Sermons on Milton Cunningham:

Merciful, Merciful And Gracious Series

Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Mar 30, 2025

We confess our sins with true repentance and determination not to sin again, and we are forgiven. Freely. That is God’s self-definition. He needs nothing from us, no. His love for us is constantly being thrown back in His Holy Face by us sinners, but He keeps summoning us to be loved.

Fifth Sunday of Lent 2025 On this Fifth Sunday of Lent, which some of us grew up knowing as “Passion Sunday” or the first Sunday of the Passion, the Church is getting really serious about the identity and mission of Jesus as Christ/Messiah. Isaiah speaks for God, declaring “Remember not the former ...read more

Scripture: Deuteronomy 22:24, Isaiah 43:16-21, Psalm 126:1-6, Philippians 3:8-14, John 8:1-11  (view more)  (view less)

Denomination: Catholic

Not So Important Where The Messiah Came From Series

Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Mar 31, 2025

In two weeks we will be celebrating the three days that shook the world, and the Friday we call “Good” because it led to our redemption.

Friday of the Fourth Week of Lent 2025 As St. Paul and others spread the joyous and demanding Gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the Roman world, and even beyond, they read from the Scriptures. But the story of Jesus was available orally. The Gospels in writing were not set down on papyrus right ...read more

Scripture: John 7:1-2, John 7:10, John 7:25-30, Psalm 34:17-21

Denomination: Catholic

Jesus Is God And The Crowd Doesn't Like That Truth Series

Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Apr 7, 2025

Jesus has just declared that the Father and He are one, one in intention and one in mind and heart. The Jerusalem crowd that Jesus has been preaching to heard His words as blasphemy, and that offense carried the death penalty.

Friday of the Fifth Week in Lent 2025 Today’s Gospel reading from St. John continues the narrative we heard yesterday from an earlier chapter. You may recall that incident. Jesus declared that Abraham rejoiced to see the day of Jesus. Almost certainly that means the birth of Isaac and perhaps even ...read more

Scripture: Jeremiah 20:10-13, Psalm 18:2-7, John 10:31-42

Denomination: Catholic

The Mercy Of God Locks Up Death And Hades Series

Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Apr 8, 2025

Jesus bears the keys that have locked up “Death and Hades” so that we no longer can fear dying, so that when we close our eyes for the last time here, we can look forward to seeing Our Lord in that New Life.

Sunday of Divine Mercy 2025 When the Church gets really excited about one of God’s wonderful works, She commits Liturgy over and over. So last Sunday was our celebration of Christ’s Pasch, His rising from the dead, and for the entire week we have been celebrating that same Mass every day. This ...read more

Scripture: Acts 5:12-16, Psalm 118:2-4, Psalm 118:13-15, Psalm 118:22-24, Revelation 1:9-13, Revelation 1:17-19, John 20:19-31  (view more)  (view less)

Denomination: Catholic

The Name Above All Names At Which We Bend Series

Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Apr 9, 2025

The Son of God was divine already, but He thought it unfair to glom onto that identity. He became the face of the divine compassion and enduring love, God’s hesed, by emptying Himself of all His divine glory, all His divine dignity.

Palm/Passion Sunday The critical reading we are given from Scripture today is not one of the two Gospels, not the triumphant Palm Sunday story of Christ’s entry to Jerusalem and not the story of the Last Supper, Passion and death of Our Lord. No, the reading that is crucial to an understanding of ...read more

Scripture: Philippians 2:6-11, Isaiah 50:4-7, Acts 16:11-40

Denomination: Catholic

Disappointed? You Were Looking For The Wrong Messiah Series

Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Apr 12, 2025

It could have been a puppy or a pony or a Red Rider BB gun ® but the day sticks in your mind because you were very disappointed.

Palm Sunday Procession Homily 2025 Take a moment to recall from your childhood a particularly memorable Christmas or Birthday celebration in your family. I bet you have one in which you had wished—and made your wish known—for a particular toy or cuddly and did not receive it. It could have been a ...read more

Scripture: Luke 19:28-40, Luke 18:35-43, Zechariah 9:9, Acts 1:6, Isaiah 56:7  (view more)  (view less)

Denomination: Catholic

Could Even Judas Have Been Forgiven? Series

Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Apr 13, 2025

Did Judas have to lose hope? On the third day after Jesus died, when the apostles gathered in the Upper Room, would there have been room for Judas Iscariot? He was, after all, one of the Twelve, chosen by Christ.

Monday of Holy Week 2025 St. John the Evangelist probably had three or four decades or more to contemplate the life and fate of his fellow disciple, Judas Iscariot. He then wrote his clear and crisp description of the man’s moral character. The incident described Mary of Bethany ministering to the ...read more

Scripture: John 12:1-11, Psalm 27:1-3, Psalm 27:13-14, Isaiah 42:1-7

Denomination: Catholic

Judas Was Not The Only Betrayer Series

Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Apr 13, 2025

The servant of the Lord described by Isaiah today actually becomes a light, not just for people Israel, but for the goy, the nations. Wherever this servant would be, darkness would flee, and salvation would enter.

Tuesday of Holy Week 2026 None of us, I suppose, has ever lived in a house without electricity for more than a few hours or days. Those would be periods of a weather emergency, or utility blackout. But in a place without utilities, lanterns and candles would be used to extend the period of work or ...read more

Scripture: John 8:12, Revelation 21:23, John 13:21-33, John 13:36-38, Psalm 71:1-6, Psalm 71:15, Psalm 71:17, Isaiah 49:1-6  (view more)  (view less)

Denomination: Catholic

The Greatest Saint Meets The Greatest Criminal Series

Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Apr 14, 2025

We don’t know what was going through Judas’ mind as he took the bread and wine offered by Jesus as His Body and Blood, but we can be pretty certain that he didn’t think he was doing evil.

Wednesday of Holy Week 2025 Is it possible for the greatest criminal not to know he’s doing evil? Today we have a case study from Scripture on the greatest saint who ever lived, and the greatest sinner. The saint, of course, is Our Lord Jesus Christ. The sinner—and we are all sinners, after ...read more

Scripture: Matthew 26:14-25, Isaiah 50:4-9

Denomination: Catholic

Priest Forever Making Us Priests Series

Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Apr 15, 2025

He (Jesus) did learn obedience to the Father’s will from what He suffered.

Thursday of Holy Week 2025 (at Matins) The annual feast of Passover, or Pesach, is attributed to the interaction of Moses with the liberating YHWH/Adonai at the time of the Israelite liberation from Egypt, perhaps 1200 years before Christ. A second feast, about six months later, held the annual ...read more

Denomination: Catholic

Dying On A Cross Series

Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Apr 16, 2025

Today we must give thanks for the gift of Jesus. His self-giving knew no limits and doesn’t stop giving even now.

Good Friday 2025 I’ve frequently thought that the best approach to a homily for Good Friday would be to stand and look at the biggest cross or crucifix and focus on the pain and torment Jesus underwent two thousand years ago. I’ll encourage you to do that sometime in the next couple of days before ...read more

Scripture: Isaiah 52:13-15, Isaiah 53:1-12, Hebrews 4:14-16, Hebrews 5:7-9, John 19:1-42, John 18:1-39  (view more)  (view less)

Denomination: Catholic

This Lent Get Your Passions Under Control Series

Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Feb 21, 2023

We take pleasure in the lesser goods of earth–food, drink, beauty, sex. And if we take too much pleasure there, we can treat them as if they were the highest good and we fall into sin.

Ash Wednesday Homily What brings us here today so early? We are here because we want something. Not a mere smear of black soot, no. If that were our goal, we’d be certifiably insane. We are here because we want at the end of our lives to be united with the Blessed Trinity forever, body and soul, ...read more

Scripture: Joel 2:12-18

Denomination: Catholic

The Pre-Conditions God Sets For Us In His Mercy Series

Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Feb 22, 2023

God turns away from our fasting unless we are getting our behavior together

Saturday of the First Week in Lent Today’s reading from the prophet Isaiah is the second part of a very late prophecy, one that appears to have been written down years after the Babylonian exile. The prophet Zechariah tells us that in this late period, there were fasts in the fourth, fifth, ...read more

Scripture: Luke 5:27-32, Psalm 86:1-6, Isaiah 58:9-14, Zechariah 8:18

Denomination: Catholic

The Struggle With Satan Lent Sunday 1 Series

Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Feb 23, 2023

Was the Lord bragging about how He defeated the old Worm, man’s adversary, Satan? No.

First Sunday of Lent 2023 How did St. Matthew come by the story he shared in today’s Gospel? It was easy to understand the first line, what happened when Jesus, who was fresh from His baptism by John, where the Holy Spirit came upon Him in form of a dove, went into the wilderness of Judea. ...read more

Scripture: Romans 5:12-19, Matthew 4:1-11

Denomination: Catholic

Playing No Favorites--Like God Does Series

Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Feb 28, 2023

Jesus tells us today not just to forgive our enemies, something we heard earlier in the Gospel, but to wish them well, to do good to them, and, yes, to love them.

Saturday of the First Week of Lent 2023 One of the worst heresies of the past two thousand years, an opinion that keeps coming back with almost predictable regularity, is the error first heard in early times from Marcion. The idea is that the God of the OT was a harsh, vindictive judge, almost ...read more

Scripture: Deuteronomy 26:16-19, Psalm 119:1-2, Psalm 119:4-5, Psalm 119:7-8, Matthew 5:43-48  (view more)  (view less)

Denomination: Catholic