Fr. Paul Castelli (Episcopal Campus Ministry at West Virginia University)

The Rev. Paul H. Castelli, OCS
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Listen to sermons and messages from Fr. Paul Castelli, Vocations Director and Campus Missioner for the Episcopal Diocese of West Virginia, serving the Episcopal Campus Ministry at West Virginia University. This podcast also includes Fr. Paul’s sermons in other congregational settings, including the backlog of sermons from his prior parish before coming to Morgantown, WV. Learn more about our campus ministry by visiting our Linktree: https://linktr.ee/episcopalwvu

  1. 10/30/2025

    “God, have mercy on me a sinner.” A sermon for the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost 2025

    A sermon preached on the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost at the student service for the St. Thomas Aquinas Episcopal Campus Ministry at West Virginia University Focus Texts: Luke 18:9-14 There are basically two kinds of people: those who know they’re dead and those who don’t. Today’s parable shows us this dichotomy illustrated by the Pharisee, a man who does not know he is dead, and the tax collector, a man who knows that he is. Many will assume that Jesus came to make the bad good and the good better when, in fact, Jesus came to bring the (spiritually) dead to life (bringing the physically dead to life comes later!) Bottom line: we can’t impress God. We can either do what is required of us—and essentially acknowledge that we’ve done nothing but what we were supposed to do in the first place—or acknowledge our failings. That’s it. There’s nothing we can bring to God that will fill him with awe. All we can do is bring empty hands ready to receive grace, broken hearts ready to be mended, and trust in God’s promises For centuries, saints and sinners (they’re the same, by the way) have been spiritually nourished by a prayer based on the words of the tax collector: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. Said repeatedly, slowly, and deliberately, this prayer can have a powerful affect on our lives. It draws us deeper into the presence of God, calling to the forefront of our minds our deep need for God’s mercy, filling us with gratitude for his boundless grace

  2. 10/20/2025

    “You’re not too much for God.” A Sermon for the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost 2025

    A sermon preached in the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost at the student service for the St. Thomas Aquinas Episcopal Campus Ministry at West Virginia University Focus Texts: Genesis 32:22-31; Luke 18:1-8 Many people get this idea in their heads that they shouldn’t bother God with their problems or that other people’s prayer needs are more important than their own. But this scarcity mindset doesn’t accurately reflect the creator of the universe who seeks nothing more or less than to be your closest and dearest friend. God seeks an intimate relationship with all of us, and nothing is too little or too big to share with Him. There is no “too much” when it comes to the prayers that we lift up to the Lord. You’re not a burden and you’re not too much — You are God’s beloved. Jesus teaches us not to hold back, but to persevere in prayer

  3. 10/20/2025

    “Wait…Fr. Paul is a Leper?” A Sermon for the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost 2025

    A sermon preached for the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost preached at the campus ministry service for the St. Thomas Aquinas Episcopal Campus Ministry at West Virginia University Focus Texts: 2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c; Luke 17:11-19 “Your faith has made you well." What does it mean to be made well by faith in Jesus Christ? Our readings included two different stories of Lepers being miraculously healed. But faith gives us a healing that is more than skin deep.

  4. 10/05/2025

    “Of Mustard and Mulberries”: A Sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost 2025

    A sermon preached at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in St. Alban’s, West Virginia on the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost Focus Text: Luke 17:5-10 (specifically vv. 5-6) Just before this passage, Jesus is instructing his apostles on sin, faith, and duty. Particularly important is what Jesus says about offering forgiveness to those who repent of their sin against you: as many as seven times in a day if they sin against you and repent seven times in a day (don’t take the number in a woodenly literal sense - forgive as many times as someone repents). It is in response to this that the apostles cry out to Jesus, “Increase our faith!” Jesus’ response? Mustard seeds and mulberry bushes… WHAT?! We need to always remember the sever ways of reading scripture. Here it is crucial to read the text in the allegorical sense — a spiritual way of reading focused on symbolic connections — and also the anagogical sense — spiritual or mystic reading of scripture. The Church Fathers help us to better understand the symbolic meaning of the mustard seeds and mulberry tree in a way that may surprise us. This sermon draws on sermons and commentaries by St. Augustine of Hippo, St. John Chrysostom, St. Cyril of Alexandria, and even rabbinic Jewish tradition to understand the symbolic meaning of these plants — what it means to have mustard seed faith and the meaning of uprooting a mulberry tree and planting it into the sea. This helps us to better understand how Jesus is responding to the apostles’ cry to increase their faith. A little faith is all it takes to do incredible things, even uproot the mulberry trees (the temptations of the devil, the passions, vices, and habitual sins) and cast them into the abyss. And when we cry to God for help in faith, God will always increase our faith. Grace always precedes and follows us as we walk in faith as disciples of Jesus Christ. Divine Grace makes it possible for us to do what we cannot do on our own — but for God all things are possible. God adds to our faith when we cry out for strength, for aid, for faith. This helps us to do the impossible, even to forgive those we wish not to forgive; to root out evil from within us; to face our fears; to heal from grief; to face terminal illness with dignity, grace, and unwavering faith; to release control and trust in the Lord. Cry out to God to increase your faith. He’ll do it every time.

  5. 09/29/2025

    “Let’s Break the Rules and Talk About Money.” A Sermon for the 16th Sunday after Pentecost

    A sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost preached at the campus ministry service for the St. Thomas Aquinas Episcopal Campus Ministry at West Virginia University Focus Text: Luke 16:19-31; 1 Timothy 6:6-19 “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” (Matthew 25:40) “If you cannot recognize Christ in the beggar, you will not find Him in the Chalice.” (St. John Chrysostom) “You don’t see many hearses pulling Uhauls.” (Liz LaMoreaux) “He who dies with the most toys doesn’t win, he dies.” (Unknown) All of these quotes have something to say about the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus in conjunction with St. Paul’s oft misquoted statement, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.” Take it all together, and it has a whole lot to say about each of us and how we choose to live our lives, how we set priorities, and who to what we ultimately devote ourselves to — God or some other alternative. There’s not much to say here. Just listen.

  6. 09/23/2025

    “A Crooked Christ?” A Sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost 2025

    A sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost preached at the campus ministry service for the St. Thomas Aquinas Episcopal Campus Ministry at West Virginia University Focus Text: Luke 16:1-13 The Parable of the Shrewd Manager (or is it the dishonest steward or the unjust steward?) is considered among the most perplexing of Jesus’ parables. Many preachers grumble and groan when it comes up once every three years on the Sunday Lectionary shared by many denominations (What a lovely day to preach on the Collect of the Day!). It’s hard to know what to make of Jesus’ story here and the connection between it and the sayings directly connected to it. Some commentators try to shield Jesus, and our sensibilities, from the scandal of it all by saying, “He never said that.” But that just doesn’t add up, does it? Why would we hide the offense? Why do we blanche at scandal in the Gospel narratives? Is that not the direct context in the chapter preceding this? The Pharisees are scandalized that Jesus would publicly eat with tax collectors and sinners. Then we receive a progression of thematically connected parables (with some unrelated ones in between today’s and what follows on this list): ​ The Parable of the Lost Sheep​ The Parable of the Lost Coin​ The Parable of the Prodigal Son​ The Parable of the Shrewd Manager​ The Parable of the Persistent Widow (and the Unjust Judge)​ The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector Jesus doesn’t balk at scandal. The truth is that the Gospel is scandalous. That the Son of God would become man and die for us “while we were still sinners” (Romans 5:8) is scandalous. And, after, what could possibly be more scandalous than the way Christ died on the cross, a mode of Roman execution reserved for runaway slaves and violent criminals — Jesus, the Son of God, nailed naked to a cross for all who passed by to see. The means of our salvation were and are inherently scandalous. The shrewd manager in our parable cuts what the debtors owe in half. Jesus abolishes our debts entirely. Grace is dishonest wealth and heavenly glorification with Christ is true riches received when we are faithful with the grace given us. Jesus was killed like a crook for crooks — you and me. Is it fair? By no means. Is it just? Absolutely not! But that’s the promise of the Gospel — we don’t get what we deserve. How fortunate we are that Christ isn’t fair. How “lucky for us that we don’t have to deal with a just steward,” (Robert Farrar Capon, Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus, p. 309).

  7. 09/15/2025

    “Rejoice! What Was Lost Has Now Been Found (You)” A Sermon for the 14th Sunday after Pentecost 2025

    A sermon for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost preached at the campus ministry service for the St. Thomas Aquinas Episcopal Campus Ministry at West Virginia University Focus Texts: Luke 15:1-10; Exodus 32:7-14 Jesus chooses to claim tax collectors and sinners as his people when he dines with them. Some Pharisees who witness this public acceptance are scandalized and ridicule him. Enter the parables of the lost sheep and coin and hear, “there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents." Faith is evident when we realize that we can only approach God with outstretched empty hands to receive mercy, grace, forgiveness of sins, and new life in Jesus Christ. It realizes that we have nothing to offer God but our hearts and our acceptance of his acceptance of us and recognizing need for God. Faith doesn’t rely on the condemning others for the sake of contrast needed for a self-justifying narrative. These contrast, like in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, fill the religious landscape of the United States. As David Zahl wrote in Seculosity, we have not become less religious but are rather more than ever before — just not in places of worship. New religions — new self-justifying stories that can stand only by comparing and contrasting ourselves with others — have emerged instead: religions of busyness, work, fitness, nutrition, sex, and politics. In the new religion of political self-righteousness, it is not Christ who saves but rather the “correct” political agendas and leaders which fit our ideologies. The priests, pastors, and prophets of this religion are politicians, lobbyists, and talking heads. Righteousness is found in the ridicule of “diabolically evil political enemies” who stand against all that our nation holds dear (left or right) and purity tests are normative to determine distinguish “true belief” from “heretical apostasy.” The sacrifices offered to this religion’s “gods” come in the forms of horrors, such as school shootings and political violence, such as the school shooting in Colorado (in which two students were critically injured before the 16-year-old shooter turned his gun in himself) which happened just one minute after the political assassination of Charlie Kirk. This self-righteous political religiosity defines how many progressive liberals talk about the demonic political violence that took a young man’s life, leaving his wife a widow and his young children fatherless. In like manner, one of the right wing purity tests is found in an often empty response in the wake of equally diabolical mass shootings. Such schemes of self-righteousness that define our self-justifying stories pervade even within the church when we learn about the conversion of high(ish) profile individuals converting to faith in Jesus Christ as Christians take to social media, as these conversions are often made publicly known. There are Christians — both theologically progressive and conservative — who learn on social media platforms about these et repentant kin, such as actor Shia LaBeouf and former OnlyFans girl Nala Ray. They do not rejoice with the angels about these newborn Christian lives. Rather, they respond in pharisaical sneering and mockery (“Yeah, sure. We’ll see how long this lasts”) or refuse to forget a past that God has put out of his mind. Their conversion is treated in comments section with suspicion and the same ridicule of the Pharisees in our Gospel passage. I am convinced that much of this arises as a way to ignore our own religious insecurity — our inability to recognize our own lostness, our own foundness, and the acceptance that we have in Christ when we see ourselves as unacceptable. We hold ourselves in high esteem only by dragging others through the mud because we hate to look in the mirror and find ourselves wanting (yet wanted!). This changes when we readily realize that we are the sinners who Jesus sits with at dinner saying, “these are my people.”

  8. 09/08/2025

    “Did Jesus just tell me to hate people?” A Sermon for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost (9.7.25)

    Sermon preached Sunday evening on September 7th for the St. Thomas Aquinas Episcopal Campus Ministry at West Virginia University Focus texts — Luke 14:25-33 and Philemon Jesus isn’t really telling us to hate people, is he? I’ve got good news and bad news (that’s still actually good news). The word in the original text (μισέω) translates better into English as something along the lines of love less or prefer less. What Jesus is getting at is a sort of emotional detachment from relationships and things that may cause us to deprioritize God. Our relationship with Jesus comes first. Discipleship comes first. And we must never forget the cost of discipleship and never settle for cheap grace (Bonhoeffer). While we shouldn’t go out looking for crosses, we must be ready to accept and shoulder the burden of the crosses that do come our way. As disciples of Jesus, one of these burdens is the need to detach from that which prevents or inhibits us from putting God first. We learn something, though. Do you want to be a better child to your parents? Put God first. Do you want to be a better parent to your children? Put God first. Do you want to be a better friend or student? Put God first. Do you want to be the best you can be in your career? Put God first. When we put God first, we find that God has a way of transforming us in to the best versions of ourselves, beyond what we could ever ask or imagine.

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About

Listen to sermons and messages from Fr. Paul Castelli, Vocations Director and Campus Missioner for the Episcopal Diocese of West Virginia, serving the Episcopal Campus Ministry at West Virginia University. This podcast also includes Fr. Paul’s sermons in other congregational settings, including the backlog of sermons from his prior parish before coming to Morgantown, WV. Learn more about our campus ministry by visiting our Linktree: https://linktr.ee/episcopalwvu

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