OCTOBER 23, 2026 FATHER MICHAEL COUTTS
Our first reading is a letter of Paul to the Ephesians.
We start off with our journey, the third missionary journey, it is coming to an end. Paul is at Athens. He can sail to Patmos, and then to Ephesus, and say goodbye. But Paul wants, when he is in Athens, to be in Jerusalem at the time of Pentecost. And he knows that he will never be in Jerusalem at Pentecost if he has to spend some time at Ephesus, saying goodbye to all his friends. He had eaten with them, he had worked with them, he had prayed with them, he had set up the church. So he calls the elders of Ephesus to come down to the Port of Miletus. And then there are a lot of tears, because both the elders and Paul know that they are not going to see each other in this life again. And so Paul will go down to Jerusalem, he will be put in prison, and finally sent to Rome, where he is under house arrest.
It is four years later, the year is 62 of the year of the Lord, “anno domini.” And he writes a letter to the Ephesians, knowing exactly that he is writing to a group of believers, who are both Gentiles and Jewish backgrounds. They are people who have one faith. They believe in keeping the commandments. They believe in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. They believe in the breaking of bread. And that is the way the Mass that you and I are celebrating today was called in those days.
And yet, there was some distinction among them. And that thing carries on even ’til today. Only last month, I was at the installation of Father Jobby, at Saint Isaac Jogues Parish, which is just about two kilometres from here. And I looked at the congregation, they were one in mind and heart. They sang beautifully, they prayed beautifully. And then time for communion came, and some insisted on receiving communion standing up, others insisted on receiving communion kneeling down. Some received communion in their hands, others insisted on receiving it on their tongue. Still others would not go to anybody but the priest. Not the Eucharistic minister, not to the deacon. And I said, these are the people, as Paul would say in the letter to the Ephesians, “One faith, one Lord, one baptism.” And yet, they were so diverse in so many places. And Paul would write to the people of Ephesus to be one in mind and heart.
Then that very evening, I sat down with my fellow Jesuits. We had 12 of us. All 12 happened to be there at supper. And I looked around, and I began to choke. Because eight out of the 12 of us had been priests for over 50 years. They were novice masters, they were superiors, they were liturgists, they were teachers, they were great and wonderful men. And I looked at them, and I said, they remind me of a Snickers bar. A lot of chocolates with a few nuts thrown in. Nuts that could get under my skin. And yet, we were of one mind and one heart.
How do we keep that unity together? Paul said to the people of Ephesus, he says, “You are Gentiles, and you are Jewish background, but both of you believe in Jesus Christ.” And then the Christians who had Jewish backgrounds said, “You know, to be a real Christian, you have to keep the Torah, you have to keep the Sabbath, you have to keep the circumcision…” And the Gentile Christians said, “No problem. We will keep the commandments, because that’s what we are bound to do. We will obey and observe the Sabbath. But when it came to circumcision, we’re going to draw the line. We don’t need that.”
And Paul would speak about the First Council of the Church in Jerusalem, and you read that in chapter 15 of the acts of the Apostles. But they said, “We don’t want to burden you with anything more than being united in one in mind and heart.” And the few instructions that they gave were all to do with dietary obligations. They said, “You don’t have to be circumcised, in order to belong to the Church of Jesus Christ.” And so said, so done.
And Paul advises them, “Look, you’re all of one mind and one heart. You all should be able to agree and to disagree. Because you are embedded in Jesus Christ, you are one in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And that is all that matters.” And kept on saying, as we read in the letter to the Ephesians, “One, one, one,” all the time. One faith, one Lord, one baptism. One in union of mind and heart.
When we come to the Gospel, it is an enigmatic type of Gospel. Jesus seems to speak about the weather, and then he comes down into taking care of our own moral life. He says, “If the wind blows from the south, if the wind blows from the west, you what type of weather you get.” And we have that saying even in our ordinary everyday language, when we said “Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning, red sky at night, sailors delight.” They knew exactly, from looking at the sky, what type of weather they had.
But Jesus takes that call from discerning the weather to discerning how you and I should live in our everyday life. And so often I say to myself, you know, what nobody sees and what nobody knows. Who cares? I can do what I want. And the answer is no. I don’t do what I want.
There is between me, within myself, I don’t need Google, I don’t need ChatGPT. I don’t need books to teach me. My own conscience tells me what I have done is either sinful, or pleasant and right in the sight of God. And I try to bluff myself, I will get that virtual Irish slap across the side of my head and say, don’t kid yourself, don’t bluff yourself. Because that is exactly what hypocrisy means. It’s to put on a great face as if you’re doing the right thing, but deep down within it, you know exactly who and what you are.
And so Jesus tells us, “If you can do that, and you can judge the sky and the weather around you, you should be able to discern when things come and face you, whether you need to reach out and help people.” And so he gave that beautiful parable of the good Samaritan. Where people thought, “Okay, I have to be pure, I have to be out of quarantine so I won’t deal with this issue.” You hypocrite. You’re going up to the altar to pray, and you’re not looking after your brother, who needs all the help you want.
Jesus was not telling this only to the crowds, but he was telling this to the disciples, and those who he would make in charge of the faith later on. The 12 tribes of Israel, the Church on which this foundation was built. That means you and me. Because the Church is built on our foundation, our faith, because we are the same baptism as Peter, James, John, and the other 12 Apostles.
May God bless you all as we continue to look after what is deep down within our hearts. Our conscience telling us, “This is what you have to do.” God bless you all.
