Homily: March 14, 2023, Tuesday of the Third week in Ordinary time.

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 In the first reading we heard “But with contrite heart and humble spirit let us be received”.

And our Gospel text today ends with these words “unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart”.

It is very clear what God wants of us in our relationship with Him and in our relationship with one another. It is all about the heart. Worship God with a contrite heart, forgiving brother from our heart.

So being a disciple of Christ is an inside job.

From times of old, beginning with the Israelites, the tradition of pleasing God with burnt offerings, sacrifices, incense, first fruits and so on continues to our time. Our liturgy expresses our worship in similar rituals.

And in this Lenten season, we are also encouraged to make sacrifices, fast, pray and give alms.

All these are good and helpful in cultivating a spiritual discipline of self-denial and putting God in the focus, but if we do it without a sincere, contrite heart, would it really please God?

Our God is a God who looks into our hearts. He sees what is truly inside, He sees our intentions and motivations. He sees our yearnings and desires. He sees what we try to hide. He sees and He loves, He yearns for our hearts to soften and convert to become like His. Full of love, full of mercy, full of joy.

Past Sunday we sang in the responsorial psalm “if today you hear the voice of God, harden not your hearts”.

May this season of lent be a time for true conversion of our hearts. Overcome with contrition, may we yearn to be forgiven the debts of our sins. Overcome with love, may we forgive others for the hurts of their offenses.

St. Therese of Lisieux said, “The goodness of the heart of man mirrors the goodness of the heart of God.”

May we walk closer to our Lord and our hearts be more like His. Amen.

Fr. Nivin Scaria 

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Homily: October 4, 2026, Twenty Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time (No Anxiety)

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 “Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.” This is how St. Paul speaks to us in today’s second reading. “Have no anxiety at all.” We might immediately think: That is easy to say! But look at the person who said it. St. Paul wrote these words while he was a prisoner. He was facing an uncertain future and even the possibility of death. And yet his Letter to the Philippians is often called the Letter of Joy. All of us have anxieties. I have my anxieties too—what to preach, how to raise money, what comes next, concerns about family and ministry. Parents worry about their children and their future. We worry about our health, finances, relationships, and many other things. St. Paul does not simply say, “Stop worrying.” He tells us what to do with our worries: bring them to God. “By prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.” In other words: Do what you can, and place what you cann...
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Homily: September 21, 2026, Feast of Saint Matthew, Apostle and evangelist (Follow me)

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 “Follow me.” On this feast of St. Matthew, we hear Matthew’s own account of his calling. Jesus saw him sitting at the customs post and said just two words: “Follow me.” And Matthew gets up and follows him. No second thought. No long discernment. No plan for the future. Maybe Matthew had been waiting for a moment like this—a chance to begin again. Matthew was a tax collector, considered a sinner and hated by his own people because he worked for the occupying power. Yet Jesus looked at this man whom others rejected and saw an apostle. That should give every one of us hope. God can change people. God does not wait until we are perfect before he calls us. Jesus says in today’s Gospel, “I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.” We are all sinners. We all have weaknesses, habits, failures, and things in our lives that need to change. And there may be people around us struggling with addictions or trapped in sinful situations. Sometimes we may even wonder whether a person can ev...
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Homily: September 27, 2026, Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary time (The Fair way)

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 “Thus says the Lord: You say, ‘The Lord’s way is not fair!’” I chose this phrase from our first reading for our reflection today because it sounds very similar to what we heard last Sunday in the first reading.  “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways.” I think most of us, at some point in our lives, have said something similar to God. I know I have. “Lord, this is not fair.” “Why do I have to go through this?” “Why didn’t you answer this prayer?” “Why did you allow this to happen?” “I am trying to follow you. Could you not treat me a little better?” We may not say those words aloud, but sometimes they are deep within our hearts. So what exactly is God’s way? The second reading gives us an answer.  For centuries humanity wondered what God was like. Then Jesus Christ, the beloved Son of the Father, came among us and revealed the face of God. And St. Paul describes Jesus with these extraordinary words: “He did not regard equality with God something to...
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Homily: October 3, 2026, Saturday of the Twenty Sixth Week in Ordinary Time (God Restores)

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 “Thus the Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his earlier ones.” This beautiful phrase comes from our first reading today, from the very last chapter of the Book of Job. The Book of Job is part of the wisdom literature of the Bible. Job is presented as a righteous man who loses almost everything—his possessions, his children, his health, and even the understanding and support of those around him. The great question running through the book is: Why does a good person suffer? Where is God when everything seems to be lost? Interestingly, the Book of Job does not give us a simple answer to the mystery of suffering. Instead, it invites us to trust in God even when we cannot understand his ways. And today, at the end of the story, we see something beautiful: God restores Job. “Thus the Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his earlier ones.” This reminds us of the restoring power of God. God can restore what seems broken. God can bring hope after despair, joy after sor...
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Homily: October 5, 2026, Monday of the Twenty-Seventh Week in Ordinary Time (Repay you on my way back)

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 “If you spend more than what I have given you, I shall repay you on my way back.” This is one of the beautiful lines from today’s Gospel.  We can easily see Jesus as the Good Samaritan. Humanity was wounded by sin, and Jesus came to rescue us. He lifted us up, cared for our wounds, and brought us to the inn. And we can see the inn as the Church—a place where wounded people are brought to be healed, cared for, and loved. But then Jesus gives the innkeeper two coins and says, “Take care of him.” Perhaps we can see ourselves as that innkeeper. Jesus has entrusted people to our care. And we might imagine those two coins as the two great commandments: Love God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and love your neighbor as yourself. The first coin is love of God. God deserves the first place in our lives—our heart, our time, our attention, our will. So let us intentionally live our lives trying to please God. Then comes the secon...
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Homily: October 6, 2026, Tuesday of the Twenty-Seventh Week in Ordinary time( Zealous Catholic)

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“You heard of my former way of life in Judaism, how I persecuted the Church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it.” Whenever I read the letters of St. Paul, one thing that strikes me is his zeal. Paul never did anything halfway. Before his conversion, he was completely committed to what he believed. He thought Christianity was wrong, and so he became one of its fiercest persecutors. But when Paul encountered Jesus, something beautiful happened. Jesus did not take away Paul’s zeal; he redirected it. The man who traveled from place to place persecuting Christians now traveled from place to place preaching Christ. The man who tried to destroy the Church became one of its greatest builders. He crossed countries, entered unfamiliar cities, endured rejection, imprisonment, beatings, and suffering—all because he wanted people to know Jesus. That same fire comes through in his letters. Paul says, “Stir into flame the gift of God.” He says, “For to me life is Christ, and death is gain.”...
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Homily: May 23, 2026, Saturday of the Seventh Week of Easter (Scripture is enough)

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 “There are also many other things that Jesus did, but if these were to be described individually, I do not think the whole world would contain the books that would be written.” Once I walked into our youth Bible study, and they were discussing the Book of Enoch, an ancient Jewish apocalyptic text traditionally connected to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah. They asked me questions about it. I had read it myself when I was their age, mostly out of curiosity, but honestly, I do not remember much of its content. There are also several other apocryphal writings, like the Gospel of James, the Gospel of Thomas, and the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. But the Church never considered them inspired Scripture, because many of them were written decades after the death of the last Apostle, St. John. Public Revelation ended with the death of the last Apostle. Sometimes I also wish the Bible had more details about Jesus’ infancy and His hidden life. But St. John reminds us today that the world its...
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Homily: October 18, 2022. Tuesday of the twenty-ninth week in Ordinary time (Feast of St. Luke)

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“Stay in the same house and eat and drink what is offered to you.” This sounds fine to me because I am not fussy with food and am happy to eat anything offered. I can’t think of any food that I will not eat. And it helps a lot in my ministry, especially in this parish since I get invited to homes of various cultures and different cuisine. So far, I do enjoy Eritrean, Burmese, Laotian, Sudanese, Mexican and of course, American food. Yes, it is easy to feed me but very difficult to slim me down. But why did Jesus give such a specific instruction to His disciples regarding eating and drinking? It may look simple for us, but it was challenging to His disciples. They were Jews and the Jewish law laid out very strict food practices and prohibitions. And now they were being sent out to Gentile villages to preach to them. They were to live in Gentile homes and eat as they eat, drink as they drink. The disciples probably had never done anything like that before. Can you imagine the cultural sho...
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Homily: June 2, 2023, Friday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time (Fruitless fig tree).

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"When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves…” A fig tree with leaves usually indicates the presence of ripe fruits since the fruits appear before the leaves. Therefore, a tree full of leaves should have many ripe fruits, but not this tree which Jesus approached in today’s Gospel by St. Mark. It had many leaves but no fruit at all. What was wrong with this fig tree? Did Jesus’ curse cause the tree to wither the next day, or was it a prophecy? This incident is highly symbolic. The fig tree is mentioned about thirty times in the Old Testament, and about twenty-seven times in the New Testament. In the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve used fig leaves to cover up their nudity, an attempt to hide their sin of disobedience and rebellion. And now in this Gospel, St. Mark mentions the fig tree event right before the cleansing of the temple event. What is the parallel? The temple in Jerusalem was a remarkably beautiful building. Though it was a grand structure fit for the highest worship t...
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Homily: May 24, 2024, Friday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time (Don't complain).

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"Do not complain, brothers and sisters, about one another, that you may not be judged… Indeed, we call blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of the perseverance of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord." I really wish we had more scripture texts by St. James the Apostle. His short epistle is full of wisdom. He was the earliest among the apostles to receive martyrdom, which is why he did not get to write much. Look at today’s reading and you can see how much he understood the human condition and was able to preach effectively with relevance to people’s lives. His advice for his listeners in those days is still applicable and very relevant for us in our time. We still struggle with the same issues even after 2,000 years. Do not complain but count every blessing! That is my constant reminder for myself. Although most of the time, I just needed to vent my anger and frustrations to someone who understands, yet I would always regret it after complaining. Thank ...
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