The Second Sunday of Advent [A]
Isaiah 11:1-10  +  Romans 15:4-9  +  Matthew 3:1-12
St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, Garden Plain, KS
December 7, 2025

The Old Testament prophet Isaiah, who lived seven centuries before Jesus, prophesied about a day that was to come.  Isaiah preached about that future day on which the Messiah—the Savior of the Jews—would appear and set things right in the world.  But Isaiah’s prophecy is a little strange.

Isaiah begins his prophecy with the words:  “On that day ….”  That day, Isaiah foretells, will be a day of unexpected sights and sounds.  The images that Isaiah describes seem to be contradictions:  the lion eating hay, and the wolf as the guest of the lamb.  But then comes the most disturbing image, especially if we think of the manger in Bethlehem:

“The baby shall play by the cobra’s den, and the child lay his hand on the adder’s lair.”  We would never expect to see this image in real life.  In fact, if you are a parent, it’s the last image you’d want to see. 

The Lord probably gave Isaiah the image of the baby because of a baby’s innocence and weakness, and how it contrasts with the serpent’s cunning and danger.  But whether Isaiah knew it or not, his image also sums up the meaning of Christmas.  God the Son, who existed from all eternity with the Father and the Holy Spirit, entered this world of ours as a tiny baby.  And what kind of a world is it?

The world we live in—the world God the Son entered as a baby—is a world of sin and sickness.  The Gospel accounts make clear that the world into which Jesus is born is a world where justice is denied to the innocent, and kings are liars.  This world of ours is turned upside-down, and this is the world into which God the Father sent Jesus as an innocent baby.

Why would God the Father do that?  God the Father, who is perfect, and without any needs, chose to send His Son from Heaven to earth:  from Heaven—a place of perfection, the Kingdom where His Will is done—to earth—a place where sin has the upper hand, and a lair of the serpent where everyone gives in to his temptations.

The baby Isaiah prophesies about is the baby Jesus, and the snake is the Devil.  Isaiah’s prophecy echoes what God had warned the serpent in the Garden about after Adam and Eve had committed the Original Sin.  God said to the serpent:  “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers;  He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel” [Genesis 3:15].

No matter how poorly you and I offer our lives to God, day in and day out, He still loves us.  God’s love is mysterious and unexpected, and is the same love that we are preparing to celebrate at Christmas.  This is the love which God the Father incarnates when He sends His only Son into this world of sin, to take that sin upon Himself on the Cross.

These truths can be hard for us to fully accept.  We may say we believe these truths of our Faith, but the Church knows how hard it is for us truly to accept not only how much the Father loves us, but also to accept this truth’s consequences.  That’s why we fallen human beings need an entire season of four weeks to prepare for Christmas.

Last week I mentioned three practices that are a good way to prepare during Advent.  We can remember them with the initials P-S-P.  These three letters—P-S-P—stand for the practices of poverty, silence, and penance.  These three practices can help us to accept more readily the gift God wants to give us, and to accept also the consequences of this gift.  That’s especially true of the practice of silence.

Silence is hard to come by these days.  A lot of people who live in the country appreciate silence.  However, with the nature of mass media today, it doesn’t matter if you live at the top of a mountain:  radio signals, TV signals, wireless Internet and more can be beamed to you, or maybe we should say at you.  To create an atmosphere of silence, you have to go on the offense.  You have to unplug, disconnect and turn off a lot of devices.

Of course, there’s also another difficulty when it comes to silence.  Sometimes we don’t like silence.  Noise has a way of blocking out, or distracting us from, our own thoughts and concerns, which at times we’d rather not face.

But maybe we need to accept silence as a gift.  In fact, in our spiritual life silence is a two-fold gift.  The first aspect of the gift of silence is that it’s a gift we give ourselves, so as to hear one’s own true self, even when that’s uncomfortable.  But the importance of silence also goes beyond our selves.

You remember the Old Testament story about Elijah, to whom the Lord God spoke, not through fire or an earthquake, but through a tiny whisper.  In the Christian spiritual life, silence is not an end in itself.  Silence is a means, or rather, a medium through which to hear the Word of God.  This is takes us to one of the most important truths of our Catholic Faith.  This truth will be proclaimed on Christmas morning in the Gospel Reading from John 1.  You might want to look it up and make it part of your Advent spiritual reading.

The Word of God is not a book.  The Word of God is a Person:  the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity.  In John 1, St. John proclaims that this divine Word, which was in the beginning, became Flesh and dwelt among us.  He became flesh and blood—one of us—in order to offer that Body and Blood, with His soul and divinity, on the Cross at Calvary.  His Sacrifice on the Cross is made present to us sacramentally in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

This is a message we sinners need to hear, and we need silence to be able to hear it, to appreciate it, and to start making changes in our lives in order to accept this gift more fully.

The First Sunday of Advent [A]
Isaiah 2:1-5  +  Romans 13:11-14  +  Matthew 24:37-44
St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, Garden Plain, KS
November 30, 2025

So much of our preparation for December 25^th is made up of customs.  You have Grandma’s recipe for cookies, the family Christmas stocking to be hung up, and the Christmas tree decorations that have been passed from one generation to the next.  These customs are like well-worn slippers:  comfortable and without surprises.

However, this comfort stands in contrast to the shocks and unexpected surprises that we hear in the Gospel accounts about the nine months leading up to the birth of Jesus.  Unexpected surprises also surround His birth at Bethlehem, and also occur after His birth, as others try to learn more about the new-born king, some for good reasons, and some for ill.

Of course, we might say that that’s all ancient history.  But the mystery at the heart of Christmas—which we are preparing for in these weeks of Advent—is not just about history.  Advent and Christmas are about allowing God to come into your life, as He came into the lives of Mary and Joseph.

God wants to enter into your life throughout your days on this earth.  He wants to enter into your life often, from the day of your baptism to the day of your death.  He wants to enter your lives with specific graces, and for specific reasons.

So for a moment, step back and look at the big picture of your life on earth.  In your life as a Christian, God shapes your life at three different levels. The first is your baptismal vocation, which of course started on the day of your baptism.  This is the most general call that God makes to you:  it’s the call to holiness, or you might say, the call to be a saint.  The second is a more specific vocation that God asks from most Christians:  either the vocation to Holy Matrimony, or the vocation to Holy Orders, or the call to consecrated life.  Those vocations give a more specific shape or form to a person’s call to be holy.

The third is what we’re talking about today.  It’s the most specific call, and occurs often throughout the course of one’s life.  You might say that God calls a specific Christian to carry out a specific mission for God.  These are usually temporary, unlike the first two calls, which last until death.

So regarding these specific calls that God makes to you throughout your life, the challenge is that you do not know the specifics of these calls.  This is what Jesus is talking about in today’s Gospel Reading:  “… you do not know on which day your Lord will come.”

Nor do you know in what form the Lord’s grace will come into your life.  Nor do you know how, or though whom, the Lord’s grace will come into your life.  God has missions in store for you in the new Church year which starts today.  Some of God’s missions may challenge you, some may console you, some may give you needed support, while some of God’s graces may lead you to make difficult decisions.  But the Season of Advent is about fostering the virtues that help you to be ready for God, no matter where, when, how or through whom He wishes to be present to us, for us, and finally within us.

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So there are three very practical ways that you can engage with the Season of Advent, in order to be ready whenever and however the Lord wants to come into your life at specific times, for specific reasons.  These three practices can help you to recognize and accept the Lord when He chooses to come into your life.

These three are poverty, silence, and penance.  Just remember the first letter of each.  Poverty, silence, and penance:  P-S-P.  Not E-S-P:  because if you had ESP than you would know on which day the Lord will come.  The letters P-S-P stand for poverty, silence and penance.  Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition both show us how the three practices of poverty, silence and penance can help you as a Christian prepare for God.  On this First Sunday of Advent, focus upon the practice of poverty.

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We don’t usually think of “poverty” as something that’s meant to be practiced.  Usually we just think of poverty as a state of life for some persons.  Likewise, poverty is not usually something that we think of as a means of drawing closer to God.  Usually when we think of “poverty”, we think of what in fact is destitution, where individuals do not have food to eat, or shelter from the elements, or clothing to wear.  When God, in His Sacred Scriptures and Sacred Tradition, commends the practice of poverty to His children, He’s not talking about destitution.  But Jesus does commend poverty to His own disciples, saying to them:  “every one of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple” [Luke 14:33].

On the one hand, when Jesus ask us to enter into the spirit and practice of poverty, he’s not asking us to become destitute.  But on the other hand, we should never water down Jesus’ commendation of poverty by thinking that it does not connect in any way to our relationship with our material possessions.  That might sound like a strange phrase, to speak of someone’s “relationship with their material possessions”.  Unfortunately, some people not only have a relationship with their material possessions, but in fact have more of a relationship with their material possessions than they do with the other persons in their lives.

Our standard-bearer when it comes to poverty is Jesus Himself.  Jesus never sought material possessions as a way to grow in the sight of Himself, in the sight of others, or in the sight of His Father.  This is one of the first principles of spiritual poverty:  to realize and believe down to the bottom of our hearts how little spiritual value material possessions hold.

The second principle of poverty is trust:  trust in the providential care of God our Father.  Practically speaking, we can ask God to increase our trust not by praying a petition asking for trust, but by making a concrete sacrifice.  When we make such a real sacrifice, we’re implicitly placing our trust in God to provide what we truly need.  So we can grow in the conviction that material possessions hold so little true meaning by making a sacrifice of what we do possess.

Here’s one simple example among many that you might practice this Advent:  tithe your wardrobe.  Maybe some people have never heard of doing such a thing, but it’s a simple practice, and does not need to take a lot of time.  Tithing your wardrobe means giving 10% of your clothes and accessories to the poor.

Although that practical sacrifice is one that the whole family can participate in, I’d like to offer a second challenge just to young people, by which I’m referring to anyone who still lives at home.  This may not make me very popular with our young people, but a priest is not ordained to be popular.  Young people, when you make your Christmas wish list, put down only three gifts that you’d like to receive at Christmas.  And if, for some reason, you receive more than three gifts, resolve now—at the start of Advent—that you will choose only three of the gifts that you receive, and donate the rest to children who are poor, and who might well receive fewer than three Christmas presents if not for you.  Maybe you could donate them to St. Anthony’s Pro-Life ministry, for distribution to families that this Pro-Life ministry serves.

Regardless of how you put it into practice, starting or deepening the practice of poverty has just one aim:  to conform oneself to the person of Jesus.  In other words, poverty is practiced by Christians in order to dispose themselves to the grace by which God wants to make us more like Jesus.

Jesus became one of us when He was conceived at the Annunciation, so that you and I could become like God by opening our hearts and minds to God’s grace.  God works the change by His grace.  But we have to open our lives to God’s grace, as the Blessed Virgin Mary did at the Annunciation.  In our own lives, we accomplish this “opening” through our good works, especially virtuous practices such as poverty.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe [C]
II Samuel 5:1-3 + Colossians 1:12-20 + Luke 23:35-43
St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, Garden Plain, KS
November 23, 2025

One day an old professor spoke to large corporations about time management.  Standing before a group of CEOs, he pulled out from under the table a large, empty glass vase.

Then he carefully placed a dozen rocks the size of tennis balls inside the vase.  When he could not add any more, he asked the crowd:  “Does the vase look full to you?”, and they all nodded in agreement.

He waited a moment, and then he pulled a box full of pebbles from under the table.  He poured the pebbles into the vase, moving the vase back and forth so that the pebbles shifted downwards.  Then he asked, “Is the vase full?”  In the audience, several shook their heads, “No.”

The professor picked up a bag of sand and poured it into the vase.   The sand filled all the crevices between the rocks and the pebbles.  He asked again: “Is the vase full now?”, and the crowd all answered “No.”  Then the professor took the pitcher of water from the table and poured it into the vase up to the brim.

At this point he looked up at his audience and asked:  “What great truth does this experiment show us?”  The most successful CEO in the audience stood up and declared:  “This shows us that even when our schedule is full, with some effort we can always add another task.”

The professor replied, “You are exactly wrong.  You are looking at what happened from exactly the wrong perspective.  What you’ve just seen in fact demonstrates that, if you don’t put the big rocks in the vase first, then you will never be able to put them in after.”

There was a moment of silence, and the professor continued: “What are the big rocks—the priorities—in your life?  The important thing is to put these big rocks at the top of your agenda.  If you give priority to a thousand other little things—the pebbles, and certainly the sand—your life will be filled with things of small meaning, and you will never fit in what’s most important.”

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Not many of us are CEOs, but each of us makes choices each day about our priorities.  On this final Sunday of the Church year, the Church is very sober is speaking about Christ the King.  As a king, Christ judges.  This Sunday focuses our attention on what the Church refers to as “the four Last Things”:  Heaven and hell, death and judgment.   Christ the King judges us in the light of these four Last Things:  Heaven and hell, death and judgment.

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When God created the heavens and the earth, including Adam and Eve, God set a plan in motion.  In this plan, Adam and Eve and their descendants could have been perfectly joyful.  However, this plan was derailed by Adam and Eve’s Original Sin.  Adam and Eve chose to divert God’s grace from flowing through this world as God had planned.

So at that point, God had several choices:  He could have said, “These human beings are just not working out:  I’ll think I’ll just destroy the human race and start over.”  In all justice, God had the right to say this.

Or God could have said, what in fact He did say.  God in fact said:  “Unfortunately, Adam and Eve ruined my plan for them.  But I love them.  I will not leave them.  So it’s time to offer them my ‘Plan B’.”

That ‘Plan B’ is what we call “salvation history”.  God’s grace is like a mighty river flowing through the course of human history, which of course includes each human life on this earth.  God was willing to allow His grace to be diverted from His original plan in Eden.  But He also was willing to channel that grace in another direction, so that it could still offer salvation to those whom He loves.

On this feast of Christ the King, we celebrate the victory of God over sin and death, which Christ won on the Cross.  In Christ, who reigns from the Cross, we see the King who wants us to share in His victory by our entering into His life, and through His life, to imitate Him.

However, God only offers you His grace:  He does not force it upon you.  God’s grace will flow around you if you divert it from your life.  Yet God’s grace is always there, ready to flood your life, to destroy sin and the power of death, and to fill you with the graces you need to carry out what He asks of you.  That’s why we have to make God our first priority.  Otherwise, like in the professor’s demonstration to the CEOs, we won’t be able to give God His place into our lives later.  He just won’t fit.

God’s offers His grace to us through the Sacraments and through prayer.  God’s grace conforms your life to the life of Christ.  But you must accept that gift.  That’s where priorities come into play in our lives.

There’s an old saying about life’s priorities.  It’s only six words long:  “Play hard.  Work harder.  Pray hardest.”

These priorities are not about how much time we give to each.  Someone who works to feed the family has to work as much as the job requires, and that’s likely more time than one has for prayer.  Prayer being a higher priority than work doesn’t mean giving more time to prayer.  It means that prayer is a non-negotiable each day.  The priority of prayer also means that while work is done for the family, prayer is done with the family (in addition to being offered at times in solitude).

Work may be, for example, five days a week, but prayer is seven days a week.  Work also lasts, hopefully, only until the age of 65 or 70 or 75.  But prayer only becomes more important each year of one’s life on this earth.  There are two reasons why prayer becomes so important in the later years of life:  first, one’s health becomes a frequent concern, and a subject of prayer; second, the older one is, the more children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren one has, and that means more people to pray for.  Yet if a Christian doesn’t in his 20s and 30s and 40s dedicate time to prayer, the foundation of prayer won’t be there to build upon in the later years of life.

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Advent starts a week from today.  The four weeks of Advent are a good time to make some changes based on those six simple words:  “Play hard.  Work harder.  Pray hardest.”

Besides, of course, making an Advent confession, and making sure to plan for the Holy Day of Obligation of the Immaculate Conception on Monday, December 8, one very good goal for each week of Advent is to spend time each week here in church in front of the Blessed Sacrament.  It doesn’t have to be on a Monday or Tuesday morning when Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament takes place.  If Christ is in the tabernacle, and you are praying here in church, then you are praying in His Presence.  It doesn’t have to be an entire hour, either.  If you believe you can only sacrifice thirty minutes each week, then make a “Holy Half-Hour”.  Like in Jesus’ parable, Jesus can take the mustard seed of your time and accomplish great things through your efforts to make Him a stronger priority in your life on this earth.

The Dedication of the Lateran Basilica
Ezekiel 47:1-2,8-9,12  +  1 Corinthians 3:9-11,16-17  +  John 2:13-22
St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, Garden Plain, KS
November 9, 2025

The word “temple” is found in all three of today’s Scripture readings.  In the First Reading, a temple is the heart of Ezekiel’s vision.  In the Gospel Reading, the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem is the focus of Jesus’ cleansing.  In the Second Reading, Saint Paul tells the Corinthians that they themselves are a temple.  Although the image of a “temple” is described differently in these three Scripture passages, taken together they help us see where we can find God in our lives on earth.

But why are those Scripture passages chosen for today’s feast?  What is today’s feast, anyway?

Every year on November 9^th, even if it falls on a Sunday, the Church celebrates the feast of the dedication of St. John Lateran Basilica in Rome.  This church, which was founded in the year 324—just over 1,700 years ago—is the cathedral of the Diocese of Rome.  Most people assume that St. Peter’s Basilica is the cathedral of Rome, since the Pope lives next to it.

But St. John Lateran and St. Peter’s are two of the four most important churches in Rome.  Whenever you make your lifetime pilgrimage to Rome—and every Catholic ought to make a pilgrimage to Rome at least once in their life—these four churches need to be at the top of your itinerary.

The most important is St. Peter’s Basilica, built over the tomb of St. Peter, and the largest church in the world, its inside length measuring 300 yards (the length of three football fields).  The second most important is St. John Lateran Basilica, the cathedral of Rome.  The third is St. Mary Major Basilica, the oldest church in the West dedicated to Our Blessed Mother, and containing relics from Bethlehem in the grotto beneath the high altar.  The fourth is St. Paul Basilica, built over the tomb of St. Paul.

As far as what the dedication of a church is in general, you could say that a dedication is to a church what a baptism is to a person.  The ritual of the dedication of a church is a lengthy ceremony performed by a bishop, consecrating a building made by human work so that the building can be used by God for His divine work of making those who dwell there holy.

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So why is a church building even important, or needed?  You may be familiar with the old Western song called “Cowboy Church”, the lyrics of which suggest that a church building is not important.  Here are some of the lyrics (sing along if you know the melody):  “My church is the great out of doors / My song is nature’s sound / The sky is my cathedral / My altar is the ground”.  And a little later he sings these words to God:  “Don’t think that I don’t love you / because I’m not herd bound / It’s just that I’m uncomfortable / With other folks around / I know you’re all around me / I see you every day / It’s just that I don’t go to church / Where other people pray”.

Of course, the composer of this song is not the only one who thinks you don’t need a church building to worship God.  Others will tell you that you can worship God in the mountains, on the beach, in your recliner at home, or on the golf course.

However, both Jewish and Christian Scripture and tradition tell us that having sacred spaces in our lives—spaces dedicated by God used only for the purpose of prayer and worship—is important for several reasons.  All of these reasons are summed up in a single word:  “church”.

The word “church” literally means “assembly”, as in God’s people assembling—coming together into one body under one roof—for the purpose of worshipping God.  It’s in this assembly that the two great commands of Jesus come together:  to love our God with our whole heart, mind, soul and strength; and to love our neighbor as our self.

Yes, it’s true that you can pray in the mountains, and if you’re ever in the mountains, you certainly ought to pray there.  But the detriment of praying there is that you’re not with others in the way that you are at Sunday Mass.  When we pray with others, we praise God more fittingly.  It’s more fitting to praise God by joining together with other believers, because we show God that we are united with each other, and with Him, in the same act of worship:  the worship He Himself has taught us how to offer.  The Sacraments, after all, are not man-made.  The Sacraments and all the Divine Liturgy were crafted by God and given by Him as a gift to man.

Of course, there’s another argument that gets thrown in the face of church-attending Christians.  It’s illustrated in the story about the Baptist preacher, who one day was walking down the sidewalk in Mayberry when he met Mr. Cratitch.  After exchanging pleasantries, the preacher said, “Why don’t you join us this Sunday for worship?”  Mr. Cratitch replied, “Bah! I wouldn’t be caught dead there!  Your church is full of hypocrites!”  The preacher replied, “Don’t worry:  there’s always room for one more!”

There are certainly times when it would be easier to pray alone, without other hypocrites to “distract” us.  But maybe God wants us to take up this challenge because that’s what He Himself did.  After all, it would have been easier for God’s eternal Son to stay in Heaven, and never come down to earth to take on our human nature, and to take up the Cross that is ours.

But God did not choose Heaven over earth.  He did not choose solitude over the mess of human hypocrites.  He did not choose peace and quiet.  He chose the sword and insults, because His choice to dwell among us was not primarily for His sake, but ours.  Or rather, we could say that it was first for our sake, so that we could be redeemed, and as redeemed sinners, more fittingly give God the worship that we owe Him.

At the same time, if we can enter with humility into communal worship, we see how many blessings there are in communal worship.  We cannot enjoy these blessings in prayer offered in solitude.  The most obvious of these blessings—especially to those of us without such talent—is the spiritual joy of being surrounded by the voices of those who sing beautifully, and who play instruments beautifully.

We certainly don’t want to be like the old gentlemen in Ireland whom Father O’Sullivan chastised after Mass one day for never taking out the hymnal and singing.  Paddy replied, “Well, Father, it’s like this.  With the voice that God did not give me, I consider my not singing to be one of the spiritual works of mercy!”  Most likely, Father Sullivan worked to help Paddy see that we need to bring all our talents to the Lord, no matter how meager.  If you have a meager singing ability, you still need to sing. You might consider your singing to be like the widow who put the penny in the collection, as opposed to the choir members whose talent is like a hundred-dollar bill.  This is important to keep in mind during our parish’s annual renewal of Stewardship.

Our own weaknesses, and the weaknesses of others, are not reasons not to worship the Lord as He commands.  In fact, our weaknesses are opportunities to believe more deeply in the Gospel.  Remember that St. Paul preached to the Corinthians that he three times begged the Lord to take away his weakness from him.  But the Lord replied to St. Paul in the same words that He speaks to you:  “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness” [2 Corinthians 12:8-9.]

You can take a virtual tour of the basilica at the parish website, by clicking HERE.

All Souls’ Day
St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, Andale, KS
November 2, 2025

The “communion of saints” is the Church’s focus this weekend.  The “communion of saints” is a familiar phrase.  We recite it during the Apostles’ Creed.  But some Christians have a narrow view of the Communion of Saints.

Some Christians think that the the “communion of saints” refers only to those who are already in Heaven.  But the “communion of saints” has three parts to it, or three divisions, or three degrees.  The Communion of Saints includes not only those who are in Heaven, but also the members of the Church in Purgatory, and those who are on earth.

Every year on November 1—on the Solemnity of All Saints—we who are on earth honor those who are in Heaven.  We ask their prayers for us and our intentions.  In other words, the prayers of those in Heaven are offered for those of us on earth.

Every year on November 2—on the commemoration of All Souls—we who are on earth remember those who are in Purgatory.  We pray for those souls in Purgatory.  In other words, the prayers of us on earth are offered for those who are in Purgatory.

In other words, those in Heaven, those in Purgatory, and those of us on earth are part of the same Family of God.  Every family member helps those in need to the best of their ability.

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The Mass of November 2 for the commemoration of All Souls bears many features of a funeral Mass.  The Scripture readings for today are taken from the options for funeral Masses, and the Gloria is neither recited nor sung.  Today’s Mass commemorates all the souls who have died, and have not yet reached Heaven, and therefore are in need of our prayers.

Here we have to focus on the Church’s teaching about the existence of Purgatory, and God’s reason for creating Purgatory.  The best start is to understand the differences among Heaven, Purgatory, and hell.

All three are on the other side of the “door of death”.  We on earth stand on one side of death’s door.  On the other side of death’s door are Heaven and Purgatory and hell.

When a person dies, that person’s soul goes to one of those three places:  either Heaven, or Purgatory, or Hell.  Which of those places a person’s soul goes to depends upon the state of their soul at the hour of death.  In other words, at the hour or death, to what extent is the person’s soul corrupted by sin?

If a person’s soul at the hour of death is completely free from sin and its effects, then that soul goes straight to Heaven.

If a person’s soul at the hour of death bears even one mortal sin, then that soul goes straight to eternal punishment.

However, if a person’s soul at the hour of their death bears no mortal sins, but is marked by venial sins or the effects of sin called temporal punishment, then that soul—in God’s eyes—deserves neither hell nor Heaven.  That is why God, in His Divine Mercy—created Purgatory:  to be a place of temporary purgation, where venial sins and temporal punishments could be purged from the soul, so that the soul could then fly to Heaven.

It’s St. John the Apostle and Evangelist who teaches us about the difference between mortal and venial sin.  In his first New Testament letter, St. John preaches that “If anyone sees his brother committing what is not a mortal sin, he will ask, and God will give him life….  There is sin which is mortal; I do not say that one is to pray for that.  All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin which is not mortal” [1 John 5:16-17 (NRSV)].

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There are two important points that St. John is making in this passage, and which he develops more fully in all of his New Testament writings.  The first is the distinction between mortal and venial sin.  Mortal sin kills the soul, while venial sin wounds the soul.

The second point is that God calls Christians to pray for other Christians, and especially in regard to their venial sins.  Praying for other Christians is the type of prayer called “intercession”.

Even in heaven, saints pray for those Christians who are not yet in Heaven.  Saints do not have their full attention fixed on God in prayers of adoration, without regard for others.  Saints in heaven pray to God for the other members of the “communion of saints” who are in Purgatory and on earth.  St. Therese the Little Flower spoke to this when she promised to “spend her Heaven doing good on earth.”

We on earth are like the saints in Heaven in this regard.  While we might want in our prayer to fix our attention on God alone, God wants us to offer our prayer for others, because this is often where we find God revealed in our lives.  So it is with our prayers of intercession, both for fellow pilgrims on earth, and for those in Purgatory.

Of course, you likely know that some Christians falsely claim that asking others—whether saints in Heaven, or family members on earth—to pray for us is an offense against God.  They will explain to you that Jesus is the sole mediator of God’s graces.  What they will not explain to you is that each Christian is a member of Christ’s Mystical Body, the Church.  Therefore, each Christian shares in the work of Christ.

So does one Christian praying for another take something away from God?  No.  God wants us to turn to each other.  Intercessory prayer is one form of Jesus’ command to “love your neighbor as yourself” [Matthew 22:39].  If it’s valid in God’s eyes to pray for oneself, why wouldn’t it be to pray for others?  When a family suffers a tragedy, they often draw closer together.  Part of this occurs through prayer, and when they pray for each other, they all are stronger afterwards, and more closely knit.

Our prayer for others draws us closer to those for whom we pray.  Those in Heaven, in Purgatory, and on earth are drawn closer together through intercession.  When we intercede for another—or ask someone’s intercession—we don’t believe that that person is God.  We ask another to take our prayers to God.  When, for example, we call our mother on the phone and ask her to pray for us, we’re doing the same as when we kneel and pray a rosary:  we are asking our mother to pray to God on our behalf.

Through all prayers of intercession, the Body of Christ grows stronger.  In the person of Christ, God and man are united.  Within Christ, we live as members of his Body.  Within Christ, we build others up through our prayers for each other, and find God’s love for us all.

The Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time [C] 
Sirach 35:12-14,16-18  +  2 Timothy 4:6-8,16-18  + Luke 18:9-14
St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, Garden Plain, KS
October 26, 2025

“… the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Look at the Pharisee and the tax collector in today’s parable.  They’re opposites.  Let’s say that the life of prayer is like climbing a mountain.  Then union with God—experienced on earth incompletely in contemplation, and in Heaven forever and fully in Adoration of Him—is the summit of the mountain.

Given that, neither the Pharisee nor the tax collector has reached that summit yet.  Both are still at the base of the mountain.  But they are facing in opposite directions.

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Consider an image that clarifies the difference between the Pharisee and the tax collector.  To paint this picture in your imagination, a modern world record holder will help us.  The sprinter who still holds the world record for the 100 meter dash is Usain Bolt.  Although he’s now retired, his 2009 world record for running the 100 meter dash in 9.58 seconds still stands.  At his fastest point during this race, he was running 28 mph.

But imagine if I told you that you could beat Usain Bolt in a 100 meter dash.  You would not have to trip him, or tie his feet together.  I can guarantee that you would win the race against him, fair and square.

Here’s how.  You and Bolt both start at blocks right next to each other.  Both of you run 100 meters as fast as you can.  The only catch is this:  before you begin, Bolt has to turn around 180 degrees and face the other direction.  If he does that, you’ll win every time!

Of course, Bolt would never do that, unless someone convinced him to.  But the Pharisee didn’t have to be convinced.  The Pharisee choose to do just that spiritually, turning his back on the real goal—the real summit—because the vice of pride was the starting block of his prayer.  Remember how St. Luke prefaces the parable.  The evangelist tells us that Jesus spoke this parable “to those who were convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else.”

In other words, the Pharisee and the tax collector are standing at the same base of the mountain of prayer.  But they’re facing opposite ways.  The Pharisee faces away from the mountain.  Every step he takes leads him farther from authentic prayer, and prayer’s summit of communion with God.

By contrast, the tax collector faces the mountain.  He looks up:  toward the mountain summit which is God, and toward the mountain face that he has to climb to reach the summit.  The tax collector knows the climb will be demanding, but he’s facing the challenge.  The key point of Jesus’ parable is that the first step up the mountain of prayer is the virtue of humility.

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To make this even clearer, listen closely to how the Pharisee and the tax collector pray.  This is important to listen in on, because their prayers reveal their hearts, and it’s the heart that determines which direction—and what goal—a person is facing in prayer.

The Pharisee begins with words of thanksgiving:  “O God, I thank you.”  So far, so good. Giving thanks to God is a holy thing.  Thanksgiving is one of the four chief motives for praying to God:  the others being Adoration, Petition, and Contrition.

But then the Pharisee’s prayer goes off course when he explains what he’s thankful for.  “O God, I thank you … that I am not like the rest of humanity.”  In that moment, the Pharisee reveals his hand:  his real goal in praying.  He uses prayer to separate himself from others.  Every word he speaks moves him a little farther down the wrong path, away from the summit of authentic prayer.

In telling this parable, Jesus makes sure we understand what’s happening here.  In narrating this parable, Jesus tells us that the Pharisee “spoke this prayer to himself.”  Honestly, this is not the best translation into English of the original Greek words that St. Luke used to record Jesus’ parable.  In English, when we hear that someone on some occasion was “praying to himself”, we might assume that the person was praying quietly, or “under his breath”.

But that’s not what it means when Jesus tells us that the Pharisee “spoke this prayer to himself”.  The original language means that instead of the Pharisee speaking this prayer to God, he was actually speaking the prayer to himself.[1]  Of course, you might argue that if someone is praying to himself instead of God, he’s not really praying at all.  But that’s Jesus’ point.  The Pharisee is not really praying.  What he’s doing is not giving glory to God.  He’s giving glory to himself.

By contrast, the tax collector does pray authentically.  He stands before God with humility in his heart.  He does not look around.  He does not compare.  He does not justify himself.  He simply lifts his eyes toward Heaven and says, “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner”.  Here, the tax collector is starting with a prayer of contrition.   This is the place to start.  Humility fosters a recognition that I am a sinner before God, and that humility motivates our prayers of contrition.  Once we’ve done that, we can advance in prayer:  first, to prayers of thanksgiving and petition, and finally, to prayers of adoration.

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So today’s parable is about prayer.  But the lessons that Jesus teaches us through this parable apply not only to prayer.  These lessons apply to every area of our lives in this world.  These lessons apply to everything we do, no matter whether the goal is the summit of prayer, or something much simpler.

Before we take a single step in life, we have to face the right direction.  We have to look up to see God.  We have to be resolved to act and succeed not for our own sake, but for God’s glory.

Humility is the beginning.  Divine charity—the very life of God—is the end.  But without the right beginning, we can never reach the right end:  the end for which God made us.[2]

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[1] The original Greek is “πρὸς ἑαυτὸν προσεύχετο”.  The Latin Vulgate renders it “haec apud se orabat”.

[2] See also St. Bernard of Clairvaux, In the Steps of Humility (London: St. Austin Press, 2001), and Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D., Divine Intimacy (Rockford, Ill.: Tan Books and Publishers, 1996), especially 777-779.

“Zelo zelatus sum pro Domino, Deo exercituum” (Vulgate, I Kings 19:10)

Summary of Pope Leo XIV’s apostolic exhortation Dilexi Te

Please note: the numbers in brackets indicate the paragraph(s) of Dilexi Te referred to or quoted. This summary summarizes about nine-tenths of the material in the document. Sociological and economic assertions are largely not covered.

Dilexi Te can be accessed here:
https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/apost_exhortations/documents/20251004-dilexi-te.html

The PDF of this summary can be accessed here:
https://reflectionsonthesacredliturgy.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/dilexi-te-summary-pdf.pdf

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Dilexi Te (“I have loved you”) is the title of the first apostolic exhortation promulgated by Pope Leo XIV [October 4, 2025].  The document’s header explains that it’s addressed to all Christians, whereas some papal documents are addressed specifically to bishops, priests, religious, etc.

The total length of the document is 121 paragraphs.  In the introduction, which is three paragraphs long, Pope Leo clarifies that this document is a companion to Pope Francis’ final encyclical, Dilexit Nos [October 24, 2024].  Pope Leo also clarifies that Dilexi Te was drafted by Pope Francis, and that Pope Leo added some reflections to the draft.

Whereas Pope Francis’ encyclical focused upon “the human and divine love of the heart of Jesus Christ” [2], Pope Leo’s apostolic exhortation focuses upon love for the poor.  In other words, Pope Francis’ encyclical focused upon the Sacred Heart of Jesus as the subject of love (that is, the one who loves), whereas Pope Leo’s apostolic exhortation focuses upon the poor as the object of love (that is, the ones who are loved), albeit from a two-fold perspective:  first, the poor as loved by God; and second, the poor as loved by the members of Christ’s Church.

Chapter One of Dilexi Te is titled “A Few Essential Words”, and consists of twelve paragraphs touching upon diverse points.  Pope Leo in Paragraph 5 ties together three verses from the latter chapters of Matthew.  He introduces his weaving of these verses by asserting:  “Love for the Lord, then, is one with love for the poor.”  Tying these three verses together helps the reader to see the unity forged by Jesus’ two-fold command to love both God and neighbor.  This two-fold command reflects the human and divine natures united in the Person of Christ.  In this chapter, Pope Leo also makes a statement that reveals a motive for writing this apostolic exhortation:  “I am convinced that the preferential choice for the poor is a source of extraordinary renewal both for the Church and for society” [7].  Also of note in this brief chapter is Pope Leo’s explanation that there are many forms of poverty [9], a point which is not in this document fully explored.

Chapter Two is titled “God Chooses the Poor”, and consists of nineteen paragraphs.  It is the most thoroughly Scriptural and theological chapter of the document, and chiefly focuses upon two themes.  The first [16-23] is God’s outreach to the poor being fulfilled in the Messiah who Himself chose to be poor.  The second theme [24-34] is the call of God to His People—both the People of Israel in the Old Testament, and the Church in the New Testament—to imitate His merciful love for the poor.  A briefly mentioned though undeveloped point is that “works of mercy are recommended as a sign of the authenticity of worship” [27].  Hopefully Pope Leo XIV during a lengthy papacy will reflect in his writings about the link between the Church’s heritage of care for the poor and the heritage of the Sacred Liturgy.

Chapter Three is titled “A Church for the Poor”, and consists of 47 paragraphs.  It’s by far the longest chapter of the document:  in fact, it’s more than twice as long as the second-longest chapter.  Nonetheless, Chapter Three is a straightforward survey of saints who with zeal and devotion lived Christ’s call to serve the poor, which call Pope Leo wants Christians today to take up.

The survey starts in the apostolic era with the example of St. Stephen.  Pope Leo suggests that it’s not a coincidence that the first martyr of the Church was a deacon:  one ordained for service of the poorest.  In St. Stephen, “the witness of caring for the poor and of martyrdom are united” [37].  The survey also includes the witness of the Fathers of the Church [39-48], of those in monastic life [53-58], and of religious such as Franciscans and Dominicans who embraced poverty in a radical way as itinerant friars [63-67].  The survey also reflects upon individual saints and religious orders dedicated to particular examples of the corporal and spiritual works of mercy:  to the sick and suffering [49-52], to prisoners [59-62], to the education of the poor [68-72], and to migrants [73-75].  The chapter concludes by considering popular movements “made up of lay people” who dedicate their apostolates to caring for the poor [80-81].

Chapter Four is titled “A History that Continues”.  Over 21 paragraphs, the chapter considers the Church’s “veritable treasury of significant teachings concerning the poor” expounded over the past two centuries [83], beginning with Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum [May 15, 1891].  The chapter continues by exploring the teachings of the Second Vatican Council [84-86], and the three popes immediately preceding Pope Leo XIV [87-97].  The chapter concludes with a brief section titled “The poor as subjects” [99-102].  Pope Leo considers the Latin American bishops’ Aparecida Document [June 29, 2007], which “insists on the need to consider marginalized communities as subjects capable of creating their own culture, rather than as objects of charity on the part of others” [100; emphases in the original].  In a similar vein, Pope Leo quotes Pope Francis’ call to “let ourselves be evangelized” by the poor and to recognize “the mysterious wisdom which God wishes to share with us through them” [102, quoting Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium [November 24, 2013], 198].

Chapter Five, titled “A Constant Challenge”, consists of the final nineteen paragraphs of Dilexi Te.  Pope Leo notes that “love for the poor—whatever the form their poverty may take—is the evangelical hallmark of a Church faithful to the heart of God” [103].  That truth is based upon even more fundamental truths of the Christian Faith:  “No Christian can regard the poor simply as a societal problem; they are part of our ‘family.’  They are ‘one of us’” [104].  This solidarity with the poor raises the stakes even beyond those presented in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, to which Pope Leo next turns [105-107].  Jesus taught that parable to a scholar of the law to answer the question, “Who is my neighbor?”  Jesus taught the scholar of the law to see the suffering person as his neighbor, but Jesus teaches His disciples to see the suffering person as “one of us”.

Pope Leo concludes Dilexi Te with a section of seven paragraphs about almsgiving [115-121].  This might not seem a grand way to draw the document to a close.  Yet the simplicity, smallness, concreteness, and directness of the venerable Christian practice of almsgiving reinforces the key points of Pope Leo’s first apostolic exhortation.  Each of these four qualities of almsgiving also marks:  the love of God for the poor; the Incarnation of God’s divine Son in poor, mortal flesh; and the earthly mission of Christ’s Church.  The individual Christian is called to serve the poor as Christ Himself did:  seeing in the poor a human person created by God, bearing a heart called to love God and fellow man, and invited to share in the Father’s eternal banquet.

The Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time [C]
Exodus 17:8-13 + 2 Timothy 3:14—4:2 + Luke 18:1-8
St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, Garden Plain, KS
October 19, 2025

If you were to ask a group of priests what topic they preach about the least, their answer would probably be: prayer.

For every ten homilies about the Creed, or the sacraments, or the Ten Commandments, you might only hear one about prayer.

Why is that? Maybe it’s because our Catholic beliefs about prayer are harder to describe in clear terms.  Like prayer, they’re elusive, like the experience of prayer itself.

By contrast, the Creed is straightforward: the Holy Spirit is “the Lord, the giver of life… who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified.”  But the words of the Our Father are more mysterious, and take more work to unpack.

There’s also another reason that it’s difficult to preach about prayer.  That is that prayer is deeply personal. While we all share the same Creed, no two Christians have the same experience in prayer — nor are they meant to. God’s grace meets each heart in a different way.

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One helpful way to understand prayer is to understand that God means for it to unfold in three stages: vocal prayer, meditation, and contemplation.

The first, vocal prayer, is the most familiar. It’s the prayers we speak aloud—such as the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Glory Be—or our own spontaneous words spoken to God from the heart.

In vocal prayer, we use human words to speak to God, just as we would speak to a loved one.

The second stage of prayer is meditation.  As with vocal prayers, meditation starts with the person who is praying.  That is to say, the person in each of these first two stages takes the initiative.  The third stage will be different.

Meditation is when we pray about God through our thoughts and imagination.  We might, for example, picture ourselves inside a Gospel story:  maybe putting ourselves in the place of St. John at the foot of the Cross on Good Friday, and seeing the scene as St. John did, and feeling as he did on Calvary.

If prayer were a conversation, we could say that the first two stages of vocal prayer and meditation use the mouth of the soul more than the ear.  In vocal prayers and meditation, we do most of the speaking.  The third stage will be different.

The third stage—contemplation—is where God takes the initiative.  God communicates Himself to the person praying.  Contemplation is not something you can produce.  It is God’s work in us.  It’s not a method or a technique; it’s a gift.

In contemplation, we don’t so much speak to God as rest in His presence:  this is a foretaste of Heaven, where the blessed behold God face to face.

Of course, we must dispose ourselves for this gift:  by turning away from sin and by offering our vocal prayers and meditations faithfully, with the right focus.  You might say that Jesus’ parable today helps bring focus to our prayer life:  focusing our will so it’s in closer conformity with God’s Will.

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Today’s Gospel begins with a simple line: “Jesus told His disciples a parable about the necessity to pray always without becoming weary.”

He tells us about a widow who keeps coming before a dishonest judge, begging for justice.

We’re not told exactly what her case is, only that she refuses to give up. And finally, the judge grants her request — not because he’s just, but because he’s tired of her persistence!

Now, Jesus isn’t comparing the unjust judge to God — He’s contrasting them.

If even a corrupt judge will do the right thing for the wrong reason, how much more will God, who is goodness itself, do the right thing for the right reason?

Still, the parable leaves a question hanging: If God already knows what we need, why does He ask us to keep praying — to persist in our petitions?

Here the Church gives us a guide in St. Teresa of Avila, whose feast the Church celebrated this past Wednesday, on October 15.

In her reflections on the Our Father, she wondered why Jesus didn’t simply teach us to pray, “Father, give us whatever is good for us.” Wouldn’t that be enough for an all-knowing God?

But she answers her own question. Jesus knows our weakness. We need to name our petitions one by one, so that we can reflect on them — to see whether what we’re asking truly aligns with God’s will.

St. Teresa writes that God may offer us a far better gift than what we asked for — but if it isn’t what we wanted, we might reject it. And so, He patiently teaches us that in our prayers we need to ask, to wait, and to trust.

The Lord calls us to pray always and not lose heart — not because He needs to hear our words, but because we need to learn how to listen.

Vocal prayer teaches us to speak about what is most important.  Meditation teaches us to imagine about what’s most important.  Contemplation is an experiences of what’s most important.  Contemplation teaches us to rest in the presence of God.

“Zelo zelatus sum pro Domino, Deo exercituum” (Vulgate, I Kings 19:10)

The Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time [C]
II Kings 5:14-17  +  2 Timothy 2:8-13  +  Luke 17:11-19
St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, Garden Plain, KS
October 12, 2025

In southwestern France, alongside the Pyrenees mountains, rests a small town called Lourdes.  In the year 1858, a fourteen-year-old girl named Bernadette began to see apparitions of a “small young lady” holding a rosary.  It was not until the sixteenth apparition that Bernadette learned the lady’s name.  The lady said to her: “I am the Immaculate Conception.”

Years after these apparitions of Our Blessed Mother, once the local bishop and civil authorities accepted Bernadette’s claims, a statue of the Immaculate Conception was commissioned.  It stands today in the center of the main square, in front of the great basilicas at Lourdes.

Preparations took a long time.  Bernadette insisted that every detail of the statue match what she had seen.  The artist grew exasperated — but Bernadette was insistent.

Among the many details that Bernadette corrected was the rosary the Lady held.  The artist had given her a five-decade rosary.  But Bernadette explained that the Lady’s rosary had six decades —the form known as the Carmelite Rosary.

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Many Catholics today don’t realize there is such a thing as a six-decade rosary, or that it’s been prayed for centuries.  The five-decade form — the Dominican Rosary — is more familiar, but both are beautiful ways of honoring Our Lady and meditating on the mysteries of our Lord Jesus Christ and His Blessed Mother.

The point is this: there is not just one single form of the Rosary.  The Church does not regulate the Rosary in the same way she regulates the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  If someone prays the six-decade Carmelite Rosary instead of the Dominican Rosary — that’s fine.  If someone wishes to read a Scripture verse before each decade — that’s fine.  If a person prays the Luminous Mysteries on Thursdays — that’s fine, also.

The form is not essential.  What is essential is to pray the Rosary.

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The Carmelite Rosary, for example, adds one extra mystery to each set of mysteries.  These additional mysteries focus on Mary’s unique share in salvation history:

the extra Joyful Mystery is Mary’s Immaculate Conception;

the extra Luminous Mystery is Jesus’ obedience to Mary and Joseph in their home at Nazareth;

the extra Sorrowful Mystery is the body of Jesus being taken down from the Cross and placed in the arms of His Mother;

and the extra Glorious Mystery is the loving patronage of Our Lady of Mount Carmel as the mother of each of us who belong to the Church.

The Carmelite Rosary reminds us that Mary’s life is inseparably joined to her Son’s mission — and that her prayers and example always draw us closer to Him.

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During this month of October, the Church encourages all Christians to deepen their devotion to Our Blessed Mother through the prayer of the Rosary.  Our Lady’s side altar is beautifully decorated this month — a reminder of that invitation to pray the Rosary.

Now, in our modern world, many people find it difficult to make time for prayer.  But we also have modern tools today that can help.

Many Catholics use prayer resources on their phones or tablets—digital aids that offer audio Rosaries, reflections on Scripture, and guides to the teachings of the Faith.  When used well, technology can make ordinary moments in life holy.  This can be the time that we spend driving, walking, or working.  When used wisely, tech can turn these occasions into moments for prayer and reflection.

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Venerable Sister Lucia, one of the visionaries of Fatima, said late in her life:  “All people of good will can — and must — say the Rosary every day.”

She explained that if God, through Our Lady, had asked us to go to Mass and receive Holy Communion every day, many would rightly say, “That’s not possible.”  This for some would be because of distance from a church, while for others because of health, family, or work.  But, she said, the Rosary is within everyone’s reach.

The Rosary can be prayed by rich and poor, wise and simple, great and small.  It can be said alone or with others, in church or at home, on a walk, in a vehicle, or even while rocking a baby’s cradle.

Sister Lucia offered this beautiful thought:  “God, who is our Father and understands better than we do the needs of His children, chose to stoop to the simple, ordinary level of all of us in asking for the daily recitation of the Rosary, in order to smooth for us the way to Him.”

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So pray the Rosary each day.

We need to pray it with love, with confidence, and with perseverance.  Through the Rosary, we join our sinful hearts to Mary’s Immaculate Heart, and through Mary, we draw closer to the Sacred Heart of her Son.

“Zelo zelatus sum pro Domino, Deo exercituum” (Vulgate, I Kings 19:10)