Sermons

Bishop Gumbleton's homilies are posted each week on the National Catholic Reporter Conversation Cafe website. Click here for the most current homily.

An online Archive of all of Bishop Gumbleton's homilies since Sept 30th, 2001, is also available from the National Catholic Reporter.
http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/peace/archives.htm

Excerpts from recent homilies:

Sept. 7, 2007
"Break down all those barriers that separate one group from another. Go out to the highways and byways, bring in the poor, the neglected, the crippled, the blind, the lame, the rejected - bring them all in. Common sense, human wisdom, would not do that. Jesus is saying to break away from that, go beyond, leap into the reign of God, where there aren't rules like that, for God is all-inclusive, all-welcoming, all-loving.

Are we ready to move beyond human wisdom, to try really to live according to the reign of God, the way of Jesus? Let go of what would be common sense and be like Jesus, have a divine wisdom, a wisdom that most people think is foolish. Accept suffering rather than inflict it. Be killed rather than kill. Love to the point of laying down your life for others without condition, without limit. Are we ready to do that?"

August 31st, 2007
"What if we had the openness of the vision of God? Would we be having so much trouble finding priests to serve our parishes? No. Because we would be more like God and say we can welcome married people, women to be priests, just as God shows us through Isaiah, that God welcomes, not just those that Jewish tradition said could be priests, but people from every nation regardless of their sex or their national tradition and so on. God says priests and Levites will be chosen from all. We could do the same thing in our church.

What I am suggesting and hope that we will accept is that God has a vision that is vast and unlimited. Our vision is often very narrow, very constricted. We have to try to open ourselves to do, become more like God. We have to try to be more welcoming to all. We have to try to open ourselves to new ideas about who could minister in our church. We have to try to open ourselves to a new awareness of God, as father as mother, as one who loves and nurtures. As we open ourselves to all of that and grow in our own awareness of God as revealed to us in Jesus, this is what we will pass on to this infant, Justin Michael, who will become part of our community today."

August 23rd, 2007
If you follow Jesus, you're going to walk into hatred, and people may want to kill you even. It's so significant, I think, that our first lesson today from this book of the prophet Jeremiah, is a lesson about God's chosen people being threatened with war and violence.

Isn't there special significance in the fact that that threat was coming from Babylon, which is today the country of Iraq, where we're engaged in war? We had prophets like [Pope] John Paul II who said that war is wrong, don't do it. [Pope] Benedict [XVI] has repeated the same message. The Catholic bishops in the United States have made the same judgment, and yet like those people in Jeremiah's time, those in positions of power were determined to go forward into war, and they did.

Jeremiah, because he was preaching against it - and notice the terms, because I've heard these same terms used today. "Oh, don't speak against the war. It's too hurtful to our troops who are over there." That's what they accused Jeremiah of: "You're causing a morale problem," so, "Get rid of him. Throw him into a cistern where he's going to starve to death." I've noticed too - we're already into a presidential campaign although it's over a year from the time we vote - but recently one of the candidates said, "I'll negotiate with even those that we think of as our enemies."

Almost immediately the other candidate said, "No, you can't do that. You have to be strong. You've got to be ready to go to war." Why can't we hear the message of Jeremiah? He was preaching, speaking for God. Why can't we hear that message? Really it's the message of Jesus too. He rejected violence. He went to his death loving his enemies.