The Lord’s Day, not Your Day — Sermon for the XX Sunday through the Year, A.D. MMXXVI

“All who keep the sabbath free from profanation and hold to my covenant, them I will bring to my holy mountain and make joyful in my house of prayer.” Our Lord has some harsh words for this Canaanite – non-Jewish – woman in today’s Gospel. Why would He treat her so severely? His words, […]

Pleading for Our Kindred — Sermon for the XIX Sunday through the Year, A.D. MMXXVI

St. Paul gets away with saying some crazy things in the Scriptures. In the letter to the Colossians, he writes that he is making up for what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ (Col 1:24). To the Galatians he writes, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there […]

Ultra Processed Religion — Sermon for the XVIII Sunday through the Year, A.D. MMXXVI

“Why spend your money for what is not bread; your wages for what fails to satisfy? Heed me, and you shall eat well, you shall delight in rich fare.” “Give them some food yourselves.” Different cultures have different ways of eating. Most of the world uses food to eat their food, rather than silverware. […]

The Goal of Prayer — Sermon for the XVII Sunday through the Year, A.D. MMXXVI

The past three weeks, our Lord has been explaining the Kingdom of Heaven using different images or parables, and we have been exploring what each of these representations of the Kingdom can teach us about prayer, since it is through prayer that the Kingdom begins growing in our hearts. Today we arrive at the […]

“Real Patience” — Sermon for the XVI Sunday through the Year, A.D. MMXXVI

Our Lord continues today explaining the Kingdom of Heaven in parables. Last Sunday, we saw a prodigiously generous sower who scatters seed even where it doesn’t seem likely to grow. We saw how the different kinds of soil represent different responses to receiving the Word of God – Christ Himself – through prayer. […]

“How the Seed Grows in Prayer” — Sermon for the XV Sunday through the Year, A.D. MMXXVI

Today’s parable about the sower and the seed is quite familiar. We are used to hearing about the different kinds of soil, and how we can be the good soil that enables us to grow spiritually. But in focusing on the soil, we can lose track of what is actually doing the growing – […]

“Buried So We Might Live” — Sermon for the XIII Sunday through the Year, A.D. MMXXVI

At the beginning of the Rite of Baptism, the priest asks an important question: “What do you desire?” The traditional rite directs the godparents to respond on the part of the child, “Faith.” The priest then asks a second question, “What does faith give you?” And the godparents reply, “Eternal life.” The modern rite […]

“The Gifts of the Sacred Heart” — Sermon for the XII Sunday through the Year, A.D. MMXXVI

“How much more did the grace of God and the gracious gift of the one man Jesus Christ overflow for the many.” We’ve been talking a lot lately about the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Just over a week ago, we joined Catholics around the United States in consecrating ourselves and our country to the […]

“A More Difficult Sacrifice” — Sermon for the XXI Sunday through the Year, A.D. MMXVI

“Perhaps for a good person one might even find courage to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” In 1941, in the hellish concentration camp of Auschwitz, a prisoner escaped. In retaliation, the guards lined up the men of his barrack and […]

“Catholics in America” — Sermon for the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, A.D. MMXXVI

A lot has changed in 250 years. The cultural assumptions that grounded American civic life in 1776 are largely gone. As the Declaration of Independence was signed in Philadelphia, the representatives of the Second Continental Congress could assume that the citizens of this new country would be raised by intact, two parent families; that […]

Father Gregerson

my homilies and other musings