OCTOBER 16, 2026 FATHER MICHAEL COUTTS
Paul had spent two years in Ephesus. He had made many friends. There were many Gentiles who believed in Jesus Christ because of Paul. He had set up administrators in the church in Ephesus, and then he continued on his missionary journey.
Then he was returning from Athens, and he decided, “I cannot go to Ephesus and say thank you, because they have got so many friends, and I want to be back in Jerusalem in time of Pentecost.”
Four years later, in the year 62 Anno Domini, Paul is in Rome under house arrest, and he writes this letter to the Ephesians. Now, many people say that this was not written by Paul but by a disciple of Paul.
You see, when you and I write letters and it is an official letter, we sign, “Yours sincerely.” Many people write to me because of the TV mass. I have never met them, and I probably will never meet them, but I write, “Yours affectionately.” But if I’ve known them very well, I’ll end with “Hugs and kisses.”
Now, Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is more of the “Yours sincerely” and “Yours affectionately” type, not “Hugs and kisses.” And yet he was there for so many years.
Paul tells the people, and he uses the Exodus experience.
Canadian Sister of Sion Maureena Fritz is 100 years old. She’s done two great things this year. She became 100, and she wrote her final book, hopefully, I and Thou: Jesus of Nazareth. But my favourite book of hers is the Exodus Experience, where she explains how the Israelites became a chosen people of God. An insignificant group of people, and the Lord chooses him, chooses these people as his own.
Paul in the letter to the Ephesians will use that Exodus experience. He says, “Remember, God has made a covenant with you. God has chosen you as a special people. You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people set apart. And if that is the case, then you should behave with dignity.”
And he uses that same phrase to the people in Ephesus. He says “You have been inscribed in Jesus Christ. You have been inscribed because of his life, his death, his resurrection, and because you have decided to pick up the cross daily and follow him. You are now sealed with the Holy Spirit.”
The people in the Exodus experience were sealed with the love of God because God had given and made a covenant with them. Here, they are sealed with the Holy Spirit because they have been inscribed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
And the early church began to use the seal of the Holy Spirit in its sacrament, the sacrament of baptism. After an adult or a child is baptized, there are three rituals.
They are given a light so that they can move from darkness and walk as children of the light. They’re given a new garment. They’re no longer the garment and slaves to sin, but they have got the new life in Jesus Christ. And they are told to hold this blanket or this garment of innocence, this new life, so that it may remain unstained when they are called to heaven. And finally, they are sealed with the Holy Spirit.
You and I have been sealed with that same Spirit, and because we have been sealed with that Spirit, we belong to Christ.
When we come to our Gospel today, we have enough material for three different reflections, and I thought I’d choose the one that consoles me most. “Are not five sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them is lost.”
The late Sister of St. Joseph Joanmarie Smith tells us the story of Ethel Waters. I doubt whether you and I have ever heard of her name. And yet she came from a family where, as was very often the case, was abandoned by her parents and was brought up by her grandmother.
And there were three, four different turning points in her life: at the age of nine, at the age of 11, at the age of 13, and at the age of 17.
At the age of nine, her grandmother decided to enrol her in a Catholic school in Philadelphia. And she was so immersed and was so excited about this that at the age of 11, she decided, “I’m going to dedicate my life totally to Jesus Christ.” Ethel Waters, at the age of 11, but she was determined, and she never turned back on that.
At the age of 13, she became a chambermaid in a hotel, just to make ends meet. And then on a whim, she joined a Halloween song contest at the age of 17, and her voice was so beautiful and wonderful, she won hands down, far ahead of everybody. And from then on, it was just fame and fortune.
You and I might not have heard of Ethel Waters, but you and I have heard the song “Dinah” or “Stormy Weathers.” We even sing it today.
Well, there were two things that were no turning back for the case of Ethel Waters. One was that she would never sing or act in any movie that did not have family relations. And she became so famous in a time when the Africans were asked to go to a back door into a hotel, no matter how famous they were. Louis Armstrong, Joe Louis, even when they were honoured, they had to enter through a back door. Not Ethel Waters. When she was a movie star, her name got first billing.
When she died in 1977, the stone on her grave said, “I sing because I’m happy, because I sing. I sing because I’m free. His eye is on the sparrow. I know he watches me.”
She knew that she was just an insignificant sparrow, but the Lord watches her, and the Lord watches you and me. And so we have to sing because we are happy. We sing because we are free, because the Lord watches me.
God bless you all.
