FEB 1 HOMILY FOR THE ANNUAL APPEAL
A/ Zeph 2:3, 3:12-13. The “remnant of Israel,” a people humble and lowly, who trust in the name of the Lord – will escape the severity of divine judgement at the end of time. B//’ Psalm 146 The Lord raises up the lowly. C// 1 Cor 1:26-31. Paul reminds his community in Corinth that their first converts came from among the poorer, socially deprived classes. They ought not now be arrogant and rebellious. D// Mt 5:1-12. The Beatitudes give the basic charter of the Christian life and challenge our worldly sense of values.
Let’s have a two-part homily today. First, we will have a look and comment on the readings that tell us about the benefits of being humble and lowly before God. Secondly, we’ll have words about the 2026 Annual Catholic Services Appeal.
The theme of humility is in all of the Scriptures of this weekend’s Mass. Each tell of how we would be blessed to be the humble person.
The main blessing of being a humble and lowly person is that you imitate our Lord Jesus and become a great human being, which has its own contentment. You can be happy with yourself, no matter what is the situation. You live to serve God, and that is what life is about—though few want to submit to it. Sins keep them proud; yet the lowly get free of the fallen-world pride. As the 146th Psalm promises:” In the final say of history, “The Lord raises up the lowly!” Also as a Beatitude says today: The meek and lowly will inherit the earth by accepting the Kingdom of Heaven in them. Their present happiness is of being free not to live anymore for one’s great “self.” Phooey on that foolishness! You’re off the throne and God is on it in one’s life. Hooray!! Jesus Christ is your King of Hearts. God reigns. Or, if you are in material poverty or in poverty of health in this world, you are not defined or judged by that—you are a child of God and friend of Jesus. God is including you. Psalm 34:2 says “the lowly will hear God and be glad.” What do they hear? They hear God’s word of love and mercy for them, and that brings inner or ultimate gladness. We call it the Good News of the poor. Intimacy with God is worth more than all the riches and pride of the world. Amen.
Another blessing of humility is basically knowing where you are headed. The humble are led to the refuge place of protection by God. In the prophet Zephaniah’s words (of the first reading today) he echoes what He hears God say to man: “Seek the LORD, all you humble of the earth, who have observed His higher ways; seeking justice, seeking humility—for then perhaps you may be sheltered
on the day of the LORD’s anger.” This is a good life strategy, for we don’t want to be in pride and to try to face the Lord God head on in the final evaluation of things.
Now onto a third blessing of humility. Jesus mentioned seven paths of following Him that all end up leading you into the kingdom-of-heaven experience. They are called The Beatitudes, proclaimed today in Matthew’s Gospel. and its start of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. So a third blessing is heaven getting into you. The life in your soul and the souls of the Church would bow down to make room for God. Jesus explained that “the kingdom of God is within you.” Even of his Old Testament followers in Zephaniah’s time of post-exile days, God was noticing those humbled and open Jewish believers of that time and He prophesizes through his prophet how these folks’ descendants will become “the remnant of faith” ahead” to accept Messiah when He comes to earth. Indeed that is what happened.
Consider the way of humility and appreciate these three blessings of living it.
Let’s now talk of the Appeal. It is two weeks or so to Lent and each year at this time the Archdiocese holds its annual appeal. It is the effort of all the Archdiocese of Washington parishes, missions and of all local Catholics to put together a charity effort to fund things the Archdiocese could support in common. That would be $12 million worth of effort for six categories: 1/Shared Catholic education and catechesis, 2/ Communications and Digital Evangelization, 3/ Parish Family and Life Ministries, 4/ Vocations and Seminarian education funding, 5/ Social Justice endeavors, and 6/ for Chaplains to Campus ministries, hospitals and prisons.
Let’s just look at category six. Chaplains can’t usually be financially supported where they are. For university chaplains, for example, the Howard University Catholic chaplain priest, Fr. Boxie, does not get enough monies in his student collection at Mass, nor can he turn to support from the parishes in the Pleasant Plains or Shaw neighborhood, as he is it alone—so he counts on help from the Annual ADW to have his outreach keep going. It’s the same over at American University or at The University of Maryland College Park. While the chaplain may garner some support there on his own, the Appeal makes the whole campus ministry happen.
Prison ministry is another sort of chaplain work. Take, for example, the Appeal funded ministry in Md. and DC called Reentry Housing and Services. You may not know of a person released from prison this year, but this ministry finds and helps them, via your help. Each year about 20,000 individuals return home to our region from serving their time in prison. Yes, that many! Most newly released individuals are estranged from family and friends or are choosing to find newer, more supportive networks for reintegration into society. With paid staff leading it, and offices, and many volunteers, Reentry Housing and Services work to prevent recidivism—the relapse of the past criminal to that past behavior again. Since 70% do—this ministry helps the needy person get in the 30% of success. The ADW Appeal backs this effort.
Some people don’t know how many chaplains we have in hospitals. You go to a local hospital, like White Oak Adventist, or Medstar Washington Hospital Center, or Southern Md. Hospital-Clinton—and you find there’s a full-time Catholic chaplain for you. The hospital doesn’t pay him, nor do parishes around the hospital foot his bill, but the Appeal supporters do. I have lived with three such chaplains, our own in-resident Fr. Pius to White Oak, our former Fr. Dan Gallaher (here for a stint, but who is at Washington Hospital Center now as chaplain and an in-resident at a parish that way), and Fr. Jeff Samaha who in in Southern Md. MedStar hospital Clinton, in his 32nd consecutive year as their hospital priest. Appeal paid.
In this homily, we featured one of the six categories of the Appeal “pie” of service distribution from this in-and-out collection. There are brochures by the doors that show all six categories. You can pick it up, if interested, on the way out. Next weekend, the Cardinal will have a CD homily for you to hear, and then we will pass out pledge cards to those who need them to participate, and on Feb. 15th—two weekends from now, we will collect them. We won’t fill them out in church, since so many participate in the mail now ahead of time. We also have QR code cards on the table in back for you who want to respond that way. Thank you for listening.