Homily for the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
February 1, 2026
St. Patrick Cathedral
Fort Worth, Texas
Zephaniah 2:3, 3:12-13
Psalm 146
1st Corinthians 1:26-31
Matthew 5:1-12a
“When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he had sat down, his disciples came to him. He began to teach…” There are two groups depicted in today’s Gospel: the crowds and the disciples. Jesus teaches His disciples, and they listen because He has called them by name, and they belong to Him. A crowd is without identity and thrives on frenzy. Crowds are pieced together by individuals who out of fear or indifference have jettisoned the responsibility that accompanies belonging as a lawful member of society in exchange for fitting in with the prevailing mood of the time. The disciples are governed by faith in God as Christ’s Church.
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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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Life on the Chrism Trail 