Homily for Wednesday, Week 24 of Ordinary Time

Homily for Wednesday
24th Week of Ordinary Time

Sept. 17, 2025
1 Tim 3: 14-16
Year I
Salesian HS, New Rochelle, N.Y.

An early church assembly in a private house
(https://housechurch.me)

We’ve been reading from St. Paul’s 1st letter to his disciple and co-worker St. Timothy.  In several passages, Paul reminds Timothy of how church leaders are to act.  He alludes to that today:  “You know how to behave in the household of God, which is the Church” (1 Tim 3:15).  “The household of God” doesn’t mean a church building.  The early Christians didn’t have church buildings; they met in private homes.  “The household” would’ve been all the members of the family, and in Paul’s context, when he says, “which is the Church,” he means all who assemble in that house to worship God in Jesus Christ.  The Greek word for an assembly is the same word that we use for Church, ekklesia.

The Church, the assembly, is God’s household, God’s family.  How are we to behave in that household?  If we’re God’s family, we treat one another as brothers and sisters.  Paul has been instructing Timothy in how to be the leader, the father, in that family, under “the living God, the pillar and foundation of truth” (3:15).  In everything, God rules.  We acknowledged in the prayer moments ago that he’s “creator and ruler of all things” (collect).

God’s rule applies not only to leaders but to all of us who belong to the household.  All of us ought to respect our brothers and sisters in the family of God.

Sometimes as I walk around the campus, I’ll hear a guy use a bit of foul language, in a basketball game for example.  Then he notices me, and says, “Sorry, Father.”  And I say to myself, “Don’t the guys you’re playing with also deserve your respect?  If you won’t say a bad word in front of me, how is it OK to say it in front of your brothers?”

All who belong to “the household of God” deserve our respect:  no lies, no cheating, no harsh words or bad language, no “borrowing” their stuff without intending to return it.  Respecting them, we’re all being devout to God (cf. 3:16), their Father.