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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18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C Published: Sunday, July 31, 2016 There is an old proverb that says that "money is like seawater, the more a person drinks, the thirstier he becomes." So long as a person centers his life on his own struggles for self-sufficiency and forgets those in need, and the God who has made all this possible, his desire will always be to get more. This attitude, against which we all have to struggle, is the very reverse of Christianity. |
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35th Anniversary of Death of Servant of God Father Stanley Rother Published: Wednesday, July 27, 2016 For Father Rother this meant leaving his family and friends, everything that was familiar, and coming to Guatemala. He gave his life to you for 13 years and then gave his life for you. In Father Rother's mind, you were a treasure worth dying for. Which is another way of saying that for him, Jesus — the Kingdom of God — was a treasure worth dying for. |
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17th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C Published: Sunday, July 24, 2016 Nowhere does God promise to satisfy all our desires because that might not serve his purposes. But God does promise to provide our most basic needs if we ask him to do so. And that's what we ask for, our daily bread, our basic needs. |
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16th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C Published: Saturday, July 16, 2016 You and I are busy about many things that are not very important. I've never heard anyone on their deathbed say they wish they'd worked harder, earned more money, spent more time cooking and cleaning the house. |
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15th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C Published: Sunday, July 10, 2016 How can we heal this wound? Nothing will really change until we as a nation begin to see each other as true brothers and sisters, which is the main point of Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan in today's Gospel. We can pass all the anti-discrimination laws we want, but until we have a change of heart, our nation's wound will not be healed. |
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14th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C Published: Sunday, July 3, 2016 Regardless of what they say, most people's actions show that they expect to find security in the things of this world and happiness in living however we want. Yet this willfulness only leaves us feeling even more insecure than before, because the conscience that God planted in us will not allow us to find true peace so long as we persist in living what we know deep in our hearts to be a lie. |
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Saturday, 13th Week of Ordinary Time, Cycle II Published: Saturday, July 2, 2016 By voting, we remind politicians that they have to take our concerns into account; if we don’t vote, we are likely to continue to be ignored, and some will feel free to actively promote policies that continue to do us harm. |
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13th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C Published: Sunday, June 26, 2016 Like Cortez who burned his boats and Elisha who burned his farm implements, you and I must burn our bridges to eliminate everything that might tempt us to return to our former way of life when things get rough. |
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12th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C Published: Sunday, June 19, 2016 In order for you men to be fathers truly worthy of the name, you have to embrace your fatherhood, give yourselves over fully to all that is entailed becoming the kind of fathers that God has called you to be. |
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Diaconate Ordination of William Burmester Published: Thursday, June 2, 2016 The obedience you promise today is not just the mere compliance of a slave. It is the self-sacrificing gift of yourself to the Lord, and so you promise not only to do what I ask you to do, but also to do so with a listening, loving heart. |
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Priesthood Ordination of Stephen Gadberry, Taryn Whittington, Mario Jacobo, Norman McFall and Joseph Chan Published: Saturday, May 28, 2016 Ninety-nine percent of the time, your ministry will require you to lead, but not compel; to inspire, and not shame; to encourage the sheep instead of rebuking them — and hopefully, that rare one percent of the time when rebuking is needed, might never arise if they know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you love them and revere them. |
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Diaconate Ordination of Stephen Hart and Matthew Glover Published: Wednesday, May 25, 2016 In our second reading, Peter calls us to sincere mutual love, that we should love each other "intensely from a pure heart." And in today's Gospel that love and service come together in the person of Jesus Christ who "did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many." |
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Diaconate Ordination of Michael Johns Published: Tuesday, May 24, 2016 Today we formalize your response to the call of Jesus and his Church, committing yourself to a life of sacrificial love, loving others as Jesus has loved you. And so Jesus speaks directly to you when in today's Gospel he says: "It was not you who chose me, it was I who chose you to go forth and bear fruit." |
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Diaconate Ordination of Ramsés Mendieta Published: Friday, May 20, 2016 While celibacy involves sacrifice and death to self, you will discover it to be a gift that enables you to love others more fully and more freely, your life modeled on Jesus who also was celibate — probably for that very same reason — and who will give you the grace you need to live with total dedication to the promises you make today. |
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Diaconate Ordination of Luke Womack Published: Thursday, May 19, 2016 So Luke, like the rest of us, from this day forward, it will be your duty to do all in your power to bring about "a revolution of tenderness" (88), which is the life-changing fruit of the Gospel of joy! |
