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Palm Sunday

In 05 Homilies by Fr. Reid on 2015/03/27 at 12:00 AM

Last Sunday we began the solemn vigil of Passiontide. The violet veils
covering our statues and crucifixes, as well as the silencing of the bells in lieu of the harshness of the clacker, speak of our sadness in the face of Jesus’ impending death and provide a means of intensifying our Lenten fasting.
Today the most solemn part of our Lenten journey begins: Holy Week. This week is called holy, for throughout the course of this week we will recall, through our liturgies, the Paschal Mystery: the mystery of our Lord’s suffering, death, and resurrection. Today’s reading of the Passion provides us with a prelude to all that we will experience in the coming week as we prepare for Easter, the great feast of our salvation!

One of the great lessons we learn this week is that sin has tremendous consequences. Indeed, the death of our Lord is itself the greatest witness to the consequences of sin! Jesus Christ, who is Truth, Goodness, and Beauty Incarnate, was crucified for no better reason than Man’s intractable pride.

Yet sin and its deathly consequences will not have the final word this week. No, my brothers and sisters, this is a week of victory for our Lord! As such, it is a week of hope! This week, more than ever, we hope in our own victory over sin and death! In truth, resurrection is possible for us all, but only if we maintain our hope in Him and do our best to follow His will.
So it is that in this most solemn and holy of weeks, we are called to meditate more deeply on the great gift of self that our Lord makes to mankind. For in this great act of love on the cross, we find that our Lord is willing to go to any lengths to save us.
But as we hope in our Lord, we must remember that as Christ’s disciples we are called to enter into His Paschal Mystery with Him, imitating Him in His willingness to suffer.
St. Paul tells us that if we suffer with our Lord, we shall also be glorified with Him (cf. Rom 8:17). And so we must not only meditate on our Lord’s sufferings, my brothers and sisters; we must also take part in them, for there is no other path to Heaven.
More than any other way, it is through His passion and death that Our Lord shows us just how much He loves us. But it is not enough for us to know of His love. We must return it, “for love is repaid by love alone” (St. Therese of Lisieux).
The Gospel of John tells us that: “greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for a friend” (John 15:13). And so if we truly love our Lord and wish to show our love for Him, we must be willing to lay down our lives for Him; we must suffer with Him.
Alas, suffering is hard, is it not? We resist suffering, for it requires that we go against our own nature, which desires comfort and prefers pleasure.
Yet what we will learn from this week is that suffering, though evil in itself, can bring about such great good. And in faith we must trust that if our Lord, who is Love and Goodness, allows suffering to come into our lives, it must be for our ultimate good.
In truth, every suffering that we endure is an opportunity for us to be crucified with our Lord, if we are willing to embrace it as a gift and unite it to our Lord’s suffering in prayer.
Doing so is not only an act of the will that strengthens us in virtue, it is also an act of love by which we put to death that which is sinful within us so that Christ may live and reign within us!

This week as we meditate on all that our Lord suffered for us and because of us, let us each examine ourselves so that we may know what it is within us that must be crucified. Let us also examine our own sufferings, and with the courage that God provides, let us embrace every form of suffering that comes our way as a means to put to death our personal sinfulness so that Christ may more readily live within us.

And let us live in hope, confident that the suffering and death we witness in our Lord this week will lead us all to eternal life.

01 April 2012

© Reverend Timothy Reid

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

You can go directly to his homilies:
http://stanncharlotte.org/content/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&id=8&Itemid=61

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St. John Paul the Great: How Pope John Paul II lived and helped others live the new evangelization

In 04 Fr. John McCloskey on 2015/03/20 at 12:00 AM

In 1978, I arrived in Rome as a new seminarian, after six years as a Wall Street stockbroker. Talk about a life changer!

Ten weeks after my arrival, I found myself in St. Peter’s Basilica, along with thousands of other people attending the installation of the now-St. John Paul (dare I add “the Great”?) as our new Roman pontiff.

At that moment, my life and that of the world changed forever. Though we did not yet know it, the New Evangelization had begun, ushered in by a pope from a faraway country. Its high point under his stewardship was probably the celebration in 2000 of the closing of the second millennium of Christianity and the opening of the third — an event that, in his fearless way, he described as Crossing the Threshold of Hope.

John Paul (a man in full!) lived out his entire life as a priest, bishop, cardinal and pope through a “sincere gift of self,” made not once, but renewed day by day, moment by moment. He laid down his life for others right up to his last breath.

Who can doubt, then, that, from the realms of glory, he is now helping all who need help (and who does not?) when we ask his intercession in prayer.

To understand him better, you might consider reading or re-reading George Weigel’s magisterial biography or one of the many books of reminiscences by those who were closest to him in his long life.

Perhaps John Paul’s greatest work was to correctly define the meaning of the Second Vatican Council after several decades of contentious confusion. Being granted one of the longest pontificates in history gave the Holy Father the opportunity, through his writing and teaching, to make clear the Council’s emphasis on the universal call to holiness of all the faithful and their obligation to share their faith not only by example, but by word — in the workplace, among family and friends and in society.

CONTINUE READING…
http://www.catholicity.com/mccloskey/john-paul-the-great.html

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What’s In a Name? by Jack Reagan

In 08 Musings by Jack Reagan on 2015/03/20 at 12:00 AM

Did you know that the majority of those who live in the U.S. label themselves “Christian”?  That  is a great number of people by any standard; yet, by any Christian standard, the United States is a pagan country in practice, if nothing else.

Consider the following: more than fifty million babies have been killed because they were inconvenient for someone…….and the majority is silent.

We spend over 30 billion dollars a year on pets while countless humans lack the basics of food, shelter…… and the majority is silent.

Pornography is another billion dollar business in the U.S……. and the majority is silent.

The media of all types ridicules and distorts Christianity routinely while almost never doing the same to another religion…….and the majority is silent.

Television and movies depict sex and violence as not only acceptable, but, in some cases, as desirable…… and the majority is silent.

Health and fitness have become for many a quasi-religion, ignoring the fact that one’s  spiritual fitness, not physical fitness, determines one’s eternal destiny…….and the majority is silent.

In a nation that says it is overwhelmingly Christian, something is amiss beyond the obvious fact that too many “Christians” are participants in the above.

So, let’s look a little deeper into what research has discovered.

Most Americans say there is no absolute truth.  Most evangelical Christians do not believe in absolutes. (An absolute is a doctrinal or moral principle that is true for all people, everywhere, at all times. For example, the Ten Commandments and the existence of God.)

Most of those 18-25 do not believe in absolutes. The majority of evangelicals believe “that the Bible is the written word of God and is totally accurate in all that it teaches”. BUT, most of Americans say they believe this too which is about the same percentage that reject absolutes. (The Bible is full of absolutes.)

Most “fundamentalists” engage in non-marital sex; about the same rate for non-Christians. Half of the  Protestants and  Catholics are pro-abortion. Half of Evangelicals and Catholics believe in euthanasia. Half of freshman entering Christian colleges cannot explain or defend basic doctrines of the faith. Half of the youth who do attend church do not believe in absolutes.

It seems that the word “Christian” can mean many things to many people. One thing seems obvious which is that too many “Christians” are “cafeteria Christians” who pick and choose what doctrines and morals apply to them.  That is the result of rejecting absolutes.  If there are no absolutes, there can be no abiding truth that we cannot challenge without risk to our spiritual welfare.  We are left with human opinions instead of divine knowledge and revelation.  And the blind lead the blind.

We cannot even begin to change the situation until we recognize that the American Christian world is not in good shape. Then we have to determine how we came to reflect the reality above. There is no salvation in using that name “Christian” only in the name of Jesus.

Note: Poll statistics generalized because of constant fluctuation; sadly on the rising side.

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