Videos from selected homilists; Transcript excerpts from Fr. Hawkswell, Fr. Fleming, Fr. Chama, Msgr. Pellegrino, Fr. Sigma, Fr. Kavanaugh’s homilies; Bishop Barron podcasts; Life Issues; Doctrinal Homily Outlines
B.C. CATHOLIC | 2021
In this Sunday’s Collect, we ask “God, whom, taught by the Holy Spirit, we dare to call our Father” to perfect in us “the spirit of adoption” as his “sons and daughters,” so that we may inherit what he has promised.
The Church also says dare in her introduction to the Our Father at Mass.
What is “daring” about calling God “Father”?
In his book Hail, Holy Queen, Scott Hahn notes that at our baptism, “we were bound by the covenant of Christ’s Blood into the family of God. We were raised, at that moment, to share in the eternal life of the Trinity.”
KUALA LUMPUR | 2018
If someone were to ask you this question, “Are you happy?” What would your answer be? Generally, many would hide behind a fake grin and offer an insincere answer. But to our closest confidantes, that may be the trigger to unload our discontent, our frustrations, and our complaints about anyone or anything that doesn’t seem to measure up to our standard of perfection. After that tiring session of listening to an entire litany of complaints, it’s our turn to unload our grouses on to another. If there is anything common among us is that we love to complain. Complaining, or grumbling, or murmuring (call it what you will) is very infectious, and has the potential to spread from one person to the other, until the entire family, or community, or even parish, becomes a cauldron of discontent.
Everyone battles discontent at different times and in different ways. Some are discontent with their marriage. Others are discontent with their bodies. Many are discontent with their career path. We know of so many who feel discontent with the Church or the parish or its leadership….
Related Homilies
Food for the Journey (2015)
A CONCORD PASTOR COMMENTS | 2015
Who doesn’t love focaccia bread? Maybe you’ve had the focaccia bread at Paparazzi or another Italian restaurant. It’s delicious! The Italian word focaccia means “hearth bread” and it’s derived from the Latin word for hearth which is focus. The hearth, the center of the home, its focus, is the place where this simple bread was first baked by placing flattened balls of dough right in the hot ashes. The outside of these hearth cakes would burn from contact with hot ash and so the cake, the bread, needed to brushed of its ashen coating and broken open, to give up its delicious and nourishing center.
In today’s first scripture, it was a hearth cake Elijah found by his head when he woke up after collapsing under that tree in the desert. And that hearth bread and a jug of water gave him the strength he needed for the journey of 40 days and 40 nights to the mountain of God.
I suppose that sounds impossible – unless and until we consider some of the small things that keep you and me going when we’re ready to collapse and pack it all in. How many times have we trudged and suffered through really difficult circumstances on the strength of a promise we made? a word we had given?
Related Homilies
HOMILETIC DIAKONIA | 2012
THIS HOMILY IS FOR THE 21ST SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
SINGLE HUMANITY | 2018
This Sunday’s readings send me back to the choice I have made in my life; most especially to check how I’m living them out. I suppose, you too, you have made several choices in your life. How are you living them? Let’s profit from this Sunday and see how we can gain a new momentum in living fully our choices.
If we do the recap of chapter 6 of the Gospel according to John, that we have been reading the past few Sundays, it all began with the multiplication of five bread and two fish and over five thousand persons ate to their satisfaction, and there were leftovers. Excited, the people thought of Jesus as the promised messiah, so why hesitate? They wanted to make him their king. Euphoria! Jesus sneaked away, but the people went searching for him. Realising that they had missed the point of this gesture, Jesus took time to explain. His intention was not just to give bread for the bellies, but he was himself the bread from heaven who came to give lasting life, by his own body and bread. Intolerable!
Fr. Chama’s homily is divided into the following sections:
From Euphoria to Deception
Popularity?Numbers?
This is Inaceptable.
Choice Founded on Trust in Jesus
Go Back to Your Sichem
DIOCESE OF ST. PETERSBURG | 2021
Many people are held captive to what Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI called the Dictatorship of Relativism. They decide for themselves what the truths of our faith are or what they should or should not do to live the Christian life. They may not say those words, but we witness this in people who treat communion as a sacramental instead of as a sacrament. A sacramental is a devotional object or practice to remind us of some aspect of our faith. Signing ourselves with holy water is a sacramental. It reminds us of our baptism. Receiving ashes at the beginning of Lent is a sacramental. This practice reminds us of our dependence on God. Sacramentals are useful, but are totally optional. The Eucharist is not a sacramental. It is a sacrament. It is the real presence of Jesus Christ uniting His Body and Blood to us and presenting us with Him to the Father. Communion is the Bread of Life that we need to eat to have eternal life. Yet, some people will treat communion as a sacramental, an option that may or may not be received. So they say, “To me communion is something I do when I go to Church, but it is not necessary for me to receive communion; so I do not attend Mass every Sunday.” People simply relegate the teaching of Jesus Christ as inferior to their own perception of the truths of the faith. They are bound by the dictatorship of relativism.
Related Homilies
On Murmuring (2018)
John 6 Part 3: Food for the Journey (2015)
A Fragrant Aroma (2009)
Eucharist, Love, Jesus (2006) – PDF
CATHOLIC PREACHING | 2015
What is our response to this incredible gift of himself that the Lord gives us every day? Why do we think he does it? Do we think it’s merely to provide some superfluous “frosting on the cake” to those who are already holy, or to give sustenance to all the people he created and redeemed — especially those who he knows are not as holy as he wants them to be — because he knows they more than any need him every day? It was of course possible for a Jew in the desert to skip a day, or two or three, in going out to obtain the daily manna. But over the course of time, the person would become weaker, hungrier and more vulnerable. If God went through the effort to feed them every morning, it’s because he knew that they needed to be fed every day. It’s the same way with the Eucharist. God has desired to give us each day this “daily bread come down from heaven,” because he knows that we need to be spiritually fed each day. But how do we respond? Do we have any desire to receive him who gives of himself to us in love every day? Are we willing to rearrange our schedule in order to respond to his spiritual breakfast invitation? I’m convinced from both personal and pastoral experience that one of the real proofs of whether we recognize that the Eucharist really is Jesus, and whether we truly love the Lord, can be seen in our attitude toward daily Mass.
BUILDING ON THE WORD | 2003
The Eucharist can shape our past because the Christ that we receive in the Eucharist both forgives us and heals us. All of us have in our past mistakes that we have made, hurts that we still carry, regrets that we can’t erase. But if we can realize that the real presence of Christ which comes to us in the Eucharist is a healing presence, then we can find the power to put the past behind us, to move beyond the mistakes that we have made, to forgive our enemies, and to let anger go.
The Eucharist can shape our present because the Christ that we receive in the Eucharist is the Christ from whom all blessings flow. Having that presence of Christ helps us to recognize how we have been blessed. So often we absorb ourselves with fretting about the details of life and forgetting about the gifts that sustain us. So often we center on what is wrong with our lives and ignore what is right. If we can claim the presence of Christ within us in the Eucharist, Christ can allow is to see what we have been given, the people who love us, the talents we received, and the opportunities that have been given. Then we can live our life more deeply, because we can recognize how we have been blessed. Then we can be thankful.
The Eucharist can shape our future because the Christ that we receive in the Eucharist promises us eternal life. The bread of the Eucharist is our pledge that we will live with God forever. So each time we face evil in our lives that we cannot understand, when we have to deal with sickness or we fear the approach of death, we can receive this sacrament. Then we can realize that the Christ who is with us is one who has promised us that there is still more to come. Christ has promised us that we will have a life where tears will be wiped away, where pain will be relieved, where fears will be allayed. The Eucharist is our hope because the Christ we receive in the Eucharist is our promise of unending joy.
THE REASON FOR OUR HOPE | 2018
When you come to this mass with faith, you watch the power. It gives you strength. It gives you eternal life and that’s again the difference. A lot of times people, not here, other people maybe who are listening will come up and receive communion – the body of Christ and say Amen and walk out the door. Not here but in other places and other people might come up, receive the Eucharist and say “Amen” and go back and sit in their seat and read the bulletin – again not here because you don’t get it – but might go into la-la land. What happens today is you come up and say I would stake my life. You are going to God and He gives us the strength. The mass is phenomenal. We enter into heaven. You know, yesterday and the day before, I was at Columbus, well Sunbury, which is right outside Columbus, doing an Alpha – a Catholic Alpha group came together.
SUNDAY WEB SITE | 1997
Strengthened by God’s sustenance, Elijah, even though he felt like dying, walked forty days and nights to the mountain of the Lord. Such is the bounty of God.
We too are beneficiaries of God’s miraculous nourishment. It is the eucharistic sign of Jesus. “This is the bread that comes down from heaven, for you to eat and never die. I myself am the living bread. … If you eat this bread, you shall live forever; the bread I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”
A mighty claim. God would be our food, our ultimate provision. God actually wants to inhabit our flesh, make us tabernacles. And think what a powerful profession of faith it is to believe this. Our “Amen” is a radical assertion of dependence and desire. “You are our food and drink. You are our sustenance. You are what nourishes us.”
SUNDAY REFLECTIONS | 2021
Our Christian faith is based on the personal love of God towards each one of us. Through faith wonders have been carried out throughout the ages. Thanks to faith we ourselves believe in the divine presence and in his providential care. But true faith is nothing without love. It is love which is the driving force of faith; it is love which pushes the men and women living on this earth to believe, with all their heart, in God the Father who is in Heaven. Faith and love do good work: together, they lead man towards God, towards that food which is the Word of God. Faith and love are the means which make it possible for man to receive within him the life which belongs to the Word of Life, the very Life of God: “He who believes has eternal life.” However, even if faith makes it possible for love to live eternally, it is only a beginning of eternity which is given to the man who loves God: for faith is a trial which lasts until the end of a man’s life on earth, a trial which one must undergo, a trial one must endure to the end, with perseverance. A strong faith supported by the Love of God, gives man the power to not die in eternity, but remain ever united with God. The object of this faith and love is the Eucharist, the bread of eternal life which Jesus gives us for our nourishment. In today’s Gospel Jesus tells us that he is the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. In the second reading we are reminded that the Holy Spirit has entered our lives through Baptism. With the Spirit’s help we can even imitate God and live a life of love. In the first reading Prophet Elijah feels that he has come to the end of his mission while God has special plans for him.
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SPIRITUAL FOODby Bishop Robert Barron . August 12, 2018 .
In our first reading today, Elijah is dejected and requests that the Lord take his life. But an angel touches him and orders him to get up and eat. Strengthened by food, he journeys to the mountain of God, Horeb. We’re all acquainted with the need for physical food, like Elijah, but we also need spiritual food. If we don’t feed our souls, we will become spiritually lethargic and unhealthy. Where do we find that nourishment? The answer comes in John 6, our Gospel reading for today.
THE BREAD OF LIFE, THE BODY OF CHRISTby Bishop Robert Barron . August 12, 2012
Today’s readings are from First Kings and the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel. Our passage for this weekend discusses the Eucharist as the necessary antidote for spiritual exhaustion. We all need the Body of Christ to nourish our souls and keep us in communion with God.
LIVING BREADby Bishop Robert Barron . August 10, 2003
Another homily from Fr. Robert Barron and Word on Fire Catholic Ministries.
Friends, I’m going to be blunt with you: today’s Gospel is really challenging. It cuts right to the heart of the ethical implications of the Gospel. There’s something of a “be all, end all” quality about Jesus, something of an either/or. As he says, “Whoever is not with me is against me.” What follows from this is what I call the principle of detachment and clarification of motives. If Jesus is unambiguously the center of your life, then everything else has to find its place in relation to him. If the good things of the world become more important than following him, then something has gone off-kilter.
The Eucharist and our life. The Eucharist is never separated from real life. In our day-to-day struggles, how many times have we said with Elijah, “Lord, I have had enough!”
Next time we receive the Eucharist, let us remember that this is not mere bread. This is the bread of life. This is the flesh of Christ. We who partake of it make Christ present once more in a very concrete way in the world. We too become the bread of life.
While we have not met Jesus face to face, the fact is that many people are convinced that they know someone because they have seen an actor or actress on television. For example, if Sam Waterston, who plays Jack McCoy on Law and Order, were to get arrested for drunk driving it should not surprise any of us if we heard someone say, “Jack McCoy would never do that!” Well, that is very true. Jack McCoy cannot do anything that is not written into the script; however, Sam Waterston is not Jack McCoy.
It is in the Eucharist that people of diverse social backgrounds, economic status, and political persuasions come in fellowship. It is where both sinners and saints kneel in worship. As St. Paul warns, there is no place for discrimination in the eucharistic celebration. Hopefully. to experience the Eucharist is to experience a bit of heaven.
Those who stop going to Mass because they don’t like the priest are like followers of John the Baptist who didn’t hear what he said, and who fell away after he was beheaded; those who attend Mass because they are drawn to the priest’s personality are like brute animals that don’t understand the significance of a pointing finger. And priests that fail to lead the faithful to the Lamb of God point to themselves and are unwilling to decrease.
Click to access 19th_OT_B_8-8-21.pdf
Sunday Readings
