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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16th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A Published: Saturday, July 18, 2020 All of us are sinners and there will always be hypocrites in the Church. There will always be people who use their church membership for selfish ends. Sometimes we do have to intervene and pull out the most damaging weeds by the roots, as with the great evil of the clergy abuse scandals, but most of the time prudence requires us to just be patient. |
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15th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A Published: Saturday, July 11, 2020 Farmers plant lots of seeds; many get eaten by birds or wither for lack of roots or get choked out by weeds. But some do fall on good soil and produce a great harvest: 30, 60 or hundredfold. If a farmer expects every seed to produce, his expectations are unrealistic. |
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14th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A Published: Sunday, July 5, 2020 True joy is hidden from those who dedicate themselves to selfish, worldly pursuits. It is only found by those who truly give themselves to God and others with sacrificial love and childlike humility. |
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13th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A Published: Sunday, June 28, 2020 What Jesus says is that he must be the primary allegiance of our lives. He’s the only one we really have to please, and sometimes doing the right thing, especially in the face of opposition, can be very challenging. But anything less is not worthy of him. |
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Votive Mass to the Holy Spirit Published: Sunday, June 21, 2020 Your next prioress is going to suffer, so you’d better elect someone who can do difficult things; embrace the cross with sacrificial love. That’s what Jesus says is the unavoidable price of following him. |
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12th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A Published: Sunday, June 21, 2020 So if you know what you should do and not do, you’ve got values. But it is only when you actually live according to those values that you’ve got virtue. |
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Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ 2020 Published: Sunday, June 14, 2020 What you and I receive at Communion retains the appearance and taste of bread and wine, but that’s no longer what it is. By means of the words of consecration, Jesus changes them into his very own Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity. |
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Pentecost Sunday 2020 Published: Sunday, May 31, 2020 If this tiny virus that none of us can even see with the naked eye has brought us to our knees, what more do we need to show us where to place our trust and hope, both in this life — and in the case of those who have died — also in the next. |
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Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord 2020 Published: Sunday, May 24, 2020 Think, perhaps, of the hardest confession you ever had to make, and then how exhilarating it was to finally be set free and be given a fresh start; set free from that "ton of bricks" of bitter remorse that had so long been weighing down your soul. |
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Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year A Published: Sunday, May 17, 2020 We are grateful finally to be able to resume the celebration of Mass on a limited basis and there are many things about the restrictions we presently have to live with that I don’t like any more than you do, but with which we have to obey — and which are, in fact, the price of self-sacrificing love. |
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Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year A Published: Sunday, May 10, 2020 We take all the reasonable steps we can think of to mitigate the threat — God gave us brains and he expects us to use them — and then we place in his hands all the things we cannot prevent. And so, to us also, he says “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me.” |
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Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year A Published: Sunday, May 3, 2020 We do what we can to care for both the physical and spiritual needs of those the Good Shepherd entrusts to our care. Hence the suspension of public Masses in order to maintain necessary physical distancing, but live-streaming Masses to better enable people to make a good spiritual communion. Neither is ideal, but we live in an imperfect world, so this balancing of prudence and piety is what the care of the flock requires. |
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Third Sunday of Easter, Year A Published: Sunday, April 26, 2020 The grace of all the Eucharists we have received in the past remains in us even during this time when access to additional receptions of the Eucharist is temporarily not available. In this way, the access that you and I have even in this time of COVID-19 is far greater than that of Jesus' own contemporaries because our eyes are open. |
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Divine Mercy Sunday 2020 Published: Sunday, April 19, 2020 And so he says also to us, “Peace be with you” and he shows us also the wounds by which we were saved, the wounds that were the cost of loving us to the end, the wounds that reveal that it really is him and that the mercy he brings us is real too. |
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Easter Sunday 2020 Published: Sunday, April 12, 2020 You and I are gathered here today to proclaim the Good News that sin and illness and death do not have the last word. COVID-19 has caused a crisis that, like everything else, God will use for his purposes. If he can take Jesus’ gruesome death on Good Friday and turn it into the most powerful instrument of salvation ever, he can certainly take the worst effects of the coronavirus and do the same. |
