NOVEMBER 12, 2026 FATHER PETER TURRONE
“I am appealing to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I have become during my imprisonment.”
My brothers and sisters, if you’ve ever had an opportunity to travel overseas, Rome, any other countries, the Holy Land, when you walk around, we see these beautiful, ancient cities before our eyes. But there’s something unfortunate, very sad, behind how they came about.
We know that in the Roman Empire, roughly 25% of the people were slaves. So, it goes, some of the estimates are up to 90%, others 10%, but at least 25 to 40% of the people living in the Roman Empire at that time were slaves.
So, whether they voluntarily gave up their freedom because of debts or they were taken into slavery and they were kidnapped, there were all sorts of terrible situations in which they found themselves. This is a reality; it’s a sad part of history. So, what we see there, again, was built largely by slaves. And this is in many places.
So, in this context, we can look at the first reading from St. Paul’s letter to Philemon when he writes. So, as a Christian, right, as a Christian man, he sees that there has been problems. So, we know Onesimus had escaped. There were some issues there. We’re not exactly sure if he had stolen something. There were problems, so he left, and then he ended up going to Paul. And Paul realizes that there is a serious problem here. Something had changed within this man, in Onesimus, and this change gave St. Paul a great deal of consolation.
So, Paul knows what the structures are of society, even those evil structures. He knows what Jesus reveals to us about the dignity of the human person. So, what he does is, without forcing upon this man, what he does is he uses the appeal, right, of love.
So, he says, “Look. I urge you out of love to treat him well.” I urge you out of love. So, he appeals to the gospel and he says, “This man, whatever problems he had, whatever issues were there,” he says, “I treat him like my own son. My own spiritual son, and I ask you again to be kind to him.”
So, when you look back historically during the first four centuries of Christianity, there was this beautiful book we read in the seminary. It was from Gustov Bardi, and it was called “The First Four Centuries of Christianity,” and the reason why Christianity spread so quickly was because of the fact that the Christians treated the slaves not as objects, but as people.
Because it is Christianity that teaches that the human person has infinite dignity. They are made in the image and likeness of God, and all of us have this great dignity and are loved by God, and all of us should be treated with respect and should treat others with respect as well.
So the ideas that we have even in contemporary society about the equality and then the goodness of the human person. Of course, we’re fallen, so we’re all touched by Original Sin, so we have to contend with that, but everyone has dignity before God. Just because we exist, we have this dignity that’s been given to us by God.
And this is important because there are people that say they have no use for religion, but then they say that they believe this, right? I believe these things. I believe I know what is good. I know what is evil, and so on and so forth. But without reference to Christianity, none of this makes sense. They wouldn’t even think this way because it was Christianity, it was Jesus Christ who revealed the truth of the human person, right?
So, he’s the one that raises us and recovers our dignity, and he shows that to us, how important we are, by taking on human flesh, right, and dying for our sins, by His resurrection, by making us become temples of the Holy Spirit, by coming to live inside of us.
So, we can thank the Church. We can thank Christianity for working through this and by through the appeal of love, right, to lead people to come to recognize what it means to be a human being and to be treated as such as well. This is why the Church sees this and tries to live this experience.
It hasn’t been easy. It hasn’t been easy when you look throughout history. There were terrible things that were done. Sometimes there were Christians, even though we knew what the truth was, we were still stuck or there was fear. There were many different reasons for being, not going head to head with society at the time. I mean, the societies were very corrupt.
There had to be another way of going about it, and we thank God that this came to an end, but it still exists in other countries in different ways even today. There’s different forms that we need to address.
But it’s the force of love, right, so what can I do? I can’t fight, I can’t fight big battles, but what do I do in my daily life? How do I treat my neighbour? How do I treat the people in my family? The people at school? Do I pray for unity? Do I pray that people will be able to be respected for who they are just because they are?
This is a very important part, and this is how the Kingdom of God advances. Jesus, as He says in the gospel, it doesn’t come through big signs necessarily. There will be these signs that precede His return, but the Kingdom of God spreads through the power of love, right, so it’s not by coercing anyone, but it’s by proclaiming it, most especially by how we live our lives.
Today’s saint, St. Josaphat, he lived that way, and he gave up his life for the union of the Church. And we pray and we ask God for the grace to be able to offer up our lives also for unity in the Church and for peace in a society which seems to be continually falling apart.
