No War, No Peace

 

Historically, the slogan "No War, No Peace" refers back to Leon Trotsky (1879-1940), the Bolshevik leader of the Soviet negotiating team, trying at Breat-Litovsk in early 1918 to end the war with Germany and Austria-Hungary. Refusing to accede to Imperial Germany's severe territorial demands, Trotsky simply announced on February 10, 1918, that the Russian war was over and that the Soviets would cease active fighting. Trotsky's Bolshevik boss, Vladimir Lenin, initially went along with the "No War, No Peace" approach. After Germany resumed its military advance, however, Lenin pragmatically insisted that the Russian negotiators immediately agree to sign the treaty accepting Germany's harsh terms. So much for "No War, No Peace" as a strategic policy!

It is a very imperfect analogy, of course, but "No War, No Peace" is not an altogether inadequate description of the present impasse in the misbegotten war between the U.S. and Iran. Whatever the slogan's strategic limitations, Trotsky's "No War, No Peace" was at least a  policy of sorts. On the other hand, it is hard - on any given day - to divine what U.S. policy regarding Iran actually is, or indeed what the state of the conflict actually is. Are we negotiating? If so, with whom? Are we threatening "prompt and utter destruction" (as the world War II allies famously threatened Japan at Potsdam)? If so, with whom? Are we doing both at the same time? Or something else? Who knows? How would one know? 

Like so much of what the U.S. has done (or failed to do) in this war, Trotsky's "No War, No Peace" was an ad hoc adjustment to an uncontrollable reality. In fairness to Trotsky, however, the war was not one which the Bolsheviks had started, although, of course, they had benefited enormously from its traumatic effects on Russia. The Revolution had inherited the war from the Tsarist Regime, which shared responsibility for that colossal failure of European civilization with the other belligerent Powers on both sides. In contrast, the Iran War is entirely the result of U.S. decisions, a wholly self-induced foreign-policy debacle.

According to Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan's Regime Change (Simon and Schuster, 2026), the Administration's previous attack on Iran - the June 2025 "Operation Midnight Hammer" - began with Mass offered in the Vice President's office, attended by the Secretary of State and the White House Chief of Staff, who later said it was "to pray for the people." One wonders whether any comparable prayers were offered the following February when the current war was being launched?

All of which, of course, brings us back to the original mistake, the misbegotten character of the conflict, displayed in the problematic decision-making recently described so poignantly, for example, in Haberman and Swan's same riveting account and which continues to bedevil the U.S. today. It is widely alleged that the Administration would like just to be able to quit the war somehow. One is reminded of October 1966, when Senator George Aiken of Vermont famously suggested that the United States should just unilaterally declare that it had won the Vietnam War, using this "victory" as an excuse to de-escalate American involvement in Vietnam. But unilaterally declaring "victory," would not open the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranians just don't seem to want to cooperate with American face-saving - unsurprisingly, given their long history of malevolent anti-Americanism and their past success at humiliating American presidents. Meanwhile, the war continues to take a terrible toll on the world economy, on American military resources, and on our on-site personnel (as evidenced by the recent revelations about conditions on the American aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, which themselves highlight the defective nature of American war planning). 

Perhaps, prayers really are what the situation calls for. But divine intervention to bail us out - what the ancients called a Deus ex machina -  cannot be counted on. At the end of The Odyssey (Homer's, not Nolan's modernized version), when Odysseus and his rivals seemed stuck in a pattern of further fighting that threatened almost unending civil conflict in Ithaka, Athena herself intervened. She "cried with her clarion voice and forced the whole host to stop," and Zeus reinforced her intervention with a decisive thunderbolt. Odysseus "obeyed, his heart rejoicing. They were made to swear oaths to each other, to endure for all time to come" (tr. Daniel Mandelsohn, U. of Chicago Pr., 2025, 530, 545-546).

Would a clarion call to "Stop," backed by a thunderbolt or two make a difference in this war? Actually, one might suggest that more than a few such thunderbolts have metaphorically already been hurled as warnings both before and during this conflict, to little or no avail. So, on it goes, "No War, No peace." 

Photo: Leon Trotsky and his fellow Bolshevik negotiators arriving and meeting their German counterparts at Brest-Litovsk station on January 15, 1918.

Blessed Be Her Glorious Assumption - Even on Saturday

 

"To day is the holy day of the Assumption of the dear blessed Mary other of our Lord and Saviour Jesus. Oh may I be found worthy of her regard and love." So wrote the then 24-year old Servant of God Isaac Thomas Hecker in his Diary on August 15, 1844, exactly two weeks after his entry into the Catholic Church.

La Madonna di mezz'agosto was how my Sicilian grandmother used to refer to today's festival of the Assumption (typically termed, as in the Divine Praises, the "Glorious" Assumption) of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which has been celebrated on this same date for so many centuries.

Unfortunately, in the United States this year, because it falls on a Saturday, the Assumption is not being kept as a holy day of obligation, for reasons which may seem inexplicable at best and (like so many other contemporary religious mistakes) may also seem self-destructive in terms of the Church's visible and public presence in people's lives today.

In contrast, early on in American history the Assumption received special attention and solemnity in the newly created the United States as the patronal feast of Baltimore, the first U.S. diocese (then encompassing the entire territory of the new country). In his first pastoral letter to his extensive American diocese, Bishop John Carroll called on all U.S. Catholics to celebrate the feast: "to unite with one heart, and in one earnest supplication to the father of all mercies, and the giver of every good gift, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, that he may be graciously pleased to preserve, increase, and diffuse a sincere and well-grounded attachment to the principles of our holy religion; to advert from us the seduction of error and pestilential infidelity; to awaken and renew in us the spirit of solid piety, and of watchfulness over your unruly passions; to animate us to the fulfilling of all the commandments; to pour down on our country blessings spiritual and temporal; and to receive our grateful and humble thanks for the innumerable favors, which we continually receive from a Bountiful Providence." 

Certainly, Saturday or not, that remains a worthy prayer agenda for this happy feast in our own troubled time as well!

Early traditions saw Mary's death (her "Dormition") as an extraordinary event. It is thought that traditions about Mary's Dormition and her accompanying Assumption can be traced as far back as the second century. Whatever may be inferred from those ancient narratives, Eastern Orthodox Christians affirm that, after Mary had died a natural death, her final resurrection was anticipated and she was carried completely, body as well as soul, into the glory of heaven. Accordingly, they celebrate the Dormition of Theotokos on August 15, preceded by a strict 14-day fast. Roman Catholics regrettably abandoned virtually all remnants of the ancient ascetic Christian practice of fasting decades ago.  That said,  we likewise also affirm faith in Mary's body-and-soul assumption and also celebrate it on this same ancient date. (Catholic teaching, now formally dogmatically defined by Pope Pius XII in 1950, leaves it an open question whether Mary actually died and was then raised up to heaven or whether she was directly assumed into heaven without having died first.)

In 1946, Pope Pius XII, in a letter to the world's bishops Deiparae Virginis Mariae, asked them:

"Do you, venerable brethren, in your outstanding wisdom and prudence, judge that the bodily Assumption of the Blessed Virgin can be proposed and defined as a dogma of faith? Do you, with your clergy and people, desire it?" To this inquiry, the Pope received an unsurprisingly resounding response, which he characterized as "outstanding agreement of the Catholic prelates and the faithful." This showed, the Pope claimed, "the concordant teaching of the Church's ordinary doctrinal authority and the concordant faith of the Christian people which the same doctrinal authority sustains and directs" (Munificentissimus Deus, 12). 

Those were the days! Try to imagine such concordance in today's conflict-ridden factionalized world! Try to reimagine today the missionary self-confidence and future-oriented hopefulness expressed in that Holy Year of 1950 in the papal bull defining the by-then fully accepted Catholic doctrine!

Preaching at the Sixth National Marian Congress of France in July 1950, the Papal Nuncio to France, Archbishop Angelo Roncalli (the future Pope Saint John XXIII) composed this prayer:

O Mary, Mother of Jesus and our Mother too! We hail you with this cry that all generations repeat, contemplating the mysteries of your life and the splendor of your Assumption. Once more we hail you as blessed, beata; intercede for us, O glorious Queen of the world and be ever mindful of us, particularly in the dangers and needs of the present hour.

Photo: The Crowning of Mary, Queen of Heaven, Mural by Willian Lauren Harris, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY.

To watch a video (with commentary in french) of the proclamation fo the assumption by Pope Pius XII in 1950, go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AKESyTZZM8.

Theo - A Kris Kringle for our Dispirited Age

 

Every Christmastime, I rewatch Miracle on 34th Street. Originally, however, that famous film was released in summer and was not initially presented as a Christmas movie. To me, how a film that features Santa Claus could not be a Christmas movie defies all explanation! That said, Santa Claus aside, Miracle on 34th Street is a movie about how someone who personifies goodness brings joy to other people's lives and gets them to do good things that they probably ought to have had enough sense to do on their own, but never would have. Theo of Golden by Allen Levi (Atria Books, 2025) has a similar feel (minus the Christmas context), highlighting classically human themes of friendship and kindness, mutual service, and responding to the sadness and loneliness so endemic in modern American life.

Allen Levi originally self-published his novel through Amazon in the fall of 2023, but the book really took off in 2025 and has since became a huge success, finding its way onto the New York Times "Bestsellers" list for weeks. The story follows "Theo" - an 86-year-old Portuguese-born man, who uses only his first name - through his eventful year as a visitor residing in a Southern Georgia town called Golden. Theo focuses much of the year buying up portraits of local residents. The portraits had been done by a local artist named Asher. Theo sees them hanging on display (and for sale) in a local coffee shop called The Chalice. Theo's plan in purchasing the portraits himself is to give them as gifts to their subjects. First, Theo sends the portrait’s subjects a handwritten letter on fine paper, inviting them to come to the prearranged meeting place, promising that he’s “a harmless old man, a widower, a father, a toothless lion with only innocent intentions.” For the most part, the recipients of the portraits and the other locals whom Theo befriends respond positively to his generosity and prove to be grateful for an opportunity to tell Theo their story.

Much of the novel is about the unique network of generosity and mutual friendship which Theo creates, and how most of the others in downtown Golden respond to his initiatives. The author supposedly turned down offers from a Christian publisher for Theo of Golden. Even so, this is a novel permeated with a Christian sensibility, with occasional references to both Christian beliefs (e.g. heaven) and practices (e.g. Sunday churchgoing).  The novel’s conclusion features a Christian funeral service that includes an edifying homily on the story of the Risen Christ's encounter with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. (Since Theo is Portuguese his religious background would presumably have been Catholic. The local church, however, although the minister is a Father Lundy, looks somewhat generically, non-denominationally Christian.)

If the novel has a particular weakness, it is that the conclusion which ties everyone and everything together appears a bit too contrived, which (to my mind) may actually diminish the gratuity of Theo's kindness. The book could also have been a little tighter (i.e. shorter), the main point having been made and remade multiple times. (Rare is the book that couldn't benefit from being shorter!) That said, it is a beautiful story that highlights hope for humanity and prioritizes authentic Christian values in this time when such contrary values seem to predominate in our culture and in our politics.

As Father Lunday says: "For a year, he was in our midst and now, looking back, can't we say that, when we were with him, our hearts burned within us, our souls stood on tiptoe, our eyes recognized something good and true, and our minds could believe, if not fully, then ever so slightly, that love and heaven and forgiveness are the most real things that we can know in this world?"

Rome's Third Patron

 

Quam clarificata est Jerosolyma Stephano, tam illustris fieret Roma Laurentio ("As Jerusalem is made glorious by Stephen, so Rome is made illustrious by Lawrence"). So said Saint Leo the Great preaching on today's feast of the great Roman deacon-martyr Lawrence. Back in 2012, during my time at "Saints School" in Rome, I got to visit three Roman churches named for Saint Lawrence - San Lorenzo in Lucina, San Lorenzo in Panisperna (honoring the site of Lawrence's martyrdom), and the great Basilica of Saint Lawrence Outside the Walls, where Lawrence is buried. (The Photo above is of the altar at the site of his burial).

 

Christian Rome produced many martyrs - among them Pope Sixtus II and four other Roman deacons, whose memory we commemorated at Mass just last Friday, who were martyred just four days before Lawrence in 258 during the persecution of Emperor Valerian. 

What made Lawrence stand out so?

 

As deacon, Lawrence was apparently in charge of the material possessions of the Roman Church and of its alms for the poor. According to tradition, after the execution of Pope Sixtus the Prefect demanded that Lawrence turn over the Church's treasure. Supposedly, Lawrence quickly distributed as much of the Church's property as possible to the poor and then went to the Prefect and presented to him the poor. "Behold in these poor," Lawrence said to the Prefect, "the treasures I promised to show you." 

In the late 20th century, it became quite common to talk about a "preferential option for the poor." Lawrence lived it. Hence his standout status in 3rd-century Rome - and a good reason why we remember (and hopefully imitate) him even today.

Homily for the feast of Saint Lawrence, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, August 10, 2026.

Pompeii: Out of Time

 

One of the many side-benefits of the popularity of Christoper Nolan's blockbuster movie The Odyssey has been a widespread increase in interest in classics generally. For me personally, it led directly to my discovery of Mary Beard's fascinating and entertaining podcast Instant Classics. And it was on Instant Classics that I learned about Pompeii: Out of Time, a three-part documentary-drama television series recently produced for National Geographic and hosted and executive-produced by British actor (and Cambridge-trained classicist) Tom Hiddleston.

Hiddleston's series sets out to identify residents who might have escaped the disaster. Working with the "Pompeii Survivors Project," Hiddleston cross-references names inscribed on objects and buildings found in Pompeii with names that also appear elsewhere in the Roman world after the eruption (traditionally dated August 24, AD 79). He thus follows the fates of three individuals, who might have had potential to survive: Avianius, a headstrong teenager from a downwardly mobile family currently apprenticed to a bronze smith; Julia Felix, a wealthy businesswoman who owned a bathhouse on her estate; and an otherwise unidentified soldier, possibly a Praetorian Guardsman, whose belongings were recovered at the elite beach resort of Herculaneum several miles from Pompeii and even closer to Vesuvius.

In the first episode, "Tremors," Hiddleston follows some of the early signs from Vesuvius  as earthquakes disrupt the city. He follows Avianius and Julia Felix while he counts down to the beginning of the eruption. A key concept here is Hiddleston's desire to challenge the popular idea that Pompeii was destroyed without any warning, What in fact he examines is the different physical, social, and psychological pressures which contributed to each individual's eventual real-time decision to flee immediately or to delay during the appoximately 30 hours over which the tragedy transpired..

In the second episode, Hiddleston depicts the first four phases of the eruption. We watch as daylight disappears into darkness. (The fifth phase will be the final pyroclastic flows which ultiately buried the two cities intact for centuries.)  Hiddleston highlights the attempted flight from Herculaneum (dramatized as led by the Praetorian Guardsman.) As pyroclastic surges begin, hundreds will die not in Hurculaneum itself but on the beach from which they were trying to flee. He also highlights how Julia Felix tries to maneuver her household and customers away from the disaster.

In the third episode, Hiddleston uncovers possible evidence about the tragic fates of Avianius and Julia Felix, and considers what survival would have meant in practice for Pompeii's residents.

I guess it is a clever technique to bring us along following particular persons, expecting (or at least given initial reasons to hope) that they will survive. However, hoping our characters will survive only leads to disappointment when in the end most don't make it. Of course, it highlights the dramatic pathos of the event, but we already know it was a titanic catastrophe! By tracing the specific stories of particular people, Hiddleston seems to be trying to make that catastrophe come alive and its tragic character so much more personal for us as observers.

One of the three apparently did survive, however. Avianius apparently made it, although his mother did not, facts attested by a subsequent gravestone. For Avianius, survival meant moving on alone in the world. Survival too - for the few who, totally traumatized and now alone, did survive - was also tragic in its own very deep way.

My grandmother grew up in the shadow of Italy's other active volcano, Mount Etna near Catania, Sicily (which is making herself heard again as this is written!). As a child, I remember worrying that a volcano might erupt in the Bronx! There was never any danger of that, of course. But volcanoes continue to endanger our fragile human world - as Vesuvius itself may yet someday do once again! The twin traumas of massive deaths and traumatized survivors may yet continue to haunt our tragedy-burdened world.

The Cure of Ars

 

The year that Saint John Vianney (1786-1859), the famous "Cure of Ars" and patron of parish priests, died, 1859, Charles Dickens published A Tale of Two Cities, his famous novel about the French Revolution, which begins with the familiar sentence, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." Into that turbulent "worst of times," John Vianney was born just three years before the Revolution - a movement which showed a hatred for the Church, the likes of which Europe had not seen since the worst of the Roman Emperors. Churches were desecrated; bishops, priests, and religious were massacred. Young John Vianney received his First Communion in secret, since public celebration of Mass by priests loyal to the Church was illegal.

After Napoleon had restored some semblance of peace between Church and State, 20-year-old John Vianney went to school to study for the priesthood. He failed the seminary admission test, but somehow managed on his second try. Even then, he was such a poor student that his continuance was in question. The Vicar General of the diocese finally asked the seminary rector, "Is Monsieur Vianney good?" The rector replied, "He is a model of goodness." To that, the Vicar General replied: "Let him be ordained. The grace of God will do the rest." Commenting on John Vianney's difficulties as a student, Isaac Hecker (1819-1888), the founder of the Paulist Fathers, saw "the supernatural action of the Holy Spirit at work" in John Vianney's difficulties. Hecker likened himself to John Vianney in how hard he had found his studies for the priesthood. Both John Vianney and Isaac Hecker went on to become exemplary priests - in spite of not quite measuring up to standard seminary standards.

The damage done by the revolutionary "worst of times" was eminently evident in the little village of Ars (population 230), to which John. Vianney was sent as pastor in 1817. His bishop warned him, "There is little love of God in that parish."

As Ars' parish priest, Saint John Vianney (photo) devoted the rest of his life to trying to remedy that devastating description. And, so, in Ars, "the worst of times" eventually became "the best of times." Always aware of his own inadequacies, but obedient to the Church that had called him to be a pastor and devoted to the people committed to his care, he sought to harmonize his own life with the holiness he was called to embody as a priest, instructing his parishioners by the personal witness of his life. "There are no two ways of serving God," he explained. "There is only one: serve him as he desires to be served. Celebrating Mass, he was said to have "gazed upon the Host with immense love." He believed the fervor of a priest depended on the Mass. "My God," he famously said, "how we ought to pity a priest who celebrates as if he were engaged in something routine." By his example, he helped his parishioners to pray. "One need not say much to pray well," he told them. "We know that Jesus is there in the tabernacle: let us open our hearts to him, let us rejoice in his sacred presence, that is the best prayer."

John Vianney is perhaps most famous for his ministry in the confessional. One legacy of "the worst of times" upheaval produced by the Revolution, was widespread indifference to the sacrament of forgiveness. Eventually, however, penitents would be coming to him from all over France, finally making it one of "the best of times" also for the great sacrament of God's mercy. 

Homily for the feast of Saint John Vianney, Saint Paull the Apostle Church, NY, August 4, 2026.

 

Bread of Joy

 

Every Sunday this summer, the second reading at Mass has been taken from Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans. Today’s text [Romans 8:35, 37-39] is a rhetorical flourish, which concludes the first half of Saint Paul’s letter.

What will separate us, Saint Paul dramatically asks, from God’s love for us as revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord? His answer: nothing! Not that there isn’t plenty out there to get in the way of our experience of God’s love! Paul knows only too well what obstacles there are and how powerful they seem to be. He even enumerates a bunch of them: anguish, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, the sword. We could, of course, add to that list - war, public and private corruption, political polarization and division, downward mobility, the death of the “American Dream,” chronic illness, aging, and any number of other social, political, and personal problems. Even the gospel account we just heard of the feeding of the 5000, [Matthew 14:13-21] a happy, feel-good story if ever there was one, begins with the potential danger posed by the murder of John the Baptist!

Paul’s point is not that these things are not real or that they don’t threaten us, but that God’s power is so much greater than the forces that oppose it – and so can overcome all obstacles that threaten to separate us from God and the salvation his love intends for us. Instead, in desperation (in Paul’s time as again in our own) people tend to turn to all sorts of falsehoods – spiritual falsehoods like cosmic forces and social falsehoods like political power - in order to cope with threats from present things and future things.

Paul’s conviction, based on the love of God revealed in Christ, is that God’s power is way greater than those threats. If, however, we really believe in God’s omnipotence and in his love for us as revealed in Christ, then we will react differently to the many stresses and challenges we might otherwise be beaten down by. In this threatening and dangerous world, an all-powerful God who didn’t also love us would only add to the danger. That was precisely what made Paul’s preaching seem so liberating to so many pagans then – and continues to attract people to the Christian message today.

If God had not revealed himself – and his love for us – as he has done in his Son Jesus, we too would be equally desperate, clutching at anything that promised to placate otherwise uncontrollable cosmic forces or perhaps more mundanely to marshal aggressive political power to protect us against real or imagined scapegoats.

God, however, has revealed his love for us – not as an abstraction, but as a person, Christ Jesus our Lord, whose heart is moved with pity for us and satisfies us with food we could never buy on our own.

There will always be an insurmountable gap between our meager human resources – our 5 little loaves and 2 fish – and what God can accomplish on our behalf. Once we are willing to put ourselves at his disposal, however, God’s great love for us, present and active among us in Christ Jesus our Lord, will transform us by his blessing and enable us to accomplish, on his behalf, what we could never ever have imagined doing on our own – to conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us.

And, so, the same Christ who feeds us whenever we assemble in his presence also commands us – as his disciples, as his Church –to reject pessimistic false alternatives and to join him wholeheartedly in feeding the world with the bread of joy and trust that comes from recognizing and perpetuating his presence in our world.

Homily for the 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, august 2, 2026.

Ignatius

 

Twenty-plus years ago, on a parish pilgrimage in Spain, I celebrated Mass at the shrine of Saint Ignatius at Loyola Castle, the famous site of Ignatius’ religious transformation while recovering from his battle injury. As I unvested after Mass, the Jesuit sacristan seemed to be yelling at me. Thankfully I knew enough Spanish to understand that he was complaining that we had not venerated the relic. “What relic?” I asked. “the Saint’s head,” he replied. “Where is it?” I asked. The sacristan looked around and realized his mistake. He rushed to a filing cabinet and pulled out the small reliquary with a piece of bone from Saint Ignatius’ head, while, I, for my part, ran outside and summoned everyone back into the chapel to venerate the Saint’s head!

I have no recollection of what I had said in praise of Saint Ignatius in my homily on that occasion. I could hardly have said it better than our first Pastor and Paulist founder, Isaac Hecker, did in a famous sermon in 1863: “The leader of this company was Ignatius Loyola, the Spanish soldier, who abandoned the sword for the more powerful weapon of the Cross. For enlarged conception, energy of execution, and boldness of design, he has not been surpassed, if ever equaled, in Church history.”  [“The Saint of Our Day, “March 19, 1863]

At a time when the Church was faced with the twin challenges of the Protestant Reformation and world-wide exploration and (what we now call) globalization, Ignatius, together with six others (among then Saint Francis Xavier), founded his Society of Jesus, to reinvigorate the Church’s spiritual life and serve at the Pope’s disposal, wherever and however needed in the global mission. His Spiritual Exercises have served as a guide for vocational discernment and personal spiritual renewal for generations ever since, while the Jesuit community has spread all over the world as missionaries, scholars, and teachers, from the era portrayed in the movie The Mission until the present day. The first U.S. Bishop was a Jesuit, as was the first U.S. Catholic college. Ignatius’ legacy continues to guide and direct individuals and communities within the Church in the perennial process of discerning the most apt responses to the complicated crises and challenges the Church faces today.

Homily for the feast of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, July 31, 2026.

Image: Emblem of the Society of Jesus.

Friends

 

One of the more distressing observations about life in our contemporary society is how many people seem to have very few friends, some say none at all. Aristotle long ago famously said that friendship is something that no one would choose to live without even if one possessed all other goods. In the New Testament, even Jesus had his special friends and strongly valued his personal friendships. Today, the Church commemorates three of those special friends, the sisters Martha and Mary of Bethany and their brother Lazarus. The Collect we just prayed mentions something specific to each of them. O God, Whose Son called Lazarus back from the grave and was pleased to be a guest in the home of Martha, grant us, we pray, that, faithfully serving him in our brothers and sisters, we, with Mary, may be found worthy to be nourished by the contemplation of his word.

Each is mentioned for the thing that he or she is most famous for - being brought back to life from the dead, serving as Jesus' super-conscientious hostess, listening attentively to Jesus' words. But we commemorate them together - together as a family, of course, but more than just a family - together too as Jesus' disciples, and, more than disciples, also as Jesus' faithful, much loved friends. It was Lazarus' loving friendship with Jesus that his sisters' emphasized when they sent Jesus the message that Lazarus was seriously sick. Presumably, it was Martha's also authentically close friendship with Jesus, which enabled her to confront Jesus so dramatically when he showed up late for Lazarus' funeral. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." We get the same feeling from Martha's other famous confrontation with Jesus in Luke's Gospel. “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving? Tell her to help me.” That is less a disicple talkign to her teacher than one good friend talking to another.

Both these scenes took place in Bethany.at Martha, Mary, and Lazarus' home, where Jesus was apparently a frequent visitor. Not all visitors are friends, of course. Hospitality to strangers was a very high value in the ancient world, as the The Odyssey movie has recently reminded us. But Jesus seems to have been a regular visitor at Martha, Mary, and Lazarus' home near Jerusalem, occasions for more than conventional hospitality but rather for deeply human experiences of mutual friendship.

In becoming human in Jesus, God has fully experienced our human life, sanctifying the sorrows and challenges of our ordinary lives but also blessing life's joys, among the benefits we receive from friendship.

Homily for the feast of Saints Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, July 29, 2026.

Photo: Traditional Site of Tomb of Lazarus near Jerusalem.

The Elephants in the Room (A Book about Trump's Party)

 

Throughout this entire decade of Trump and Trumpism, numerous journalists have enriched our impressions of this president and the movement that has attached himself to him - most recently Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump (Simon & Schuster), by two New York Times journalists, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. After the journalists, inevitably come the political scientists, until finally in due course the historians will weigh in. Seth Masket is a Political Science professor at the University of Denver, a specialist in political parties, who has already attempted to address the Democrats story in this period with Learning from Loss: The Democrats 2016-2020 (Cambridge University Press, 2020), has now turned his (and our) attention to an important part of the Republican story with The Elephants in the Room: How Trump Voters Seized the Party from Republican Leaders (Cambridge University Press, 2026).

Masket starts from the fact that until recently both parties' presidential nominating processes "have followed a predictable set of rules." The Republicans, however, have changed "because the DC-based 'establishment' elites who used to run the party lost control of it to a populist, nativist grassroots faction outside Washington." It was Donald Trump who facilitated that faction's acquisition of power. "They don't see this as temporary madness; they see this as the movement that put them in charge and actually cares about the things they care about." Masket "uses the 2024 Republican presidential nomination as a lens for examining changes within the Republican Party and in the relationship between party insiders and voters."

What Masket calls populist conservatism has three key tenets: People-centrism, Anti-pluralism, and Moralized anti-elitism. He traces the history of the rise of this element in the party (at the expense of the previous "fusionist" consensus) through several stages:

1. 1960-1968 Learning from Nixon's Loss.                                                                                    2. 1970s The Rise of Primaries, the Fall of Gatekeepers.                                                            3. 1990s Pat Buchanan, Nativism, and Populism.                                                                        4. Mid-1990s The Gingrich Revolution.                                                                                        5. 2008-2012 The Tea Party and Obama's First Term.                                                                  6. The Rise of Conservative Media.                                                                                            7. Late 2000s-2010s The Demise of the Republican Establishment.

Having recounted this history, Masket moves into the present (the period after 2020). His methodology basically involves interviewing and surveying Republican party county chairs.  One might counter that county chairs and other formal party officials don't matter that much anymore, but that, of course, is precisely Masket's point.   "Trump did not win the 2024 nomination because party leaders were pulling for him and guiding party voters.  Indeed, many party leaders, including those who strongly supported him in his first term, were quite cool to a third Trump nomination.   They worried about his ability to win and the baggage he brought with him, and looked to a range of other candidates as possibilities. But they had no mechanism for picking such a candidates over the very strong preferences of party voters."

Masket concludes that neither party insiders nor donors rallied to Trump "until the party's voters made him the nominee." He had, after all, lost re-election, which is usually not rewarded in American politics. In particular, "the indictments caused many Republicans to rally behind Trump and defend him." Evangelical Christians are known to be among Trump's strongest supporters. "Opposition to an immoral person holding the presidency was one of the most commonly cited rationales among evangelicals for impeaching Bill Clinton in 1998-9, but less than two decades later, immorality was not a dealbreaker. Christianity did not undergo any major doctrinal shifts during this time; rather, its conservative adherents rethought the political implications of their faith."

Masket also examines the differences between Trump supporters and other Republicans. Trump's "supporters are considerably poorer, less educated, more conservative, and more likely to identify as evangelical Christian." They also share "a commitment to social order and hierarchy, endorsement of conspiratorial thinking, strong opposition to 'elite' rule in their party, a focus on immigration, and less acknowledgment of the existence of racial discrimination."

Masket concludes that the changes that brought Trump to power "are very much still present and aren't about to change back." 

God's Gracious Patience

When I was a kid growing up in the Bronx, New York City (sadly noted for its summer heat and humidity) tried to promote itself to tourists with the slogan “New York is a summer festival.” Festival or not, we certainly have had a festive summer, an exciting summer. We had the Knicks. We celebrated our semi-quincentennial – complete with tall ships, fireworks, and a celebrity wedding – and more locally our own Paulist Pilgrimage to Liberty Island in Support of Immigrants. And, of course, we have had the World Cup, which will come to its glorious conclusion later today in the final championship match between Spain and Argentina at the stadium across the Hudson.

 

Meanwhile, here in church this summer, we have been making our way, week-by-week, through Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans, the longest and most studied of all Saint Paul’s letters. Before I had ever formally studied it, however, my first serious personal encounter with the letter to the Romans occurred some 50 years ago, right around the 1976 bicentennial. It was in a Peanuts cartoon, in which Charlie Brown was moaning and groaning in his characteristic way, until finally someone said to him, “Stop sighing,” to which he responded, “It’s scriptural,” and then proceeded to cite Saint Paul’s words from the short passage we just heard today – in the more elegant, more traditional translation, for the Spirit helps us in our weakness, with sighs too deep for words [Romans 8:26].

 

Well, of course, there really is a lot to sigh about. Just listen to the news – or the poisonous brew that is social media. Paul’s words express the problem of the present, that is, the tension between, on the one hand, our obvious weakness and the sense of overwhelming futility that seems to characterize the world, and, on the other, our hope as children of God and joint heirs with Christ. We have, Saint Paul insists, been offered an alternative, already in the present. Hence, his stirring call to a total reorientation of our lives.

Even so, we remain burdened by what we have made of ourselves and our world, in the here and now. Left on our own, we would stay stuck. Paul, however, wants to alert us to something better and brighter than the present but which is already accessible to us now, thanks only to the presence and power of the Holy Spirit acting upon us, filling us, surrounding us, transforming us.

 

Similarly, the parables Jesus proposes in today’s Gospel [Matthew 13:24-43] all illustrate the slow – but inexorable – progress of God’s kingdom, transforming our pathetic present into God’s glorious future. God sows his good seed in the field of the world and patiently waits until the harvest before separating the wheat from the weeds. The weeds are very real and must be recognized and dealt with eventually. But God’s judgment is patient with the world – for our sake. Because, of course, God is not at all like us! As we just heard in the book of Wisdom, God’s mastery over all things makes him judge with clemency. He governs us with much lenience, thus giving us good ground for hope that he would permit our repentance [Wisdom 12:16-18].

 

God is not at all like us! In our frustratingly futile present, we lack patience – with God, with ourselves, with one another, with our world. But, again, God is not like us! Like the yeast which, when mixed with flour, leavens the whole batch, God is patiently filling, surrounding, and transforming our world with the presence and power of his Holy Spirit.

 

As the first fruits of the Spirit, we – the Church, Christ’s witnesses in the world – reflect the Holy Spirit’s leavening presence and power at work.  We are not quite there yet, of course, as the parable of the field so dramatically demonstrates. Wheat and weeds coexist in the Church – as they do in each one of us individually.

 

With the presence and power of the Holy Spirit acting upon us and within us, we are being aided to trust God’s process and make good use of the opportunity God’s patience provides us.

Homily for the 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, July 19, 2026.