Homily for Thursday
Week 9 of Ordinary Time
June 4, 2026
1 Tim 2: 8-15
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence,
N.R.
Paul writes to his disciple Timothy as a prisoner, chained like a criminal for preaching the Gospel. Altho he’s suffering, he has every confidence that God’s Word can’t be restrained—neither the Word that is Jesus Christ, nor the word of Jesus’ message of salvation.
As that confidence sustained Paul and
was intended to sustain other believers in times of trial, so it sustains the
multitudes of Jesus’ disciples who are persecuted today for the sake of the
Gospel.
In yesterday’s Office of Readings for
the martyrs of Uganda, we read from St. Paul VI’s homily for their canonization. The Pope observed that in our era we never
expected to repeat the glorious record of martyrdom that the Church in Africa
experienced in its earliest years (LOH 3:1453).
But harassment, prison, and bloody death continue still to be the price
of following Jesus in dozens of places, e.g., India, China, Muslim societies, Burma,
and even the supposedly enlightened West.
We can’t forget our brothers and
sisters, chained figuratively or even literally, for adhering to the Word of
God. We pray for them and for their
persecutors.
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