A Homily for Friday of the Third Week of Easter
Friday, May 9, 2025
Prince of Peace Catholic Church – 8:00 Mass
Acts 9:1-20; Psalm 117:1bc, 2; John 6:52-59
Audio Recording
Habemus Papam! Jesus’ choices of human instruments to do his work are truly UNPREDICTABLE and SURPRISING. First he chooses fishermen and other “uneducated, ordinary men” to be his apostles (Acts 4:13). Then in today’s first reading he chooses Saul, a highly trained and distinguished Pharisee who is convinced that Jesus’ followers are spreading blasphemy and who is fanatical in persecuting them.
Were either of these men worthy of their positions according to the world’s standards? No, but worthiness is unquestionably NOT the prerequisite for being called by the Lord. Rather, by his grace the Lord makes us worthy for whatever task he calls us to.
Yesterday, the Holy Spirit surprised the world again by selecting an American Cardinal as our new Holy Father. I’m sure Pope Leo XIV would say that he is not worthy to assume the role of the successor of Peter. But, again, the Lord does not seek those who are worthy to lead His Church, he seeks those who have humility and faith, those who he knows will do his will even when the circumstances of their lives become very difficult. He calls those who understand that without God’s grace they can do nothing. I’m sure this is the case with Pope Leo.
The Holy Spirit is always full of surprises and the election of Cardinal Prevost, an American born and raised in Chicago, was a HUGE surprise. So many who consider themselves knowledgeable of who was likely to be the next Pope were dead wrong. No one I know thought it would be an American. None of the so called “experts” guessed it right.
I was curious to see what the odds were in Las Vegas as to who would be the next Pope. As I’m sure you can guess, there were millions of dollars bet. The odds that it would be Cardinal Prevost were so low that he was essentially at the bottom of the list of the leading candidates. I read that the odds-makers believed he was a “massive long-shot” with about a 2% chance of being elected. The “smart money” in Vegas would never have bet on him.
But here we are. We have a Chicago born-and-raised Pope who’s only 69 years old, so he’ll likely be our Holy Father for the next 20 or so years, in spite of the fact that so many believed we’d have an older Pope this time around. Isn’t it EXCITING to see just how the Holy Spirit works? How He surprises us and reminds us that God’s ways are not our ways?
But we shouldn’t be surprised, considering that Jesus surprised the people of his time when he chose an ordinary, uneducated fisherman to be our first Pope. He then chose a Pharisee who was on a mission to persecute the early Church to be the Apostle to the Gentiles. Now he has chosen the first American to sit on the Chair of Peter and I, for one, am certain that he is the right man for the job at this time in history.
Our job now is to pray for Pope Leo. Our prayers, our Mass offerings, our rosaries and devotions are precisely the means God uses to accomplish what he wants to do in the world.
To pray for the holiness of the successor to Saint Peter is a task we’re each called to do, not because it’s a nice sentiment or the right thing to say we’re doing, but because it can actually help to accomplish God’s will — much more than our opinionating, speculating, chattering, or immersing ourselves in Church politics ever could.
Our job is to PRAY that the Lord may grant the divine wisdom, serenity, and strength Pope Leo needs to lead the universal Church as he assumes the great burden of the papacy during this complex time in the history of the world.
May the Blessed Virgin Mary, mother of the Church, intercede with her maternal intercession, so that the Holy Spirit will guide and strengthen Pope Leo XIV in the days, months and years to come. Amen.