarily in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Pacific Islands. However, the United States alone has 70 dioceses that are considered mission dioceses, including the Diocese of Jackson. These funds help train seminarians and catechists, construct schools and clinics, and  operate vital social ministries. In areas ravaged by poverty, conflict or climate crises, this assistance ensures that local churches can remain resilient beacons of hope.

As Catholics, we are called to make a difference in the world. World Mission Sunday is a wonderful opportunity to reach out in prayer and gift to those in need. 

In our second reading today, from the beginning of St Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, Paul and his companions praise the Thessalonians for not only proclaiming the Gospel to others, but also for living in the virtues of faith, hope, and love. This contracts to the way that the Pharisees are more concerned about trapping Jesus with their questions and accusing him of breaking God’s law. The first letter to the Thessalonians is considered the earliest surviving letter written by Paul, written around the year 50 AD. Paul and his companions had founded this community on his second missionary journey to this prosperous capital of Macedonia. Paul expressed his joy at knowing that the Thessalonians had continued to persevere in their faith. 

Saturday of this weekend we celebrated the feast day of St Daniel Comboni, the founder of the missionary order with which I served as a consecrated lay missionary in Ecuador. I had heard stories of Daniel Comboni traveling across Egypt and Sudan for four months in a caravan of camels in the mid-19th century to travel to his mission site. All of his missionary companions accompanying on that journey died from disease before they arrived. Comboni himself died at the age of 50, the harsh missionary life in Africa taking a toll on him. It is important for us to support the missions financially and with our prayers. But it is equally important for us to have that missionary spirit that sent Daniel Comboni and other missionaries to foreign lands. We can reach out to others in that same missionary spirit in our own corner of the world. 

10 October 2026 - homily for Saturday of the 27th week in Ordinary Time - St Daniel Comboni - Galatians 3:22-29

Daniel Comboni was born in 1831 in Italy to a poor family of farm laborers. He was one of 8 children, but the only child to survive early childhood. His parents sent him to study at an institute in Verona, Italy run by Father Nicola Mazza. This Catholic institute trained boys to service in the Church. After his ordination to the prieshood in 1854, he was sent to Africa. On his journey to the Sudan, which took four months, his missionary companions died from tropical diseases. He had a heart for the missions and a call to evangelize the people of Africa with Christ’s Good News. In 1867 and 1872, his work led him to found to institutes for men and women which formed missionaries for Africa. Originally called the Verona Fathers and Sisters, they are now called the Comboni Missionaries and the Comboni Missionary Sisters. Due to his many years of hard missionary work, he died in 1881 at the age of 50. Today, the two orders he founded serve as missionaries all over the world. I served as a consecrated Comboni Lay Missionary in Ecuador for three years, working alongside Comboni priests, brothers, and sisters. I am very humbled and honored to have been working in the tradition of Daniel Comboni in his missionary spirit. That spirit has stayed with me in my service as a priest in the Diocese of Jackson. 

I think of the great faith of St Daniel Comboni and the other missionaries who went to faraway lands to bring the Gospel to the world, knowing that they would encounter many struggles and obstacles. We hear St Paul address the theme of faith with the Galatians in our first reading today. St Paul asserts that faith in our Lord Jesus Christ is to replace the law of the Old Testament as the source of salvation. This faith is to unite all believers as children of God, breaking down our human divisions. St Paul calls us to clothe ourselves with Christ, to allow Christ’s grace to cover us, to allow Christ to transform our very identity so that may live in union with him each day on our journey of faith. 

18 October 2026 - prayers of the faithful for World Mission Sunday - prison ministry

Lord Jesus - you call us to have a missionary spirit. 

Christ Jesus - you sent out your disciples to continue your ministry. 

Lord Jesus - you are our savior and our redeemer. 

Priest: As we celebrate World Mission Sunday today, we bring our prayers before our heavenly Father: 

1. For the Universal Catholic Church. May every baptized Catholic answer the call to be a witness of Christ by word and deed, proclaiming the Gospel to all both near and far. We pray to the Lord.

2. For missionaries who leave their homeland to serve God and his people. For missionaries who work in the their own communities. May they be given courage, joy, and the strength of the Holy Spirit in their service. We pray to the Lord.

3. For communities in need. For communities suffering from war, violence, poverty, and persecution. May our prayers and material support bring them hope and relief. We pray to the Lord.

4. For our Holy Father Leo XIV and Bishop Kopacz. For all bishops, priests, deacons, and church leaders. May they lead the flock with the servant-heart of Christ and inspire a zeal for the missions. We pray to the Lord.

5. For our local Catholic faith community here at CMCF. May we open our hearts to the needs of the global missions and support them generously through prayer and sacrifice. We pray to the Lord. 

6. For Pope Leo’s October prayer intention. For the establishment and strengthening of mental health ministries throughout the Church. May we work together to overcome the stigma and discrimination faced by individuals with mental illnesses. We pray to the Lord. 

7. For our children and youth. May the Lord continue to accompany them in their studies and in their activities. May they always feel our love and prayers coming their way. We pray to the Lord. 

8. That during Respect Life month, we may unite our prayers with the prayers of our Blessed Mother Mary as we respect human life in our words and our actions. We pray to the Lord. 

9. For the prayers we hold in the silence of our hearts. For those who have asked for our prayers. We pray to the Lord. 

Priest: Out of the joy of our faith, and out our of missionary spirit, we present our prayers through your son Jesus Christ, our Lord forever and ever. AMEN.