Today at Holy Mass we hear from the Gospel of St Luke……..”One of those at table with Jesus said to him, “Blessed is the one who will dine in the Kingdom of God.” He replied to him, “A man gave a great dinner to which he invited many. When the time for the dinner came, he dispatched his servant to say to those invited, ‘Come, everything is now ready.’ But one by one, they all began to excuse themselves. The first said to him, ‘I have purchased a field and must go to examine it; I ask you, consider me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have purchased five yoke of oxen and am on my way to evaluate them; I ask you, consider me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have just married a woman, and therefore I cannot come.’ The servant went and reported this to his master. Then the master of the house in a rage commanded his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in here the poor and the crippled, the blind and the lame.’ The servant reported, ‘Sir, your orders have been carried out and still there is room.’ The master then ordered the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedgerows and make people come in that my home may be filled. For, I tell you, none of those men who were invited will taste my dinner.’”
Tuesday, November 5, 2024
“The lowly shall eat their fill; they who seek the LORD shall praise him: “May your hearts be ever merry!”
Monday, November 4, 2024
“Sharing your bread with the hungry……….Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer, you shall cry for help, and he will say: Here I am!”
Today at Holy Mass we hear in the Gospel of Luke something that is very interesting…A contradiction to say the least…But that is exactly what the message of Jesus Christ is all about…A contradiction…Jesus “turned the world on its head”…..That should tell us something about how we should view the world and also how we as Catholics should live in it…We are not here to “go along to get along”…We are a people set apart!….But I digress…Let’s get to the words of Christ today in the gospel…."When you hold a lunch or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or sisters or your relatives or your wealthy neighbors, in case they may invite you back and you have repayment. Rather, when you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous”……..Its November, Thanksgiving Day is coming……No better way to “give thanks” then to give to those who are unable to return the favor
Sunday, November 3, 2024
When we can see Jesus who is fully present in the Blessed Sacrament, we will see God in our neighbor…And when we see God in our neighbor, we will treat our neighbor as our self…There it is…You got the “secret”
Today at Holy Mass we hear in the Gospel of St Mark a scribe asks Jesus a question…."Which is the first of all the commandments?" ….Jesus being the straight forward man that he is boils the entire law down to two sentences….”You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these”….BOOM - There it is!……But here is the question?…How can we do this being that we are just mere humans all born with a fallen nature?…The answer is we can not do this to the degree that Jesus asks of us without divine assistance…I can hear all the “go-getters” saying right now…”Maybe you cannot do it but I can”….My answer to “that guy” is….”Time will prove me right and our shared fallen human nature bets against it!”….Jesus established a Church for a reason. In the Catholic Church we have the Sacraments and they give us the needed divine assistance to do exactly what Jesus asked of us…..When we can see Jesus who is fully present in the Blessed Sacrament, we will see God in our neighbor…And when we see God in our neighbor, we will treat our neighbor as we would want to be treated…There it is…You got the “secret”!….But how you may ask do we learn to see Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament?….The answer…We must remove all the “impediments” that impair our “vision”…We do that by going to a Priest frequently in the Sacramental of Reconciliation…Then when we receive the source of all grace, which is Jesus fully present in the Blessed Sacrament…Our “vision” will be “20/20” and in turn, we will “see” our neighbor differently and as a result, we will treat him differently.
Saturday, November 2, 2024
The Process of Purification starts now!…Let us begin
Today the Universal Catholic Church remembers all those who departed from us in the state of grace….This day is known as All Souls Day….Americanized Christianity does not believe in Purgatory…Sadly, many Catholics no longer concern themselves with the reality of Purgatory either…..Nothing enters heaven and stands before God until it is made pure….We must remember this reality because it is reality!….Therefore “all who die in God's grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven”…Do we pray for the dead?…This is a great mercy and our responsibility……Do we have Masses said for our loved ones?…….For those who are in Purgatory have their “ticket” for heaven in their hand…God is just “cleaning them up”…This is a great mercy……However, we should start the process of ‘cleaning ourself up” now
Friday, November 1, 2024
If you want to “make a difference”…Strive to become a saint….If you think God “can not work with someone like you”….Tell that to St Matthew…Who me?….Yes - YOU!
Today at Holy Mass we honor the saints…Who are the saints?…They simply are people who are in heaven…Some of these people are known to the world but most simply made it their life’s goal to do God’s will in whatever state of life God had chosen for them…..St John tells us this clearly from the second reading today from Mass. ”Beloved, we are God's children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope based on him makes himself pure, as he is pure”….Each of us have something to do and in order to do it, we must cooperate with God….At our Baptism, the life of Christ was placed in us….The mark of Baptism cannot be erased!….However, the process of sanctification is just that, a process…God who is “the potter and we the clay” are molded and formed by sanctifying grace…..Because of our human condition, we hold unto the “things of this world” as God gently “opens our hands”, which grasp too tightly to the many "things" that keep us from our true purpose……God does not call the qualified - He qualifies the called…And each of us have been called!…..Allow the “master potter” to work and mold his “clay”…..The final product will set the world on fire!
Thursday, October 31, 2024
People believe what they see, even those who are “unwilling to see”
Today at Holy Mass we hear from the Gospel of St Luke…Jesus is saddened by the fact that his people would not listen to him….“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how many times I yearned to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were unwilling!”…People did not want to hear it…Jesus was God…..Jesus performed miracles…And the people still “did not want to hear it”…..Is it any different today?…..As a father I tell my children all the time…”Listen to me”…Clearly I tell them things for their own good but there is something about human beings that do not want to be told what to do…Even if that instruction is for their benefit……God is constantly trying to form us in our everyday life…He gave us Sacred Scripture…Jesus founded a Church, which provides us with time tested teachings that have guided great saint to do amazing things….We have Our Lady to teach us the about her son…We have the Sacraments to enlighten our minds and hearts and fortify us with grace…And we ignore it all!…..This is why Jesus lamented over his people today in the Gospel……..“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how many times I yearned to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were unwilling!”
Wednesday, October 30, 2024
The morning came around and the “cock crowed”….."Cock a Doodle Doo”…And Peter the “tough guy” was no where to be found!…Why did that happen?….Jesus Prayed - Jesus Stayed….The Disciples Slept - The Disciples Ran!…Do you hear that all you “tough guys”!
Today at Holy Mass we hear from the Gospel of Luke…Jesus tells us something that breaks the American narrative of what many mainstream Protestants refer to as “Once Saved - Always Saved”…These are Jesus’s words not mine - So don’t shoot the messenger.…."Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I tell you, will attempt to enter but will not be strong enough”…Let’s breakdown what Jesus just said….First off, the road to heaven is narrow, which implies its the road less traveled….Which implies we as Catholics must be in the world but not of the world…This means we must be “set apart” and not like “the crowd”…Why is that?…Catholics are called to be a “light on the hill” for the world…In order to do that, we can not be “like the world”…What else is found in that one sentence from Jesus?….Jesus says that some will “not be strong enough”…What does he mean by that?….This statement implies effort is required by those who “walk on the narrow road”…..And since we are all human, which means we are all sinners, will need divine assistance to “walk on that road”…Why is that?…Well, lets look to what Jesus just said…On our own, “We are not strong enough”…I can hear all the “tough guys” out there saying right now…”That is what you think!”….My answer to all the “tough guys” is remember our friend St Peter…..When push came to shove, Peter denied his friend three times…In fact, every single one of the 12 disciples ran away…Why is that?…Because the road to heaven is “narrow”…And because of that in order to stay "on the road" we need divine assistance…What is that divine assistance?…..Daily Prayer, Weekly fasting and living a Sacramental life…..Do you hear that all you “tough guys” out there!….The road is narrow!