FR. BARRY’S END OF SUMMER HOMILIES
Assumption Homily Aug.15
Fr. Barry at Assumption Cathedral in Baltimore
Gospel. “Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice and said (to Mary,
who was visiting her): “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your
womb. And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?…
Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.”
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ: There is an old saying: All
roads lead to Rome. For Catholics, Rome is the center of
unity, the place where the Church remembers the witness of
Saints Peter and Paul, and the place from which the Gospel has
gone forth to the nations. But as our nation celebrates its 250th
anniversary, I would suggest another saying today – at least for
American Catholics: All roads lead to Maryland. In fact, that
Maryland visit demands a focus onto this Baltimore cathedral,
America’s first Catholic one.
That is not simply local pride. It is a recognition of history. If you
want to understand the story of Catholicism in the United States,
sooner or later you find yourself in Maryland. You find yourself
among the first Catholic settlers who arrived seeking religious
freedom. You find yourself in the chapels and manors houses
where the faith was preserved when Catholics were often viewed
with suspicion. You find yourself in the story of the family of
Charles Carroll, the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of
Independence, and in the life of the first bishop of the United
States, John Carroll. You find yourself at the roots of a Church
that helped shape a nation while remaining faithful to a kingdom
not of this world.
As America marks 250 years, it is tempting to focus on power,
achievement, and worldly success. Yet today’s Gospel for the
Assumption of Mary, points us in a very different direction.
A pregnant Elizabeth speaks to a pregnant Mary these words:
“Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your
womb…” Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to
you by the Lord would be fulfilled.”
It is a couple of Gospel verses that would match up to what Jesus
would say of His mother. Blessed is she who has heard the Word
of God and kept it, that is, has lived it out heartfully in her life.
That focus on a faithful Mary, main disciple and mother to Our
Lord Jesus, helps us understand the Catholic story in Maryland.
Keeping Faith and Living it out and spreading the Word of God is
what matters to Our Lord. He loves us for it. From our going from
less than 100 Catholics in 1634 to about a million in 2026 in
Maryland, Jesus is moved by what has grown in His Church here
and then throughout to the USA.
As we heard in a 2026 Summer Gospel of mustard seed
beginnings, the Church started pretty small. Outside of the Carroll
family, the first Catholics here did not have numbers or power to
help their cause. Often they were disadvantaged, and a minority
in the New World. They lived with uncertainty. These Catholics of
early times experienced periods of toleration and periods of
discrimination. Yet they carried something stronger than political
influence. They carried faith. They carried hope. They carried the
conviction that Christ is the Lord of history. The Church in
Maryland survived and flourished, not because Catholics
controlled events, but because they trusted the One who does.
St. Elizabeth is quoted in the Gospels today with a high comment
towards Mary. “Blessed are you who believed what the Lord told
you would be fulfilled.” Think about that for a moment… Empires
rise and fall. Political movements come and go. Constitutions are
amended. Cultures change. Yet the Spirit of God remains at work
in every generation. The same Spirit who sustained Mary in the
start, in a steadfast hope in what The Christ could do for the
world, does repeats in Catholic believers in the Church 250 years
ago, as in the days of first bishop John Carroll, as he looked to
the Holy Spirit for help, to the Word of God for help, and to the aid
of Queen Mary and Mother, to sustain the Church. The sanctuary
of this cathedral tells that story in its artwork.
Go forward in Maryland and America to 250 years, and we
conclude: The same Spirit who guided Catholics through
persecution, civil war, economic depression, and social upheaval
continues to guide us now. The Body of Christ will prevail, and
eternal life in God is our great hope.
As we celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday, that should give us
both gratitude and perspective. We can be grateful for the
blessings of our country, for the freedoms we enjoy, and for the
opportunities that generations before us secured through
sacrifice.
I think of two women back in Maryland Catholic history who gave
their lives and heart for the Lord Jesus Christ. One is of Bethesda
Maryland (who also Summered in Ellicott City), and the other is a
Baltimorean, who came here as an immigrant, bringing lots of
faith with her.
Mary Virginia Merrick is the name of the first, a woman of
extraordinary zeal who lived from a wheelchair from her teens on,
but became a social reformer, a philanthropist, and founded the
Christ Child Society in 1887 to serve poor children and families.
What a great Catholic life. Her Christ Child work began in DC and
out to Maryland, with a Christ Child House in 1900, but the society
spread out to be a national organization.
Mary Lange came to the USA from Cuba and Haitian background,
back in 1813 and to Baltimore. She was part of a wave of French-
speaking Haitian refugees and became a devout, French
speaking Catholic of modest means, but built relationship with
French priests come to Baltimore in those early 1800’s, and by
1828 Lange co-founded (with Fr. Joubert) St. Frances Academy,
the nations’ first Catholic school for African Americans. It is still
open and new-looking on Martin Luther King Blvd, just blocks
from here. Lange established the Oblate Sisters of Providence,
too. They blessed Baltimore and Wash. D.C.
This is the Faith that is in us, dear Catholics. On USA year 250, it
tells us that our ultimate hope is not in any political system, any
ideology, or any historical achievement. Our hope is in Christ.
The Assumption Feast shows us that Jesus gave a reward to His
Blessed Mother, the woman who “heard the word of God and kept
it—lived it.” The reward? She was assumed into Heaven, and our
Revelation Scripture gives us an image of that, of her with God,
from what St. John the Apostle saw in holy visions of Glory
We would like to please the Lord by our lives, too. If we can live
by Jesus’ direction, such as by following His Beatitudes, or
obeying His Commandments, then Matthew chapters 5 and 25
say that “our reward in Heaven shall be great.”
The answer to our present burdens of still trying to live in a
broken, sin-infested, selfish world–is not from a program or a
policy or a strategy. The answer is a Person. The Person of Jesus
Who wants to live and work through us, who believe in Him.
Perhaps that is the greatest lesson Maryland’s Catholic history
offers the Church and the nation. The men and women who built
the foundations of the faith here understood that Christianity is not
primarily about winning arguments or securing influence. It is
about belonging to Christ. It is about taking His Word as true and
living by it. We need to prayerfully receive the Word of Life and
look for ways to express the Christ in us out to Maryland and the
world.
As America has entered its 250th year, perhaps the Church’s
mission today is not unlike that of those first Maryland
Catholics: to remind our fellow citizens that it is by our co-citizenry
offer of Jesus, to live His Kingdom come, that ushers in freedom
and truth, that can make America operate best.
Our Catholic Vice President just authored a book called
“Communion” which testifies to the Faith he is trying to live
out—and Communion with Jesus is there for us to lead us aright.
As Archbishop Lori said recently: any American prosperity without
God will leave the human heart restless. The future of our nation
will not be secured merely by economic strength or political
success. It will be secured by men and women who allow the
Spirit of God to dwell within them and who hear anew the
invitation of Christ: “Come to me.”
So yes, all roads may lead to Rome. But for American Catholics,
all roads eventually lead to Maryland – to a story of faith,
perseverance, and hope. Led by bishops of this first cathedral of
Catholic America. And all those roads ultimately lead somewhere
even greater: to Jesus Christ, the Lord of history, the source of
our freedom, the rest for our weary souls, and the
destination toward which every faithful pilgrim journey is directed.
If Jesus comes to you, and by the blessed Mother’s
assistance, I pray you leap for joy like pre-born baby John
the Baptist did.
20 TH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME HOMILY AUG. 16
Gospel acclamation for this Sunday
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Jesus proclaimed the Gospel of the kingdom
and cured every disease among the people.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
While there are usually an opening reading at Mass, often of the
Old Testament, and then a Psalm, and then an epistle or
sometimes the Acts of the Apostles, and then there is a gospel
following—making four distinct readings—each Sunday Mass also
has a short acclamation Bible verse in it, preceding the Gospel
proclamation. Today it was a short verse from Matthew 4:23, telling
that “Jesus proclaimed the Gospel of the kingdom and cured every
disease among the people.”
We often just run over this little verse, but today I’ll make it the
whole homily.
What is this Gospel of the Kingdom Jesus is talking about?
The words Good News or evangelion of God was something
Jesus was claiming for Himself and His coming.
Let’s go back 2000 years to the context of Jesus’ words and the
time of the Roman caesars or emperors. 70 years prior to Jesus’
birth, Caesar Augustus unified a divided Rome into what would be
known as the Roman Empire. The Emperor became known as
“Son of God”, “Lord”, “Savior”, and “Prince of Peace” In fact, one
ancient inscription reads; “The birthday of the God (Caesar
Augustus) was the beginning for the world of the glad tidings
[good news] that have come through men through him.”
An evangelion in the ancient world was a royal announcement
about a king and a kingdom.
Yet if a Caesar had been saying it, what then of a Jewish
carpenter and lay rabbi kind of figure in Israel?
Jesus says, “The time is fulfilled…” here comes THE kingdom.
Healing can start for this long-broken world. In other words, for
the Jews hearing it–The Old Testament, its prophesies and
predictions, are about to come to pass. A breakthrough is come.
“The Kingdom of God….” 1: Meaning, God has come to the
world and brought something, which is new access to Him, when
mankind had seemed to be so cut off. You are now the range of
God’s effective will. This is Jesus proclaiming a kingdom of God.
2: The King of Heaven and Earth is come and His reign can be
received. It is somewhat of a secret kingdom, of the Spirit, but
God wants us to come into a new covenant or communion with
Him. Many will translate it as the “reign of God” because it
communicates something more active for the hearer. Where is
this reign to be? It is to be of the human person under God now.
We can believe and join into a new realm—joining up into Jesus,
or Jesus coming into Communion with us, and coming in peace.
3. The Kingdom is meant to sound like a very big realm, as it
pervades all parts of life and it is a Kingdom that is utterly unlike
the kingdoms of the world.
So Jesus is saying that He is the true Son of God…Savior…
Lord…Prince of Peace. Not those Romans, though they have
taken much of their existing world by force. The Romans offered
not a friendly realm but one of terror and might. We don’t want
their version of son of god in our lives!
Jesus has another sort of kingdom to show the world.
It actually is a kingdom that we of humanity were originally built to
live in—it is our normal habitat.
Yet the pride and fall of the world has been to resist what God has
designed for us, to want to choose another way.
Yet we fail miserably on our own. As a popular Christian therapist
says to his counselees who are mired in their problems—“how is
your way working for you?”
Jesus is saying to the world—would you be interested in a great
alternative to selfishness, greed, hate, division, dog eat dog
competition? I’ve got it for you. It’s at hand. It’s in Me.
So we speak of the Gospel of the Kingdom…. Jesus’ Way. Who
said: I AM the Way, and the truth, and the life—follow Me.”
The good news, the evangelion, the kingdom come of God is the
“news” that the one true God has now taken charge of the world,
in and through Jesus and his death and resurrection. The ancient
hopes have indeed been fulfilled, but in a way nobody imagined.
God’s plan to put the world right has finally been launched. The
ancient sickness that had crippled the whole world, and humans
with it, has been cured at last, so that new life can rise up in its
place. Life has come to life and is pouring out like a mighty river
into the world, in the form of a new power, the power of love. Soul
power. New heart power. Forgiveness and healing afresh for the
power to live as a child of God, no longer a slave to sin or the
darkness of the world. I have mercy in Jesus, I have a Way in
Jesus, and I have a Hope in Jesus.
NT Wright sums it up in his “Simply Good News.” He says: “The
good news was, and is, that all this has happened in and through
Jesus; that one day it will happen, completely and utterly, to all
creation; and that we humans, every single one of us, whoever
we are, can be caught up in that transformation here and now.
This is the Christian Gospel. Do not allow yourself to be fobbed
off with anything else.”
My friends, that is my short explanation of that one verse in the
Gospel Acclamation: Now, you have the kingdom of God to
ponder during the week to come.