'Strangers to one another': What Catholics face today
Fr Hennick sets out the problem of social isolation facing Catholics in the current crisis, and gives the perspective needed to overcome it.
Fr Hennick sets out the problem of social isolation facing Catholics in the current crisis, and gives the perspective needed to overcome it.
Editor’s Notes
Fr Reid Hennick has kindly given us permission to publish the outstanding sermon which he preached on the Third Sunday after Easter, 2026.
Ordained by Bishop Alfonso de Galarreta in 2016, he spent much of his priesthood as a member of the Society of St Pius X, based in the United Kingdom. He left the SSPX on 12th February 2025; after a brief sabbatical began working publicly with the Roman Catholic Institute in December 2025, and became a member of the RCI in March 2026.
He has since been appointed as the priest in charge of Sacred Heart Church, Lawrence, Massachusetts. This is where he preached the sermon in question, and the video (above) is from the chapel’s YouTube channel.
Drawing on the Epistle and Gospel for the day, Fr Hennick’s sermon gives timely and very necessary perspective to Catholics trying to keep the faith in the post-conciliar wasteland.
‘I Beseech You as Strangers and Pilgrims’
Fr Reid Hennick ICR
Third Sunday of Easter
Headings added by The WM Review for ease of reading.
St. Peter’s Word of Address
“I Beseech You as Strangers and Pilgrims.”
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
St. Peter opens today’s epistle with a word of address. “Dearly beloved,” and then immediately “I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims.”
He greets us and then names us. Strangers and pilgrims.
There are two pictures here. A stranger is a resident foreigner. A man who lives among others, but is not of them. A pilgrim, however, is not a resident. A pilgrim is a traveler passing through. His home lies elsewhere. St. Peter tells us Catholics that we are both. We are both. We reside in the world, and at the same time are passing beyond it.
Of course, St. Peter is speaking directly to our relation to the pagan world. But something true of us among the pagans turns out to be true of us in another way, among ourselves, among one another.
Often enough, we Catholics feel as strangers to one another, even while on the same road. And this is the case especially these days.
This Congregation as Proof
For proof of this, consider this church. Consider this congregation. Many of you have traveled an hour or more to be here today. Perhaps you’ve told an uncomprehending family member or friend, maybe with an awkward laugh, that yes, you do this every Sunday and no, there’s nowhere closer.
Now, in this excursion, we know that we are doing our duty before God. But do we ever consider how odd these circumstances really are?
Because this is not how a parish worked in the Catholic past. Catholics would walk to church. They would walk to the village church. The priest knew the grandmother’s maiden name. He knew the child’s temperament, the father’s trade. The church was a web of familiarity, a thick web woven over generations. It was the locale’s place of worship.
Our church is not that. Our church cannot be that. Not during today’s crisis of faith. Our congregation is a gathering drawn from many places, which means it is a gathering of strangers, naturally speaking. The differences among us are not those simple variations we might expect to see in a family, an extended family, a village.
No, there are here marked differences in ethnicity, temperament, aptitudes, inclinations, education, socialization, and catechesis. Some of you come from families that never lost the true Mass, and others found it months ago, maybe even today. And the culture that we might share outside these walls is only that of an empire. It is thin. It is consumerist. It’s distracted.
And in this respect, we are not unlike the congregation that St. Peter writes to today. Jews and Gentiles, slaves and freemen gathered in the cities of a Roman Empire that gave them roads and commerce, but no bond beyond that.
Strangers to One Another
So we come to Mass as strangers. Not to Christ, never to Christ; but strangers to one another. We come with our own affections and fears that others in the pew cannot even venture to guess. We come with our habits of thinking and judging that they can’t appreciate.
Now on the essentials, those grand overarching questions of the faith, the sacraments, the moral law, we are in sync. Thanks be to God.
But on questions, for instance, of how this church ought to be run, what ought to be done here and now, in these circumstances, for this end, good men will differ. Good men will differ.
And such friction should scandalize no one. It comes quite simply from being a creature, not God. Honest disagreement over practical matters is not only possible, it’s unavoidable for us.
The Angels in the Book of Daniel
St. Thomas Aquinas teaches something remarkable about this fact. He says that even the good angels – pure spirits of flawless intellect confirmed in grace – even the good angels can disagree over practical matters. And we see as much in the tenth chapter in the book of Daniel.
The prophet Daniel has been mourning. He’s been in mourning for three weeks straight. He has seen the afflictions coming upon his people, and he fasts in sackcloth. An angel at last comes and speaks to him.
“Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that thou did set thy heart to understand, thy words have been heard. But the prince of the kingdom of the Persians resisted me one and twenty days. And behold, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me.”
Now, what’s being said here? We have two angels, both good, both holy, and they have been in contest for three full weeks over what is to be done with God’s people.
The angel that is speaking with Daniel is the guardian angel of the Jews. He wants the Jews delivered from Persia so that they might escape the danger of idolatry. However, the guardian angel of the Persians, of the pagan kingdom, he resists. He begs that the Jews remain so that his own charges, the Persians, might be converted to the true religion by the example of the holy Jews living among them.
So in short, both angels are pursuing a real good. They are both right about something – and they contend.
What resolves this? It’s not the cleverness of one. It’s not the force of argument. It is St. Michael the Archangel who comes bearing the ordination of God. That’s what solves it.
But here is the point. If even the good angels can see a practical matter differently, how much more we ourselves?
The Devil’s Exploitation of Disappointment
When we overlook this fact, we are bound to be disappointed. And the devil is ready to exploit that disappointment.
He will tempt us to see this parishioner-stranger of ours with whom we disagree as an enemy, and we begin to fixate on our divergence of opinion.
We let this disagreement take on absurd proportions in our head, and soon enough we are dividing the entire congregation into camps.
We find a little circle that happens to agree with us and feel relief at last. Finally, a kind of fellowship.
But we’re only united in a shared contempt. There’s nothing positive here. In a way, it’s the stranger to my stranger is my friend.
Now, this is not a new problem in the Church, the Church at large. St. Paul had to deal with it. He spent chapters trying to pull the Corinthians out of it. And he would give voice to their factionalism. “I am of Paul. I am of Apollo. I am of Cephas.” And this he calls carnal. Carnal. It’s the same word used by St. Peter today.
Charity as the First Answer
The answer to this temptation is to refuse the narrative, because our differences need not vanish. The answer is that we love, that we exercise our charity through these differences. Remember the mandate of charity does not depend on our feelings of compatibility or mutual merit.
St. Bernard, he once made a vow of charity to his community, which is worth hearing in full.
“Whatever you do to me, I have resolved to love you always, even if you do not love me. I will conquer by my kindness. I will come to the aid of those who refuse my care. I will do good to the ungrateful. I will honor those who despise me.
“For we are members of one another.”
That is the standard. It’s not a feeling. It’s a resolution.
We must not miss what charity is all about. St. Paul calls it '“the bond of perfection.” Charity is the tendon that unites every member of the Mystical Body both to the head and to one another. Without it, without charity, though we might preserve every doctrine and keep every fast, we become, in that terrible phrase of St. Paul, “as sounding brass.”
And then everything will have been for nothing.
Authority as the Second Answer
Now, thankfully, there is a second answer to our disagreements, but it is as much a matter of the will as the first. Again, the story of the angels in Daniel is our reminder.
The only thing that can truly terminate a practical disagreement and promote common action, the only thing is authority. The exercise of clearly delineated authority.
Authority changes everything. Authority’s sanction is what solves the stalemate.
And this, even if below the surface, some might still be a little attached to their own proposal. And in human affairs, that’s fine. A quiet reservation held without passion, without insistence, that is one thing.
But when this reservation is nurtured, rehearsed, whispered into the ear of others, that’s another thing. That is the subversion of peace.
And this peace is at the very heart of the common good to which we are all called. This project of sanctification. St. Thomas teaches in fact that this peace, this ordered submission, this social harmony, it’s better than any one man taken by himself.
Why? Because without peace, the community and every member in it individually can attain nothing, least of all God.
A Little While
So our coordination, this sign of heaven, even if frustrating at times, it is all in view of our one day seeing Christ.
“A little while and you shall not see me, and again a little while and you shall see me.”
Our Lord is speaking these words at the last supper. The Apostles as usual don’t understand. But he encourages them nevertheless. He tells them that their present sorrow will be turned into joy.
“So also you now indeed have sorrow, but I will see you again and your heart shall rejoice and your joy no man shall take from you.”
St. Augustine, he comments on these words of our Lord.
“The whole space which the present age of the world passes through is but a little while. This little while seems long to us because it is yet going on. But when it is ended, we shall feel how short it has been.”
And St. Bede the Venerable, he comments in this way.
“These words of our Lord apply to all the faithful who strive amid the tears and pains of the present life to reach eternal joy.
“With good reason they weep in this present life, for they are not yet able to see him whom they love, they know that as long as they are in this mortal body, wanderers from their true country, they must be.”
“Wanderers from their true country.” Again, the idea returns. Strangers and pilgrims.
Our Conversation Is in Heaven
To put it in perspective, the hour-long drive, the unfamiliar faces, the disagreements over matters that seem so clear to us. “A little while.”
Our strangeness to one another need not scandalize. In fact, it’s the heartening reminder that our present sorrow, if we endure, will be turned into joy. Our estrangement from God need not be endless.
And for all that, however, our virtues of faith and charity, they should make us peer a bit harder. Before the canon of the mass, the priest turns and prays, Orate fratres:
“Pray, brethren, that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God.”
“Pray, brethren”, not “Pray strangers”. The Mass is the moment in our week in which our natural strangeness is overcome. It’s overcome by the Sacrifice we share in.
The Council of Trent calls this sacrament “the sign of unity, the bond of charity, the symbol of peace”.
And the fathers have their favorite illustration. As the many grains of wheat are pressed into one bread, so the many who receive our Lord’s body are made one body with him and with one another.
That’s what’s happening at the altar, at the communion rail. By the Sacrifice offered, by the flesh we receive, we are made into something we could not make ourselves: one body.
Our Manner of Life
So to close, St. Peter tells us that our manner of life, “our conversation” is how he puts it, it must be:
“… good among the Gentiles, that whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by the good works which they shall behold in you glorify God in the day of visitation.”
It’s the very word St. Paul uses elsewhere. Conversatio, conversation, to the Philippians. He writes, “Our conversation is in Heaven”. He’s saying that our way of life is ordered to another city. We’re pilgrims. Our way of life is ordered to another city. So the manners of that city ought to be visible in how we live in this one.
So as the world outside us looks at this glorious church of ours, they likely every Sunday see an odd lot driving in from every which direction. But let them see something that they can’t account for by nature: a charity among real strangers.
Let them say of us what the pagans said of the first Christians. See how they love one another.
And indeed, what is the alternative? What is the alternative for us? Providence has seen fit to put us all closely together during this pilgrimage.
This company is the means our Lord has chosen to train our hearts along the way.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Post-script
S.D. Wright
Fr Hennick is a personal friend, and I am very glad to be publishing one of his sermons.
A further point: his involvement with the RCI provided me with the opportunity to make the following remarks on Twitter, which I include here for posterity.
First, on 15th December 2025:
The WM Review has had disagreements with the RCI and some of its members over the years. We’ve generally tried to keep it respectful – but others will be the judges of how well we’ve succeeded with that over the past couple of years.
We still have some disagreements on some issues, and that isn’t going to change.
But Fr Hennick’s involvement with the RCI seems like an opportunity to state, for the very little that it’s worth:
We agree with many of the RCI’s theological and practical positions, including on some topics where they diverge from other groups (with no disrespect intended to any other groups either).
We are grateful for the work of the RCI, its priests and its Superior General, Bishop Sanborn.
We wish them the best in this work.
We would prefer to be on good terms than bad terms.
Who cares what we think about the above? No-one, of course – but given the disagreements, there it is.
Best of luck to Fr Hennick in this new environment.
S.D.Wr.
Then, on 28 March 2026:
Fr Reid Hennick’s official reception into the Roman Catholic Institute is a good occasion to make some more points in a similar vein to the quoted tweet below.
Although I personally do not hold the Cassiciacum Thesis...
Mgr Guérard des Lauriers was probably a saint. See here.
Mgr Guérard des Lauriers is generally underrated and underappreciated by those who do not hold the Cassiciacum Thesis. That is to say nothing of those who positively denigrate him.
The Cahiers de Cassiciacum have a wealth of insight into the current crisis of the Church, and are extremely interesting and valuable reading.
If “totalism” (a term I do not accept) were proved to be false – perhaps by proving that our arguments about public heresy etc were not sound – this would not mean that Paul VI etc were true Popes. I do not believe that the arguments typically raised against the vacancy are sound, but if they were, they do not adequately answer the arguments raised by the Thesis.
In any case, many of those arguments raised by the Thesis are already held and used by those who do not accept it – and arguments about public heresy are downstream of them.
Work such as Fr Coradello’s Sodalitium essay on Titles – and older articles like Fr Barbara’s explanation of why he came to accept the Cassiciacum Thesis after years of opposition – show that there can be a lot more common ground than people think.
The revival of “The Thesis Wars” of a few years ago, interesting though they were, does not seem to be a good thing.
Best of luck to Fr Hennick and the RCI.
S.D.Wr.
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Thank you for sharing this homily bringing new Biblical insights into the pressing need for charity amid real differences among far-flung traditional Catholics brought together for worship by necessity. Thanks to Fr Hennick.
Thank you for sharing this, although I have never met Fr. Hennick. I used to stay at Sacred Heart when I was discerning my vocation. Back then the priests of the late Bishop Morello serviced that chapel. God Bless you.