Homily - 14 September 2025 - Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

The Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Dear brothers and sisters,

After the Crucifixion of the Lord Jesus, the Cross of Christ was lost. The Romans, of course, wanted nothing more to do with it. In fact, they wanted to remove the memory of this Messiah from the history of Jerusalem. They tossed the Cross into a cave at the base of Calvary and built a temple to the goddess Venus over it, hoping to erase the memory of what took place there. For nearly three hundred years they were lost.

Following Emperor Constantine’s great victory at the Milvian Bridge in 313, which he won through the sign of the Cross, his mother Helena embarked on an archaeological mission. She tore down the temple to Venus and dug beneath its foundation, unearthing what the Romans tossed aside. In fact, she found three crosses there. Patriarch Macarius, the Bishop of Jerusalem, told her to touch each cross to the body of a dead man. The first two did nothing; but the third cross brought the dead man back to life. In the year 326, the Empress Helena found the Cross on which Jesus died – the True Cross.

Saint Helena, Giovanni Battista Cima da Conegliano, 1495

She took the Cross to the top of Calvary and lifted it high – she exalted it - for the people to see. She then began work on the first Christian church built on the site of Jesus’ Death, burial, and the Resurrection, which was dedicated on September 14, 335. Today’s feast, then, reminds us that Christianity is embedded in history, that the Christian faith can be verified, that it can be seen and even touched.

The Lord Jesus has since become so closely associated with his Cross that it is impossible for most of us to see a cross and not think of him who died and rose. How can we not think, then, of Jesus’ words, “And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself” (John 12:32)? When she physically lifted up his Cross from the earth, the Empress Helena lifted up Jesus and more people came into the Church. In this way, she said to the people, “Through his cross, Jesus revealed to us the true face of God, his infinite compassion for humanity…”[1]

This brings us to an important question: How is the Holy Cross exalted in your life? How is the Holy Cross lifted up in my life? Saint Helena also lifted up the Cross throughout her life and sought to unite herself to that Cross. She exalted the Holy Cross in this way; you and I called to do the same, but how?

Two years before he died, Saint Francis of Assisi went up Mount La Verna to pray. He was in prayer on this Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross when he asked for two particular graces:

My Lord Jesus Christ, I pray you to grant me two graces before I die: the first is that during my life I may feel in my soul and in my body, as much as possible, that pain which You, dear Jesus, sustained in the hour of Your most bitter passion. The second is that I may feel in my heart, as much as possible, that excessive love with which You, O Son of God, were inflamed in willingly enduring such suffering for us sinners.[2]

Because Francis had already embraced the Cross with such a devoted love, the Lord granted his two requests and impressed upon his body what he had already impressed within his soul; he received the stigmata, the very wounds of Christ Jesus in his own flesh.

This is why the people of his own day called Saint Francis the alter Christus – the other Christ. Francis had attained the goal of the Christian life: his love came to look like that of Crucified Love. As Pope Benedict XVI observed, “The experience of La Verna, where he received the stigmata, shows the degree of intimacy he had reached in his relationship with the Crucified Christ. He could truly say with Paul: ‘For me to live is Christ’ (Philippians 1:21).”[3]

This is the goal of the Christian life: to know Jesus Christ so intimately, to love him so deeply, that his thoughts become mine, that his love becomes mine. It is to become so closely united to him that I can say with Saint Paul, “It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). We must set ourselves aside in such a way that the love of Christ radiates out from is. This can only be done through union with the Cross.

Each of us has many opportunities to be united with the Cross each day. These invitations can come through tragic events, but they most often come through simple, everyday frustrations: the homework that is difficult or boring; the athletic move that is not yet mastered; the person who will not stop talking when you want quiet or the person who will not talk when you want company; even the dog that will not befriend you no matter how hard you try. There is no frustration, no inconvenience, no hardship that cannot be offered to Jesus in love and joined to his Cross.

Dear friends, when you find yourself facing the struggles of life, however significant they many be, turn your eyes to the Cross of Christ and think on his life. With Saint Francis, ask to experience the full measure of his love and to know what it cost. With Saint Helena, lift up his love to show it to everyone you meet. And never forget:

God saves us by showing himself to us, offering himself as our companion, teacher, doctor, friend, to the point of becoming bread broken for us in the Eucharist. In order to accomplish this task, he used one of the cruelest instruments that human beings have ever invented: the cross.

 

That is why today we celebrate the “exultation”: for the immense love with which God has transformed the means to death into an instrument of life, embracing it for our salvation, teaching us that nothing can separate us from him (cf. Rom 8:35-39) and that his love is greater than our own sin (cf. Francis, Catechesis, 30 March 2016).

 

Let us then ask, through the intercession of Mary, the Mother who was present at Calvary near her Son, that the saving love of her Son may take root in us and grow, and that we too may know how to give ourselves to each other, as he gave himself completely to all.[4]

Amen.

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[1] Pope Leo XIV, Homily, 14 September 2025.

[2] In The Little Flowers of Saint Francis, 190-191.

[3] Pope Benedict XVI, Meeting with Youth, 17 June 2007.

[4] Pope Leo XIV, Angelus Address, 14 September 2025.

Homily for the Funeral Mass for Mary Elizabeth Reckers

The Funeral Mass for Mary Elizabeth Reckers

Dear brothers and sisters,

For many years I told people that all of my personality could be traced to the morning I found my father dead on the couch. However, with my Aunt Mary’s death, I have now realized that claim is - in fact - not entirely true. My father’s death, if you like, built the skeleton of my personality, but it was my Aunt Mary who gave flesh to these bones.

It was she, for instance, who first introduced me to The Hobbit and to the Lord of the Rings. These two books would come to share much of my own thinking because the author was able to express in his own words many of the thoughts my heart could not find the words to express.

In a letter he wrote in June of 1941 to his son, Michael, J.R.R. Tolkien said,

The link between father and son is not only of the perishable flesh; it must have something of aeternitas about it. There is a place called ‘heaven’ where the good here unfinished is completed; and where the stories unwritten, and the hopes unfulfilled, are continued. We may laugh together yet…”[1]

If this is true of fatherhood, it must also be true of motherhood, for the two are part of a whole. Whether that link between mother and son or daughter is of the natural flesh, or of choice and care, it must still have something of aeternitas to it. 

It is with these sentiments and desires that we bring Mary’s earthly remains here to the altar of God. Indeed, this desire is part of our reason to hope (cf. Lamentations 3:21). We entrust her remains to Almighty God trusting that Mary, who was baptized into the death and Resurrection of Christ Jesus, may be raised to life again on the Last Day, asking that she receive a place in the Father’s house in the kingdom of heaven (cf. Romans 6:3-4; John 14:2).

But when we speak of the Father’s House, when we speak of heaven, what is it that we mean? To what do we refer? How do we look at death and yet hope for life unending?

While the Christian certainly looks to the completion of the good we have begun in this life and to the conclusion of our as-yet unwritten stories, the fulfillment of our hopes is not to be found in “an unending succession of days in the calendar;” this is not what the Christian means by heaven or by eternity.[2]

Rather, by the term “heaven,” the Christian means something quite different than this life we now live and to which Mary has died. Rather, by the term heaven, the Christian means

…something more like the supreme moment of satisfaction, in which totality embraces us and we embrace totality… It would be like plunging into the ocean of infinite love, a moment in which time — the before and after — no longer exists. We can only attempt to grasp the idea that such a moment is life in the full sense, a plunging ever anew into the vastness of being, in which we are simply overwhelmed with joy.[3]

It is this overwhelming joy that completes the good we have begun and finishes our unwritten stories and fulfills all of our hopes, for these were but a yearning and stretching for that joy for which we know we have been made.

When confronted with the mystery of death, the Christian can only respond

…with faith in God, with a gaze of firm hope founded on the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. So, death opens to life, to eternal life, which is not an infinite duplicate of the present time, but something completely new. Faith tells us that the true immortality for which we hope is not an idea, a concept, but a relationship of full communion with the living God: it is resting in his hands, in his love, and becoming in him one with all the brothers and sisters that he has created and redeemed, with all Creation. Our hope, then, lies in the love of God that shines resplendent from the Cross of Christ who lets Jesus’ words to the good thief: “Today you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43) resound in our heart. This is life in its fullness: life in God; a life of which we now have only a glimpse as one sees blue sky through fog.[4]

So it is that the mystery of death and of life are bound together in Christ. Heaven is the fulfillment of the promise that “the favors of the Lord are not exhausted, his mercies are not spent” (Lamentations 3:22).

The Christian need not fear death; rather, because “we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son,” the Christian can instead raise her eyes to Christ to see in them a look of tender love because she has already died and risen with him in the saving waters of Baptism (Romans 5:10; cf. Romans 6:3; I Peter 3:21). Let us, then, entrust our beloved Mary to the mercy of God, that he who prepared a place for her will receive her into his overwhelming joy unending. Amen.

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[1] J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 45 to Michael Tolkien, 9 June 1941. In The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Revised and Expanded Edition. Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien, eds. (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2023), 76.

[2] Pope Benedict XVI, Spe salvi, 12.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Pope Benedict XVI, Homily, 3 November 2012.

Homily - 3 August 2025 - The Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

 The Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)

Dear brothers and sisters,

Every Eucharistic celebration invites us to reflect on that which is most important: “the encounter with the risen Christ who transforms our lives and enlightens our affections, desires and thoughts.”[1] The readings from the Sacred Scriptures today invite us to continue this reflection in a particular way by remembering that God turns humanity “back to dust” (Psalm 90:3).

We have recently seen two people each go to Jesus and demand he intervene in a personal quarrel and each time Jesus redirects the complainer’s focus to what is essential (cf. Luke 10:40 and Luke12:13). Two Sundays ago, he redirected Martha to what he called “the better part”; today, he redirects the man away from greed and idolatry (cf. Luke 10:42; Luke 12:21).

Jesus responds today with a parable particularly apt for our own age, one about a rich man who demonstrates neither gratitude nor generosity and who focuses only on this life. “He talks about himself only, or rather about what he owns, about his things: his harvest, his provisions, his possessions, his soul. He talks about his plans and about how he can preserve what is his” (cf. Luke 12:19).[2] 

He is an ego-centrist. Each in their own way, the sacred readings today call us away from this mindset by directing our thoughts to death, something we especially do not like to think about today but from which none of us can escape.

Jesus speaks not of an earthly wealth, but of a heavenly one that will not pass away (cf. Luke 12:22). “Jesus does not say what this wealth is, just as he did not tell Martha what the good thing is that will not be taken away” from her (Lk 10:42).[3] What can we say, then, about this wealth?

The great Saint Augustine of Hippo reminds us that the New Testament cannot be understood without the Old, and that the Old Testament cannot be understood without the New. So it is that we can get a hint, maybe, of what this heavenly wealth, this better part, is.

Qoheloth – the preacher who in Latin is called Ecclesiastes - tells us in English that “all things are vanity” (Ecclesiastes 1:2)! The English word vanity was once more useful here, but – as often happens – the way we use the word today is different from how it was used in the past. It is used here to translate the Hebrew word hevel. It is tempting to translate hevel as “nothing,” but this does not quite get at the meaning of the phrase that all things are vanity.

Literally, hevel means “breath” or “vapor,” neither of which means nothing but both of which are ultimately ungraspable, which more closely approximates what Qoheleth is trying to say; he seems to be saying that all things are ultimately meaningless because nothing remains and all our efforts are futile and fleeting, but this was said by a man who did not know the Messiah Jesus Christ.

Because of this, some readers today accuse Qoheloth of being overly pessimistic because he focuses on the sadder reality of this life. In point of fact, he is not pessimistic, but directly realistic.

For twelve chapters, the preacher argues his [seemingly] pessimistic point. The passage we read today is only one of many arguments for it – that all our work dies with us, that “you can’t take it with you,” that whatever profit you make on earth does not follow you after death. He has even stronger arguments: the problem of evil and injustice, for instance, which infects every life and every age. All the preacher’s points are taken from simple observation of the world, observation of life “under the sun.” And despite progress in cleverness and information and science and technology and economics, “nothing is new under the sun” morally (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Science makes us smart and powerful but not happy or good. People are just as unhappy and wicked as they were in simpler and poorer ages, perhaps even more so. That data that the preacher assembles to make his case is massive, the argument is inescapable, and the conclusion is deeply depressing: the settled happiness and goodness we all desire is simply not attainable in this life.[4]

His insistence on the ungraspability of the meaning of life causes most moderns to avoid reading Qoheleth altogether. Instead, we should each ponder with him the meaning of life; we should struggle with the questions connected with it and search out the mind and heart of God.

If we strive after the answers to these questions with Qoheleth and wrestle with the seemingly contradictory answers we find, we will quickly learn that

Ecclesiastes is not an atheist. He speaks of God, but he tells us only what our observation of this world tells us: that God is a great mystery, that no one knows what he is up to or what will happen to us after death or even if there really is a life after death… Without divine revelation, without the divine initiative, without God coming down from his heaven into our earth, how can we know and how can we possibly climb the mountain to get there? We can’t. That’s the true pessismism that this book teaches us, and it’s a crucially necessary lesson. Religion is not a happy face; it’s realism, it’s the truth, the whole truth, including the bad news. Only then do we appreciate the good news.[5]

His searching and wrestling and pondering, his deep dives into what is most important, taught him that “prayer, life, is nothing other than a constant search for what is essential, what we really need, what enriches us before God.”[6] The true meaning of life is not to be found in the things of this world, however pleasing they may be, but in the one who created these pleasing things and who alone gives meaning to these passing realities.

Ultimately, Qoheleth knows this life has both meaning and purpose, but he cannot quite discover it. The Christian, too, knows this life has both meaning and purpose, but he knows it can only be found in Jesus Christ; the Christian knows the meaning and purpose of this life is to encounter Jesus Christ – risen from the dead – and to allow him to change our affections, desires, and thoughts until they become united to his own.

Here, though, we meet another important and unavoidable question:

What did Jesus leave the world that it didn’t have before? The world that the preacher describes – that is, the world full of evil and injustice and suffering and death and ignorance and failures, the world that in the end is just “vanity” – is the same today as it was before Jesus came. What did Jesus give us that we didn’t have before?

 

The answer is very, very simple. He gave us God. He put God, and union with God, into our hands. And when he did, what did our hands do with God? We killed him. We crucified him. And what did he do about that? He used that sin to save us from sin, and he used that death to save us from final death. Jesus’ Resurrection is the guarantee of our hope and our resurrection. That’s the incredible Good News of Easter, the Gospel; but we appreciate it only if we are honest enough to accept the bad news first: that without that, without God-for-us, without God coming to us, life is indeed vanity of vanities. Ecclesiastes is the truth and nothing but the truth – but not the whole truth, thank God.[7]

Amen.

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[1] Pope Leo XIV, Homily, 3 August 2025.

[2] Pierbattista Cardinal Pizzaballa, O.F.M., Meditation for the Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, 3 August 2025.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Peter Kreeft, Food for the Soul: Reflections on the Mass Readings, Cycle C (Park Ridge, Illinois: Word on Fire, 2021), 517.

[5] Ibid., 518.

[6] Pierbattista Cardinal Pizzaballa, O.F.M., Ibid.

[7] Peter Kreeft, Food for the Soul, ibid., 518-519.

Homily - 20 July 2025 - The Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

The Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)

Dear brothers and sisters,

What is it that Jesus says will not be taken away from Mary (cf. Luke 10:42)? What is this “better part” of which he speaks? The answer is really quite simple, and even obvious: the better part that will not be taken away is Jesus himself.

When the Lord came to the home of Abraham and Sarah, he came as a stranger and received hospitality; when the Lord came to the home of the two sisters, he came as a friend and received hospitality. The hospitality of Abraham and Sarah was rewarded with the promise of a son (cf. Genesis 10:10); the hospitality of Martha and Mary was rewarded with God himself, for what does the Word Incarnate speak if not himself (cf. Luke10:39)?

Martha extends hospitality to Jesus by welcoming him with her service, by becoming “burdened” with

something that no one has asked her to do and for which there is no urgency (cf. Luke10:40). When the Lord enters a person’s life, the order of priorities changes, and the first thing everyone needs is to know Him and meet Him, everything else comes after that.[1]

Mary understood this in a way Martha did not. It is not that Martha’s form of hospitality was unimportant, but it was misdirected.

Georg Friedrich Stettner, Christ at the Home of Martha and Mary

We see this in that Martha is burdened, which is to say her attention and energy was divided. Martha’s frustration with her Mary’s lack of help arose because

It is not Martha who decides what to do, but the things that need to be done decide for her. And this is exactly the opposite of the verb used for Mary, who instead “chooses” (“Mary has chosen the better part” - Lk 10:42), that is, she is free to remain in what she thinks is good.[2]

And Mary is not wrong, as the Lord himself says, but how often do you and I let things decide for us what needs to be done, rather than you and I choosing the better part with Mary, to first listen to Jesus?

The hospitality Mary gave Jesus is different from that given by Martha. Martha attended to Jesus’ physical needs while Mary gave Jesus her ear. “It would be incorrect, however, to see these two attitudes as mutually exclusive, or to compare the merits of the two women. Service and listening are, in fact, twin dimensions of hospitality.”[3]

The example of these two sisters provides us with a model of how to be disciples of the Lord Jesus. Mary shows us the necessity of listening to the Jesus, of letting him speak to us before we do anything else. Martha offers us a warning of what can happen when we do not first listen to Jesus. “Martha complains about being left alone, and she feels that no one, not even the Lord, really cares about her” (cf. Luke 10:40).[4] Martha’s example cautions us that “if you lose the essentials, you lose communion; the other person, even if it is your own brother, is perceived as an enemy who is taking something away from you.”[5]

These two sisters show us the way forward. Whatever we do must begin with listening to Jesus, learning from him what must be done. Then, having listened to him, we must set out to love both God and neighbor so that, at the end of our lives, the better part will not be taken from us. Amen.

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[1] Pierbattista Cardinal Pizzaballa, Meditation for the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, 20 July 2025.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Pope Leo XIV, Homily, 20 July 2025.

[4] Pizzaballa, Ibid.

[5] Pizzaballa, Ibid.

Homily - 13 July 2025 - The Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

The Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)

Dear brothers and sisters,

What is the point of the law given to Moses? This is, in some sense, the question behind what the “scholar of the law who stood up to test him” asked of Jesus (Luke 10:25). Moses gave the law to the people so they might “return to the Lord, your God, with all your heart and all your soul” (Deuteronomy 30:10). The purpose of the law, then, is to keep us in right relationship with God by keeping us in right relationship with our neighbor. The two-fold command of the love of God and the love of neighbor are intimately connect and cannot separated; the parable of the Good Samaritan makes clear that I cannot love God if I do not love my neighbor in whose image he is made.

Here, of course, we have to ask that troubling question: “And who is my neighbor” (Luke 10:19)? The scholar of the law asked it “to justify himself” (Luke 10:29). He did not yet understand the necessity of loving my neighbor as a means of loving God. Do we not also ask this question – at least implicitly – whenever we look for a reason not to lend a hand?

Gustav Dore, The Arrival of the Good Samaritan at the Inn

If we look closely through the Gospels, we will see Jesus rarely directly answers a question posed to him. He usually answers with another question, but sometimes – such as today – he answers with a story. Jesus’ response to the question of who my neighbor is does not exactly answer the question, but his answer is certainly to be inferred.

Until that time, the concept of “neighbor” was understood as referring essentially to one's countrymen and to foreigners who had settled in the land of Israel; in other words, to the closely-knit community of a single country or people. This limit is now abolished. Anyone who needs me, and whom I can help, is my neighbor. The concept of “neighbor” is now universalized, yet it remains concrete. Despite being extended to all mankind, it is not reduced to a generic, abstract and undemanding expression of love, but calls for my own practical commitment here and now. …we should especially mention the great parable of the Last Judgement (cf. Mt 25:31-46), in which love becomes the criterion for the definitive decision about a human life's worth or lack thereof. Jesus identifies himself with those in need, with the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and those in prison. “As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Mt 25:40). Love of God and love of neighbor have become one: in the least of the brethren we find Jesus himself, and in Jesus we find God.[1]

Now it remains for you and me to love God in my neighbor; it remains for us to live pono by living in right relationship with both God and neighbor.

This parable is not one we often like to consider too closely, because it reveals to us some of the ways in which we are not very neighborly.

If Christ shows us the face of a compassionate God, then to believe in him and to be his disciples means allowing ourselves to be changed and to take on his same feelings. It means learning to have a heart that is moved, eyes that see and do not look away, hands that help others and soothe their wounds, shoulders that bear the burden of those in need.[2]

This is a parable we must allow to challenge our hearts, and to make them at least a little uncomfortable; most of us are not loving our neighbor as fully as Father Damien, Mother Marianne, and Joseph Dutton did.

At the conclusion of today’s Mass, after having consumed the Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, we will pray that “its saving effects upon us may grow.”[3] What these effects are is made known in the prayer we will pray in a few moments, when we ask that the gifts of bread and wine – which will be changed into the Body and Blood of Christ - “may bring ever greater holiness.”[4]

This growth in holiness is largely a passive experience; it is something Jesus does for us and in us, rather than something we accomplish by the force of our own will. Consider a surfer bobbing on his board as he waits to catch the next wave. What he does is largely passive. He waits for the wave to come and carry him along. It is largely passive, yes, but it is also active; the surfer must do more than be picked up. After paddling out from shore, the surfer sits. He waits. He stands. He rides. But he does all of this after having waited to be carried by the wave. It is passive, yes, but also active. Over the course of time he becomes a better surfer, perhaps without even noticing as his skill improves. So it is with holiness; it is largely passive, but it is also active.

With time and practice, the surfer learns to read the waters and to respond to them accordingly. This is what must happen with our hearts when we see our neighbors.

Looking without walking by, halting the frantic pace of our lives, allowing the lives of others, whoever they may be, with their needs and troubles, to touch our heart. That is what makes us neighbors to one another, what generates true fraternity and breaks down walls and barriers. In the end, love prevails, and proves more powerful than evil and death.

You and I must become embodiments of that Good Samaritan so Jesus’ love may triumph over hatred and indifference.

Over the course of time, the reception of Holy Communion has the power to make us ever more like Jesus. It has the power to open our eyes and our hearts, and to extend the reach of our hands. This is something the Eucharist does to us, but we must still cooperate with the grace given us. Jesus will never force us to become holy. Rather, he invites us along the adventure of holiness and asks us to wait for the wave and catch it when it comes. Amen.

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[1] Pope Benedict XVI, Deus caritas est, 15.

[2] Pope Leo XIV, Homily, 13 July 2025.

[3] Prayer after Communion for the Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time.

[4] Prayer over the Offerings for the Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time.