“The Sources of Freedom” — Sermon for the XXXII Sunday through the Year, A.D. MMXXIV

“Beware of the scribes … They devour the houses of widows and, as a pretext recite lengthy prayers. They will receive a very severe condemnation.” The prophet Elijah seems to deserve the harsh condemnation given by our Lord to the scribes today. What is he doing if not literally devouring the house of a widow, […]

“Loving Your Neighbor in a Time of Civil Strife” — Sermon for the XXXI Sunday through the Year, A.D. MMXXIV

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” For most of us, loving God is the easy part – it’s the other people who present the real problem. But it’s more […]

“Our Country As Well as Theirs” — Sermon for the Solemnity of All Saints, A.D. MMXXIV

One of the most popular tourist attractions in Rome is the Pantheon, visited by over six millions of people each year. At nearly two thousand years old, it is the best-preserved ancient Roman structure, and is still the largest un-reinforced concrete dome in the world. During the Middle Ages, when engineers had forgotten how to […]

“Enacting a Drama of Love” — Sermon for the XXX Sunday through the Year, A.D. MMXXIV

“But he kept calling out all the more, ‘Son of David, have pity on me.’” We hear today the prayer of a man desperately in need of the Lord, who calls out over and over, “have pity on me!” Bartimaeus is not afraid to be repetitive in prayer, to ask over and over again […]

“Lending Your Flesh to Christ” — Sermon for the XXIX Sunday through the Year, A.D. MMXXIV

On February 5th, 2006, Fr. Andrea Santoro, an Italian missionary priest in eastern Turkey, was kneeling and praying in his church when a young man entered, shouted, “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is the greatest”), and shot him dead. His murderer, though convicted, he was released after serving only ten years of his sentence after a […]

“Taking the Right Risk” — Sermon for the XXVIII Sunday through the Year, A.D. MMXXIV

“There is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the gospel who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age.” We encounter today another teaching that defies the logic of […]

“The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce” — Sermon for the XXVII Sunday through the Year, A.D. MMXXIV

This past summer, we read deeply from the sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel, the Bread of Life discourse. We did so using the parallel series of readings from St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians as a key that showed us how the Lord’s teaching on the mystery of His Body present in the […]

“To Be a Prophet” — Sermon for the XXVI Sunday through the Year, A.D. MMXXIV

“Would that all the people of the LORD were prophets! Would that the LORD might bestow his spirit on them all!” The prophets were misunderstood people. By our Lord’s time, they were held in great reverence, but in their own day they were persecuted, reviled, and even killed – like the just man we […]

“Not a solution, but a victory” — Sermon for the XXIV Sunday through the Year, A.D. MMXXIV

“The wicked say: Let us beset the just one, because he is obnoxious to us … let us find out what will happen to him.” There is a deep crisis of faith in our world, a crisis of faith precisely in whether or not there exists a God who made it so that, “three […]

“The Judgement of God is Nigh” — Sermon for the XXIII Sunday through the Year, A.D. MMXXIV

You’ve probably felt that sharp pain from time to time, the one that happens when you’re trying to chew really quickly so you can tell your son to stop hitting his sister at the dinner table (just a hypothetical example), and all of a sudden your teeth close on the side of your cheek, and […]

Father Gregerson

my homilies and other musings