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September 13, 2026
Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
The Contradiction of Confession
Peter asks Jesus a question that I think all of us have probably asked in one way or another: How many times do I have to forgive someone? And Peter thinks he’s being pretty generous. Seven times? And Jesus basically says: Peter, you’re still counting.
And then he tells us this parable we just heard. A man is forgiven an enormous debt—something he could never repay—and then he turns around and refuses to forgive someone else. And I think there’s a temptation in our own lives to do exactly the same thing.
I sometimes call it the contradiction of confession. Think about what we do when we go to confession. We come before God and say: Lord, forgive me. Have mercy on me. Don’t hold my sins against me. And God forgives us. But then we can walk out of confession and still hold on to what somebody else did to us. God, forgive what I’ve done—but I’m not ready to forgive what they did. There’s the contradiction.
We want mercy for ourselves, but sometimes we’re not nearly as generous with mercy when it comes to somebody else. And Sirach puts it pretty strongly today: “Could anyone nourish anger against another and expect healing from the Lord?” That’s a tough question.
Because forgiveness isn’t easy. And Jesus isn’t telling us that what somebody did to us doesn’t matter. Forgiveness doesn’t mean pretending we weren’t hurt. It doesn’t mean saying what happened was okay. And sometimes it doesn’t even mean that the relationship can go back to what it was.
But it does mean that at some point I have to stop carrying it. I have to place that person—and what happened—into the hands of God. Because otherwise, I can spend years allowing something somebody did to me to continue having power over me.
And then think about the prayer we pray all the time: Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. We say those words so easily. But they’re actually pretty serious words. We’re asking God for mercy while at the same time acknowledging that we are called to give mercy.
And maybe that’s the question Jesus leaves us with today. Not simply: Has God forgiven me? We know that he has. Maybe the question is: Who am I still having trouble forgiving? Whose name comes to mind? What hurt am I still carrying? What debt am I still keeping track of?
Maybe there’s someone we’ve forgiven seven times—and now we’re saying, “That’s enough.” And Jesus says: Stop counting.
That doesn’t mean forgiveness happens overnight. Sometimes the most honest prayer we can make is: “Lord, I don’t know how to forgive this person yet. Maybe part of me doesn’t even want to. But you have been merciful to me. Help me to begin.”
Because that’s really what Jesus is asking of us. The mercy we receive from God cannot stop with us. We come before him and say: “Lord, have mercy on me.” And then he sends us out and says: “Now take that mercy and give it to someone else.”
August 27, 2026
Memorial of Saint Monica
Found Faithful
Jesus says something in the Gospel today that I think is worth thinking about: “Blessed is that servant whom his master on his arrival finds doing so.” In other words, when the Lord comes, he finds that person doing what they’re supposed to be doing. Nothing spectacular. Nobody applauding them. They’re just being faithful.
And today, as we celebrate the feast of St. Monica, we have a wonderful example of exactly that kind of faithfulness. Most of us know Monica because of her son, St. Augustine. For years she prayed for him. She worried about him. She watched him go in directions she knew were not good for him. And yet she never gave up on him, and more importantly, she never gave up on God. She remained faithful even when she couldn’t see the results.
And I have to say, when I look around at those who come to daily Mass, I see a lot of that same kind of faithfulness. Many of you are here day after day. Many of you are involved in different ministries in the parish. You volunteer. You help when something needs to be done. Some of you take Holy Communion to people who are homebound. You visit people who are sick. And probably a lot of what you do, most people never even know about.
That’s why I like what Saint Paul says in the first reading. He tells the Corinthians, “I give thanks to my God always on your account.” Maybe we don’t say that enough. We’re pretty good at noticing what isn’t getting done. But sometimes we need to notice the people who just keep showing up. The people who keep praying. The people who keep serving. The people who remain faithful even when they don’t see the results. St. Monica certainly knew what that was like.
And I think there’s something especially important in her story for anyone who is praying for a child, a grandchild, a spouse, or someone else they love who has wandered away from the faith. Sometimes you wonder whether your prayers are doing any good. Monica reminds us: don’t give up on them, and don’t give up on God.
So maybe the question from today’s Gospel is a simple one: If the Lord came today, what would he find me doing?Hopefully, he would find us still praying, still serving, still caring for people, still doing what he’s asked us to do—even when nobody notices and even when we can’t yet see the results.
Because maybe at the end of our lives, one of the greatest things the Lord could ever say about us is very simple: I found you faithful.
August 20, 2026
Memorial of Saint Bernard, Abbot and Doctor of the Church
A New Heart
There is something about that first reading today that I find very comforting. Listen to all the things God says: “I will gather you. I will sprinkle clean water upon you. I will cleanse you. I will give you a new heart. I will put my spirit within you.” Pause. Notice who is doing all the work. God says, “I will.” And sometimes we need to hear that.
Because we can spend so much of our lives thinking about everything we have to do. I have to fix this. I have to solve that. I have to change this about myself. I have to figure out what comes next. And then God comes along in Ezekiel and says, “Let me do something in you. I will give you a new heart.” There is a certain peace in that.
It doesn’t mean that we have no responsibility. The Gospel makes that clear. God prepares the wedding feast. Everything is ready. The invitation goes out. But people still have to respond. Some refuse the invitation. Others are too busy with their farms and their businesses. And then there is the man who comes to the feast but isn’t prepared to enter fully into what he has been invited to. So God does not force himself upon us.
But the wonderful thing about these two readings together is that God isn’t simply standing at a distance saying, “Change yourself, and then come to me.” He is saying, “Come to me, and let me change you.” Pause.
Maybe there is something in our life right now that we have been trying very hard to fix on our own. Maybe there is something in ourselves that we wish were different. Maybe we have been struggling with the same weakness, the same worry, the same resentment, the same fear.
Today God says, “I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you.” That is good news. Our job is to accept the invitation, to come to the feast, to open the door, and then to let God do in us what we cannot always do for ourselves. “I will give you a new heart.” Maybe that’s the promise we need to take with us today.
August 19, 2026
Wednesday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time
The Invitation of Our Lives
There is one little line in today’s Gospel that can easily get overlooked.
The landowner goes out late in the day and finds people still standing there. He asks them, “Why do you stand here idle all day?” And they answer, “Because no one has hired us.”
Notice what they don’t say. They don’t say, “We didn’t want to work.” They don’t say, “We weren’t interested.” They simply say, “No one has hired us.”
And when someone finally invited them into the vineyard, they went.
I wonder if there aren’t people in our own lives who could say something similar about faith.
We sometimes wonder why people don’t go to church anymore. We wonder why someone has never become Catholic, or why a family member or friend seems to have no interest in faith.
Maybe we should ask ourselves: Have we ever invited them?
And that invitation doesn’t always have to be verbal.
Certainly, sometimes we should say, “Why don’t you come to Mass with me?” Or, “Have you ever thought about becoming Catholic?” We might be surprised at the answer.
But there is another kind of invitation—the invitation of the way we live.
If people know that we are followers of Christ, what do they see in us? Do they see joy? Do they see hope? Do they see kindness and generosity? Do they see something in our lives that makes them wonder, “What does this person have that I would like to have?”
Because if we talk about how much our faith means to us, but we are constantly angry, complaining, judging others, or miserable, that can become exactly the opposite of an invitation.
What is striking in today’s Gospel is that the landowner keeps going out. Nine o’clock. Noon. Three o’clock. Five o’clock. He never stops looking for people to bring into his vineyard.
And perhaps Christ is still doing that today—through us.
Sometimes through the words we speak.
And sometimes simply through the kind of people we have become because we belong to him.
There may be someone in our life who is waiting for an invitation into the vineyard.
The question is: When they look at us, do they see a vineyard they would want to enter?
August 18, 2026
Tuesday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time
What Does It Mean to Give Up Everything?
Peter says something rather extraordinary in today’s Gospel: “We have given up everything and followed you.” We might hear that and think, Well, that certainly doesn’t describe me. Most of us haven’t given up everything. We have homes, possessions, bank accounts, families, and responsibilities. So is Jesus really telling every Christian that we have to walk away from all of that? No. But He is asking something every bit as serious.
Today’s Gospel continues directly from yesterday’s encounter with the rich young man. You may remember what happened. He was a good man. He wanted eternal life. He had kept the commandments. But when Jesus invited him to go further, he discovered that there was something he simply couldn’t let go of. And that’s what leads Jesus to say what we hear today: “It will be hard for one who is rich to enter the Kingdom of heaven.” The problem wasn’t simply that the young man had possessions. The problem was that his possessions had such a hold on him that he couldn’t let them go—even for Christ.
And that brings the Gospel very close to us. The question isn’t simply, “Do I own things?” The deeper question is, “Is there something in my life that I would not be willing to surrender to God?” For some people, it may be money. But it could also be my plans, my comfort, my need to have things my way, a resentment I don’t want to release, a relationship that is pulling me away from God, or even my time.
Peter says, “We have given up everything and followed you.” Those last words are important: “and followed you.” Giving things up by itself doesn’t make us holy. We let go of things so that nothing keeps us from following Christ. And maybe that’s the question this Gospel gives us today: What is the one thing in my life that I would have the hardest time placing completely into God’s hands?
Then comes perhaps the most important line in the whole Gospel: “For men this is impossible, but for God all things are possible.” Jesus knows that letting go isn’t always easy. He isn’t asking us to do it simply through willpower. He’s asking us to trust Him enough to loosen our grip on whatever keeps us from following Him.
So perhaps our prayer today can be very simple: Lord, everything I have is ultimately yours. Don’t let anything I possess, anything I desire, or anything I refuse to let go of keep me from following you.
August 16, 2026
Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
When God Seems Silent
There are times in almost everyone’s life when we wonder, “Is there really a place for me?” Maybe we have made mistakes. Maybe we have been away from the Church for a long time. Maybe our life has not turned out the way we expected. Maybe we look around and think everyone else has it together and we are the ones standing outside the door.
That is why today’s readings are so important. Isaiah says that God’s house will be “a house of prayer for all peoples.” Not just for the people who have everything together. Not just for the people who have always done everything right. For all peoples.
And then we meet this Canaanite woman in the Gospel. She really is an outsider. She is not part of the people of Israel. When she comes to Jesus asking him to heal her daughter, at first Jesus says nothing. Imagine how that must have felt. She cries out to God, and God seems silent.
Some of us know exactly what that feels like. We have prayed for someone who is sick. We have prayed for a child or grandchild who has walked away from the Church. We have prayed for something happening in our family. We have asked God again and again, and nothing seems to happen.
But this woman does something very important. She stays. Even when Jesus is silent, she stays. Even when the disciples want to send her away, she stays. Finally, she says one of the simplest prayers in the entire Gospel: “Lord, help me.” Sometimes that is all the prayer we have left. Lord, help me. And that is enough.
Jesus finally looks at this woman whom everyone else considered an outsider and says, “O woman, great is your faith!” The disciples saw someone who did not belong. Jesus saw faith.
Sometimes we are the ones who put ourselves on the outside. We look at our past. We remember our failures. We think about how long it has been since we really prayed, or how far we may have wandered from God, and we begin to wonder whether there is still a place for us. But Isaiah gives us this wonderful image: God’s house is “a house of prayer for all peoples.” There is room for us, not because we have earned our place, but because God is merciful.
I recently met an 87-year-old man from another Christian tradition who told me about the many men he has invited over the years to come closer to Christ. He took no credit for what happened in their lives. He simply invited them and then let God do the rest. Sometimes God uses us to help someone else discover that there is room for them too. We do not have to change anyone. We simply have to be willing to invite.
St. Paul reminds us that every one of us finally stands in the same place: in need of God’s mercy. None of us earned our place at this table. We were invited.
So if you find yourself feeling a little like that Canaanite woman, standing on the outside and wondering whether God still hears you, remember her. Stay. Keep praying. And if all you can manage is three words, let them be hers: “Lord, help me.”
Sometimes the person who thinks they are standing farthest from God may be much closer to him than they realize. This woman thought she was an outsider. The disciples treated her like an outsider. But Jesus saw what they could not see—her faith.
We may feel far from God because of our past, because of our failures, or simply because our prayers seem to go unanswered. But feeling far from God does not mean that God is far from us. Sometimes simply continuing to pray, continuing to come back, continuing to say, “Lord, help me,” is itself a sign of a faith much greater than we realize.
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