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God’s Generous Grace
Reverend Robert Gillelan
September 19, 2026
Sorry about my voice. You know, usually after spending five days with the Trappist monks on a silent retreat at Berryville, Virginia, I would come back and my voice would be fresh and livelier, but it always seems to have a hard time waking up, so I’ll do the best I can.
One of the great things about these parables is that a parable always tells us something about the nature of God and the nature of God’s kingdom. And so, with this parable tonight, we know it’s not about business or hiring or wages; it’s about God’s sovereignty and God’s generosity.
And this is something that Jesus apparently really wants us to understand, because we judge so many things as human beings in terms of our model and our standard of what is fair. That’s not how God rations grace at all.
God gives us grace according to our need, and sometimes there is quite a disparity, or it appears that there’s quite a disparity, between what one person gets and what another person gets. But it was St. Thomas Aquinas who reminds us that people perceive different measures of grace based on how well they cooperate with the grace that’s given.
St. Teresa of Ávila was right on board with that, saying that we receive grace and garner holiness precisely according to our readiness to receive that grace and cooperate with it. And one of the disparities that we see in the lives of the saints is that some of these saints got holy really quick.
They became saints at a very young age. We think of Maria Goretti, who had the grace to endure martyrdom; Carlo Acutis, who handled his terminal illness in a sacred way; the Ugandan Martyrs, who were martyred—who were tortured—but even some of those were like ten and eleven and twelve years old.
Saint Thérèse of Lisieux contracted tuberculosis at the age of twenty-four. It would seem that God really loaded them up on the front end of their lives to accomplish His purpose, which was their sanctity, their holiness, and ultimately salvation.
Which brings us to the point of understanding that God gives each and every one of us enough grace every day to attain salvation. And that’s really, really important to understand, because, as we heard in the Gospel tonight, one of the problems in our humanity is that we can start to compare ourselves to other people.
Imagining how much more grace they’re getting than we are, or how much they are progressing in spiritual life and I’m not. And one of the things that the saints consistently tell us is: don’t compare yourself to another person.
If you’re going to compare yourself to someone, as St. Thomas Aquinas says, compare yourself to Jesus, not someone else. Because remember, each of us is on a very unique path to God, and God takes that into consideration, just as you who are parents do with your children.
If one child needs a little bit more help in this area, you give that child more help. It doesn’t mean you love the other children less.
You know what to give this child, but this child does need more. And that’s how God is with us when it comes to God’s distribution of grace in our lives.
God knows what we need, and He gives it to us. We can let go of the myth that health and wealth mean that, well, God favors that person, or that the difficulties and the hardships of my life mean that I’ve fallen out of God’s favor.
Not true at all. Most of the saints experienced serious hardships in their lives, and they used those hardships as opportunities to grow in holiness through the grace that God gave them through that hard time in their life.
Or when we think that our spiritual life is stagnating, it’s stymied, and we ask, “Why is God being so stingy with grace?” One of the things we want to remember is there’s a difference between what we’re feeling and grace.
Sometimes grace feels good, but sometimes God withdraws the feeling without withdrawing the grace. If you’re getting the grace and you’re getting the feeling, then you should feel good about it.
That’s called a consolation. And so this is all about this serious myth of God, who is this incredibly generous giver.
God will not be outdone in generosity. He gives every drop of grace that we need every single day, not only to attain salvation but to grow in personal holiness.
The thing that defeats envy—and envy is the sorrow that we feel for another person’s gain, for their good fortune—and Jesus brought that up in the parable: “Are you envious because I’m generous?”
If you want to check your envy, put yourself in that Gospel. So imagine that you are one of the workers who worked twelve hours, and your best friend comes up to you and says, “Look what happened to me. I got paid a full day’s wage by just showing up at the last minute.” Are you happy for your best friend, or are you mad as a wet hornet? Okay, now you passed that test if you’re really happy for your friend.
Now imagine it’s somebody you don’t know, a total stranger, showing up and saying, “Hey, guess what? I got paid the same as you. You worked twelve hours, I just showed up at the last minute, and I got paid the same.” There’s envy. That’s envy, and that’s a capital sin.
And so the Lord wants us to check that. We’ve got to check ourselves so we don’t wreck ourselves on the rocks of envy.
You know, humility is a powerful virtue that helps us to defeat envy. Humility is really the archenemy of envy.
And one of the things that the Litany of Humility tells us, one of the petitions in there, is, “Lord, may others become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as You need me to become.” So allowing others to receive all the graces that they need, even if it’s more than what we think we should get, to be satisfied with what the Lord gives us. To be grateful for that.
And there’s a great song—if you remember nothing else from this homily—by Matt Maher. He’s a wonderful Christian leader of a band. One of his songs is called “Your Grace Is Enough.” He’s quoting Saint Paul, actually.
And that’s the whole point: “Lord, Your grace is enough, not only for me to make it through this day, not only for me to survive whatever life throws at me, but it’s enough for me to go just a little bit more into holiness and to ultimately attain salvation.”
So let us thank the Lord for these beautiful parables that reveal something of the nature of God and something of His kingdom. And as we thank the Lord with grateful hearts for the grace that He gives us, may we remember the wisdom in our first reading, remembering that God’s thoughts are above our thoughts, and God’s ways are above our ways.
FORGIVENESS & JUSTICE
Reverend Robert Gillelan
September 12, 2026
A Response to the Vandalism of the Statue of the Blessed Mother
You probably know by now, on September 8, this past Tuesday, which was the birthday of our Blessed Mother, late at night our historic statue, painted gold, was vandalized. It was knocked over, it was cracked, some of the parts broke off, and in Church terminology we call that a desecration.
Desecration is when someone with malicious intent tries to damage or destroy a sacred object or something religious that we hold dear. Let me just say, to bring you kind of up to date without throwing a wrench into the wheels of justice, that Bishop Senior knows about this.
The insurance carrier has been contacted. We have some people, professionals, coming in on Tuesday to take a look at the statue and see if it can, in fact, be repaired or at least be replaced.
As some of you know, it was the statue between the spires, in the middle of them. That’s where this statue was in the old church that dates back to the 1870s.
And finally, just so you know, the police are on it, and the detectives also, and are going to do a very good job, so we’ll leave it at that. So if everything is pretty much well in hand, what is there left for us to do?
Well, some people I’ve heard, you know, have told me, “Father, I’m very upset about this. I’m devastated.” Others have said that they’re very angry.
Others have said they feel violated. All normal, very expected feelings in light of that kind of evil. And we’re dealing with two kinds of evil here, really. We’re dealing with being offended by this desecration, which offends God and our Blessed Mother and anyone who holds our Blessed Mother near and dear to their hearts.
And we’re dealing with a crime, a felony. So we’re kind of offended in two ways.
How are we going to deal with that? Funny that we should have this Gospel today, which is about forgiveness.
Because I think it is divinely inspired, because it gives us a way. It gives us a really important spiritual way to deal with these kinds of situations in life.
And so Jesus says, “Forgive.” And interestingly enough, Jesus compares forgiveness to writing off a debt. So how do we apply that to our present situation?
Well, first of all, we can write off a debt that we often feel we owe to ourselves: to get even, to retaliate, to seek revenge against the perpetrator of this offensive crime. But then we realize that Jesus said, “We’re not going to do that.”
We’re not going to do an eye for an eye. What we’re going to do is, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” So that’s what we’re going to do.
We’re going to pray for the perpetrator that he will have a kind of conversion and, in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “Stop doing evil and learn to do good.”
Okay, what’s another debt we might write off? How about the debt of an apology? We are owed an apology. Well, we’re also going to write off that debt.
We’re going to write it off because we can’t force anyone to feel sorry.
What’s another debt we’re going to write off? Restitution. Oh my goodness, how can we write that off? We need that to pay for the statue, to have it repaired or replaced.
Restitution, in a spiritual sense, is actually what we call satisfaction. It’s like the penance we do after confession to try to show God that we’re really sorry and we want to make this situation right again. We can’t force anyone to do that. We can’t.
Another debt that we can write off is the demand that we often place on forgiveness. We feel we owe that to ourselves.
We feel it’s just: “I’m not going to forgive this perpetrator until he apologizes, until he pays full restitution, and until he changes his evil ways and has a conversion. Then I’ll forgive him.” Well, you see how we’re adding on to forgiveness and Jesus is subtracting from it?
When we hold on to these kinds of conditions when it comes to forgiveness, we often end up frustrated and angry and bitter and feeling more victimized, because we’re holding on to things we can’t control.
We cannot control an apology or restitution or how someone is going to respond to this situation. Jesus is saying, in effect, “You’ve got to learn to let some things go.” We need to learn to write off the things that we cannot control.
That actually constitutes forgiveness, and it’s good for us. We often think we’re doing forgiveness for the other person, but so often, especially when a person shows absolutely no repentance, forgiveness is unilateral.
It’s something we do for ourselves. Because if we hold on to all these conditions of forgiveness that are never met, we end up unforgiving. We end up angry. That often produces a stress response in us, which releases the cortisol, and we’re not supposed to live in that kind of stressed-out state all the time. It’s not good for our hearts. It’s not good for our minds.
Science has figured that out. We need to get on board. It’s not good to live in a state of unforgiveness.
Okay, so if we write off all of these debts, then aren’t we—aren’t we giving away the farm?
I mean, where is the justice for us? Well, justice for us comes with the other side of the forgiveness coin, which is justice.
And St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that justice is to give to the person what they are owed. And so, with the criminal justice system on board and working for us, what are we owed? We are owed restitution, satisfaction, to make it whole.
What is the perpetrator owed? Well, probably according to the Pennsylvania Crimes Code, he’s owed incarceration, probably fines, and restitution to us.
So in this way, we see that forgiveness and justice are not mutually exclusive, which most people think they are. The fact that we are forgiving of this individual, as we are, doesn’t mean that we give up all justice.
Justice is also a virtue. It’s actually one of the cardinal virtues.
Our entire, you know, Western civilization is strongly based on a system of justice. So we need to make use of it and respect it as we can.
So, two sides of the same coin: forgiveness, which actually helps us with our healing of the situation, and justice, which holds the perpetrator accountable. And in this way, we hope and pray that the situation, you know, finds a peaceful and equitable and just resolution.
So if you’re angry or hurt or feel violated by what has happened, that’s natural. But Jesus says, “Go ahead and try to forgive this,” letting go of the things that we cannot control and trusting that the wheels of justice will, in the end, give us our due.
Those very memorable words in our first reading from Sirach. Sirach tells us that, “Wrath and anger are hateful things, and the sinner hugs them tight.” May we not hug and hang on to anger, wrath, frustration, bitterness, and victimhood in light of this situation.
But may we be a people known for practicing forgiveness as we await the fulfillment of justice.
Fraternal Correction
Reverend Robert Gillelan
September 5, 2026
In tonight’s Gospel, Jesus is talking about fraternal correction – fraternal correction directed toward repentance. And boy, is that a touching subject today.
We also heard in our first reading that even in the Old Testament, in the Jewish faith, a fraternal correction of someone who was sinning was a commandment given by God. What did God say to Ezekiel? If an evil man dies, he will die because of his guilt, but if you don’t correct him, I’m going to hold you also responsible.
So these readings tonight tell us that there is a responsibility on the part of us as Christians to lovingly – let’s underscore that – lovingly, correct and help one another when we have gone astray. And that’s the goal here. You know, this kind of correction today might get the response to someone who’d say, “Don’t push your morals on me.” Or, “Jesus said don’t judge.” Well, Jesus just said that we are supposed to use the faculty of judgment to know when someone sins against us or has gone astray in the faith, and it’s our responsibility to help, to bring them back.
This is not about weaponizing religion, as you would hear today. This is about love, because love is to will the good of the other, as St. Thomas Aquinas has told us numerous times. And willing the good of the other is to bring the sinner back onto the path of righteousness. And so we know from our Church history that the Church has been exercising this discipline of fraternal correction in various ways and forms throughout the millennia.
Some of the things that the Church has had to confront have been those three really big sins of heresy, apostasy, and schism. And all three of those big-time sins are still with us today and require our vigilance and, at times, the Church’s correction.
And notice that Jesus doesn’t say, “Do your best to – do what you can to correct someone.” Jesus actually gives us a plan. He gives us an outline of how to do it.
The first thing He says, if someone sins against you, or in the broader sense of the Church, you know that someone is seriously – has seriously fallen into sin, what do we do? Do we go online and announce it to everyone?
No, first go to the person directly and personally and bring the matter to their attention.
Privately. Not publicly. Not online.
In person. Directly. In charity.
If bringing this matter to their attention doesn’t seem to help them, doesn’t seem to do any good to change their mind and their heart, then we take some other people along with us – with us – like-minded believers, which today we might call an intervention.
We do an intervention to help these people again to see that perhaps they are in the wrong here, and perhaps they do need a bit of correction. And if they don’t listen after the intervention, then we can take it to the Church.
We have seen the Church’s response to these serious sins down through the past 2,000 years: heresy, officially the obstinate denial of a truth to be believed by Catholic faith. In the early Church, some of the heresies were about the nature of Jesus Christ. Some would be heretical because they said He isn’t fully human. Others over here would say, “Well, He’s not fully divine.” And so the Church had to deal with that.
Those kind of heresies led to proclamations and creeds and dogmas. Bishop Barron says those kind of heresies are still with us today, but are with us more regarding the nature of our humanity.
Often these heresies are the secular ideologies that deny the truth about our relationship with God and with one another, and the true nature of our humanity. He tells us we need to be on guard so that they do not infect our core beliefs as Catholics.
Heresy, apostasy. Apostasy is the total repudiation of the Christian faith.
The emperor would say, “Renounce your faith or die.” And so they would renounce their faith as Christians. If you want a really good movie on that, probably not best for children, but great for adults, the movie Silence, about missionaries in Japan.
In the early Church, that was a really big deal because when Christians were under persecution, they would apostatize. Some would repudiate their faith.
Apostasy. And then schism: the refusal of submission to the pope. Here we have an example of what Jesus said, that if you’ve tried to speak with people one-on-one, and if you’ve done an intervention and they still do not have a change of mind and heart, they may need to be excommunicated from the faith community, not primarily as a punishment, but primarily as a medicinal response, driving them out from the community, separating them from the community of faith, like a great big time out, to give them the time to think about what they’ve done and hopefully inspire a bit of conversion. So excommunication directed towards a change of mind and heart.
We recently had an example of excommunication, did we not? When Pope Leo excommunicated, recently, the bishop from the Society of St. Pius X, who attempted to ordain four or five new bishops against the direction of our Holy Father. And he excommunicated them all because they refused to submit to the pope.
You know, today I think people look at that sort of thing and can have a very wrong judgment about the Catholic Church, saying that we’re weaponizing religion. Well, we’re not weaponizing anything.
We’re doing exactly what Jesus said to do in the Bible, in the Gospels. And sometimes excommunication is needed not only to give the sinner the time to convert, but also to protect the integrity and the deposit of faith of the rest of the faithful.
So we’re following Jesus’s instructions when we try to guide people back on track one-on-one, when we do interventions, or when we need the help of the Church to solve some of life’s more difficult problems. And so in the end, we have these disciplines that, you know, some of them are even outlined in the 1983 Code of Canon Law. And when we think of Canon Law, we don’t think of love, but we should think of love and salvation.
The Code of Canon Law directs us how to give expression to fraternal correction in our minds. And its motto is Salus Animarum Suprema Lex. The Latin scholars among us know that that means the salvation of souls is the supreme law.
So as Catholics, we celebrate the law as an instrument of salvation. So let us pray that the Lord may give us the wisdom to know when to exercise fraternal correction, and may He give us the courage and the charity to do it following His teaching.
Suffering & the Messiah
Reverend Robert Gillelan August 30, 2026
Matthew 16: 21-27
We love St. Peter because of his humanity, but in today’s Gospel we hear how Peter’s humanity gets him in hot water with Jesus.
To understand what’s going on, it’s best that we go back to last week to see how this all transpired before St. Peter, who last week Jesus was calling the rock, and this week He’s calling him Satan.
How do you go from hero to zero? Well, if you remember last week, Peter made this miracle profession of faith, that Jesus was the Christ, the anointed one, the Son of the living God.
Upon hearing that, Jesus conferred upon Peter the keys to the kingdom and made him the rock-solid foundation of His church. And then, to show how quickly things can just pivot on a dime, immediately following that, Jesus decides He’s going to tell His disciples about His passion, what awaits Him in Jerusalem.
In your Bible, this is the first prediction of the passion. So Jesus tells Peter and the disciples that when He goes to Jerusalem, He’s going to suffer, die, and rise again on the third day. When Peter hears this, you know, like in that great movie, A Few Good Men, Peter can’t handle the truth. That’s what’s going to happen.
That is Jesus’ truth. But Peter has another truth about the Messiah. Because in Peter’s mind, the Messiah is not a suffering servant Messiah. The Messiah has to be a conquering hero Messiah.
So Peter takes Jesus aside. Remember, Jesus is the Son of God. He is God incarnate. Peter takes Jesus aside and rebukes Him. And tells Him, you know, heaven forbid that anything like that should ever happen to You. You need to disabuse Yourself of that idea.
That’s not the way things happen. Well, the word for rebuke in Greek means to sternly warn. So wrap your mind around that. Here’s Peter, a human being, sternly warning God in the person of Jesus Christ that He’s wrong.
That’s a pretty big deal. And so, Jesus then rebukes Peter. He says, “Get behind me, Satan. You are not thinking like God. You are thinking like a human being.” Maybe that’s instructive to us for what Jesus sees in this encounter.
Because think of somebody else. Think of two other people who thought they knew better than God. Adam and Eve in the garden. Mere human beings thought they knew better than God. So they ate from the tree. They disobeyed God.
Who tempted them to think that they knew better than God? Satan in the form of a serpent. And Satan is all about lies and pride. I think here what Jesus is seeing is kind of this archetypal spiritual pride coming out in St. Peter. It’s kind of insidious because it doesn’t really look like pride. I mean, it is pride because what else can you call it when a mere human being is telling God incarnate that He’s wrong.
So, Jesus needs to correct this situation. He needs to nip it in the bud. To get Peter, the rock foundation of His church, on board to understand His true identity. That Jesus truly is and will be a suffering servant Messiah.
I think it’s probably the rest of the way to Jerusalem that Jesus is trying to impart this to Peter. And Peter is not quick on the uptake. Because remember what happens in the Garden of Gethsemane as Jesus begins to enter into His passion.
What does Peter do? He takes out his sword when the guards come and try to arrest Jesus. He takes out his sword and chops off Malchus’ ear. He’s trying to prevent Jesus from being arrested and entering into His passion.
And so, Peter, you know, is having a hard time understanding our Lord’s true identity. And how a Messiah can actually be a suffering-servant Messiah.
We probably don’t have that kind of problem understanding Jesus as the suffering servant Messiah. But we do at times have a problem with suffering and the Messiah. Our truth about suffering.
Is our truth about suffering always our Lord’s truth about suffering? Do we sometimes pretend that we know better?
Almost four decades, you know, in profession and spiritual direction, I hear things like, “Well, I’m suffering, so God must be punishing me.” Right?
Well, let’s remember that we worship Jesus Christ, who is God. When we look in the Gospels, there are no instances at all of Jesus inflicting pain and suffering on anyone in order to punish them.
And yet we continue to think that when we are suffering, maybe somehow God is punishing me for something when Jesus, whom we worship, never did that. On the contrary, Jesus heals and Jesus forgives. He doesn’t punish with suffering and pain.
Okay. Well, if Jesus isn’t punishing me in my suffering, then maybe He’s abandoned me in my suffering. You know what St. Teresa of Calcutta says about that? She says, when we suffer, we draw close to Christ, and Christ draws close to us. She says, Jesus draws so close to us in our suffering that He kisses us. That’s not abandonment. That’s love and consolation.
Well, if I’m not being punished and if I’m not abandoned, well, I certainly don’t deserve this suffering that I’m going through. No, you don’t. No, you don’t. And neither did Jesus.
But how in the world do we think that somehow we should escape all suffering from this life when Jesus did not. And in fact, we are baptized into His suffering.
When we’re baptized, we’re baptized into the entire life of Jesus. And that life of Jesus and the rhythms of that life are mysteriously reproduced in our life. The good times, the bad times, and the ugly times, the suffering times. And that’s why Jesus in the Gospel says that we have to learn not only to accept suffering in our lives, but to accept it and be able to spiritualize it for a greater good. A good outside of ourselves. That’s what redemptive suffering is all about.
Thats what offering it up is all about. For maybe our spiritual good, for the good of His church and the good of God’s kingdom, and to give greater honor and glory to God.
So for us, no, we don’t deserve to suffer. We do because that’s how it is. But suffering can have deep, deep spiritual meaning as Jesus and the saints tell us and show us by their example. So while we don’t have a problem with the identity of Jesus as the suffering Messiah, let us consider if we do have a problem with suffering and Jesus and how the two go together. Maybe we need a little attitude adjustment on that. And if we do, those words of St. Paul in that second reading in his letter to the Romans are so beautiful that we want to remember. He says, “Do not conform yourself to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind so that you may come to discern what is God’s will, what is good and pleasing and perfect.”
And that includes taking up our cross and following Jesus.
Why Catholics Believe What We Believe
Created on August 23, 2026
Reverend Robert Gillelan
What if somebody asked you, “Why do you Catholics do that? Why do you Catholics believe that? No, it’s not in the Bible?”
Well, the short answer to that is, we do some things and we believe a lot of things because Jesus gave the power of the keys to St. Peter. That’s the short answer.
The longer answer is, we believe as we do and we do as we do because when Jesus gave Peter the power of the keys, of course, we’re not talking about real keys here. We’re talking about Jesus conferring authority onto St. Peter.
And as we know, authority is the right to use power, to exercise power. And so, Jesus is saying to Peter, “I’m going to make you a leader. I’m going to give you authority, and l need you to exercise that authority in my name, in matters of faith and morals, directed towards the spiritual well-being and salvation.”
In exercising this power, when we look at Church history, we see that the popes throughout the course of history-and the popes are the successors of St. Peter-all of the popes that have sat on the Chair of St. Peter have received this charism of binding and loosing.
We see this being exercised down through the course of history in the areas of teaching and governance of the Church, and spirituality and sanctification. Those are the areas where this shows up.
For example, if someone were to say to you, “Why do you Catholics believe the Assumption of Mary? It’s not in the Bible?”
Correct. It’s not explicitly in the Bible.
But after centuries of reflecting on this mystery and with the help of the Holy Spirit-remember something else that Jesus said: “I’m going to give you the Holy Spirit to lead you into all truth.” With the help of Gospel reflection, with the help of the Holy Spirit, Pope Pius XII, in 1950, proclaimed Mary’s Assumption into heaven, that that should be a doctrine that all Catholics should accept as true.
And we do. And no, it is not explicitly in the Bible, but the Pope has given us that to help us on our spiritual way.
It’s another piece of our faith that helps us in the spiritual life and gives us hope. And so, that’s why we believe, because the Pope said so.
That’s not an answer that’s very satisfying to people today. But that’s an answer that shows that we understand the primacy of the Pope-the primacy which Jesus gave explicitly to St. Peter and his successors.
So, that’s an example of how this charism of the power of the keys might express itself when it comes to Church teaching and doctrine. But it also expresses itself when it comes to sin and sanctification.
So, here’s another question you’ve probably got in your lifetime: Why do Catholics go to confession to a priest?
That’s not in the Bible either.
Well, we go to confession to a priest, actually now, because of the 6th-century Irish concept. Because in the 6th century, they were the ones who introduced individual confessions as we know them today-individual private confessions.
And it was, I believe, Pope Innocent III, who confirmed at the Fourth Lateran Council in the year 1215 that all Catholics should go to confession at least once a year to confess their mortal sins.
So, why do you go to confession?
Well, number one, because Jesus instituted it as a sacrament. John 20: remember what happened on Easter evening when Jesus came among the apostles and He breathed on them the Holy Spirit and said, “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.”
We believe as Catholics that’s where Jesus instituted the sacrament of confession, and that He actually wanted to, in a sense, hear your confessions and forgive sins, and that the ministry would endure in the Church.
So, another short answer: why do Catholics go to confession to a priest? Well, because Jesus and Pope Innocent Ill said we should.
And then another place where this charism of binding and loosing the power of the keys to make these important decisions-shows up is in Church governance and order. And, boy, for that we go to the 1983 Code of Canon Law.
And virtually none of that we’re going to find in the Bible, because it’s all the rules and regulations of the Church.
And who put that on the table? Another pope.
Pope Saint John Paul Il in 1983, because when you have a Church with 1.14 billion people, you need some governance.
And so, for example, why do you need a baptismal certificate? If you want to get married in the Church, why do you need a baptismal certificate brought in to the deacon or myself that’s only six months old? Why can’t you bring in a baptismal certificate that’s stuck in the Bible when you were baptized, you know, 20, 25 years ago?
Because the newer baptismal certificate has a lot of information on it that we need, because a lot has happened to you since your baptism regarding the sacraments. And that’s not in the Bible, is it?
All those kinds of rules and regulations are there for the spiritual good of the faithful and for the order and well-ordering of the Church and the administration of the sacraments.
So, when people ask us as Catholics, “Why do we believe something, or why don’t we do something?” you can probably name a pope who signed some kind of decree to put it on the table as part of our apostolic faith and something that they want us to be aware of and use to help us in our spiritual growth.
So, today, let’s consider Leo XIV, who also has received the power as successor of Saint Peter. And let’s pray for him that he will use that charism wisely and courageously to lead his flock.
And while we know that this is a tremendous responsibility, let us also pray for all the bishops in communion with our Holy Father, that they will be faithful to their apostolic offices.
So, when people ask us, “Why do Catholics do this, and why do Catholics do that?” remember this Gospel, and you can start the conversation by saying, “Because Jesus, in His wisdom, gave Saint Peter the power of the keys.” He must have thought that it was going to work, because at the end He added, “And the gates of hell will not prevail against you.”
