Official Website of the
Catholic Diocese of Little Rock
Bishop Taylor Homily Library
Bishop Anthony B. Taylor celebrates Mass across Arkansas and beyond. This library features the homilies delivered from March 2014 to the present. To listen to earlier homilies, please visit the bishop's Homily Archive.
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2024 Consecration Day and Religious Jubilarian Mass Published: Saturday, February 3, 2024 Jesus will not calm every storm because sometimes it is the storm itself that serves God's purposes. That's the mystery of the cross. Most of the disciples saved that day from drowning will one day die a martyr's death, perish in a different kind of storm, but a storm nonetheless. |
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2024 Women of Hope Retreat Published: Saturday, February 3, 2024 It is sometimes hard to discern well what is best for others or even for ourselves. So as we begin this conference, let us make this request of Solomon our own: "Give your servant an understanding heart." |
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2024 Presentation of the Lord Published: Friday, February 2, 2024 Mary and Joseph were amazed by what they were saying about their child. But it was not all happiness and light. Simeon had to warn Mary about the suffering that would be the cost of our salvation. |
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Mass for Life 2024 Published: Sunday, January 21, 2024 That Kingdom of God is still at hand, and we sure have our work cut out for us in our task of calling people — indeed our entire nation — to repentance today. And we have not only the God-given right, but more importantly, the God-given obligation, to do so. |
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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Mass 2024 Published: Saturday, January 13, 2024 Fear and hopelessness lead to abortions to end inconvenient pregnancies and are performed on African American women far more frequently than on white women. Fear also leads to the application of the death penalty, which still today falls more heavily on African Americans and other people of color who languish in our prisons way out of proportion to their percentage of the general population. |
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Epiphany of the Lord 2024 Published: Sunday, January 7, 2024 This vision of inclusion is at the heart of our call to follow Jesus as Christians and today’s feast challenges us to become agents of inclusion in our own time and in the process discover that freedom from fear that comes from seeking to do God's will rather than our own. |
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Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God 2024 Published: Monday, January 1, 2024 As we begin this New Year at a time when war is raging in the Middle East and Ukraine and in countless other places, we gather on this feast of the Blessed Mother to pray for peace. For true peace, not merely the absence of war. |
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Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph 2023 Published: Sunday, December 31, 2023 We see Mary's courage in riding a very uncomfortable donkey to Bethlehem while nine months pregnant and Joseph's patient, futile attempt to find lodging, and finally their faith-filled, humble acceptance of an unsanitary barn in which to give birth to their child. |
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Nativity of the Lord (Christmas) 2023 Published: Sunday, December 24, 2023 Today I proclaim to you a message of hope: We have that Savior — he is Jesus, whose very name means God saves. He was born on Christmas. Welcome him into your heart. The darkness will dissipate, and his light will grow in you and fill you with hope, meaning and purpose the more you conform your life to his. |
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Fourth Sunday of Advent 2023 Published: Sunday, December 24, 2023 The Son of God stripped himself of the privileges of his divinity in order to embrace our damaged human condition because that sacrifice was necessary for him to accomplish his great work of redemption, a work that he completed 33 years later when he sealed with his own blood the New and definitive Covenant with all of humanity. |
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Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe 2023 Published: Tuesday, December 12, 2023 May the Lord deepen our faith and commitment, so that like Mary and Juan Diego, our faith may also bear lasting fruit worthy of the Lord. |
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Second Sunday of Advent 2023 Published: Sunday, December 10, 2023 Jesus is at the door and is knocking. Listen to his voice, grab that knob and open the door, receive him into your heart now, and thus also on Christmas and for always, until his second coming on the last day. |
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Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception 2023 Published: Friday, December 8, 2023 But for that salvation to become ours, to make a difference in our life and in the lives of others, we have to open our hearts like Mary and Joseph did, even though they really didn’t know where it was all going to lead. They said in effect: "Yes Lord, whatever you want, I will do." |
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Feast of St. Andrew, Apostle, 2023 Published: Thursday, November 30, 2023 Our first priority has got to be a living relationship with God through Jesus, who is by far the most important person in our life: listening to him and obeying him. Our second priority is all those obligations that are directly connected with fulfilling God's personal call in our life: my priesthood, your marriage and your children, but God still comes first. |
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Decommissioning of Old St. Thomas Aquinas Church Building, Fayetteville Published: Tuesday, November 28, 2023 The chief priests and elders — the respectable people of his day — say all the right words, give God lip service, but are unable to accept the fact that God is doing something unexpected and new. |
