Fr. Kirby Longo's Homilies

I remember walking into the YMCA courts in BIllings when I was a kid and seeing one of the new kids fiddling around with a basketball. It was obvious he had never played the game. At best, he had maybe seen a few nba games on a bad TV, because what he was doing was not basketball. Me and a few buddies gave him the general overview of the game and played a bit with him. At first, giving him the rul...

Be courageous, trust that you are a member of Christ’s body, and no matter the mess in the Church, your mission as a Christian is always to preach the gospel and draw souls to Christ and his love. We find that love in the Church, we find our mission in the Church, and those outside may only hear that truth if they hear it from you. The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few. Butte is 75% bap...

many of us witnessed Nathan Scheidecker from Butte give his life to Jesus Christ and his Church in the priesthood. He left everything to follow our Lord in this day and age. Just so all the young men out there and families of young children know, it will be at least three years before we have another ordination, and if you were there yesterday and saw our presbyterate, it was not the youngest crew...

Roy and Aislinn: You realize all the sacrifices you will have to make in your married life together and you chose it anyways. Correction- You have NO IDEA the sacrifice that's involved in married life. If you think you have it figured out, good luck. But that’s OK, it doesn't matter that you don't know what's coming because one of the beautiful gifts we have as human beings is the capacity to comm...

You might know someone (Or you might honestly be this way yourself- You know, I have a friend) who thinks like this: I like the idea of God, I might even say he exists because the universe doesn’t make sense without some prime-mover, some uncaused-cause. But the Bible, the Incarnation of God as man, the Trinity, the Church, doesn’t it just seem a bit absurd!? We can’t prove any of that, there is n...

Jarrett and Nicole. The love you have for one another- if you are willing to die to yourselves- will bring souls to Christ. Our culture loves the idea of mega- individualism, then we're all confused and sad when our relationships grow bitter and resentful. When anyone in that dark place sees marriage lived sacrificially as we're called to live it, they are immediately compelled.

Perhaps when you distill the teachings of Christianity you can glean something that strikes us as profound. That was, after all, the whole project of many modern philosophers and political scientists. Thomas Jefferson edited his New Testament to do exactly that. Yet, that isn’t what Jesus is saying! The newness of the gospel comes, as Benedict XVI says, “From the gift of being-with and being-in Ch...

We were created by God created by his Word. From the beginning to the end of our lives, God’s voice, his word, is the only one that satisfies. When we listen to any other voice, we know they are thieves tempting us to leave the fold and no matter how enticing the voice may be, we all know a thief can promise nothing good.

Western culture is no longer the relativist. The new cultural moral code is absolute, but certainly not based in natural law. The Atlantic published a fascinating article on this phenomenon called “The Death of Moral Relativism.” The author pointed out, “This new code has created a paradoxical moment in which all is tolerated except the intolerant and all included except the exclusive.”

You are baptized, you are sons and daughters of God and so you can do the same when you face the enormous dragon that has planted itself on the narrow way that leads to eternal life! Do not shrink from the great journey, do not shrink from the Christian life, it is the only life worthy of your dignity! Nothing else will make you happy, not a $100 million condo overlooking Manhattan, nor any amount...

So many of our lives are defined, marked indelibly by the death of those we love. No matter when, whether it was your wonderful grandma who died when she was 90 or whether you lost a child or friend in their teenage years, we see so clearly the evil of death and we do not understand it. Jesus is the only worthwhile answer to the question of evil. The only other alternative is to deny the existence...

It’s lent, the perfect season to seek out the Lord in new ways. Do something crazy and foolish for him. When I was at Carroll, my friends and I tried to fast in impossible ways, we did middle of the night prayer vigils at the grotto or up on Mount Helena, tried to pull all nighters during holy week. In almost all this we failed, but we did it because we loved Jesus and wanted to know him, and it w...

This, the final part of my four-part formation for the CYC board in the Diocese of Helena, addresses the moral life. The main question is: Does God want us to be happy? We need to ask this because what the Church demands often seems to go against our interests, against our happiness.  But is it worth it? If I'm gay or transgender, can I be happy in the Catholic Church? Listen in!

When we come to an impasse, when life presses in on us and we face some impossible trial or suffering that will surely overwhelm us, we frantically look around, and seeing nothing that will heal us or satisfy us, we begin to reach for things that can never satisfy. Our desperate imagination tells us this artificial thing can bring satisfaction, that some shadow is, in fact, real sustenance.

The beam here is sin, the only one who can remove it is Christ. So, before we judge our brothers and sisters, we turn to Christ and recognize our sins, our shortfalls, our total incapacity to live the charity he calls us to. When we do, we are forgiven, we are healed, and our sight is restored. It is then that we begin to judge rightly and confidently because we judge with the judgment by which we...

Today western culture seems to have settled on an odd and contradictory mixture of ideas simultaneously. Our culture has embraced the sexual revolution of the 60’s which basically says- do what you want with your body, it’s yours and it’s just a body. While believing this, we also totally reject the body as a means of communicating any truth about our identity. So it seems our culture is saying th...

The beatitudes aren’t even commands. Look at the commandments, you will notice eight “shall not” commands and two positive commands. The Beatitudes, in contrast, are statements of fact: “Blessed are those.” They are not commands forbidding sinful activity, but invitations into deification, invitations to “become partakers in the divine nature.”

So as our culture slowly rejects Christian morality- as we see in the supreme court’s redefinition of marriage or the recent New York Abortion Laws, or in the growing indifference to the gospel and the Church amongst the general population- we cannot be surprised. Why? Because we are to blame. It’s our fault. What is Jesus’ prayer more than any other?  “Father, just as you are in me and I am in yo...

God calls us to obedience and abandonment to him. For some, this call may include the call to absolute poverty and chastity, and obedience. For all of us it must involve abandonment to divine providence. This idea of abandonment and obedience to God’s will is so foreign to us today that it may seem slavish and ridiculous. Is it a virtue? or the attitude of a slave?

I want to give you two definitions of Faith, but I promise I’ll explain them. First, let’s look at the scriptures for a definition. In Hebrews, we are told, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” This might not clarify things all to well, but let’s get one more working definition then begin our journey- though this might temporarily muddy the waters even...

Do we believe the Church was founded by Jesus Christ? Do we believe that her demands- though heroic- will actually bring us joy? That’s a question we need to ask ourselves, because the world is certainly asking it of us. Not only are they asking, they have already condemned us hateful bigots.

I had the honor of presiding over the wedding of Garrett and Kylee Conners this weekend, a great Montana couple who who witnessed well to the power of this sacrament and are more than ready for this wonderful adventure together. Enjoy the homily!

Jesus, in his Baptism, gives us a direction forward into this difficult life. He makes very clearly to us that this life involves a death, that no one escapes this life without giving himself away, so why not give our lives for something worthy.    

Our culture believes our relationships are fundamentally about me. Is this relationship making me “happy”? Does this person give me what I need? Are my hopes and dreams the main focus of this relationship? Why are these the questions we ask first? Because our fundamental disposition is that of taking. We all believe, to some degree, that our happiness is about taking- whether material, emotional,...

We not only are a mystery to ourselves concerning our past, but our future is unknown as well. We tend to respond to this in one of two ways: either with a hyper-planned scenario that attempts to cover every possible outcome (older generations tended toward this) or to just say forget it- Many in my generation, millennials, tend to say something like: we are 25 with too many degrees, mediocre job...