Homilies – Tony Lusvardi, S.J.

The question that changes who we are: homily for the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jesus consigning the keys to St. Peter, G. Battista Cassignola, 1569

Homily for the Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A).

It’s hard to imagine a better Gospel reading with which to end an Ignatian retreat. We find this episode at the middle point of Matthew’s Gospel, and the question that Jesus poses to his disciples is the hinge on which everything else turns: “Who do you say that I am?”

We have heard the episode before, so perhaps we don’t register what a strange question Jesus asks. When I test my students at the end of the semester, I ask them about the content of the course, not about my own identity. But Jesus asks about himself, not his message. Were he any other teacher, such a question would be pure arrogance. But Jesus is not like anyone else, and everything depends upon our recognizing the difference.

Public opinion, as the disciples tell it, seeks to put Jesus into a recognizable category; he is one of the prophets, like Elijah or Jeremiah. Perhaps he is the reincarnation of John the Baptist. But Jesus does not let such answers go, and the disciples themselves have been with him long enough that they are not satisfied with such an answer, either. There is a right and a wrong answer to the question Jesus asks. It is not a matter of opinion. Jesus is not administering a Rorschach test to prompt the disciples to look more deeply into themselves. The question is not what is inside, but who is standing here before you.

When God doesn’t respond like a chatbot: homily for the 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Homily for the twentieth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year A).

*Christ and the Samaritan Woman at the Well, Annibale Carracci, 1604-5*

When I teach my introduction to the sacraments course in Rome, at the end of every sacrament I assign one question and ask my students to write a one-page response. I try come up with unusual questions to keep them on their toes—and to keep myself entertained when I’m grading. This year’s question for the sacrament of marriage was: “Can you marry a chatbot?” Chatbots are essentially AI characters that you can have conversations with; over the past couple of years stories have appeared in the media about people—usually women—becoming emotionally attached to the chatbots they create, to the point where some felt like they had gone through a breakup with a boyfriend when the AI programs they used were discontinued.

There’s not always a right or wrong answer to my questions, but in this case, you will be happy to know that all of my students responded, “No. You cannot marry a chatbot.” And they all passed. There are lots of reasons you can’t marry a chatbot; for one thing, they aren’t actually human, and they don’t have bodies. What a number of my students pointed out, which I found particularly insightful, is that chatbots are designed to give us the answers that we want. An AI program doesn’t have emotions or needs of its own, and it is designed to keep us happy so that we keep using it. This feature is what makes chatbots seem like the perfect boyfriend. The chatbot is programed to always tell you exactly what you want to hear. It never gets impatient. If you wake up at three AM, the chatbot is happy to talk and doesn’t have to go to work in the morning. It feels like the chatbot really understands you because it’s a product of your own design.

My students were right to recognize that conversing with a chatbot is not a real relationship. A relationship means interacting with someone else—someone who is different. Our differences make relationships hard at times, but they are necessary for us to grow. Relationships challenge us to grow because sometimes we don’t get the answer that we want from the other person, and then we have to learn how to respond. This is why marriage is always dynamic, always in progress. In marriage, the fact that men and women are different—physically, emotionally, socially—is what makes the relationship fruitful; the biological difference is necessary for our species to survive.

So why am I bringing up chatbot romance to explain this Sunday’s readings? The reason is because Jesus’ behavior in today’s Gospel story is definitely not what you would expect from a well-programmed chatbot. What Jesus says and does doesn’t quite make sense to anybody. Even for us, reading the Gospel at some distance, his response is jarring because it seems to put a woman seeking help from him in greater difficulty. She comes to him not for anything selfish, but asking for her daughter’s healing. We feel natural sympathy for her, but Jesus, at first, ignores her. An AI boyfriend would never do that.

St. Paul and the Jews: Homily for the 19th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A)

*Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, Rome*

Today’s marvelous Gospel story of Jesus walking across a stormy sea shows us how faith grows from fear to true understanding. The disciples move from a superstitious worldview, imagining that the Lord is a ghost, to true faith, confessing to Jesus, “Truly, you are the Son of God.” But since the same reading came up at daily Mass earlier this week and some of you already heard what I had to say about it, I thought today I would step out onto a different kind of stormy sea: the second reading, taken from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans. The reason this particular passage from Romans means walking on turbulent waters is because it deals with St. Paul’s attitude toward his own people, the Jews. It has implications, therefore, for what attitude Christians should take toward the Jewish people today.

I decided to risk stepping out onto such waters this morning because over the past several years we have seen a sharp rise in anti-Semitic rhetoric and an increase in violence directed against Jews. In March, a synagogue in West Bloomfield, Michigan was attacked and, soon after, the FBI thwarted a plot to firebomb synagogues in New York, Los Angeles, and Scottsdale, Arizona. The situation in Europe is worse, and it should disturb anyone of good sense and good will that in the wake of Hamas’s attack on Israel in October 2023—which included murder, rape, and hostage-taking—anti-Semitic rhetoric in the West increased.

Cooperating in the mission of Jesus: homily for the 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Homily for the Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A).

We don’t know much about how the Gospels were written. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John didn’t leave dustjacket biographies, like you see on book covers, because the point of writing a Gospel is to put the focus on Jesus and not on oneself. But we can tell a few things about the lives of the earliest Christians indirectly from what they wrote. One thing we know, for example, is that before even a word of the New Testament was written, the earliest Christians were already celebrating the sacraments. When you remember this, you begin to notice that symbols referring to the sacraments are all over the New Testament—especially baptism and the Eucharist, the two pillars of Christian life. Today’s Gospel passage, for example, begins with a reference to John the Baptist and ends with miraculous loaves of bread, an obvious symbol of the Eucharist.

The message of the Gospel writers is clear: when we celebrate the sacraments we are coming into contact with the ministry of Jesus. Today’s Gospel passage begins with news about John the Baptist—the tragic news that John had been killed by King Herod. Herod, if you remember, didn’t like the fact that John had accused him of living in an immoral marriage. Herod’s wife Herodias liked it even less and maneuvered to have John beheaded. Reading between the lines in today’s Gospel, it seems that Jesus felt wounded by the news of his cousin John’s execution and withdrew by boat to “a deserted place” to pray and mourn. Jesus, perhaps, also felt some premonition of his own Passion.

How do we choose to suffer? Homily for the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Homily for the fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A).

“Brothers and sisters,” Saint Paul says, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed in us.”

In other words, Saint Paul recognizes that the present time, the world in which we live, is characterized by suffering—pain and weakness, shame and fear, insults and injustices. Human life is not entirely suffering, but suffering is present. Christianity does not promise us a life without it.

But if Saint Paul does not promise to eliminate suffering, what is his message? His message is that suffering can help us obtain a greater glory. In fact, if we read the Gospel with Saint Paul’s words in mind, the meaning of Jesus’ message today becomes clearer.

Jesus uses the image of the seed, and a seed, as we know, must be buried in order to grow. Before taking on its new form, before becoming a plant and blossoming, a seed must lose its old form—it must, in a certain sense, die.

Homily for the Nativity of John the Baptist: The desert in the temple and the temple in the desert

Homily for the Solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist

John the Baptist, Filippo Lippi (ca 1455)

The story of Saint John the Baptist begins in the temple, when an angel announces his miraculous conception to the priest Zechariah while he is offering incense at the altar. The account of Gabriel’s announcement is read during the vigil of this feast, and today we read about the fulfillment of that prophecy.

We probably do not associate John with the temple because most of his prophetic mission takes place in the desert—which is exactly where he heads at the end of today’s Gospel. But I would like to pause for a moment in the temple, where the story begins.

As modern Christians living after Luther, Kant, and the Enlightenment, we are unfortunately accustomed to viewing the temple and all Jewish rituals in a somewhat negative light. We tend to see them as superfluous, rigid, and irrational. We think of ourselves as more enlightened, scientific, progressive, and perhaps even more moral, believing we have no need for such complex and useless rituals.

I must admit, I am grateful that I am not required to observe the entirety of the Jewish ritual law. I, too, enjoy eating prosciutto and calamari. But if we view the Jewish religion in a negative light—as if ritual worship were in itself merely a sign of a primitive mindset that we have finally outgrown—we lose something. The Gospel of Luke begins in the temple but, as all our biblical scholars know, it also ends there: after the resurrection, the disciples “were continually in the temple praising God” (Lk 24:53).

Jesus, Christians, and the law of Moses

Homily for Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Easter.

Moses, Basilica of St. James, Levoča, Slovakia

Today, in the Acts of the Apostles, we read about one of the first developments in the most significant controversy in the life of the early Church: the question of whether Christians of non-Jewish origin should be required to observe the Mosaic Law, particularly circumcision.

We know that, in the end, the Church recognized that all Christians are bound to observe the moral law, but not the ritual precepts that were intended to preserve the distinct identity of the Jewish people. Through his perfect and definitive sacrifice on Calvary, Jesus inaugurated a new worship, in which we participate today, and to which all peoples are called to join.

This controversy, resolved centuries ago, might seem of little relevance to us today, but it is not. It is important to remember this historical event because it teaches us at least two fundamental things. First of all, the Christian mission is universal, directed toward every human being. As St. Peter says after Pentecost: “There is no salvation in anyone else; for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we are to be saved.”

Lent’s moment of choice

Homily for Friday of the Fifth Week of Lent

Jesus crowned with thorns, 18th century, Molave wood, San Augustin Museum, Manila

We have reached the final days of Lent. Five weeks ago, this penitential season began with an emphasis on prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. The austere sign of ashes reminded us of our mortality and challenged us to conversion. Prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are the classic means of conversion. Perhaps we have examined our lives, sought to grow in certain virtues, and made personal resolutions. And perhaps now, at the end of these five weeks of Lent, we realize that we have grown—or that we have not been very faithful to our resolutions. Or, more likely, we find that the results have been mixed: some growth, some failure.

In any case, we have reached a new moment. You may have noticed that, in this week’s liturgy, we have stopped using the Lenten prefaces at the beginning of the Eucharistic prayer and have begun to use the Passion preface. And today’s readings strongly orient us toward the Passion. Jeremiah speaks of slander and betrayal, and we naturally think of the sufferings that the Lord will face within a week. In the Gospel, opposition to Jesus grows, becoming increasingly violent, and his identity becomes clearer. It is no longer possible to maintain a moderate position toward him. It is no longer possible to respect him simply as a good teacher, a prophet, or a philosopher with interesting ideas: he is either the Son of God or a blasphemer. Everyone must choose.

This is the moment in Lent when we forget ourselves. Even our desire for conversion takes a back seat, because our attention is focused entirely on Jesus. Perhaps at this very moment, even our unsuccessful resolutions and failures help us understand how much we need a Savior. We are leaving the time of resolutions and moral growth and entering the time of the Savior. This time is his. It is the time of the Son of God, the time of the One who is greater than John and all the prophets, the time of our only Lord and only Savior. Thanks to our efforts—or perhaps despite our efforts—we have arrived here, at this moment. But this is the time of Jesus.

Readings: Jeremiah 20:10-13, John 10:31-42

Original: Italian

Gregorian University Chapel

2025

Freedom and Life: the two guiding lights of Lent

Homily for Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Lent

Baptism of St. Augustine (copy), Tito Troya, San Augstin Museum (Manila0

In these two readings, we see the two points of the compass for our Lenten journey. These points are also the two sides of the sacrament of baptism, to which this journey is directed.

The first reading speaks of freedom from evil: freedom from war and oppression; the end of exile in a devastated land; liberation from captivity, darkness, hunger, thirst, and abandonment. The joy that the prophet Isaiah expresses comes from the defeat of these evils that oppress us. The ascetic dimension of Lent is motivated by the desire to be freed from the forces that hold us captive: sin and selfishness.

But the purpose of Lent is not empty freedom. Rather, it is a freedom that allows us to live in a new relationship with the Lord. In the Gospel, Jesus emphasizes his relationship with the Father. And we, at the end of this Lenten journey, hope to renew the gift that was given to us in baptism: the gift of a new relationship with the Father, the gift of being reborn as his adopted children, the gift of the Spirit of Jesus who transforms us. Jesus speaks of intimacy with God.

Prophets of doom or prophets of truth?

Homily for Wednesday of the Second Week of Lent (translated from Italian).

When I was little, I liked a series of children’s books and cartoons called “Winnie the Pooh.” In this series there was a character called Eeyore—in Italian I think it’s “Ih-Oh”—a gray donkey who talks sadly and sl-ow-ly. Poor Eeyore is always pessimistic and depressed. Eeyore is not a bad character; he is just a melancholic person—or, rather, a melancholic donkey.

I think Eeyore would like today’s readings. The prophet Jeremiah is a prophet of doom. The message he receives from God to tell the citizens of Jerusalem is pessimistic. Destruction will come to the holy city, Jeremiah says. The king of Jerusalem and his advisors do not want to hear this message, so they find a more optimistic prophet, Hananiah, and plot to throw Jeremiah into a pit.

Jesus’ words today are also, in a way, words of doom. He repeats the prophecy of his crucifixion, which the disciples consistently try to avoid. Here, instead of listening to him, they immediately turn to church politics—who will have the highest position.