Attitude Is Important

The Sodom Chamber of Commerce Welcomes You!
What happens in Sodom stays in Sodom. 

Today in this world we have created for ourselves, a world where little by little God is being edged out and being replaced with what seems good, or feels good, or doesn't offend, we Christians have a grave duty.  It is a duty to our to our God, to our Church and to our fellow human creatures.  Our duty is to be the pain in the ass for the world. (I cam't believe he said that!) It is the easiest thing in the world to be politically correct, just sitting back and letting what happens around us happen. We need not participate. No we just need to stand by and watch it happen. This will promote peace and harmony among all of the people and isn't that what we are after?  Peace is a good thing after all isn't it? Well, there is peace and there is peace. In 1938 Neville Chamberlain stumbled off of his airplane clutching a piece of paper in hand and proclaimed that he had brought back "peace in our time." We all know what happened. On September 1, 1939 NAZI Germany started World War II which caused millions of deaths world wide. 

The men and women living in ancient Sodom kept things politically correct, they were at peace with one another and we know what happened to them. I am afraid that peace is something that is going to be hard to achieve in our world. We Christians have the duty to point the way, to be a lighthouse that points out the rocky outcrops that litter the pathways of life. This duty is not going to make us popular with the people around us that have chosen to turn their back on the law of God and to follow their own law. It is very important that in being a PIA we do so keeping in mind that those we are trying to help are beloved by God our Father just as we are. The most rabid homosexual activist, the Muslim who bathes in the blood of the innocent, the abortion doctor who has filled his wallet with money by creating baby cadavers, all of these are loved by God who is just one step away from them with His arms outstretched waiting for them to return to Him. 

In a soul where God is absent, ego grows to imperfectly fill His place. A soul without God can never be satisfied because no matter what he/she obtains in gratification of their wants still leaves them wanting more.  They are in a most pitiful shape because they cannot see the trouble that they are in. When we point out an issue where Christians and they are on opposite sides their ego shuts off their ability to see and they that cannot see, will not see. 

Okay, lets get to the bottom line. We must love our brothers and sisters back to life. Do you remember Chinese handcuffs? You put your fingers in them and if you pull hard, they hold more tightly to your fingers and you cannot get out of them. Release the pressure and your fingers slip right out. While we have to confront people about behavior that is sinful we must do it in a loving and respectful way. We must always remember that we are the planters and God Himself is the harvester. If we sit back and say nothing then we are guilty as if we committed the sin ourselves.  If we attack frontally and insult our brothers and sisters, we can only expect them to hold on to their beliefs even more strongly. We must love them back to health. Our good example and gentle prodding will do more good than anything else. 

God bless all of you. Please leave a comment, even if it is only to say you think I am nuts! Michael 

Early In The Morning

I was up very early this morning. It is a gloomy looking start to the day and it is refreshingly cool as I sit by the window with my computer thinking about what I want to say this weekend.  To be honest, I feel a little bit down today.  I look back at my life and I see nothing noteworthy that I have accomplished. It seems everything I have tried has come to naught.  I look at the lives of others and with suppressed envy I wonder why the key to success does not fit the lock I have been given. This is a very rare thing for me to be feeling this way. I am normally a guy who sees the glass as being half full, not half empty.  

There have been a few changes in my life recently, nothing too bad but changes none the less.  The most important of these changes is that my Type 2 Diabetes has become harder and harder to control with just oral medications and TLC care, so my doctor has put me on Lantus, a long acting synthetic insulin. Some of my friends have offered their sympathy and while I am grateful that they think that this is something to mourn about, it really is just another medication and I have adapted to it.  In my life too there have been things I have had to adjust to. I know it was bound to happen sooner or later and I think deep inside of me, in the part of my brain where "self failures" are stored I still consider this to be a failure.  this has been added to the list my brain has compiled when it wants to make me feel sorry for myself.  

My brother and sisters for reasons known only to them have in effect abandoned me and since the death of my father eight years ago I have truly been an orphan, declared persona non gratis by those that should be closest to me. I mourn about this regularly and pray to God often and ask Him why he has permitted this. 

Now, why am I sharing all of this personal stuff with you?  It is because our Gospel today is the story of Mary and Martha. You know, Mary is running around serving the guests while Martha is sitting at the feet of Jesus listening to him speak.  Our deacon pointed out that what Mary is giving us is a poor me type of a story. She is saying "Oh poor me, look at how hard I have it, why me?" 

I truly believe that God has a plan for us and it is our job to cooperate as best as we can with that plan.  People come and go in your life and it is a fact that the ones that you love most are the ones that can hurt you the most.  As for me, I bear no ill will towards my estranged family.  I have granted them what their heart seems to yearn for, my absence in their lives. I leave it up to God to someday to tell me why this has happened.  This of course has caused my spirit to suffer, to feel lonely and abandoned but I offer my anguish and sadness that the situation causes me up to the Lord and ask Him, as Paul did in our second reading today, to add it to the all sufficient suffering he experienced on the cross for us. 

There is a purpose for everything under God's universe.  My puny mind and my sin weakened soul cannot hope to know what specific part those things that appear as evil in my life will have in bringing the ultimate plan of God into fruition, but I just have to remember that it will.  For the disappointments in life, for those things that have caused me pain and suffering I accept them and thank God for them because I know that He will ultimately place all things under his feet.

Change The Mass - An Ex Catholic with a Bad Idea and Lets Play Spin the Bottle Spin The Priest

Proposal By A Fallen Away Catholic

This week I skimmed over an article written by a young lady that styles herself as a former Catholic which in the olden days we would have called "fallen away."  She decided to take it upon herself to recommend to Pope Francis that the Catholic Church remove from the Mass the words of the Roman soldier, "Lord I am not worthy that you should come under my roof, only say the word and my soul shall be healed."  Like many fallen away, excuse me, former Catholics she has suddenly become an expert on the Bible, sacraments, and the liturgy.  In her treatise she says that Jesus died for all and His death made us worthy so we should not say these words as they are not true and an affront to our humanity.  As many former Catholics, she has become blind to the beauty of the moment of when those words are said in the Mass.  She obviously does not or perhaps she chooses not to remember that this prayer is said as part of the communion rite, right before we receive.  She obviously has no respect for the Eucharist. I am sure that in her denomination any remaining grape juice and saltines are simply disposed of along with the stale cupcakes and used Styrofoam coffee cups used in the fellowship after their preacher finishes his sermon.  She should remember that in the Catholic Church the Eucharist is the very Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ who enters into us in the form of transubstaniated bread and wine.  The words of the soldier are very apt for each one of us. Because while it is true that we are saved by the Cross of Jesus, each one of us falls short, misses the mark, in some ways.  So the words confess that we are but a shack of a temple with a leaky roof and mud floors and in faith it shouts that when Jesus enters us in this most intimate way we become greater than St. Peter's Basilica in Rome because Jesus, the resurrected Jesus, the Triumphant Jesus, the Very Word of the Father  is physically within us.  This makes me just a bit on the humble side, as it should. 

SPIN THE PRIEST AROUND?

Since the reforms of Vatican II the priest has lead us in prayer by facing the congregation.  Prior to this the presider would face the altar with his back to the people.  First of all, let me say that whatever way the priest faces makes no difference to me.  But, if I had my choice, if the Church left it up to me, I would keep the priest facing the people, sharing prayer and better able to communicate with the people.  Some conservatives want to go back to the old way.  This week the Pope said that while it is permissible to face the altar instead of the people, it is not mandatory that the priest do so.  With Christians being slaughtered in the Middle East I think we should have more to worry about than this.  I will take what comes.  I have to confess that I was a bit put out when Pope Benedict vetoed using the name of God, "Yahweh" in our worship because I love the song "You Are Near" and really got into it when it came up as part of the music selected for worship, I put this in its place and realized that in the long run, this was something that does not matter.  I classify the position of the priest in the same way.  I would not be pleased if I started to have to watch the priest from behind, but I certainly would not stop going to Mass or give up the Catholic Church because of it.   What I say now, I say with all due respect to the Pope and to the Magistarium, but sometimes I think that breathing that holy rarefied air that seems to fill presidential offices, board rooms, and executive meeting chambers the world over sometimes makes those who inhale it lose sight of the little people below them that do not really care one way or the other.  So let's play spin the priest if we must but my fellow little people, let us not get caught up in a minor change in ritual that only makes a real difference to the Pope, the Cardinals, and the Bishops who make their living in and through the Church. Now, changing the words of songs to make them "inclusive," well, don't get me started on that...........

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. 

  

Freedom

It is the 4th of July holiday weekend. It is a time for festive events, picnics, family reunions, fireworks, and parades. I think it should be a time also for sober reflection on just what it means to be free. 

In America we have the freedom to hold any opinion about the government that we want to hold and we can shout it to the rooftops if we want to!  

In America we can elect any citizen to any office based on what they say and we can hold them accountable and even demand a recall election if they seriously fail in their job. 

In America we have the right to be free of government interference in our life and concurrently we have the right to give the government authority to do things for us and in our name, We the People!

In America we have an absolute right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

In America we are guaranteed the right to worship God in the way that we want to and to follow our conscience using the light that God sends to us. 

In America we can be what and who we want to be. We can be a garbage collector or a doctor, it is our choice what we become and what we work towards.

In America we have citizen soldiers, volunteers to protect us and our country. We have a duty to see to their welfare during and after the service that the give to us. 

In America we unite with our brothers and sisters in our neighborhood, in out towns and cities and try to live in peace and in harmony with each other. 

In America, law is master over might.

In America in modern times we have lost the ability to discuss things with one another, the word compromise has lost its meaning with our elected representatives. 

In America, we have lost confidence in our senate, in our congress, in our executive and legal branches because they no longer want to work together for the common good. 

In America, we move ever closer to having a state instead of a government. 

In America, our freedom of religion is being rescinded little bit by little bit. 

In America, the president now issues decrees called executive orders that have the force of law. 

In America, the Supreme Court issues decrees called decisions that have the force of law. 

In America, our Congress and Senate are deadlocked because party politics have become more important than the good of the citizens that sent them to Washington. Those entrusted to define the law do nothing. 

In America, you have the right to live unless you are in the womb and then you have no rights at all. 

In America, there is good, there is bad. But the only other form over government that is worse than ours is any other. 

God bless this country I call home, my Lord protect us, speak more loudly that we may hear your voice.  We pray oh Lord that never take for granted the freedoms that come from you. May America be a shining light to all the world of what can be.  Amen.   

The Death Penalty

On June 21, 2016 Pope Francis that "No matter how serious the crime it is an offense to the inviolability of life and the dignity of the human person, as well as a contradiction if God's plan and His Merciful Justice." (Catholic News Service) He went on to say that the death penalty is not justice, it is revenge.  
The pope is correct in his thinking here.  Although there are many examples of people being condemned to death and being executed in the Bible, let's look at the first reported murder, the case Cain versus Able. The motive for this killing was simple jealousy and Cain slew his brother because he was jealous because God did not accept his sacrifice.  God of course knew what Cain had done.  Did He apply the death penalty? Actually no he did not. He sent Cain off to exile. 

The Bible says "Whoever sheds the blood of men shall his blood be shed for God made man in His image."  The catechism says that the death penalty may be used if there is no other way to protect society from harm from the perpetrator.  Today we have such a method, it is called "Life in prison without the possibility of parole."  We can take the worst of the worst and keep them away from others until such time as God calls them home in order to answer for their crimes before His tribunal. 

Maybe we are too concerned about the perpetrators here and are not considering the victims?  Let's talk about them a bit. Very often it is claimed that the execution of the one that hurt their loved one brings closure.  If you do a little bit of research you will find that, in America, the long time between conviction and the ultimate execution keeps the wound fresh red and raw in the victim's family.  Then when the execution finally does occur there is no closure because many of the families realize that this second killing did not bring back their loved one. 

What are Christians such as you and I supposed to do?  Jesus is very clear on this.  We are to love one another as ourselves and we are to include our enemies in this.  We are to turn the other cheek.  But since we are to love others as we love ourselves we are also allowed to deal a lethal blow to defend our lives against an aggressor.  What I think we are being asked to do is to err on the side of mercy.  

Let me tell you a personal story.  My mother, Violet, was a wonderful woman. She had a hard life growing up during the depression.  Her mother wasn't especially good to her during her childhood.  She grew up, dropped out of high school and obtained work in a defense plant.  After the war she met my father, married, and gave birth to me and my siblings. She was always looking for happiness to come into her from outside, she never learned that happiness comes from within. She ended up divorcing my father and she went to work for our family doctor. When he retired she continued working for the doctor that bought the practice.  Part of her compensation package was that she was to receive free health care from them.  This doctor apparently took this obligation with a grain of salt.  She misdiagnosed a growth on my mothers skin and prescribed an ointment to fix it.  It was not going away but she really could care less because she was not receiving any money for treating my mother.  Mom was getting very concerned and she went to see her former employer who recognized it as what it was, cancer.  She was immediately put into the hospital where she received the news that it would have to be removed.  The surgery went well and afterward the follow up showed no return of the cancer.  Then on the third follow up it was discovered that the cancer had indeed returned and had invaded her lungs and that her condition was terminal.  She went to a surgeon who said she could buy herself more time if she had the tumors removed.  She was scheduled for surgery and the doctor came to see us and gave us the good news that it had gone well and that she might have as much as a year or a year and a half to live.  Three days post op she went into a coma and died.  At the funeral a lady came up to me and offered condolences which I accepted.  My younger sister came up to me and said that that was the doctor mom had worked for.  I looked at this so called doctor and my heart filled with hate and rage.  I never knew I could feel such negative emotions as I did at that minute.  I nurtured those feelings over the next months.  I also went into a deep and dark depression that lasted for six months!  Then one day I realized that I was a Christian and Jesus was calling me to forgive.  I did forgive this worthless excuse of a doctor, gave her an unconditional pardon and at that moment my depression lifted and I felt once again the warmth of God's love filling my heart.  Don't get me wrong, I wound not cultivate a relationship with this doctor, I would not take her to lunch, or play Parcheesi with her, but I no longer wished her any harm and placed her under God's care. 

Jesus knew that forgiving brings its own rewards and that is why he asks us to do not the impossible, but the very, very, very, difficult and forgive those that do harm to us. 

What are my views on the death penalty?  In general I am against it.  I think there are some people whose offenses are so heinous that the death penalty has to be on the books to deal with them.  I cannot imagine the world would be better off if we kept people like John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, or others like them alive.  But they are the exceptions to the rule. 

The death penalty is fraught with the danger that an innocent person will be put to death.  IF you are poor, black, living in Texas, or California, Alabama, or Florida you are likely to get the death penalty if you are found guilty of murder.  In Texas there is was a ruling that a capital defendant is entitled to a lawyer but they don't have to be awake during the trial.  This is true I swear it.  Let's face it, once you are dead, you are dead even if ten minutes or ten years later DNA evidence proves that you are not guilty.  And let's not forget if you execute the wrong person, the killer is still at large. 

So I guess I for the most part agree with Pope Francis. Let's get rid of the death penalty.  It's time to prove that we can be better that the people we jail.  It really makes no sense to kill people to teach them not to kill.   What do you think?   

The Cross

The cross is a very personal thing. Jesus knew this. The cross of Jesus affected his whole body. The pain he was feeling was so severe that the temptation to prove his power by removing himself from the cross had to be running through his head.  Jesus is both fully human and fully divine, it is this fact that makes the cross relevant. If Jesus were just human He could not use the cross to show God's great love for us, He would have been just another sacrifice like those being made at the temple. On the other hand if Jesus was just divine, He would not have experienced life and the dying process as we His creatures do. Both of the elements, humanity and divinity,  had to be and were present.  So the first way the Cross affected Jesus was mentally.  He had to refuse the all too human facility to go against the desires of the Father by using the power that He had as the Son. This required Jesus to put complete trust into God and surrendering Himself as a human to the will of the Father.  

The next way the Cross affected Jesus was physically. Death by crucifixion was a death by inches. The major process was suffocation.  The woulds caused by the nails were just "minor" injuries that the body could healed if the person had been taken down from the cross while still alive. The process that a person goes through while dying on the cross is this. You had to hold yourself up to breathe and that strain on your arms was monumental and the fatigue was cumulative as lactic acid built up in the muscles. The condemned used their legs and the nail that had been pounded through the feet to give some purchase to stay where one could breath. But the pain from the wound in the feet was great and the arms tired and the culprit would sag down into a "Y" formation. The pressure on the diaphragm would make it impossible to breathe and the victim would have to push himself up again.  Depending on the strength of the one on the cross, this could go on for days.  In the case of Jesus, He was already battered and beaten and so his strength was expended in mere hours.  Death on the cross as I said was a death in inches.  The merciless sun beat down upon the criminal and insects of all types alighted on the body. There was the psychological aspect of the punishment as well to consider.  In most of the empire the criminal was exposed naked on the cross. In Israel, the benevolence of Caesar allowed the wearing of a loin cloth because the Jews were scandalized by nudity.  

So for hours Jesus suffered through the dying process. Then near the end he did several things that showed that this was no ordinary execution.  He awarded sainthood to a fellow criminal suffering with Him on that day. On the cross a criminal could be counted on to answer the scorn heaped upon him with curses. Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, they do not know what they are doing." Jesus perfectly fulfilled his obligation to honor His mother and father when he put the Virgin Mary, who had no other relatives to help her into the care of the apostle John for a widow with no relatives would have to resort to begging to meet the needs of the day.  Just before He died, he said, "I thirst."  A sponge was soaked in cheap wine and held up to His lips. He took some and he then said, "It is finished."   What was finished?  Do you remember the last supper? It ended before all of the ritualistic rubrics had been completed. They sang a long hymn. After the hymn there was supposed to be a final cup of wine that would conclude the Passover meal.  It was never consumed and the Passover meal was never completed.  By taking that wine on the Cross, Jesus, the Lamb of God, completed the New Passover and redeemed us,  Then one of the evangelists says "He uttered a loud cry."  A loud cry? From the cross? After being scourged, beaten, bled and bloodied?  The loud cry was followed by Jesus handing over His spirit.  voluntarily for us.  It was very hard to speak at all from the cross. To hear a loud cry come from someone near to death must have been  startling to the onlookers.  The loud cry shows that Jesus handed over His life, that it was not taken from Him, He gave it willingly. 

Today at Mass we read the Gospel where Jesus asks who do the people think I am.  After a few answers he asks the apostles who they think He is. Peter answers "The Christ of God."  He then tells his followers that to be his follower we have to take up our cross daily and follow Him.  What does this mean?  The cross is a very personal thing.  But we as followers of Chris, what we need to do is this,  We need to wake up each morning and pick up our cross and follow Jesus with it.  A cross is a very personal thing.  For many of us it may be a fault we are working to correct and never can seem to conquer it and it is causing us anguish. For some of us it might mean going to a job you hate because you receive no recognition for your contributions and to contribute to the best of your ability anyway.  It may be dealing with any number of things, but we must pick it up, put it on our shoulder and carry it every day for that is what is means to be a follower of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.