2025 Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

Published: February 23, 2025

Bishop Anthony B. Taylor preached the following homily at St. Jude Church in Jacksonville on Sunday, Feb. 23, 2025.

Bishop Taylor

When I was growing up, we always had four or five priests in my hometown: two or three at the parish, plus chaplains at the hospital and at the Felician sisters’ motherhouse, which was only a few blocks from our home. 

I still remember many of the priests who served in our town during those years, most of whom I liked, but there was one who I simply could not stand. 

The Church doesn’t bat 1,000. But after getting steamed up a few times over things I couldn’t do anything about as a simple high schooler active in the youth group, I decided to do what Jesus says in today’s Gospel and began to pray every morning for his well-being.

I didn’t so much pray that he would change; rather, I simply prayed for his happiness, figuring that if he were happy, things would be a lot better.  To this day, more than 50 years later, he is still on my prayer list.

Which is a good thing, because little did I know at the time that years later, I would find myself working with him as a fellow priest, and indeed that at one point, I would have to intervene to deal with a problem in his parish, even though I was much younger than him. 

I don’t know what effect my prayer had on him — only God knows that, and this priest is dead now — but the effect on me of praying for his happiness daily was 1.) to keep my own heart pure and my actions charitable in his regard; and 2.) he eventually stopped making me angry. I just felt sad for him. I realized that he was simply not a happy person and that was why he was so unpleasant to be around. 

Some of you have had the same experience: when we pray for others and do good for them, they benefit for sure, but we benefit the most because the prayer keeps our hearts pure in their regard. 

That’s part of what Jesus means in our Gospel when he says, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who maltreat you.” Notice especially his words “bless” — meaning “speak well of” — “those who curse you.” 

If you truly love someone, you won’t gossip about them. It’s futile (and hypocritical) to do good for them to their face if you talk bad behind their back, and what’s the point of praying for their well-being if you’d really love to see them squirm? To love our enemies, all three are needed: good deeds, helpful words and prayer.

Moreover, if this is how we are to treat those who hate us, who actively wish us ill, how much more should we do good deeds, speak helpful words and pray for family members and others who are not even enemies, people from whom we feel a certain distance due to nothing more than bad chemistry and misunderstandings.

St. Monica’s greatest challenges were within her own family: a difficult husband and wayward children, for whom she did good deeds, spoke helpful words and prayed daily amid many tears. God didn’t have to give her enemies; her own family was challenging enough. 

It was through years of patient, often unreciprocated love and persistent prayer that, by God’s grace, she finally touched their hearts and won them over. And in so doing, she not only became a saint herself, she won for the Church one of the greatest theologians of all time, her once wayward son, now known as St. Augustine. All the good he later accomplished was ultimately the fruit of his mother’s good deeds, helpful words and prayer.

This is the heart of the Gospel and is precisely what Jesus did for us: he loved us even when we were sinners, enemies of God, so to speak, and through his prayer, helpful words and the ultimate self-sacrificing good deed of dying for us on the cross, he was finally able to touch our hearts and win us over. 

Now he calls us, as he did St. Monica, to share in his great work of salvation by loving others, including our enemies, touching their hearts with good deeds, helpful words and persistent prayer.