August 24, 2025
21st Sunday
Ordinary Time
FOCUS: God offers salvation to all in the person of his only Son.
God’s desire is that we love him and serve him and are united to him for eternity. We are called by baptism to the salvation that he offers through his Son. What matters is our response to that loving and life-giving invitation: how we live out our lives as faithful disciples makes the ultimate difference. It is our witness that will encourage others to hear and respond to God’s call to them.
What's in Your Heart
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Trials can be rich opportunities on our spiritual path if we see them as "discipline," that is, training in new ways of seeing and living. Can I name a recent trial that helped me be a better disciple?
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Ego lowering is a big part of spiritual development. Do I take trials and disappointments as wounds to the ego that I defend against, or as ways to lessen my ego and rely more on God? How so?
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The narrow way that Jesus points us to demands awareness and choice. It also demands patience with myself and with God. What in my behavior right now indicates I'm choosing the narrow way?
Homily Stories
The Lasts and Firsts always get mention, but what about the in-betweens, the average, the mediocres? Where do they stand in the Kingdom? Hmm . . . it seems pretty clear that Christianity is an all-or-nothing proposition: If you're not with me, you're against me, Jesus tells his disciples. There is no maybe, no give me a minute to tie up some loose ends. The time to love with fiery passion is this instant.
But for those of us who fear we might not have embraced our Christian faith with that degree of warmth, fear not, the hope for reconciliation is ever-present. The possibility to recommit to the discipline of God's love is available at any given moment.
Second chances and do-overs abound throughout Christian history. Saint Peter denies Christ three times and becomes the rock upon which the church is built; Saint Paul persecutes Christians and becomes its most vigorous and influential missionary; Augustine spends his early life as a profligate and later years as one of the greatest Christian thinkers; Saint Thérèse of Lisieux suffers obsessive guilt and then goes on to find unflappable calm and peace in her little way.
It's never too late to turn up the heat and become like God, who the writer of Hebrews tells us is "a consuming fire." Sorry, lukewarm definitely won't do.
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