11th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Sunday, June 14, 2026
St. James Cathedral (8:00am), Immaculate Conception (11:00am)

Watch this homily! (begins at 30:00)

 
Brothers and sisters, the first line of the Gospel passage we just heard says that Jesus’ heart was moved with pity for the crowds that were following him. That movement of Jesus’ compassionate heart has become the focus of a devotion to the Sacred Heart that we just celebrated this past week in a special way.

The Bishops of the United States consecrated our country to the Sacred Heart of Jesus this past Thursday, and on Friday we celebrated the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Recently Archbishop Etienne wrote a pastoral letter on this devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In his letter, the Archbishop writes that “When we speak of the heart of Christ, we are speaking of Christ’s immense love, which consumed his whole being.”
 
It is that immense love of God, made incarnate in Jesus, that prompts God to always act first in our lives and in the life of the world, and then invites us to respond. It is out of love that long ago, God acted to free those enslaved in Egypt, to lead them to freedom and then to enter into covenant with them. That covenant is one in which Israel becomes God’s very special people. They are his precious possession, dearer to him than any other people.
 
We know that God will never take back his covenant, that, as we sang in our Psalm response, “his kindness endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.” Our response to this immense love, is to listen to the voice of the Lord and to keep the covenant that God initiates.
 
In Jesus, we inherit that promise and are grafted on, as it were, to that covenant of love that God first made with our Jewish brothers and sister. In Jesus, we see the compassion of God enfleshed, and how that compassion continues to prompt God to act first. St. Paul tells us that “God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
 
This is such an important reality of our relationship with God, but it is one that too often gets lost in a spirituality that flips this relationship around and sees us earning God’s love through our actions. A spirituality that sees us acting first and then God rewarding us for our good behavior is a spirituality rooted in the laws of the world, not the law, not the covenant with our God.
 
As Jesus looks out at the crowd following him in today’s Gospel, his heart is moved “because they were troubled and abandoned” by religious leaders of their day and were “like sheep without a shepherd.” Those religious leaders meant well, but they had fallen into the trap of multiplying prayers and practices to please God and somehow earn God’s love. Those prayers and practices became a huge burden, hard for just about anyone to carry.
 
So Jesus’ compassionate heart moves him to see the great need, the great harvest, and sends out collaborators, fellow workers for his harvest. He gives the twelve apostles authority to cast out the evil that has enslaved this people and to free them spiritually and physically from dis-ease and illness. He gives them the authority he has over this evil, this darkness.
 
His sending forth of these co-workers is well-ordered. He sends them out by name and tells them where to go and where not to go - at least for now. He tells them that they are to proclaim that “the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” They are to do this work, this ministry of healing and reconciling, rooted in his compassionate heart, without any strings attached. They have received this freely and they are to offer it freely.
 
My friends, as we proclaim these scriptures here today, this living word of God calls us as God’s precious people, entrusted with the Good News, to be those laborers God needs to extend God’s healing love to those who are troubled and feeling abandoned.
 
This is the work of every baptized person. This ministry, this labor is not limited to priests and religious. We are all co-responsible for proclaiming by what we say and what we do that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. That kingdom is a kingdom of love and life and wholeness that God initiates.
 
Today the harvest is indeed abundant. There are too many people who think they are unloved or unloveable. They are our harvest. There are too many people, because of who they are or what they have done, who think that the Church and God have abandoned them. They are our harvest. There are too many people who are lost and wandering, and who don’t think God our the Church have anything that can help them. They are our harvest.
 
We are called to allow our hearts to be moved with compassion for them. We are called to allow the Sacred Heart of Jesus to shape our hearts so that we can accept the call, the responsibility we have, to share how God has loved us first and extends that love to all.
 
Through our acts of compassion and love we can show that the kingdom of heaven is indeed at hand. In a world where exclusion and hard-heartedness seem to rule the day, we can be instruments of Jesus’ inclusive and loving heart.
 
May the Eucharist we share today draw us deeper into the Sacred Heart of Jesus and empower us to go, to be sent from this place as his laborers, his co-workers, in sharing his healing, life-giving love with all who are in need.

Father Gary F. Lazzeroni