Many people are religious and want to believe in God, but don’t know him. We have all been in conversations where someone says something like, “I believe in God.” This is a very common sentiment, even among Christians when speaking to one another. It appears that many people today are religious, but don’t believe in Jesus Christ. One problem is that we Christians become sloppy in our language. The statement, “I believe in God”, doesn’t really say much, and doesn’t really clarify your faith as a believer.
St. Joseph the Worker
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Evangelization and Call
Evangelization and Vocation — No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him, John 6:44-51. Vocational call: Protestant terminology from 1600’s. Vocational call is not a Catholic concept. We are drawn; we fall in love. Telling people the truth vs. recruiting. Catholics don’t evangelize? We’re too big a Church to say we don’t evangelize.
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Feast of St. Mark 2012
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I Am The Bread Of Life
3rd Week of Easter, John 6:30-32
Religious options? Protestant influences, misconceptions.
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Easter changes things
Easter changes things. Once you experience Easter things can never be the same.
Once you accept the reality of Easter, you realize that those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God and follow his commandments, cannot die. Our earthly machines wear out. Our flesh dies, but like Jesus, our brother, death cannot hold us.
Once you come to accept the reality of Easter, human history can never conform to secular history. History is not repeating itself. There is a beginning, a middle and an end of history. The center of history is the earthly life of Jesus, including his passion, death, burial and Resurrection.
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The Wind Blows Where It Will
2nd Tuesday of Easter. The workings of the Holy Spirit. Jesus and Nicodemus.
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Unpacking the Mystery of Easter
Judas Iscariot, the Sycophant
Funeral Homily
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The Truth Will Set You Free
Secular universities would not allow me to preach this homily. Yet, they represent that the Truth will set you free.
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Something Has to Change
Seraph Serpents
Road to Emmaus – First Mass
In those days after the Resurrection and the Pentecost the Church had to figure out what to do next.
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Call No Man Father
Since I was ordained a Catholic priest some of my Protestant friends get tongue-tied when they greet me. They have a tough time calling me Father. I don’t care what they call me, but it is interesting how they struggle with my new situation.
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Don’t waste Lent!
Today I wish to revisit some of the issues we spoke about on Ash Wednesday, and business as usual.
How is your Lent going? Sometimes we simply cannot continue with “business as usual”. Our “business as usual” is our accommodation with the world. The Church knows that we cannot simply continue with “business as usual”. That is why we have always had Lent. [Read more…]
Ash Wednesday 2012
Sometimes we simply cannot continue with “business as usual”. Our “business as usual” is our accommodation with the world. The Church knows that we cannot simply continue with “business as usual”. That is why we have always had Lent.
Something has to give. Something has to change. Our faith cannot simply be an external practice. The words of Ash Wednesday are always,
“Remember man that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” [Read more…]
Priesthood: A Love Affair
Recently a Catholic gentleman asked me about my calling to the priesthood. The question struck me as strange. He was obviously curious with a good question. I don’t question his motives. He was actually thinking about his teenage son who had told him he was thinking about the priesthood. However, the man’s language struck me as strange. I don’t think in terms of a “call” to priesthood.
We have all heard the word, “calling”, with respect to a religious vocation. It is very common in today’s language. [Read more…]
St. Sophronius
Candlemas, Presentation of the Lord. Homily of St. Sophronius, last Patriarch of Jerusalem before the invasion by the Muslims, 7th century.
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Pray For The Unborn
We are initiating a new Liturgical Year. We are also initiating a new cycle of biblical readings in the Mass. This year we will explore the Gospel of Mark, which may have been one of the first Gospels written, shortly before the year 70 AD, probably in Rome.
Mark gets right down to business in the first chapter. Jesus had already been baptized by John in the Jordan. John has been arrested. We heard that, [Read more…]