N.B. This weekend was the annual Bishop’s Appeal.
Picture a small clay lamp on a rough table in a Galilean home. It is not a sealed lantern with glass and metal. It is an open flame, steady and exposed, giving light as long as it is fed. Jesus says, “Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket,” and the image lands with force in a world where fire is never merely decorative. A basket over a flame does not simply hide the glow. It catches fire, it smolders, it collapses into ash.
So it is with the Word of God. It is not ink resting quietly on a page. It is the living presence of Christ pressing into the heart, warming what has gone cold and exposing what has been kept in the shadows. A person can try to muffle that word—to keep faith private, to avoid the cost of being known as a disciple. Yet the Gospel is not content to sit harmlessly under cover. If it truly enters, it spreads, and it reshapes the one who receives it.
When that fire is welcomed, Christians become more than spectators of the world’s troubles. We step back into ordinary life and notice what the Gospel has been pointing out: the slow spoilage that comes when mercy runs thin, and the dimming that follows when hope is starved. This is where Christ draws near. His word in us is not a decorative candle; it is a working flame. It burns away the habit of indifference, and it lights the next faithful step. It makes us salt—quiet, steady people who keep love from rotting and keep a community from falling apart.
That is why the annual Bishop’s Appeal matters. It is not simply a diocesan collection. It is a concrete way the flame spreads beyond one parish, reaching people we may never meet, yet whom Christ loves. When we support the Bishop’s Appeal in the Diocese of Knoxville, we help form seminarians with the education and formation they need to answer God’s call as future priests. This is close to the heart of the Church, because priests are not religious functionaries; they are men given for the sacraments and the care of souls. They pour out sacramental grace, preach the Gospel, and stand at the altar day after day. Supporting seminarians means supporting a future of grace for East Tennessee.
Your generosity also strengthens mercy on the ground. Here at St. Alphonsus, the Mobile Medical Clinic comes once a month, offering free care to neighbors who would otherwise go without. The Appeal supports Catholic Charities and other works that shelter the vulnerable, teach the faith, and help young Catholics encounter Christ and stay close to the Church. In each of these ministries, the lamp of the Gospel is carried into places where darkness tries to settle.
A lamp stays lit because someone keeps adding oil. The Church’s mission stays bright because ordinary disciples choose, again and again, to let Christ’s love be seen. Let the Bishop’s Appeal be an act of faith—not from leftovers, but from conviction. May the Lord place his living word in us like fire, and may our parish burn steadily with a light that warms this community and reaches far beyond it.