July 26, 2026 at Saint Peter and Saint William Churches in Naples, FL

1 Kings 3: 5, 7-12 + Psalm 119 + Romans 8: 28-30 + Matthew 13: 44-52

Listening to these two parables weeks ago left me wondering about this all this searching, and I don’t mean searching for my keys or my phone as I do every day. A lot of us do that. I know people who are never searching. They have found everything they want, and they are happy, for a while, until what they found breaks or goes out of style. At the same time, there are even more people searching every day for food, shelter, and safety. In the middle of all that there are young people who seem to be searching too and while some are searching a for job or for someone to love them, many, from what I observe, are searching on the screen of their phones. Does anyone know what for? They don’t seem to be finding it.

The first of these parables takes us back into a field for the third weekend in a row. There was first that parable about seed being thrown everywhere and generously. Then, last week there was that parable about the weeds. All three of these field stories are really speaking of the Word of God. That is the seed scattered everywhere that needs to compete with the evil. Now comes these parables also about the Word of God that once discovered is worth everything and when embraced brings a joy that all other things failed to provide.

The last of these parables puts a value on God’s Word. It is of great price Matthew tells us. Searching for the Word of God, the Word Made Flesh is for wise and hope-filled people. Matthew puts before us today these two people who are wonderful models of faith. They are restless and searching. They are far from satisfied with the way things are, and they are willing to let go of old things and perhaps old ways to search deeper for that priceless gift of God.

All of us need to keep or start searching once again deep into the mystery of God’s Word among us. I would like to think that motivated by the power of God’s Word, we may once and for all find ways to end some people’s search for food, shelter, and safety. Rather than running all over the place looking for some new devotion or that latest vision, we need to dig deep into the Word of God. It stirs a hope that keeps faith alive and is the only search that matters, brings joy and lasts forever.

July 19, 2026. At Saint Peter, Saint William and Saint Agnes Churches in Naples, FL

Book of Wisdom 12, 13, 16-19 + Psalm 85 + Romans 8: 26-27 + Matthew 13: 24-43

“Kingdom Parables” I call them. We get three in a row this month, and this is the second, and all three of them have us out in the field: first with seeds, now with weeds, and then next weekend with a hidden treasure. I love the way this parable captures the attitude of our day toward things we don’t like. When the question is raised about how the weeds got there, BLAME rears its ugly head. “The devil did it.” There is always someone or something to blame.

However, that is not the point here. This parable, unique to Matthew’s Gospel, really speaks to us about evil not necessarily where it comes from or who did it, but what we do about it and how we live with it. There is an ethical question being raised by these servants. Should they pull the weeds? Their desire to do so reveals a too simple understanding, and the planter corrects that. The presence of the weeds or the presence of evil means that the wheat must now compete in a field with a plant that provides no nourishment, feeds no souls, but uses precious resources.

That planter responds that the good seed must just always contend with the bad, the pure with the impure. There is suggestion here that we must simply live with the weeds until the harvest comes. This planter’s advice invites us to reflect on the risk of unintended consequences, or what some circles call, “Collateral Damage.” Most of the time it only makes the evil worse. This is not to suggest that we just ignore evil, but that we begin get our act together and compete with it letting our good works and the truth prevail until the angels have their day.

There is one more little piece of wisdom in this parable that may escape us because we like to think of ourselves as the wheat, the good seed in this world or as the ones who should serve as God’s assistants and clean things up. You may judge for yourselves after some reflection, but I know that I am one of God’s plants, a complicated mixture of good and evil that I can’t always pull apart. Remembering that keeps my mouth shut when I want to criticize someone, and it tempers my too quick judgements about what or who is really good or bad.

To my relief, I remember that God does not rely on our actions. We rely on God’s merciful, steadfast patience to leave us here in the field, tangled up as we are rather than be pulled out early.

July 12, 2026. At Saint Peter and Saint William Churches in Naples, FL

Isaiah 55: 10-11 + Psalm 65 + Romans 8: 18-23 + Matthew 13: 1-23

It is not likely that Jesus actually supplied the interpretation of this parable to the disciples. When Jesus did speak this parable, it was to teach something about God and God’s generous behavior throwing seed abundantly and generously everywhere without fussing over the potential. In that time, seed was precious, and not something to be waisted without some expectation of its fruitfulness. So, his parable was a surprise to people who were so picky about the soil and where they planted. That’s not how God works, says Jesus.

It is likely however that someone who added this interpretation did so because the intended readers needed to concentrate more on their receptiveness rather than on God’s behavior, and it may still be so today.

Anyone who has ever planted a garden knows that good soil does not exist on its own. It needs to be turned. Rocks have to go. Weeds must be pulled. Seeds may need to be covered lest the birds eat them all. When it comes to God’s Word sown in us through this Liturgy or our own prayerful reading, something is required of us not just for readiness, but for that harvest to come.

So much of our lives makes the risk of a harvest failure possible. Career goals and the business required to be successful is a threat to the seed. Broken relationships, grudges, anger and resentment are like the rocks the writer speaks of. Addiction, bad habits, judgements about others and selfishness need to be pruned or uprooted for the seed to have a chance. We all have some rocks and thorns in our lives to examine because they threaten the harvest that we think of as the Kingdom of God.

A little fertilizer almost always makes a difference even with the best of soils. Like wise laborers who tend the gardens of this earth, we can cultivate our lives, our souls, minds, and hearts with some compassion and tenderness that will surely bear the fruit of peace as the Holy Spirit brings forth its first fruits in us.

July 5, 2026 at Saint William Church in Naples FL

Zechariah 9: 9-10 + Psalm 145 + Romans 8: 9, 11-13 + Matthew 11: 25-30

We seem to be living through an age of anti-intellectualism that has created a big split between what I will call scholars and workers, for lack of a better term. It’s not to suggest that scholars do not work, but I think you may know what I am struggling to describe. Some political observers and commentators call this, “Popularism.” What it seems to boil down to is that many people look upon thinkers and scholars as being “out of it” or being somehow “elite.” The other way around is just as observable with the highly educated looking down on those who do not share their interests, ideas, and values.

Jesus is talking to us today about this. While he upholds the value of wisdom, he turns what wisdom looks like on its end. Jesus does not think that having a string of letters after your name or a great resume means you are wise. He suggests that the wise are those who live according to the way of the Kingdom he came to reveal, and he did that with his Sermon on the Mount.

Jesus speaks of “little ones” lifting up infants as a model because he wants wonder to remain central to our relationship with God. Wonder and awe are sure signs of Wisdom. Educational systems that grind on with grueling attempts to bury mystery with data robs the scholar of real wisdom. At the same time, the business, the noise, and distractions of everyday life exhaust and leave others with no curiosity, wonder, or imagination. For both, the ability to find joy in watching a butterfly or a sunset gets lost. It’s almost as though we need permission to sit and watch and wonder even if it means we are not engaged in productive work or serious study.

My friends, when wisdom takes on human flesh, it is Jesus Christ. In other words, s Wisdom, Jesus becomes a yoke – a way of life – whose life-giving power transforms our deepest desires into passion for God’s just and merciful reign over this world. As Wisdom, Jesus provides us with a yoke that, when we take it upon ourselves, heals our deepest hurts and pains to that our lives can find purpose and wholeness. The more we take on the Wisdom of Jesus Christ, the more intimately we are drawn into the intimacy Christ has with the Father.

Intelligent, whole human beings can still celebrate wonder. A desire for greater knowing goes hand in hand with our recognition that God’s world still holds new insights and discoveries for unfolding the truth. Anyone who thinks they know the whole truth is far from wise. If being humble is knowing more fully our true selves, then perhaps some of our most precious learning about God will come to light as we look within.

June 28, 2026. This homily will not be delivered as I am in Oklahoma City

2 Kings 4: 8-11, 14-16 + Psalm 89 + Romans 6: 3-4, 8-11 + Matthew 10: 37-42

Matthew’s Gospel has fewer miracle stories than Luke or Mark because Matthew is more interested in telling us what Jesus said than what he did. At this point, in Chapter 10 we hear the closing words of what some call, “The Missionary Instruction.” I find it interesting that while Matthew takes great care to record the instruction of Jesus to his missionary disciples, unlike Mark and Luke, they are never sent out. Matthew would have us know what Jesus says, not what the disciples do.

At the center of his instructions is the matter of hospitality, something that is a challenge for us all today. With our locks, bolts, gates, and alarm systems, “hospitality” is an ideal that has escaped us. The consequence is a lot of loneliness and a lot of displaced people. Hospitality to a friend is no big deal. There is no risk involved and every likelihood that the favor will be returned. On the other hand, hospitality to a stranger is a great thing. You don’t owe anything to a stranger, and there is risk involved.

Yet, Christ calls us to welcome strangers. Being hospitable does not mean making them like us. It means accepting them as they are. Doing so allows them to shed their strangeness and be included in a community. If Christian people get into ghettos where they secure themselves and their property against anyone considered socially inferior, there is no hope for the world.

Hospitality is not so much about open doors as it is about open hearts. There is always a risk from having an open heart, the risk of being hurt. But to open one’s heart is to begin to live. To close it is to begin to die.

June 21, 2026, at Saint William and Saint Peter Parishes in Naples, FL

Jeremiah 20: 10-13 + Psalm 69 + Romans 5: 12-15 + Matthew 10: 26-33

There is a breathtaking intimacy expressed in these verses of today’s Gospel. To those of us who are too often timid, if not downright afraid, to respond to the challenges of today’s culture and political climate, Jesus reveals a God of sparrows. This is a God who is to be trusted. A God who has not withdrawn from the world but filled it with his gentle and loving spirit to give us courage and hope. Yet, we are so like Saint Peter, who in Pilate’s courtyard cowardly avoided any association with Jesus Christ when it meant some risk. Then the Spirit awakened in him, and there was no way to silence his voice when it came to speaking of Christ and what he had learned from his Savior.

This culture and political climate may not be as physically dangerous as in other times, but there is a persecution still. It is subtle, often expressed in apathy or a roll of eyes that minimizes our faith and what we have learned from our Savior about how to live together in peace, generously, respectfully, and honorably. Religion becomes a private matter banned from discussion as though we had nothing to say that mattered.

Our values matter, and they need to critique the public sphere and shape public policy not in a patrician political way, but in such a way that our values raise questions about what is right and what is wrong. We do not check our values rooted in the Gospel when we leave this church. The compassion of Jesus Christ for the poor, the sick, those in prison, and the vulnerable matters as much today as it did in his own historical time. These vulnerable ones cannot be demonized.

I know people who place conditions on God’s unconditional and extravagant love. They resist a Gospel of Grace and often embrace a Gospel of punishment and retribution calling it “Justice.” I also know people who simply avoid any mention of Jesus Christ and resist what he taught us about the Father. With no more judgement about them than I would judge Peter in Pilate’s courtyard, I wait and pray that the Spirit will awaken them to experience that God of Sparrows who protects, inspires, and waits for us to bear witness to his presence, his Son, Jesus Christ, and all that he taught us. Everyone who acknowledges me before others, I will acknowledge before my Father in heaven. Who wouldn’t want that?

June 14, 2026. At Saint William Parish in Naples, FL

Exodus 19: 2-6 + Psalm 100 + Romans 5: 6-11 + Matthew 9: 36 to 10:8

Leadership in first-century Palestine was a precious commodity. In fact, it would be impossible to point to anyone in those times who fulfilled that role. The Roman Emperor was no leader. No one followed him willingly. It was all fear-inspired oppression. Even today, there are precious few examples of true leaders. There are bullies and bosses, tyrants and rulers who threaten and frighten with power and punishment. Into this world comes Jesus who shows us something about leadership, forming and commissioning disciples in a real school of leadership that will eventually threaten the powerful so-called leaders of his day with bad consequences.

What Jesus teaches us by example is that leadership is really ministry. Yet, while many people came together seeking his help, they did not come together as a community. They are simply a crowd driven by their own individual needs. There is no sense of community or solidarity. The truth is, at that time, they were needy, searching for food and healing.

In contrast to this, Matthew shows us a community of disciples that can move beyond its own needs to ministry to others. For Matthew, the church exists to identify with needy people, and this is the key to leadership in the model of Jesus Christ. The faithful leader of a community of believes is like a shepherd, meeting others who are like a crowd of individuals leading them into a compassionate community.

When Jesus laments that there are few laborers, he is not talking about Nuns, Sisters, Brothers or priests. He is talking to and about all of us who are often so focused on our own wants and needs that we fail to see others who are waiting and longing for a companion with far greater needs. Those lost sheep of the house of Israel are, in other words, our immediate neighbors isolated, fearful, alone, and afraid. There is a sickness called helplessness we can cure. There are people dead from loneliness who can be called to life. There are people living in filth out of sight, shunned like lepers who need to be cleansed, and others living with the demon of sadness and hopelessness. That demon needs to go, and a people together, filled with the power of the Holy Spirit can cast out that demon, cure, and call people to real life. This is the leadership to which we are called.

Up to this point in Matthew’s Gospel, the disciples have been watching Jesus at his work. They have seen him in his triumphs and when he is tired. They have listened to his teaching and have heard him being confronted by the establishment. They have sacrificed a home and stability for the opportunity to be a part of a movement that will usher in a new way of being in relationship to God. That movement is all of us together, the Church.

When any of us complain that nothing is happening to make things better, we need to remember what Matthew has put before us today, set aside our own sometimes puny needs, and rise up together to challenge any establishment that is self-preserving, self-serving, and show the kind of leadership to which we are called. No more watching. There are helpless, hopeless people all around us, probably near us in this church. It is easy to shut down, but we are apostles. We have been given authority and permission to be human like our teacher whose humanness is best revealed in his compassion, empathy, and love for us all.

June 7, 2026, at Saint William Parish and the Naples Maronite Mission

Deuteronomy 8: 2-3, 14-16 + Psalm 147 + 1 Corinthians 10: 16-17 + John 6: 51-58

“How?” the leaders ask themselves. It’s not necessarily a bad question. Abraham asked that question, and young woman in Nazareth asked it as well. There is so much we do not know, and even then, there is even more we do not understand. There was really nothing wrong with the question those leaders asked. Their problem was that they were talking to themselves and not really listening to Jesus. Surely, overhearing their conversation, Jesus pushes his messages and drives it home with graphic words that cannot be watered down or explained away as though it were a metaphor or just symbolic.

It is near Passover time John tells us, and Jesus presents himself as the sacrificial offering, that Lamb whose flesh is eaten, affirming God’s covenant with his people leading to their liberation. These words then are as much about the identity of Jesus and what he perceived was his role and destiny as they are about eating and drinking. Yet, eating the flesh of that lamb and the flesh of Jesus Christ cannot be separated. It’s real flesh to be eaten.

Jesus does not make it easy for those who do not seem to really want to know how. Pushing harder, he hammers it into them by repeating the phrase that makes them back away: “Eat my flesh and drink my blood.” Three times he says it and then adds: “Whoever eats me will live because of me.” John uses that word “flesh” very carefully here. Matthew, Mark, and Luke use the word “body.” If at the last supper John had cared to focus on the meal rather than the washing of feet, Jesus would have said: “Take and eat. This is my flesh. This is my blood.” This how the work of salvation is accomplished in flesh and blood. God takes on flesh and blood in the person of his son to redeem all those who will receive him. To eat his flesh and drink his blood is to welcome and accept God’s saving action into our whole being. When we consume his flesh and blood, we are consumed by him.

For those who wonder, “How,” I always wonder why they can’t get it. If God can create all things out of nothing, God can certainly change bread into flesh and wine into blood. If Jesus could take jugs of water and change them into wine, he can take wine and change it into his blood. What he goes to say is that this is how we are saved. Consume him, eat and live.

I never forget that in 2004 I was really close to death after open heart surgery that didn’t exactly go well. After getting me to CCU, the surgeon went back into surgery for another patient, and I crashed. The nurses called down to surgery, and he told them to pump blood into me until he finished and then bring back. I had nine units of blood that morning, and because someone gave that blood, I’m standing here. It saved my life.

If anyone of you has had any similar experience, it’s probably not hard to understand what Jesus promises, offers, and gives us. There is life in this food that we have because he died surrendering his life, pouring out his blood for the life of the world. What’s the point of asking how. It might be better to ask why, and accept the fact that God thinks we are worth it. Take and eat. This is my flesh given for you.

May 31, 2026, at St. William and the Naples Maronite Community

Exodus 34: 6, 8-9 + Deuteronomy 3 + 2 Corinthians 13: 11-13 + John 3: 16-18

It says here: “God so loved the world.” It does not say: “God so loved the Church, God so loved the pure, God so loved the pious and holy, or God so loved America” or anywhere else for that matter. God’s love is for the World. This story is about God’s deep and abiding love for all and everything created. The Divine Incarnation, the sending of God’s Word in flesh is for the world, for everyone, everywhere. He did not send his Son, His presence in human flesh into a Tabernacle. We need to understand that the Divine Presence is in a Tabernacle because that presence is first in us, all of us.

The implications of this love are massive It means that God is to be found where the Son of God is to be found living, incognito in the world. In the space of just two chapters of this Gospel, Jesus is found in the dark of night talking with a Jewish leader, Nicodemus, a classic insider. Then, he is found at Midday with a Samaritan woman, a classic forgotten outsider. He can be found in the synagogue, in the Temple, but usually he is seen in the streets feeding, healing, teaching, forgiving. He has been given to the world!

Yet, how often the world hears a different message. How often the world hears a message of judgement and condemnation. How often the people of the Church, where he should be found first, are busy separating and judging all the while looking holy and pious as they push people out to the margins of society because they are slow to believe, broken by divorce, gay, or some kind of public sinner.

The mission of Jesus Christ passed on to us is not a rejection mission. It is a rescue mission because God loved the world. The judgement spoken of in this Gospel is not the judgment of God. God does not condemn. The judgement is a choice to remain in the dark hiding from the light of God’s love. That choice is an act of self-condemnation.

Some love the darkness imagining that eternal life is found in possessions, power, and prestige. For some, the darkness is a land of addiction to short-term fixes that can never hide deep pain. In that darkness evil deeds become a habit and so much a part of our way of life that we barely recognize that this behavior and these attitudes are out of synch with Jesus Christ. Believing in him and trusting him means being in synch with him, living in harmony with God’s extraordinary love for the world.

There is no one in this world who is not good, and no one is going to hell if God has anything to say or do about it. Yet, the love of God revealed in Jesus demands a decision to believe, or not to believe; to live in response to the love of God for all people, or not. To say no to the love of God in Jesus Christ is to choose a life in the darkness of the world we have been taught to call reality. That is real condemnation, to the “living hell” of the real world that has chosen to ignore or dismiss its creator who loved the world into existence.

May 24, 2026 at Saint Agnes Parish in Naples, FL

Acts of the Apostles 2: 1-11+ Psalm 104 + 1 Corinthians 12: 3-7, 12-13 + John 20: 19-33

There is a sense of powerlessness hanging over many of us these days. There is violence in homes, schools, and even churches that leaves us uneasy at best and fearful at its worst. There is button at every altar in this city waiting to be pushed at the first sign of trouble, and our parish offices have one as well. Most of us live behind gates, and many have alarm systems at home, and we don’t seem to know what to do about it. And so, we flee from communities that are dangerous and hide. We are a very much like the Apostles in today’s Gospel. They were hiding in some upper room.

Like us, a great task and mission was entrusted to them. Yet they had neither the strength nor the will to begin. Then the Holy Spirit came, and they were changed. Christ Jesus had said to them: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit come on you, and then you will be my witnesses to the ends of the earth.” The key word here is “power.” It is exactly what they needed as they hid feeling absolutely powerless, overcome by fear and a feeling of inadequacy. Having seen what happened to Jesus they needed courage and someone to empower them.

What Christ Jesus promised is what we celebrate today. It is a promise of power, but it does no good to celebrate this Feast if we fail to accept that gift. We are a people empowered by baptism and confirmation. We are able to take charge of our situation. We may not wait for someone else to do it for us. We are a people filled with the Holy Spirit.

Our Church, its values, its vision of the Kingdom of God, its message of peace and reconciliation cannot remain hidden because we are timid or feel inadequate. We should not think that the change in the Apostles was something instant. That’s a too literal reading of the Gospels. It had to be a gradual thing, a growth process, and that can be painful and slow. We do not easily let go of old ways, habits, and attitudes.

People change when they are given hope, and they change when they are loved. They come out of hiding and some kind of energy is released in them. I believe that the miracle of human change is perhaps, the only real miracle. The power that changed the Apostles is not just for them. The Holy Spirit did not just come for a day and then blow away like the wind. That Spirit is ours too. It stirs up power in us like the wind. If fires up our courage to get up, speak up, and act up in the name of Jesus Christ and all that he taught us.

We are not helpless, and together we are far from inadequate. We are a people of hope with a clear vision of the Kingdom of God which is at hand and available now for those who choose every day to say: “Come Holy Spirit.” When we do things will change. We will no longer be waiting for someone to do what we can do, and fear will be replaced by joy.