Videos

Journey with us through Lent as we reflect on Hosea’s call to return to the Lord. Today’s homily explores Salvador Dali’s powerful imagery from Dante’s Divine Comedy, contrasting Lucifer's isolation with the soul's path to purification.

Jesus told his disciples to take the log out of their own eye before they tried to take a splinter out of their neighbor's eye. If we do the work to purify our own vision in love and joy, St. Paul assures us that this labor will not be in vain.

Little children believe with their whole person, while adults tend to believe only with their minds. Perhaps this is why Jesus told his disciples that they had to receive the Kingdom of God as a little child. We can relearn as adults to follow our inner light and see the world more truly.

We cannot imagine the Reign of God, and yet we are invited into it every day, again and again, through our engagement with scripture, our service to one another, through liturgy, and through our call to the apostolic life. Let us live in the Reign of God, even though we cannot understand it.

Jesus told many parables of the Reign of God. As we listen to them, the Reign of God grows within us so that our actions naturally become reflections of the Kingdom.

Jesus is God's own Son. We are called to be children of God, and Jesus points the way to become such.

Saints Basil the Great and Gregory Nazianzen, who share this memorial, were great friends. Their friendship brought them each closer to God. Friends can bring us closer to God and friendship itself is a model of what our relationship should be with God.

As we begin a new liturgical year, the Prophet Jeremiah reminds us of God's promise to raise up for us "The Lord of Justice." Yet we are also reminded in the Gospel not to let the anxieties of life distract us from our duty to always stand on God's side, full of joy, vigilant for the cry of the poor, joining in spreading the message that our salvation is near.

St. Paul assures us that all who call on God will be heard. Yet we can only believe because we have been told. Christian life is inherently communal, and thus we celebrate in community the passing of the seasons, and our gratefulness to God.

Jesus spoke of the Kingdom of Heaven as being like the leaven in dough that, though small, can grow and take over the whole measure of flour. Our hearts can grow with the love of God, but sometimes they get frozen. Let yours grow, and perhaps use the pope's new encyclical on devotion to the Sacred Heart to help.

On this feast of Sts. Simon and Jude we read of Jesus choosing the apostles. Each of us are also called to become his followers and receive an epiclesis, a transformation by the Holy Spirit turning us into the Body of Christ so that we can join in Christ's mission.

Saints Cosmas and Damian knew that their martyrdom would spread sparks far and wide to ignite the faith of the Christian community and thus embraced their faith. Let their example and their prayers reignite your own faith this day. Even though all things might seem hopeless, they are not for nought with the help of God.