Homily
27th Sunday in Ordinary Time C
St. Ann Catholic Church - Prairie Village
5 October 2025
AMDG
Is holiness easy or hard?
I bet your first answer is that holiness is really hard. Really hard. And you're not wrong. Or perhaps your first response was that holiness is neither easy nor hard. Maybe you sniffed our a false dichotomy. When considering matters relating to God, paradox oftentimes prevails, and both . . and answers are much better than either . . . or answers. So maybe holiness is both easy and hard.
The right answer is the last one though. Holiness is easy. Holiness is simple. My yoke is easy and my burden is light, says the Lord. All it takes is the smallest amount of faith. Then holiness, a complete sharing in the love and power of God that overcomes all things, is the fruit.
Holiness is easy. It is simple. It is expected. It is at hand.
Don't believe me? Look at the three honorees who receive the Ave St. Ann award this weekend. They make it look easy. What's the key ingredient, the common thread between these St. Ann heroes of faith? They pray. They have faith. They put themselves simply at the the service of God's plan. They live not an ego-drama of trying to get, but the theo-drama of simply giving. The result of this trusting relationship of faith is powerful indeed; the fruit is a heroic love the endures and prevails and bears fruit that lasts.
None of the three honorees - Dick and Martha Taylor, Al and Pat Kolarik, Jim and Patti Lisson - think they deserve these awards. Which is why we are so happy to give them to them. Each would in their own way say they are the least deserving, that they are only unprofitable servants, doing what life requires. Yet in trusting God and serving His plan and not their own, they have truly moved mountains.
Faith obtains all things. Perseverance obtains all things. Prayer obtains all things. Chastity obtains all things. Service obtains all things. Being pro-life obtains all things! It's all utterly simple, and just takes a mustard seed of faith.
It's hard when you make your life about you; when your life is about you, the simple demands of holiness seem impossible. Yet they are easy for God, and easy for one who just has a mustard seed of faith.
I'm not saying that the Taylors, Kolariks and Lissons have had comfortable lives. Far from it. They have just learned a very simple secret. That trusting God and serving Him redounds to their own benefit. Trusting in God's plans makes them strong. The just one is not one who has life figured out, but the one who lives by faith.
In honoring our Ave St. Ann inaugural award winners, we honor all of us, just as when we honor the saints, a new path to holiness opens up for each one of us. Thank you Lissons, Kolariks and Taylors, for showing us the way. Holiness is for everyone. And for the one who has faith, it's not hard at all.
+mj
