February 16, 2026
Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily on the 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A) on February 15, 2026 for the Archdiocesan Gay and Lesbian Outreach (AGLO) weekly Mass held at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Chicago, IL. (The video is from a truncated version of this homily he preached at Old St. Mary’s Catholic Church preceding Cardinal Blase Cupich’s message for the Annual Catholic Appeal.) Both versions of the homily are based on the day’s readings: Sirach 15:15-20; Psalm 119; 1 Corinthians 2:6-10; and Matthew 5:17-37.
In 21 verses, today’s gospel passage covers a lot of different ideas: how Jesus claimed to fulfill the Law and the Prophets, how Jesus raised the bar on upholding the commandments, what Jesus says about anger, name-calling, and lust. And if that isn’t enough, Jesus also speaks about divorce and remarriage. Obviously, we can’t dig into all these ideas in one homily.
The community to whom Matthew was writing was a group of people who didn’t feel as if they belonged with anyone else. They were Jewish Christians who felt rejected both by Jews who weren’t Christians and by Christians who weren’t Jews.
At various points in our lives, we all have probably felt as if we didn’t belong, either. We are imperfect people… destined for the perfection of heaven. Let us take a moment to acknowledge that we rely on God’s mercy to cross the divide.
“We are constantly becoming.”
I only heard Dominican Sister Carmelita Murphy speak once. The Paulist Fathers and our collaborators were gathered for a strategic planning process in 2006, dreaming about who we wanted to be, and facing the obstacles to achieving those dreams. “We are constantly becoming,” she said.
We are always growing. We are always evolving. We are always being renewed. That’s true of all people of all religious backgrounds. As we grow in on our faith journeys, we replace simple understandings from earlier phases of our lives with more nuanced insights. We are constantly becoming.
For example, consider the community for whom Matthew wrote his gospel, roughly 50 years after Jesus’ Ascension. The political and religious circumstances had already changed drastically. Matthew’s community – which probably consisted mostly of Jewish Christians – felt isolated from both the majority of Christians who were now Gentiles and from the majority of Jews who continued to reject Christianity. If we take certain verses out of context, the Gospel of Matthew appears to be condemning the Jewish Law (5:34), the Jewish religion (21:43), and the entire Jewish people (27:25). If we consider Matthew as a whole, however, it gives a very positive portrayal of Judaism. Matthew presents Jesus as the new Moses, giving the Sermon on the Mount in a way similar to Moses giving the Law as he received it from God on Mt. Sinai. Jesus himself declares, “I have not come to abolish [the Law or the Prophets], but to fulfill” (5:17). Jesus did not intend to establish a new religion, but like other rabbis of his time, he wanted to reform Judaism. Like all religions, Judaism is constantly becoming, working towards what God intends it to be.
Nevertheless, through the centuries, the Gospel of Matthew has been contorted by many Christians to persecute Jews. After the Nazis tried to use Christian teaching to justify the Holocaust, Pope John XXIII called the Second Vatican Council in part to make sure that the gospel would never be twisted in such vile ways again. As the Council declared: “[T]he Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures…. [T]he Church… decries hatred, persecutions, [or] displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone” (Nostra Aetate, 4). Christians today have a responsibility not only to fight all forms of anti-Semitism, but also to undo the nineteen centuries of damage we have caused. Hopefully, we are constantly becoming the disciples whom Jesus calls us to be.
And what Jesus challenges us to become, is challenging indeed. We can better live out our faith as we better befriend and understand our emotions. Anger is a God-given emotion that even Jesus experienced, but it’s a sin to call someone a blockhead (or ‘raqa’). God gave us the desire and the energy to connect with things beyond ourselves, not only with God, but with all kinds of people in all kinds of ways — to connect with people in groups and as individuals, with people of the same sex and of the opposite sex. For that reason, we will all probably continue having sexual thoughts until 15 minutes after we die, but Jesus calls each of us to use that desire and energy in ways that build long-lasting relationships of love and mutuality. Christians today have a responsibility not only to fight all forms of LGBTQ+ discrimination, but also to undo the twenty centuries of damage we have caused. Hopefully, we are constantly becoming the disciples whom Jesus calls us to be.
If we are constantly becoming…we need to ask ourselves: who are we becoming? What kind of employee, what kind of friend, what kind of family member, or what kind of partner am I becoming? What kind of person does God envision me becoming? As a human being, Jesus recognizes the challenges of being human. He exhorts us to aim for the perfection of heaven, even if our relationships will sometimes fall short in this lifetime. There are so many ways that we, as humans, live in constant transition between one state of being and another. Our identities are not static. We are constantly becoming. Guided by our past, the Holy Spirit invites us forward to a future more wonderful than our wildest imaginings. The kingdom of God is already here, but our eyes have not yet seen and our ears have not yet heard what God has prepared for us. As we come to see Jesus’ face more clearly and hear Jesus’ voice more precisely, our next steps on the journey of faith become easier to determine.
Allow me to let my freak flag fly for a minute. Before I became a priest, I was an optical engineer. So tonight, let me try an analogy from analytical geometry. Maybe our life of holiness is like the red curve on this graph that approaches the green line asymptotically. The curve gets closer and closer to the line, but it only reaches the line at infinity. Christ and the kingdom of heaven are like that green line: the same yesterday, today, and forever. But we are constantly becoming the disciples Christ calls us to be. Hopefully, by following Jesus as best we can, we will get closer and closer to perfection, even if we won’t reach the perfection of Christ until we are with Christ in the eternity of heaven.