Sermon Central
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The Testimony Of The Saints
Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Aug 20, 2011 (message contributor)
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1. Queen Mother And Servant
Contributed on Aug 20, 2011
We call Mary Queen of Heaven because she was first the servant of God in imitation of the God who became servant of all
Let us confidently draw close to the throne of grace, that we may find mercy and discover grace at the time we need help. These words of the letter to the Hebrews–which were also incorporated into Archbishop Gomez’s coat of arms–were the keynotes to today’s celebration of ...read more
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2. Entering Through The Veil
Contributed on Jan 26, 2019
The gift we offer is the gift of ourselves, in Christ, for the Father to do with as He wills.
St. John Bosco 2019 St. Matthew records, in his passion narrative, an old tradition from the earliest days of the Church which is referred to in this letter to the Hebrews. The story tells us that when Our Lord died, there was an earthquake, and one of the results was the ripping of the Temple ...read more
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3. Imitating Christ, Poor, Humble And Meek
Contributed on Feb 2, 2019
In this age of countless people seeking nothing but pleasure and wealth, we need the spirit of St. Colette, the spirit of Jesus.
Thursday of 4th Sunday in Course 2019 Saint Colette of Corbie The letter to the Hebrews is a fairly long book in the New Testament, but much of it has the character of a sermon or homily. There are exhortations, particularly to regular attendance at the “assembly” or Eucharist. And here today, in ...read more
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4. Evangelization With Inculturation: Cyril And Methodius
Contributed on Feb 10, 2019
God’s intention continues to be to bring us together in His Church. “It is not good for man to be alone.”
Thursday of the 5th Week in Course 2019 Ss Cyril and Methodius After Pentecost, the Catholic Church was made up exclusively of Jews. In fact, for many years it was considered a Jewish cult. But Gentiles who had made a study of religion and who had become Jews or followers of Jews found the ...read more
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5. The Struggle Never Ends
Contributed on Feb 16, 2019
We humans think that we can be happiest when there is no struggle, when we can just coast. . .But that is not the state of society when there are still many who have not accepted and begun to live the call of Christ.
Thursday of the 6th Week in Course 2019 St. Peter Damian Life after original sin came into the human family is a continual struggle. The story of a great flood is found in more than one culture. Here in our first reading we see God establishing a covenant after the flood between Himself, Noah and ...read more
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6. Yes, A Church Leader Must Have A Sense Of Humor
Contributed on Feb 23, 2019
We are told to have salt in us. Salt was used in the ancient world, and occasionally today, to preserve meat from corruption. So if we have spiritual salt, we will be preserved against that kind of corrupt thought and behavior.
Thursday of the 7th Week in Course 2019 St. Hilarius Today we have a rare treat because of the late date of Ash Wednesday and Easter. We get the rare festival of St. Hilarius, about whom I will speak in a moment. By now, most years, we are deep into Lent, and so the saints’ days are suppressed in ...read more
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7. Our Calling To Make Holy Families
Contributed on Apr 6, 2019
Our task in our families is to become saints ourselves and to nurture our loved ones to sainthood.
Tuesday of 5th Week in Lent 2019 St. Waltrude A number of years ago I was privileged to teach a speech course to some deacons in training, and I asked them to speak for a few minutes on their thoughts on the realization that they were mortal–that the life they now lead would end. I think I said ...read more
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8. Matthias And Our Witness To A Culture Of Death
Contributed on May 11, 2019
Our mission, through prayer, fasting and almsgiving, and through a constant witness to the Truth of Jesus Christ, is to share the love of God with as many as we can, so that we will all be together in eternity at the awesome banquet of the Lamb of God.
Tuesday of the 4th Week in Easter 2019 St. Matthias Today we remember the outcome of one of the great human tragedies–the treason and suicide of the apostle Judas. Now we don’t know from the magisterium what happened to Judas after he died. Did he have a moment of clarity that caused him to repent ...read more
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9. So What Really Is Sin, Righteousness And Judgement?
Contributed on May 25, 2019
The world thinks sin is anything they don’t like good people doing.
Tuesday of the 6th week in Easter 2019 I’m one of the folks who believes that lawyers are a bane on our existence until the day you need one, and then they are the best people on earth. In Jesus’s last sermon, in the upper room after the Last Supper, we hear that it’s better that Jesus ascended ...read more
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10. Let Us Go, Let Us Go To Heaven
Contributed on Jun 1, 2019
The Church continues the mission of Jesus Christ as one Body and is able to do so because of the prayer of that same Christ.
Tuesday of the 7th Week in Easter 2019 Sometimes it helps us to understand that the Roman world in the first century did not speak Latin all over, or write in Latin all over the place. Most of the writing was done in Greek. And the Bible that they used was the Old Testament, because the New ...read more
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11. Forgive, Love And Pray For Our Foes
Contributed on Jun 15, 2019
There is no other religion that is so bold as to require forgiveness of enemies, and even doing good for enemies.
Tuesday of 11th Week in Course 2019 Ss Mark and Marcellian Those who would reduce the status of Jesus Christ to that of a “nice guy who did good things and said nice things” should read this part of St. Matthew’s Gospel several times. Those who would relegate the Church to the scrap heap of ...read more
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12. The Narrow Gate And The Universal Love Of God
Contributed on Jun 22, 2019
The Church and her missionaries do all these things in response to the commands of Jesus to love even unbelievers as Jesus loves them, to do to others as they would want others to do to themselves
Tuesday of 12th Week in Course 2019 St. Dominic Henares, bishop If you look carefully at the long Biblical accounts of the life of Abraham–here identified as Abram before the Lord changed his name–you might wonder why God chose him. The answer is similar to the reply to the question “why does God ...read more
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13. Sodom, Gomorrah, Lot And St Otto
Contributed on Jun 29, 2019
Our prayer, “Save us, Lord, for we are perishing,” will always elicit a positive response from Our Savior. God never changes His mind.
Tuesday of the 13th Week in Course Many years ago–well before I was ordained--a parishioner came to me with a sad tale about her brother. He had been raised Catholic in a strong Catholic family but had fallen away from the faith. She was very despondent about the situation, so I reminded her about ...read more
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14. Take Up The Challenge And Do The Will Of God
Contributed on Jul 6, 2019
In this age, when Christians of all kinds are being ridiculed, harassed and threatened in many different ways, we need to look at the martyrs of the past two thousand years and take courage.
Tuesday of the 14th Week in Course 2019 Jacob ben Isaac was a cheat, a liar and a thief. You may recall from an earlier reading in Genesis that he lied, cheated and stole his older brother, Esau’s, first-born blessing. Then, wisely, he left town and took up with Laban, where he married two sisters ...read more
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15. O Gladsome Light
Contributed on Jul 13, 2019
The message of Christ is the only one that makes sense for the healing of our world in any age, but it’s not an easy one to hear and obey.
Tuesday of the 15th Week in Course 2019 Our Lady of Mt. Carmel and Saint Athenogenes Today is the Memorial of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, which commemorates the appearance of the Mother of Jesus to St. Simon Stock, an early Carmelite leader, and his reception of the Brown Scapular from her hands. So ...read more
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16. Bringing People And Churches Together
Contributed on Jul 20, 2019
In this day of conflict and disunion, we need to recover this sense that we are all one family of God, to dedicate ourselves to peaceful resolution of conflicts.
Tuesday of the 16th Week in Course 2019 St. Liborius I suppose like many Baby Boomers one of the most memorable films of my lifetime was the Cecile B DeMille epic The Ten Commandments. It was his second stab at commemorating the Exodus, and his only one both with sound and color. Who could forget ...read more
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17. Total Reliance On The Providence Of God
Contributed on Jul 27, 2019
What we need in life is purification, holiness, total reliance on Divine Providence
Tuesday of the 17th Week in Course 2019 Bl. Solanus Casey Today’s reading from the book of Exodus is taken from two consecutive chapters of the book, and so are really two related but separate situations. The first one shows the daily routine–if you can use that word about an encounter with God–of ...read more
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18. All Things Possible With God
Contributed on Aug 18, 2019
How many times do we need to see or hear God asking us to do some good thing for the spread of His kingdom?
Tuesday of the 20th Week in Course 2019 St. Bernard of Clairvaux If there is a critical message in our Scriptures today, it is something we see here and there in both Old and New Testaments: “with God all things are possible.” St. Luke records the angel Gabriel saying it to Mary in a double ...read more
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19. With Patience You Will Win Your Souls--And Others'
Contributed on Aug 24, 2019
Our prayers often look ineffective, but they are like dripping water on the rock of our heart and the stony hearts of other people for whom we pray.
Tuesday of the 21st Week in Course 2019 St. Monica St. Luke tells us in the sixteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles that on his second missionary journey, St. Paul went to familiar communities in Anatolia–Asia Minor–and intended to evangelize all of that huge area. But the Holy Spirit, the ...read more
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20. Lord, Bring Your Day To Dawn On Us
Contributed on Sep 1, 2019
In pretty much every age of the Church, things have looked so challenging that Catholics have prayed to God to make the Day of the Lord dawn.
Tuesday of 22nd Week in Course 2019 St. Gregory the Great Early Christians knew themselves to be the heirs of the promise God made to the people of Israel, and they looked forward to “the day of the Lord” in which God would act to redeem His people and make every thing that is wrong to be right. ...read more
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21. Canonized Or Not, All Are Called To Be Saints
Contributed on Sep 7, 2019
The slavery to sin that we all labor under for some part of our lives is destroyed by the infinite loving power of Christ.
Tuesday of 23rd week in course 2019 St. Agnes Tsao-Kou Ying We don’t become disciples of Jesus Christ on our own volition. We must be called to follow Christ. Some teachers have misunderstood this to mean that some are called and others are not called, and therefore are damned to perdition by ...read more
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22. The Encounter With Christ
Contributed on Sep 15, 2019
For the mystic Francis, "there is nothing but God."
St. Francis of Assisi, Stigmatic 2019 It was the encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ that gave us the miracle that was Saint Francis of Assisi. That personal relationship with Christ turned a hedonist into an ascetic, a wastrel into Il Poverello, a sinner into a saint. And, that, we must believe, ...read more
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23. Jesus Never Missed An Opportunity
Contributed on Sep 21, 2019
Jesus never missed an opportunity to use daily events as a way to reach the hearts of His listeners.
Tuesday of the 25th Week in Course This short Gospel given to us by St. Luke has parallel stories in the other Synoptics, and the amount of ink that has been spilled over the years by interpreters must run to the thousands of liters. I have had experience of anti-Catholic acquaintances throwing ...read more
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24. Our Face Set Toward Jerusalem
Contributed on Sep 28, 2019
Athanasius taught that God became human so that humans could be made divine. But even the baptized struggle with the profound negative impacts of original sins in our physical, emotional and spiritual lives.
Tuesday of the 26th Week in Course 2019 St. Therese of Liseaux The connection between our two Scripture readings today is stark. The prophet Zechariah, writing a couple of hundred years before Christ, is in a society dominated by Hellenist culture, polytheism and utter contempt for Biblical faith ...read more
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25. Falling In Love And Enjoying The Sacred Presence
Contributed on Oct 5, 2019
The time we give in contemplative prayer or reading the Scriptures in quiet faith is a wonderful preparation for an eternity in His presence, in the arms of Jesus Christ.
Tuesday of 26th week in course 2019 The best part The experience of falling in love is an unmatched moment of one’s life. When you see clearly “the One” and know that your whole life has been a preparation for this moment of encounter, you never forget the place and circumstances of that awesome ...read more
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26. The Two Kinds Of Saints We Must Pray For In Our Day
Contributed on Oct 12, 2019
Love and fear are the two driving forces in human nature, so we need two kinds of saints today.
Tuesday of 28th Week in Course 2019 St. Theresa of Jesus (of Avila) There are two forces that drive the human being. On the one hand, love responds to the eternal creative and embracing Trinity, who loved us into existence and longs to divinize us. Fear, on the other hand, responds to the evil and ...read more
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27. Friendship With God And Enmity With God
Contributed on Oct 19, 2019
Through Christ we have hope that we will eternally live at peace in the embrace of the Blessed Trinity.
Tuesday of the 29th Week in Course 2019 St. John Paul II Today’s first reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans is the result of taking a scalpel to the original text. We read verses 12, 15, 17-19, 20 and 21, for reasons unknown to me, and the result sounds strange at best. So I had recourse ...read more
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28. The Narcissus Who Gave Us Easter Sunday
Contributed on Oct 26, 2019
Those who do not know the Resurrected Christ either have to attain some kind of Buddhist impassivity or despair of any relief.
Tuesday of the 30th Week in Course 2019 Saint Narcissus Today St. Paul contrasts our life in this world with our hope to live eternally in the arms of the Blessed Trinity. His reflections are particularly apt for Catholics today. Because of the evil done by a small minority of priests and ...read more
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29. Our Mission To The "nones"
Contributed on Nov 2, 2019
Today we are all called to reach out to what sociology calls the “nones,” people who profess no faith at all. It is critical.
Tuesday of the 31st Week in Course 2019 St. Guido Maria Conforti One of the recurring errors embraced by lazy Christians is that all one has to do is accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior and you are saved. That statement leads to all kinds of presumptuous behavior. Neither Jesus nor St. ...read more
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30. That All May Be One--Despite The Cost
Contributed on Nov 9, 2019
Every plan, every agenda, every meeting of any Church body must be focused on the mission that Our Lord Jesus gave to us as He ascended into heaven.
Tuesday of the 32nd Week in Course 2019 St. Josaphat Every plan, every agenda, every meeting of any Church body must be focused on the mission that Our Lord Jesus gave to us as He ascended into heaven. He wants the Gospel to be preached throughout the entire world, so that everyone on earth has ...read more