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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Fourth Sunday of Lent, Year C 2022 Published: Sunday, March 27, 2022 God is throwing a banquet and wants to see his Church packed with returning prodigals, our brothers and sisters. And we have a choice: rejection or compassion, a choice that may well determine whether we get admitted to the banquet ourselves. By the measure we measure we will be measured. |
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Third Sunday of Lent, Year C 2022 Published: Sunday, March 20, 2022 The kingdom of God is open to everyone, but there are standards; conditions of membership. Jesus' hope is that once we know the rules and what the job expectations are — and the consequences of non-compliance — that we'll get with the program right away. |
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Ash Wednesday 2022 Published: Wednesday, March 2, 2022 Ashes are what’s left behind when smoke ascends to heaven; where we all hope to ascend one of these days. Ashes are the residue left behind by the purifying fire, the trials and tribulations of this earthly life. Ashes do eventually become soil and indeed fertilize the soil. That’s why some farmers burn their fields and plow under the remaining stubble and ashes. But unlike ordinary dirt, ashes also tell a story of previous life. |
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2022 Arkansas Catholic Men's Conference Published: Saturday, February 12, 2022 We have also received God's providence: through our parents, relatives, teachers, priests, all the people through whom God has provided for us all these years — and above all through Jesus — and he continues to feed our souls with miraculous bread, bread not only multiplied into more loaves, not merely changed in quantity as in today's Gospel, but actually changed in its very nature, miraculously changed into the very body and blood of Jesus for us to eat and drink, and through which we receive eternal life. |
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Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C 2022 Published: Sunday, February 6, 2022 Like me and like Peter, you too may feel unworthy as a sinner, or incapable due to personal limitations, but that's no excuse. When the Lord calls, the only proper answer is: "Yes Lord! Yes, I'll do whatever you ask in faith." |
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Catholic Arkansas Sharing Appeal 2022 Published: Saturday, February 5, 2022 Last year, despite the pandemic and the attendant financial uncertainty that many of us experienced, you were amazingly generous to our CASA appeal, and today I come before you to ask you to do the same again this year. |
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Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C 2022 Published: Sunday, January 30, 2022 Those who think outside the box often threaten those with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo — oil producers prefer gas-guzzlers because they’d sell much less gas if we all drove hybrid cars — and the people of Nazareth felt so threatened and infuriated by Jesus’ message that their enemies were included in God’s plan of salvation that they tried to kill the messenger, by throwing him over a cliff. |
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Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C 2022 Published: Sunday, January 23, 2022 There were many stages of composition and many writers contributed to the final result. God was the author of the events described, which is different from our concept of authorship. He didn’t write the text with pen and paper, but he is its source, and he guided its development, and so is in that sense the author — the intellectual author of the Bible. It reveals his will and contains his promises — and that’s how it should be read. |
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Mass for Life 2022 Published: Sunday, January 16, 2022 Life does not cease to be sacred once the baby is born, and no child in the womb will be secure until we embrace the sanctity of all life and reject everything that threatens human life or degrades human dignity at any stage of human existence. |
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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Mass 2022 Published: Saturday, January 15, 2022 This human dimension is what is missing in our national discourse — hence the need to insist repeatedly that Black lives really do matter, because as a country we don’t act that way. Look at the glaring disparities in access to health care and medical outcomes, in education, in law enforcement, in employment and indeed almost every other area of life. |
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Baptism of the Lord 2022 Published: Sunday, January 9, 2022 Each of us needs to ask God in prayer just exactly how he wants us to serve him in this life. Prayer is the key to hearing your call and to opening your heart to know God's will, and do it. |
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Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph 2021 Published: Sunday, December 26, 2021 Mary and Joseph’s faith is obvious in the way they accepted and treasured the hard-to-understand ways that God was already working through and in their Son; meanwhile Jesus’ love for them is obvious in the way he humbled himself and obeyed them, even though as God he knew that he knew a lot more than his parents did. |
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Nativity of the Lord (Christmas) 2021 Published: Saturday, December 25, 2021 The child born today will struggle against the darkness his whole life, to the death — his own death. And that is how his saving, divine light will finally destroy, for once and for all, the power of the darkness, sin and death. |
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Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year C 2021 Published: Sunday, December 19, 2021 Christmas is a time when families get together to share with each other. We share big things and little things, happy things and sad things. We share the joy of being together as a family. Catching up on things, seeing how the children have grown. We also share the sadness of remembering family members who have died and will not be with us this year. |
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Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe 2021 Published: Saturday, December 11, 2021 We have a mother who speaks our language and shares our troubles, a mother who is with us every step of the way, a mother who loves us and gives us hope, a mother who feels what we feel, a mother whose tenderness is more powerful than any adversity we will ever have to face. |
