Here is my homily for this weekend. God bless all of you.
14th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Isaiah 66:10-14c; Gal.6:14-18; Lk 10:1-12, 17-20
July 7-8, 2025
I will soon be turning seventy years of age. At the end of my seventh decade of life, I find myself thinking about how life has gone for me, the ups and the downs, the consolations and desolations of it all. What has become very evident is that since my early twenties, I have personally known the Cross. I know what the Cross is like.
For nearly thirty-eight years I did psychotherapy before retiring ten years ago. I heard over a thousand people talk about their crosses of life. I listened to how life treated them, the choices they made in life, and how they understood their crosses.
As a deacon for sixteen years now, I have talked with parishioners in four different parishes. As a spiritual director for clergy and men in formation the past three years, I continue to hear of the cross in the lives of so many.
I have concluded that no one over the age of twenty is exempt from the cross. I have concluded the Cross is very real.
Saint Paul, in our second reading this weekend, wrote of his experience of the Cross. He wrote, “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” (Gal. 6:14) Earlier in that same epistle (verses we did not read today) he wrote: “I have been crucified with Christ, and the life I now live is not my own; Christ lives in me. (Gal. 2:19b-20a)
How do we think about our crosses? What is our attitude toward them? Do we boast, or as some translations put it, glory in our crosses or are we fearful and ashamed of them?
Tough stuff if we are really honest. Confusing stuff if we think as human beings think, and not as God thinks. Impossible stuff if we understand only as humans understand and not as God understands. Painful stuff if we remember as humans remember, and not as God remembers.
Do you glory in your cross, whatever it may be, or are you ashamed and fearful of it?
We run from the Cross. We flee from it. We hide our personal crosses so others cannot see, or know, or recognize them in us. We want to get that cross off our backs as soon as we can. We reject the cross.
Each of us is carrying at least one cross. Each of us must find a way to see in that cross the very place where God most fully loves us. Each of us must begin to understand how it is in that cross we bear that God most clearly has loved us, poured out His love upon us, even if we can’t feel it. In the cross of your life, God is loving you most.
I have seen men care for their critically ill wives. Certainly, no man would want a critical illness for his wife, yet in that cross the love of a husband for his wife is most clearly seen. I have known parents who sacrificed their own comfort and financial security to save the lives of their children. That cross becomes the very place where parental love is most fully expressed.
Too often we see the cross of our lives, whatever that cross might look like, as an indication of the absence God and His love. Too often the cross in our lives seems like a sign of God’s lack of concern for us.
Yet, Saint Paul says, we should boast of our crosses, glory in them. I think he is reminding us that we cannot escape God’s love or His presence, no matter what has happened or where we go. I think he is telling us that we cannot escape the fact that in those crosses of our lives, God has poured out into us His love, more than perhaps at any other time or place in our lives. We cannot escape God’s presence. He is present in those crosses. Indeed, our crosses were His before they became ours. Jesus Christ has carried them first. He knows everything about them. In some sense, our cross is in fact His cross.
Yes, we share in the Cross of Jesus. We carry some of His cross in our lives. We are very close to Jesus when we take up our cross, and He is very close to us. When we see our cross as the Cross Jesus carried, we are in fact walking cheek to cheek with Him and He with us.
That is why Saint Paul can say that he boasts and glories in the cross. He can say with honesty that his cross is Jesus’ cross, and that Jesus has allowed him to walk cheek to cheek with Him.
All of this requires faith. It makes no sense at all if you do not have faith. It is all gobbledygook without faith.
Yes, I have known the crosses of the loss of loved ones, the loss of my wife, the loss of possessions, loss of health, being misunderstood and ridiculed, being rejected and unloved. I have known the crosses of fear, worry, loneliness, and confusion. I know these are the same crosses many of you bear. How will we see them and understand them? Will we conclude that they are signs of God’s absence and His failure to love us, or will we in faith find in them the love of God poured out abundantly into our lives?
To me, in faith, they are opportunities to experience the love of God poured out in abundance upon me. In that way, I can boast in the cross, knowing God is present in my cross, never leaving me alone, always present to me in love.
How will it be for you?
May God love you all!
