2cornucopias

Last Judgment

In 05 Homilies by Fr. Reid on 2015/09/25 at 12:00 AM

 

 Very few works of art in our world have the impact of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment, which adorns the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel.
 Completed in 1541 after 4 years of work, this Renaissance fresco is a riot of color and images, which excites the eye and stimulates both mind and heart.
 The great genius of this fresco is not so much its sheer beauty and artistic imagination, as it is the clear message that each of us must make a radical choice to either accept or reject Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, for this fresco provides a glimpse into that great final moment when Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead!
 Seated in the center of the painting with His Blessed Mother to His side, Jesus is depicted as strong and powerful, reigning supreme as He is surrounded by His saints and pronouncing judgment on souls who ascend to the heavens or fall to hell accordingly.
 The most interesting part of the fresco, though, is the very bottom in which angels and demons wrestle for souls, a reminder of the spiritual battle for our souls that is constantly being waged around us whether we realize it or not.
 In the bottom right of the picture is Charon from Greek mythology, steering the ferry that carries the damned down the River Styx to where they are greeted by Minos, Hell’s gatekeeper, whose body is coiled about by a serpent.
 On the faces of the damned are terror, fear and loathing, for now they realize that their grave sins and refusal of Christ’s mercy have merited an eternity of hellish pain and suffering.
 On any given day, we can open the newspapers or turn on the news and learn of anotherterrible tragedy or saga of sorrow in our world. It is not hard to find examples of incredible
human suffering.

 But truly, my brothers and sisters, the greatest tragedy any of us can face is eternaldamnation. And what this means is that the greatest burden in this life is to be in a state of
mortal sin, for to die in mortal sin necessarily means that we will be damned for eternity.

 What matters most in this life, then, is not to be free of suffering or sorrow. It is not ofgreatest importance that we are comfortable and happy in this life. All that truly matters is
that we are living in a state of grace!

 When we maintain our souls in a habitual state of grace, we can truly exercise the beautifulvirtue of hope “…by which we desire the kingdom of Heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit” (CCC, no. 1817).
 But this does not mean that any lapse into mortal sin should ever extinguish our hope for eternal life, for just like the widow’s son in the Gospel, Jesus can bring us back from death to life by His words.
 If we are dead in sin, but contritely place ourselves under the healing hand of Christ in the confessional, His words of absolution – spoken by Him through a priest – brings us back to life just as surely as Jesus revives that young man in today’s Gospel.
 But this new life that we receive in the confessional should not be taken for granted, nor should we ever flirt with grave sin, rashly presuming upon God’s mercy.
 Rather, as true followers of Christ we must seek to live habitually in a state of grace – avoiding even the near occasion of sin.
 Remaining in a state of grace requires living a spiritual life, and avoiding a life of carnal pleasure. As St. Paul reminds us: “what a man sows in the flesh, from the flesh also will reap corruption. But he who sows in the spirit, from the spirit will reap life everlasting.”
 Of course there’s more to living a life of grace than merely avoiding sin and seeking to live a spiritual life. While doing so may keep us in a state of grace, our goal must be true holiness, for this is what glorifies God and secures our salvation.
 Yet holiness is never attained simply by focusing on ourselves. To grow in genuine holiness requires reaching out in charity to help others. This is the all-important virtue that we must strive for, for it is the virtue of charity that helps to form the other virtues within us.
 Charity takes many forms, but I think the most important form of charity is helping people to overcome their sinfulness so that they may grow in genuine holiness.
 If there’s one thing I’ve learned during my life as a priest, it is that people are fragile. All of us bear particular wounds and sufferings that are the mark of sin – either our own sins or the sins of others. Oftentimes the wounds we bear inhibit our growth in holiness.
 But that doesn’t have to be the case! For when we seek to live by the spirit, we can see in our wounds a means of growing closer to Christ. When we unite our wounds to Christ’s wounds, they are transfigured and become a means of spiritual strength for us.
 Yet oftentimes, this is only possible when someone lends us a helping hand. Just as we often need the assistance of others when we are physically wounded in order to find healing, so too do we need the assistance of others to find healing for our wounds of sin.
 As St. Paul tells us today, we should be willing to bear one another’s burdens, and not grow tired of doing good. This requires the virtue of magnanimity so that we may look beyond a person’s sin to see his wounds that have helped bring about that sin.
 So often when we see a person sinning in a grievous way, we are tempted to judge them and to be scandalized. And worse yet, we often turn to gossiping about them as well.
 But St. Paul tells us today that when we see someone sinning, we should instruct them in a spirit of meekness – not judging, but realizing that we, too, could fall into a serious sin.
 This doesn’t mean we should ever excuse the sins of others, especially when those sins aregrave and scandalous. But like Jesus with the woman caught in adultery, we should show
compassion for that person’s woundedness while gently admonishing them not to sin again.

 Brothers and sisters, each of us is precious in God’s eyes, no matter how numerous or graveour sins may be. And each us, in working out our own salvation, is called to help others
along the path to salvation.

 Sometimes all it takes is a kind word, a smile, or an earnest prayer coupled with a generoussacrifice on our part to help turn another away from sin and find healing for his wounds.
 In a spirit of humility, may we be always clear in our understanding of what is sinful andoffensive to God, while never judging the hearts of those we see sinning.
 In a spirit of meekness and magnanimity, may we each be willing to bear the burdens ofothers, gently correcting and helping each other to heal from our sins.
 And through the practice of the virtue of charity may we merit to be resurrected from theeternal death our sins deserve so that we may reign with Christ Jesus forever in Heaven.

September 2013

© Reverend Timothy Reid

Fr. Reid is the pastor of St. Ann Catholic Church, Charlotte, NC

Homilies from June 17, 2012 onward have audio.
To enable the audio, lease go directly to Fr. Reid’s homily homilies and select the matching date.

Link to Homilies:
http://stanncharlotte.org/content/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&id=8&Itemid=61

 

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What Did You Expect?

In 08 Musings by Jack Reagan on 2015/09/25 at 12:00 AM

A man is fined $37,500 a DAY because he built a pond on his own land, but some Federal bureaucrat didn’t think he  should have done so.

Illegal aliens are pouring into the country while the government does nothing about it because the Democrats see them a huge voting block for them.

Hillary Clinton wants to be president with no record of success in any of her government positions.

Senate Democrats refused to defund Planned Parenthood after the revelation of gross scandal. Planned Parenthood gets 500 million taxpayers dollars a year.

Republicans who have the majority in Congress seem paralyzed by indecision and ineptitude.

The news media is totally corrupt and biased as it hardly reported on the Planned Parenthood scandal. Had it been a “conservative” scandal, we still be hearing about it.

The Obama administration has had a singular lack of success in anything but piling on more and more regulations.

The President has spent millions on taxpayer funded vacations because he takes a huge staff with him.

Forty percent of babies are born to unmarried women.

The U.S. Supreme Court decided the history and practice of thousands of years was wrong and declared that people of the same gender could marry legally. The majority opinion was a written a  Catholic who should have known better.

The latest street slogan is: “Black lives matter.” and they do, but where is the clamor about almost 24,000,000 black babies killed in the womb?

Liberals preach tolerance…except for those who disagree with their ideas.

The sexual revolution has spawned an epidemic of sexually-related diseases never mentioned by the media.

The Democratic Party has been called the party of sin because it approves of abortion, partial-birth abortion euthanasia, fetal stem cell research, ssme-sex “marriage” and other immoralities. (I am registered as an Independent voter because I have no respect for either party.)

Congregations come to church on Sunday looking like they are dressed for anything but the serious business  of divine worship.

Political correctness rums amok through the country denying reality and forcing people to pretend the false is true.

Muslims are now invading Europe. Islam has wanted to control Europe for centuries. Now it may the chance because the Europeans had no interest in curbing Muslims extremists in the past 20 years.

Iraq, after thousand of American and Iraqi deaths and tons of American money is worse off now than it was. In Afghanistan, we are no nearer to a solution than we were on the first day there.

And the list could go on and on…

If these facts were incorporated in a novel written about 60-70 years ago, it would have widely panned as too absurd to read. Yet, the it is reality of the present day.

The world was not made by humans.  We don’t even understand most of it.  It was a made by a Creator we call “God”.   As the Creator, He s entitled to make the rules.  He has done so, and He has revealed those rules to us.  Because He also envisioned reward for tie faithful followers, He had to give us  a free will to make decisions, good or bad because rewards have to be earned.  Modern man is making wrong decisions, and when you make wrong decisions and judgments, the negative effects follow until death or the wrong decision is corrected.  Our past and present wrong decisions have caught up to us.  The problem is that God does not change his rules because the Supreme Court says He is wrong.  Abortion and same-sex “marriage” are still wrong in His mind.

So modern man decided to adopt a philosophy that there is no objective truth, that truth arises within the individual’s mind, and  he                                                                             determines what is personally true or false for him.  But that is not reality.  Truth is outside of our mind and we take it into the mind.  It’s called reality, and without a realistic view of life,chaos will follow proportionately.

The other error that  modern man indulges in is to say that God has no business in public life.  Thus, our media,education , government all levels and business are essentially atheistic in practice.  This is not without is baneful effects.

Our ethical standards are now given to us by fellow humans whose have neither the wisdom or the purity of intention to prescribe well.  Look how they have changed the U.S. in the past 50 years.  Humans have been designed to need God and anything else  will not succeed.

Another effector  of this is the loss of ability to think and act rationally.  God is the source of wisdom and rationality.  Since we do not offer Him a  place et the public table, there can be no certain standards by which to measure actions.  We go from failure to failure, stupid idea to stupid idea. How can same-sex “marriage” be anything but a stupid idea; the  anatomical arrangement of two of the same gender are certainly not conductive to what the Creator has in mind when He designed marriage in the beginning of time.

We also lose the ability to chose and implement true values suitable to the human race.  Values are now imposed by the loudest and the boldest.  The why we value pets over people (You can go to jail over animal abuse, but not abortion), blacks over whites, illegals over legals, affirmative action over merit. etc. etc. The  only sins today are racism, sexism and environmentalism (cf. the first item in this essay).

Is there a solution to all this?   Of course..go back to God in huge numbers.  Will we?   I doubt it.   History tells us that no society on the slippery slope has EVER recovered because societies die by suicide.  It as happened 21 time over the be centuries.  The last 40 years of American education has produced people who do not and cannot think about anything worthwhile.  They have no sense of history.  Younger people have a sense of entitlement to be deemed the wisest among us while in reality,they know almost nothing of value to themselves or the country.

We have rejected God, but have set other gods in His place.  Humans are wired to worship something or someone.  We worship drugs, sex, electronic devices galore, sports to excess, political-correctness, one-sided “toleration”, physical fitness and on and on.  We have changed the country so it is not same USA I grew up in.

I hate to pessimistic, but it’s  better to be be realistic.

If you have a true relationship with the Creator, improve it; if you do not, think again.

 

 

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“Renew your joy for the struggle”

In 01 Daily Meditations on 2015/09/18 at 12:00 AM
Sometimes you feel that you are beginning to lose heart and that everything is getting on top of you. This kills your good desires, and you can hardly manage to overcome this feeling even by making acts of hope. Never mind: this is a good time to ask God for more grace. Then, go on! Renew your joy for the struggle, even though you might lose the odd skirmish. (Furrow, 77)


There are many who repeat that hackneyed expression ‘while there’s life there’s hope’, as if hope were an excuse for ambling along through life without too many complications or worries on one’s conscience. Or as if it were a pretext for postponing indefinitely the decision to mend one’s ways and the struggle to attain worthwhile goals, particularly the highest goal of all which is to be united with God.

If we follow this view, we will end up confusing hope with comfort. Fundamentally, what is wrong with it is that there is no real desire to achieve anything worthwhile, either spiritual or material. Thus some people’s greatest ambition boils down to avoiding whatever might upset the apparent calm of their mediocre existence. These timid, inhibited, lazy souls, full of subtle forms of selfishness, are content to let the days, the years, go by sine spe nec metu,* without setting themselves demanding targets, nor experiencing the hopes and fears of battle: the important thing for them is to avoid the risk of disappointment and tears. How far one is from obtaining something, if the very wish to possess it has been lost through fear of the demands involved in achieving it! (Friends of God, 206-207) 

* ‘Neither hoping nor fearing

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