Mother, Has Your Child Fallen Away? St Monica Can Help

I don't know how many times I hear it.

"My son used to be an altar boy. My daughter used to love to go to Mass. They don't practice their faith anymore. She is living with her boyfriend. He is in with some bad friends. I don't know what to do. They used to be so close to God."

These are the words of mothers whose hearts have been broken by watching their children turn away from God and head down the road toward perdition. Believe it or not, the priest writing this was away from the Church for several years and could not stand any talk of faith, God, or religion. Was it the devil trying to tear away a priests vocation? Young heart seeking happiness in the wrong way? God writing straight with crooked

lines? Whatever it was, I am back with God because of my mother, who prayed, fasted, wept, knelt, suffered, sacrificed and waited with broken heart and a faintly hoping spirit.

Here are prayers to St Monica, whose boy strayed too. May her intercession bring all sinners back to the merciful embrace of Our Father:

O glorious St. Monica, greatly challenged among mothers, I feel particularly attracted by you who gave such an

enlightened example of motherly love.

Who could understand better than you the anxieties and fears of a mother worrying about the eternal salvation of her children? You endured all, since in the order of nature, St. Augustine is the fruit of your womb, and in the order of grace, the fruit of your tears. For this reason I am greatly convinced that if you here on earth, with the sanctity of your life and the perserverance of your prayers, were one of the great models of the Christian mother, you must enjoy in heaven the privilage of being their singular protector.

Obtain for me the grace to faithfully imitate your virtues, and furthermore, may my children avoid those errors and failures you disapproved of so strongly in your son. And if it will happen, to my misfortune, that they too fall, grant me the grace to obtain with my prayers, supported by yours, as perfect a conversion as you were able to obtain for your son. Amen.

Idolatry and Adultery - Unfaithfulness in Body or in Spirit

In the Old Testament, there is a clear reason why adultery and idolatry always are put together (Eg. Exod. 24:7; Deut. 5:27; Josh. 24:14-25). They are considered two sides of the same coin. One is spiritual infidelity, where Israel would worship other gods forsaking the monogamous covenant with the Lord, and the other is bodily unfaithfulness, the sexual expression of the hearts errant direction.

Be not afraid, if you look into the murky depths of your heart and you find infidelity. This is nothing other than the power of sin working. Yet there is a deeper calling, a higher light, a yearning much more intense for the soul to be fulfilled in God, an aching of greater gravity to have intimacy with the One who loved you first before all others.

The sufferings and Cross of the Redeemer is where the infidelity of man is washed clean, bathed in a bath of faithful and inerrant love, unstraying, unwavering, immutable, and eternal adoration of the Son's Heart fixed like a true arrow to the inmost depths of the Father's Heart. Follow the Immaculate Lamb of God to submit all that is in you, even and especially that part of you that is not yet faithful, that still needs to be cleansed and cauterized in the white hot holy Love of Jesus Christ. The Immaculate and true Heart of Mary, the perpetual Virgin Mother can intercede for you and obtain for you a portion of the Lord's unwavering and faithful love.

Prudent Vigilance Over the 5 Senses Helps Keep the Oil of Charity Burning

In today's readings for Mass we hear:

The Kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins
who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom.
Five of them were foolish and five were wise.
The foolish ones, when taking their lamps,
brought no oil with them,
but the wise brought flasks of oil with their lamps.

Listen to my homily for today:

If you have trouble listening click here.

The Fathers of the Church have seen the five prudent virgins as a kind of life of watchfulness over the five senses while the foolish virgins are an icon of a life where the senses go unguarded. Charity is a kind of oil that suplies the fire for our spiritual life. Imprudent foolishness in the spiritual life is to not check the senses so that the soul may not have any charity in stock.

What is necessary is constant self-denial of the senses so that the life of charity may remain brightly burning in the soul. The Sacramental Life of the Church, especially fervent and frequent participation in the Eucharistic Mystery is one of the surest and quickest ways to staying watchful over the senses and keep the precious oil of charity filled and ready to burn in the lamp of the heart.

May Our Lady, Mother of Divine Charity, help us obtain and maintain this precious life of charity, that we may be found worthy to enter the wedding feast, not to be left out where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Charity Keeps You Awake

In today's Gospel,

Jesus said to his disciples: "Stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come. Be sure of this: if the master of the house had known the hour of night when the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and not let his house be broken into. So too, you also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.

Here is my homily for today:

Click here if you have trouble listening.

Doing all-night vigils in front of the Blessed Sacrament, the actual physical act of staying awake with Jesus, teaches us a spiritual long-term lesson for our lives and vocations: Charity keeps you awake. It is divine charity that animates and enlivens all man's faculties, for he was made to be in the divine presence for all eternity and this is the presence of eternal and perfect charity. Therefore, what is most important is that we keep watch over the things which diminish the life of divine charity in our souls, those venial faults, unkindness, uncharity, impatience, etc. Also to make very fervent and frequent holy communion to stoke the fires of charity. May Our Lady, Mother of Divine Charity, help us to be on fire with the love of God.

Straining Out the Gnat to Swallow the Camel - What is Really Important and What is Not?

Today we celebrate the feast of St Rose of Lima, who lived a life of prayer and penance. Her witness ought to help us be reminded of what is most important. In today's readings for Mass we hear:

Blind guides, who strain out the gnat and swallow the camel! "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You cleanse the outside of cup and dish, but inside they are full of plunder and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, cleanse first the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may be clean." (Mt 23-24-26)

Listen to my homily for today:

If you have trouble listening click here.

St Rose of Lima was convinced that suffering realigns our priorities, revealing to us what is most important and what is not. She wrote:

“Let all men know that grace comes after tribulation. Let them know that without the burden of afflictions it is impossible to reach the height of grace. Let them know that the gifts of grace increase as the struggles increase...This is the only true stairway to paradise, and without the cross they can find no road to climb to heaven.”

Mary's Queenship Helps us Win the Victories of Christ

Today we celebrate the Queenship of Mary. This feast was instituted by Pope Pius XII with the Encyclical Ad Caeli Reginam in 1954 to give the faithful hope that reign of Christ may be attained with faith and cooperation in his divine plan. In today's readings for Mass we hear:

Dominion is laid on his shoulders; and this is the name they give him: Wonder-Counsellor, Mighty-God, Eternal-Father, Prince-of-Peace. Wide is his dominion in a peace that has no end. (Isaiah 9:6)

Here is my homily from Mass today with the Marist Sisters:

If you have trouble listening click here.

The most royal and regal quality of Our Lady is her humility. Whoever humbles himself shall be exalted. At the news from the angel that she would be the Queen Mother of the King of Kings, she replied, "I am the handmaid of the Lord. Be it done unto me according to thy Word." Her life was full of opportunities to grow in humility, i.e. humiliations. She had to endure the terrible yet wonderful throne of the King of Heaven, the Cross, where her she saw Jesus crowned not with glory but with contempt. Yet because of this, she was highly exalted with, in, and through him. Jesus shares his holy throne with us too.

Do we see the Cross as the way to entering into his royal kingdom? Do we see the wisdom of the words, "To serve is to reign"? Our Lady helps us with her great maternal love and her royal intercession to allow the difficult opportunities of life, or humiliations, to be converted into authentic humility, the mark of the King.

HOMILY: Jesus Gives Us the Gift of Peter & His Successors

Jesus said, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

Here is my homily for this 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time:

If you have trouble listening to this click here.

Five million young people are gathered now in Madrid, Spain, with an 84 year-old German man dressed in white cassock. Why? Because they believe he is the 246th successor of St Peter, whom Jesus gave to confirm the brethren in the faith.

Yesterday he spoke to the young people gathered for an all-night Eucharistic Adoration vigil of prayer:

"Yes, dear friends, God loves us. This is the great truth of our life; it is what makes everything else meaningful. We are not the product of blind chance or absurdity; instead our life originates as part of a loving plan of God. To abide in his love, then, means living a life rooted in faith, since faith is more than the mere acceptance of certain abstract truths: it is an intimate relationship with Christ, who enables us to open our hearts to this mystery of love and to live as men and women conscious of being loved by God.

"If you abide in the love of Christ, rooted in the faith, you will encounter, even amid setbacks and suffering, the source of true happiness and joy. Faith does not run counter to your highest ideals; on the contrary, it elevates and perfects those ideals. Dear young people, do not be satisfied with anything less than Truth and Love, do not be content with anything less than Christ.

"Dear friends, may no adversity paralyze you. Be afraid neither of the world, nor of the future, nor of your weakness. The Lord has allowed you to live in this moment of history so that, by your faith, his name will continue to resound throughout the world."

Love is Repaid with Love Alone

Today is the feast of St Bernard of Clairvaux. He was ablaze with the fires of divine charity and the zeal and depth of humility with which he preached manifested this in the eloquence that comes from divine wisdom.

Listen to my homily today:

If you have trouble listening to this click here.

Today's readings for Mass talk about Ruth. She forfeited her legal right to return to her homeland when her husband died so that she could take care of her mother in law. It was only love that bound her to this. She was therefore immediately rewarded with love, yet because of this love her heart was made open to receive more divine benefits. Because the workings of divine love kept her faithful, she was given a new life and a new husband, in so doing she became the great grandmother of King David, and the ancestor of Jesus Christ, which one can read about in the geneology of Matthew 1:1-17.

In the Gospel, Jesus speaks about the vanity and hypocrisy of the Scribes and Pharisees, who like to be seen as holy by others. About this he said in another place, "They have already received their reward." Which reward is this? Human respect, esteem, and human honors. We must really have mercy on these guys. Because many people who are beset by deep inner fear of not being loved do this also. This insecurity gives rise to the spiritual vanity that is a veneer of holiness, a mask of being righteous, a kind of insecure protective garment we call pride. Love alone has the power to disarm us, remove from us our protective armor and be vulnerable, be seen as poor, unholy, in need of God.

Mary Immaculate, whom St Bernard preached about with singular beauty and eloquence, has a heart which is a furnace of divine love. How we need our Beloved Mother to show us the great love of God to make us like her, humble, pure, and lowly, always in need of the love of God to set fire to our hearts and burn away any fears that keep us from loving.

From the Office of Readings for today:

"Love is sufficient of itself, it gives pleasure by itself and because of itself. It is its own merit, its own reward. Love looks for no cause outside itself, no effect beyond itself. Its profit lies in its practice. I love because I love, I love that I may love. Love is a great thing so long as it continually returns to its fountainhead, flows back to its source, always drawing from there the water which constantly replenishes it. Of all the movements, sensations and feelings of the soul, love is the only one in which the creature can respond to the Creator and make some sort of similar return however unequal though it be. For when God loves, all he desires is to be loved in return; the sole purpose of his love is to be loved, in the knowledge that those who love him are made happy by their love of him."

Ever Made a Stupid Sacrifice?

Sacrifice something higher for what is lower? Jepthah did it. Pharoah, Essau, and the guys that rejected the kings feast did it too - stupid. Don't be stupid. Make the intelligent sacrifice of what is lesser for what is greater.

Listen to my homily for today:

If you have trouble listening to this click here.

Know that at the end of your life you will be consoled by how many times you worthily received Jesus in holy communion. Don't be afraid to receive the King frequently and intensely. You won't regret it. Be careful however of making the stupid sacrifice of receiving him unworthily. Examine your heart before hand and if you need to, go to confession. Otherwise what would be a sacrifice becomes a sacrilege.

Our Blessed Mother made the most pleasing sacrifice to God by offering her Son in union with the Eternal Father. May her prayers help us to make a pleasing sacrifice to the Lord our God.

Answer the Call: Permit God to Be with You

In today's Mass readings, the angel greets Gideon, saying,

The Lord is with you, O champion! (Judges 6:13)

Something similar was said to Jeremiah when he was called:

A prophet to the nations I appointed you..I am with you to deliver you. (Jerimiah 1:5-8)

This greeting is similar to the angelic salutation to Our Blessed Mother Mary,

Hail full of grace! The Lord is with you! (Luke 1:28)

This is also similar to the many different encounters that the disciples had with the Lord Jesus:

Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid. (Matthew 14:27)

What you see in all of these different callings and encounters with God is that he invites the person to be in his presence, or rather, in his awesome and ineffable humility, he asks the person for permission that he may be present to them. Everything else, all the directions and graces come after the divine presence is manifested.

In the Gospel for today, Jesus speaks about the calling to eternal life, saying that it is easier for a camel to enter the eye of the needle for a rich man to enter into eternal life. Without going too much into detail, we know that there is a gate of Jerusalem called the needle and that those on camels had to dismount of their high position on the camel and divest themselves of all their traveling gear to enter into this gate.

The eternal presence of God is not something that we must experience only after death. It is something, according to the Lord Jesus, we enter into when we come to know the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

This is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ. (John 17:3)

Knowledge of God comes from experiencing him, from dwelling in his presence. Yet God waits for us to give him permission. He will not force himself upon us, but will BE with us as much as we permit him. If we are up on our high horse, or high camel, that is, if we are rich in our own presence, our own thoughts, words, actions, self, we cease to permit God to be God and dwell in our presence, our thoughts, words, actions, our very beings. Many times people think a calling is about a position, a work, an apostolate, when really it is first and foremost about giving God permission to be present to you.

Drawing near to the Most Holy Eucharist, either in Mass or in Adoration, is the place par excellence to allow God to be present to you. It is however important not to present God with your riches, telling him about all the wonderful things that you are doing for him, but rather to divest yourself of all your heavy burdens, planting your feet on the ground. It is in your misery, your poverty, your need for him as little child that you will allow him to manifest his deepest presence to you, which is the presence of Divine and Tender Mercy.

May Our Lady, who allowed God to be God more than any, prostrating herself before his awesome and eternal tenderness in her littleness, help us to hear the voice of the Lord clearly, "I am with you."

HOMILY: Spiritual Calisthenics: humbling yourself before God

"There are three things necessary in the spiritual life: humility, humility, and humility" - St Augustine.

It is easy for us to be associated with the Lord Jesus a long time and not know him, not really know his heart. The primary disposition in his heart before the Father is that of humility. His Sacred Humanity is at every moment prostrate before the majesty and holiness of the Father's glory on our behalf.

Here is my homily for Monday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time:

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Contemplating Mary's Assumed Womanhood

There is great need today for the whole Church, indeed for all mankind, to be taken up into contemplation of the beautiful and graced womanhood of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Here is my homily for the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

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Got Discipline?

The London riots and those in other parts of the UK in the past week have revealed a general lack of discipline and respect for authority. Some have shown how this is the natural outgrowth of a culture of moral relativism.

Parenting that is based on the fundamentally egocentric nature of moral relativism results in psychological correctness versus moral correctness. Instead of asking the questions, "Is this behavior of my child good? Is it moral?" the questions are asked, perhaps not explicitly but they are implied: "Is my child's ego alright? Are they feeling good? Will they develop psychologically from this situation?"

Recently when I was called to discipline a teenager I noticed her first reaction was to psychoanalyze her behavior and to give me justification stemming from her relationship with her parents. I simply told her, "I am not Oprah. I am your priest, and I am telling you that I don't care why you do what you do. You will NOT do it again otherwise there will be very immediate consequences. Is that clear?" I am always surprised how well this works, while if I had gone the Oprah route she would have known that I was another authority in her life she could manipulate or soft-peddle her disobedience. Instead what happened was that she was corrected and she grew immediately in the knowledge that in Church there are clear boundaries around her to keep her safe, protected, and in truth - LOVED. When I was teaching high school last year it always impressed me how discipline, when it is applied with consequences that are clear, immediate, and deliberate, actually works! There is a change of behavior. Children who do evil learn to do good, and their lives become better. They start to learn that these morally good effects bring them peace of mind, balancing of their personality, and ordering their interior or emotional life, and then something really miraculous happens - they begin self-discipline.

God the Father doesn't need to explain why he made distinction between good and evil. He doesn't need to justify himself, make excuses for the corrective crosses and trials that he allows us to suffer. His discipline is the expression of his love for us. The better we know this and see how he disciplined Jesus on the Cross for our salvation, the sooner we will see that discipline flows from discipleship, the sequitur Christi, following the very interior discipline of Jesus Christ which he lived from the Father. The Father disciplined Jesus on the Cross not for his own sake but that by it we might become good.

It is in the shadow of the Cross that the words of Hebrews (12:11) become clear, "All discipline seems harsh at the time it is administered but later bears the fruit of a peaceful life." When I was the department head of the religious department in a high school I posted this scripture above the door of the teacher's lounge leading out to the classrooms, reminding the teachers that they are not the child's "friend or buddy." They are the authority to be obeyed. To whom does discipline seem harsh? To the child or to the parent? In our days of being oversensitive to one's feelings I would say it is the parent. Here the old adage comes to mind, "This is going to hurt me more than it does you." The truth is that moral discipline does in fact hurt the ego, it denies the ego its self-satisfaction, and this is very psychologically incorrect, and an intelligent child will probably pull out all the stops to tell a parent how mean they are for doing what they are doing, how harsh. In the words of my favorite expert on the topic, "Discipline without love maybe harsh but love without discipline? - Child abuse." Neglect is 50% of all child abuse and love without discipline is a very real neglect that the child will feel for the rest of their life, and if their parents don't discipline them, then their employer, the police, the magistrate, or worse - their wife will have to do it for them.

Discipline needs to be re-contextualized in our relationship with God. This IS happening all over the Church, but there are some sectors of the Church that are perhaps incapable of understanding this. Ultimately their understanding and psychologically feeling good about why canon law is exercised isn't important. What is most important is that it needs to be practiced and done with consistency, universality, and fidelity and let them figure out from the effects why it is good. Thank God there are wonderful new bishops and priests who are practicing this.

Here is one of my heroes with regard to the renewal of parental discipline, which bears within it the ethos ecclesiastical discipline, Dr Ray Guarendi, a child psychologist who specializes in discipline, authority, and developing moral children.

HOMILY: Funeral of Two Year Old Boy. Why? Why Jesus do you chose to suffer in the littlest of your brethren?

Today I had the sorrowful privilege of burying a two year old little boy who died by drowning while his family was on holiday. Here is the homily.

Let the Little children come unto me; and do not hinder them.

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HOMILY: St Claire Shows us Christ's Healing Poverty

St Claire had a relationship with Jesus in his poverty that is very healing for many. She realized that he unites himself to our sheer misery, that he is rejoiced to be with us in our poverty, that love is very poor, has no decoration, no leaven, no element of self. May her prayers help us to realize this beautiful love of Christ in our own lives.

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HOMILY: St Lawrence Teaches us Humor Amidst the Flames of Life

St Lawrence had great charity and generosity. Only this could truly fuel a sense of humor amidst the terrible suffering he endured. May he obtain for us by his prayers and merits, a sharing in the joy of Christ amidst suffering.

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St Alphonsus - Let us be moved by the Love of Christ

A few days ago someone asked me, "Why does St Alphonsus di Ligouri repeat himself in his writings?" St Alphonsus was a great theologian and author who wrote voluminous works on the holy Eucharist, the priesthood, mental prayer, consecrated virginity, preparation for death, and much, much more. His writing style is to look at a topic as you might look at diamond in your hand. You pick it up and turn it, viewing it from many different angles, seeing something new with each turn. The reason for this is because he wrote not for the understanding of the intellect, but for the conversion of the will.

He was very much aware that most people did not struggle with ignorance, for it takes only catechesis to bring about knowledge of the faith. Most struggle with doing what is right. His approach is to provide many proofs from Scripture, the Church Fathers, from life experiences, sayings of the saints, and many stories in order to form an inner conviction to form good spiritual habits and to shun evil. Reading his works is like watching an artist paint a picture. He starts with the context, the background, begins to put on layer after layer of color, then slowly forming in the reader's heart greater clarity and beauty of an inner picture he is trying to paint.

This principle I find incredibly useful for preaching. People do not need a thesis. It is not their mind that I address, but their heart. They need to be convicted of the Redemption wrought for them by God, and therefore they need to have a real living experience of the Redeemer. Usually they need simple stories, words, quotes from the saints, the Popes, whatever it takes to reveal to them the Love of God. Then when caritas divinum, divine charity, takes hold of them, charity moves their will to believe in what is being preached. Faith is animated by charity. Fire brings both heat and light.

I find that people who have been wounded by sin (everybody) need to hear thousands of times how much God loves them. I do not tire of repeating this. Like a husband who tells his wife how much they are loved so priests must proclaim it to the Church with every possible way, "Your Redeemer loves you."

Blessed Pope John Paul II had spoken repeatedly about the way of the new evangelization as a living encounter with Jesus Christ, and that the Teacher would instruct further, but people need to be put into communion with him first. Mass, confession, holy hour, prayer - all of these need to be re-contextualized in the model of a living encounter with Jesus Christ fully alive and active in his Church especially in the Sacred Liturgy.

May the prayers of Our Lady, star of the New Evangelization and of St Alphonsus di Ligouri bring about our conversion deeper to the imitation of Christ and adoration of the divine Mystery.

Homily: Feed them Yourselves - Jesus Calls us to Trinitarian Participation in the Holy Eucharist

Jesus tells us "Feed them yourselves." Here is audio mp3 homily for the 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time. If you have trouble playing it click here.

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Homily at the Wedding of Joanna and Daniel Lott

I had the wonderful privilege of witnessing the wedding vows of this happy couple. Here is my audio mp3 homily for the occasion. Their readings showed the different kinds of human love : romance, friendship, and self-sacrificing agape.

If you have trouble listening click here.

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The Glorious Hope in Christ Crucified and Risen

I am always amazed at the novelty of Christian hope. On one hand, the weight and sheer intensity of human sufferings that we must face seem to crush us to the ground: broken family relationships, scandals and hypocrisy, physical ailments, emotional pains, isolation, fear, anxiety, and the heaviest of all, the weight of our very own weakness. YET, in the midst of all of this, the Lamb of God calls out to us, as if the first cries of suffering must be penetrated, probed, searched, and then if we listen deeper, if we can touch the bone marrow, the inmost heart of human suffering, we find...GOD! We find that Christ suffers in us. Love suffers. Love suffers for want of love, and seems to still cry out from the Cross, as if those "loud cries" (Hebrews 5:7) of Jesus can be heard in the depths of human misery.

Yet it doesn't go away. I am still afflicted, pained, crushed. What now? Prayer. Only in prayer can we stop and wait, and in the silence of stopping to listen to the voice of Christ, the voice of suffering Love, we are permitted to focus in on the inmost heart of human suffering and perceive the heart of Christian Hope, that Jesus suffers with me, knows me intimately, hears my cries, hears my hearts deepest longings and pains. When we pray we discover the meaning of St Paul's words, the God's "power is perfected in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9). We hear the sound of hope itself. We hear God, who says,

"HOPE! Hope that I am good. Hope that

my plans are for your highest good, to bring you peace and fulfillment, not despair, loneliness, or the trauma that you may now be feeling."

Christ is HOPE. He is the cause of amazing and enduring joy even amidst terrible difficulties. And since she was able to perceive the plan of God, the goodness of God, his most hidden purpose even amidst the trauma and abandonment of the Cross, Mary is always called and continues to be SPES NOSTRA, OUR HOPE. She makes the difficult transition from encountering the pains and aches of human life to the purpose and plan of God a gracious and even pleasant experience. It is the sheer tenderness of her love, her maternal embrace, her hand on our shoulder that allows us to suffer the worst of pains in the gentlest of ways.

Mary Our Lady, Mother of holy Hope, pray for us and obtain the firmness of heart to never waiver from the Cross and its divine purpose to bring us to unwavering joy and delight in God's eternal presence.

Why I am Proud to Be Catholic - A Talk to Catholic Youth

If you said you were proud to be Catholic or you thought the Catholic religion was the correct religion, the true Church, certainly people, even some catholics, would accuse you of being proud or arrogant, or not seeing the “whole picture.”

If you said that you though Muslims were right, or that atheists had the proper view, this is certainly more en vouge in popular circles.Ifanybody says anything against Jews, Muslims, or any ethnic group it would surely be the end of their career and their respectability. Yet if someone says something against the Catholic Church it is considered normal, social acceptable, or even intelligent.

Anti-Catholicism is the last acceptable prejudice.

(From non-catholic author Philip Jenkins) which is why it is easy for Catholics to falsely believe ourselves as second class. Things that try brainwash us into thinking this:

-Bullying at School, even Catholic School to make one think it is not “cool” or popular to be Catholic

-Media exposurethat mocks Catholic beliefs - not mostly doctrine (yet this is not left out) but morals

-Culture of Lust where sex before marriage and living together is thought of as “normal” though this actually destroys marriage

-Mockery of Christ-centered life & Catholic Values especially with regard to marriage and family

Christ said, “If the world hates you realize that it hated me first”It is Christ himself who is persecuted in his Body the Church. “Why do you persecute me?” Jesus to Saul after he’d killed Christians.

SO IT IS CHRIST WHO DEFENDS HIS CHURCH, WHO DEFENDS YOU WHO ARE HIS BODY.

How does Jesus defend you? Through the Sacraments, he gives you grace, peace, joy, and the inner strengthening of the Holy Spirit, who is given to those who ask in faith with prayer. He gives you the graced-friendships of the Church here on earth to strengthen you.

Yet, he also asks you also to use your wits he gave you.

YOU MUST DEFEND THE CHURCH

How? Understand most of the attacks are not mostly on what the Church believes (although these are present too) but on the identity and dignity of Catholicism to try to attack its moral authority.

For example: Constantly bashing the Church for sex abuse scandals

REALITY: The safest statistical place in the world right now is in Catholic Churches, and it always has been! It has always been statistically safer than schools, the workplace, or even the family.

FACTS:

-there are far more cases reported against married protestant clergy USA: 6% catholic priests 13% protestants Germany: least of all professions (this is from insurance claims and criminological studies)

-The Catholic Church has the harshest possible laws and policies against abuse than any other institution (juridical profession has noted this).

-There should be 0% abuse from priests and the fact that they are the most discussed is a subconscious acknowledgment of its moral authority. In other words, the fact that the media is more upset by priests committing these terrible crimes shows that they respect the authority of the priesthood.

Another Attack is History: there are terrible sinners in Catholic history. People would hold them up to be the official Catholic view when they were in fact against the mind of Christ:

atrocities committed in the name of the Crusades, misconstruing Galileo...

Yet saints stand right along side of them - weeds and wheat together.

“BE OF GOOD CHEER. I HAVE OVERCOME THE WORLD” (Jn 16:33)

We are called to be confident - proud to be Catholic.

At this point in English History a shift is taking place. Many people are realizing that in order to be human, to be noble, to be upright, to be a good Englishman, one must become a good Catholic. Only the stability and the faithfulness of the Catholic Church can preserve the best and most noble part of England, its very soul - its faith.

The signs of that reveal this are the following:

-The Holy Father’s Visit revealed that England, while it is very secular, still has the desire to be a Christian nation

-The many thousands of conversions that are happening at this time

-Catholics are becoming less afraid of witnessing publicly their faith.-The bishops are taking a firm stand on public moral issues like abortion, same sex unions, and embryonic stem cell research whilst promoting a clear catholic identity (abstinence from meat on Fridays)

WHY IT IS SO AWESOME TO BE A CATHOLIC:

HOLY EUCHARIST: Walk into any Catholic Church in any country for the

past 2000 years and you will find Jesus Christ truly present in his Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Holy Eucharist. You will find the very same ritual given to us by Jesus himself, the holy mass, where Jesus himself, in the person of the priest says to you personally, “This is my Body...This is my Blood...given up for you”

The true presence is different than any other reality. It is the fact that he is reserved in all the tabernacles of the world. Everywhere in the world you can look around and say, “God is here.” Only in heaven and only in the Eucharistic Host can you say, “THIS IS GOD!”

CONFESSION: Every Catholic priest in the world has been given the power by Christ to completely obliterate sin out of your life in the Sacrament of Confession. Jesus gave this power to priests when he breathed on his first priests, the apostles, and said “Receive the Holy Spirit, whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven.”

Think about it, if you ever experience any fear, worry, anxiety, depression, loneliness, if you ever do anything wrong, any sin or evil, when you repent by confessing your sins to God’s representative he says to you, “I Absolve you” and frees you from all of this! Most of the emotional difficulties people struggle with are from sin or from the terrible vacuum of love caused by it. Confession heals. Just do it!

ANOINTING OF THE SICK: a priest can come to you when you are dying, forgive your sins, anoint you with the strengthening oil of the sick, give you the apostolic pardon freeing you from all punishment even in the next life, and hold your hand as you pass from this life to the next handing you off to Jesus who will embrace you with the Father.

MOTHER MARY: You have a beloved Mother who always pleads your cause, waits for you, hears your prayers and intercedes for you before her divine Son. She never draws us to herself but only to God. Every time we say, “Hail Mary!” she says “Hail Jesus!” Every time

POPE, SUCCESSOR OF ST PETER: The simple fact is that the

Catholic Church is the one Church that Jesus Christ founded when he told St Peter, “You are Rock and upon this rock I will build my Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it” (Mt 16:18). Pope Benedict XVI is the 266 of St Peter.

NO OTHER christian community claims this, that they belong to the very Church founded by Jesus Christ, that he is their head. They claim to have the teachings of some particular man but not Christ himself.

There are over 200,000 Christian denominations. When was your Church founded?

Christian Denomination	Founder	Date
Catholic	Jesus Christ	33 AD
Orthodox (schism)	Michael Cerularius	1054
Lutheranism	Martin Luther	1517
Anabaptist	Ulrich Zwingli	1521
Anglican	King Henry VIII	1534
Reformed	Jean Calvin	1536
Presbyterian	John Knox	1560
Baptists	John Smyth	1609
Methodism	John Wesley	1739
Mormonism (No longer Christian)	Joseph Smith	1827
Millerism	William Miller	1840
7th Day Adventists	Ellen Gould White	1860
Salvation Army	William Booth	1865
Jehovah’s Witnesses (No longer Christian)	Charles Taze Russel	1870
Pentecostal	Charles Fox Parham	1901
Assembly of God	Council of Hot Springs, AR	1914

Be proud to be be Catholic! BE NOT AFRAID! God will be with you to show you how to proclaim the Gospel to the people of our time with wisdom, courage, and that noble dignity of Christ to which you are called.

Happy are your eyes because they want to see Jesus MP3 HOMILY

Here is my audio homily for the day today.

If you have trouble listening click here.

Gospel for today Mt 13:10-17

The disciples approached Jesus and said,
“Why do you speak to the crowd in parables?”
He said to them in reply,
“Because knowledge of the mysteries of the Kingdom of heaven
has been granted to you, but to them it has not been granted.
To anyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich;
from anyone who has not, even what he has will be taken away.
This is why I speak to them in parables, because
they look but do not see and hear but do not listen or understand.
Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled in them, which says:

You shall indeed hear but not understand,
you shall indeed look but never see.
Gross is the heart of this people,
they will hardly hear with their ears,
they have closed their eyes,
lest they see with their eyes
and hear with their ears
and understand with their hearts and be converted
and I heal them.

“But blessed are your eyes, because they see,
and your ears, because they hear.
Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people
longed to see what you see but did not see it,
and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.”

Priests Need Confession

A sure sign of faith and Christian fervor is the frequency and intensity with which the Christian people approach the font of mercy in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Conversely a sign of a crisis of faith is the lack of it's celebration.


If this is true for the faithful, how much more true it is for priests, for their priesthood must exemplify the Christian life of faith and the Sacraments.

Recently, the Congregation of Clergy produced a document entitled, "The Priest, Minister of Divine Mercy: an Aid for Confessors and Spiritual Directors." Quoting Blessed Pope John Paul II, it says,

The priest's spiritual and pastoral life, like that of his brothers and sisters, lay and religious, depends for it's quality and fervor, on the frequent and personal practice of the Sacrament of Penance. The priest's celebration of the Eucharist and administration of the other sacraments, his pastoral zeal, his relationship with the faithful, his communion with his brother priests, his collaboration with the bishop, his life of prayer - in a word, the whole of his priestly existence, suffers an inexorable decline if by negligence or for some other reason he fails to receive the Sacrament of Penance at regular intervals and in a spirit of genuine faith and devotion.

The moments in my short priestly life where I have felt the closest to God, most penetrated with his divine and unrelenting love, were those days where I spent most of my time hearing confessions. It seems here that the Levitical priesthood of animal sacrifice is a type or shadow of Christian priesthood, whereas the priests of old received the choicest portions of the sacrifices of bulls and goats, now he receives the choicest graces of mercy and reconciliation with God. It as if the priest, holding up to heaven in the eucharistic chalice, the Sacramental representation of the Blood of the Immaculate Lamb, it must first spill over onto his own head, into his own life, touching first and transforming his own humanity before it flows out to touch others in a veritable river of Mercy that soon becomes an ocean. So it is with the sacrament of confession. To put it plainly, at times I feel confession is like the abyss of divine Mercy floods a penitent's soul after having passed through the soul of the priest. Let me attempt to express this in words with an image. It is as if an endless and infinite ocean of God's grace had to first pass through the garden hose of a priest's very frail humanity in a few brief moments. For this reason, there have been times while in the midst of celebrating or dispensing this sacrament, I have felt as if I were to die of love, of having to channel too much infinite goodness through the wretchedness of my own poor heart.

Personally, I find it necessary to approach this sacrament every few days, for it is not just as some mistakenly claim, merely a "sin-washing machine" but an encounter with my Father, my Abba, who loves me so much that he desires to free me of even the slightest sin or obstacle to his love.

May Our Lady, Mother of Mercy and Queen of the clergy, obtain for us the renewal of the celebration of the sacrament of divine Mercy, especially among priests.