Peace be with you. Friends, for this 19th Sunday of Ordinary Time, I want to focus right in on reading number two, which is from the letter to the Hebrews. It’s one of my favorite passages in the New Testament because it’s a great biblical [...]

Peace be with you, Friends. For this Sunday, I want to talk to you once again about faith. I know I probably talk a lot about that, but as I’ve said before, it’s the most misunderstood word in the religious vocabulary. So here I go again. I want to [...]

Peace be with you. Friends, for this 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time, I want to focus not on the Gospel. I preached on it many times before, the great Parable of the Unjust Steward, which is very rich. But I want to focus on readings two and one [...]

Peace be with you. Today is Trinity Sunday, one of my favorite feast days of the year. Because I have put my old theologian’s cap on, and speak very theologically to you. Some people say, «Oh no, sermons shouldn’t be theological». Nonsense. Go back [...]

Peace be with you. Friends, for this 15th Sunday of ordinary time, we get to read from the book of Deuteronomy, which is a marvelous text, of course, in the Old Testament. It means literally the second law. And so a lot of it’s about the laws and [...]

Peace be with you, friends. For this Sunday, I want to focus on our second reading, one that I don’t preach on that often. It’s an excerpt from Paul’s second letter to Timothy. Those two great letters to Timothy we have are fascinating from a lot of [...]

Please be with you. Friends, this year has been unusual because Easter was a bit late, and then we go through Pentecost, then we come to the Feast of Holy Trinity and then Corpus Christi, and then we had the Feast of Peter and Paul. So all this has [...]

Peace be with you. Friends, we have a special treat this year because the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, June 29th, falls on a Sunday. So, we have a chance to meditate on these two great saints, these pivotal saints in our Church. And I’ve been [...]

Peace be with you, friends. Pope Benedict memorably told us that the Church does three essential things. I’ve always found this really clarifying: the Church worships God, the Church evangelizes, and the Church serves the poor. Those three basic [...]

Peace be with you. Friends, we come to this 17 Sunday, of the ordinary time, and we have a great privilege, because we’re reading in our gospel Luke’s account of Jesus' great prayer. The disciples say, «Lord, teach us how to pray,» and so Jesus [...]

Peace be with you. Friends, we come now to this wonderful feast of Corpus Christi. Every year we have the Feast of Trinity Sunday followed by Corpus Christi, two of the highest theological mysteries, the Trinity and the Eucharist back-to-back. And I [...]

Peace be with you, friends. For this 22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time, I want to talk to you about a very important theme. Namely, the theme of pride and its antidote. Now, I say very important because I don’t know a spiritual teacher who doesn’t say [...]

Peace be with you. Friends, our gospel is the famous question to Jesus, «How many will be saved»? I know it’s everyone’s favorite question, I’m not going to preach on it. I’ve preached on it a lot, I’ve written a lot, so you can consult those. But I [...]

Peace be with you. Friends, we have a great privilege this year because the feast of the exaltation of the Holy Cross, September the 14th, falls on a Sunday. So, we have a chance to reflect a bit more deeply on this marvelous, and frankly, [...]

Peace be with you. Friends, people ask me sometimes: Where did the title of my ministry, Word on Fire, come from? It came from our Gospel for today. Jesus said to his disciples, «I’ve come to set the earth on fire». Other translations, «I’ve come to [...]

Peace be with you, friends, for this 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time. We’re reading from the 14th chapter of Luke, and this is very serious spiritual business. We’re talking-if you want to put it this way-very high-octane spirituality. Remember the [...]

Peace be with you, friends, on this 16th Sunday of Ordinary Time. Our Gospel is the ever- popular Martha and Mary Gospel. I say «ever-popular» with a tongue -in- cheek tone because, in my years of preaching, it’s one that tends to bother people a [...]

Peace be with you, friends. Our readings for this 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time are marvelous. They center around a theme that is fundamental to the spiritual life: detachment. I want to delve into it by referencing a song. I often go on long car [...]

Peace be with you. Friends, this is the great feast of Pentecost, the greatest, alongside of Christmas and Easter, greatest of the Liturgical Year, the Feast of the Holy Spirit, and we celebrate the first coming of the Spirit upon the Apostles that [...]

Peace be with you. Friends, we come to this wonderful feast of the Ascension of the Lord. We have this feast right at the end of the Easter season as a prelude to Pentecost, the celebration of the coming of the Holy Spirit. And getting the Ascension [...]

Peace be with you, friends. We come to the sixth Sunday of Easter, so we are nearing the end of the Easter season. This means the readings start speaking about the Holy Spirit. The Church is preparing us for the great feast of Pentecost, the coming [...]

Peace be with you. Friends, on this fifth Sunday of Easter, we have an extraordinary Gospel. Again, like last week, it’s very short and punchy, but it is at the heart of the Christian message. It marks the beginning of Jesus' Last Supper [...]

Peace be with you, friends. On this fourth Sunday of Easter, we have this marvelous, short yet very punchy reading from the Gospel of John, with Jesus referring to Himself as the Good Shepherd. Now listen: «My sheep hear My voice; I know them, and [...]

Peace be with you, friends. On this third Sunday of Easter, we have this magnificent gospel from the very end of the Gospel of John, chapter 21. It’s so rich theologically, and the tradition has just loved this passage, drawing out all sorts of [...]

Peace be with you, friends. We now enter the Easter season and come to the second Sunday of Easter. Here’s what I want you all to know: we misunderstand Easter dramatically when we think primarily of it as a spring festival—when the weather gets [...]

Peace be with you and Happy Easter to everybody. We come to this high point of liturgical year of the celebration of the resurrection of the Lord. Probably a lot of you know that I’ve spent a lot of my life reading texts from philosophers and [...]

Peace be with you. Friends, we’re coming to the end of our Lenten journey. We come to Palm Sunday, also called Passion Sunday because, on Palm Sunday, we always read at Mass the Passion narrative from one of the synoptic Gospels: Matthew, Mark, or [...]

Peace be with you. Friends, we come to this fifth Sunday of Lent, and I want to continue maybe a little bit of an offbeat style here. Not looking at the Gospel for today, the wonderful story of the woman caught in adultery, but rather our second [...]

Peace be with you, friends. This fourth Sunday of Lent gives us marvelous readings. The gospel presents the magnificent parable of the prodigal son, and I will get to it, but today I want to focus on all three readings. The Church always provides us [...]

Peace be with you. Friends, we come to the Third Sunday of Lent, and we have an extraordinary privilege during the C cycle to read this account in the third chapter of the book of Exodus, of Moses' encounter with the burning bush. It’s one of [...]

Peace be with you. Friends, our Gospel for the Second Sunday of Lent this year is Luke’s account of the Transfiguration. And whenever we come to this text, I don’t know, it just opens up something that’s this marvelous, this confounding… There’s a [...]

Peace be with you. Friends, we come to the holy season of Lent. I don’t know if you’re like me, but gosh, how many Lents have I lived through? And when I come to the end of most Lents, I say, «Gosh, I probably could have done that better. That [...]

Peace be with you. Friends, for this Eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time, we’re right on the cusp now of Lent, so next Sunday is the First Sunday of Lent, and it gives me the opportunity to talk about something I always love to talk about, which is the [...]

Peace be with you. Friends, our Gospel for today is from the Sermon on the Plain, that’s Luke’s version of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. So we’re getting the essential teaching of Jesus, which means our ears have to perk up. It means we’ve got to [...]

Peace be with you. Friends, on this sixth Sunday of ordinary time, we have something similar to what we found last week. Remember last week, we had Isaiah juxtaposed with the Gospel of Luke, and each author bringing out essential features of the [...]

Peace be with you. Friends, we come to the fifth Sunday Ordinary Time, and the church gives us a wonderful pairing of readings. The first reading from the sixth chapter of the prophet Isaiah and the Gospel from the fifth chapter of the Gospel of [...]

Peace be with you. Friends, we have the good fortune this year that the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord falls on a Sunday, so we can reflect on it perhaps a bit more deeply. It’s easy enough to sentimentalize this feast. It’s lovely. The [...]

Peace be with you. Friends, on this third Sunday of Ordinary Time, I want to talk to you about walls and bridges. Those old enough to remember, I’m referencing a John Lennon album from the mid-1970s, Walls and Bridges. There’s I think, a tendency [...]

Peace be with you. Friends, I don’t know if you’re like me, but I always have a sense of relief when we come back to ordinary time. We’ve been through the season of Advent and Christmas and now the Church returns us to ordinary time and it gives us [...]

Peace be with you. Friends, we come to this great feast of the Epiphany. It’s just one of my favorites. I love, every Christmas season, having the opportunity to reflect on the meaning of this feast because it just keeps generating meaning, I find. [...]

Peace be with you. Friends, we come to the fourth Sunday of Advent. We're now coming to the culmination of our preparation for Christmas, and the church has introduced us to a number of Advent figures: Isaiah, John the Baptist, et cetera. But [...]

Peace be with you. Friends, many mythologies and philosophies in the ancient world hold that time is cyclical. What I mean is it just goes round and around, never really getting anywhere, but just the constant repetition. A bit like the change of [...]

Peace be with you, and a very blessed and Merry Christmas to everybody. What is it about babies that’s just so irresistibly charming? Now, I realize some parents might be thinking, «What a typical celibate’s perspective on things»? but you know what [...]

Peace be with you. Friends, we come to the third Sunday of Advent. And I want to draw attention to our second reading. It's from Paul to the Philippians. Now again, can I urge you, take out your Bibles, read Paul to the Philippians. You can do [...]

Peace be with you. Friends, we come to the second Sunday of Advent and there's a lot of talk about building highways. Now, what is going on there and why is that being used as a spiritual symbol? Well, first of all, remember the importance in [...]

Peace be with you. We come to the first Sunday of Advent, New Year's Day. The new liturgical year commences. And so once again everybody, we get back to basics. We start preparing ourselves for the coming of Christ. Adventus in Latin means just [...]

Peace be with you. Friends, we come to the end of the liturgical year, this feast of Christ the King. Think of this now as this great stately procession we've been following all during the year. At the very end of it comes the King. So we close [...]

Peace be with you. Friends, we come to the 33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, so just one more week in the liturgical year. We're coming toward the end of the year, and as is typical, the church gives us readings of an apocalyptic nature, so [...]

Peace be with you. Friends, our first reading is that wonderful, wonderful story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath. It's one of my favorites. It's a kind of hidden gem, I think, in the Old Testament. Like so many of the stories in the [...]

Peace be with you. Friends, I know I say this a lot, but the readings today take us to very holy ground for this 31st Sunday of the year. Reading one is taken from the sixth chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy. I'm going to encourage you, get [...]