Let’s be honest about how human beings operate when we get an invitation. If someone sends you an invite to a high-end black-tie gala or a major celebration, what’s the first thing most folks do? They check their calendar. If they’re busy, if they’ve got a mountain of paperwork on the desk, if the weekend is jammed with chores, or if they’d rather just kick back on the couch with a game, what happens? They RSVP with regrets, or worse, they ghost. They make light of it. That’s exactly what happens at the beginning of Jesus’ parable today in Matthew 22. The king—representing Almighty God—puts on a massive wedding feast for his son. Everything is prepped, the table is loaded, the calves are butchered, and the invitation goes out. And what do the invited guests do? They treat the king of the universe like an annoying telemarketer. “They made light of it and went off, one to his farm, another to his business.” Sound familiar? It’s the easiest trap in the world. As a guy who spent decades on the street and in public service before answering the call to the altar, I’ve seen how fast people let everyday survival—the bills, the grind, the side hustles, the endless noise—crowd out the only thing that actually matters. We treat God like an optional weekend appointment. “Lord, I’ll drop in if I have time after I finish my checklist.”

Look at what God does when people blow Him off. A lesser king would have shut down the hall, canceled the catering, and sent out a punitive strike force. But God’s mercy doesn’t work like human ego. The king turns to his servants and says, “The banquet is ready, but those invited weren’t worthy. Go out to the main roads, the highways, the dark corners, and bring in whoever you find—the good and the bad.” He fills the hall with nobodies. People pulled straight off the street who never dreamed they’d sit at a royal table. That’s us. That’s the beauty of grace. God doesn’t wait for you to clean up your resume or get your life completely squared away before He invites you in. He reaches right into the mess of our daily lives and pulls us to the feast.

But then the story takes a sharp, uncomfortable turn—the kind of twist that makes you sit up straight in the pew. The king walks into the banquet hall, looks around, and spots a guy sitting at the table without a wedding garment. When the king asks him, “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?” the man is speechless. Total silence. And the outcome is severe—bound hands and feet, thrown out into the dark. For a long time, people read that and think, “Hold on, that’s harsh! The guy was just dragged off the street corner. How was he supposed to change clothes?” Here’s the historical reality check: In Jesus Time as a first century Jew, when a king threw a royal wedding, it was customary for the host to provide the proper garments right at the entrance for his guests. Everyone received the exact same robe of honor, wiping out all distinctions of who was rich, who was poor, who came from the highway, and who came from the estate. So when this guy refused or neglected the garment, it wasn’t a laundry issue. It was an attitude issue. It meant he walked through the king’s doors, took a seat at the king’s table, ate the king’s food, but said: “I’ll do it my way. I’ll keep wearing my own dirty rags.” He wanted the blessing without the transformation. He wanted the kingdom on his own terms. And brothers and sisters, that is where the rubber meets the road for us.

How many times do we show up to church—or walk through life—wanting God to fix our problems, bless our families, protect our health, and grant us peace, but we refuse to let His grace actually change our character? We want the feast, but we want to keep wearing our old bitterness, our old grudges, our secret sins, and our self-reliance like a comfortable old jacket. St. Paul nailed it in our second reading today from Philippians: “I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation… I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” Paul wasn’t speaking from a position of ease; he wrote that from a Roman prison cell! He understood that true freedom isn’t found in managing your own life or defending your own ego. It’s found in total, radical surrender to Christ. As a Dominican-rooted, charismatic community, we love to talk about the fire of the Holy Spirit, the gifts, the worship, the movement of God. But the primary mark of the Spirit is holiness. The wedding garment is the righteousness of Jesus Christ. You can’t sneak into the Kingdom wearing your own self-righteousness. You can’t fake your way into eternal life holding onto resentment. God invites you out of the dirt of the highway, but He hands you a clean robe at the door. He asks you to put off the old life and put on Christ.

Look around this altar today. This is the mountain of the Lord. This is the banquet. Jesus isn’t asking you to clean yourself up before you come to Him. He’s asking you to stop pretending your old rags are good enough. Drop the excuses. Drop the self-reliance. Let the fire of the Holy Spirit burn away whatever is keeping you lukewarm. When we come up for Holy Communion today, let’s come with open hands and a surrendered heart. Let’s wear the garment of His grace, live out our faith with grit and joy, and remember that when God sets a table, He doesn’t hold back anything. So I leave you with this: Are you ready to strip off your old, comfortable rags of self-reliance, put on the garment of Christ’s grace, and actively pull someone else off the highway into the King’s banquet so that both you and they may gain heaven? To God be the glory, now and forever. Amen.

When life gets loud, messy, or complicated, the easiest thing in the world to do is cut a corner or make a compromise just to avoid an argument. We tell ourselves that if we just go along to get along, or keep our heads down and blend in with the crowd, everything will work itself out. But anyone who has lived long enough knows that real peace never comes from dodging the truth. Real peace comes from knowing who you are, knowing who you belong to, and keeping your feet planted firmly on solid ground.

Today, we celebrate the Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary. For us in the Dominican family, this feast is personal. It goes back to the victory at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, when the Christian world was facing overwhelming odds and Pope Saint Pius V asked everyone to pick up their beads and pray. Our holy father St. Dominic didn’t hand people the Rosary as some kind of mechanical chore or magic charm; he gave it to them as a spiritual anchor against heresy and confusion. The purpose of this feast isn’t to look at a pair of beads like jewelry. It’s to teach us how to look at Jesus Christ through the eyes of His Blessed Mother—a woman who stood steady through uncertainty, grief, and the foot of the Cross because her entire life was fixed on doing God’s will.

That backbone is the exact thing Saint Paul is talking about in our first reading today. Paul goes up to Jerusalem to ensure that the core truth of the Gospel isn’t watered down. And when he sees Peter—Cephas—pulling away from eating with Gentile believers just because he was worried about what a certain group might think of him, Paul calls him out right to his face. He didn’t do it out of anger or disrespect; he did it because Peter wasn’t walking in line with the truth. Paul knew that the moment you start compromising the truth to please other people, you lose your footing.

Now, where do you get that kind of strength? How do you stay steady when the pressure is on? That brings us right to the Gospel of Luke. The disciples watch Jesus praying by Himself. When He finishes, they don’t ask Him how to win arguments, gain influence, or run an organization. They say, “Lord, teach us to pray.” They saw that His strength, His calm, and His authority came entirely from time spent alone with the Father. And Jesus doesn’t give them a complicated speech; He gives them the essentials: honor God’s name, pray for His kingdom, ask for daily bread, forgive others, and ask for protection from the test.

When you put Paul’s courage next to Luke’s Gospel, you see the real power of the Rosary. The Rosary takes the very prayer Jesus gave us—the Our Father—combines it with the biblical words of Gabriel and Elizabeth, and walks us step-by-step through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. It calms the noise in our heads so we can actually listen to God, and it gives us the courage to stand tall for what’s right when everyone else is backing down.

So my question for each of us today is simple: When the pressure mounts and the world pushes you to compromise your faith just to keep the peace, are you willing to pick up your beads, sit quietly with the Lord, and let Mary teach you how to stand firm in the truth?

Mother Mary of the Rosary pray for us.

Scripture Readings: Luke 1:26–38 & Acts 1:12–14

​My dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

​Today we gather as The Church to celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, a title that carries both profound spiritual sweetness and rich historical strength. When we hold the humble string of beads in our hands, we are not engaging in a mechanical repetition of words, nor are we offering a distant, detached petition. Rather, we are taking the hand of the Blessed Virgin Mary and allowing her to lead us through the life, death, and triumphant resurrection of her Son, Jesus Christ.

​The Rosary is, at its core, a deeply biblical prayer. It is often described as a compendium of the Gospel. In each decade, as our fingers move from one bead to the next, we are invited to gaze upon the mysteries of our redemption through the very eyes of the one who knew Christ best. Who better to teach us how to love the Saviour than His own Mother? Who better to guide us through the joys of Bethlehem, the light of His public ministry, the dark sorrow of Calvary, and the radiant glory of the Easter morning than the one who shared so intimately in every single step of His journey?

​Consider for a moment the posture of Our Lady at the Annunciation. When the Archangel Gabriel appeared to her in Nazareth, her heart was filled with wonder, yet her response was one of radical, trustful surrender: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done unto me according to thy word.” That single moment of obedience—that holy Fiat—opened the floodgates of grace for the entire world. In the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary, we reflect on this quiet assent, learning from Mary how to welcome Christ into the ordinary spaces of our own daily lives.

​Yet, Mary’s journey was not without profound sorrow. As Simeon foretold, a sword of grief would pierce her soul. In the Sorrowful Mysteries, we walk alongside the Mother of Sorrows as her Son carries the weight of human sin up the hill of Golgotha. We see her standing at the foot of the Cross—steadfast, courageous, and faithful when others had fled. How often in our own lives do we face grief, uncertainty, or deep spiritual dryness? It is precisely in those moments that the Rosary becomes our lifeline. In repeating the Hail Mary, we join our small, fragile voices to the eternal choir of praise, anchoring our souls to the unwavering hope found at the foot of the Cross.

​Finally, the Rosary turns our hearts towards victory and hope in the Luminous and Glorious Mysteries. We witness Christ’s divine light manifested in His ministry, His triumph over death, the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the nascent Church, and the heavenly coronation of His Blessed Mother. In the Acts of the Apostles, we read how the disciples gathered in the Upper Room, persevering in prayer with one accord alongside Mary, the Mother of Jesus. Just as she was present at the birth of the Church at Pentecost, so too is she present in our worshipping community today, interceding for us as we navigate the complexities and challenges of our present world.

​The Rosary is not a burden to be borne, but a gift to be cherished. It is a refuge for the weary heart, a shield against spiritual despair, and a simple, accessible path to contemplative holiness for young and old alike. When the world around us seems chaotic, noise-filled, and restless, the Rosary offers a sanctuary of quiet rhythm, centring our thoughts on the unwavering love of Almighty God.

​As we honour Our Lady under this glorious title, let us renew our devotion to this precious prayer. Let us commit to picking up our beads daily—whether in the quiet of early morning, during a busy commute, or together around the family table—offering our joys, anxieties, and petitions to the Lord through Mary’s blessed hands.

​Let us pray:

​O Most Holy Virgin Mary, Queen of the Holy Rosary,

you stand as a radiant beacon of faith, hope, and love for all generations.

We turn to you today with grateful hearts, placing our lives, our families,

and our burdens into your gentle and maternal care.

​Obtain for us, we beseech you, a heart like yours—

ever open to the word of God, courageous in times of trial,

and steadfast in faithful service to your Divine Son.

​Through the devout meditation on the sacred mysteries of the Rosary,

draw us closer to the heart of Jesus.

Help us to carry our daily crosses with patient trust,

and inspire us to be instruments of Christ’s peace, mercy, and truth in a broken world.

​Protect our homes, guide our shepherd pastors,

comfort the sick and suffering, and lead all souls to the joy of eternal life.

​Amen.

Before I begin, let me make one thing clear: I love this parish too much to stand at this ambo and feed you comfortable lies. What God has placed on my heart today isn’t polite, and it isn’t gentle. It convicts me just as much as it challenges every single person sitting in these pews. Truth spoken in love sometimes stings, but a shepherd’s job is to pull the sheep out of the ditch, even if the grab hurts. So, open your hearts, because Jesus is calling all of us to real, uncompromising accountability today.

I have spent an entire lifetime in service—in military uniform, in law enforcement, and now at this altar. My duty now is to get you to heaven. And if there is one hard, unshakeable truth that four decades on the front lines will burn into your soul, it is this: talk is cheap. In the real world, nobody gives a damn about what you said you were going to do. When the call comes in, when people are hurting, when the mission is on the line, words without action are nothing but hot air coming out of your mouth. Don’t tell me what you believe. Don’t tell me your good intentions. Show me. Put your boots on the ground and show me. Love is action.

That is the exact, brutal reality check Jesus drops on the religious establishment in today’s Gospel. He lays out two sons. The second son has all the right manners, the proper religious pedigree, and the polite church smile: “Yes, sir.” He talks a big game. He checks every outward social box. But his boots never touch the mud of the vineyard. He didn’t do a single thing he promised. And the prophet Ezekiel makes it crystal clear that God does not grade on a curve of past reputation, titles, or pious excuses. If you stand there professing righteousness while living a lie, you are dead in your tracks. God has zero patience for hollow lip-service, and neither should we.

Then Christ points to the first son. That son wasn’t polished. He wasn’t polite. He snapped back: “I will not.” He pushed back, he made the wrong call, and he failed right out of the gate. But the truth struck his conscience. He swallowed his stubborn pride, changed his mind, repented, and went out into the dirt and did the hard labor. And Jesus looks those high-and-mighty chief priests right in the eyes and delivers the verdict: the tax collectors and the prostitutes—the broken, messy sinners who actually listened, repented, and changed direction—are kicking down the doors of the Kingdom of God ahead of the church folks who smile, nod, and do nothing. As Dominicans, our motto is Veritas—Truth! But truth isn’t an academic theory you debate in an air-conditioned room. Truth is a fire that demands conversion and demands sweat.

And let’s call it what it is: too many people treat their faith like a cafeteria line. They stroll through the teachings of Christ and pick out the blessings, the forgiveness, and the easy grace, while sliding right past obedience, self-denial, accountability, and the hard commands of the Gospel. You don’t get to pick and choose which parts of Jesus you follow. Christ never said, “Take up your cross when it fits your schedule or aligns with your personal preferences.” He demanded everything. You cannot demand the privileges of being a son or daughter in the Father’s house if you refuse to step foot in His vineyard. You are either all in with Christ, or you are just standing on the sidelines playing church.

Look at our Lord Jesus Christ in Paul’s letter to the Philippians. He didn’t sit high and mighty in the comfort of heaven offering us inspirational slogans from a safe distance. He stripped Himself of His glory. He took the form of a servant. He put Himself in the dirt, took the cross on His bleeding shoulders, and was obedient even unto death. Calvary wasn’t a speech, it was raw, sacrificial, agonizing action. Jesus didn’t just say He loved us; He drove the nails through His own hands to prove it.

We cannot come into this church, raise our hands in praise, sing modern worship songs, receive the very Body and Blood of Christ, and then walk out those double doors into the parking lot and live like practical atheists until next Sunday. If your faith does not change how you treat your spouse, how you handle your business, how you stand up for the weak, and how you get down in the trenches to serve the hurting, then your religion is completely useless. Faith without boots-on-the-ground execution is stone-cold dead.

So look yourself in the mirror right now and cut through every excuse: are you doing lip service, or are you doing what it takes to get yourself and others to the Kingdom of Heaven?

We stood this morning singing at the top of our lungs: “We’re the people of God, singing for the things He has done… there’s joy in the house of the Lord!”

And man, you can feel that joy in this room today. But let’s be completely honest with each other for a second. If you paid attention to the Gospel passage we just proclaimed from Matthew 20, by the time five o’clock in the afternoon rolled around in that vineyard, nobody was singing. The joy in that house had completely vanished.

Why? Because the folks who clocked in at six in the morning started doing human math.

They worked twelve hard hours under the scorching sun. They took off their work gloves, wiped the sweat from their brows, and watched the landowner hand the exact same silver coin—a full day’s wage—to the crew that rolled up at five in the afternoon and barely worked an hour. And instantly, the grumbling started: “Hold on. That’s not fair! We carried the heat of the day, and you made them equal to us!”

Now, look at human nature. If you’ve ever managed people, worked a flight line, walked a beat, or raised a house full of kids, your gut reaction is: Yeah, they’ve got a point! Where’s the seniority? Where’s the merit?

That is human justice. You clock the hours, you produce the numbers, you get the payout. But then Isaiah stands up in our first reading and drops the hammer on our human logic: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.”

Isaiah reminds us that heaven does not run on human accounting. The marketplace runs on contracts, but the Kingdom of God runs on covenant love.

Look closely at the Master of that vineyard. He didn’t just hire a crew and sit in his air-conditioned office. He went out to the public square at 6:00 AM, at 9:00 AM, at noon, at 3:00 PM, and even at 5:00 PM—one hour before quitting time. And when he finds men still standing there in the dirt, he asks them: “Why have you been standing here idle all day?”

Listen to their answer. It will break your heart: “Because no one has hired us.”

In the ancient world, a denarius wasn’t luxury money. It was the daily bread. If a laborer didn’t take home a denarius at sunset, his wife and children went to bed hungry that night. The men left at the eleventh hour weren’t lazy; they were the overlooked, the unchosen, the ones the world deemed too old, too slow, too broken, or too flawed to pick.

And the Master looks at them and says: “You go into my vineyard too.”

In a few minutes the bread and wine will be brought forward to the “Goodness of God.” We will sing, “All my life You have been faithful… all my life You have been so, so good.” That is who the Master is! When the early workers grumbled, the landowner looked them dead in the eye and said: “Are you envious because I am generous?” In the original Greek, that phrase literally means, “Is your eye evil because I am good?”

They got infected with envy. And what is envy? Envy is looking sideways. Envy happens when I take my eyes off the Master’s generosity to me and start keeping score of what’s in my neighbor’s hand. The early workers didn’t get cheated; they got exactly what was promised. Their only problem was that God was too good to somebody else!

How do we break free from that kind of toxic comparison?

St. Paul shows us the way in our second reading from Philippians. Paul is writing from a cold, damp Roman prison cell. He doesn’t know if he’s going to be executed tomorrow or set free. But he isn’t complaining about his situation. He isn’t keeping score. He writes: “For to me, life is Christ, and death is gain.”

Paul was so head-over-heels in love with Jesus that personal ambition simply died. When Christ is your entire treasure, comparison has nowhere to take root.

In just a few moments, we are going to come forward and kneel together side by side at the altar rail, the way it was intended: in reverent humility before our King. And as you kneel there at the rail, look at the sacred mystery: the soul who has prayed the Rosary every single day for seventy years, and the soul who walked through our doors this morning after twenty years away in the wilderness, kneel on the very same step. And both receive the exact same gift: the full, undivided Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ.

Not one of us earned it. Not one of us has a resume worthy of that Bread of Angels.

As we kneel at the rail and we hear “Gratitude,” remember the truth of that song: “I’ve got nothing to bring… just an open heart and two lifted hands.” That is the only posture that makes sense before a God of such overwhelming mercy. Gratitude kills entitlement every single time.

St. Michael’s, as followers of St. Dominic, we are called to bring the Truth—Veritas—out into a hurting world. And the truth is, every single one of us has been that eleventh-hour worker. We have been spiritually stranded, discarded, sitting in the dust of our own brokenness, until Jesus stepped into our town square and said, “I want you. Come labor in my grace.”

As we prepare to be sent forth today knowing that God takes dead ends, wasted years, and idle hearts and turns them into a harvest of holiness, I leave you with this one question to carry into your week:

Will you keep measuring people by your ledger, or will you start loving them with God’s generosity?

Amen.

Who’s on Your Hook?

Look around this room. We can lift our hands, we can sing 10,000 Reasons until the roof shakes, and we can pray in the Spirit all morning. But none of that means a thing if you walk out that door carrying a grudge in your back pocket.

We all know human nature. We like to keep score. We remember what was said to us ten years ago, five months ago, or yesterday morning in the kitchen. We want an apology, we want justice, and we want to see the other guy sweat.

Peter thought he was being generous. He walks up to Jesus and asks, “Lord, how many times do I have to forgive my brother? Seven times?”

Back then, the rule of thumb was three strikes and you’re out. Peter thought he was being a spiritual heavyweight by doubling it and adding one.

Jesus looks him in the eye and basically says: Throw the scoreboard in the trash. Not seven times—seventy-seven times.

Then He tells the story.

A guy owes the king ten thousand talents. That is unpayable money. Billions of dollars. He’s looking at losing his family, his home, his life, and going straight into a prison cell. He falls on his knees, begs for mercy, and what does the king do? He doesn’t set up a payment plan. He wipes it clean. Gone. Total freedom.

The guy walks out the door, takes a breath of free air, turns a corner, and spots a fellow worker who owes him a few bucks. What does he do? He grabs him by the throat and screams, “Pay me what you owe me!”

It sounds outrageous until you realize we do it every single day.

Every one of us has knelt before God with a mountain of sin, pride, and brokenness that we could never, ever pay back. And because of Jesus Christ on that Cross, God looked at you and said: Wiped clean. You’re forgiven. Go home.

And what do we do? We get up from prayer, walk out into the parking lot, and we grab our spouse, our kid, our coworker, or our neighbor by the neck because they slighted us, cut us off, or broke our trust.

Sirach warned us in the first reading: Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight.

When you hold onto resentment, you aren’t holding that person accountable. You’re holding a hot coal in your bare hand waiting to throw it at them, and you’re the only one getting burned. You’re locking yourself in a cell and handing the enemy the key.

The charismatic life isn’t just about feeling good during worship. It’s about letting the Holy Spirit break your stubbornness and give you the guts to do what you cannot do on your own: let people off your hook.

So, let’s take the gloves off right now. Look at your life and answer this truthfully:

Who do you need to forgive? Who do you need to show mercy and grace today?

Because make no mistake about what Jesus is telling us: if you refuse to let go of that debt, that bitterness will lock you out of the Kingdom of Heaven. Let it go, lay it on this altar, and walk out of here free.

Amen.