The ‘Response Crisis’ and What we can do About it

 

(Eleventh Sunday of the Year (A): This homily was given on June 14, 2026 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Exodus 19:2-6a; Romans 5:6-11; Matthew 9:36-10:8.)

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Eleventh Sunday 2026]

“The harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.”

That verse, from today’s gospel reading from Matthew 9, has a certain application to all of us, but it has a particular application to priests.  It’s no secret that in many places today (including our own diocese) there is a shortage of priests.  Many parishes that used to have a resident pastor no longer do, and many priests currently active in ministry are overseeing two and sometimes even three church communities.  As of July 1, for example, Fr.  Mahoney will have two churches to worry about: St. Pius and St. Clare’s.  Fr. Frank Francese from Westerly will have three to be in charge of:  St. Joseph’s in Hope Valley; St. Vincent’s in Bradford; and Our Lady of Victory in Ashaway.  That kind of work overload is becoming more and more common these days all over the country.  Some dioceses are doing well with vocations, but most are not.

Some say that in all this we’re experiencing a “vocation” crisis, but that’s inaccurate.  In fact, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a vocation crisis.  A vocation is a “call” (that’s what the word means).  To say there’s a vocation crisis is to say that God isn’t calling enough men to serve him in the ordained priesthood.  But that can’t be true.  The Bible says that God always supplies our need (Philippians 4:13). So obviously the Lord is calling enough men to the priesthood to supply for the needs of his Church at the present time. However, some of those who are being called are not responding to the Lord for one reason or another.  It may be because of the attractions and temptations of the world; it may be for some other reason. 

So yes, we have a crisis, but it’s not a vocation crisis, it’s a response crisis!  And some who initially say yes to the Lord and get ordained don’t persevere in their yes.  After a period of time, they leave the priesthood.  That’s yet another dimension of the problem. 

Is there anything that we can do as individuals to help change this?  Are there any concrete actions we can take in order to promote and support priestly vocations in the midst of the present response crisis in the Church?  The good news is: Yes, there are!  I’ll share three of them with you this morning.

The first thing that we can and should do, of course, is PRAY.  No surprise there, I’m sure. That’s what Jesus tells us in today’s gospel text: “Ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.”  We pray for vocations here at our Sunday Masses every weekend.  Hopefully you also do that in your personal, daily prayer time—at least every once in a while.

The second thing we can and should do is ENCOURAGE: we should encourage young, single men that we know who are serious about their faith to consider the possibility that God is calling them to be priests.  Now here we need to remember that there’s a very big difference between encouraging and nagging.  Encourage—yes; nag—no.  If you know a young man who seems to possess the personal and religious qualities that would make him a good priest, tell him so!  Then give him the time and space he needs to reflect on what you said.  Sometimes that’s all the encouragement that’s needed.  I thank God my mother never pressured me about the priesthood.  Her attitude was, “Raymond, it’s your decision.  If you discern that God wants you to be a priest, then I want you to be a priest.  But if you discern that God does not want you to be a priest, then neither do I.  One way or the other, I will support you.”

That kind of encouragement meant a lot.

In addition to praying for vocations, and encouraging potential vocations, we also need to make the effort to LIVE our vocation—our personal vocation—as well as we can.  That’s the third thing we can do to address the response crisis.  Young men will say yes to the call to be priests if they’re surrounded by priests and lay people who live their vocations well—who live their vocations joyfully, especially if their vocation is to marriage.  I had a theology professor at Providence College who pointed out something one day in class that I’ve never forgotten.  He pointed out the fact that when you look at the history of the Church, what you see is that in those periods of time when the institution of marriage was strong, the priesthood was also strong; whereas in those periods of history when marriage was weak (as is the case today), the priesthood was also weak.  Which really shouldn’t surprise us since both marriage and priesthood involve permanent, lifelong commitments.  It’s inspiring for a young man who is discerning a vocation to the priesthood these days to be surrounded by married people who are resisting the cultural trend and are living their vocation well—and who have been positively influenced by the priests in their lives.  That can make a big difference.

Our former Holy Father, Pope Francis, said it well (and I’ll leave you with his words): “No vocation is born of itself or lives for itself. A vocation flows from the heart of God and blossoms in the good soil of faithful people.”  By our prayers, by our words of encouragement and by our faithfulness in living our personal vocation, may we be among those faithful people.

 

The Faith/our faith and the Holy Eucharist

(Corpus Christi 2026: This homily was given on June 7, 2026 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Exodus 24:3-8; Psalm 116:12-18; Hebrews 9:11-15; Mark 14:12-16, 22-26.)

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Corpus Christi 2026]

A Catholic bishop was doing missionary work in a foreign country.  One day he was having a conversation with a well-educated Muslim man.  The Muslim said to him, “I don’t understand your Catholic beliefs about the Eucharist.  How is it possible for ordinary bread and wine to change and become the Body and Blood of Christ?  It seems impossible.”

The bishop paused for a few seconds to collect his thoughts; then he responded, “You were very small when you were born—but you didn’t stay that way, did you?  You physically grew because in a certain sense your body ‘changed’ the food you ate into flesh and blood.  Well, if your own body can transform bread and wine into flesh and blood, then so can God!  In fact, the Lord can do it far more easily.”

The Muslim then shot back, “But how is it possible for Jesus to be wholly and entirely present in such a little host?”

The bishop answered, “Look, for a moment, at the landscape before you, and think how much smaller your eye is in comparison to it.  And yet, within your very small eye is an image of that vast countryside.  Isn’t it possible for God to do in reality what is done in us by way of likeness or image?”

Finally, the Muslim said, “But how is it possible for the same Body of Christ to be present at the same time in all your churches and in every consecrated host?”

The bishop responded, “Nothing is impossible with God—and that answer ought to be enough for us.  But the physical world also gives us an insight into this phenomenon.

Take a mirror, for example, and throw it onto a hard floor.  It will immediately break into many pieces.  But, amazingly, each piece of that broken mirror can carry the same image that the whole mirror formerly reproduced.  Likewise, the very same Jesus reproduces himself in each consecrated host—not as a mere likeness, but in reality.  Thus he is truly present—Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity—in every one of them.”

When we pause to reflect on the Holy Eucharist—which Catholics all over the world are doing on this Corpus Christi Sunday—we must always make a very important distinction: it’s the distinction between “The Faith” (capital T and capital F) and “our faith” (lowercase o and lowercase f).  What the bishop shared with that inquisitive Muslim man was “The Faith.”  With the help of some very good analogies, the bishop made clear to him exactly what the Catholic Church believes and teaches about this sacrament.  When Jesus said, for example, “This is my Body” and “This is my Blood,” the Catholic Church maintains that Jesus meant exactly what he said!  He wasn’t speaking symbolically or metaphorically, as some of our Protestant brothers and sisters believe.  And the Catholic position is certainly verified in Scripture passages like John 6, where Jesus speaks very clearly and very realistically about the Eucharist: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.’… ‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”

Did this Muslim man become a believer after his conversation with the bishop?  We don’t know—but, quite frankly, he probably did not!  The bishop’s very good analogies—his excellent efforts to explain The Faith—probably didn’t bring this man to a personal belief in Christ and in the Eucharist (at least not right away).  This is why I said that when it comes to this sacrament, we must always distinguish between “The Faith” and “our faith” (i.e., our personal faith).

For a Catholic, of course, the two should be identical: what the Church officially teaches about the Eucharist in the Catechism should be exactly what we personally believe in our own heart.  Our personal faith should be The Faith.  But it might not be!  In fact, the polls indicate that it’s actually quite common these days for members of the Church to reject at least some aspects of Catholic Eucharistic teaching.  And they usually manifest their rejection in their actions.  Catholics, for example, who receive the Eucharist at weddings and funerals down at Christ Episcopal Church (and at other Protestant churches), clearly do not fully embrace Catholic teaching on the Eucharist.  Catholics who come to Communion after missing Mass on a Sunday or Holy Day without good reason—and without going to Confession first—clearly do not fully embrace the Church’s teaching on the Eucharist.  Catholics who need to have their marriages validated and who still come to Communion do not fully embrace the Church’s teaching on the Eucharist.  Catholics who fornicate, masturbate, contracept, or commit some other mortal sin, and come to Communion without repenting and going to Confession first do not fully accept the Church’s teaching on the Eucharist.

My simple prayer at this Mass is that this situation will change where it needs to change—here in our community and throughout the world—because the graces of the Eucharist are awesome and many.  But those graces become operative within us only to the extent that we accept the Church’s teaching and act accordingly.  Or, to put it another way, if we want all the blessings that come with receiving Holy Communion, “The Faith” must be our faith.

 

E-Mails From Hell, And What It Means To Believe

 

(Trinity Sunday 2026 (A): This homily was given on May 31, 2026, at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read John 3:16-18.)

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Trinity Sunday 2026]

A couple from Minnesota decided to go to Florida in January to escape from the cold winter weather and enjoy some fun in the sun.  They planned to stay at the same hotel where they had spent their honeymoon 20 years earlier.

However, because of their busy schedules and previous commitments, they were forced to fly down on separate days.  The husband booked his flight for Thursday, and his wife was scheduled to join him on Friday.

When he arrived in Florida on Thursday afternoon, the husband checked into the hotel.  When he entered his room, he was pleased to see that there was a computer on the desk in the corner, so he decided to send a quick e-mail to his wife back home.  (This was before people could get their e-mails on their cell phones.)

Unfortunately, however, he accidentally left out one letter in her e-mail address. 

Meanwhile, somewhere in Houston, Texas, a widow had just returned home from her husband’s funeral.  He was a minister who had died of a heart attack a few days earlier.

The widow decided to check her e-mail, expecting to find some letters of condolence from concerned relatives and friends.

She read the first message in her mailbox, screamed, and fainted.

Her son rushed into the room, found his mom on the floor, and then looked at the computer screen.

There he found these words:

To: My loving wife.

Subject: I’ve arrived.

Date: January 15.

I know you’re surprised to hear from me.  They have computers here now and you’re allowed to send e-mails to your loved ones. 

I’ve just arrived and have checked in.  I see that everything has been prepared for your arrival tomorrow.  Looking forward to seeing you!  Hope your journey is as uneventful as mine was.

P.S. It sure is hot down here!

There are two morals to that little story.  Number one, make sure you don’t leave out any letters in e-mail addresses; and number two, never forget that there is something at stake in this life!

When that poor woman in Houston received that misdirected e-mail, her minister husband was hopefully in heaven with his Lord and Savior—or at least in purgatory.  But the “other place” was a definite possibility for him—and his dear wife knew it! 

In today’s Gospel text from John 3, Jesus makes it clear that hell is also a possibility for each and every one of us and for every human person.  Furthermore, he indicates that this is not something that happens by accident.  It happens by choice: by choosing those attitudes and behaviors that put us on what Jesus later called the “wide road that leads to destruction.”

But before he gets into that dimension of things, Jesus clearly states that God wants something better for us—namely, heaven—and that God has done everything necessary to make it possible for us to get there.  He says, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”

In Trinitarian terms (this, remember, is Trinity Sunday), that text says, “The infinite and perfectly happy Triune God loved us so much, that the Second Person of that Trinity took on mortal flesh and came into this world of suffering and pain, in order to rescue us from the eternal consequences of the sin we have freely chosen.  Later, after he had risen from the dead and ascended into heaven, the Son (and the Father) sent us the Holy Spirit—the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity—to give us grace through Baptism and the sacraments—the grace we must have in our souls to enter into his eternal kingdom.  God did all this so that the world might be saved through Jesus.”

Only after he expresses this positive truth does our Lord mention the possibility of going to hell.  In that regard, he says, “Whoever believes in him [Jesus there is referring to himself] will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”

Which leads to the obvious question: What does it mean to ‘believe’?  Does it simply involve saying Amen to a set of intellectual propositions, such as we have in the Nicene Creed? 

The answer is No!  Belief is more than that!  Belief, according to Jesus, is not simply a “head trip.”

When our Lord tells us we must “believe,” he means two things: yes, we must assent with our minds to the Creed and the Catechism; but secondly—and just as importantly—we must obey with our lives! 

Belief, for Jesus, always implies obedience.  This is crystal clear, incidentally, from a very interesting line that we read later on in John 3.  In verse 36 of that chapter it says, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains upon him.”  Notice that instead of saying, “whoever disbelieves in the Son,” the text says, “whoever disobeys the Son.”  Disobedience, not disbelief, is presented as the opposite of belief.

Obviously for Jesus—and for John, the author of the 4^th Gospel—belief and obedience were pretty much synonymous.

And that’s the way they should be for us—and for everyone who claims to be a believer in Jesus Christ.

The philosopher Descartes once said, “I think, therefore I am.”

In a similar fashion, every Catholic and every Christian should say, “I believe, therefore I obey.”

May that be our common philosophy of life, as disciples of the Lord.  If it is, then even if they do allow e-mails out of hell someday in the far distant future, we can be confident that our relatives and friends won’t be receiving any of those e-mails from us.

 

Confirmation and ‘Conformation’

(Pentecost 2026 (A): This homily was given on May 24, 2026 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Acts 2:1-11; Galatians 5:16-25.)

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Pentecost 2026]

Confirmation/conformation

Each of those words has twelve letters, eleven of which are the same.  But the tiny change that we find in the second word—the change of the “i” in Confirmation to the “o” in conformation—makes a huge difference.  So much so that it actually takes a work of the Holy Spirit and transforms it into a work of Satan.

Confirmation, of course, is one of the seven sacraments.  As such, it’s one of the Holy Spirit’s greatest works.  It’s also our personal participation in the event of Pentecost, which we heard about in today’s first reading from Acts 2.  Pentecost, which occurred fifty days after Easter, was what you might call a spiritual “game changer”.  Prior to that event, the Apostles were weak and fearful, unsure of themselves and unsure of the truth.  After the Spirit descended on them, they were exactly the opposite.

And they were not only different as individual persons; they were also different from other persons (from other persons who had not been anointed with the Holy Spirit in the way that they had been).  That’s clear from today’s first reading.  When the people in Jerusalem on Pentecost Sunday heard the Apostles preaching and speaking in tongues, they took notice, did they not?  They said, in effect, “Hey, these guys are different!  Something’s happened to them!  Each of us hears them speaking in our own native language!”

The Catechism says this about Confirmation: “It is the sacrament which gives the Holy Spirit in order to root us more deeply in the divine filiation, incorporate us more firmly into Christ, strengthen our bond with the Church, associate us more closely with her mission, and help us bear witness to the Christian faith in words accompanied by deeds.”

We receive the Holy Spirit for the first time when we’re baptized.  Through the sacrament of Baptism original sin is taken away, we’re born again of water and the Spirit, and we receive sanctifying grace into our souls. 

So why do we receive the Spirit again? 

We receive this second outpouring of the Spirit in the sacrament of Confirmation to help us live out our baptismal commitment to Christ and his Church by “bear[ing] witness to the Christian faith in words accompanied by deeds”—as the Catechism tells us in that text I just quoted to you.

And this is where, for many young people who are being confirmed these days, Confirmation gets overshadowed.  It gets overshadowed, it gets usurped, by what I would call “conformation”—which is basically the desire to conform and be like everybody else (instead of trying to be the person that God wants you to be).

These young people need to hear and take seriously the words of St. Paul in Romans 12.  There the Apostle says this: “I beg you through the mercy of God to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, your spiritual worship.  DO NOT CONFORM YOURSELVES TO THIS AGE, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may judge what is God’s will, what is good, pleasing and perfect.”

“Do NOT conform to this age!”

“Don’t live your lives,” in other words, “in conformation to the ungodly ideas of the world in which you live.”

But many of our CONFIRMED young people are doing just that!  As Fr. Besse would say, they’re allowing the world to “squeeze them into its mold.”  Over the years I’ve had faithful teenagers from our parish say to me things like, “Fr. Ray, we had a discussion in class today about abortion, and I was the only one who said abortion is wrong.”  “Fr. Ray, I was talking with a group of my friends recently and they said that they all believe in gay marriage.”  “Fr. Ray, one of the other teens who works with me said he doesn’t see anything wrong with living together before marriage.”

And on and on it goes.

Now I could understand it if the faithful teenagers who say these things were going to school and working and hanging around with a bunch of atheists and devil worshippers, but most of the kids they’re talking about here are baptized—and confirmed—Catholics!

And yet, they believe all these things that are contrary to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

That’s “conformation.”

The grace of Confirmation, my brothers and sisters, is the grace to live the Faith and defend the Faith and spread the Faith.  It’s a gift from Almighty God himself.  But it’s a gift that we have to freely accept and freely put to use.  Have you ever received a gift from another person that you haven’t ever used?  I have.  A number of times!

The gift is yours—you have it in your possession—but it doesn’t do you any good whatsoever, because you aren’t using it.

Well, that’s precisely the way many young people—and many not-so-young people—respond to the grace given to them at their Confirmation.  They receive that grace into their souls, yes, but they don’t allow it to change them and strengthen them in the way the Apostles allowed the Spirit to change them and strengthen them at Pentecost.

Many of them don’t even go to church anymore!  Pope Leo XIV mentioned this sad fact in a talk he gave in Rome last week to some Confirmation candidates from Genoa, Italy.  The Holy Father said, “At times, when the bishop administers Confirmation, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the children are never seen again! They disappear from the parish.”

We had 19 young people confirmed here at St. Pius last Monday night by Bishop Tobin.  I wonder how many of them will be at Mass this weekend.  I hope and pray they ALL will—but I definitely wouldn’t “bet the farm on it”.

I wouldn’t even bet half the farm.

Is it any wonder, therefore, that so many of our youth are depressed and confused these days?  I don’t think it is.  In a well-known passage from Galatians, chapter 5, St. Paul contrasts “the works of the flesh” with “the fruits of the Spirit.”  The works of the flesh he mentions there are some of the activities that flow from a life of conformation: “Immorality, impurity, lust, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness, dissensions, factions, occasions of envy, drinking bouts, orgies and the like.”

The kinds of activities, in other words, that eventually lead to depression and confusion—and a lot of other bad things.

Then Paul mentions the fruits of the Holy Spirit, which, happily, are some of the realities which are found in the life of somebody who is living in the grace of his or her confirmation: “Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”

Confirmation/conformation: two similar words with two very different meanings, signifying two very different lifestyles that take people in two very different directions—both in this life and in eternity.

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful on this Pentecost Sunday, that we will say yes to the grace of our confirmation every day, and no to the constant temptation we face to conform our lives to the world and its ways.  And may our young people follow our example and do the same thing.  This we ask through Christ our Lord.  Amen.