Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Lent
March 30, 2025
St. Patrick Cathedral
Fort Worth, Texas
Joshua 5:9a, 10-12
Psalm 34:2-3, 4-5, 6-7
2 Corinthians 5:17-21
Luke 15:1-3, 11-32
In today’s Gospel from Luke, we find Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem and engaged in a discussion with the Scribes and Pharisees. They are watching for Him to make a mistake and find a reason to judge and to condemn Him since “He welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So, Jesus instructs them by telling them a parable.
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Homily for the Ordination of Blake Ryan Thompson to the Transitional Diaconate
Solemnity of Saint Joseph, Husband of Mary
March 19, 2025
St. Maria Goretti Catholic Church
Arlington, Texas
Numbers 3:5-9
Psalm 23:1-3, 4, 5, 6
Acts 6:1-7b
Luke 2:41-52
Today is a joyful day in the life of the local Church of Fort Worth as we celebrate the ordination to the transitional diaconate of Blake Thompson who has persevered through discernment, study, ministry, and prayer for the last eight years to arrive at this point of firmly saying “yes” to Christ’s call to him to follow Him in giving himself entirely to Christ and to His Church. This evening our relative and friend, Blake Thompson, will solemnly promise to live a life imbued by celibate chastity in total dedication to the Kingdom of God as established by Christ and manifested through humble service to the People of God. He will promise to pray daily the Liturgy of the Hours with and for the People of God here and throughout the world. Finally, he will be ordained to give himself as a minister of charity and as a herald of the Gospel of Christ, to preach at liturgies, to preside at weddings and funerals, and to administer the sacrament of Baptism within the Church.
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Homily for Ash Wednesday
March 5, 2025
St. Patrick Cathedral
Fort Worth, Texas
Joel 2:12-18
Psalm 51:3-4, 5-6ab, 12-13, 14 and 17
2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18
“Spare, O LORD, your people, and make not your heritage a reproach, with the nations ruling over them! Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?'”
This question spoken by the prophet, Joel, is a question at the heart of our Lenten season of repentance for us to ponder in reference to our relationship with God. Where is our God?
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Homily for Friday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time
Memorial Mass for Deceased Basselin Alumni and Professors at the School of Philosophy of the Catholic University of America
February 28, 2025
Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception
Washington, D.C.
Wisdom 3:1-9
Romans 5:17-21
Matthew 5:1-12
We are summoned by God in His compassion here today as a family to offer this Eucharist in memory of Theodore Basselin and of our departed professors, colleagues, friends, and brothers who like so many of us received so much through the gift of the Basselin scholarship. Whenever God summons the Church to worship Him at Mass, He offers each and all of us a sign of hope and invites us to offer an act of hope. This is most clearly true when the Eucharist is offered for the repose of the souls of the faithful departed.
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Life on the Chrism Trail 