We wrestle with a piercing question from the readings: what are we unwilling to lose, even for Christ, and how do our choices reveal the answer. We connect Amos’s warning about hollow rituals to a Gospel scene where a town chooses financial security over Jesus, then ask what real worship looks like when Monday arrives.
• Amos’s indictment of worship without justice
• The danger of singing hymns while neglecting the poor
• “Let justice surge like water” as a test of integrity
• Worship as a whole-life offering, not a one-hour habit
• Jesus’s authority over darkness and despair
• The town’s decision to send Jesus away after losing pigs
• The hard examination of comfort, reputation, business, and protected sin
• The cost of surrender and the greater return of staying close to Christ

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We explore why Jesus’s hard words in Matthew 10 are not a command to love family less but a call to stop possessing the people we love. We use the image of open hands to expose fear, control, and misplaced expectations, then practice surrender in the Eucharist and in everyday relationships.
• reading and unpacking Matthew 10:37-42 through the lens of surrender
• why hands and body language reveal anxiety, fear, and control
• distinguishing love that protects from possession that controls
• parenting and marriage as stewardship rather than ownership
• St. Augustine’s ordered love and why sin is often love out of order
• why no spouse or child can fill a God-sized emptiness
• making room for God amid busyness, noise, and packed schedules
• the Shunammite woman’s hospitality as a model for creating space
• receiving the Eucharist with open hands as a weekly act of trust
Take this homily and try to break it open with yourself, with your spouse, with your children, and with your friends.
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We challenge the idea that God’s love should make life easy, and we show why hardship can be a form of correction rather than rejection. We connect Amos and the storm at sea to a single question that every crisis asks us: will we trust Christ when the waves rise?
• the hidden belief that a good life should feel easy
• Amos on correction as a sign of love
• suffering as a wake up call aimed at conversion
• “Prepare to meet your God” as a crisis moment
• Jesus asleep in the storm and why it feels unsettling
• the order Jesus uses: calming the heart before the weather
• why obedience does not spare us from storms
• the promise of the Gospel: Christ is in the boat

Thank you for listening! Visit us at www.saintaugustinechurch.org