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 ever change.

St. Matthew gives us the answer: Yes.

Because Jesus is still passing by. He is still looking at sinners with mercy. And he is still whispering into human hearts, “Follow me.”

Matthew followed Jesus as a sinner, but he did not remain the same. He became an Apostle, an evangelist, and a saint.

So when Jesus says, “Follow me,” don’t look first at your sins. Look at his mercy. Don’t think first about how weak you are. Think about what his grace can make of you.

If Jesus  could make a saint out of Matthew, imagine what he can do with us when we get up and follow him.


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Homily: October27, 2026, Tuesday of the Thirtieth week in Ordinary Time (Kingdom of God)

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 “It is like a mustard seed that a man took and planted in the garden.” “It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of wheat flour.” In today's Gospel, Jesus compares the Kingdom of God to two very small things: a mustard seed and yeast. Both teach us about how God's Kingdom grows. In both cases, the growth happens quietly, almost invisibly. We cannot see the growth from moment to moment, but eventually we see the results. When we look at the two-thousand-year history of the Church, we see this very clearly. The Church began with a small group of ordinary people. It faced centuries of persecution, suffering, and opposition. Yet, it not only survived but spread throughout the world. The tiny mustard seed became a great tree. Today, we seem to be very concerned about the growth of the Church. We conduct surveys, studies, and research. We count how many people attend Mass, how many are baptized, and how many are leaving the Church. And when the numbers go ...
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Homily: November 18, Monday of the Thirty-Third week in Ordinary Time (Love)

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“Yet I hold this against you: you have lost the love you had at first.” Love is the greatest Christian virtue. Without love, Christianity is meaningless. Without love, salvation is pointless. Without love, our life is aimless. We are created by a God who is love, saved by His Son out of love and called to imitate Him in love. He created us to accept His love, to love Him, and to love others. Therefore, a life without love is empty. The greatest love ever is Jesus giving his own life completely to us. Our response to this is to love Him back all our mind, heart and soul. In today’s first reading from the Book of Revelation, God’s angel rebukes the church in Ephesus for having lost the love for Jesus they had when they first embraced the faith. The Ephesians fell passionately in love with Jesus at the beginning. They surrendered totally to Him, obeying His teachings fully. They left all their old ways to follow Him. But now God’s  is warning and reminding them, because they have beco...
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Homily: October 25, 2025, Saturday of the Twenty-Nineth Week in Ordinary Time (Spirit -Alive)

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 “But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is alive because of righteousness.” What a hopeful and assuring message. Even though our bodies are weakened by sin and subject to death, the Spirit of God within us is alive and active. But note the one condition: if Christ is in you! The Father and the Son have given us this precious gift, the Holy Spirit, the divine helper who will dwell in our hearts if we accept Jesus Christ into our lives. If we follow the timeline of our salvation story, all of us are now living in the era of the Holy Spirit. God the Father has revealed Himself to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and the prophets. Then in the fullness of time, God the Son came into the world and revealed to us the Father’s love. Before returning to heaven, Jesus promised to send us the Holy Spirit to be our companion, our guide, and our strength till the end of time. And from then, the Holy Spirit has been active in the world, in the church and in o...
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Homily: September 19, 2026, Saturday of the Twenty-Fourth Week in Ordinary Time (Generous God)

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 “They are the ones who, when they have heard the word, embrace it with a generous and good heart, and bear fruit through perseverance.” We hear this parable during the harvest season, so the image of seed and harvest is very familiar to us. Once, a farmer friend gave me a ride in his combine during harvest. He showed me the GPS system they use for both planting and harvesting. It was fascinating. The system could tell him what kind of seed had been planted in a particular area and how many bushels of corn were harvested from each acre. All that information would help him decide what seed to plant and where to plant it the following year in order to get a better yield. Seed is expensive. So naturally, farmers want to make sure that good seed is planted in good soil where it can produce a good harvest. But the farmer in today’s Gospel seems almost wasteful! He throws the seed everywhere—on the path, on rocky ground, among thorns, and finally on good soil. He knows that some of the s...
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Homily: November 3, 2024, Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time (Memento Mori)

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 In the 2,000-year history of the Church, monastic orders like the Cistercians and Trappists have existed, and the monks dedicate themselves to a life of deep contemplation and penance. Some of these monks take a vow of perpetual silence, speaking only in an emergency. When they pass each other in the monastery, their silent greeting is "memento mori" - "remember death." They remind each other daily to consider the reality of death and to always be prepared for it. Today, November 2, we commemorate All Souls' Day, remembering all the departed souls in purgatory who long to see God face-to-face. Like the consecrated monks, this commemoration invites us to pause and reflect on our own mortality. Memento mori. Remember death. We probably have said goodbye to many people in our lives: family, friends, relatives, famous people and people who have done great deeds that impacted society. Some of their names may have already faded from our memories. Perhaps we’ve even s...
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Homily: October 25, 2026, Monday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time (Spiritually Crippled)

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 “And a woman was there who for eighteen years had been crippled by a spirit.” Throughout the Gospels, we see Jesus healing people who had suffered from illnesses for many years. We remember the woman who suffered from hemorrhages for twelve years, the man who had been paralyzed for thirty-eight years, and today, a woman who had been crippled for eighteen years. For eighteen long years, this woman was bent over, unable to stand straight. She could not even look up. We have probably seen people suffering from similar conditions, especially in their old age. But imagine living like that for eighteen years, always looking down, unable to lift your head and enjoy the beauty of the world around you. But there is something deeper in today's Gospel. St. Luke tells us that she had been crippled by a spirit. Her suffering was not simply physical; there was also a spiritual bondage. And Jesus came not only to heal her body but also to set her free. We may not be physically crippled by an evi...
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Homily: February 24, 2026, Tuesday of the First Week of Lent (God's Word)

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 “So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me void.” Today Prophet Isaiah reminds us that God’s word is powerful. It is not empty. It goes forth and it returns. And it accomplishes God’s will on return. It does not fail. From the very beginning, creation itself was born from God’s word. He commanded, “Let there be light.” And there was light. And till today, light continues to do what God wills it to do. Everything we see and depend on - the vast universe, the galaxy, the earth, everything born of earth, and life itself - exists because God spoke. God speaks and it is fulfilled. And God breathes into our life; He speaks His life into ours. His life becomes ours; His promise is to be accomplished through our obedience; His will is to be fulfilled by our submission. Even as we struggle to cooperate with God, deep in our being, our souls want to be one with God. Because our very existence comes from Him. He has a plan for each of us. Long before we wer...
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Homily: March 9, 2026, Monday of the Third week in Lent (prophet -Accepted )

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 “No prophet is accepted in his own native place.” I have experienced this personally many times. Years ago, when I was newly ordained and was about to preach at a relative’s wedding, my oldest sister, lacking confidence with my ability, whispered to me, “Make sure you do a good job.” I whispered back, “Why don’t you do the preaching!” Last year I went to my nephew’s First Holy Communion. The parish priest asked if I could give the homily, and I happily agreed. The night before the Mass, my second sister came to my room and questioned me, “Do you really want to do the homily? People expect a good one for this occasion.” She worried I would do poorly. And my third sister who lives in Ireland, keeps sending me videos of popular preachers - like Fr. Mike Schmitz and Bishop Barron. She probably hopes I will learn to preach like them. My siblings grew up with me at home, and they know me well from young. However, they were not with me in my seminary life and have not witnessed my growth...
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Homily: March 15, 2025, Saturday of the First Sunday in Lent (Perfect Love)

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 "So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect."  I was very privileged to have done my seminary studies and formation at Santa Croce University (Holy Cross), in Rome which is run by the Opus Dei order. Their founder, St. Josemaría Escrivá, was a visionary and a great saint. One of the core principles of living and spirituality he laid down for Opus Dei members was this: “strive for excellence in everything”. Because of this, the university was marked by excellence in every way - excellent professors, an outstanding library, state-of-the-art classrooms, and advanced technology. To be a student at such an institution meant that they, too, were expected to strive for excellence in attitude and effort. To maintain this high standard, there were many strict rules for the students to follow. By following conscientiously, students would grow and develop to their full potential with remarkable outcomes, all through into the future. In the first reading, Moses tells the Isr...
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