What Do You Want The Most Of?

The LORD was pleased that Solomon made this request. 
So God said to him:
"Because you have asked for this—
not for a long life for yourself,
nor for riches, 
nor for the life of your enemies,
but for understanding so that you may know what is right—
I do as you requested. 
I give you a heart so wise and understanding
that there has never been anyone like you up to now, and after you, there will come no one to equal you."

Brothers and sisters: We know that all things work for good

 for those who love God, who are called according to His purpose. 

"The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field, which a person finds and hides again,
and out of joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field."

Okay, I am walking along the street one morning and a truck goes through a large muddy puddle and splashes me.  Do you know what my first thoughts are?  Of course, I am thinking on how all things will work for good and I whisper a prayer of thanksgiving as I attempt to wipe the muck from my glasses so I can see and include the truck and the truck driver in my prayers.  Right!   What I need here is a bit of Solomon to be added to the mix.  When God told him that He wanted to give Solomon a present, Solomon asked for something that was very valuable indeed, wisdom. God was very pleased with Solomon's request and He immediately granted it and he became a wise and powerful ruler over all Israel. Solomon could see outside of himself and was cognizant of what was in his heart and what he needed to fulfill his duties. He also was humble and that made bestowing of the gift easier for God. 

When we last looked at me, I was standing there, looking like a fool and praying for nasty things to happen to a certain truck driver as I scraped the muck from my clothing and turned to head back home to change clothes. I could not see how being drenched in mud furthered the kingdom of God. That itself is a lesson.  Whatever happens to us, God is aware of it.  He knows fully how this will help get this muddied, drenched, upset, ignoramus into heaven and I have to have the wisdom to trust God for that.  He does not expect me to say "Alleluia! I am soaked to skin and caked with holy mud." But, He does expect me to accept these little things in life as they come and to trust in Him to see me through.

I have to say I am truly blessed because of our faith community, St. Mary of Vernon, has a gang of good preachers. This Sunday proves this point very well.  Our pastor's homily was very good.  It dealt with the treasure found in the field and the pearl of great price. The men that found these treasures went and sold everything that they had to acquire these things.  They had to give up something to get something more valuable.  It hurt to give up absolutely everything but in the end, it was worth it.  That is the same as it will be for us in obtaining heaven. We will give up everything but in the end, it will be worth it.  Thank you, Father Joe. 

This week our teens returned from their yearly mission trip.  They spend a week in the field helping the less fortunate with different things and they come back and share their youthful exuberance with the parish.  I look at these young people and I see the future of our Church. It was not so long ago that I was a teen, well it was a long time ago, but what the heck?  Anyway, when I was young I remember how wise I was. As I got older, the wisdom of youth dropped away and was replaced with the wisdom of experience. I pray that for our youth, that the energy and love that they expressed to others this week will follow them and re-energize the Church in the coming years.  

Repeat After Me: "I will pray for the Holy Souls in Purgatory today, an Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory be takes only a few moments of our time but it means so very much to them."  

Lazarus Come Out

I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world."

Biblical Passage: John 11: 43

“Lazarus Come Out!”

The story of the raising of Lazarus is a familiar one to all Christians. Remember that Lazarus was in the grave for four days. A four-day-old corpse was dead indeed.  Jesus had heard of his friend’s plight well before the tragedy of death struck Lazarus down. Yet, Jesus did nothing, he allowed his friend to die.  He then went to the sisters and they professed faith that God would do anything Jesus asked him to.  It was a touching demonstration of faith and yet when Jesus ordered the rock to be removed from the tomb Martha showed how little faith she really had when she said, “He has been dead four days, surely there will be a stench.”  Then, when the rock was rolled away, Jesus commanded Lazarus to “Come Out.”  And out he came, all wrapped up in his burial ensemble. His friends untied him and he went home.  How do you think Lazarus felt? Had he been to heaven?  Was he happy to be back on earth? The Gospel is silent on this but if it was me and I was called back from the bliss of heaven, I would be ticked off, to say the least!  But today let us compare the raising of Lazarus to our own Baptism. Before we were baptized, we were enemies of God. When we were drowned in the Baptismal font we died to our original nature and became an adopted child of God. But is that enough, just to be a child of God?  We were brought to life like Lazarus by our baptism. This was an action of God, and like Lazarus, we are called to “Come Out” and take up our duties as the son or daughter of the Great King. Those duties are simple and at the same time profound, they are to “Love one another as I have loved you.”   Like Lazarus, we have to depend on our friends to remove the bindings that hold us back from being a full partner in the redemptive work of God.  That is why Christians get together. We get together to worship God, of course, but we also get together to help one another.  Will we truly open our hearts to let Jesus in or like Martha will we say, “Surely there will be a stench!” The choice is ours. 

What if you were in purgatory?  Would you want someone to pray for you?  Please pray for the poor souls.  

            

I'll Have the Golden Calf with Fries

"I, the LORD, am your God, 
who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery.You shall not have other gods besides me.
You shall not carve idols for yourselves 
in the shape of anything in the sky above 
or on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth; 
you shall not bow down before them or worship them."

Today's first reading is the story of God speaking out the ten commandments. The first commandment forbids us from having any false gods, bowing down to statues of any living thing or worshipping them.  Oh boy! I wonder if the Church knows about this commandment.  I've been in a lot of Catholic churches and I've seen a lot of statues are we in trouble or what?   Actually, "or what" would fit better here than "trouble."  Once and for all, Catholics do not and never have worshipped statues.  We use statues, in the same manner, we use pictures of our loved ones, as a reminder of them, we know that the picture is not them, not even a substitute for them, just an image to help us remember them. I am done defending the statues that appear in various Catholic churches, they are a non-issue as far as I am concerned.  But idol worship is a very serious thing. 

God is very serious that we do not worship idols. He knows that idol worship takes us away from His loving care and sends us down the wide and smooth road to perdition.  But, I've established that we do not worship statues.  Doesn't that mean we Catholics have commandment one aced?  There may be a few of us that really and truly do have it aced and do not offend against this commandment but I bet if we really think about it, we can find idols that we do worship that are not statues or pictures. 

Where do we find these things?  We find them inside our heads for the most part. Anything that leads us away from God is an idol that we are bowing down to and making sacrifices to and violating this first commandment.  If something is taking the place of God in our lives, that something is an idol.

Think carefully about your wants and desires.  Focusing on a want or desire simply to satisfy yourself and not caring what effect it has on others is the same as idol worship.  The Israelites knew that the golden calf was not God.  They were not invested in the calf, it cost them nothing because they were using the gold and jewels that the Egyptians gave them to fashion the idol. The calf itself was a beautiful loathsome thing made out of the gold of Egypt and the sin of the people, it was pricelessly valueless.  This is the same thing the object of our desires becomes when it takes the place of God in our lives.  When it takes over and pulls us away from God, then we are worshipping it as God.  Since the object is not God, then it is subject to decay, rust, moths, age, and other things that destroy the temporary. 

So, don't worry about the statues in the church, they are harmless. But think carefully about those things for which you lust for as you watch them, they may turn to rust. 

Now a word from our sponsor...The Holy Souls never forget someone that has prayed for them.  They need our prayers because they cannot help themselves.  Remember them in your prayers today.  An Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be takes but a minute for us but it means so much for them. 

Ahh The Good Old Days

"Would that we had died at the LORD's hand in the land of Egypt, as we sat by our fleshpots and ate our fill of bread!But you had to lead us into this desert to make the whole community die of famine!"

Do you remember that great old film "The Ten Commandments?  One of my favorite characters in this story is Edward G. Robinson who played some sort of Hebrew that was better off than most of the folks. You could depend on him to be the one to stir up trouble when trouble needed to be stirred up. He didn't really believe in all of this religious stuff, he was happy to make a comfortable living and to keep himself well nourished.  He scoffed when it came time to mark the door posts with blood so that the angel of death would pass over.  He thought it was all a bunch of nonsense and he went to bed without bothering to do it. It was lucky for him that someone, a Hebrew that loved his fellow Hebrews, marked the doorpost for him and he was saved on that fateful night. The Egyptians who in the morning were mourning the loss of all of the first born in their land begged the Hebrews to go and gave them gold and jewels and probably a road map to show them the fastest way out of town.  Every chance he got, Robinson's character stirred up the people. And when the way grew drear and hunger afflicted the children of Israel he reminded them of all the great food that they had back in good old Egypt.  You could almost smell the onions cooking in the fleshpots!  Moses, played by Charlton Heston, went to God.  You could almost hear God saying, "Yeah, Yeah, I hear them.  When are they going to get the idea that I am going to take care of them, Moses?"  Then he promises them flesh in the evening and bread in the morning.  The only losers in this story, of course, are the doves that got invited to dinner each night. Do you wonder why it took forty years to get to the promised land? A blind camel could stumble into it in a few weeks.  Oh well, that's that story of the Israelites, one stiff necked people, just like us. 

When the Hebrews were hungry, they began pining for food and I guess that the food they remembered in Egypt was pretty good.  Then again, anything is better when you have nothing.  What would they have to do to get their delicious Egyptian Pot-o-Flesh?  They would have to go back to Egypt, of course, and while they might get the food they craved, the would get the slavery that they did not crave back. 

So it is with us. We beg God to relieve us from this burden or that and when the way gets tough we look back and say that the good old days weren't so bad.  We forget that if we take up the sin again, we pick up the slavery to it.  Don't you find it amazing that over thousands of years we as a species have learned so little?  No wonder why God had to come to earth and save us.  We could do nothing for ourselves. 

In order to enter heaven, we have to be free of our attachments to sin. If we need to, we choose to go to Purgatory to clean up to ready ourselves to be in God's presence.  The Poor Souls need the prayers of the faithful on earth to help them.  Please remember them today.

Serve or Serve its Your Choice

It

"You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and the great ones make their authority over them felt.

But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant;

whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave."

Americans are not the type of people that want to be servants.  Oh, we will take a job that at first blush seems beneath us but we will only tolerate it for only the minimum amount of time required to move up the ladder to a position where we can call the shots.  We prefer to be the ones that tell someone else where to move that heavy piece of furniture instead of being the one that moves it.  We go through life not seeing those that have taken the jobs we consider menial. The Latino gardener mowing the grass, the janitor with mop and bucket, the hotel maid, the busboy and waitress, all of these people are invisible people.  They are there, we acknowledge that but then we do not see them anymore, they fade into the background.  Please understand that I am not looking down on these people. This is just how it is. 

Well, here is a news flash for you.  No matter who you are in the world, no matter if you are a CEO of a giant corporation, world famous surgeon, President of the United States, or even the Pope of Rome, you are the servant of someone.  That someone might be your stockholders, your patients, the citizens that elected you or the clerics and people of your church, somewhere you owe service to another person or group of people.  We all have an obligation to fulfill to others. We are all servants and of course, we are all servants of God.  I  do mean all of us are servants of God.  We may be good servants, mediocre servants or bad servants, but servants we are.  

What exactly does God expect of His servants? Let's start with His chief employee here on earth, Pope Francis.  The Pope is the prime minister of the Kingdom of God on earth. The prime minister acts in place of the king while the king is absent.  It is expected that the prime minister will know the will of the king and handle the king's affairs accordingly.  How do we know what that word accordingly means in this case?  It is simple.  The Pope functions as the servant of the servants of God. Jesus washed the feet of His disciples and that is what Francis I is supposed to do.  Here he is, a man that seems to hold unlimited power in his hands, and what is he to do with that power? The Kings says to wash the feet of his fellow servants. 

If we were to realize that our vocation is to be just like that of the Pope, that of foot washing servants to one another, we would be falling all over each other trying to meet the other's needs with charity and love.  Next time you see a person mowing the lawn, packing grocery bags, waiting tables, or mopping floors, remember this, they are not invisible people, they are our fellow servants.  Treat them with the kindness and respect you would give to visiting royalty or better yet, treat them as if they were Jesus and He was performing this service for you.  It will change your life and how you look at people.  God bless. 

Mother, Father, Sister, Brother, Aunt, Uncle, Grandmother, Grandfather, who do you know that might be in purgatory?  The Holy Souls in Purgatory cannot pray themselves out of there and into heaven, they need us.  An Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be takes only a few moments of our time but it means so much to those in purgatory.  Remember to pray for the holy souls...do it now!  

  

The Judgment Is Coming

At the judgment, the men of Nineveh will arise with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and there is something greater than Jonah here.

Author's Note:

Now, don't worry, old Michael the Lesser isn't turning into a Left Behind, the Sky is Falling, Over the Top, Let's Hunker Down, Rising Rapture Religious Hack.  No, I'm going to stay just the normal religious hack that you've grown to love.  But, the Gospel readings for today are about the end times so I had my choice I could pick something else or attack the subject head on.  I have obviously chosen the latter. I will keep it short. 

The End of The World is a subject that has been popular with Christians since the very beginning. There have been any number of predictions of the exact date and time when the return of Jesus was to occur only to have that day come and go with no visual or sonic signs of the Lord's return.  Some denominations exist today just because some pastor has taken a sentence here and a sentence there from the Bible and has woven both of them into a prediction that says, "This is It."  Well, pastor, take it from me, you are probably wrong. 

It is a great waste of time and energy to pine for and spend all of your spiritual resources on predicting and watching for the imminent return of Jesus.  Make no mistake, He is coming. But remember, Jesus Himself said that the day and hour of the end is known to the Father.  

God has given us today. It might be bright and sunny where you are or it might be gloomy and wet. No matter what the day is like, it is a gift from God.  Don't worry about the end of your life or the end of time.  Embrace today and do what you can to make the world just a little bit better.  All it takes to do this may be a smile or a kind word or just some thoughtful kindness bestowed without thought of repayment. This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us be glad and rejoice! Do this and come what may, you will be ready for Day of the Lord.

Prayers, Moans, Groans and other Hymns

Brothers and sisters:

The Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness;

for we do not know how to pray as we ought,

but the Spirit himself intercedes with inexpressible groanings. 

And the one who searches hearts

knows what is the intention of the Spirit,

because he intercedes for the holy ones

according to God's will.

Why do we fold our hands when we pray?  Is it required that we do so? Why do we often kneel when we pray? Who came up with that idea?  Why is prayer so mysterious? Saints, priests, nuns, and brothers pray and they seem, at least according to the stories, to get so much more out of it than I do when I pray. I never know what to say when I pray, I am not good with words, all of the "thee's and thou's" don't come naturally to me, my prayers sound so very plain. 

There is no subject more important to a Christian than prayer. Prayer is where our relationship with God begins. We do have some strange notions about prayer.  For example, why do we fold our hands when we pray?  To be honest,. most people do it because that is how they were taught. But when your hands are folded in prayer, they are not busy with other things or at least that is the hope.  You need not fold your hands when you pray. As a matter of fact, if that is what keeps you from prayer, don't do it!  Why do we sometimes kneel when we pray?  We Catholics kneel to show reverence at Mass for the Holy Eucharist which is the Lord Himself. In the middle-ages people knelt because it was very hard to draw a sword when in that position. In the time of Jesus, praying was done standing up.  Again, if kneeling is what keeps you from prayer, don't kneel unless you have to. 

Saints and vowed or ordained people seem to get more out of prayer for one simple reason, they do more of it but this is one case where practice does not make perfect. What the professional religious do that many of us civilians do not do is that they pray and build a relationship with God while many of us in the lay world try to say "the right things."  Prayer is getting to know God and by revealing yourself to Him, allowing Him to know you. Of course, He already knows you better than you know yourself, but what you share with Him shows how much you trust Him.

Prayer is not a mysterious thing.  There are no secrets to prayer that you cannot learn for yourself just by doing it. My advice is that before you look to experience the prayer life of St. Francis of Assisi, that you experience your prayer life first. There is no one size fits all method to prayer.  When we pray we are speaking to not some distant, uninterested sort of supreme being.  No, we are speaking to our Father in heaven.  He wants to hear from us. He wants us to be ourselves and to share our most intimate thoughts with Him.  Being God, He knows them already, but he wants you to think of Him as a friend, a personal, intimate friend.  

How you pray is not the issue. That you do pray is important.  Save the flowery language for professional prayer writers. If you are angry, tell God why, be honest and share fully. If you are feeling good, share that too. Be thankful for what you have and what you can do. Don't worry if your prayer doesn't sound like it came from a prayer book, just speak.  God wants to hear. 

Sometimes you will find it hard to pray. Cardinal Bernadine who died of cancer and finished a book literally hours before he died said that in his sickest moments he could not pray.  In these moments, the prayers in prayer books come in handy, they are a tool that was made for times such as these, for heaven's sake (pun intended) use the tools you have.  But if even that is too hard, your prayer can be contained in the tear drop that rolls down your cheek.  God knows why that tear formed and He will deal with it as if you had spoken to Him for hours. 

SPEAKING ABOUT PRAYER...PLEASE PRAY FOR THE POOR SOULS IN PURGATORY. THEY DEPEND ON US TO PRAY FOR THEM.  DON'T FORGET THEM TODAY...

Something New

So whoever is in Christ is a new creation:

the old things have passed away;

behold, new things have come.

Well it was battered and scared,
And the auctioneer felt it was hardly worth his while,
To waste much time on the old violin but he held it up with a smile,
Well it sure ain't much but it's all we got left I guess we ought to sell it too,
Oh, now who'll start the bid on this old violin?
Just one more and we'll be through.

And then he cried one give me one dollar,
Who'll make it two only two dollars who'll make it three,
Three dollars twice now that's a good price,
Now, who's gonna bid for me?
Raise up your hand now don't wait any longer the auctions about to end,
Who's got four Just one dollar more to bid on this old violin?

Well the air was hot and the people stood around as the sun was setting low,
From the back of the crowd a gray haired man,
Came forward and picked up the bow,
He wiped the dust from the old violin then he tightened up the strings,
Then he played out a melody pure and sweet, sweeter than the Angels sing, 
And then the music stopped and the auctioneer, 
With a voice that was quiet and low, he said now what am I bid,
For this old violin and he held it up with a bow.

And then he cried out one give me one thousand,
Who'll make it two only two thousand who'll make it three,
Three thousand twice you know that's a good price,
Come on who's gonna to bid for me?
And the people cried out what made the change we don't understand,
Then the auctioneer stopped and he said with a smile,
It was the touch of the Masters' hand.

Sometimes when I am feeling low, I turn to music to turn myself back around so that I am not looking so much at me at a pity party but me as a person beloved by God.  The song I've reprinted above is called, "Touch of the Master's Hand" and it is sung by Wayne Watson. The words are absolutely on point and true. I love the beginning of the song where the auctioneer says, "Well it sure ain't much but it's all we got left..."  When I hear that I think of myself before Christ came into my life and how He tuned me up and it is because of Him that I am who I am today.  Friend, if today the gloomy sky matches your mood, or if you know you just aren't right, then surrender to the Master and let him fix what is broken, all you need to do is cooperate with His grace and the sun will shine in your soul.    God Bless.

YES, I AM SHOUTING!  PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE REMEMBER THE POOR SOULS IN PURGATORY IN YOUR PRAYERS TODAY. AN OUR FATHER, HAIL MARY, AND A GLORY BE TAKES BUT A MINUTE FOR US AND MEANS SO MUCH FOR THEM! 

Fear of the Unknwon

"Precious in the eyes of the LORD   
is the death of his faithful ones."

My first experience with death happened in 1959 when my father's mother passed away.  The sad news was passed to my father by phone when we arrived back home from a fishing trip.  I cannot remember if my father cried when he heard the news.  Soon enough, his brother John came over to the house and Dad, John, and a very surprised me got into the car to go and make arrangements for Grandma's funeral.  This was the first time in my life that I had been included in an affair that normally was reserved for adults.  Of course, I was almost seven years old at the time.  We drove to the Blake and Lamb Funeral Home and sat around this table.  My father and his brother did all of the talking.  I decided to be quiet and only offer advice if it was asked for.  They managed to handle it themselves without my savant wisdom to guide them.  The time came to pick out a casket for Grandma.  The man in the dark suit bid us follow him and he opened a door and we descended into the bowels of the funeral home, going down these rickety stairs.  I still remember how they creaked as we went slowly down.  At the bottom of the stairs were dozens of metal and wooden boxes.  My father told me that these were coffins or caskets that dead people were placed in.  I was in awe and a little bit frightened.  After a few minutes, the deal was done and we left the dungeon-like basement and with handshakes all around we left the funeral home and made our way back home.  We were not home for long because we next got back into the car and we drove to Robert Hall, a place that sold suits. The men all were outfitted in black suits and the women folk, mom, and my two sisters bought appropriate outfits.  The next day, dressed in our new finery, we went to the funeral home. We were directed to the parlor on the second floor and we walked up and into this large room. There, against the wall, under pinkish colored lights, was my Grandmother, her hair was in some sort of style that she never would have worn while alive and she was in a dress that, while beautiful, did not look like something she would wear. The whole thing was quite surreal even to a youngster like me.  My father then said that today and tomorrow we would be attending Grandma's wake.  Then the pieces began to fit and I asked why we just didn't wake her up then and take her home.  He explained that she was dead, that she would not wake up and that we would bury her on Saturday.  I had come to an Adam and Eve moment in my life.  Up until Dad explained death, I had knowledge of good.  Now, after being given a bite of the apple, I knew about the other side of the equation.  Now, my Grandmother was not a church going person so the Catholic Church in the self-righteousness of the period refused to do a Mass for her.  She was baptized, so she was allowed burial in a Catholic Cemetary.  The funeral directors did some sort of service at the funeral home and we went to the cemetery.  I remember looking down into the hole before the casket was placed over it.  The funeral director said some more saccharine, one size fits all prayers and we left, the box containing grandma was left behind and I understood that death was a forever sort of thing.  

I've been to other funerals and each time I remember the first time I was introduced to what St. Francis calls Brother Death.  It scared me when I was young.  Today, as my turn to experience first hand what it is like to die gets closer, the fear is no longer there.  To be sure, I am in no rush but I do believe that we will all face death alone no matter how many people are around us.  I also believe it will be peaceful and the transition from life to eternal life will be seamless to us.  I like to think of it as inhaling my final breath on earth and exhaling it in heaven. 

I firmly believe that God does not abandon us when we go through the process of dying.  I believe that our returning to Him is very precious in His sight.  The stories about the tunnels of light, I find comforting.  I also pray for the poor souls in purgatory so I am hoping to have some friends there to greet me and to usher me into the presence of the Lord.  We will all be together again in heaven. You will be with your family and know absolutely everyone!  There will be joy and peace and rest from the struggles of this world and we will be awe struck at the beauty and the love of God for His children. 

So, what do you take home after reading all of this?  I would hope you would take away two things.  First, that you, as a person, the real you is loved by God for who you are.  Secondly, be not afraid because this love will keep you safe in His arms both now when you cannot see Him and especially on that day when you do.   God Bless! 

Purgatory is a place of hope and cleansing. The Holy Souls know that they will one day go to heaven, they have that irrevocable hope and a passion for loving God fully.  They cannot help themselves and they depend on us to pray for them.  Please remember them in your prayers today. 

The Fugitive

On one occasion, after Moses had grown up,
when he visited his kinsmen and witnessed their forced labor,
he saw an Egyptian striking a Hebrew, one of his own kinsmen.  
Looking about and seeing no one,
he slew the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.

Here is something that may tax your memory if you, like me, are a baby boomer.  One of the iconic television series back in the day was a program called "The Fugitive." I am talking about the TV series that featured David Janssen that ran from 1963 to 1967 for a total of 120 episodes.  It followed the story of Richard Kimble who had been convicted of killing his wife and had been sentenced to death.  On his way to Death Row the train he was on derailed and he was able to free himself and he began his odyssey to find "the one armed man" whom he said was the actual killer. Week after week he stays one step ahead of Lt. Gerrard who seems to be able to devote quite a bit of his time in chasing Richard.  In the end, a much anticipated final chapter the one arm man confesses to Richard but then is shot by Lt. Gerrard and Richard accepts his fate but since he was a good guy someone is found that testifies that the one armed man was the killer of Richard's wife and the show ends with the narrator saying "September Fifth, the running stops." Richard leaves the court and shakes the hand of Lt. Gerrard.  Fade to black.  

In today's reading, we hear of the time when Moses who is destined to be the leader of the Hebrew people that leads them out of Egypt, killed an Egyptian that was brutalizing a Hebrew.  He hides the body and continues with his day.  The next day he breaks up a fight between two Hebrews and one of them asks if he is going to kill them like he killed the Egyptian.  Moses knew the jig was up.  If these lowly Hebrews heard the story, then everyone knew the story. The Pharaoh was ticked off and Moses and wanted him to be brought before him so that he could condemn him.  Moses showed how fast he could run and he got out of Dodge as quickly as his legs could move him.  

What can we say about Moses here?  He murdered another man, but then again, it was before the Ten Commandments were handed to man so it wasn't technically wrong, was it?  Well, even before the Ten Commandments, men had in their heart a revulsion for those that took the life of others, they had a conscience back then.  If he had no conscience, then Moses would not have run. He knew in his heart what he did was wrong and we see that because he hid the body in the sand.  If it was okay to kill, well he would not have bothered to bury the victim. 

Now, imagine God in heaven.  What do you do with a man that has shed the blood of another?  Do you give him the mark of Cain and punish him for the rest of his life? What do you do?  In this case, God had His plan ready. For a number of years, He would allow Moses to be at peace in a foreign land.  He would marry, not the girl of his dreams mind you, and he would become a man of great wealth and influence in the region.  Then God put it into his heart that He had to return to Egypt.  He did this not by a dream or not by sky writing, but by a bush that was on fire and yet was not consumed.  And Moses returned to Egypt and eventually led the slaves of the Egyptians out of bondage.

We see here that God can make good come out of evil. The path that led to Jesus was trodden first by a murderer. Moses never lost his temper, it served him well on the forty year journey.  At the end of his life, when all of the original slaves had died off, Moses was told that he would need to be content with a view of the promised land and that he would not himself set foot there.  And so they buried him and God's plan to save you and me continued.  

I am not saying to go out and murder someone but remember the story of Moses. God can work with the clay he created no matter how many defects there are in the clay.  Just be ready to say to the Lord, "Yes, Lord, send me for I am your servant."

The poor souls in purgatory cannot help themselves.  They need prayers from the faithful still on earth.  Remember them today as you go about your business, an Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be takes so little of our time and it means so much to them. 

A Clear Case of Discrimination !

Pharaoh then commanded all his subjects,

"Throw into the river every boy that is born to the Hebrews,


but you may let all the girls live."

Today's first reading at mass relates the story of how the Children of Israel fared after a new pharaoh came to power who did not know the deeds of Joseph.  The first thing that the pharaoh did was to make sure that he had slaves but not people that could rise up against him should an enemy come to attempt to take over Egypt. He proclaimed that all of the Hebrew boys should be drowned in the river.  This eliminated the chance that the Hebrews would get strong enough to eventually raise up an army against Pharaoh but kept the girls around to act as slaves and probably as entertainers on those long cold nights along the Nile.  He was sacrificing the future of the Hebrews to ensure the continued greatness of the Egyptians.  The Lord arranged a powerful good to come out of this murder of innocent infants and that good was Moses.  Moses would grow up in the house of Pharaoh and become one of the most powerful men in Egypt.

God can make good happen where we see only bad.  I do not know what it is about mankind that through the years we see that there is a hostility against the infants of his kind.  We have our story above, we have Herod killing the boys in the time of Jesus, and today, we have caused the deaths of millions of babies under the guise of "women's health" in the death chambers of Planned Parenthood. 

To sacrifice the future for convenience sake is a horrible thing. The right to life is something that is guaranteed by God because it is He that gives us children.  Pray for an end to abortion in the world and especially in America.  Pray for us to return to God in tears and repentance for what we have done since the dark day of Roe v Wade.  Find your voice and speak out for the unborn. 

The Poor Souls in Purgatory - Remember them and pray for them today! 

Quite an Eye Full

"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.

I never thought about this before.  Sharing the earth with me are seven and a half billion people.  That is certainly a lot of people. Of that number, I can count myself as one of the fortunate ones because I have heard and have accepted the wild tale of God coming to earth, taking on our mortal bodies, working a sun up to sundown job which He learned from his foster father.  Then, after thirty years of coming to know what being a human was like he began to teach about the Kingdom of God, which angered the people in power who could not see the forest for the trees, and they hung this God come to earth on a tree and left Him there to experience the pain of death, which, like any other human, He did. Then He did something that no one could conceive of, He rose from the dead.  I am one of the blessed because I have heard and I believe these truths.

I am really happy that I am one of the chosen ones. But then again, everyone on earth is a chosen one, it is just that they have to first hear the Good News and then they have to believe the Good News. In this modern age, there are so many opportunities for the pagan (Come on now, that's what they are, I don't mean it as an insult.) can hear about Jesus and the wonderful work He did so many years ago that has changed the ultimate fate of believers.  He opened the Gate of Heaven and has readied the feast. It is just too bad that the vast majority of people on this world do not look at life through the lens of eternity.  They fix their eyes on what is and not what can be.  They rise daily, work for eight or more hours, eat, then sleep and then do it again and again and again buying this and that with their money and not storing anything away for eternity. 

So, my eyes are blessed and one of the things I have to do is to help my brothers and sisters to see, to look at the long picture, to store up things for eternity.  This is the New Evangelization, funny, it's just how the old evangelization worked too. 

THE POOR SOULS IN PURGATORY NEED YOUR HELP.  PLEASE, TAKE A MOMENT NOW AND PRAY FOR THEM.  THEY CANNOT HELP THEMSELVES, THEY DEPEND ON US.  WON'T YOU HELP TODAY?

Top Secret. No Longer

Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed,

nor secret that will not be known.

What I say to you in the darkness, speak in the light;

what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops.

Did you read the story about Harvard University?  It seems that this grand old college is about to do something rather unique.  It is about to close their doors to all fraternities and sororities and make Greek life on their campus a thing of the past. This draconian decree is not aimed at all of the groups but rather at the secret societies that the college community is famous for.  These single sex groups instill in the members, a sense of entitlement and it is said that most of the incidents of non-consensual sex, a polite term for rape, comes from male members of the secret clubs. The notion that banning the organizations will change how these self-entitled men handle themselves around women is quaintly naive. The fact is that you would have to go back in time and teach the young hooligans how life should be lived and this is not possible.

The darkness conceals a lot of things but all will be brought to light on the Day of Judgment. We will be surprised on that day when we see some people we assumed were destined for hell be welcomed by Jesus into the Kingdom.  Surprised indeed we will be when we see some who gave all the outward appearances of being saints only to be sent away in eternal disgrace. The Christian should be not afraid to allow the secret thoughts in his/her heart to be revealed to the world.  Our inside self should be a mirror of our outside self and our behavior should be a transparent map to the whole person that we are.    

For us Christians, it is not enough for us to have knowledge of salvation, we are called to shout from the housetops the Good News that Jesus brought into the world.  The Church is NOT a Secret Society.  Like it or not, the Church IS God's Kingdom on Earth.  It has a king, Jesus and the King appointed a Prime Minister, the Pope to take care of the Kindom's earthly business while the King is away.  Protestants, whether they realize it or not, depend on the authority of the Catholic Church for their teachings. For example, it was the Church that defined the Trinity because nowhere in the Bible is the Trinity defined, it is only alluded to. All of the things that the Catholics and Protestants hold in common come from the teaching authority of the Church.  It was the Church that gave the Bible to people and it is the Church that has the authority to determine what is meant by the holy infallible words in that great library of books. Bishop Baron says in an infallible book without an authoritative interpreter is a useless book. The Protestant notion that every man can interpret scripture for himself is absolute nonsense, otherwise, why would we have over thirty-thousand Christian denominations in the United States alone, each with a slightly different interpretation on this or that point of scripture?  The Holy Spirit is said to guide individual readers.  Why does the Spirit guide one person one way and another person a different way when interpreting scripture?  Jesus built His Church as a kingdom on the Rock of St. Peter and gave the Church and by Church I mean not an invisible mystical group somewhere in the ether, but rather flesh and bone human beings, the Pope and the magisterium of the Church the ability to discriminate what is true in scripture from what is false under the protection of the Holy Spirit. 

We Christians must take what we have learned and share it by shouting out to others what was whispered to us in the dark. We are responsible for helping to get the message out and we should do so without delay for the time of God's mercy for those in this world is finite because if we do not accept His mercy we will have to accept his judgment. 

PLEASE REMEMBER THE HOLY SOULS IN PURGATORY IN YOUR PRAYERS TODAY, THEY DEPEND ON US TO HELP THEM AND THEY WILL NOT FORGET THOSE THAT PRAY FOR THEM

And Now For The News

Jesus said to his Apostles:
"Behold, I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves;    
so be shrewd as serpents and simple as doves.
But beware of men, 
for they will hand you over to courts
and scourge you in their synagogues,
and you will be led before governors and kings for my sake
as a witness before them and the pagans.
When they hand you over,
do not worry about how you are to speak
or what you are to say.
You will be given at that moment what you are to say.
For it will not be you who speak

Christians being persecuted for their faith in Jesus is nothing new. The founder of Christianity was Himself hung by nails on a cross and left to die.  Die he did.  The life forces that animated the body of Jesus of Nazareth left His body and he was truly as dead as could be. This was not some simple trick that a magician might pull, no, Jesus suffered the reality of death of His body, experiencing every ounce of pain in the cup he drank for us.  He, of course, used this very set back to achieve final victory when he defeated death itself and rose on the third day. 

In our reading today, Jesus warns us that He is sending us out into a world that will be hostile to us because of Him and because of His message. Throughout the centuries we have been persecuted and martyred for our faith. What Jesus said came to pass. 

Today we face a world that grows ever more intolerant of the Laws of God. We have been called hate mongers when we point out that God created man and women and marriage can only between people of the opposite sex.  We are hated when we point out that the murder of the unborn in the womb is just that, murder.  We are told that our antiquated beliefs have no place in the modern world and that our Church should reform our teachings to conform more exactly to what the majority of people believe.  Unfortunately for those that want this change, God's Kingdom is a kingdom and not a democracy.  Where other denominations once stood side by side with the Church on these issues, now, they, after convening a meeting and voting, have voted themselves on to the side of the pagans.  They in effect voted themselves out of God's kingdom and the word Protestant takes on a new and more sinister meaning. 

If we pick and choose the laws of God that we will obey and discard the ones that are inconvenient, then we no longer believe in God, we believe in ourselves.  I am so glad that I am a Catholic and that I can believe in the authority of the Church to guide me.  The day may come when I will have to stand and either acknowledge the authority of the Church in my life or accept the punishment of the mob that hates God and His Church.  I pray that when that time comes, I have the faith of our fathers and I can depend on the Holy Spirit to tell me what to say and to hold fast to my course no matter what the consequences shall be.    God Bless. 

Please pray for the Holy Souls in Purgatory, they cannot help themselves.