Being Proud of Our Humility?

"For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled,

but the one who humbles himself will be exalted."

The Gospel reading for today comes  Luke Chapter 14 verses 1 to 7 and verse 11  ( Click here to read  ).  In the time of Jesus, there was a definite protocol that was followed at weddings.  In many houses, especially in those of the monied class, the feast was held in a room with two levels.  The higher level was reserved for the guests of honor, the wedding party, the rabbi, people of higher civil rank and the like.  It was the place to be seen at the wedding.  The lower section was for those of lesser importance, the riff-raff, and more common people. The Pharisee and the Sadducee always aspired to the upper level because they saw themselves as men that were worthy of respect.  So, if you were a Pharisee or a Sadducee you always felt compelled to be at the top of the feast rather at the bottom.  What Jesus was saying is that what would happen if you sat down at the upper level and began to enjoy yourself when someone more important than you arrived.  The host would see that the choice spots were all taken and then he would see you sitting there where the host felt that you did not belong.  He would approach and tell you to give up your space to the man that had just arrived. If you looked insulted of if you did not look like you were going to go, he would probably tell a servant to "assist you" to a different place. Then, you would stand up and with a red face join the great unwashed on the lower level.  On the other hand, if you started on the lower level the host might see you and realize that you were certainly an honored guest and he would immediately ask you to join him in the VIP lounge.  As you walked to your new space others would look at you in awe. and yes, maybe they would be just a little bit jealous.  

Jesus is telling us to be humble.  This is something that we in the twenty-first century do not understand.  We are taught from early age to be assertive and to take our rightful place in the world.  This is good advice except we should always consider others as better than ourselves. We have as an example Jesus, Himself.  He did not descend to earth with trumpeting angels announcing His arrival to all.  Quite the contrary.  We are told that angels announced His birth to shepherds abiding in the field.  Being a shepherd was not considered to be a cool occupation.  This is because your work kept you in the field, read away from the temple, and you were more or less considered a bad Hebrew, even chronically ritually unclean.  Yet these poor shepherds were the first in Israel to hear the Good News and they came to the stable and found the Child not in a cradle of gold but in a common manger, a place where cattle ate and did the other things that cattle do after eating.  They found the Messiah in humble surroundings. 

Jesus is the poster boy for humility.  He washed the feet of his followers, a dirty job usually given to the lowliest servant in a household.  For us, he assumed the most humble role of all, becoming the Bread of Life, which is Jesus, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the guise of bread and wine to nourish both body and soul.  God can give no greater example of humility than that. 

So, practice humility in all you do.  Sometimes giving up your "rightful place" will be a good thing to do and you may be surprised when after doing so you are asked to come up to the higher level.  

This Is What Being A Christian Is All About

Yesterday's readings defined for us what Church is. Today's readings define how we are to treat one another as members of this Church.  In the first reading for this Sunday, we are told to treat everyone with kindness, not to abuse immigrants, not to take advantage of widows and orphans and not to take advantage of others with the example of usury being given as one thing not to do.  God also tells us that if we abuse widows and orphans that His wrath will rise up and make our relatives widows and orphans.  In the Gospel reading, Jesus is asked what the greatest commandment is.  He rightfully quotes the first commandment, we are commanded to love God and he quotes the second commandment, we are to love our neighbor not just a little bit, but as we love ourselves.  Jesus tells us that in these two commandments is the whole of the law of God. The eight remaining commandments tell us exactly how we are to execute the requirements that God has given us. 

It is not easy to perfectly follow the ten commandments.  The old testament Hebrews were always finding themselves at odds with one or another of the commands.  Their solution was to flesh out the commandments of God with more and more rules to follow.  They would split hairs and split them again. They had rules for everything.  For example, they had the rule that no one could walk further than two-thousand cubits on the Sabbath. That meant that you could walk about two-thirds of a mile.  The intent of this rule was two-fold.  First, it kept the Sabbath as a day of rest and secondly, it kept you close to the temple or synagogue so that you could spend your time wisely.  Even today in Israel the modern Jews can be very scrupulous when it comes to rest on the Sabbath.  Elevators stop on every floor of a high rise so they do not have to push a button for that is considered work.  Some families hire non-Jewish help for the Sabbath so that lights can be turned on or off for the act of making a spark would be considered work. 

Now that is how we humans are.  We have a tendency to take things that are simple and turn them into things that can be incredibly complex. That is okay, I guess, because some of the rules and regulations we have to follow, both religious and non-religious have to be fleshed out some so that what is expected at minimum is known to all.  But, if the truth is to be known, if we work on the first two commandments, if we truly set out sights on observing them as perfectly as we can, then the whole of the law of God will be observed because if we are doing all to love God and love our neighbor, we will not be doing the other things that the commandments forbid. Perhaps the law can be made even simpler as elsewhere in scripture it is written that we should do unto others what we would have them do unto us.   That is what being a follower of Jesus is all about.  What Jesus wants from us is to show the same love to others as He has shown to us.  He went to the cross as a victim, taking our place and paying our penalty.  We are to imitate Him and carry our cross and bear the burdens of others as best as we can. What we cannot carry on our own, He will help us carry.  

They Lost Everything ! ! !

For we brought nothing into the world, just as we shall not be able to take anything out of it. If we have food and clothing, we shall be content with that. Those who want to be rich are falling into temptation and into a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires, which plunge them into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all evils,

We weep with those who have lost everything in hurricane and earthquake.  Millions of people have had their lives permanently changed by what we whimsically call "acts of God" as if God sits on His throne charting out all of the disasters that befall those on Earth.  The truth is, God has set the rules of nature in motion and sometimes these disasters do occur but they were not planned nor ordained by God, they are just physical realities following the laws of nature. 

These disasters do bring into focus what the letter to Timothy quoted above has told us.  We can live without a lot of things that we now consider vital.  There is one commercial that I like because it exposes the flaw in our thinking.  A man is in his kitchen and says that all we need is bread, water, and the internet to survive.  

Our prayers and charitable acts need to flow in a giant tidal wave to help our brothers and sisters that are facing the peril of the loss of everything including bread, water, clothing, shelter and every modern convenience.  While we are doing what we can, we should imagine what our friends are going through and realize that next time, we could be the victims of the laws of nature the next time something happens because the rules of nature apply to everyone. 

The poor souls in purgatory know that someday they will see God face to face and that gives them perfect joy but the fact that they cannot see Him now hurts them beyond belief. Please pray for the poor souls 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?

Watermelon

"The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few;   
so ask the master of the harvest
to send out laborers for his harvest."

My Dad was a good man. He had two missions in life, the first was to take care of his family and the second was to tend his garden.  His garden was his pride and joy.  He grew beefsteak tomatoes the size of a clincher softball and his radishes were huge.  I love tomatoes, not so much the radishes. Every day during the summer he would come home from work and immediately go out to work in the garden.  One year, he had me and my two sisters plant some watermelon seeds in a patch of ground between the sidewalk and the neighbor's fence line, a space of about eight inches.  The three of us became gardeners for the rest of the summer.  We watered the little patch, made sure no weeds grew and carefully took care of the plants that would produce these wonderful watermelons.  It was getting close to the start of school. The parish carnivals had come and gone and still no watermelon.  We continued to tend the plants and one day, there they were, three watermelons had appeared where just that morning there had been only the promise of fruit in the future.  We were amazed.  Dad had us harvest the three melons, each just big enough for one child. Using a magic marker he placed our names on the melon and we carried our precious product to Mom who put them in the refrigerator to chill down.  The melons made a wonderful desert that day at dinner time.  

Our reading today is about the lack of workers tending the fields of our heavenly Father.  There was a time when a parish had three, four, or even five priests to take care of the local Catholic community.  I remember as a kid, going to Saturday confession and all four of the confessional boxes were in use. There was also a time when in a family if a boy or girl felt called to a Christian vocation, it was a matter of great pride for the family and they young people were encouraged to listen to the voice of the Lord.  

In contrast, I look at what happened to me when I announced that I felt a calling to the religious life.  My family let out a collective yawn and did not exactly encourage me.  Well, I went and tried religious life and as you know, after two years, I returned home.  I think back on those days, which were some of the richest and most joyous days of my life surpassed only by the day I married the lovely Mary my wife and partner in life. But, I wonder if I would have stayed had I received any encouragement from the home front?   This was in the 70's, a time when the Church was experiencing growing pains as we tried to unravel the wisdom that was Vatican II.  We still are working through that council.  

Today, some parishes are served by a single priest who divides his time among several parishes.  In parts of the United States deacons celebrate communion services on Sundays using communion consecrated by the priest that comes once a month.  People in these areas are dying without receiving the anointing of the sick or Viaticum.  We truly need more workers in the field. 

Some solutions are presented, for example, women priests is one thought.  The Church points out that both men and women have different jobs to do.  The role of the priest is reserved to the male of the species.  This is something that will not change.  We are told that we lack priests because of the rule of celibacy that they take on, that it is too hard for a man to live his life without the comfort of a woman to accompany him on the journey.  This is a discipline of the Church and it could be changed.  But, are the people in the pews ready to take on all it means to have a married clergy? A married clergy means that the priest will need to make a living wage so that he can take care of his family.  This would mean the weekly collections would have to go up so the parish could support a priest and his family.  The poor parishes would be at a disadvantage because they would not be able to afford to maintain a priest and his wife and a couple of children.  To be sure, there are already married priests in the Roman Catholic Church.  They have come over from Episcopal Churches, returning home to Rome.  They have been welcomed into the Church and have had their priesthood confirmed and they celebrate the Mass and the Sacraments as they enjoy the comfort of a family to accompany them.  

I do not know the answer to the lack of priests and religious in the Catholic world today. What I do know is that we have to encourage our young people to consider a religious vocation and we need to do it from an early age.  When I was growing up, there was no real talk in our home about the Church, we did not share family prayer and as a matter of fact, my father or mother did not go to church on Sunday, only us kids were sent to sit with our class at 9:15 AM mass. 

Jesus gives us the formula as to how to solve this crisis. He tells us to pray that the master of the harvest to send more workers out into the field, the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.  So, reserve just a little bit of your prayer time to pray for vocations.  Do you remember Mother Angelica on EWTN telling you to put her between your phone and electric bill, well when you pray put a prayer for our young people to answer the call of God between your prayers for Aunt Bertha and her bunions and Uncle Frank and his need for a job.  We need more priests, nuns, brothers, and deacons and we will get what we ask for and the harvest will be greater if we can encourage those with the call to listen to the voice of God as He calls them forth. 

Was He Kidding Or What?

Foreward:

There is no work as onerous as reinventing something that has already been invented, found to be useful and still does the job.  What follows is a reprise of a blog entry made several years ago on the Feast of Corpus Christi.  I was writing with passion that day and except for the addition of a comma here and an article there, I am reproducing it here.  Sometimes, and this is one of those occasions, I can't find anything to fix.  Praise to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.  Corpus Christi 2017  Michael

For fifteen hundred years there was no conflict when it came to the Holy Eucharist.  The Church believed that it was the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ. Some of the "reformers" took issue with this, notably not the prototype heretic Luther who maintained that it was a sacramental union between Jesus and man.  Other reformers such as Calvin, Knox, and others believed it was only a symbolic memorial.

The Council of Trent at that time confirmed what everyone up until that time believed:

 Christ “instituted this Sacrament, in which He poured forth as it were the riches of divine love towards man” so that the Eucharist would be:

a remembrance, “to venerate His memory” and “show forth His death until He comes to judge the world.”

the “spiritual food of souls, whereby” He feeds and strengthens “those who live with His life.”

an “antidote, whereby we may be freed from daily faults [venial sins] and be preserved from mortal sins.”

a “pledge of our glory to come, and everlasting happiness”

a “symbol of that one body whereof He is the head, and to which He would fain have us as members be united by the closest bond of faith, hope, and charity…   Source: Laura McAlister

The Council of Trent like many councils was a reactionary council called to combat issues that came to because of the rebellion of Luther and the others.  Contrary to what some critics of the Church say the Council of Trent did not invent transubstantiation but rather codified what up until that time had been believed by everyone, everywhere.  I can see why today's Protestants would have trouble with the concepts codified by Trent.  The Council rightly defined the Eucharist as the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ.  This position taken to its logical end proves the Catholic point and thus was bitterly contested by the "reformers."  But for the sake of this blog let us suspend the tenants of the Council of Trent and go to what the "reformers" claim is the only source of Christian Doctrine, the Bible itself.  Let us also restrict ourselves to what the founder of the Catholic Church, Jesus, Himself said about the Eucharist.  (Please supply quotation marks where you think they should go,,,)

While they were at supper, Jesus took bread, and blessed and broke it, and gave to his disciples and said; Take and eat. This is My Body And taking the chalice, He gave thanks, and gave to them saying: Take and drink this.  For this is My Blood of the New Testament which shall be shed for many unto the remission of sins.  (John 26: 26-28)

Amen, Amen, I say to you; Moses gave you not bread from Heaven, but my Father gives you the true Bread from Heaven.  For the Bread of God is that which comes down from Heaven and gives life to the world.

John 6:32, 33

I Am the Bread of life: He that comes to me shall not hunger and he that believes in Me shall never thirst.

John 6:35

I Am the Bread of Life. Your fathers did eat manna in the desert and are dead. This is the Bread which comes down from Heaven; that if any man eats of it, he may not die.  I Am the living bread which came down from Heaven.  If any man eats of this bread he shall live forever, and the Bread that I will give is my Flesh for the life of the world.

John 6: 48 - 52

Amen, Amen I say unto you: Unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of man and drink His Blood, you shall not have life in you.  He that eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood has everlasting life: and I will raise him up on the last day.

John 6: 54-55

For my Flesh is food indeed and my Blood is drink indeed.  He that eats my Flesh and drinks My Blood abides in Me and I in Him.  As the living Father has sent Me, and I live by the Father; so he that eats me, the same shall live by Me. This is the Bread that came down from Heaven. Not as your Fathers did eat manna and are dead. He that eats this Bread, shall live for ever.

John 6:56-59

If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word and My Father will love him and We will come to him and will make Our abode with him.

John 14:23

From the above, we can see that Jesus considered the gift of His Body and Blood essential to salvation. The Doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist is a hard thing for some people to believe. It was hard for the people in the time of Jesus.  In John chapter 6 verse 60 we read: " After hearing it, many of his followers said, 'This is intolerable language. How could anyone accept it?' Jesus does not say that He is only kidding, or what he said before should be taken as a symbol.  When he refuses to compromise or place a spin on what he said, the saddest moment of His life up until that time occurred because the people turned away and John says " After this, many of his disciples went away and accompanied him no more."  (John 6: 66) This too is what the "reformers" did or caused to happen among the poor souls that the clawed away from the Church.  They rejected the great gift of Jesus and just walked away, 

So, there you have it. The Blessed Sacrament is a gift that is misunderstood by some, laughed at by others, seen as a symbol, seen as a rite of passage, seen as something "you do."  The Blessed Sacrament is the union of Jesus and the recipient. You cannot get closer to God in this life than by receiving Him, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity into yourself.  If God can create the world in seven days from nothing, can He not also give us Himself in the form which appears to our senses as being bread and wine?  Does He not have the power and the will to do this?  If you say no then your God is too small.

One Plus One Is One

And I have given them the glory you gave me,

so that they may be one, as we are one,

Here is a stumper for you, explain the Trinity.  Is our God actually three Gods?  Those of you of ancient times might remember the Baltimore Catechism's definition of who are God actually is.  Do you remember?  Well, the answer is that The Trinity is Three Divine Persons in one Divine Being. There, we got that figured out now don't we?  Or do we?   St. Patrick used to arrive at a village and the first thing (the story goes) he would do would be to find the meanest, strongest, bad boy living there and beat the tar out of him.  This got the citizens attention and then he took out a shamrock and used it to explain the Trinity, one plant, three leaves, all united.  Is that a true story? I don't know, but it sure is a good tale.  It makes one good point, that the Trinity is united, they are one even though they are separate and distinct.   The idea of three Divine Persons in One Divine Being is hard, no, impossible to get your hands around.  It is one of those things that we may never, in all eternity understand.  

The most important thing about the Trinity, as I said is that they are united, they are one.  Jesus prayed that all of His followers be of one mind but when we came to the fifteen-hundreds, we kind of messed that up now didn't we?  I am not going to get into a finger pointing session here because there was enough blame to go around.  Luther was too prideful and the Church didn't listen as well as she should have. 

Unity in our religions is something that we need to work towards.  The Catholic Church cannot move any closer to our separated Protestant brothers and sisters by changing doctrine that has remained unchanged since the Church was founded.  She can and should to try to attract her lost children back to her. We do not do that by pointing out the error of our brothers' ways and shaking our fingers at them. To do this would make us no better than old Jack Chick and his poison tracts. We must attract them by showing them what a real Christian community is like.  This is something that we have not been too good at since Luther banged a few nails into a church door.  

How do we do this?  We make the light of Christ brighter and brighter in our church communities that they cannot fail to see that we are different and that difference is the life of Christ in us shining out. We must open doors and windows.  We must be ready to be friendly and loving to those who might not really trust us because we bear the label Catholic.   The new evangelization is not new at all. It is something that we should have been doing all along.  You don't need to become a street preacher, you need not say even a word. You may let your actions do your talking for you.  What I suggest is that we take some time and look around and find a need and fill it.  Listen for the Lord to speak to you.  He is looking for men, women, and children to build his Church.  Enthusiasm will generate enthusiasm!   Love will generate love in return.  The hardest part is to start.  

That is all for today.  I hope I have given you something to think about.  God bless and don't be afraid to leave a comment.  

Please Explain Yourself !

Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.

Always be ready to give an explanation

to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope,

but do it with gentleness and reverence,

keeping your conscience clear,

so that, when you are maligned,

those who defame your good conduct in Christ

may themselves be put to shame.

For it is better to suffer for doing good,

if that be the will of God than for doing evil.

Yesterday, I wrote about the world and how if the Church is doing a good job the world will hate us. Today, we are asked to always be ready to explain why we are a Christian.  We are told to do so gently and reverently.  So, what do you say if someone asks you why you are a Catholic Christian?   How do you respond? 

First, how would someone determine if you were a Christian? Could they tell just by looking at you?  Could they tell by a close examination of your conduct that you were different than someone who does not profess to be a friend of Jesus?  If we go back to our roots in the first century we can see that Christians of that era were known because they loved each other so much. Do we exude the aura of love in what we do and say?  Or, are we just another regular Joe (or Jane) that works nine to five and collects a paycheck to pay the bills and maybe, just maybe, have a little bit of transient joy by engaging in the things of this world.  If we could not be convicted in a court of law of being a Catholic Christian than it is unlikely anyone would bother asking why we seem different because we aren't.  If we practice our religion on Sunday and that carefully pack it away for the rest of the week, then it makes no difference in our lives.  We in effect become an undercover Catholic.  We keep our pious lives safe and secure and  no one is the wiser. 

But, if you get asked, what do you respond?  Do you break out your Bible and thump it and scream that they had better accept Jesus as their savior or suffer the pains of hell forever more?  There is nothing like going for the jugular vein.  The direct approach wastes no one's time and unfortunately discourages the person because the yelling and screaming gets lost in the noise generated by the world itself.  There will be nodding and agreement and once you walk self-righteously away, everything you have said will be filed away in the same place that the person files the information attained in late night infomercials.  

It is important to have a reason for your belief that is both honest and true.  And this reason should be self-evident in the way you conduct yourself and your words should simply confirm that what you have shown them on the outside is matched by what comes from inside. What could the reason be?  Can you put it into words?  I think our hope comes from the fact that in the Church we are united by one Bread and one Body.  I think that we are united in a spirit of love and honest and responsible conduct and gentle treatment of all we meet. We are that way because we know and believe that we are special.  We are not just ordinary Joes or Janes.  We are adopted children of the Father who loves us with a love that is impossible for us to fully understand.  It is this love, that we have in our hearts that we just have to share with those around us.  This sharing of love, this kindness in a world where a smile might be met with a fist, is what we have that the world does not have and what it longs for. 

Words can be powerful things.  Writers are skilled at arranging words to make a point.  Orators are skilled at swaying emotions through the use of vocabulary, inflection, and gesture.  But what if you are a person who cannot write and you are too shy to stand before a group of people and to try to sway them with pearls of wisdom dropping from your vocal chords?  It is very simple.  You live your life giving love and patience to all, accepting the good and the bad with equal joy and people will notice that there is something different about you.  This will attract them to you and eventually they will see that you are you because of Christ within you.  Our Church is not built on great orators or writers, both of which are needed. Our Church is built by those that use their life to make a difference to each person that they meet. 

Finally, do not be too concerned if your good attitude and mode of living brings to you rejection.  It will come.  Do not be concerned if you are the victim of persecution for that goes hand in hand with being a Christian from the beginning.  Your hope and your strength are not centered in this world, they are centered in heaven.  Your victory has already been won and that is why you can hope while the world dwells in hopelessness.  Let the brightness of your soul shine forth with the radiance of a thousand billion suns and let the world come and see why you shine so brightly.

It's All In The Instructions

I brought home the thing and opened the box. It looked easy enough and I started putting the thing together. Well, part one went into part two but the hole for part three didn't quite line up but I inserted it anyway.  Part four almost lined up correctly and using the wrench provided by the manufacturer I tighten the nuts and turned my new table over and it was very, very lopsided.  I took the thing apart and looked in the box and pulled out this printed sheet. It appears that I had part one upside down as to how it was supposed to fit in part two.  I took the thing apart and this time I followed the instructions and my new table looked just like the sample did in the store. Reading and following all of the instructions made all of the difference. 

In the first reading at mass this Sunday, God reminds us in Deut 30 10-14 that the instructions are there, he put them there, we do not have to look for them, He has written them for us in our hearts.  In the Gospel today we heard the story of the Good Samaritan.  The story was a shocker in the time of Jesus. Samaritans were looked down upon, they were looked on as pagans by the faithful Jews of the time.  The road that lead to Jericho was avoided for a couple of reasons. First, it went through Samaria.  Second. it was well known that it was infested with robbers. A Jew would travel out of his way to avoid this road.  So it must have been an urgent mission that caused a priest and Levite to use that road. First of all the priest, why he could not stop. The man lying on the side of the road was bloody and if he touched him he would not be able to pray because he would be ritually unclean. The same was true for the Levite. Besides, what if the man was faking and either one of these two stopped to help, well maybe the man would jump up and rob them or hidden accomplices would jump out and beat the tar out of him and leave him for dead on the side of the road.  So for practical purposes alone, the priest and the Levite ignored the victim.  The Samaritan on the other hand was walking down that same road.  He stopped, he chose to extend mercy. He carried the victim to an inn and dressed his woulds and paid the innkeeper to watch over the man.  He also promised to pay whatever the innkeeper paid in excess of the two silver coins he left for the victims room and board. 

Jesus in this story makes sure to tell us while it is important to love God with your whole heart, soul, and being, you must also love your neighbor.  

On this Sunday where we are all still shaking our heads at the senseless violence that is plaguing our world, we have to ask ourselves are we taking care to be a caretaker of our neighbor?  Jesus is asking us to do so.  If we do, the violence will stop, I guarantee this to you. 

  

What EVERY Christian Can Learn from Mother Angelica

Rest in Peace Mother Angelica

Mother Angelica was perhaps the greatest American Catholic in the last fifty years. All of us, Catholic or not can learn a lesson from this great lady. 

The eulogies written and said for Mother are many and far more beautiful than I can write. So rather than eulogize her I am going to point out what I feel are her  most important characteristics that we as Christians could emulate in our lives. 

Mother knew of only one road to take and that was the road of faith. When she believed that God was calling her to do something, she set her eyes upon Jesus, threw the throttle into full speed ahead, and turned a deaf ear to those who said what she wanted to do was impossible.  She also knew that sometimes she would misinterpret what God wanted her to do, those times she would experience failure. She did not fear failure. The only thing that she feared was standing before Jesus and being shown what she could have done. 

She was a caring person. I read where she was more concerned with the spiritual conditions of her employees than she was concerned with the television network.  She was also fearless when it came to speaking the truth. She saw that the Church was looking to throw away practices that were necessary to keep.  She took on the mighty and helped preserve important Catholic practices that she rightly thought as important.  She also was honest to those who worked with her and if she had a disagreement with say for example with inviting a certain guest on to a show because the guests views were too liberal, she came out and said it. She was also compassionate knowing that we are all sinners and she did her best to coax and coach people back into the Church when they had lost their way.

She also had a great sense of humor. There is nothing worse than a glum Christian. From what I've heard on EWTN these past few days she even kept her humor during her sickness over the last years of her life. She embraced the suffering that came her way.  She joined it to the sufferings of Christ as St. Paul tells us to and she made her pains and her bed-ridden state into something holy.  Her whole life contained suffering. For years she had to wear pounds of braces so that she could walk. She bore this cheerfully, without resentment, for the good of all and offered it up to Christ. 

The thing she did the best is that she brought Jesus to life for many many people!  We have a tendency to think of Jesus as "up there, somewhere."  She brought Him and His teachings back to earth.  She reintroduced something that some Catholics forgot about, a personal Jesus. She reminded us that Jesus loved us and our ideal fate is to be with Him in heaven. 

Mother will be missed, there is no doubt about that. The good that she did has reached around the world via the television and radio stations she founded.  How many people came to Christ because of her?  How many returned to the Church because something she said or did on TV?  We will never know, 

She is at rest now.  Probably in heaven talking with Saint Maximilian Kolbe about modern communication methods or speaking her words of thanks to Jesus and the Blessed Mother.  She belongs in heaven for because of her work many others will enjoy being with God that may not have made it at all.