Persecution and Persuasive Perseverance

Today is the Memorial Mass of Saint Andrew Dung-Lac, Priest, and Companions, Martyrs

From Catholic News Service

On June 19, 1988, Pope John Paul II canonized a group of 117 martyrs who died for the Roman Catholic Faith in Vietnam during the nineteenth century. The group was made up of ninety-six Vietnamese, eleven Spaniards, and ten French. Eight of the group were bishops, fifty were priests and fifty-nine were lay Catholics. Some of the priests were Dominicans, others were diocesan priests who belonged to the Paris Mission Society. One such diocesan priest was St. Theophane Venard. (His feast day is November 6.) 

St. Andrew Dung-Lac, who represents this group of heroes, was a Vietnamese diocesan priest. He came from a poor, non-Christian family and was taught by a Christian lay catechist. He worked in the missions with the priests of the Foreign Mission Society of Paris. He was imprisoned and repeatedly tortured during the persecutions of Minh-Meng, the emperor of Vietnam between 1820 and 1840 who was famed for his persecutions of the Christians. Among the many Vietnamese and international martyrs who died alongside St. Andrew Dung-Lac was Saint Peter Thi. 

This feast day and the witnesses of the lives of the martyrs give testament to the sufferings inflicted on the Vietnamese Church, which are among the most terrible in the long history of Christian martyrdom

Persuasive Perseverance - that is one thing that the Catholic Church is known for.  Notice that St. Andrew Dung-Lac was not trained by a nun or a priest but was trained in Christian Doctrine by a lay-person.  He also persevered in the faith in spite of the fact that he was imprisoned and tortured on and off for twenty years.  He retained his faith. How do you do that in the face of ongoing pain and suffering?  It is one thing to believe when all is well and you are well-fed and happy and in no danger of having your door broken down and being carted off to prison for your faith and it is another when persecution happens or life seems to take a turn for the worse.   It is these times we have to prepare for.  They are coming to each of us.  When bad times come, we have to keep our eyes on the prize and to know that all things work for the good for those who believe.  But really, do we mean that good can come out of persecution or a diagnosis of a dread disease or the loss of someone close to us?  How can good come from these things?  I have to answer honestly, I do not know.  No, I don't know.  What I hope to be able to do when and if the time comes is to keep my eyes on the prize, to give a good example to those around me. Nothing shines brighter than a Christian who demonstrates their trust in Jesus at times when all seems lost.  So, prepare today for the evil that might come tomorrow.  Train your eyes to watch for the prize and know that you are not alone in your suffering and pain and that Jesus is by your side offering solace and hope. 

Give a Careful Listen to Home Free by Wayne Watson

Pray for the poor souls today - thank you! 

Thanksgiving - Remembering The Forgotten Holiday

As Jesus continued his journey to Jerusalem,
he traveled through Samaria and Galilee.
As he was entering a village, ten persons with leprosy met him.
They stood at a distance from him and raised their voices, saying,
"Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!"
And when he saw them, he said,
"Go show yourselves to the priests."
As they were going they were cleansed. 
And one of them, realizing he had been healed,
returned, glorifying God in a loud voice;
and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him. 
He was a Samaritan.
Jesus said in reply,
"Ten were cleansed, were they not?
Where are the other nine? 
Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?" 
Then he said to him, "Stand up and go;
your faith has saved you."


Happy Thanksgiving!  
Unfortunately, for some people, a quick greeting to friends and family is all of the thought that this holiday will receive as the talk goes to the football schedule, black Friday sales, and everything but thankfulness.  

We in the United States of America have a lot of things to be thankful for even though our government is taking a hiatus from being a government of the people, by the people. and for the people, as both parties man the barricades and block any legislation proposed by the other party.  We have things to be thankful for even though we have a president who thinks that a bunch of women and children looking for a better life pose a threat to the security of the United States.  We also have a president who has expressed admiration and is cultivating a relationship with two of the most ruthless and evil men our times have ever known and by that I mean Fatso Kim and this century's Stalin Vlad the Impaler Putin and who blames the people of Puerto Rico and the people of California for the disasters that they have suffered.  Yes, with all of the nonsense going on today, we still have things to be thankful for.

• This president, for all of his faults and foibles, seems to want to protect our religious freedom.  That is a good thing and we should be thankful for this because our rights as Christians were being eroded by the last administration.
• We can worship however we want to in this country and embrace the Faith of Our Fathers or we can worship no god at all, it is our choice.  Try that in Iran or Iraq. 
• There is abundance and plenty in this country and the vast majority of people have access to good food and clean water and those that don't, well, many of them get extra help during the holiday season.  Hint: Look for ways you can help...there are needy people in your neck of the woods who would be very grateful to you if you could donate something to the local food pantry.
• I can express my feeling about the state of politics in this country without fear that a swat team will not be executing a no-knock warrant for my opinions about the current president and Congress.  Try doing that in Iran and you may just go to jail or even get the death penalty.   No, here I am in more danger of friends not allowing me to express my own opinions rather than the rulers of the land and they are entitled to their opinion too. 
• I have a job, I get paid well for what I do, I like where I work.  
• Looking around my home, I see that I have more material goods than I could ever use and I have the potential for getting more.  

So you get the idea.  Today is a day we set aside for thanks. Many people consider it the day before Black Friday and will spend a lot of time going over the printed ads and going through websites online and let today slip away from them.  The very fact that they have money to spend on Black Friday will not occur to them to be something to be thankful for.  

On this day of thanks, make yourself a gratitude list.  Spend some time reconciling what you have with who gave it to you and who it belongs to.  If you think for a minute that all of your stuff is your stuff, well, you've got it wrong.  None of the things you own are yours.  All of what we have and who we are belong to God our Father.  You can use the things He blesses you with but you will not be able to carry them with you when you leave this world.  So, take time today to be thankful for you have.  Also, thank God for what He has NOT given you.  God knows what is best and what will help you make it to heaven and He gives according to our needs and not necessarily to satisfy our wants. 

So, Happy Thanksgiving.  May God continue to bless you as you go one day at a time through life.  May your eyes be filled with the wonder of His love for you and may you share that love with those around you.  

Don't forget to pray an Our Father, Hail Mary, and a Glory Be for the poor souls in Purgatory>

Striving and Climbing

Gospel	Luke 19:1-10

Salvation comes to the house of Zacchaeus

Jesus entered Jericho and was going through the town when a man whose name was Zacchaeus made his appearance: he was one of the senior tax collectors and a wealthy man. He was anxious to see what kind of man Jesus was, but he was too short and could not see him for the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to catch a glimpse of Jesus who was to pass that way. When Jesus reached the spot he looked up and spoke to him: ‘Zacchaeus, come down. Hurry, because I must stay at your house today.’ And he hurried down and welcomed him joyfully. They all complained when they saw what was happening. ‘He has gone to stay at a sinner’s house’ they said. But Zacchaeus stood his ground and said to the Lord, ‘Look, sir, I am going to give half my property to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody I will pay him back four times the amount.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house because this man too is a son of Abraham; for the Son of Man has come to seek out and save what was lost.’

I love to watch the Olympics.  Many people do. I think that the reason that it is so popular is that we admire people who forsake all other things in the pursuit of a higher goal.  We know that hours upon hours of dedicated time is spent practicing and honing the skills needed to win a medal.  Yet, most of the dedicated athletes come, perform, and go home clutching only the memories of having participated.  Many of those athletes will begin getting ready for the next Olympics four years in the future.  Once again they will deny themselves the pleasures of an ordinary life and take up the training in the hope that they will succeed.  They are willing to go to any lengths to get the prize and they fix the goal in their sight and all of the pain and suffering that their training brings them is seen as a good because just perhaps the next time the athletes of the world gather, they will be good enough to take home the prize. 

Our hero Zacchaeus, was a man that no one looked up to.  I mean that figuratively and factually.  He was celebrated by the majority of the people of Israel as walking, talking, human scum because he worked for the Romans, the occupiers of Israel, and helped them rape the wallets of the hard-working people by collecting taxes for the occupiers. He also was a short man who was used to spending a lot of time missing out on things simply because he was too short to see what was going on. He knew Jesus was coming and he had heard great things about this man.  He wanted to see Him.  Well, as normal, the only things he could see was the behinds of his taller fellow citizens.  He decided to run ahead and he climbed a sycamore tree so he could see Jesus pass. All he wanted to do was to see this man.  He did not expect the Holy Teacher to speak to him, a tax collector so he almost fell out of the tree when Jesus spoke to him and said that He wanted to stay at his house that day.  Zacchaeus immediately came down and passed through the forest of legs and agreed to host Jesus.  He ran ahead and had his servants prepare a party lunch for him, his friends, who were all pretty much in the same business as Zacchaeus, and for Jesus and his disciples. 

I can imagine the joy that Zacchaeus felt as the Holy Teacher reclined at table with him and his friends.  We do not know what Jesus said at the luncheon but we do know the words had to be very powerful indeed!  Zacchaeus, in front of witnesses, repents of his ways and says that he would give half his property to the poor and repay quadruple any person that he had defrauded in the course of his employment.  Jesus must have felt joy when he told  Zacchaeus that salvation had come to his house that very day. 

Jesus does not ask us to do much.  He asks us to forgive the unforgivable, to love the unlovable, to be ethical in a world where ethics is losing its place.  We need to do what needs to be done no matter what.  We have to be willing to go to any lengths to be with Jesus.  We need to climb the tree of life and allow Jesus to call us down because He wants to spend the day with us.  Get climbing young warrior for Jesus is just down the road.  Give a listen to today's song, it seems to fit nicely with the reading. 

The End Times Are Here? Are You Ready?

Jesus said to his disciples:
"In those days after that tribulation
the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light,
and the stars will be falling from the sky,
and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.

"And then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in the clouds'
with great power and glory,
and then he will send out the angels
and gather his elect from the four winds,
from the end of the earth to the end of the sky.

"Learn a lesson from the fig tree.
When its branch becomes tender and sprouts leaves,
you know that summer is near.
In the same way, when you see these things happening,
know that he is near, at the gates. 
Amen, I say to you,
this generation will not pass away
until all these things have taken place. 
Heaven and earth will pass away,
but my words will not pass away.

"But of that day or hour, no one knows,
neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."

Back in the late 1960's Bob Dylan wrote us a song that assured all of us that the times were "a changing."  Today one just has to look at the news to see that there are earthquakes, many wildfires, political chaos, with inflation, discord, lack of faith,  with a lot of religious persecution, rejection of morals, and other things that we associate with the end of time.  Can all of these things mean anything else but the imminent return of Jesus?  Well, first let me say that I believe that Jesus is going to return to judge the living and the dead and that His kingdom will have no end.   I also believe that as a Christian, that I will see these things when they happen. I just have to say that I do not think that the time is now.  I really do not know when the return of Jesus will be.  There is no one in heaven or on earth that knows when the end of time will happen. Jesus tells us of that day or hour no one knows, not the angels, nor the Son, but only the Father.

With that being said, we always have to remember that the end times are as near as our next breath. We are not guaranteed to live another minute in this life.  We can be called home to give an account of ourselves at any time.  In this respect, the end IS near because even if we live late into our nineties or even past one hundred when you stack it up against eternity it is almost no time at all. 

Above we see a fallible prediction that man has made of when the end of the world will come.  Remember the Aztec calendar?  It was predicted that the Aztecs knew something that we did not know and that is why they stopped their calendar at a particular date because it was assumed that they knew that no day would follow that last day on their calendar.  Actually, I believe that they got bored with the whole thing and decided that they had a bit of time before the calendar would go out of date so they gave the stone carvers a day or two off. 

When someone tells you that they know the date of the end of the world and that you better get ready for it, well, smile at them, thank them and walk away.  You are not going to convince them that they are wrong.  It appears that they do not know their Bible as good as they think they did.  In the meantime, while we wait, do not waste time.  Remember what Jesus said: "Love one another as I have loved you."  Get on with it - the end of the world is coming! 

Pray for the poor souls in Purgatory this week. 

Always ON, Always CONNECTED - Your Mobile Hot Spot

Gospel	Luke 18:1-8

The parable of the unjust judge

Jesus told his disciples a parable about the need to pray continually and never lose heart. ‘There was a judge in a certain town’ he said ‘who had neither fear of God nor respect for man. In the same town there was a widow who kept on coming to him and saying, “I want justice from you against my enemy!” For a long time he refused, but at last he said to himself, “Maybe I have neither fear of God nor respect for man, but since she keeps pestering me I must give this widow her just rights, or she will persist in coming and worry me to death.”’

  And the Lord said ‘You notice what the unjust judge has to say? Now, will not God see justice done to his chosen who cry to him day and night even when he delays to help them? I promise you, he will see justice done to them, and done speedily. But when the Son of Man comes, will he find any faith on earth?’

We live in a cell phone world.  Whatever we want is available to us with the manipulation of a few buttons we can summon information, order food to be delivered, talk to someone half of a world away, all of these things while playing a game of "Shoot the Bad Guy."  If we forget our precious phone or heaven forbid, break it or lose it, well then we are lost, hopeless, alone, and cut off, truly a caricature of our former powerful self.  How sad that many of us judge our worth based on the power of the phone we carry. 

Regardless the state of your wireless network, you are always connected to God.  He is there with you every moment of every day looking out for you, sending you graces to live life better, waiting to hear from you, not over a smartphone but through prayer.  God will always answer your prayer.  His answer may not always be the one you want to hear, but he will answer.  In God's eyes, you are worth more than all of the gold, silver, and Apple X cell phones in the world.  We know this because He sent His only Son to die for you. 

 As a beloved adopted son or daughter, we have immediate access to the throne of God. He is our Father and He will take care of us and be there for us from the rising of the sun to its setting and all through the hours of the night. He wants us to share our lives with Him, to share our secrets, to share our wants and desires and our fears and troubles.  For this, we need to have faith in Him. 

 According to Steven Curtis Chapman, a great Christian singer, faith is "standing in the pouring rain and knowing that the sun will shine again."  Without faith, we do not pray.  Without prayer, we do not receive.  We demonstrate our faith in the promises of God by our persistence in prayer.  Being persistent shows that we know that a God is there and He is listening.  Whenever you pray, be ready to be overwhelmed with the answer you receive.  Even if God answers "no," the graces you will receive will make you a stronger person and more in love with God than you were before. 

So, if your network indicator says, "no service" or your screen is cracked so bad that when you try to use it your fingers bleed, always remember that you are permanently connected to God and the signal strength is always five bars and He will always respond to you as a loving Father, granting you all that you need to be with Him in his house forever.   

PLEASE READ!

May I please ask for a favor from you please.  I have a friend who will be undergoing serious surgery on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving Day.  May I ask that you offer a prayer for her and pray also that her family, who is estranged from one another, come together at this time to offer their support and love.  I am not listing her name out of respect for her privacy. Just call her "Michael's friend,"  God will know who you are talking to Him about! 

( Evil + Evil ) / Christ = Love Love = God

First reading	Titus 3:1-7

It was purely by his own compassion that God saved us

Remind your people that it is their duty to be obedient to the officials and representatives of the government; to be ready to do good at every opportunity; not to go slandering other people or picking quarrels, but to be courteous and always polite to all kinds of people. Remember, there was a time when we too were ignorant, disobedient and misled and enslaved by different passions and luxuries; we lived then in wickedness and ill-will, hating each other and hateful ourselves.

  But when the kindness and love of God our Savior for mankind were revealed, it was not because he was concerned with any righteous actions we might have done ourselves; it was for no reason except his own compassion that he saved us, by means of the cleansing water of rebirth and by renewing us with the Holy Spirit which he has so generously poured over us through Jesus Christ our savior. He did this so that we should be justified by his grace, to become heirs looking forward to inheriting eternal life.

Can you imagine that?  Part of being a good Christian is to be a good citizen, to obey the officials and representatives of the government and to be ready to do good at every opportunity.  But what if you have a government that is evil such as the government that afflicted Germany in the first half of the twentieth century?  Do you obey them?  Do you sign up your sons into the youth organization that the government demanded?  Do you enroll your daughters as well into their sorority that promoted evil?  Do you go along with a government that preaches the need to eliminate a people solely because of their religion?  What about in our time.  Do we remain silent while the government mandates birth control, forcing The Sisters of Charity to become a distributor of birth control pills and devices?  Are we expected to agree with the notion of same-sex marriage? Paul, it would seem, has gotten it wrong. But, look at what his people were going through.  They were being rounded up and being tortured and killed for professing the Name of Jesus.  Was he blind, did he not see the evil that the Romans were doing to the Christians?  Of course, he saw what was going on. Yet, he was telling his people that so far as it is possible, obey those that are over you and be a good example as to what a citizen should be.  It was the turn the other cheek principle that we were to use.  We should not return evil for evil but rather show the good that can come out of being a follower of Christ. 

Please remember the Poor Souls in Purgatory today.  Remember that your next breath is not guaranteed and tomorrow might find you in close fellowship with some of those that you arr praying for today!

Duty

Gospel	Luke 17:7-10

You are merely servants

Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Which of you, with a servant plowing or minding sheep, would say to him when he returned from the fields, “Come and have your meal immediately”? Would he not be more likely to say, “Get my supper laid; make yourself tidy and wait on me while I eat and drink. You can eat and drink yourself afterwards”? Must he be grateful to the servant for doing what he was told? So with you: when you have done all you have been told to do, say, “We are merely servants: we have done no more than our duty.

On rare occasions sometimes these reflections write themselves.  Today is such an occasion.  Remember the old song "What So Ever You Do?"  It reminds us that whatever we do for others, we do for Christ. While this is an important lesson for us to learn, it does not need much comment from me.  So do it and that's it. 

Give a listen...