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)

The Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time [C]
Habakkuk 1:2-3;2:2-4  +  2 Timothy 1:6-8, 13-14  +  Luke 17:5-10
St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, Andale, KS
October 5, 2025

“… bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God.”

St. Paul is challenging us when he commands us in today’s Second Reading to bear our fair share of hardship.  It’s a challenge made more difficult by the fact that we’re surrounded by a culture steering us in the opposite direction:  that is, towards more and more comfort.

“… bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God.”

There are two parts to what St. Paul is saying here.

First, he’s commanding you who call yourselves Christians to “bear your share of hardship for the gospel”.  That’s the challenge.

But the second part of St. Paul’s command offers us hope, because he doesn’t say that we have to bear our hardship alone, in isolation.  Instead, we’re meant to bear our share of hardship for the Gospel “with the strength that comes from God.”

When St. Paul refers to “the strength that comes from God”, he’s talking about grace.  Human effort—that is, human strength—and God’s grace—that is, divine strength—are always meant to go hand-in-hand.  You cannot be an authentic Christian without both hard human effort and God’s free grace both working together within your soul.  If you try to get to Heaven only by your own hard work, without turning to God for His grace, not only will you not get to Heaven, but you will become very hardened and bitter.

On the other hand, if you try to get to Heaven only by God’s grace, without lifting a finger to work hard to cooperate with God’s providential will for your life, not only will you not get to Heaven, but you will become lazy and think that it’s everyone else’s job to care for you and your needs.  You cannot be an authentic Christian without both hard human effort and God’s free grace, both at work within your soul.

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Given all that as background, consider one specific problem in the Christian life.  Reflect on this problem in light of the fact that every October the Church calls each of us to consider more seriously the Church’s pro-life mandate.

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One way that Christians often over-simplify the spiritual life, and make it less than what God intends, is to think that the spiritual life is simply about “staying away from mortal sin”.  A well-meaning Christian might say to himself, “As long as I stay away from mortal sin, I’m on my way to heaven.”

Obviously, it’s incredibly important to stay away from mortal sin:  we might say it’s foundational.  But like with a house, you only build a foundation in order to put something on top of it.  When someone looks at a house, the foundation had better be there, and be strong, or the house is not going to be there when the going gets tough.  But when someone looks at a house, they don’t look at the foundation.  In the same way, when we die, and God judges our soul, the foundation had better be there.  But that’s not what God’s going to be looking for.

Here’s the question:  What are you building on top of the foundation?  Above and beyond staying away from mortal sin, you are called to choose among many good options in life, and do the greatest amount of good that you can during the years of your earthly life.  This is one of the reasons for using the corporal and spiritual works of mercy in order to make an examination conscience, along with also using the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes to make an examination of conscience.

So when Jesus judges your soul after you die, he’s going to ask, “What did you do for the least of my brethren?”  “Did you have faith enough to see me, Jesus, when you looked at the hungry, the thirsty, the naked and the homeless?  Did you—so that others might know Me—instruct the ignorant, give counsel to the doubtful and comfort to the sorrowful, admonish the sinner, and pray for the living and the dead?”

Do not define your life, and your faith, by what you don’t do, saying, “I don’t miss Mass on Sundays and Holy Days.  I don’t break the big Commandments.”  These statements begin with the word “I”.

The life lived in faith, that Christ calls us more deeply into, is shaped by the sacrifices that we do make for others.  It’s not about what “I” “don’t do”.  Instead, it’s about what is done, for others.

Here we see what it means to be “pro-life”.  I’m not pro-life simply because I’ve never had an abortion, or encouraged someone else to do so, or co-operated with someone who committed abortion.  Viewing our faith that way is like saying that I’m a patriotic American because I’ve never flown an airplane into a skyscraper.

But a patriot isn’t someone who does not harm his country.  A patriot is someone who does make sacrifices for his country.  The men and women of our military who are overseas, in hostile territory:  those persons are patriots.  They set the standard for the rest of us to live up to as Americans.  Maybe we can only fly a flag outside our homes or businesses, or send care packages, or pray rosaries for the members of our Armed Forces, but those sacrifices will make a difference.

Likewise, God calls each Christian to be pro-life.  During this month of October, you are called by God to reflect seriously upon what sacrifices you will make to defend the right of the unborn to live.  How will you do what Saint Paul encourages Timothy in the Second Reading to do:  to “bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God?”

The Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time [C]
Amos 6:1,4-7 + 1 Timothy 6:11-16 + Luke 16:19-31
St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, Garden Plain, KS
September 28, 2025

“When the poor man died, he was carried away by angels to the bosom of Abraham.”

It’s been my experience that brothers and sisters do not like to share.  Of course, parents, through the virtue of prudence, try to teach their children to share.  When I was growing up, one of the ways my parents did this was interesting.  Our parents had us share names.  Our parents gave the same middle initial to all five of their children.  They gave the same middle name to both their daughters:  Marie.  Then they gave the same middle name to each of their three sons:  Michael.

In CCD when I was a boy, whenever we were asked to study one of our patron saints, I always chose my first name.  Maybe I didn’t want to learn about the patron saint that I had to share with my brothers.  Not until I was older did I become more grateful to my parents for giving me St. Michael the Archangel as one of my patron saints.

St. Michael’s feast day is Monday, September 29th.  St. Michael is a saint many of us do not turn to often enough.  He’s a saint that many of us might not know much about.  At the end of today’s homily we’ll pray together the Prayer to St. Michael, asking his protection, and asking him to help us imitate him.  But first, we need to consider some of the Church’s teachings about this great saint.

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Sacred Tradition identifies St. Michael as the one who—at the beginning of creation—led the good angels against the evil angels, banishing the evil angels to hell.  Sometimes those who don’t understand Jewish and Christian tradition, especially those influenced by New Age teachings, think of God and satan as opposites, similar to the Eastern notion of yin and yang.  Maybe these people have watched too many Star Wars movies, and think that God and the devil are equal in power, balancing each other as light and dark forces in the universe.

The truth is that God transcends all of creation, including all of the evil angels and all of the good angels.  If the devil as the chief fallen angel has an opposite, it would be St. Michael the Archangel.  You know, the literal meaning of the name “Michael” is actually a rhetorical question.  The name “Michael” is a question which means, “Who is like God?”  The answer, of course, is “No one”, yet all the fallen angels in their pride refuse to accept this truth.  Each of the fallen angels believes that he can be the equal of God.  Unfortunately, each of us does the same every time we choose sin over and above God.

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So why is the Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel an important prayer for us to pray?  There are at least two good reasons for praying the Prayer to St. Michael, whether you pray it after Holy Mass, at the end of your Rosary, with your night prayers, or at any time day or night when you are in need.

The first reason is to ask for St. Michael’s protection.  Each of us individually, and our families and our parish family collectively, need the protection of the holy angels.  That’s one of the chief reasons why God created the angels in the first place:  to protect God’s chosen People. (Two other reasons are to praise God in the Heavenly Liturgy, and to serve as messengers to those on earth.)

For several decades now in the Church, the angels have been largely ignored.  Some even consider a belief in angels to be a quaint custom from the Middle Ages that’s best left forgotten.  However, you may have noticed after the new translation of the Roman Missal started to be used in 2011, that the holy angels are more prominently mentioned again in the prayers of Holy Mass.  For example, in several of the Prefaces to the Eucharistic Prayer, right before we sing the “Holy, Holy, Holy,” the priest concludes his prayer to God the Father by saying:  “And so, with Angels and Archangels, with Thrones and Dominions, and with all the Hosts and Powers of Heaven, we sing the hymn of your glory….”

Every Christian ought to know about the nine Choirs or Orders of angels.  Every Christian ought to pray to the holy angels, including St. Michael and each person’s Guardian Angel.  But in addition to praying to St. Michael for the sake of his protection, we also ought to pray to him because each of us ought to imitate those holy angels who serve mankind.  This leads to the second reason to pray to St. Michael:  in order that we might imitate his example.  As an illustration, consider today’s Gospel passage.

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In the parable we just heard, Jesus preaches what’s commonly called the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus.  But that name for the parable, like all the names of the parables in the four Gospel accounts, are modern inventions.  Jesus never gave a name to any of His parables.  In the case of today’s parable, the common name for the parable is misleading.

In the first line of today’s Gospel passage, the evangelist tells us that Jesus preached this parable to the Pharisees who surrounded Him.  This is important for understanding this parable.  The Pharisees are not symbolized by either the rich man or Lazarus.  Who in today’s parable symbolize the Pharisees?  The five brothers of the rich man symbolize the Pharisees.  When Abraham declares, “If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead”, the clear reference is to the Pharisees not being persuaded by Jesus’ future resurrection from the dead.

Of course, Jesus is wanting the Pharisees to accept now the graces that God is offering them, even if God’s graces come to them through simple and humble messengers sent by God.  Just as the rich man during his life on earth failed to lead his five brothers to God, so each of us has a choice about whether or not to be a simple and humble messenger to others.  Or in other words, each of us needs to be a human angel—metaphorically speaking—because the word “angel” literally means a “messenger”.  Whether we intend to or not, we send messages to others all the time.  But do the messages that we send to others communicate God’s kindness, mercy, compassion, and forbearance?  Or their opposites?

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Today’s parable illustrates the second reason to pray to St. Michael:  as a reminder to us to be angels in our own place in life.  God calls us to be messengers of God’s goodness, as the rich man in today’s parable failed to be.  St. John Henry Newman wrote a meditation stressing this calling that each of us has.  Here are just two sections of it:

     “God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another.  I have my mission—I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next.

     “I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons.  He has not created me for naught.  I shall do good.  I shall do His work.  I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place while not intending it—if I do but keep His Commandments.”

With that in mind, please join me in kneeling and praying the Prayer to St. Michael:

St. Michael the Archangel,
defend us in battle.
Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray,
and do thou,
O Prince of the heavenly hosts,
by the power of God,
thrust into hell Satan,
and all the evil spirits,
who prowl about the world
seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

St. Michael Vanquishing Satan by Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino [1483-1520]

The Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time [C]
Amos 8:4-7 + 1 Timothy 2:1-8 + Luke 16:1-13
St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, Garden Plain, KS
September 21, 2025

“You cannot serve both God and mammon.”  This sentence is sometimes falsely thought to mean that you cannot have both God and money in your life.  In other words, this false interpretation says that there’s a sort of competition in your life between God and money which is a zero-sum game.  To use a visual metaphor:  this false interpretation says that there’s a see-saw in your life, and that God and money are sitting at opposite ends of the see-saw.  If one goes up, the other goes down.  The holier you are, the less money you will have, and the more money you have, the less holy you must be.  This interpretation of Jesus’ words is false.

In fact, our spiritual well-being and our financial well-being are not in competition with each other.  Rather, when Jesus plainly tells you that “You cannot serve both God and mammon”, the key is the word “serve”.  “You cannot serve both God and mammon.”  You can serve God, or you can serve mammon.  But you cannot serve both.  You can have both in your life.  You just cannot serve both.  The key is that simple word “serve”.

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One of the most recited prayers cited by Jewish people throughout the centuries is called the Shema.  It’s from the fifth book of the Old Testament, the Book of Deuteronomy.  This brief prayer is only three sentences long.  Here is the Shema:  “The Lord is our God, the Lord alone!  Therefore, you shall love the Lord, your God, with your whole heart, and with your whole soul, and with your whole strength.  Take to heart these words which I command you today” [Deuteronomy 6:4-6].  This prayer helps us understand that to love someone is to serve her.  This is true in our relationship with God, as well:  to love God is to serve Him.

The beautiful thing about serving God is that through this form of love, we become more like Him.  After all, “God is love” [1 John 4:8], St. John taught the first Christians.  So when we love God by serving Him, the more we serve Him faithfully, the more we love, and so the more we become like God. This is true because of a basic metaphysical principle: a person becomes like that which he loves.

By contrast, what happens when you try to serve money?  One simple way to get at an answer is to ask yourself whether your self-image goes up and down with the amount of money that you have.  Do you feel worse when you lose a significant amount of money?  Do you feel better about yourself when you gain a significant amount of money?  If so, then there is a certain likeness between your money and you.  As the money in your possession grows, so you grow.  As the money in your possession diminishes, so you diminish.  This is a false form of love, and a false serving:  a false servanthood.  It is a love of something that is beneath you, and so when you love money you debase yourself.

So we need to ask:  what is financial wealth for?  The answer is:  financial wealth is a means by which to serve others:  the Other who is God, and the others around us on earth, who are our neighbors.  That doesn’t mean that the wealthy person has to give it all away, like St. Francis of Assisi.  Despite what some socialists might say, there’s nothing inherently immoral about the action of accumulating wealth.  The sin lies in not using one’s wealth for others, especially within the setting of one’s vocation.

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So with that as a backdrop, consider the guidance of Holy Mother Church.  Consider her precept about personal finances.  As you know, there are five “Precepts of the Church”, listed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church in sections 2041-2043.  The fifth Precept of the Church is to provide for the material needs of the Church, each according to his abilities.  In a single word, this is the Church’s precept to “tithe”.  The word “tithe” literally refers to giving one-tenth of one’s income.  The Diocese of Wichita does break this ten percent down into two parts:  eight percent given to one’s parish, and two percent given to any charitable group of one’s choice (which can be one’s parish, or which can even be a secular charity that follows sound moral principles).

Some Christians are unaware that tithing is a practice not only rooted in Scripture, but also in the life of the Church and her saints.  In the Old Testament, tithing was seen among the Israelites as a giving of one’s “choicest first fruits” [Exodus 23:19].  This phrase—“choicest first fruits”—comes from the Book of Exodus.  This is an important image to consider spiritually, because it reveals to us that tithing is not merely a Precept of the Church, but also a spiritual exercise:  a practice that stretches the soul.

The image of “choicest first fruits” explains two things about tithing as a spiritual exercise.  First, what does the word “choicest” tell us?  This word, if you’ll pardon a mixing of metaphors, insists that we give God not the rump roast, but the sirloin.  Tithing is giving to God our best, not our leftovers.

But even more demanding is the call to give our “first fruits”.  If you were a farmer harvesting his crops, then your “first fruits” would be given at the beginning of the harvest, when there’s more harvesting to come.  If you were to give God your tithe from the first day of harvest, you would have no way of being sure that Mother Nature wouldn’t wipe out the rest of the crops that night, leaving you with nothing for yourself.  Nonetheless, that’s exactly the sort of faith that the Bible describes in commanding the giving of one’s “choicest first fruits”.

Here are some practical suggestions. If you don’t already know, then sit down and calculate what percentage of your monthly income you donate to the church each month. If it’s not yet 8%, increase it next month by one percent, and every so often, increase it by another one percent until you reach 8 or 10 percent. Along the way, with paper and pen look at your monthly expenditures and separate your wants from your needs, and also make sure to pay credit card balances in full every month.

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Our spiritual lives and our finances are not in competition with each other.  The chief threat that finances pose to our spiritual lives arises when we start serving money, instead of making money serve us (or more specifically, making money serve our need to give to God and neighbor).  When we make the sacrifices needed so that our finances serve our needs rather than our desires, then we’ll be more free to serve the Lord with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.

St. Lawrence Distributing Alms by Fra Angelico [c. 1395-1455]

The Exaltation of the Holy Cross
Numbers 21:4-9 + Philippians 2:6-11 + John 3:13-17
St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, Garden Plain, KS
September 14, 2025

In the Catholic Church, some feasts fall on the same date every year.  St. Patrick’s Day, for example, is always March 17th.  Christmas Day is always December 25th.  The Assumption of our Blessed Mother is always August 15th.

Other feasts fall on a different date each year.  These feasts include Easter Sunday, the First Sunday of Advent, and Pentecost.

Today the Church celebrates a feast that is always celebrated on September 14th.  Because it’s always celebrated on that date, of course it rarely falls on a Sunday.  So the average Catholic does not have many experiences of being at Mass on this feast day.  That’s unfortunate, because today’s feast is like a magnifying glass that focuses our sight on the mystery of our Faith that’s at the heart of what it means to be saved.

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Today’s feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross has an historical background to it, apart from the historical event that took place on Good Friday atop Mount Calvary.  The actual cross on which Jesus was crucified was lost for many years after the death and resurrection of Jesus.  That’s not surprising, since pagan Rome ruled the Holy Land at the time that Jesus walked on this earth. The crosses were their “property”, which they used to kill those condemned as criminals.

However, some three hundred years after the events of Holy Week, the Roman Emperor Constantine became Christian, and by extension, the Roman Empire was—metaphorically—baptized.  Saint Helena, the mother of Constantine, in the year 326 discovered the cross on which Jesus was crucified, and she found it in the tomb where Jesus had been buried.

So the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which you can still visit today, was then built on the site where the cross was found.  Today’s feast marks the dedication of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in 335.  Although the building was consecrated on September 13, the next day in continuing ceremonies, the cross of Jesus was brought outside the church and raised high so that the faithful could pray before it. Then the faithful came forward to venerate it.  If this sounds familiar, it’s because our Good Friday customs of the priest processing with and raising up a replica of the cross, and then the laity venerating the cross comes from that historical event in the fourth century.  However, all that’s just historical background.  The heart of today’s feast begins with what happened on Good Friday some two thousand years ago, and the means by which God achieved our salvation from sin.

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You know, one of the technologies that’s come to shape our world in recent years is drone technology.  Like every human creation, this tech can be used for good or evil.  In war, drones can be used by invading militaries to cause massive destruction and death.

But drones can also be used for beneficial purposes.  For example, in business drones can help in the conduct of geographical surveys by giving a view of things from above.  Likewise, you may have appreciated on a personal level drone footage taken of the Grand Canyon or the Mississippi River.

The perspective is what drones bring to the table.  Drones help us to see a familiar sight from a new perspective.

But have you ever seen drone footage of a church from above?  It can be revealing.  If you were to look, for example, at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, you would notice that the physical church building was designed and constructed in the shape of a cross.  St. Peter’s Basilica has a head, two arms, and a long body, just like the crucifix that hangs in your home, and just like the crucifix that hangs in this church at the top of the high altar.  Of course, only very large churches are large enough to be built in that shape, which is called “cruci-form”.  However, it’s not only buildings that are meant to be formed in the shape of a cross.

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You are meant to be formed in the shape of a cross.  You, as a Christian, are meant to be shaped by Christ into the shape of a cross.  And you are meant to actively shape your life into the shape of a cross.

This doesn’t happen in a physical sense, of course.  It happens when your thoughts, words, and actions reflect the love that Christ poured out from His Sacred Heart on the Cross on Good Friday.  Jesus did not have to die on the Cross in order to redeem fallen man.  Jesus is God, and so He is All-Powerful.  He could have redeemed fallen man in any one of an infinite number of ways.  But He chose to die on the Cross in order to forgive our sins.  Jesus chose the Cross as the means of our salvation in order to reveal the depth of His love for fallen man, and He wants you to chose the Cross as the shape of your daily life.

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Now, no matter how old you are, whether nine or ninety, God is calling you right now to shape your life in the form of the Cross.  Of course, you already make many sacrifices each day as part of your vocation:  for many if not most of you, as spouses, parents, and grandparents.  Yet in addition to those sacrifices of thought, word, and action that reflect the love of Christ from the Cross, there are other, very simple ways in which you can shape your daily life.  I only have time to mention one of them, but if there were more time, I’d also speak about the simple prayer called The Sign of the Cross, and how important it is to pray it intentionally.  I’d also speak, if I had more time, about the importance of having crucifixes that have been blessed in the main rooms of our homes.

However, since time is short, just consider Friday penance as one way of shaping your life in the form of the Cross.  A lot of Catholics have never even been taught that every Friday of the year—not just during Lent—every Catholic is obligated to carry out some type of penitential sacrifice.  In olden days, the Church specified what type of penance this was to be:  that is, years ago, every Catholic every Friday of the year was obligated to abstain from eating meat.

Today, by contrast, each Catholic gets to decide what type of penitential sacrifice to carry out on a given Friday.  It can be abstaining from meat, or praying the Stations of the Cross, or reading from one of the four Gospels the account of what happened on Good Friday.  Nonetheless, regardless of which type of penance is chosen each week, every Catholic has the obligation each Friday to carry out some type of penitential sacrifice, in recognition of what Jesus sacrificed for us on Good Friday.

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God is eternal.  He’s outside time, and so He has a divine perspective from which to see all of creation, and all of time, including what you and I call the past, the present, and the future.  From this divine perspective, as God looks “down” from Heaven, He can see the shape of your life stretched out from the day you were conceived to the day on which you will die.  He can see whether the shape of your life on this earth is the shape of the Cross. God asks a lot from you as a Christian.  He sets the bar very high when it come to what He expects from you.  To put it simply, He expects your life to reflect the life of Jesus.  He expects the love in your heart to be the love of Jesus’ Sacred Heart.  Of course, that’s not humanly possible unless God’s grace infuses your life, in order to empower your thoughts, words, and actions.  God gifts us His grace through the Cross of Jesus Christ, and none of His graces are better suited to shaping our lives to the Cross than the graces of the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist.

The Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time [C]
Wisdom 9:13-18  +  Philemon 9-10,12-17  +  Luke 14:25-33
St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, Garden Plain, KS
September 7, 2025

“… when things are in Heaven, who can search them out?”

Last Sunday’s Scripture readings pointed our attention to the virtue of humility.  Today the Scriptures point to another virtue.  This virtue helps us know what’s best for us, and helps us figure out how to achieve it.  The author of today’s First Reading rhetorically asks:  “Who can know God’s counsel, or who can conceive what the Lord intends?  For the deliberation of mortals are timid, and unsure are our plans.”

Use your imagination to picture the following scene, which can help us understand this virtue better.  Image that someone—let’s call him Mr. X—takes you to Colorado to the base of a 12,000 foot high mountain.  He tells you that nine other people have also been brought to the base of the same mountain, at different points around the base.  The person who reaches the mountain’s summit first will receive $100 million.  The person who makes it to the top second will receive $10 million, and the third will receive one million dollars.  When you agree to participate, Mr. X hands you a backpack, and leaves you there, looking up at the mountain’s peak.

The question is:  what do you do first?  Will you immediately put on the backpack and start climbing the face of the mountain in front of you?  Is that the best way to start, to “just do it”?  Or would asking yourself some questions first make more sense?

Maybe you need to ask yourself if the face of the mountain that you see in front of you is the best way to the top?  Maybe you need to ask what’s in the backpack?  Maybe there’s a set of maps inside, which detail every angle of the mountain, and reveal that if you walk along the base to the northwest for twenty miles, you’ll find a tram that offers an express ride to the top?

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Now, that mountain is just an illustration.  The point is that in this imaginary scene, like in our life on earth, the virtue of prudence helps us reach our goal.  If you were an impulsive person, and just shot straight up the mountain on your own two feet, you might be wasting a lot of time and energy.  If you were to stop first and ask yourself some questions, you might save a lot of time and energy.  The same is true in the Christian life.  The virtue of prudence is one of the chief moral virtues that can help in this regard.

“… when things are in Heaven, who can search them out?”  “Who can know God’s counsel, or who can conceive what the Lord intends?  For the deliberation of mortals are timid, and unsure are our plans.”

The answer to these questions, posed by the author of today’s First Reading, is seen more clearly in the light of the virtue of prudence.

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So to shift our attention to the Christian life, consider a question that’s related to that imaginary mountain, the top of which you want to reach as soon as possible.  Consider this question, but be careful, because it’s a trick question.

“When you pray, should you pray for a good thing?”  The answer is “No.”  Most people would answer “Yes” if they were asked this question.  But they would be wrong.  The reason why we should not pray for a good thing is connected to the virtue of prudence.

Our Catholic Faith teaches that the moral virtue of prudence enables us to do two things:  first, to see our “true good” in a given circumstance; and second, to choose the means to reach this “true good”.^[1]  The second of these is like the means by which we ascend that imaginary mountain.  There are difficult means to reach the summit of the mountain, and then there are simple means.  The moral virtue of prudence helps us choose the best means for reaching our goal.

However, what is our goal?  Is it just any old goal?  No, the moral virtue of prudence helps us choose our “true good”.

So what is this “true good”?  This “true good” is not just the good as opposed to the bad.  The true good… is the best good, out of many good choices.  The true good… is the best good, chosen from among many good choices.  That’s what the virtue of prudence is all about.

When we are little, our parents teach us to make moral choices by recognizing right from wrong; good from bad; what is holy from what is evil.  This is the first stage of moral wisdom.  This is the foundation of making moral choices.  It’s essential that we understand that difference.  In fact, to put it bluntly, this difference is the difference between Heaven and hell.  But as a Christian, you have to build upon that foundation.

The foundation of Christian morality is about good versus bad.  We build on that by hearing God call us beyond only choosing what is good.  God wants us to do far more:  He wants us to choose what is best over and above what is merely good.  It’s in this sense that God does not want you to choose a good thing:  God wants you to choose the best thing.  “Good” is not good enough.  Only “the best” is good enough for God, and for you.

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This morning at the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV canonized two new saints.  The younger of the two, St. Carlo Acutis, died at the age of fifteen from leukemia in the year 2006.  The older of the two, St. Pier Giorgio Frassati, died at the age of 24 from polio in the year 1925.

St. Pier Giorgio was a great outdoorsman.  He especially loved hiking in the mountains, and leading groups through the Italian Alps.  A phrase he often spoke became his motto in life:  “Verso l’alto!”, which you can translate into English as “to the heights”.

That motto wasn’t just about scaling the Italian Alps.  It’s about the spiritual and moral life, and seeing God as the summit of our life.  Each moral and spiritual choice of our life on earth either brings us one step closer to God, leads us downwards, or leaves us stationary, treading water, so to speak.  God desires that your whole life on earth—every day, and every thought, word, and action—is motivated by a desire for that summit.  “Verso l’alto” means recognizing that God Himself is our truest good, and that at every given moment, there is a path for us to discern which can best lead us to that truest good.

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[1] So prudence guides both our human intellect (in seeing the “true good”), and our human will (in choosing the “true good.  Prudence is really the most practical of all the virtues, because it guides the marriage of our intellect and will in daily life.

The Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time [C]
Sirach 3:17-18,20,28-29   +   Hebrews 12:18-19,22-24   +   Luke 14:1,7-14
St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, Garden Plain, KS
August 31, 2025

During the three years leading up to His Passion and Death, Jesus taught throughout the Holy Land.  All four of the Gospel accounts show Jesus as a teacher, but St. Matthew in his Gospel account highlights Jesus’ teaching.

Sometimes Jesus teaches by means of short parables, and at other times by long sermons.  The first and greatest of Jesus’ sermons is His Sermon on the Mount, which takes up three of the 28 chapters of St. Matthew’s account of the Gospel.  This sermon, which you can find in Chapters 5, 6 and 7 of Matthew, makes for excellent spiritual reading.

Jesus, like any good teacher, knows that a teacher’s first words are key.  The first words that a teacher speaks to his students—at the start of a school year, or on any given morning when class begins—can set the tone and set the stage for all that’s going to be taught.  Jesus makes use of this principle.

So what are the very first words that Jesus speaks in His first and greatest public sermon, the Sermon on the Mount?  “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.”[1]

These words are the foundation of Jesus’ teaching, upon which the rest of the Sermon on the Mount is built.  And since the Sermon on the Mount is the greatest of Jesus’ sermons, you could argue that these words are the foundation of all Jesus’ teachings:  “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.”

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So what exactly is Jesus referring to when He talks about being “poor in spirit”?  What does your daily life look like if you are “poor in spirit”?  The fourth-century bishop St. Gregory of Nyssa explained that when Jesus preached about “poverty in spirit”, He was speaking about humility. Specifically, St. Gregory wrote that Jesus “speaks of voluntary humility as ‘poverty in spirit’; the Apostle [Paul] gives an example of God’s poverty when he says:  ‘For your sakes He became poor.’” [2]

So the key to reflecting upon today’s Scriptures is that humility is a kind of poverty.

In that quote of St. Gregory there are two points to help us focus on today’s Scriptures.

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The first point is to recognize the importance of the word “voluntary”.  Jesus teaches us that voluntary humility is poverty of spirit.  Jesus is not speaking about the kind of humility that’s forced upon us.  Poverty in spirit is only the kind of humility that we freely choose.

In today’s Gospel passage, “Jesus went to dine at the home of one of the leading Pharisees”.  It’s interesting:  at this home, everyone is observing everyone else.  The evangelist tells us that, on the one hand, “the people there were observing [Jesus] carefully”.  But on the other hand, Jesus tells His parable “to those who had been invited” because Jesus had noticed “how they were choosing the places of honor at the table”.  They were choosing, not humility, but humility’s opposite:  self-promotion.

Within Jesus’ parable, He shows us how there are two kinds of humility.  Jesus begins by describing the kind of humility that’s forced upon oneself.  Jesus describes someone seating himself “in the place of honor”, and then being forced by the host to embarrass himself by moving down to “the lowest place”.  This is what’s called “humble pie”:  involuntary humility.  Life serves up to each of us lots of helpings of humble pie.  Humble pie is not the humility that Jesus wants us to cultivate, although we can respond to humble pie in a virtuous manner.

But then, Jesus describes the kind of humility that can be virtuous when we cultivate it.  What does Jesus tell us to do?  “[T]ake the lowest place[,] so that when the host comes to you[,] he may say, ‘My friend, move up to a higher position.’”  In other words, practice the virtue of voluntary humility.  Don’t get frustrated with how often life serves you “humble pie”.  Take the initiative:  practice the virtue of voluntary humility, and you’ll find yourself eating much less humble pie, or at least, having less spiritual indigestion from the humble pie that life serves you.

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Still, even if we understand the need to practice humility voluntarily, there’s a problem.  It’s very difficult to do.  As in Jesus’ parable, there’s often embarrassment connected to acting humbly.  To take the initiative of voluntary humility is difficult.  To humble oneself before, not only God, but also others is difficult.  How can we overcome the difficulties connected with acting humbly?

The answer, of course, is Jesus.  The Apostle Paul gives us an example of God’s own voluntary poverty when Paul says to the Corinthians:  “For your sakes [Jesus] became poor.”  St. Paul is referring to God the Son leaving the riches of the Kingdom of Heaven, and entering our poor world within the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, assuming our frail human nature.  In terms of His human life, this was Jesus’ first act of voluntary humility.  We meditate on this first act of humility in the First Joyful Mystery of the Rosary:  the Annunciation.

But of course the reason that Jesus entered our sinful world was to offer His Body and Blood, soul and divinity for us on Calvary.  We meditate on this second act of humility in the Fifth Sorrowful Mystery of the Rosary:  the Crucifixion.

So Jesus gave us two great examples of humility:  both being conceived at the Annunciation, and dying on Calvary; both becoming human, and offering His humanity on the Cross.  But how could you or I possibly be strong enough to imitate such examples?  The answer is a third example of humility that Jesus offers us.

Maybe we ought to recall the rest of that verse from Second Corinthians that St. Gregory of Nyssa quotes.  Here’s the entire verse:

“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ[:]  that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that by His poverty you might become rich.”

It’s not the mere example of Jesus’ poverty that makes you rich.  It’s by entering into Jesus’ life—His Body and Blood, soul and divinity—that you become rich in God’s grace.  Only this grace can make you strong enough to practice the virtue of humility on a par with Jesus’ own humility.  This is only possible through the Eucharist, which Jesus instituted at His Last Supper.  We meditate on this third act of humility in the Fifth Luminous Mystery of the Rosary:  the Institution of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass at Jesus’ Last Supper, where the Son of God takes bread and wine and changes them into His very Self.

In today’s First Reading, Sirach counsels you to “[h]umble yourself the more, the greater you are”.  Through Baptism, you are a child of God.  So indeed you are.  That is a profoundly great vocation:  a demanding one.  To be faithful to that vocation, your humility must be the humility of God’s only-begotten Son.  Thanks be to God, He has called you as His child to the head of the Banquet Table of the Eucharist, to devoutly and humbly receive Jesus’ own life, so that He might truly live in you, and through each of your thoughts, words, and actions.

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[1] Matthew 5:3.

[2] Catechism of the Catholic Church 2546, quoting St. Gregory of Nyssa, De Beatitudinibus 1; cf. 2 Corinthians 8:9.