A homily for the Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 4, 2026 (but mostly to wrap up the Season of Creation)
Isaiah 5:1-7, Philippians 4:6-9, Matthew 21:33-43
Important information to start: The kittens in the photo are not our cats. I don’t have a group shot of our three, with their vastly divergent personalities. We’ll discuss them shortly.
Also important: Today’s passages from Scripture remind us that inviting our sisters and brothers to a closer relationship with our Creator God is a career, not a job; a marathon, not a sprint. And every single one of us is called to that vocation, using all of our unique God-given skills and talents and creativity to succeed.
Now, here’s the main Big Deal, since we’re speaking of our Creator God:
This weekend marks the formal conclusion of the Season of Creation, a semi-official celebration of every divine gift to us. Basically, everything everywhere, animal, vegetable, or mineral, with the most individually significant gift being our own lives.
God gave us us, God gave us each other, God gave us somewhere to hang out together and individually, and God gave us stuff to eat and stuff to do while we’re hanging out on Earth.
Thank you, God!
God also gives us Heaven, but we’ll save that for another day.
Back here on Earth, we have one simple job. Well, maybe not all that simple, but definitely singular: to take care of our gifts. Trees and toads. Rocks and roads. People whom we love. People who mildly annoy us. People we can’t stand and whom we might want to … well, we shouldn’t think that, though sometimes we do.
A lot of us are just plain lousy at taking care of our gifts, including our own precious, fragile bodies, minds, and souls. Our health care system emphasizes cleaning up our messes, not preventing them. Our infrastructure is repaired, not improved or modernized. Even the CarShield commercials remind us that our vehicles are going to break down, so let’s prepay for some engine work.
I’m guilty, ever so guilty, of being essentially reactive. Fix or replace daily. Forgiveness (once again, thank you, God!) not permission. But I do believe in preventive maintenance of my body, my mind, my soul, and my many, many gizmos.
There are good economic reasons for that. There are good social, moral, and spiritual reasons for that.
Creation, all of God’s Creation, deserves preservation, deserves preventive maintenance. Creation deserves better than we’ve been giving.
St. Francis of Assisi, whose October 4 feast day is tucked behind a regular Sunday this year, reminded us to care for Creation. This weekend, we tie a bow — just as we would on a birthday or Christmas gift — on the Season of Creation 2026.
One of the most visible — and fun! — ways we mark St. Francis’s life’s mission is with the Blessing of the Animals. Fins, feathers, fur, and more.
Many of us have opened our homes — surrendered them, in the case of cats — to our companion animals. Yes, dogs have owners and cats have staffs.
Andrea and I are owned by three cats: King Friday XIII, about 13; Bruce Wayne the Batman, about 6; and Cara Mia, 18 months. Black with orange eyes, black-and-white tuxedo, brown tabby with a lot of silver and a Marilyn Monroe beauty mark next to her nose.
They all have backstories from their lives before they adopted us. They all have unique personalities, lovable and humorous habits, and annoying and sometimes hazardous proclivities. Friday mostly sleeps, unless he is welcoming every visitor and door-knocker. Batman is skittish and hides. Mia is ADHD, FOMO, and chatty.
I’m sure every “pet parent” has an abundance of stories.
We humans with critters in our lives love them and care for them like family, and we cringe and cry out whenever we learn of animals being mistreated. If we somehow miss the news reports, the ASPCA commercials fill in the blanks.
Our companion animals are our close-in reminders that Creation needs care, and we’re just the people to do it.
And, if St. Francis and the Season of Creation and our pups and kitties and budgies prove too subtle a set of reminders, Mother Nature has a way of slapping us upside the head.
How ’bout that nor’easter? How ’bout the nor’easters the experts are predicting? How ’bout the Godzilla El Niño? How ’bout the Kelvin Wave on the West Coast?
How ’bout all the other meteorological stuff with weird names that we’ve never heard of before?
And where did Switzerland’s glaciers go? Or Montana’s?
As we thank God for Creation, as we thank Francis for showing us how to love Creation and live the Gospel, as we watch the changing of the seasons of the Earth and of our lives, we are challenged to do all we can, and just a little bit more, to restore Creation in sync with God’s design and leave the Earth better than we found it.
For our children and their children, and every creature, animal, vegetable, and mineral.
Because God created in all of us the ability to do so.
