Homily from Father Randy Koenigsknecht
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In his homily for Safe Haven Sunday, Father Randy reflects on God’s healing power—from cleansing lepers in ancient times to restoring hearts and homes today. He challenges families to create “safe havens” in the digital age by setting healthy boundaries around technology, fostering real connection, and inviting Christ’s presence into their homes. Through prayer, intentional family time, and spiritual safeguards, we can protect our loved ones and allow God to bring freedom, healing, and unity where there has been isolation and pain.
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Father Randy:
In the ancient world, there were many things to be afraid of. Some of those things persist down to this day, things like war and natural disaster. But others don’t really move us anymore. So in the first reading of the gospel, we hear about one of those things that the ancient people rightfully feared, but that we are no longer concerned about. That’s the disease known as leprosy. For people in the days of both Elisha and Jesus, although they’re almost a thousand years apart, leprosy was a death sentence, a terrible one at that. It meant shame, isolation from everyone else who’s not a leper, and the life of just struggling to survive until the disease finally consumed them. So it’s in this background that makes these stories today of Jesus and Elisha so striking. Because this disease that everyone else is afraid of catching, that’s incurable, God heals simply by having the leper dunk seven times at River Jordan.
And it’s the same power that Jesus demonstrates, not by like touching the man and telling him to be healed, but just saying, go show yourself to the priest. And they’re healed on the way. Not just one man, but ten. This shows us that our God, he’s a God of power. He’s a God of healing. So in our day, we no longer fear leprosy. But there is a new struggle where I believe that God wants to reveal his power. He wants to bring healing to all of us.
Today is Safe Haven Sunday. This is the third year that we’ve had Safe Haven Sunday, and it’s a Sunday where we seek to raise awareness to assist our parents in raising their kids in this technological age. The dangers of uninhibited internet access are very real, and even with the growing awareness among parents about the kinds of explicit and especially adult materials that kids can find on the internet, the average age of exposure in the States is still about 12 years old. And around 15% of kids are encountering it at 10 years old or younger. Depending on which survey data you choose to use, around 75% on the low end, or 90% of our teens, are encountering this kind of content.
So, of course, this is an issue that doesn’t just affect children. It also affects many adults. In marriage, it’s a major cause of divorce and pain. For the individual who’s struggling, it’s a source of shame, of isolation. Sometimes this disease can seem insurmountable, like leprosy was for the ancient people. This seems just too addictive, too easy to access. It’s everywhere. Too wounding for those who’ve encountered it. But the reality is that it can be overcome. And Safe Haven Sunday is meant to help you to form your home, whether you have kids or not, into a safe haven for yourself, for those around you.
So what do we need to do? How do we make our homes into safe havens? To help us understand this process, I want to share with you an image that I’ve just been praying with over this past week as I’ve gotten ready for this weekend. I want you to picture a broken, run-down house. There’s rain blowing in the windows because they’re all broken. There’s glass on the floor, the floorboards are rotted, and there are holes all over the place. It’s not a safe place for anyone to be, let alone a kid. It’s too easy to get hurt, even if you’re trying to step gingerly around the glass and obstacles. You’re trying to be careful, but it’s basically inevitable that something will happen.
Yet that is sometimes what our houses can look like on a spiritual level. If we don’t have any safeguards around our technology, around our phones or whatever we have, it’s not guaranteed that there will be an accident—but the probability is extremely high, and our data backs this up. Of the teens who have reported encountering explicit content, around 60% of them said that their first exposure was entirely by accident. It wasn’t their fault. They were scrolling in dangerous conditions, and they got hurt. But that’s not the way it has to be. There are ways that we can clean up the glass and patch the floorboards, so it’s less likely that our kids or anyone gets hurt.
Especially during our past two Safe Haven Sundays, we’ve talked about some of these methods—things like filtering software, programs like Covenant Eyes, or simply enabling parental controls on devices until the kids are old enough to protect themselves. In this kind of category of defensive measures, I would also include family and personal rules about where and when we use our phones and other devices. For example, for most people, using your phone in a private room like the bedroom or even just doom scrolling late at night is a source of temptation. It just doesn’t lead anywhere good. And because of this, many people have rules: just like at 10 o’clock, my phone goes out in the hallway—and so do all my teens’ phones and my kids’ stuff. It’s a rule that protects not just the kids but all of us, parents as well.
But as necessary as these defensive barriers are—and they are necessary—they’re not enough on their own. To go back to that analogy of the house, just cleaning up the mess, patching all the things that are broken, that’s not enough to make that into a home. For that house to become a safe haven, there needs to be a family and strong connections between the family members. When these connections are strong, we should feel safe enough to be vulnerable, to get the help that we need when we need it.
Of course, these connections themselves are just a great aid. Oftentimes, when people go back to explicit material, it’s because they’re looking for a connection. Not all the time, but many times. It provides them with just a momentary satisfaction, no matter how fleeting. But when we have these healthy connections already in place, there’s just a decreased likelihood that we’ll need to look elsewhere for them. Sometimes the difference between someone being hooked and someone being able to just leave it behind when they encounter it can be just that—healthy and vulnerable relationships within our families and outside of them. It’s very important to have good friendships, to have people that you can trust, that you can be vulnerable with.
So focusing just on our families, how do we foster these kinds of relationships and connections? It begins just with spending time together as a family, enjoying each other’s company. I know from my own experience, growing up with all the smartphones and computers all around me, just how important it was to have time together as a family—just for family—whether it was playing cards or watching a movie, it was done together. And those are some of the fondest memories that I have of growing up.
Another way that you can foster this experience is by having a family mealtime and putting an emphasis on, during this time, the phones go somewhere else. So that we’re forced to be present to each other, forced to talk to each other—uncomfortable and awkward though it may be at times. It’s these kinds of small interactions that make for a strong home, that make for a safe haven.
Now, this is just scratching the surface of the possibilities of all the things that you could possibly do and think about for your own family. To help teach and inspire you in this task, we’ve got a couple hundred copies of the book Connected, which will be available at all the exits. I’d encourage you to read through it, flip through it. It’s got a lot more data, a lot more suggestions. But of course, remember that all families are unique. We all have different needs, right?
So ultimately, we need to take time to ask Jesus, just very directly, what He’s inviting us to do to make our homes the havens that we need. “Jesus, what are You calling me to do now? What is the step You want me to take?” And take that—because we don’t do this work alone. God wants us to be strong in our faith. He wants us to be strong in our families. So if we allow Him, He can bring healing where there is or has been brokenness and pain.
He came that we might be free. And the mark of the Spirit is unity and the authentic connections that we were created for—the connections that make for a safe haven. So when we pray together, when we invite the Spirit in, He draws us together just like that, just like a family needs to have.
So I want to invite you to join me in prayer for Jesus’ power and healing to be present in us and in our homes. So let’s pray:
Lord Jesus, as we seek to protect ourselves and our families, give us wisdom and the courage to see what You are calling us to do—and to do it. Lord, be with those who are struggling with addiction. Break through shame and isolation. Reveal once again Your love for them and restore their hope. St. Michael, intercede and aid us in this task of protecting our domestic churches. Amen.