Teaching & Preaching: Deacon Matt's homilies & podcasts

Someone else’s sin is not a good reason to leave the Church — but it is a powerful reason. And so those who have left the Church over the pain that a fellow member of the Body of Christ has caused them ought to be treated with love and reverence. Why do Christians hurt one another? Why do we who profess belief in a God who is love, whose central teaching is to love one another, and who preach the...

Grace is a free gift, but a gift demands a response. We lose sight of this sometimes in our conversations about grace, because we want to emphasize the sheer gratuity of God’s gift, meaning it is not something that can be earned — which is true. But a gift, especially a valuable gift, also demands a response. The readings today are all about graciously receiving gifts from God, and learning to tru...

Homily for the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A). "This is what was hidden from the wise and the learned, but revealed to the little ones. This is why the crowds that waved palms and shouted “Hosannah!” to welcome their king on Palm Sunday abandoned him when he was arrested and crucified. They forgot the reason why Israel’s kings rode on donkeys. They were never meant to be like other kin...

Is the Mass a communal meal, or a sacrifice? The Church's answer is that it is both. What do sacrificial offerings have to do with meals, and what does this teach us about the Eucharist? Homily preached on the Solemnity of Corpus Christi (The Most Holy Body and Blood of Jesus Christ), June 7, 2026.

A catechetical homily on the importance and meaning of the sacrament of Confirmation, preached for the 6th Sunday of Easter (Year A). "Now when the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent them Peter and John, who went down and prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Spirit, for it had not yet fallen upon any of them; they had only been baptiz...

God’s perspective is so much greater than our own — infinitely greater than our own. He sees things we can’t see. He knows things we cannot know. Of course we know this intellectually. God is eternal. He is omnipotent. Of course his perspective is greater than our own. But we often fail to appreciate how this affects our own faith and the trust that we should have in God, especially when things do...

Homily for the Feast of the Holy Family, preached at St. Mary Mother of God Roman Catholic Church on December 28, 2025. "Put on, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another,  if one has a grievance against another;  as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do. And over all...

"On that day, a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom" (Is 11:1). Homily for the 2nd Sunday of Advent (Year A), preached at St. Mary Mother of God Roman Catholic Church on 12/7/25.

Homily for All Souls Day preached on Nov. 2, 2025, at St. Mary Mother of God Roman Catholic Church. "A final purification from sin is necessary for most of us after death because heaven is not for unrighteous souls who have been let in because Jesus paid the price of their admission: it is the abode of the saints who have been transformed and made pure by the love of Christ. Jesus not only re...

Homily for the 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year C), preached on Sept. 7, 2025, the day of the canonization of Saints Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis. "When I think about the examples of St. Pier Giorgio and St. Carlo, I see two ordinary young men who had the same gifts and talents as many of the people in this Church right now. They didn’t suffer martyrdom like many in the early Chur...

Homily for the 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C). God has given us many good things, but not to use solely for our own pleasure, but to use for the good of others. In other words, material wealth is only a means to an end, and we can’t lose sight of the end, which isn’t to be found in this world that is passing away, but in the world to come. This is why St. Paul says in our second reading fro...

We know God commands us to love our neighbor. So one of the oldest, time-honored excuses is to say, “that person isn’t really my neighbor.” It’s a wonderful way to rationalize our selfishness. So the question becomes, who is my neighbor? Homily for the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C).

Homily for the Solemnity of the Ascension preached on June 1, 2025.

Peter looms large in the readings for today, which is fitting, given that Peter — or the successor of Peter — looms large in the public conscience at the moment, as the Church stands poised to elect the next pope, the 267th Bishop of Rome. So what do our readings tell us about the ministry of St. Peter?

Across all cultures and times, light has been used as a symbol of knowledge and truth. It’s easy to see how this makes sense. Human beings are very sight-oriented. We have many senses, but the one that provides us with the most information about the world is our sight. To be without sight is a very serious handicap. Those who are blind, like the man in today’s gospel, have to navigate the world wi...

So often we get this idea in our heads that our sin makes us unlovable to God, that we have to earn God’s affection by our good behavior. God’s not like that. God never stops loving us. So God provides a remedy for when we separate ourselves from him by our sin. We call that remedy the Sacrament of Penance, Reconciliation, or Confession. Just like all the sacraments, God's grace is truly made...

Homily for the 1st Sunday of Lent (Year C), preached March 9, 2025. Those of us who are already baptized don’t need to be baptized again, but we do need to remember what our baptism means for us, to renew our rejection of Satan and all his empty promises and to rejoice in what Christ has accomplished for us through his passion, death and resurrection — what we call the Paschal Mystery. We need to...

At the heart of our faith is the theological truth that at the beginning of all things was a word —  the  Word, in fact, through whom all things were spoken into being. And in the fullness of time, that same Word took on human flesh and gave himself for our salvation. That means words matter.

The Church teaches that we all have a universal call to holiness. We are all called to be like God. That means we are all called to love, to give ourselves in some way for the good of others. We are all called to carry our cross and follow Jesus. In fact Christ says we are to do this daily. That means every day we have a new opportunity to tell the Lord, “Here I am, send me." That’s really al...

On the 3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, we begin to look at the public ministry of Jesus, which begins, as we find recorded in Luke’s gospel, with the public proclamation of the scripture. In fact both our Old Testament reading today, as well as the gospel, are all about the public proclamation of scripture. So it is fitting that, in 2019, Pope Francis named this Sunday, the 3rd Sunday of Ordinary Tim...

Because hope is a virtue that looks forward, you could say it is like a pilgrimage; a journey toward something greater. And today we celebrate the very first Christian pilgrimage — the journey of the magi to pay homage to the newborn King of the Jews. Homily for the Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord, preached at St. Mary Mother of God Roman Catholic Church in Sylva, NC, on Sunday, January 5, 2...

In the gospel for the 1st Sunday of Advent, Jesus does not say we should pray to escape tribulations, but rather we should pray for the strength to escape tribulations. That’s because the way we escape them is the same way that Christ escaped death on the cross — by passing through it. But what kind of strength are we talking about? St. Paul tells us in the second reading today that we must streng...

Homily for the 31st Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year B), preached at St. Mary Mother of God Roman Catholic Church by Deacon Matthew Newsome on Sunday, November 3, 2024. Christ shows us the mind and heart of the Father in the most intimate way and invites us to be his friends. No other religion in the world could imagine their gods doing such a thing, because our perspective, our understanding of real...

Homily preached by Deacon Matthew Newsome on Sunday, October 6, 2024, at St. Mary Mother of God Roman Catholic Church in Sylva, NC. ...there is more going on in our readings today than just an exposition on the good of family life. There is a deeper spiritual reality here. The human family on earth is important because it is a sign of an even greater family in heaven; a family God wants us to be m...

Homily for the 22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year B) preached by Deacon Matthew Newsome on September 1, 2024, at St. Mary Mother of God Roman Catholic Church in Sylva, NC.