July 27, 2025 at Saint Peter the Apostle in Naples, FL

Genesis 18: 20-32 + Psalm 138 + Colossians 2: 12-14 + Luke 11: 1-13

Jesus says to us and those disciples: “Ask and you shall receive.” It would be good notice that he does not say: “Ask and shall receive what you ask for.” You can take the advice of this old priest or not, but I’m standing here to tell you that you can ask all you want, and you had better to prepared for what happens. You will get something, but it may not be what you wanted or expected, and that’s where the second part of the directive hits home. This is not just an instruction about asking. It is also about receiving.

There is always some assumption that if what we ask for is not granted, we are either not praying hard enough or saying the right prayers. There is also the terrible possibility that someone may think God doesn’t love them or that they are not good enough in God’s sight. Bad thinking. To be quite honest with ourselves, there is something a little childish about trying to change God’s plan. How can we do that and then say: “Thy will be done?” That is not to say that we shouldn’t ask for what we feel we need, but how that asking is expressed says a lot about our faith and our relationship with God. We really don’t pray to change God’s mind but for God to change ours.

What Matthew records as the response of Jesus to the request of the disciples to teach them to pray does not really match Luke’s version, which ought to suggest to us that the exact words are not all that important. What we might discover is that in both versions, there are three common elements.

There is an acknowledgement of the goodness and love of God as Jesus teaches to call God, “Father.”  There is no cosmic tyrant who requires humiliating pleas in order to get gifts. This is a loving eternal Parent who takes delight in providing for their children.

Then there is the acceptance of God’s will. A prayer worthy of God is asking for the grace to do God’s work – fulfill God’s will by works of forgiveness, reconciliation, and by becoming the brothers and sisters God calls us to become.

Finally, there is an expression of our hope and our trust in God’s providence. We must always come before God confident that our prayers are heard and that we will be given whatever we need and even more. Even if it seems our prayers are unanswered, we live with the confidence that God is always present to us.

What receive in today’s Gospel is not some magic formula, but an instruction about the Father to whom Jesus prayed. He not only reveals how he prays, but, with these two parables, he affirms what should be the quality of our prayer. It’s not about persistence but about believing and living with assurance. It is with that assurance that Jesus, God’s only Son, went to a garden knowing that he was in grave danger. The writers tell us that he prayed that “This cup may pass from me.” It did not. He was condemned to a cruel death within hours. Instead of rescue he received something else, resurrection, which is better. So, it shall always be for us. We may not get exactly what we have asked for, but we have and we always shall receive the Holy Spirit which, in the end, is probably all we really need.

July 20, 2025 at Saint Peter the Apostle Church in Naples, FL

Genesis 18:1-10 + Psalm 15 + Colossians 1: 24-28 + Luke 10: 28-42

At some point in my childhood I began to listen to the Gospel at Mass. It could have been because it was the first thing spoken in English. Everything else was in Latin. I remember hearing this story and on the way home from Mass asking my parents why Jesus didn’t go into the kitchen and help Martha. There was silence from the front seat leaving me to wonder about that even today. But of course, maybe he did and Luke just didn’t mention it or maybe their brother Lazarus who never has anything to say jumped up to help keeping the sisters apart. Whatever the human side to this story, there is no missing the point that Jesus thinks listening is very important, and Martha wasn’t doing that. Her problem was that she was fixated on her work. 

This whole scene is filled with contradictions. Luke, who tells us more about woman than any other Gospel writer must have thrilled to record this incident. He puts Martha in charge of things in spite of the fact that in that Patriarchal society women were in charge of nothing. Hospitality was a man’s responsibility. Yet, Luke has no male figure in this story at all. Teaching and conversing with a woman was strictly forbidden by the religious rules of the time. Only men engaged in teaching man, and conversation was between men. So, with this story, Luke is giving us some insight into how things should be in the Kingdom of God, and perhaps instructing the early Christian Community that is to receive this Gospel.

Yet, even with all of that there is more to think about. Listening and Hospitality are the issues here. A listener is being praised, and the who is too busy to listen is being reminded that there is something more than busy work when it comes to living life in the presence of Jesus Christ. Mary is the model being put before us today. Listening is really an act of love, and it is hard work. Many people do not listen well. It is a skill that come out of a loving heart. Too many these days listen selectively, listening for what they want to hear, or just waiting for their turn to talk. When not hearing what they want to hear, they begin to end the conversation as quickly as possible, maybe so that they can go back to work.

There is a great saying in our Christian tradition, “When a guest comes, Christ comes.” This idea was deep in the conscience of early America. It was a rare day when some stranger did not sit at the family table. My own mother always set an extra place at our table just in case I brought someone home from school, or my sister did the same, or my father might invite someone. George Washington recorded that his family didn’t once sit-down dinner alone for twenty years.

Many folk tales tell of gods and kings who travel in disguise and reward people who show them hospitality. If you listened, you just heard something like that in the first reading today. God dropped in on Abraham unannounced and anonymously. And, Abraham almost blew the opportunity by fussing, but he recovered and fulfilled his duty. It was only when listening that Abraham heard the leading visitor promise a miraculous birth of a son to his aged wife Sarah Then he realized that somehow it was the Lord. He listened!

At some point, this country has lost what it had early on. Hospitality to strangers is in short supply, and it might be because we have not listened to them, not heard of their need, their fear, their suffering. It might be that when we recover our ability to listen with love even when we do not like what we hear that we may once again recognize that we have been visited by God who wants to make a home among us. The risk is always that we may not make room for God.

It is Jesus who teaches us today lessons that the one thing necessary in our lives is love that we must show in action, in hospitality, and in listening not just to God’s Word, but to each other.

July 13, 2025 at Saint Agnes Church in Naples, FL

Deuteronomy 30: 10-14 + Psalm 69 + Colossians 1: 15-20 + Luke 10: 25-37

The day that Jesus spoke those words to that man who came to him asking a question is a date to be remembered in all the history of humanity. What Jesus said that day was something that no other religion in history ever said: that everyone in the world, without exception, is our neighbor. In those days, and even for some today, there is always a “them and us” attitude that is incompatible with a faith rooted and springing out of the words and actions of Jesus Christ.

There is here even a new definition of neighbor. In the book of Leviticus quoted by this scholar of the law a neighbor is one who is to be loved. What emerges from this exchange with Jesus is that a neighbor is one who loves. Jesus is answering a question that should have been asked and is being asked today as he speaks to us: “Who is capable of becoming a neighbor?” This is the deeper question being asked of us today. We don’t need to ask “Who is my neighbor?” That question is already settled. Now we have to ask, “Am I a neighbor?”

There is a terrible risk confronting all of us today in the world and in this nation. It comes from seeing, day in and day out, the suffering of others either in real life or on TV, the homeless, the victims of violence, famine, and injustice. The risk is a hardened heart or a surrender to helplessness. A religion that is totally vertical that is focused only on my going up to God and God coming down to me is not a religion inspired by Jesus Christ. It must also be a horizontal religion that embraces broken humanity through whom we might find God. How is it possible to see the Divine in a suffering and crucified Jesus unjustly condemned and not see the Divine in the sufferings of anyone else? This is the critical issue raised by this story and the words of this Gospel.

Feeling sorry will not do. Those who passed by that victim certainly saw him and, no doubt, felt sorry for him. They had their excuses, and because of them, nothing changed. When reflecting on this story, it is easy to focus on the Samaritan, thinking that we should all be “good Samaritans” and that’s all very nice thinking, but where is the action?

It might help if instead of focusing on the good Samaritan we focused on the man in the ditch and with some empathy and compassion beginning to realize what it’s like to lie there watching people look away and walk on by. In truth, that man in the ditch and the Samaritan had a lot in common, and that might be why the Samaritan rose to the occasion. They were both looked upon as outsiders by the world in which they lived. Samaritans were despised by Jews at the time who would have nothing to do with them. It would make them unclean just as having something to do with that victim would make them unclean. Suddenly on that road, the Samaritan and that man discovered that they had something in common, and they both ended up being the better for it.

When we realize that we have something in common with the suffering people in this world, we will all be better for it. We have humanity in common. We are neighbors. We both share the image of our creator and a place in God’s creation. We all have a right to dignity. All of us were saved by that man on a cross. When someone is vilified, deaminized, imprisoned, and treated like an animal put in a cage, all humanity is degraded, and we all suffer this indignity. 

As long as we perpetuate the false belief in individual independence, we will never relate to those who are suffering. We will continue to see them as a burden. That Samaritan did not see that man as a burden. The more deeply we become related to one another, the more we shall truly live in the image of the Holy Trinity, ultimate Divine community.

July 6, 2025 at Saint Peter the Apostle and the Naples Maronite Mission

Isaiah 66: 10-14 + Psalm 66 + Galatians 6: 14-18 + Luke 10- 1-12, 17-20

None of the great Scripture Scholars seem clear about what Luke had in mind with the number of disciples sent out on this mission. Early Hebrew manuscripts say 72 and early Greek copies say 70. In the Book of Genesis 70 is the number of Gentile tribes, and in the Book of Numbers, Moses chooses 70 elders to be his helpers.  In either case, what we can be sure of is that Luke is making a point that the Gospel is for everyone, and Jesus expects everyone to share in the mission. There is no doubt that we are today’s 70 or 72 no more professional or prepared than the first wave of disciples sent by Jesus.

Those who have gone before us drew people by the example of their lives, not be rational proofs and arguments. They didn’t carry around a Catechism spouting memorized verses or citing church documents. It was their love, their compassion, and their service that attracted people to their faith. We need nothing more than our experience of the joy that comes from living the message of Jesus Christ, with its peace and its hope.

What we have to share is what we have experienced in communion with God and with others. I believe that this is why those who were first sent went out two by two, in pairs. This is no solo mission. No single person can accomplish the work Jesus sees needs to be done. This is a communal effort that springs from relationships that know the healing power of forgiveness, sharing and supporting each other through the sorrows and joys that life in communion will bring.

There is a warning that the Word of God will not always be welcomed by those who resist its message of justice. Those who are sent cannot be people pleasers. They must be God pleasures. Yet, we go, as Jesus says, “like sheep among wolves.” We have wolves to threaten us as much as did those who first took up the mission. The powerful violent Romans and the comfortable elite resisted, ridiculed, imprisoned, and killed those who brought the Good News. Those Jesus called “wolves” are still among us sewing fear, spewing hatred, bigotry, division, violence and lies every day and every hour. So, when the message was refused, they were to move on peacefully, because what God offers can never be imposed. The instruction was to “move on” not quit, not be silenced, but simply to continue in another place at a different time.

Our message is simple. It is Peace, and I think the best meaning of that word is oneness with God’s will. Peace is not something given. I must be worked for and worked at. With that in mind, we must be free from discouragement, impatience, and anger in failure in our efforts for peace. We must remain sincere, humble, and wise in our peace seeking and peace making. 

This is the highest calling within civilization. We are the ones called to this noble task. Peace is the one undeniable sign of God’s presence and God’s Kingdom. We are not there yet perhaps because we have not counted ourselves among the 70 thinking someone else should do it.

July 6, 2025 with the Naples Maronite Mission at St Agnes Chapel in Naples, FL

Matthew 10: 1-7

Then he summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to drive them out and to cure every disease and every illness. The names of the twelve apostles are these: first, Simon called Peter, and his brother Andrew, James, the son of Zabedee, and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James, the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddeus; Simon the Cananean, and Judas Iscariot who betrayed him. Jesus sent out these twelve after instructing them thus, “Do not go into pagan territory or enter a Samaritan town. Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, make this proclamation: “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

This Gospel passage invites us to reflect on two details. The first detail is these twelve. Some of them are identified by their family/father’s name which may be Matthew’s way of distinguishing them from others with the same name. Then there is Matthew who is identified by his occupation. The Gospel makes an important point about the role of one’s past in one’s ministry. When we follow Jesus, what matters is what we become, not what we have been. Notice how that works with Judas. What matters is what he becomes. Then there is Simon, the Cananean. This is not Simon Peter. This Simon is identified by his political activity. Cananeans were radical revolutionaries.

Reflecting on these details lets us see that the Twelve represent some diversity with several things in common: they are all men, they are Palestinian Jews, they are all working- or lower-class men. There is not a single person from the elite class of people here, no great leaders, nor foreigners. The fact is, that probably not one of these twelve could pass a test or succeed through an interview for some top post in a big corporation. They are so ordinary and simple, that no one would think to call them together to undertake a great task. But, God does.

The other detail concerns their instructions, where to go and what to do.  What is clear from Matthew’s report is that basically, these twelve are being sent to do what Jesus has been doing, and we ought to always see what he does through the words of the Sermon on the Mount. When Jesus tells them “to go only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” he is telling them to stay home. I think he is suggesting that they need to clean up their own lives – their own communities or families before running all over the place fixing others. They are going to need some creditability, and it will come from their own lives, families, and villages. They are to do what Jesus does. He invites them into his very life. They are to bring the power of the Gospel to bear against every force, public, private, political or social that diminishes human life.

If the Kingdom of God is at hand, then we are living in it. If we look around and what we see does not match what Jesus said it would be like, then the mission of those twelve is incomplete. When I look around here, it seems to me that we are just the sort of people Jesus would summon if we had been there at the beginning. It is still the beginning. To have any credibility or the kind of authority Jesus had to attract, invite, and set people free, our deeds must match our words. It was so for him. Our lives must match the life of Jesus Christ. Our courage can be no less than his when it comes to speaking up, acting up, and standing up against any force that diminishes human life.

Our past is of no interest to Jesus Christ. What we have done has no bearing at all on what we must become. There is no test to pass, no interview to survive when summoned. All God has to work with is you and me, and we would not be here if people just like us had believed for one minute that they were not up to the task of discipleship. We are summoned, we are gifted with everything we need which is the power of grace, the power of faith, and maybe most of all, the power of hope.