Mercy Triumphs: Weekly Homilies of a Catholic Priest

When I was growing up, my mom, with my father’s support, made sure our family went to Mass, went to confession, and prayed the Rosary among other prayers. She was serious about holiness. And, yet, like every family, ours was far from perfect. There were divisions, frictions, and real pain. One of the most impactful moments in our family life was my parents’ divorce. We’ve all heard the saying, “The family that prays together stays together.” We had prayed together. We had gone to Church together. And, still, that happened. That shows us something important: Prayer isn’t magic, nor is prayer about controlling outcomes. Rather, prayer is about trusting God within every situation. …In the second reading, Saint Paul lists a series of virtues precisely because they are difficult. The virtue of obedience is not worth praising unless we are obedient when it’s difficult. Forgiveness is another one. If we refuse to forgive, Saint Paul, and Jesus Himself, tell us not to expect f...

Soon after becoming a priest in 2016, I got a phone call from my brother. He had a friend named Matt, a prayerful man, who wanted to reach out. Matt claimed to receive messages from Jesus, and he said Jesus had something to say to me. The message was basically this: “Jesus wants me to spread the message of His mercy all the time, nonstop.” …So, I tell my family about this phone call, and we’re kind of laughing about it; not in a disrespectful way, but in an excited, curious way. So, my sister Anna says, “Sam, ask Matt if Jesus has anything to say about me.” So I did. A couple days pass, and Matt asks for my sister’s email. About an hour later, I get a text from Anna saying, “I’m teaching right now, and I’m gonna cry.” So, I asked her to send the email. I read it, and it was really nice but nothing dramatic. I said, “Why are you gonna cry?” She said, “Sam, last night I was praying, and I asked God about three different things. And, in this email, Jesus responds to each of them.”...

In seminary, while studying to be a priest, we’re supposed to take 20 masters level courses over four years, and two of the courses are Church History: The first covers from the year 33 to about the year 1500. And the second history course goes from about the year 1500 to today. And, the students in these Church history classes were not just men studying to be priests, but future permanent deacons, their wives, other laypersons, and also persons who were Christian, but not Catholic. And, as I’m sitting in these classes, learning about the history of the Catholic Church, I’m wondering what the Protestant students are thinking and how they can honestly remain Protestant after hearing everything they just heard.  …Protestantism and Evangelicalism, also known as non-denominationalism, didn’t exist until after Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation. So, I was really confused how someone could remain Protestant after learning that the Catholic Church was present from the very be...

My first assignment as a priest was at Our Lady Of Victory Basilica. And, if you’ve been there, you know that Fr. Baker’s tomb is right in the church: There’s kneelers and some pews that face the tomb so that, when people want to pray for Fr. Baker’s intercession, it’s quite easy. What you may also notice is that, when people are praying at Fr. Baker’s tomb, their back is to the tabernacle; their back is to Jesus physically present in the church. And if you could imagine Fr. Baker appearing at his tomb, he might say, “Turn around. Face your Lord. Go to Jesus.” What I could also imagine is, if we were then to turn to Jesus, and if Jesus were to appear, He might say, “Turn. Look at my masterpiece. See what my grace can do in someone’s life? Isn’t it beautiful?” And this is the relation between Jesus and His saints: Our devotion to the saints always bring us closer to Jesus, and Jesus Himself delights in the Saints and wants us to be inspired by them because they are His masterpiec...

  I was speaking with a friend who really wanted to live a good, Catholic life, living everything the Catholic Church teaches, but he expressed to me that he lacked motivation. He told me, "I just need something to scare me into being better.”   So, I suggested he read about the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Medjugorje, in Bosnia. I explained that the messages from Mary given to six children in the 1980s were a wake-up call to me personally because, within these messages, Mary said that there are these 10 secrets about the world that she would share with them, and that when all 10 secrets are told to all six visionaries, there’s going to be this big sign for the world to see, and even atheists would be converted. And, if my memory serves me right, there was also something really negative that was supposed to happen globally. And, at the time when I was first learning about these apparitions, as a high school senior, I was doing the math: I was 18 at the time a...