TEXT: Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 5, 2025
October 5, 2025 Father De Celles Homily
27th Sunday Ordinary Time
October 5, 2025
Homily by Fr. John De Celles
St. Raymond of Peñafort Catholic Church
Springfield, VA
It’s October, so that means it’s time for a few things we do in the parish.
First, we do a Sunday attendance count at every Sunday Mass during October,
as mandated by the Bishop.
So don’t get nervous if you see people walking around counting you
during the offertory.
But more importantly, for over four centuries it has been the tradition
of the Catholic Church throughout the world
to remember the month of October as “The Month of the Rosary.”
And finally, also importantly,
for the last few years, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
has asked us to also observe the month of October as “Respect Life Month,”
which refers particularly to the right to life of unborn children–
the right not to be aborted.
We’ve been praying for a long time for the end of abortion,
and three years ago God answered our prayers in a big way
in the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade
and the lie of a constitutional right to abortion.
And yet we are still very much in a battle to save the unborn,
as the Left continues to promote the sacrificial death of the unborn
to their false God of “Choice”
by shifting abortions from abortion clinics
to the abortion pill or the day after pill,
and through state laws, including our own state of Virginia, as Democrats
are trying to push through a state constitutional amendment
to make abortion an almost absolute right in our Commonwealth.
Is God really responding to our prayers?
It’s like the prophet Habakuk says in today’s first reading:
“I cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not intervene.”
God’s response to us is the same as it was to Habakuk.
As we read on in this book we find out
that God gives him a vision of a great victory,
where God Himself comes and frees His people from oppression.
And God tells him even if the vision doesn’t come true right away,
Habakuk must not give up on the promise.
He says:
“For the vision still has its time…and will not disappoint;
if it delays, wait for it, it will surely come…
[And] the just one, because of his faith, shall live.”
Faith seems to be the key here:
Even if things don’t go the way you hope right away,
have faith in God’s promise and power.
In today’s Gospel from St. Luke,
Jesus tells us something very similar about the power of faith:
“If you have faith the size of a mustard seed,
you would say to this mulberry tree,
‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”
Faith has always been the answer in difficult times,
and it seems that in every century faith is tested,
and the faithful are not disappointed.
For example, 451 years ago this coming Tuesday, on October 7, 1571,
Christian Europe was being attacked by Muslim Turks.
In order to stave off the invasion,
the Europeans united and sent a fleet out to face the Turks
near a place called Lepanto in the eastern Mediterranean.
The Turks had rarely met defeat on the seas,
and the Europeans had no real hope of changing their fortune this time.
No hope, perhaps, but they did have faith.
And so, Pope St. Pius V begged the faithful of the Church
to pray for the success of the fleet.
In particular, he called on them to pray the rosary for victory.
And when they did, when they prayed the rosary with faith in the power of God,
the Turks were defeated and Europe was spared.
So, for four and a half centuries now, October 7 has been celebrated
as the Feast of Our Lady of Victory or Our Lady of the Rosary.
Think of all the Catholics who have wielded the rosary
not just against Muslim invaders,
and not just against those who attacked Christianity over the years,
but also against any and all opponents of civilized human society.
For example, in the 1930’s and 40’s Pius XI and Pius XII
called on the faithful to pray the rosary for the defeat of Nazism and Fascism.
In the 1930’s through the 1980’s,
all the popes–Pius XI and XII, John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I and II—
called on us to pray the rosary for the fall of Communism,
particularly in the Soviet Union and behind its Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe.
All this based on a faith that never wavered.
In the gospel today the apostles ask Jesus, “Increase our faith.”
When all seems lost, when fear is too great,
when evil seems to overwhelm us on all sides,
St. Paul reminds us,
“God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love.”
If you have faith, you can tap into that spirit of power and love,
the power of God Himself.
If you have faith, you can move trees and even mountains.
And the rosary calls us to faith
–faith in Jesus Christ
–faith in the power of His life, death and resurrection.
–faith in the power of prayer.
–faith in the power of His gift of love,
particularly the power of His love experienced so sublimely
through the gift of His Blessed Mother who
cares for us, intercedes for us and intervenes for us.
____
Communism, Nazism, Fascism,
and now the pro-abortion and woke culture of death
all have a lot in common.
They do not appropriately value the life of all human beings,
and they each believe that the means justifies the end,
even when the means is killing an innocent human life.
So, just as in the past, these decades the popes have been calling us
to “pray the rosary to end abortion.”
Again, some say that after all these years the rosary still hasn’t ended abortion.
Oh, ye of little faith.
Look at the victory in Dobbs!
But also look back at history.
First, look back to Communism, Nazism and Fascism. Where are they today?
And then look back all the way to Lepanto.
Of course, the battle of Lepanto
and the wars on Nazism, Fascism and Communism
were also fought with the bloody weapons of violence,
something, thank God, we don’t do in the war on abortion.
And while those wars were necessarily fought with weapons of violence,
they were ultimately won by the weapons of faith.
In the end faith wins the war.
And the rosary proves to be one of the most effective weapons of faith,
as it combines the words of Sacred Scripture,
meditation on the great mysteries of the life of Jesus,
and the intercession and instruction of Jesus’ mother.
We have to remember one of the main reasons we fight these bloody wars
was, and is, to preserve the freedom we possess to live as a civilized society.
A society in which its members have disagreements and
even passionate arguments over fundamental values,
but in which the vast majority nevertheless share a fundamental respect for human life,
even when that respect is confused and misunderstood.
So, as bad as things can be in our country,
as much as the innocent human life of the unborn is so often abused
and the lives of innocent young people are torn apart
by that same culture of death,
there remains in us, as a nation, a strong desire to protect innocent human life.
This same deep rooted American sense of defending the innocent
also moves this nation to protect your life and mine
when we wage spiritual and “civilized” war
over the right to life of the unborn.
We fight not with the bloody weapons of death and destruction,
but with the truly human weapons of reason and persuasion,
and the divine weapons of faith and prayer.
So, when we wage the war against abortion,
it need not and cannot lose sight of the fundamental justice
inherent in the American people and our government.
We need not and cannot resort to bloody weapons.
There is no place in the war for the culture of life for guns or bombs
or physical violence of any kind
because the weapons of reason and faith, and the power of God’s love suffice.
And ultimately, too, the power of prayer.
Christ reminds us that if we have faith the size of a mustard seed,
we can throw huge trees into the sea and even move mountains.
The beads on most rosaries aren’t much larger than mustard seeds.
So let these small beads remind us of the mustard seed and the faith they call us to.
Faith in Christ and the mysteries of His life, death and resurrection,
and faith in His love for us and in His gift of His Mother,
Our Lady of the Rosary.
Let us recall that it was faith that saved Europe at the battle of Lepanto
in the 16th century,
and faith that saved us from the political scourges of the 20th century.
And it was faith expressed in this small instrument of prayer
that was such a powerful weapon in these wars.
Let us wage war today with the power of faith and love.
Let us wage war with the power of the Holy Rosary.
Pray the rosary to end abortion.
Pray the rosary to end the culture of death.
Pray the rosary for a universal return of respect for human life.