What Do I Owe You?
September 2, 2026
Fr. John Riccardo
Brothers and sisters: Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, "You shall not commit adultery; you shall not kill; you shall not steal; you shall not covet, "and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this saying, namely, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Love does no evil to the neighbor; hence, love is the fulfillment of the law (Romans 13:8-10).
“What do I owe you?”
It’s a common question we ask when we’re checking out of a store or restaurant. It’s the question that comes to mind as I pray with Paul’s words to us this coming Sunday from Romans. What exactly do I owe, well, anybody — whether they be family, a co-worker, or the homeless veteran on the corner asking for food?
”Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another…love is the fulfillment of the law.”
This is at one and the same time stunningly simple and remarkably difficult.
Those of us who live in the Detroit area are blessed to live in the shadow of a man who has left us all a wondrous example of Paul’s exhortation. Blessed Father Solanus Casey is buried at St. Bonaventure’s Capuchin Monastery in downtown Detroit. It’s a place of pilgrimage, not just for Catholics in Michigan, but for people from across the country.
Ordained to the ministerial priesthood in 1904, Casey was a “simplex priest.” This means he did not receive the faculties to preach or hear confessions. These faculties are usually withheld because those in authority think there is something seriously lacking in the man that would prohibit him from being effective either in the pulpit or the confessional. Boy, did his superiors ever get that wrong!
Photo Credit: Solanus Casey Center
Casey was assigned the task of being the porter at the Capuchin Monastery in Detroit. In other words, he more or less was relegated to opening the door for people to enter, either to pray in the chapel or to meet with one of the other “more important” priests. Soon, most of the visitors to the monastery were coming to talk to Casey. This ordinary man turned out to have extraordinary gifts for listening, both to the pilgrims who came and to the Lord who wanted to speak through him to the pilgrims. Casey prayed with hundreds of people each month. Some received miraculous cures from diseases. Others returned to the God they had abandoned years before. Some simply experienced the Father’s love shining through this gentle man. But they all left changed. Because they had experienced love.
And because they did, this man, and not the others in the Monastery, is long remembered, revered, and called upon for his intercession to this day.
How hard is it to open the door, for crying out loud?
Blessed Solanus Casey powerfully embodied what Paul calls all of us to be and to do for one another. He is a most moving testimony of the same words Paul offered to the Church in Corinth: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If … I have not love, I am nothing.”
May the example and the prayers of Solanus Casey, and all our patron saints, help us today and throughout the week to put into practice this simple and increasingly urgent command from the Lord.
ACTS XXIX Prayer Intentions
September 2026
For our mission with the priests, chancery staff, and lay leaders of the Diocese of Fall River, that our time together would be an occasion of genuine refreshment and renewal, and that the Holy Spirit would strengthen all who gather for the mission entrusted to them.
For the release of Fr. John’s new book, The Resistance: God’s Plan for Renewing the Human Family, that the Lord would use it to awaken hearts to the reality of the mission entrusted to the Church and that readers would be equipped to live out this mission with ever greater freedom, hope and courage.
For all those attending our upcoming Leadership Immersive from North Dakota, California, and Louisiana, that their time with us would bear abundant fruit and that the charism entrusted to ACTS XXIX would take deeper root in their lives and in their respective places of mission.
For the planning and preparation of the Jesus Conference, that the Holy Spirit would pour out a fresh anointing upon all who are planning, serving, and attending, so that Jesus would be encountered, known, and loved anew and that we would be mobilized for mission.
For the more than 200 religious communities who faithfully intercede for ACTS XXIX, that the Lord would richly bless and reward them for their hidden and generous prayer, and grant them renewed joy and fruitfulness in their own vocations.