Homily for the Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time
World Mission Sunday
October 19, 2025
St. Martin de Porres Catholic Church
Prosper, Texas
Exodus 17:8-13
Psalm 121:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8
2 Timothy 3:14-4:2
Luke 18:1-8
In 1926 Pope Pius XI decreed that each year on the penultimate Sunday of October, the Church would keep a day dedicated to World Missions to remind all Catholics of our shared responsibility to promote the spread of the authentic Gospel in every conceivable way. We can and should support missionary work with our financial gifts, but even more we must seek to live as faithful disciples and loving friends of the Lord Jesus and so bear witness to everyone we meet that Jesus Christ is Lord.
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Homily for the Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time
Celebration of the 130th anniversary of St. Joseph Parish
August 31, 2025
St. Joseph Catholic Church
Rhineland, Texas
Sirach 3:17-18, 20, 28-29
Psalm 68:4-5, 6-7, 10-11
Hebrews 12:18-19, 22-24a
Luke 14:1, 7-14
“God in your goodness, you have made a home for the poor.” Our responsorial psalm for today’s Mass, taken from Psalm 68, describes the essence of the prayer life of Father Reisdorf’s vision and labor in the foundation of this parish and the community of Rhineland that this parish has served for one hundred and thirty years.
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Reflection for Vespers for Thursday of the Eighteenth Week of Ordinary Time
Oath of Fidelity for Candidates for Diaconate Ordination
August 7, 2025
St. Patrick Cathedral
Fort Worth, Texas
Psalm 72
Psalm 72
Revelation 11:17-18; 12:10b-12a:3-4
1 Peter 1:22-23
Every time we pray vespers, we pray the Magnificat, the song of praise sung by Our Lady at the Visitation of her cousin Elizabeth. Her song is a song of hope in God’s triumphant intervention into human history, and it reveals her to be filled with God’s Grace, her trusting dependence and complete communion with God and calls us to our own reliance on His grace in our own vocations. Like so many other graces from God, we can take for granted the message of the Magnificat that we pray every day.
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Homily for the Mass for the Convocation of Teachers of the Schools of the Diocese of Fort Worth
Memorial of Saint John Vianney
August 4, 2025
St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church
Keller, Texas
Numbers 11:4b-15
Psalm 81:12-13, 14-15, 16-17
Matthew 14:13-21
Sing with joy to God our help!
In our Gospel reading, we see the disciples come to Jesus with what they surmise to be a problem. The disciples tell Jesus, “This is a deserted place, and it is already late; dismiss the crowds so that they can go to the villages and buy food for themselves.”
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Homily for the Sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time
February 15, 2025
St. Bartholomew Catholic Church
Fort Worth, Texas
Jeremiah 17:5-8
Psalm 1:1-2, 3, 4, 6
1 Corinthians 15:12, 16-20
Luke 6:17, 20-26
Jesus cautions us that prestige, power, and complacency can prompt us to lose our way with Him. To be a disciple of Jesus involves our dying to these selfish preoccupations so that the life of Christ can exist in us that we might raise with Him from the dead on the last day. His teaching on the Beatitudes in today’s Gospel requires us to invert the sense of values and purposes that our contemporary world espouses for meaning and happiness — power, financial success, and pleasure. These values only seem to promise freedom and to bring security to the individual. This teaching of Jesus in His Sermon on the Plain invites His disciples to risk estrangement from this world by trusting Him and by following Him in the way that He lives and loves. This way of life and love that involves surrender and trust is most clearly manifested and made present in the sacramental vocation of marriage with its graced and promised intentions of permanence, fidelity, and openness to God’s gift of children.
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Homily for the Vigil of the Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time
February 9, 2025
St. Patrick Cathedral
Fort Worth, Texas
Isaiah 6:1-2a, 3-8
Psalm 138:1-2, 2-3, 4-5, 7-8
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Luke 5:1-11
The readings from today’s liturgy offer us three examples of three distinct examples of vocation from God: Isaiah, Saint Peter, and Saint Paul. Each of these readings depict the following aspects of vocation: a sense of unworthiness in being called by God; a decision to care enough to respond to the call amidst the indifference of other bystanders; and a fresh sense of confidence that accompanies the decision to trust God and to place the response trusting God and putting one’s response into words and action.
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Homily for the Optional Memorial of Saint Ansgar
Mass for the Institution of Ministries of Lector and Acolyte
February 3, 2025
Theological College
Washington, DC
Isaiah 52:7-10
Psalm 96:1-2, 2-3, 7-8, 9-10
Hebrews 10:19-25
Mark 1:14-20
To consider the lay ministries of lector and acolyte in the life of the Church and in their role in seminary formation requires us to review two Papal documents: the Motu Proprio, Ministeria Quaedam of 1972 by Pope Saint Paul VI and the Motu Proprio, Spiritus Domini of 2021 by Pope Francis. Ministeria Quaedam identified the character of Lector and Acolyte not as minor orders inherently within the clerical state but as being “closely linked to liturgical actions that in practice were being exercised by the laity.” This shift in focus led to the development in doctrine within the Latin Church that these ministries while distinct from ordained ministry are open to all the baptized. This Magisterial recognition has graciously spared the Church from clericalizing male and female members of the laity.
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Homily for the Second Sunday of Ordinary Time
Mass for the Preservation of Peace and Justice, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration
January 18, 2025
Saint Joseph Catholic Church
Arlington, Texas
Isaiah 62:1-5
Psalm 96:1-2, 2-3, 7-8, 9-10
I Corinthians 12:4-11
John 2:1-11
The wedding at Cana in Galilee probably involved a friend or relative of Mary and Jesus since they were invited. Either the details of this event were not well planned, or perhaps there were unexpected guests. In any event, it doesn’t surprise us to find out that Mary was the kind of person who paid attention to details, who thought of others with compassion, and who wanted to prevent embarrassing situations, especially the type of embarrassment of not having enough wine at a wedding that culturally would have harmed this couple, their children, and their children’s children for generations.
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Life on the Chrism Trail 
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