STM Homilies

In preparation for Christmas, be like St. Joseph: find silence in Christmas chaos to hear God, not like Ahaz who tried to solve everything himself.

Fr. Greg reminds us that God often meets us in the “deserts” of our lives, where simplicity, honesty, and reflection open our hearts to change.

Fr. Joe reminds us that Advent should change us, and we can stay awake to God’s daily presence by slowing down, praying, and living with joyful faith.

Fr. Joe’s homily reminds us that Christ shows His kingship through humility and love, and we reflect Him by serving others with the same humility.

Fr. Greg reminds us that instead of fearing the world’s end, we should trust God and live faithfully by caring for one another as we build His kingdom together.

Pauline reminds us that we are all temples of the Holy Spirit, called to honor God by loving and serving others in our daily lives.

Archbishop Caccia reminds us that life is a gift from God, and real life lasts forever when we live with love.

Fr. Joe reminds us that prayer isn’t just asking for things, but growing in friendship and trust with God.

Sr. Mary Rose reminds us that we need both God and one another to persevere in faith and prayer.

Fr. Greg reminds us that true faith is shown through gratitude and recognition of God’s saving love.

Fr. Joe’s homily reminds us that even faith as small as a mustard seed can grow into something vast and transformative if we plant it in good soil, nourish it daily through prayer, study, and action, and protect it from life’s distractions.

Fr. Greg reminds us that our wealth is not merely a blessing from God, but above all a responsibility to care for those in need around us.

Fr. Joe reminds us that the cross shows how God brings life out of suffering, and he calls us to share that hope with others.m

Fr. Greg preaches that faith shapes both our thoughts and feelings, helping us follow God’s will and live in the freedom and love of Christ.

Fr. Joe reminds us that Jesus calls us to humility by letting go of pride and status, instead focusing on serving others.

Archbishop Coyne reminds us that following Jesus means living with faith, prayer, and love so that when we face God we are ready to enter eternal life.

Fr. Joe reminds us that Jesus calls us to set the world on fire with love and faith by living our vocations.

Fr. Greg reminds us that true faith begins with sincere thoughts and prayers but must overflow into concrete action when possible.

Fr. Joe urges us to live for eternity, care for our souls, and give generously in order to not be a fool in God’s eyes.

Fr. Joe shares that the Our Father is a model for all prayer, drawing us into Jesus’ relationship with the Father and guiding how we pray.

Fr. Joe explains to truly be friends of Jesus, we must spend time with Him in prayer and recognize His presence in others.

Fr. Gerry reflects on the Good Samaritan's willingness to stop and choose compassion over exclusion.

Fr. Greg reflects on the Eucharist as the real presence of Christ, expressing God's self-giving love and calling us to receive that love and share it with others.

Fr. Greg reflects on the Eucharist as the real presence of Christ, expressing God's self-giving love and calling us to receive that love and share it with others.

Fr. Joe reminds us that faith is not about understanding God but about more deeply experiencing His presence in our lives.

Fr. Ryan challenges us to focus not only on removing our sins, but also letting go of judgment and exclusion so we can love and include others the way God does.

Fr. Ryan encourages us to embrace Christ's prayer of unity by becoming living signs of His love.

Fr. Greg reminds us that our guiding principal is simple. We are to love God and to love one another, living humbly in community.

Fr. Ryan celebrates the Class of 2025’s academic and spiritual journey and urges them to live not by worldly success but by love, service, and discipleship in Christ as they go into the world.

Friends, we've reached the fourth Sunday of Easter. Good Shepherd Sunday. And it's also the World Day of Prayer for vocations. So we pray for vocations to the ordained ministries, to priesthood, the diaconate. We pray for vocations, to consecrated life, missionary life and lay ministry in leadership in our church today

Fr. Greg reflects on Peter’s grief, confusion, and passion, revealing how Christ meets us in our brokenness to nourish, console, and call us forward again.

This Easter season serves in a particular way to help us unpack the mystery of the resurrection of Jesus, of the death and resurrection. It's way too much to take in. And then the truest sense of the term. It takes a lifetime to really appreciate some of these more profound mysteries of our faith. And so the church, again, just unpacks it over this Easter time.

The truth that Christ is risen means that there is hope for the sinner, and so hope for each of us. To the truth that Christ is risen means that there is freedom for the captives, healing for the wounded, life for the dying, and light for the world. Friends, may we whom God has summoned here on this Easter morning run like Peter. Like the beloved disciple. Like Mary Magdalene. To a hurting, broken world. To all those we meet and proclaim. By our lives and by our words. Not with vague, naive optimism, but with fierce burning conviction of what we have seen and believed. That Christ is risen indeed! He is truly risen as he promised. Alleluia! Alleluia!

I'd like to suggest this before the sun goes down tonight. Right on a little index card. Whatever that thing was that struck you. Because I would find it hard to believe that there was not something in that story that struck each of us, but this this one. What struck you in particular? Write it down on the card and put it in your pocket and keep it with you throughout this Holy Week. Pay special attention to it when you pray, but let it always be right there with you, reminding you of the power of the story that we've just proclaimed again, reminding you of God's great and unconditional love and faithfulness and care, especially for those most in need. May we continue that work of protest for a more faithful, church to the image of Jesus and to a world situation that much more, accommodates itself to the desire and the vision that Jesus had, the mandate that Jesus gave, and that we, as followers of Jesus Christ, seek our best to follow.

God sees a path where you see failure. God sees your future where you see only rubble. God is ready to rebuild. See? I am doing something new, says the Lord. Neither do I condemn you. Now go and sin no more, says Jesus. Strain forward to what lies ahead. Urges Saint Paul, even now, let us return to the Lord with our whole hearts.

Not as a man sees does God see because man sees the appearance, but the Lord looks into the heart. Everything exposed by the light becomes visible. For everything that becomes visible is light. I came into this world for judgment. So that those who do not see might see, and those who do see might become blind. Generally research in vain for clear connections between all three of the principal readings.

Know something substantial that addresses the part of you that needs to change to be more like Jesus. What in you, what in me, needs to change, so that we can be more like Jesus? That's what lent calls us to. Addressing something like that. Maybe we find this Lenten journey, to continue to call us to deeper and more faithful following of Jesus and to the change of mind and heart that he calls all of us to.

If you have a chance to get to New York, in the next few weeks, I highly recommend an exhibition that just opened at the Metropolitan Museum called Caspar David Friedrich the Soul of Nature. Friedrich is probably the best known exponent of German Romanticism. Now I won't give a lecture, but suffice to say that romanticism reacting against neo classical insistence on intellect, reason and order trumpeted instead the supremacy of feeling and spontaneity gave us our default understanding of what art is and honed a modern sensibility regarding nature, namely that when we contemplate it, the mystery and wonder that natural beauty evokes in us speaks not merely to the material reality.

During the summer after my college graduation, my friend and I pooled our money, rented a Subaru Outback and hit the road and traveled cross-country for about six weeks. Around mid-July, after journeying through Yellowstone and the Rocky Mountains, we headed southwest. We got sidetracked when with yours truly at the wheel. We drove about 200 miles in the wrong direction to the wrong end of the Grand Canyon. This is before GPS... 

Therefore, my beloved brothers and sisters, be firm, steadfast, always fully devoted to the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. I now have words and language that reveal me as someone who is loved by God and is in pursuit of loving others, even if I don't get it right 100% of the time.

So listen to how often that tone of mercy and forgiveness and compassion comes back in the Gospels that are chosen by the church for the Sundays, of our church year. And pay attention to that. Yeah, but that kind of goes across your consciousness. Because that's telling you somewhere in your life, as in mine, that we have to work on that in order to be a faithful disciple of Jesus. And the gospel even points out, that's how we will be like God. That's how we will be like God. That's how we will advertise who God is through our own faith, lived out in that way.

The Beatitudes are not passive states of being. They're just not passive states of being. They're an urgent call to live our lives as Christ wants us to live our lives. And so, friends, as we gather here, at Saint Thomas More, let's be grateful for what we can do, always recognizing as Francis says, we have to be humble, open, far from prejudice and inflexibility.

As someone once said, God does not call the qualified, but he qualifies those whom he calls. So do not be afraid. God empowers us, gives us what we need and wants to send us out into a world so desperately in need of a Savior. Just as we need a Savior each day just to get through the day. God is sending us, wants to send us to those who are lost. Those who are in the depths of confusion, darkness and despair. Those who are afraid, like Isaiah. Let us respond to that call saying, here I am, Lord, send me.

Purification, generally speaking, doesn't require that we grovel because we're so bad, but that we come to marvel because God is so blindingly good. Conversion can come like a bolt out of the blue, but its fulfillment is usually the labor of a lifetime or a lifetime of prayer. A lifetime in a community. A church with other imperfect, dare I say, impure people. A lifetime of hope, patience, fidelity, and an anticipation. It's what our eyes need to adjust to the light.

Gratitude certainly draws us to God, but it is the poor person, the weak one. The anxious, doubtful, or vulnerable one that we encounter on the street and that exists in each of us who will bring us face to face with Jesus. Thank God. I say thank God because it is the poor, however we reckon our poverty, who truly thrill to the good news that Jesus proclaims and embodies, inspiring us then to respond, each one of us with confidence and joy.

No matter our state in life, Jesus is able, if I allow him, if we allow him to change our tears, our struggles, our anguish, and our sorrows into a deeper life. Those aspects of our lives that seem to be tasteless, plain and ordinary, can be changed through our faith and our hope. By the Lord's love and mercy, these experiences of our lives can be made rich. Life giving, and yes, even joyful. Water has been and can be changed into wine. Our own lives have been and can be transformed. I know that from my own experience. This morning, Jesus has invited us to a feast. For his feast, a celebration for us, and a celebration of his love for each one of us. This is the banquet he has prepared for us. Bon Appetit.

Did you experience the belonging to God? That's different than any other kind of belonging that's going on in your life. You experience that you you bump up against it over and over again as you make decisions about your life and you decide what you're going to do with it or how you're in respond to public affairs, or how are you going to care for other people, or what are you going to do with your life, belong to God in a way that I belong to. Nobody else. How does that register you? So is there any ring of familiarity in your life to that insight that you belong to God in a way that you belong to nobody else, Yeah. And if that's the case, remember the advice of the Irish grandmother. Remember who you are.