Lifeissues is mainly concerned with publishing thoughtful articles directly related to issues raised in Evangelium Vitae. However, from the very beginning, we have also published a few related homilies, notably by Fr. Al Cariño, O.M.I., Fr. Tony Pueyo, and others.
Please use the pulldowns below to select a homily by Liturgical Calendar date.
Who can perform the miracle of the bread today? We do not have the extraordinary power of multiplying bread to feed five thousand people. We do have the power to multiply our efforts so that the hungry will be fed.
Those familiar with disaster management procedures know that in the first few days what matters is food and clean water. People who have evacuated due to war, earthquake, fire or flood left their homes in a hurry, hardly bringing anything with them. They make do with makeshift shelters or evacuation centers to house themselves. Their immediate and short term concern would be survival.
Suffering tends to snap us back to reality. Unless we are ridiculously stubborn, suffering typically brings us in touch with our own poverty of spirit, and then we go looking for God. And that's the one thing God cannot resist: a contrite heart that knows its neediness, and which stands before Him helpless and seeking His help.
Today's readings are about the Lord providing for our needs, issuing an invitation to us to come to him confidently, to trust that he can fulfill all those needs.
An important point about this gospel is that the crowd came looking for Jesus, who was in a deserted place. It was because of that hunger and thirst that he was moved with pity. That's how you and I can win the heart of God; to go searching for him and be willing to go to a deserted place to find him.
The Church has only one thing to give the world, and that is Christ. That's it. The specific answers to the many questions we have asked and will ask will either go unanswered for the most part, or they are slowly answered as the world makes its way through history. And, of course, the Church is not a welfare system. The Church can give only one thing: and that is Christ.
Jesus is the Divine Presence in the Transfiguration although he was normally hidden within the human form. In our lives together as the Body of Christ, the trick is to see ourselves as we truly are -- a fellowship of immortals, gloriously reflecting the one who is Light of the World. For us to truly appreciate those who share the pew with us we'll have to imagine a little transfiguring in our midst.
We don't have divine glory by nature, but human beings seek it for themselves. They desire it, usurp it, and the kings and queens of history were glorified with an earthly glory that feigns divine glory, and yet there was nothing in any of these kings, queens, or princes that would demand such extraordinary treatment and worship. With Christ, we have the very opposite.