Homilies

Every medicine cabinet hides a story. Bottles with child‑proof caps, labels we can’t quite pronounce, doses we would rather skip. Bitter cures seldom feel like kindness in the moment. Yet the physician who truly loves us prescribes what heals, not what flatters the tongue.

Sin opened a wound we could not stitch. Death came as the consequence, and it has torn through families, hopes, and every human story. But listen to the strange mercy of God: the punishment becomes the medicine. The wood meant for execution becomes a tree that bears life. The valley of shadows is turned into a doorway. The cross does not decorate suffering; it transforms it.

You know the hush that falls when a sunset sets the sky on fire. For a breath, everything stops and you simply receive. Then the colors dim, and the shoreline returns to ordinary. Beauty lets us glimpse God, and then it slips from our grasp. The moment was real, but it was never meant to be owned.

Our families, our plans, even our very lives are like that—astonishing gifts that point beyond themselves. Then comes the sentence that jolts us awake: “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” These words sting because love for family runs deep. Yet the Lord is not commanding contempt; he is unmasking a temptation—to clutch a gift so tightly that we stop seeing the Giver.

Jesus can feel like the guest who spoils a party—the one who stands in the doorway, notices every flaw, and starts rearranging the seating chart. Many Pharisees saw him that way: not fun, not flattering. But look closer. He is not ruining the celebration; he is teaching us how to finally enjoy it.

Hosting can be exhausting. The menu, the timing, the conversations that must be managed so certain people do not collide. Beneath the lists and the candles burns a deeper pressure: the need to impress. We carry it into our homes, our jobs, our social feeds. Show that life is curated, successful, enviable. Spend more. Prove you belong at the head of the table.