Direct—and Indirect—Evangelization

(Palm Sunday 2025 (C): This homily was given on April 13, 2025 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Isaiah 50:4-7; Philippians 2:6-11; Luke 22:14-23:56.)

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Palm Sunday 2025]

 

We just heard St. Luke’s account of the Passion of our Lord.  Next year St. Matthew’s version will be read on Palm Sunday, and the following year we will hear St. Mark’s account.  (St. John’s Passion narrative, of course, is read every year on Good Friday.) 

There are certain details about the suffering and death of Jesus that all the gospel writers mention; there are some details that two or three of them mention; but there are others aspects of the story that only one of them mentions.  (And that’s one of the reasons we should thank God there are 4 gospels!  If there weren’t, we would know a lot less about Jesus’ suffering and death—as well as a lot less about his ministry and earthly life.)

One of the aspects of the story that’s peculiar to St. Luke’s version of the Passion is the conversion of the so-called ‘Good Thief.’  Tradition has given him the name “Dismas”—although that name is not found in the Bible.

St. John mentions that Jesus was crucified between two men; he says nothing else about them.  St. Mark and St. Matthew do identify the two men as criminals of some sort, but they tell us that both of them verbally attacked Jesus as they hung alongside him on Mt. Calvary.

Only St. Luke mentions the fact that one of two thieves rebuked the other, acknowledged his guilt, repented, and then asked Jesus to remember him when our Lord came into his kingdom.

Does that mean that at least one of the gospel writers got it wrong?  Is St. Luke correct?  If he is, then how can Matthew and Mark also be right?  Did one of the thieves repent and defend our Lord, or did both insult him?

Well, as a Catholic I believe that all 4 gospels are historically accurate on this matter, and that Matthew, Mark and Luke can be easily harmonized here.

Here’s how I believe it happened.  I think that immediately after these two thieves were crucified on Good Friday, both of them did verbally attack our Lord!  They heard the insults the chief priests and Pharisees were hurling at Jesus, and in their anger and frustration they joined right in!

But at some point during the time that these two men hung there with Jesus, one of them had a change of heart.

Which leads to the obvious question: Why?  In other words, what led him to change?  What melted his heart and led him to conversion?

Well, we don’t know for sure, but I would say that it must have had something to do with how our Lord handled his suffering!

Personally, I think the Good Thief was moved by the love and mercy he sensed in Jesus, which motivated our Lord to forgive his murderers—as he was in the process of being murdered!

“Father, forgive them.  They know not what they do.”

Our Lord suffered in love.  That had to have a powerful impact on this thief, who initially was suffering in anger and bitterness.

The way in which Jesus suffered evangelized this hardened criminal, melted his hard heart—and ultimately brought him to heaven!  We know he’s there because Jesus said to him, “Today, you will be with me in paradise.”

I mention all this because when we think of evangelization, we normally think of the direct type: speaking about Jesus with our friends and family members; inviting people to come with us to Mass—or a mission—or Confession.

But today’s lesson is that evangelization can also be indirect: THE WAY WE ACT IN CERTAIN SITUATIONS, THE WAY WE TREAT OTHER PEOPLE—ESPECIALLY OUR ENEMIES; AND THE WAY WE PATIENTLY ENDURE OUR TRIALS AND SUFFERINGS CAN HAVE A POWERFUL IMPACT ON OTHER PEOPLE AND LEAD THEM TO CHRIST.

Indirect evangelization can be every bit as effective as the direct kind.

And if you don’t believe me, when you get to heaven ask the Good Thief, because that’s precisely how Jesus Christ evangelized him on Good Friday!

 

The Difference between ‘Convicting’ and ‘Condemning’

(Fifth Sunday of Lent (C):  This homily was given on March 6, 2025 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read John 8:1-11.)

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Fifth Sunday of Lent 2025]

 

One is good; the other is bad.

One is temporary; the other is final.

One can lead to life; the other does lead to death.

I’m talking here about conviction versus condemnation.  Those are two words that people often use interchangeably in casual conversation, but theologically they mean very different things.

To convict someone is to make them aware of a sin in their life; to condemn someone is to set yourself up in judgment of that person and to say, in effect, that they’re going to hell.

To convict someone of their sin, in a loving way, is a good thing.  It’s what St. Paul is getting at in Colossians 3:16 when he tells us to “admonish one another.”

All of us need to be convicted at times, because we’re sinners.  That’s why I said at the very beginning that it’s good to be convicted!  Notice I didn’t say that it’s pleasant to be convicted!  I didn’t say that it’s pleasant because that would be a lie—and my mother taught me never to lie.

The fact is—getting convicted is normally a very unpleasant experience.  No one, after all, likes to be told they are wrong!  Nobody likes to be told that they need to change. 

But sometimes even the best among us are wrong, and sometimes even the best among us do need to change.

Now the good news is, if we respond to the unpleasant experience of being convicted by repenting of our sin and by making the effort to change our life for the better, then the unpleasantness will only be temporary (as I indicated earlier).   And it will lead us one step closer to the life—the eternal life—and the eternal happiness—that God has waiting for us in his heavenly kingdom.

That’s conviction: it’s good; it’s temporary; and it can lead to life.

The sad and tragic thing, of course, is when people get convicted, but feel like they’re being condemned.  They misinterpret the experience.  For example, when a man who’s been unfaithful to his wife hears a homily in which the priest condemns the sin of adultery, he can feel like he’s being condemned along with the sin—even though he’s only being convicted.  The same can happen to a post-abortive woman who hears a talk condemning abortion; or to a tax cheat who hears a homily condemning thievery.

In cases like these, men and women are being convicted of a sin they’ve committed; they’re NOT being condemned (even though it might seem to them that they are)!

One man who understood the difference between conviction and condemnation was the great St. Augustine, who lived back in the 4^th century.  As most of us know, Augustine lived a very hedonistic lifestyle for most of his first 31 years on planet earth—which kept his saintly mother on her knees most of the time, praying for his conversion.  Well eventually his sinful habits took their toll on him (as sinful habits always do!), and he ended up confused and on the verge of despair.  Then one day when he was in the city of Milan with a friend, trying to make sense of his life, he heard a child off in the distance singing a song that he had never heard before.  One of the lines in the song really struck him: “Pick it up and read it.  Pick it up and read it.”  He thought that maybe God was trying to speak to him at that moment, and so he found a copy of the Bible and picked it up, making the decision to read the very first passage his eyes fell upon.  That turned out to be the text from Romans 13 where St. Paul says, “Not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual excess and lust, not in quarreling and jealousy.  Rather, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the desires of the flesh.”

That was the moment when his mother Monica’s prayers were finally answered.  That was the moment of his conversion to Christianity.  And that was the event that put him on the road to becoming Saint Augustine!

But all of that never would have happened if Augustine had interpreted this event in the wrong way.  Augustine realized that God, through these 2 verses of the Bible, was convicting him not condemning him!  If he had thought God was condemning him he would have thrown in the towel and given up hope.  But he knew better.  He knew that the Lord was convicting him of his past sins—his many past sins!—and inviting him to repent.

And he did.  Thank God!

Which brings us, at last, to the gospel story we just heard from John 8—this story of the woman caught in adultery.  The scribes and the Pharisees, unfortunately, responded to the woman with condemnation.  In their minds she was a hopeless sinner who needed to be disposed of.

And they were ready to do that by stoning her to death—until Jesus began writing on the ground.

Now the mystery of the story is: What was he writing?  What exactly was our Lord scribbling there in the dirt?

Sadly, we don’t know for sure.  But one theory is that he was writing the sins of the people in the crowd, the sins of the people who were getting ready to stone the woman.  And if that was the case, he obviously worked his way from the “top down”, because the text says they left one by one “beginning with the elders.”

Obviously Jesus convicted them.  He convicted them all!

But he also convicted the woman!

Recognizing the bad attitude—the condemnatory attitude—of the scribes and Pharisees, Jesus said to the woman after they all had left, “Woman, where are they?  Has no one condemned you?”  She said, “No one, sir.”  Jesus responded, “Nor do I condemn you.”  [One of the reasons, by the way, why Jesus did not condemn her is that the condemnation of people is NOT for this life.  Condemnation, strictly speaking, only comes after death: it comes after death for those who die in the state of mortal sin.  Now it’s true that you can condemn someone in your heart in this life—which is what the scribes and the Pharisees did with respect to this woman—but true condemnation only comes for people after they take their final breath, not before.]

The last line of the story ties everything together.  Jesus says to the woman, “Go, and from now on do not sin anymore.”

Obviously our Lord had read her heart (he could do that, since he was God!) and he knew she was sorry.  But that did not lead him to excuse her adultery!  Not at all!  Quite to the contrary, he explicitly called what she had done a “sin”.  And yet, at the very same time and in the very same instant, he extended to her his mercy and forgiveness.

I find it very interesting (and rather ironic) that the “religious” scribes and Pharisees responded to the experience of being convicted by closing their hearts and walking away—with their sins still on their souls; while this supposedly evil woman responded to her conviction by opening her heart and staying with Jesus—and having her sin taken away!

Which means that it’s her example—and not theirs—that God wants us to follow.

Let me conclude now by saying that we should all pray at this Mass for the grace to remember.  We should pray for the grace to remember this gospel story every time the Lord convicts us of an unrepented sin in the future: a sin that we’ve either ignored or denied or tried to rationalize away in the past. 

Because if we do always remember this gospel story, and then respond to our conviction like this woman responded to hers, then we will also be forgiven, and, most important of all, we will never be condemned.

 

Answering Some Common Objections to Confession

 

(Fourth Sunday of Lent (C):  This homily was given on March 30, 2025 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Luke 15:1-3, 11-32.)

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Fourth Sunday of Lent 2025]

In the early 1990s, Professor Scott Hahn gave a series of lectures entitled, “Answering Common Objections to the Catholic Faith.”  Well, along those same lines, you might choose to entitle this homily, “Answering Some Common Objections to Confession.”  I don’t think it’s a secret to any one of us that many Catholics today avoid receiving this particular sacrament.  And they happily use any and every excuse to justify their avoidance.  Well today, with the help of the parable we just heard from Luke 15, I will do my best to address some of the more common excuses that are given.  Which means that, when I’m finished, no one here who is above the age of reason and canonically in good standing in the Church, will have any reason to stay away any longer.  So let’s begin . . .

Objection # 1 to receiving the sacrament: “I’ve been away too long.  I haven’t been to confession for so many years that I wouldn’t even know what to do or say in there.  In fact, the roof of the church would probably fall in on me.”  Well, the good news is we’re having a new roof put on the church in a few weeks so if it does cave in that won’t be a problem.  But the fact is, the roof has never fallen in on anybody—not even on the man who once came to me in the confessional and said he hadn’t received the sacrament in over 60 years.  And with regard to knowing the formula and the prayers: the priest will help you.  All you need to know when you walk through the door are your sins.  Thanks be to God, the son in this story didn’t think that he had been away for too long.  If he had, he might have died of starvation, without ever being forgiven.

Which brings us to objection #2: “I don’t know my sins.”  Here we have to make a distinction: some people don’t know what their sins are, and they don’t care to find out what their sins are.  They are quite content in their ignorance.  Good luck to them on Judgment Day!  But there are others who do sincerely want to come to terms with their sins, but they don’t know how to go about it.  To these people I would say, “Find a good examination of conscience.”  An examination of conscience will help you to reflect on your life, so that you can get in touch with your sins.  If you need an examination of conscience, see me—I have one that I give out to people all the time (one that’s based on the Ten Commandments).  There are also some good ones that you can get online.  “But, Father Ray, I’ve examined my conscience and I still don’t see my sins.”  Well, obviously you’re not examining yourself thoroughly enough—because the Bible makes it quite clear that all of us are sinners.  If this is your predicament then I would say: think of the son in this story.  When did this young man finally come to recognize his sin?  The answer is: when he was hungry and alone.  When he was doing penance and alone with God.  So I would say “Follow that example.  Fast, and spend some extra time in prayer—alone—perhaps here in church in front of the Blessed Sacrament.”  If you really want to get in touch with your sins so that you can repent of them and be free of them, that might be the key.  It certainly worked for the prodigal son.  Or if you’re married and you want to save time, just ask your husband or wife to tell you your sins!  I’m sure they’d be more than happy to do that!

Objection # 3: I don’t need a priest to have my sins forgiven.”  True.  You don’t need a priest, you need God.  He’s the only one who can forgive sins and take them away.  But the question is: How does God normally work?  How does God normally impart his forgiveness to us?  This is actually the same question we face in relation to physical healing.  The fact is that you don’t need a doctor to be healed of a terminal illness.  God can heal you totally and completely without any medical treatment whatsoever.  That can happen.  That has happened.  But, if you know you are seriously ill, you should go to a doctor and get the best medical treatment possible.  Why?  Because God normally transmits his healing to us in that way.  He doesn’t need doctors, but he uses them as his effective instruments of healing under normal circumstances.  And, under normal circumstances, this is how the Lord transmits his forgiveness to us for serious sins.  He does it through human beings. You know, every Christian who believes what the Bible teaches, believes that Baptism brings a person the forgiveness of sins.  If someone is baptized as an adult, all of the sins that person committed up until that moment are forgiven.  They’re wiped away.  But how is the person baptized?  The person is baptized with water by another human being!  So in Baptism the forgiveness comes from God, but it comes through a sinful human person.  And it’s the same in the sacrament of Confession.  The forgiveness comes from God, but through the instrumentality of the priest.  And all priests have received this power from Jesus, who said to his apostles, “Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them.”  Do we see this truth illustrated in this parable?  Yes we do!  How is the prodigal son forgiven?  Does he hear a voice from heaven that says to him, “Yes, young man, I can see that you are sorry so I forgive you”?  No!  He's forgiven through his father.

One more point needs to be added here.  Notice what the son says when he comes home.  He says, “Father, I have sinned against God and against you.”  The boy was right.  He knew something that a lot of Catholics forget.  He knew that sin is not just an issue between me and God.  It’s not a private affair.  It’s an issue between me, God and other people!  Every sin we commit in some way affects others.  Which is another reason why the sacrament of Confession is so important.  The Church teaches that when he hears a confession, the priest represents Jesus and the community.  In other words, he represents God and all those individuals that we’ve hurt by our sins.  So when we are reconciled in the sacrament, we are reconciled vertically and horizontally: we’re reconciled with the Lord and with the community. 

Quickly, now, a couple of other objections: “I believe God forgives me anyway, whether I confess my sins or not.”   Well, it is true, God continually offers us his forgiveness.  But just because a person is offered forgiveness, that does not mean the person will actually receive forgiveness.  The father in this story had forgiven his son in his heart long before his son ever came home.  That’s why he was at the window watching for him with eager anticipation.  But the son did not receive his dad’s forgiveness until he actually repented in his heart and made the journey back home.  Which is what we do in Confession, is it not?   We come back home, in repentance, to our heavenly Father.

“Father, I don’t think Confession would do me any good, my sin is too serious.”  That objection is answered in today’s second reading from 2 Corinthians 5: “For our sakes God made him who did not know sin to be sin, so that in him we might become the very holiness of God.”  That means, quite simply, that Jesus, through his blood, paid the price for every sin that ever would be committed, including our sin.  That blood washes us clean in Baptism and in Confession.  In fact, Bishop Sheen used to say that when a priest raises his hand in the confessional to absolve a penitent, the blood of Christ is dripping from his fingers.

And finally, this objection: “Why should I go to confession?  I commit the same sins over and over again.”  Do you think for one minute that the prodigal son was perfect after he returned home?  Do you think that he never offended his father again?  I’m quite sure he did.  And I’m quite sure he knew he would—because he realized that he was a weak, fallible person.  But praise God, that knowledge that he would probably hurt his dad again did not keep him from going back home in the first place.  He didn’t say to himself, “Oh what’s the use?  In a couple of months I’ll probably do something else just as stupid as this.” Now hopefully his future offenses were less serious.  But even if they weren’t, there’s no reason for us to believe that his father would not have forgiven him again.   And so it is with us.  Our intention when we go to confession should be to avoid the sins we’re confessing in the future.  But even if we don’t avoid them, we can still go back to our heavenly Father in the sacrament.

Bishop Sheen once said that there are two possible attitudes with respect to sin: we can fall down, and get up; or we can fall down, and stay there.  The prodigal son got up.  Now that these common objections to Confession have been addressed, we have no reason for not doing the very same thing.  So, I trust that I (or some other priest) will see you soon—in Confession.

Too Many Pilates, and not Enough Baudouins

 

King Baudouin

(Third Sunday of Lent (C): This homily was given on March 23, 2025 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Exodus 3:1-15; Psalm 103:1-11; 1 Cor 6:1-6, 10-12; Luke 13:1-9.)

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Third Sunday of Lent 2025]

When it comes to secular leaders in the world today, I would say there are far too many Pilates, and far too few Baudouins. We heard a bit about Pontius Pilate in our gospel reading today from Luke, chapter 13.  There Jesus speaks about a horrid event that had recently taken place. Apparently Pilate had some Galileans murdered, and then mixed their blood with the blood of the animals they were offering in sacrifice.  Now, as grotesque as that may sound, it was actually rather typical of Pilate’s behavior as procurator.  Josephus, the Jewish historian of the time, tells us that Pilate also had some Samaritans murdered on Mt. Gerazim when they were engaged in a religious service.  On another occasion, he killed a number of Jews who voiced their disapproval when he stole money from the Temple treasury to build an aqueduct in Jerusalem.

Although the gospel writers “soften” their portrayal of him on Good Friday, it’s clear from the historical record that Pontius Pilate was a man consumed with power.  He greatly enjoyed flaunting his authority in the face of others.  He even did it with our Lord during the Passion, when he said to him, “Don’t you know that I have the power to release you and the power to crucify you?”

It’s also clear from Scripture that Pilate was a skeptic.  When Jesus said to him, “For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.  Everyone who belongs to the truth hears my voice,” the procurator immediately responded, “Truth, what is that?” 

Pilate was also a moral weakling.  For lack of a better term, he was a spineless wimp!  He knew Jesus was innocent, but he didn’t have the guts to acquit him and let him go.  And so he ended up becoming the poster-boy for all those men and women throughout history who have said “I am personally opposed, but . . .” In the Gospel of Matthew we read, “Pilate called for water and washed his hands in front of the crowd, declaring, ‘I am innocent of the blood of this just man.  The responsibility is yours.”  Let me now modify that line for you ever so slightly: “Pilate called for water and washed his hands in front of the crowd, declaring, ‘I am personally opposed to the death of Jesus of Nazareth, but . . . he will be crucified anyway.’”

At the beginning of my homily I said that when it comes to secular leaders in our world today, there are far too many Pilates.  They’re in every country—in every level of leadership (it’s not just those at the top!).  These are people who are consumed with power, who deny the existence of objective truth, and who refuse to do anything to combat the moral evils of our time.  Like Pilate they say, “I am personally opposed, but …”  “I am personally opposed to this or that moral evil, but I’m not going to do anything to change things for the better.”

What the world needs today—what the world needs in every country and in every generation—is a lot more “Baudouins”.

What’s a Baudouin?

A Baudouin is not a what, a Baudouin is a “Who.”

King Baudouin was the ruler of Belgium.  He ruled the Belgian people for 42 years—from 1951-1993, except for 36 hours in April of 1990 (more about that in a minute).

I must admit that I had never heard of him, until a parishioner shared an article about him with me a couple of weeks ago.  The article, from the National Catholic Register, focused on the fact that this past December the Vatican opened the beatification process for him.  That means that at some point in the future, Baudouin might become a canonized former king, like St. Louis of France and St. Stephen of Hungary.

From what I’ve read about him recently it’s become clear to me that in King Baudouin’s mind his faith was more important than his kingship was.  Far more important!  His faith influenced everything in his life.  He never said, “I am a Catholic, but …”  His faith influenced the way he treated people; his faith influenced the way he ruled; his faith influenced the things he supported as king and also the things he rejected.

In 1995, two years after his death, Pope John Paul II said, “[King Baudouin] was a great guardian of the rights of the human conscience, ready to defend the divine commandments, and especially the Fifth Commandment: ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ especially with regard to the protection of the life of unborn children.”

That last point is a reference to what happened in 1990.  At that time the Belgian Parliament passed a bill which legalized abortion up to the 12^th week of pregnancy.  It was the duty of the king to sign a bill like that into law.  But King Baudouin refused to do so. He remained true to his beliefs concerning the sanctity of human life.  About his decision not to sign he wrote: “I know by acting in this way I have not chosen an easy path and that I risk not being understood by many of my fellow citizens. To those who may be shocked by my decision, I ask them: Is it right that I am the only Belgian citizen to be forced to act against his conscience in such a crucial area? Is the freedom of conscience sacred for everyone except for the king?”

As a consequence of his refusal to sign, King Baudouin was declared unfit to reign by the government, and he was removed (willingly) from office.  Thus they were able to pass the law without his signature.

But his abdication of the kingship didn’t last very long.  Because of his incredible popularity, Baudouin was reinstated as king just 36 hours later, and in that capacity he faithfully served his people until his death from a massive heart attack in 1993.

I’ll end my homily today by repeating what I said at the beginning: When it comes to secular leaders in the world today, there are far too many Pilates, and far too few Baudouins.  And, sadly, I think that has led some people to become cynical.  Given the immoral and often scandalous behavior that some prominent politicians and civil servants have engaged in during the last several decades, some now believe that it’s impossible (or nearly impossible) for a person to be both a good leader and a good Catholic at the same time. It’s as if holiness and effective leadership are mutually exclusive realities.  But King Baudouin, St. Louis, St. Stephen of Hungary—and others like them—have shown us that living a virtuous life is possible even amidst the trappings of wealth and worldly power.  By the grace of God, it can be done. This led Pope Francis to voice his hope recently that King Baudouin’s powerful “example as a man of faith enlightens those who govern [in the world today].”

Which is definitely an “enlightenment” that people in our country—and in every other nation on earth—should pray for.