Homilies
Homilies – 32nd Sunday (C)
Sunday homilies / transcripts from curated collection of homilists featuring Fr. Georg Smiga, Fr. Austin Fleming, Fr. Jude Langeh, Fr. John Kavanaugh, and others.
32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time C
November 6, 2022
INTRODUCTIONLECTORSHOMILIESVIDEO ARCHIVECOMMENTARYCHURCH FATHERSCATECHISMPAPAL HOMILIESHOMILY STARTERSGROUP SHARINGCHILDRENMUSIC
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Photograph by Fr Lawrence Lew OP of St Monans in Fife, with the parish church, c.1400 that has the distinction of being the last surviving church to have been occupied by Dominicans in Scotland.
Homily Transcripts
| Bloom | Chama | Chua | Cummins | Fleming | Hawkswell | Holsington |
| Kavanaugh | Lane | Langeh | Lawrence | McKinnon | Pavone | Pellegrino |
| Powell | Schuster | Senior | Smiga | Terra | Turner | Wester |
FR. VINCENT HAWKSWELL
Belief in the Resurrection of the Body is Essential
32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) – 2022
Belief in the resurrection of the dead has been an essential element of Christian faith from the beginning
EXCERPT: The Eucharist can help us understand. Just as, after the consecration at Mass, earthly bread has become the body of Christ, so our bodies, which have consumed the Eucharist, will be no longer corruptible, but incorruptible.
We are united with Christ by baptism and thereafter nourished by the Eucharist, his body, so our life is already, on earth, a participation in his death and resurrection. However, this life remains “hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3) until we rise on the last day.
FR. GEORGE SMIGA
Resurrection and Transformation
32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) – 2013
When we look at the brokenness of our lives, when we look at all that is wrong with the world, it is easy to lose hope.
EXCERPT: We believe in resurrection. But resurrection is more than eternal life. Resurrection not only promises that we will live forever but promises that our physical bodies will share in that endless glory. Now, that’s quite a lot to believe. It can strain our ability to believe. How are our physical bodies going to live forever? By the time you reach 50 years old your body begins to falter. By the time you are 70 or 80 it takes all of your effort to keep your body moving. So, how will our physical bodies go on endlessly? The short answer is that God will make them so. We believe that God will transform our physical bodies into a new kind of body that will live on forever.
Resurrection, then, is transformation—a transformation that God will bring about for our benefit. So, when we say that we believe in resurrection, we are saying that we believe in the God of transformation, the God who will make all things new. This is why Jesus, as he argues with the Sadducees about the resurrection in today’s gospel, concludes his argument by talking about God. God is not the God of the dead but of the living. God is the God of the resurrection who will transform our bodies and the world around us to be the perfect reflection of God’s own glory.
FR. AUSTIN FLEMING
Do I love God more than I love life itself?
32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) – 2019
The Sadducees are trying to trick Jesus into saying there’s no resurrection but he turns the tables on them.
EXCERPT: When considering the first reading, we need to get beyond the question of pork and ask ourselves, as did the seven brothers and their mother: “Is there anything in my life more important than God’s love for me?”
And when listening to the debate in the gospel today we need to get beyond the Sadducees’ tricky questions and ask ourselves, “Is there any relationship in my life more important than my relationship with God?”
These aren’t easy questions – not at all – because my love for God and my relationship with God are intimately bound up with my love for, my relationship with the most important people in my life: my spouse, my children, my family, my friends and my neighbor.
The seven brothers and their mother at the pig roast had to ask themselves a question and it wasn’t “Do I love God more than I love pork?” Rather, they had to ask, “Do I love God more than I love life itself?”
MSGR. JOSEPH PELLEGRINO
May We Alway be United to God, Here and Hereafter
32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) – 2022
Sometimes you come to Church and the priests give you hell. Today’s readings encourage the priests to give you heaven.
EXCERPT: The Almighty Creator of the universe loves us so much that he sent his son to become one of us and die for us. Now when we love someone, we want to give him or her everything we can to express our love. God gave us His Son in this life. What must he have in store for us in the next life? The answer to that question can merely be summarized in the term, heaven. We are only on this world for a brief time. We have to make the most of the period of our lives that is both physical and spiritual. We do this by leading the physical to the spiritual. That is why we are called to nurture the Presence of Christ within ourselves. That is why we are called to make Christ present to others. We only have one life. We pray today for the courage to allow God to perfect this life. May we always be united to Him, here and hereafter.
FR. MICHAEL CHUA
And So My Life is Good
32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) – 2019
The liturgy guides us towards a desire to worship God and not ourselves.
EXCERPT: The resurrection of Christ brings hope. Our resurrection in Him brings hope. Such hope is the meaning of human life. It is balm to the wounded soul, it is fuel for the exhausted Christian, it is consolation to the one who has suffered much. More than ever, our society needs a big supply of hope today because hopelessness and despair are everywhere. Hope cannot be manufactured nor is it found in false optimism. Only in the resurrected life shared with God will we find true hope. There is hope that mistakes and sins can be forgiven. There is hope that we can have joy and peace in the midst of the despair of this age. There is hope that Christ is coming soon to right every wrong, to vindicate the innocent and call the wicked to account for their wrong doings. There is hope that those who have died will be raised from the dead and suffer death no more. There is hope that someday there will come a new heaven and a new earth, and that the Kingdom of God will reign and triumph. Our hope is not in our own ability, or in our goodness, or in our physical strength. Our hope is instilled in us by the resurrection of Christ, the One who has defeated death and led its captives to freedom. Knowing this, we can say with St Josephine Bakhita, “I am definitely loved and whatever happens to me – I am awaited by this love. And so my life is good!”
FR. FRANK PAVONE
The Victory of Life Over Death, of Fidelity Over Circumstance
32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C)
Death cannot and will not have the last word in the human story
EXCERPT: The theme of fidelity in difficult circumstances, as those in the First Reading faced, provides a context for the help we give to those in difficult pregnancies. By our faithfulness to what is right, even if it seems we are going to lose our own lives in the process (literally or figuratively), we end up with the fullness of life.
Martyrdom is exactly the opposite of suicide. In suicide, one declares oneself to be the owner and disposer of one’s life. In martyrdom, one declares that God alone is owner and disposer of one’s life, which means that one can neither take it nor hold on to it at the cost of betraying Him.
FR. EVANS CHAMA, M.AFR
Believing the Resurrection is Living with Hope
32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) – 2016
We believe not only the resurrection of the dead, but also in our resurrection of everyday life.
EXCERPT: In the Gospel we find the polemic in the Jewish society, at the time of Jesus, regarding life after death -the resurrection. For a part represented by Sadducees death was the end of it all -it’s a sea of darkness and nothingness that followed. On the contrary, Pharisees believed in the resurrection; there was life after death. The polemic is still there in our society too. But how do we move from such futile controversy to find a word of life and hope?
ABBOT PHILIP LAWRENCE, OSB
Belief in Life After Death in this Life
32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) – 2010
God is a God of the living and not of the dead. All who believe are alive in Him.
EXCERPT: How often people can say that it would be impossible for God to know the many billions of people who have lived and are living! This only shows our tendency to reduce God down to a sort of enhanced human. God is God. God knows all things at all times and lives beyond all time. God is the God of all that is and is the ground of all being and cause of all being. If we could encompass God with our human minds, God would not be God. We can have some understanding of God, but that understanding is always a dim reflection of the reality of God.
FR. JUDE LANGEH,CMF
The Resurrection of the Dead
32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C)
If we learn to love and trust Christ now, we will not be afraid of what he has in store for us then.
EXCERPT: Jesus’s discussion with the Sadducees today pushes us to reflect on the life after. The Sadducees’ real question was not about marriage but about the doctrine of the resurrection. They were the priestly aristocratic party centered in Jerusalem. They accepted as scripture only the first five books of the Old testament, followed only the letter of the law, rejected the oral legal traditions, and were opposed to all teaching not found in the Pentateuch, such as the resurrection of the dead. The Sadducees’ question, asked on the law of levirate marriage recorded in Deuteronomy 25:5-10, ridicules the idea of the resurrection (vv. 35-36) and then argues on behalf of the resurrection of the dead on the basis of the written law (37-38) that the Sadducees accept. Jesus quoted from Exodus 3:6 to prove that there is life after death. God spoke of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob years after their deaths as if they still lived. God’s covenant with all people exits beyond death.
FR. PHIL BLOOM
FR. TOMMY LANE
YEAR C HOMILIES
This website is by Fr. Tommy Lane, S.S.L., S.T.D. (License in Sacred Scripture, Doctorate in Sacred Theology), returning again to my home diocese, Cloyne, Ireland in fall 2020 and formerly Professor of Sacred Scripture at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary, Emmitsburg, Maryland. I have deliberately designed this as a website rather than a blog because many of the more than 2000 visitors to this website every day are priests and deacons looking for homily ideas.
FATHER MICHAEL CUMMINS
DIOCESE OF KNOXVILLE
“Don’t be afraid, dear friends, to take the ‘alternate’ path indicated by true love: a sober and solid lifestyle, with loving, sincere and pure relations, an honest commitment to studies and work, and the profound interest in the common good.” Pope Benedict XVI to the young pilgrims gathered in Loreto, Italy
FR. JOHN KAVANAUGH, SJ
The Great Union
32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) – 1997
What is the nature of the relationship between the resurrected life and this present one?
EXCERPT: C. S. Lewis wrote The Great Divorce as a rebuttal to those who think that heaven and hell are not radically incompatible. Blake’s “Marriage of Heaven and Hell” suggests to us, Lewis claimed, that good and evil are somehow blurred. At least they’re not contradictory. But for Lewis this was not the case. Evil can be repented, but it can never evolve into good.
Our fate is a matter of either/or, a question of where our hearts find their final treasure. More precisely, heaven or hell is the result of how we define ourselves while on earth. There may be a great divorce between heaven and hell, but there is a great union between our life on earth and our eternal destiny.
SOURCE: SUNDAY WEB SITE
FR. JOHN MCKINNON
HOMILIES
These are a fairly inclusive collection of John McKinnon’s homilies. He began to type his Sunday homilies regularly since 2005, and saved them to his computer for possible later use. For some Sundays, homilies are not available, either because John was absent on holidays that year, a major feast occurred on that day, or he had some other reason for not preaching. These are provided as a possible starting point in preparation for the Sunday Liturgy.
FR. PHILIP N. POWELL, OP
BISHOP FRANK SCHUSTER
What Freedom Looks Like
32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) – 2019
It is good to be reminded at times that the Catholic Church is built on the witness of the martyrs. I
EXCERPT:The invitation this weekend is for us is to consider: what is the most important thing we value in this life, is it God or is something else? If it is something else, we are lot less free than we might think. The scriptures are also asking us to consider: what is causing us the greatest amount of anxiety or fear in our lives right now? What worries us the most, is it something that is going on in our family or work right now? Is it something going on in our country or world right now? What is causing us the most anxiety or fear in your life at present? Now, can we take a lesson or two from the martyrs and put our unconditional trust in the Lord, come what may? Can we value our relationship with God more than whatever this world can give or take away? My friends, once we learn how to do this, no tyrant, fear or worry can ever enslave us, claim power over us or cause us undue anxiety. If we follow St. Paul’s advice in our second reading today, and let the Lord direct our hearts to the love of God and to the endurance of Christ, everything will work out in the end, it will, and we will truly know freedom, perhaps for the very first time, through Christ our Lord. Amen.
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