Homilies & Thoughts

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.

Pride and humility stand in sharp opposition. Pride has long been considered the root of all sin, while humility is the cornerstone of holiness. For those who walk in the footsteps of St. Francis of Assisi, humility is not an optional virtue but the very ground on which the Franciscan life is built. Francis himself called his followers the fratres minores, the “lesser brothers,” and referred to himself as “the least of the brothers,” echoing Christ’s own humility in the Incarnation. To understand this tension, we must first consider how pride manifests in human life, then reflect on the Franciscan witness of humility, and finally turn to the cultivation of humility in daily practice.