Father Kevin A. Codd

Solomon's request from God for the gift of an understanding heart, wisdom, is one that invites us to consider what that same gift might mean for us. 

Homily delivered to the Saint Francis Catholic Community in Cuenca, Ecuador

Es una parábola hermosa pero nos deja sin saber quienes sean trigo y quienes sean cizañas. Sea posible que nosotros somos cizañas?

Jesus' parable of the wheat and weeds ("tares") is clear, concise, and Jesus even offers an interpretation of each element of the parable to his disciples. However, he leaves one vital question unanswered: who then are the weeds and who are the wheat in this story? The rest of the gospel gives us a pretty good idea and only poses more deeply the question of how we ourselves fit into that answer. 

This homily was shared with the Saint Francis Catholic Community in Cuenca, Ecuador. 

This homily has only the slightest connection to the readings of the Sunday liturgy; it is instead a reflection on the missionary impulse that is at the heart of the Church's life, particularly as it was lived by Father David Baronti across 42 years of priestly service to the faithful of Antigua Santa Catarina Ixtahuacan in the highlands of Guatemala. Having just returned to Cuenca, Ecuador from an extraordinary week in Antigua Santa Catarina Ixtahuacan for Padre David's funeral services, I felt it important to share some of these experiences with my friends here in Cuenca. It goes a bit long, but once I got started, it was difficult to stop!

You can read more about Father David on my website: David (kacodd.com).

The scriptures are replete with stories of welcome, those blessed moments when one person welcomes another and the blessings for both welcomer and welcomee are rich and bountiful. Today's reading from 2 Kings gives us one such story and the Gospel of Matthew 10, makes it clear hospitality with its double-blessings is part and parcel of Jesus' teaching to his disciples. 

This homily was preached to the Community of Saint Francis in Cuenca, Ecuador

Of all the images from nature that Jesus could have used to give his disciples a major pep-talk on evangelization, the lowly sparrow seems among the least likely. But Jesus makes a fundamental and foundational point about who God is for us by beginning with sparrows. To understand him, we need to page back to the very first page of the Bible: the story of creation!

Homily delivered to the Saint Francis Catholic Community in Cuenca, Ecuador

"Reading the crowd" was one of Jesus' great gifts. As we hear in today's Gospel passage from Matthew 9, his intuitive sense of both the joys and burdens of those who came to him in great numbers allowed him great compassion for them and gave him the ability to grace them with blessings where they were most need. He passes this gift on to the Twelve, a reminder to us that we, too, have been sent out, blessed with this gift to console, heal, and liberate. 

When Jesus invites his disciples to pray for laborers for this great harvest, we are not praying for others to join the harvest; we have met those laborers, and they are we.

The "origin story" of today's solemn feast of The Body and Blood of Christ, more commonly known as "Corpus Christi" is really that of the Jesus' Jerusalem Passover meal on the night before he died. His gift of his body and blood was not given only to edify the recipients, but came with a responsibility to share the gift beyond the person receiving it. Jesus' self-giving love, manifested in healing, forgiving, compassion for the sinner is always a gift to be given. If we focus today only on our own spiritual nourishment and not our responsibility to do what Jesus did "in memory of him" then his memory is lost, and in a sense, he dies. This feast of Jesus' Body and Blood calls us to give our own body and blood to the world beyond the doors of this or any church.

Grief is a most unwanted intruder into our lives. It sneaks up on us from behind and wraps its dull claws around our chest, squeezing out of us words, hope, and joy. Jesus' disciples have been living with this intruder into their lives for three days now. It keeps them from seeing and knowing who it is who walks with them in their intense sadness, until...

Homily given to the Saint Francis Catholic Community in Cuenca, Ecuador, Iglesia San Francisco.

Most of us have found that a part of our life of faith is the entertaining of doubts about that faith. Happily, we find a "patron saint of doubt" in today's Easter Gospel from John. That "patron saint," of course, is the apostle Thomas. He leads the way and accompanies us as we move from doubt to deeper faith. 

This homily was preached before the Saint Francis Catholic Community of Cuenca in the Iglesia de San Francisco, Cuenca, Ecuador.