TEXT: Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 4, 2026
October 4, 2026 Father De Celles Homily
27th Sunday Ordinary Time
October 4, 2026
Homily by Fr. John De Celles
St. Raymond of Peñafort Catholic Church
Springfield, VA
In 1661 the General Assembly of the Virginia Colony
passed the first law that enabled the ownership of black people
—slavery.
Black men, women and children were held as property,
legally subject to the whim and woe of their masters.
And over the next 200 years slavery became the backbone
of the Virginia economy,
helping to make it the wealthiest state
of the thirteen original United States of America.
So wed to the repugnant practice of slavery was Virginia,
that in1861 it risked all that wealth by seceding from the union
and becoming the home of the capital of the Confederacy.
But it would pay the price for its hubris,
as it was absolutely decimated by 1865,
as most of the battles of the Civil War were fought on our land,
saturating our ground with the blood of over half of the soldiers
who died in the war.
Sadly, even after the war was ended,
the effects of slavery warped the hearts of too many Virginians,
as the “black codes,” systemic and legal segregation,
the poll tax and literacy tests
perpetuated the treatment of the descendants of slaves
as inferior creatures to those who were called “true Virginians.”
And all that culminated in the Racial Integrity Act of 1924,
criminalizing interracial marriage
and codifying the different treatment of two legal races:
white and non-white.
Thanks be to God, today those laws are gone.
But Virginians are ashamed that the Racial Integrity Act
wasn’t repealed until 1975.
1661 to 1975: 324 years.
And even now, we still suffer the effects, as racial divisions continue.
But, again, thanks be to God, most Virginians of whatever race,
strive to put that ugliness behind us.
So…you’d think that a state with that history,
and that historical sense of guilt
and repugnance to treating one class of human beings
as lesser than another, even sub-human,
would never again allow such a thing to rear its head
within the borders of our Commonwealth, much less in its laws.
Then again…maybe it would.
Right now, Virginians are voting in the election culminating on November 3,
on an amendment to the State’s Constitution that would once again
segregate and subjugate one class of citizens
to the will and effective ownership of another class.
This time, the two classes are not “white” and “non-white”
but “born” and “unborn.”
The amendment proposed in Ballot question #1
will create a “fundamental right to reproductive freedom,”
allowing women and girls in Virginia to kill, or abort,
their unborn babies up to full term,
even during the birth, or partial birth abortion.
What is this if not a return to the mentality of the bad old days
of slavery and “Racial Integrity”?
What gives a human being a right to own another person
just because they are not white?
Nothing.
What gives a human being a fundament right to kill another person
just because they are not born?
And yet, this amendment has an excellent, or rather alarming,
chance of passing.
Now, the supporters of the amendment will tell you that I’m exaggerating.
I’m not.
The amendment clearly says,
“An individual’s right to reproductive freedom shall not be,
directly or indirectly, denied, burdened, or infringed upon.”
Yes, there’s some language after that
about the state regulating abortion for a compelling reason,
but then it negates that language by adding,
but only if it
“does not infringe on that individual’s autonomous decision making.”
In other words: Abortion will be legal if the woman, or girl, decides it is.
Don’t let them lie to you.
And they are lying to you.
You know, when you vote on this,
the ballot won’t include the actual language of the amendment.
It’s bizarre.
Instead of the actual amendment, you’ll only find
a “question” on the ballot.
And the question basically lies about what the amendment does,
by couching it in ambiguous language
and leaving out the worst parts of the proposal.
They lie.
And not just on the ballot.
They lie and say it’s not a baby.
They lie and say an unborn baby isn’t human.
They lie and say a mother’s rights
are more important than her unborn baby’s rights.
And they lie when they say this amendment
is just about a woman’s right to choose.
No.
It doesn’t apply just to “women”
—it doesn’t even include the word “woman” in it.
It applies to “every individual.”
So, girls, teenagers, and little girls.
It means parents will have no say if their child wants an abortion
—they won’t even have to know.
And it’s not just about abortion.
It applies to “reproductive freedom.”
Think about that: How do you reproduce?
Effectively this amendment says
there can be no law that restricts, directly or indirectly,
sexual activity.
So, things like statutory rape—that’s gone.
The age of consent—that’s gone.
And it protects predators because it says you can’t punish anyone for
“aiding or assisting another individual in exercising…
reproductive freedom”
So, it’ll be legal for a 30-year-old man to seduce a 15-year-old girl
because he is just assisting her in exercising her freedom.
And laws against incest?
How can those survive?
They will say it’s all about the wellbeing of the woman.
And yet, it will eliminate any requirements
regarding the qualifications of the abortionist or the “clinic.”
Anyone will be able to administer abortion,
without any standard for hygiene or training.
On and on.
Lies and lies.
The truth is this amendment is the most repugnant law
ever proposed in Virginia in the 350 years of her existence,
only comparable to the laws of slavery and racial integrity.
___
Now, I’ve been preaching about abortion for 31 years,
especially on this, the first Sunday of October, Respect Life Sunday,
which, in Virginia, is always about a month before elections.
But in the past, I’ve been urging folks to elect pro-life politicians.
The difficulty with that is that politicians are a mixed bag.
You may have a politician who is pro-life, but he’s otherwise a terrible person, or you disagree with him or her on almost everything else.
Or sometimes you think your vote won’t matter because we live in Fairfax, and pro-life always loses.
So, you may not vote for them, or you may just stay at home.
But it’s absolutely different this time.
For the first time in my priesthood,
really for the first time in the history of our state,
we get to vote for or against killing babies.
Vote yes for abortion, or vote no against abortion.
The choice is absolutely, totally clear.
And easy.
____
There’s been a lot of talk in recent years
about our great Virginia Founding Fathers,
and an effort to discredit them because they all owned slaves.
Think of George Washington,
who was truly a great man, but a man who owned slaves.
He didn’t mistreat his slaves, and he wanted to free them…
except he didn’t free them.
Could I have voted for him for president in 1789?
I don’t know.
There weren’t really any viable pro-emancipation candidates back them.
But what if slavery itself had been on the ballot in 1789?
Not a prejudiced candidate,
but an amendment that would allow slavery in Virginia.
How would you vote?
Or would you stay home?
It’s the same thing now.
Abortion is on the ballot.
Clear and simple.
And with it comes all those other horrible things
that this stupid law would open up.
So, we have to vote.
_____
In today’s gospel Jesus tells the parable about the tenants
who kill the landowner’s son, saying,
“Come, let us kill him and acquire his inheritance.”
They kill the son for their own supposed good.
And Jesus asks the question:
“What will the owner of the vineyard do
to those tenants when he comes?”
The answer?
“He will put those wretched men to a wretched death…”
What is abortion, but people saying,
“Let us kill the baby…for our own benefit”?
Whether that benefit is mental health of the mother,
or her freedom from responsibility,
or the cost of raising a child or whatever.
So, in love, and for fear for your souls, my beloved children, I say to you:
If you say “yes” to abortion, either by voting “yes” to ballot question 1,
or by not voting at all, you are joining with all those
who will have or will assist with abortions.
Like the tenant, you are saying, let us kill the baby, and,
unless you repent, you will face the wretched death of hell.
So, in love, I say to you: Vote, and vote NO!
But if you don’t worry about the eternal punishment for allowing abortion,
then consider the earthly consequences, the temporal punishment.
In his Second Inaugural Address, in 1865,
as our bloody Civil War was approaching its end,
President Abraham Lincoln said
that for the terrible offense of “American Slavery,”
“God gives to both North and South, this terrible war,
as the woe [the punishment] due
to those by whom the offence came…”
He spoke of
“…every drop of blood drawn with the lash,”
being “paid by another drawn with the sword…”
Think about that.
People are constantly telling me how bad things are in the world right now.
I assure you, they were much worse during the Civil War.
Up to 750,000 men died in the war,
including one-third of the young men in Virginia.
1 in 3 Virginia households lost a son or father.
A terrible punishment, but in God’s eyes a just punishment,
for the enslavement of 8 million human beings over 300 years.
Yet, in the last fifty-three years there have been 66 million abortions in America.
Even since the overturning of Roe v Wade four years ago,
there have been 160,000 abortions in Virginia alone.
Do you wonder that God has allowed us to suffer in so many other ways
these days?
Are the problems all around us perhaps a chastisement
for aborting all these babies?
And if so, what will the chastisement be
if Viriginia passes this amendment to increase those abortions?
So, vote and vote no.
___
But that’s not all.
Pray, fast, and get others to vote no.
Your adult children and siblings,
your parents and grandparents,
your neighbors and friends.
Now, you don’t have to tell them they’re going to hell if they don’t.
You can just explain the amendment to them
because only 13% of Americans support legalizing abortion in all cases,
and only 22% support third trimester abortions.
And that’s exactly what this amendment will allow.
So don’t worry about trying to make them oppose all abortions,
just get them to recognize that no reasonable person,
even someone who considers themselves “pro-choice,”
wants to allow what this amendment will allow.
___
It is stunning to me
that after the hard learned lessons of slavery and segregation–
that it is abhorrent for one class of human beings to treat
another class of human beings as property or subhuman–
Virginia now proposes to revert to that same sin and
allow the born to treat the unborn as property or subhuman.
I cannot believer we will do that again.
We cannot do that again.
___
Remember that Jesus says the punishment
for killing the landowner’s child is to
“put those wretched men to a wretched death.”
I want to save children from the death of abortion,
and I want to save you, my children,
from the wretched eternal death of hell.
So, I say to you:
Vote no to ballot question 1.
Vote no to abortion in Virginia.
And if you don’t, all I can say is, may God have mercy on your soul.