Tickets to the Eucharist

Dante speaks to Pope Nicholas III,
committed to the Inferno for simony.

I recently wrote a blog post for Church Anew about Simony, the buying and selling of sacred things. It's a reflection about one of the most ancient limits the church has placed on commerce, a prohibition that is occasionally forgotten in our marketbased society.

"In 2023, the Washington National Cathedral caused a social media uproar when it announced that it was selling tickets for its Christmas Eve Eucharist. Though the decision was quickly retracted, the initial sale ended up stoking a passionate—and for me, highly interesting—debate about the moral and theological question of whether a church should ever charge people for the Eucharist, or for any sacrament, really."

Click here to read the full post.

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Welcome!

My name is Miguel Escobar and I am an Episcopal priest in the Diocese of Long Island, currently serving a two-year curacy at San Andrés Episcopal Church in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. My work centers on the intersection of faith, justice, and economics, including through research and presentations on Christianity’s complicated relationship with money, wealth, and poverty. I write and think about these issues from my location in a parish setting, and more specifically as someone committed to Spanish-language, Latino ministry. As a writer, I focus on how Christianity has wrestled with questions of money from its earliest days to the present. My first book, The Unjust Steward: Wealth, Poverty, and the Church Today , traces how the early Church’s stance on wealth shifted over the first five centuries, going from a position of sharp critique to eventual accommodation, and reflects on what was gained and lost in that transition. I’m currently working on a second book that explores the...

Called in Uncertain Times (Sermon in English and Spanish)

This sermon was preached at San Andrés on January 18, 2026 and is available in English and Spanish (see below). Listen to the sermon in English here and in Spanish here . / Este sermón fue predicado en San Andrés el 18 de enero de 2026 y está disponible en inglés y en español (véase más abajo). Puede escuchar el sermón en inglés aquí y en español aquí . Over the past few weeks, I have been very busy. On January 1, I went to visit my family in Texas, where I had the chance to see my father, who is slowly recovering from a stroke he suffered in August. He is doing much better and is walking again. See bottom of page for image details Last Sunday, I also filled in for Father Carlos Rendón at Church of the Redeemer while he was doing important work related to the search for the next bishop of this diocese. And in the middle of all this, I had a guest staying with me—a friend from Venezuela. You can imagine the conversations we had about everything that has happened in his country and in ...

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This sermon was preached at San Andrés Episcopal in Sunset Park on August 3, 2025 and is available in English and Spanish (see below). Listen to the sermon in English here and in Spanish here . / Este sermón fue predicado en San Andrés el 3 de agosto de 2026 y está disponible en inglés y en español (véase más abajo). Puede escuchar el sermón en inglés aquí y en español aquí . Today is the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, during Ordinary Time—a season in which we journey with Jesus toward Jerusalem and have the opportunity to watch him interact with people from many different towns: healing, helping those in need, and teaching about ethical questions. For me, this is a favorite season because we are not focused on the great doctrines of the Church, but on Jesus’ ethical teachings and his reflections on everyday life. Today, we hear his thoughts on something that was part of his world and remains part of ours: greed and the accumulation of great wealth. Before we talk about this, I want ...

Miguel Castilleja Escobar

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