Official Website of the
Catholic Diocese of Little Rock
Bishop Taylor Homily Library
Bishop Anthony B. Taylor celebrates Mass across Arkansas and beyond. This library features the homilies delivered from March 2014 to the present. To listen to earlier homilies, please visit the bishop's Homily Archive.
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Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord's Supper 2024 Published: Thursday, March 28, 2024 The opportunity to receive Jesus’ body and blood offered in sacrifice for our salvation was not to be a one-time event at the Last Supper. Jesus appointed his apostles to continue to make him present for future believers in the Eucharist offered in his memory. That is why in every Catholic Church we have an altar of sacrifice; not merely a communion table. |
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Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord's Supper 2023 Published: Thursday, April 6, 2023 Jesus emphasizes that though his plan of salvation is glorious in a cosmic sense, it can be accomplished in our lives (just as in his) only through un-glorious, self-sacrificing service, only at the cost of humble and sometimes even humiliating death to self. |
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Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord's Supper 2022 Published: Thursday, April 14, 2022 Footwashing on the other hand, is unlike the Eucharist and the priesthood in as much as it has to do with a mandate rather than a sacrament — hence Maundy Thursday. And the mandate is not about washing feet per se, but rather a command that we undertake acts of humble, selfless service as symbolized by the washing of feet. |
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Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord's Supper 2021 Published: Thursday, April 1, 2021 Jesus offers up his body and blood today in every Eucharist, which is the sacrament of his death to self and enduring presence among us ... and he invites us to join our own sacrifice of self to his, offering up our body and blood to the Father, from the same altar, united to that of Jesus. |
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Chrism/Jubilarian Mass 2020 Published: Monday, August 10, 2020 Jesus was both priest and victim, the one who offered and the one who was offered, and so are we, in union with Jesus. He did so in the concrete circumstances and all the adversities present in 33 A.D. We do so in the concrete circumstances and all the adversities present in 2020, and I want you to know how proud I am of you, the priests of the Diocese of Little Rock. We are walk by faith. |
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Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord's Supper 2020 Published: Thursday, April 9, 2020 And yet, even knowing how weak and unreliable they were, Jesus washed their feet. And then through them he tells us, who are also weak and unreliable, that we should serve others with just that much humility. |
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Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord's Supper 2019 Published: Thursday, April 18, 2019 Jesus took his disciples back into the past in order to fulfill that past in the present, show how the liberation God accomplished through Moses then prefigures the far greater liberation that God is accomplishing through Jesus now. |
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Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord's Supper 2018 Published: Thursday, March 29, 2018 And Jesus will pay for us by pouring out his own blood on the doorpost of the cross. From that day forward, Jesus becomes our master and we become his servants. That is what the Blessed Mother means when she says: “I am the handmaid of the Lord!” |
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Chrism Mass 2018 Published: Monday, March 26, 2018 And this year we have the joy of knowing that the Chrism we consecrate today will be used to ordain eight new priests for the Diocese of Little Rock and two new priests for Subiaco (Abbey), 10 new priests altogether — the largest number of ordinations in a single year we have ever had. |
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Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord's Supper 2017 Published: Thursday, April 13, 2017 You and I are accustomed to calling the first of these three days Holy Thursday, but it also has an older name that some of you may remember from the past: Maundy Thursday. The word, “maundy,” comes from the Latin “mandatum” and means “commandment” or “mandate” — in this case referring to Jesus’ commandment to “love one another.” |
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Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord's Supper 2016 Published: Thursday, March 24, 2016 This new Passover instituted by Jesus at the Last Supper, in today's second reading, was followed by the death of the firstborn of all creation, the Son of God himself, which was the awful price paid to break Satan's stranglehold on every nation, not just Israel. |
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Easter Vigil 2015 Published: Saturday, April 4, 2015 Through baptism Jesus freed us from the power of sin and death and gave us a share in his Easter victory. |
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Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord's Supper 2015 Published: Thursday, April 2, 2015 But our joy today is tempered by the sober realization that our freedom is costly — bought with blood and not easy to preserve. |
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Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord's Supper 2014 Published: Thursday, April 17, 2014 He did so with a love so complete and so inclusive that it forced Satan to loosen his grip on us whom he had enslaved to sin. |
