Teaching & Preaching: Deacon Matt's homilies & podcasts

Homily for the 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C).

God has given us many good things, but not to use solely for our own pleasure, but to use for the good of others. In other words, material wealth is only a means to an end, and we can’t lose sight of the end, which isn’t to be found in this world that is passing away, but in the world to come. This is why St. Paul says in our second reading from his letter to the Colossians that we must “think of what is above, not of what is on earth” (Col 3:2). And then he says something that sounds curious: “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3).

We know God commands us to love our neighbor. So one of the oldest, time-honored excuses is to say, “that person isn’t really my neighbor.” It’s a wonderful way to rationalize our selfishness. So the question becomes, who is my neighbor?

Homily for the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C).

Homily for the Solemnity of the Ascension preached on June 1, 2025.

Peter looms large in the readings for today, which is fitting, given that Peter — or the successor of Peter — looms large in the public conscience at the moment, as the Church stands poised to elect the next pope, the 267th Bishop of Rome. So what do our readings tell us about the ministry of St. Peter?

Across all cultures and times, light has been used as a symbol of knowledge and truth. It’s easy to see how this makes sense. Human beings are very sight-oriented. We have many senses, but the one that provides us with the most information about the world is our sight. To be without sight is a very serious handicap. Those who are blind, like the man in today’s gospel, have to navigate the world without a lot of the information we ordinarily take for granted. And any of us can find ourselves in a similar situation at any time by simply turning off the lights. We need light to see, otherwise we are left in darkness, effectively blind. So just as light is equated with knowledge and truth, darkness is equated with ignorance and falsehood. Today’s readings are all about spiritual light and spiritual darkness; living in God’s truth or living apart from it. 

So often we get this idea in our heads that our sin makes us unlovable to God, that we have to earn God’s affection by our good behavior. God’s not like that. God never stops loving us. So God provides a remedy for when we separate ourselves from him by our sin. We call that remedy the Sacrament of Penance, Reconciliation, or Confession. Just like all the sacraments, God's grace is truly made present to us through confession, where by visible signs and rituals we manifest the invisible action of God in the world. And the gospel we've just read, the parable of the Prodigal Son, has a lot to tell us about the invisible drama that takes place every time one of us makes a good confession.

Homily for the 1st Sunday of Lent (Year C), preached March 9, 2025.

Those of us who are already baptized don’t need to be baptized again, but we do need to remember what our baptism means for us, to renew our rejection of Satan and all his empty promises and to rejoice in what Christ has accomplished for us through his passion, death and resurrection — what we call the Paschal Mystery. We need to remember these things. 

The scripture scholar Dr. John Bergsma says that, “one of the enemies of the spiritual life is forgetfulness. We forget what God has done for us,” he says. “We forget who we are, what we have experienced as God’s people, where we come from, and where we are going. As they say,” he continues, “those who forget history are condemned to repeat it. Applied to the spiritual life,” he says, “that means those who forget the bondage God has saved them from will slide back into that bondage.”

At the heart of our faith is the theological truth that at the beginning of all things was a word — the Word, in fact, through whom all things were spoken into being. And in the fullness of time, that same Word took on human flesh and gave himself for our salvation. That means words matter.

The Church teaches that we all have a universal call to holiness. We are all called to be like God. That means we are all called to love, to give ourselves in some way for the good of others. We are all called to carry our cross and follow Jesus. In fact Christ says we are to do this daily. That means every day we have a new opportunity to tell the Lord, “Here I am, send me." That’s really all that’s expected of us: to show up ready to do the Lord’s work.

Homily preached on Sunday, Feb. 9, 2025, at St. Mary Mother of God Roman Catholic Church in Sylva, NC.

On the 3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, we begin to look at the public ministry of Jesus, which begins, as we find recorded in Luke’s gospel, with the public proclamation of the scripture. In fact both our Old Testament reading today, as well as the gospel, are all about the public proclamation of scripture. So it is fitting that, in 2019, Pope Francis named this Sunday, the 3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, as the Sunday of the Word of God...

Homily preached on Jan. 26, 2025, at St. Mary Mother of God Roman Catholic Church.