12th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Sunday, June 21, 2026
St. James Cathedral (8:00am, 10:00am)

Watch this homily! (begins at 38:05)

 
My friends, hopes and fears compete regularly for our attention and focus. At different times in our lives and in the life of our world, one may be more dominant than another. In this season of graduations and weddings, and on this Father’s Day, many people are celebrating and looking to the future with hope.
 
For others, who have perhaps recently lost a loved one or who have fallen seriously ill, perhaps this is a time of fear.
 
Sometimes hopes and fears co-exist in the same experience, as when we face retirement, or a job change, or transitioning from junior high or middle school to high school or from high school to college or from college to a full time career, or moving to a new city. In these experiences, and others like them, there are often both hopes and fears. As a parish family of Immaculate Conception, Christ Our Hope and St. James Cathedral, we are living with both hopes and fears as we move toward becoming one parish.
 
Because we cannot see the future clearly, we are not certain about how it will unfold. We have hopes about how things will turn out, and we know we will have some amount of influence over the future. But we also know that events and circumstances beyond our control can play a large role in shaping the future.
 
This uncertainty about the future and the struggles between hopes and fears is evident in today’s scripture. In the passage from Matthew’s gospel, Jesus is giving the disciples final instructions before he sends them out on mission. In the quiet of their close companionship, Jesus has instructed them in word and deed about the Kingdom of God. Now it is their task to proclaim this Kingdom “on the housetops” for all to hear.
 
There is great hope in this message that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. But there is also fear. For as the followers of Jesus know, there are those who will reject this message and who will be threatened by it, and who will seek to silence the message. That is as true today as it was when Jesus first sent his disciples out.
 
Jesus reassures the them that they are of utmost importance to his heavenly Father. Do not be afraid, he says to them and he says to us. It has been the message of God down through the ages to those who seek to follow him and to proclaim his word.
Six centuries before Jesus, the prophet Jeremiah heard the whisperings of his enemies who rejected his message from God. Many of his closest friends turned away from him when he told them they should not resist their arch-enemy Babylon. When he said that capture and exile in Babylon was God’s will for them, many saw it as treason, rather than what it was – the logical result of their own infidelity to the covenant.
 
Speaking the truth left Jeremiah feeling isolated and abandoned by his friends. But his faith in God was steadfast. “The Lord is with me, like a mighty champion,” he says.  In today’s gospel, Jesus encourages the same trust, the same steadfast faith.
 
He is realistic about the dangers that they will face, but he reminds the disciples of their worth in the Father’s eyes by referring to a small creature. Sparrows were very common in the Middle East in Jesus’ time. They were small birds and some people trapped them and sold them. They were very cheap because they had very little meat. However, poor people could afford to buy them for food or to offer as a sacrifice in the temple.
 
Jesus uses these small birds to say that his Father, who cares for these apparently most insignificant of creatures such that not one of them falls to the ground without his knowledge, will certainly care for them. They need not be afraid for they are “worth more than many sparrows.”
 
Like his predecessors, Pope Leo has echoed this message of Jesus to not be afraid.  In a world of war and deep polarization, of the opportunities and risks of AI, of the growing disparity between rich and poor, the Holy Father said on his recent trip to Africa, “We need to look to the future with hope and to build the hope of the future. Do not be afraid to do so!” (Homily 4/19/25, Kilamba, Angola).
 
Saint Paul, writing long ago to the Christian communities in Rome, gives the same encouragement. He acknowledges that sin and death are in the world. But, he makes clear that they are no match for the grace of God that comes to us in Jesus Christ. The risen one has defeated sin and death once and for all time.
 
That’s why we can hope. That’s why we need not be afraid. Even in the face of sickness, or the loss of those we love, or uncertainty about the future of our country and our world, we can trust in the steadfast love of God for us.
 
If we can live and act out of that place of trust and of hope, instead of living and acting out of fear, then we will join that long line of faithful followers of Jesus who proclaim in words and deeds that the Kingdom is among us.
 
My friends, as we move into the future let us not be afraid. For we gather, as Christians have done down through the ages, around the table of God’s Word and Eucharist. As we turn now to this sacred altar, may the word we have shared prepare us to be nourished by the Word made flesh.
 
May our sharing in the Body and Blood of Christ strengthen us for the mission God has given to each one of us to proclaim by word and deed his kingdom of love and healing, justice and peace. May we be not afraid to live that message boldly, and without fear, trusting in God’s care for us wherever our journey leads.

Father Gary F. Lazzeroni